Thank you for inviting me to participate in the 18th Southern African Internal Audit Conference, hosted by the Institute of Internal Auditors, South Africa. In my address this morning, I will spend some time discussing the lessons learnt from progressive economies and applying them to South Africa. Economies, and the factors affecting them, have generated much interest in our attempts to deepen our understanding of the most appropriate and efficient ways of organising the economy in an effort to optimise the allocation of scarce resources. At the outset, it must, however, be emphasised that the management and allocation of resources within an economic system does not happen in isolation or in some abstract manner. Factors such as culture, values, education, technology, social and other institutions, political structures and legal systems all provide content and context and set the backdrop and parameters in which the different economies function.