• This week President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke at the South Africa Investment Conference (SAIC), detailing his plans for local investment over the next five years.
• Ramaphosa has set out the ambitious target of acquiring R2 trillion in investments for the country over the next five years.
• During the afternoon session at the SAIC, a total of R1.51 trillion in pledges were made by companies across a myriad industries.

President Cyril Ramaphosa was in attendance at the South Africa Investment Conference (SAIC) this week at the Sandton Convention Centre. The event was focused on courting investment in the country by both local organisations and foreign companies, as well as setting goals in terms of investments moving forward.

Regarding the latter, Ramaphosa has insisted that the country should reach an investment target of R2 trillion over the next five years.

It is quite a figure, especially given the dearth of investment of late as a result of growing uncertainty regarding the nation’s power utility and increasing political unrest. As such, Ramaphosa’s presence and plea during the SAIC was likely to allay fears and garner more pledges from organisations into SA.

To that end, during the afternoon session of the event, a number of companies across a myriad industries made pledges.

“Today’s pledges cover 21 district municipalities across the country. A number of these investments aren’t only bringing much-needed economic activity to these localities; they are also supporting our overall national development goals,” the president said.

He added that South Africa had reached R1.51 trillion in pledges, overshooting the initial R1.2 trillion target by 26 percent.

Looking at the pledges made towards the country’s digital economy, the largest pledges came the telecommunications sector. To that end Vodacom said it was committed to invest R60 billion, with Telkom investing R5.97 billion in ICT infrastructure development. Added to this is Rain, which plans to pledge R4 billion for the rollout of wider reaching 5G infrastructure.

Other notable pledges come from BMW with R4.2 billion for a plant expansion to manufacture new car models locally, along with Equinix and Teraco pledging R3.8 billion and R2 billion respectively for data centre expansion and investment.

While it is indeed promising to see so many pledges being made, they are still only pledges, and it remains to be seen if there will indeed be follow through with what has been earmarked.

Should current socio-political conditions worsen, it will be interesting to see whether the pledges hold firm. For now though, government is banking on sizeable investments over the next five years to held steady the ship.

You can see executives from each pledge-making company, as well as Ramaphosa’s address in the video below.

[Source – SA News]
[Image – CC BY-ND 2.0 GovernmentZA on Flickr]