for any new government has to be fixing the basics — electricity, water and transport. also, the man in charge of economic policy for the democratic alliance. as the second biggest party, they're set to have an influential say in south africa's future. plus, working harder in your work day. the big boss of the us software giant that helps power netflix, levi's and fedex tells me why artificial intelligence will bring a step change in human productivity. wherever you'rejoining me from around the world, once again, a big hello and a warm welcome to the show. you know, this week we're focusing on south africa, one of the most advanced economies on the continent, but one with huge challenges for the new government to get to grips with. unemployment, power cuts and infrastructure — they're just the start. and that is despite the imf — the international monetary fund — forecasting by the end of this year, south africa will

once again be the continent's largest economy, ahead of nigeria and egypt. the anc, it came out on top in the recent elections with 40% of the vote. but for the first time since the advent of democracy in 1994, nelson mandela's party didn't win a majority, making a coalition government very likely. what this election has made plain is that the people of south africa expect their leaders to work together to meet their needs. as you can see here, the economy has grown significantly since the end of apartheid in the 1990s. but amid widespread difficulties, it's really struggled to grow in the last decade or so. one of the most pressing issues in the election was unemployment. one in three south africans that could work don't have a job. it's one of the highest rates in the world. as a result, over 2a

million people, or 39% of the population, receive some form of government welfare payments. that's just one thing that's pushed up government debt. other factors include less money coming in from taxes, as well as higher interest rates and public sector wages. and growth has also been hurt by foreign companies investing less money. it was down a third last year as power outages and unreliable infrastructure just continue to make it hard for companies to operate. and all of this is being felt rather acutely in people's everyday lives, as our very own shingai nyoka explains from johannesburg. this is africa's most industrialised nation, but it also remains deeply unequal, with millions of south africans struggling to survive. water and electricity supplies are erratic and the really high cost of living has forced some to borrow money to buy food. 2a million people receive welfare, but from a really small tax base. so what do people want from the new government? more business opportunities for younger people,

because i've been looking for a job for two years as an animator and i couldn't find anything so far. i think, firstly, i think more opportunities and work - and jobs for the youth, - just to make things much more accessible for them. secondly, can you stop - with the loadshedding as well? can you have electricity? my greatest frustration isjust in terms of just service delivery. i think a lot of south africans, with the economy at the moment, things are tough. perhaps the biggest challenge is unemployment, a ticking time bomb that's particularly affected the youth. but there are also electricity cuts, which are caused by ageing power plants and corruption. and those have forced many small businesses to close and impacted the economic growth. in order for the anc to form a government, it needs to get into a coalition. the main opposition, the democratic alliance, is seen as pro—business, a move opposed by the trade unions. other parties have various radical positions — nationalising mines and land grabs without compensation. here in africa's wealthiest

square mile, international investors and businesses, many of them listed here on the johannesburg stock exchange, are watching closely. so there you go. that's what economic dysfunction means for millions of south africans. butjust how disruptive is it to big business? well, to find out, i've been catching up with the boss of one of the country's most influential business groups. it is business leadership south africa. busisiwe mavuso, a real pleasure having you on the show. and, busi, let me start with this because your membership, it includes some of the biggest companies in south africa, both local names like bidvest and absa, as well as some big foreign companies — anglo—american and amazon. so i guess the question, busi, is — what are the most important changes that they all want and need to see from the new government? there is a lot that business would like to see in this country. and i think some of those changes really, in the main, relate to the trading environment.

our trading environment is not conducive at the moment. and when you look at it, it is really a function of the network industries. you've got four network industries in this country. three of them are dysfunctional. you have water — that is dysfunctional. you've got energy — that is dysfunctional. you have transport and logistics — that is dysfunctional. the only one that is working as it should is telecoms. so i really think that ours is to, and our plea, you know, to the government is for the government to really fix the basics. and as business, we are committed to continuing to work with government and to providing whatever support that they are going to need. we are very clear as the business community that we are not going to support an administration that is actually going to usher in another era of economic destruction. busi, i want to talk to you about south africa's unemployment.

so, busi, what's it going to take for the private sector to create the jobs they need? and what do you fear will happen to the country if the new government doesn't tackle this properly? it's a recipe for disaster and we are very conscious of that as the south african leadership, both business and government. you know, arguably, the issue of unemployment is the biggest albatross that hangs around our neck as a country. south africa has got nine provinces, so only two provinces have got more people that are employed. busi, i want to talk to you about south africa's unemployment. it's one of the highest rates in the world — 33%, 45% for young people. and just last year, the united nations called it a ticking time bomb that threatens social cohesion and strains public resources.

so, busi, what's it going to take for the private sector to create the jobs they need? and what do you fear will happen to the country if the new government doesn't tackle this properly? it's a recipe for disaster and we are very conscious of that as the south african leadership, both business and government. you know, arguably, the issue of unemployment is the biggest albatross that hangs around our neck as a country. south africa has got nine provinces, so only two provinces have got more people that are employed. the rest of the seven are sitting with more people that are unemployed, which is just not sustainable. with such high levels of domestic inequality, you are never going to be able to attain social stability. so we are definitely at risk, you know, of the erosion of social cohesion. you don't create jobs. jobs are a function of supply and demand. you need to create an environment that is conducive for investment. because then, when investment comes in, you know, then jobs can be an outcome. many of us know, busi, that one of the most high—profile problems south africa faces is the electricity blackout, with power regularly going off

for, what, ten hours a day because there is more demand than supply. so just describe what impact that actually has on businesses right across the economy. the impact has been huge of not having the right energy security. rather a whole lot of small businesses have actually shut down, a whole lot of big businesses have continuously raised this as an issue that is the main contributor to the trading environment that is not conducive. but i must say...established a business—government partnership, you know, which is focusing on fixing the three areas of energy, transport and logistics and crime and corruption. and i really think we have actually done very well in the partnership. and that is one of the things that we're hoping that this new administration will continue.

dealing with issues of energy security is a big one, they are saying we haven't had anything because of the elections, it's definitely not that. because we've been in the engine room over the past year and i do believe that once again such basics, you are well on your way to get investment back into the country again. it does appear that foreign companies just don't seem to want to invest at the moment in south africa. i mean, the central bank says foreign investment was down a third last year. but, busi, surely those external investments

arejust, well, so crucial to the economy. how do you get them to come back? and that is precisely the problem. capital is like water and it will follow the path of least resistance. we have made it difficult for capital to land here. as much as south africa is very strategic in the african continent, we are not the only game in town. you know, you are currently seeing east africa eating south africa's breakfast, you know. and it becomes difficult because, once investors leave, they leave. and when they land somewhere else, it's normally a long—term commitment. but we do hope, you know, that because of the strategic nature of the south african economy, because of the size of our domestic market, because of all those, uh, strengths, because of the rule of law that we have in this country, we really hope that, once we get our house in order, then we will start to see, erm, investment trickling in. busi, the credit rating agency moody's, it's actually warned

that a coalition government is likely to make it difficult to run the economy so, well, do you agree with that? or do you think that having the anc work with other parties just might be, well, what's actually needed to give the economy the jolt that it clearly needs? i actually believe that that is what is actually needed. you know, i don't think that they can continue having total control. i really think that they need someone to hold them accountable. the coalition governments that we've actually had in the municipalities have actually been chaotic. they've had ineffective decision making, there's been disunity, but it doesn't mean that all coalition stories cannot be a success. and, busi, let me end on this. given south africa's prominence on the continent, just how damaging are its economic struggles for the rest of africa? they're actually very damaging. i'm a firm believer, you know, that south africa is really the country that is supposed to... ..be the tide that lifts

all ships, all ships being the rest of the 5a african countries. that is why it is incumbent and very urgent that we actually get our story right and get our house in order. and we are well on our way of doing so as a country. well, on that point, busisiwe mavuso, the big boss of business leadership south africa, a pleasure having you on the show. thanks for your time. we'll talk to you again soon. brilliant. thank you so much. thanks for inviting me. so what can government do to tackle these problems? well, the anc, as we know, won the election, but didn't win a majority. so it is looking to form a coalition. we asked to speak to the anc finance minister, enoch godongwana, but we were told he wasn't available. so we decided to speak with the man in charge of economic policy for their potential coalition partners, the democratic alliance, who came second with 22% of the vote. dr dion george, a real pleasure having you on the show. and, dion, let me

start with this. from your perspective, as the second biggest party, and as we record this possibly part of a coalition government, dion, what's the most pressing challenge facing south africa's economy right now? well, there are several problems with our economy at the moment. i think chiefly is that our economy is not growing. and as a consequence of that, we have unemployment and we have poverty, and people are actually hungry. 81% of households in south africa are not able to put enough food on their table. fundamentally for everybody in south africa become what they are capable of becoming. 81% of households in south africa are not able to put enough food on their table. and there are 5 million children in south africa that are starving today. that's the fundamental problem we have here. dion, thejobs crisis.

it's pretty damning in your country and one of the highest rates in the world. how on earth do you fix that? and how long could that take? now, the reason why our unemployment is so high is obviously our economy is not growing. we need to get our economy to grow. and the reason why it's not growing is that government is in the wrong place in our economy. it needs to build infrastructure. it needs to provide education and health care and social security, and then get out of the way and let business thrive in south africa. that's the problem. government regulation has strangled business in our country, which obviously affects the tax rate. the other part of the problem is we have labour laws that are not working. now we have a minimum wage. that's under discussion and has been under discussion for a long time. what it's done is it's priced, erm, workers out of the market, employers are not willing to employ people at the rate

of the minimum wage. so we have proposed that, specifically for people who are aged between 18 and 35 who have not been employed for the past two years, that they would be exempted. so we're not proposing to throw everything out, but we're trying to find a way that will enable us to go forward without unravelling everything else. and when you look at south africa generally, we are not a poor country. in fact we are a rich country. the only reason we are on our knees as we haven't got the right policies and that is fixable. and so this election has been an enormously important milestone in our history because now we do in fact have an opportunity where we can possibly negotiate a betterfuture. dion, we know, you know, the widespread infrastructure problems with electricity blackouts, rail and port delays — they're all taking a big chunk out of how much tax the government rakes in. and i'm just kind of wondering, does that make it imperative

that the government borrows the money right now to fix the problems for the long term? well, i think it is important that government would probably need to borrow more money for infrastructure. but the difficulty that we have, we already have a problem with our debt—to—gdp ratio. we're at 7a%, so there isn't much space for government to borrow any more money without crowding out service delivery. for example, for eskom, we have the blackouts all the time so our economy can't grow because business can't keep the lights on. so what we need to do is change the model, inject the private sector into it, and that would then take pressure off government's national balance sheet, which then would make more money available. i have to ask you because others will ask this question, do you think it could just be a matter of time before south africa needs a bailout from the likes of the imf? if africa needs a bailout from the likes of the mp?— likes of the imf? if we carry

on spending _ likes of the imf? if we carry on spending this _ likes of the imf? if we carry on spending this way, - likes of the imf? if we carry on spending this way, it - likes of the imf? if we carry | on spending this way, it may well happen. however, i believe it can be avoided if we make the right choices. at the moment what is happening is yes, we are paying an enormous amount of money on interest payments, any household will know you can't borrow so much that you just can't pay it back. if government does not cut back on it spending, it will end up that way. dion, the credit agency moody's, it's warned that any coalition will find it difficult to run the economy. and the head of south africa's biggest trade union, which is, of course, an important ally of the anc party, they told the sunday world newspaper it was firmly against an anc—led coalition that included what it called "the racist democratic alliance". so i've got to ask you, dion — do you think these differences can be overcome? and how important is that for south africa's economy? well, i think it always boils down to choices. and the trade unions in particular do not like the da's economic policy

because we believe it's necessary to rein back the public sector wage bill. we need to rein back the strength of the trade unions in our economy. if economy doesn't grow, you don't have tax revenue and you're unable to deliver services. the da's position is quite simply this — we have got a set of policies, and we have a vision that we believe can take our country forward. we need to get beyond our fixation with race. yes, it is true that we're only 30 years since the end of apartheid, and that's a very small period of time. so it will take much longer before we can become the post—racial society that we should become. but on the journey to that, we need to pick the right solutions. i have lots of discussions with the minister of finance, and we both agree we have a growth problem. the anc does not believe that it has a spending

problem, which it does do. so choices need to be made because, if we don't do that, what's going to happen is we'd end up with a bailout, we'll end up with an economy that doesn't grow. and, of course, heaven forbid, we might end up with violence that nobody wants. we need to set aside our deeply entrenched ideological perspectives and say what's good for our economy. because if it grows, it lifts everybody. well, on that point, dr dion george, shadow finance ministerfor the democratic alliance, really great to have you on the show. good luck with everything. and we'll check in with you soon. thank you very much. you know, have you ever wondered how these big companies just keep themselves running, whether it's, well, the streaming giant netflix, the french carmaker renault or the aerospace conglomerate rolls—royce? there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than their millions of end users around the world get to see. they have huge teams of people who need to get paid, big budgets to keep in check

and supply chains to keep running. well, workday, it is one of the software giants that helps thousands of big companies keep all of that going. so i checked in with its big boss. carl eschenbach, great to have you on the show. and, carl, let me simply start with this, especially for the uninitiated — just explain what workday does. workday is a company that provides a very powerful platform to allow companies to manage their most critical and most important assets — their people and their finance. and we have a very powerful set of customers around the world. we have over 60% of the fortune 500 using our platform and we have a tremendous set of clients across europe, including 35% of the ftse 100. carl, as we know, economies in many parts of the world, they're struggling. there's uncertainty about interest rates and growth more broadly. so i've got to ask you — how difficult does that environment make it for new customers to, well,

to take the plunge and invest in using your services? the macro is quite challenging out there for enterprise software companies who are selling large, transformational platforms like we do here at workday. that being said, our platform is extremely powerful and helps customers' productivity gains, allows them to be more efficient and save them money. but to get, you know, opportunities across the line where people actually want to deploy a platform like workday, we are seeing more scrutiny before they make these big decisions on these transformational platform positions. so you typically charge a company for your services for each member of staff they have. so i guess when they're growing, you're also growing. but with the us, which is your biggest market, its seeing signs of a slowing jobs market. so how concerned are you that that's going to be difficult to grow workday, at least while the us central bank keeps

those interest rates on hold? yeah, listen, we have a very what we call durable business. our value proposition continues to resonate with our customers. but we're seeing not as many people expand or increase their headcount of their employees, which can sometimes have an impact on how we license our product with our customers. but overall, we're not overly concerned because of the value we bring to our customers. carl, a lot of what you do is based on the cloud, but in a world where so much work is done remotely, i'm kind of wondering, does that make your systems perhaps more vulnerable to hacks and attacks? so i think our security posture on our platform is truly world—class. it's as secure as anything else you can do on premises. one of the reasons people have, you know, been implementing a workday platform is, post—covid, people are working all over the world in a very hybrid manner. and to do that, you had to implement a new platform

to support your employees. and now we're seeing companies implement a platform like workday in a truly transformative way to support their employees and, you know, in a very different way than they have historically had to. carl, let's talk about al, artificial intelligence. of course, touted by the experts as the next big thing in so many circles. so do you worry that the rise of easy—to—use tools like, well, chatgpt or even the integration of ai into standard office software such as microsoft office, do you think that's going to eat into demand for your customised solutions? because, well, simply put, customers, they're going to be able to achieve the same results without spending as much. we are big fans and big believers of ai and the potential impact it can have on human productivity. in fact, we think it can drive a step function change in human productivity. first and foremost, it's important to know that, for more than ten years,

workday has been building right deep into our product ai and machine learning. we talk about quality and quantity of data. we have over 65 million users on our platform, aaron, that process over 800 billion transactions a year. and by doing that, it gives us a highly curated set of data to train off of and provide ai outputs. we often say your output of ai is only as good as the input of the ai and the data you're training on. in fact, we talk about al and how it will peacefully coexist with employees, not replace employees. and those employees, because they'll be more productive, will actually go focus on work that they did not, you know, they'll focus on new types of work, where in the past they would have had to do all these mundane tasks. so we're pretty excited about al. we're big believers. we're leaning into it.

will some jobs be impacted? potentially. but we can repurpose those employees to go and work on, you know, higher productivity activities. well, on that point, carl eschenbach, the big boss of workday, thanks very much for your time. we really appreciate it. and we'll talk to you again soon. thank you, aaron, and thanks for having us on your show. well, that's it for this week's show. i hope you enjoyed it. don't forget, you can keep up with the latest on the global economy on the bbc news website and the smartphone app. of course, you can also follow me on x. x me, i'll x you back. you can get me... thanks for watching. i'll see you soon. bye— bye. hello there. it's been a pretty decent start to the weekend. there was a good deal of sunshine around across most of the country. a bit of cloud here and there, a few showers mostly in the north. part two of the weekend doesn't look quite as good. it will start certainly quite chilly. but we've got a couple of weather fronts pushing down from the north—west that will increase cloud through the day with some splashes of rain. and we've got this

weather front approaching the north—west of the country to move through this evening. showers merging together to produce longer spells of rain for the north and west of scotland. so unsettled, breezy, showery in the north, turning cloudier for northern ireland, but clearer skies for large parts of england and wales with lighter winds here. so it will turn chilly for most, single digits, i think, for the majority of the country. but with more cloud across northern ireland, we will fall to around ten degrees in belfast. so sunday, then, we've got low pressure still towards the norwegian sea there, bringing northern—westerly winds into the country. we start to have quite a bit of sunshine. scotland, england and wales, cloudy skies for northern ireland, south—west scotland in towards north—west england, north wales. and that cloud with splashes of rain will spill south—eastwards through the day. so it will turn cloudy across much of england and wales, probably the best of the sunshine across the far south—west, and the northern half of scotland doing pretty well with sunny spells. but there will be blustery showers here and a cooler day to come, i think, because of more cloud around, temperatures of about 12 to 17 degrees. as we move through sunday night, that area of rain splashes across the irish sea into much of england and wales,

becomes confined to southern and eastern areas by the end of the night. so where we have the cloud and the rain, then, a less cold night here, 10 to 12 degrees under clearer skies. further north, it will turn chilly. we start to pick up a northerly wind as we move into monday. that rain slowly clears away from the south and east. it may take a while to clear the east of england. eventually it will do that. it's a bright day for most, sunshine and showers. most of these across the northern half of scotland, where they will be quite blustery and a chilly northerly wind at that. temperatures, 10 to 14 degrees in the north, 15 to 17 further south, giving some sunny spells. and we hold on to this chilly northerly wind through tuesday, even into wednesday as well. and before low pressure starts to move in from the south—west, that'll cut off the chilly northerly and temperatures will slowly recover towards the end of the week. but it's going to be a fairly unsettled and a cool week to come with a little bit of sunshine here and there.

live from washington. this is bbc news. four israeli hostages and abducted by hamas last october reunited with their families after israeli forces freed them from captivity in gaza. hamas reports more than 200 palestinians were killed. two hospitals say they have counted scores of bodies. we'll have the latest from the general election campaign — as the conservatives are pledging tax cuts — and labour promises

to help small businesses. hello, i'm helena humphrey. glad you could join me. four israeli hostages taken by hamas during the october 7th attacks have now been reunited with their families. but israeli forces in gaza killed scores of palestinians in the military operation to free them. israeli special forces raided two locations in nuseirat, in central gaza in broad daylight. one israeli soldier was killed. hamas says more than 200 palestinians were killed in the operation. an israeli military spokesman said there were "under100" palestinian casualties. the eu's top diplomat condemned the israeli raid. the us president has also spoken out at a press conference during his state visit to france.