The director of the Navarra Center for International Development (NCID), Luis Ravina, traveled to South Africa in order to expand the network of researchers and foundations that the center already has in the country. One of the research assistants, Pierce King, accompanied him on the trip.

Luis Ravina had a meeting with the Spanish Ambassador to South Africa, Juan Sell, as well as the trade commissioner of the Economics and Commercial Office of Spain in Johannesburg, Enrique Manzanares Carbonell

In addition, Luis met with François Bonnici, who is the Director of the Bertha Center for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town. The center was founded in 2011 and focuses primarily on applied research in topics related to social innovation, education, and health. Luis Ravina also had the chance to meet Julian May, Economics Professor and Director of the Social Development Institute at the University of Western Cape. Julian May is an expert on applied poverty reduction and wrote a report about this subject entitled Poverty and Inequality in South Africa. 

Finally, Luis Ravina met with Rangan Gupta, a Professor of Economics at the University of Pretoria, and current collaborator with Luis Alberiko Gil-Alaña at the NCID. Together they have published two research articles at the end of 2013: ‘Does Sunspot Numbers Cause Global Temperatures? Evidence from a Frequency Domain Causality Test’ and, ‘Persistence and Cycles in Historical Oil Prices Data’.

It is important to remember that another member of the NCID, Álvaro Morcillo, is conducting research in South Africa and is in contact with many in the country. His research involves looking at South African emigrants, predominately those currently living in the UK, and analyzing their decisions to stay abroad or potentially return.