South African Envoy: Power Crisis Heightens Focus on Clean Energy Plan 

During a short visit to Atlanta last week, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States said an electricity crisis gripping the country is all the more reason to embrace an energy transformation plan focused on renewables. 

Ambassador Nomindiya Mfeketo said the government has declared a “state of disaster” and has outlined a plan to address persistent blackouts and power rationing at households and businesses that has slowed the machinery of the continent’s most industrialized economy. 

The crisis has emerged as Eskom, the state-owned utility that accounts for 90 percent of power production across the country, has experienced “under-investment in the energy sector over the past two decades,” with aging coal plants facing “load-shedding” as demand outpaces supply, Ms. Mfeketo said. 

Others point to another underlying explanation: corruption, especially during the nine years that now-jailed former President Jacob Zuma held office. Mr. Zuma was ordered last year to serve a 15-month sentence for contempt of court after failing to answer charges that his administration lined pockets rather than priming the country for long-term growth. 

Just before last year’s COP27 climate conference in Egypt (and before the most acute phase of the current power crisis) South Africa announced a 1.5 trillion-rand ($84 billion) plan to transition away from fossil fuels and upgrade its grid, Ms. Mfeketo said in an address to a packed room at the Metro Atlanta Chamber. 

“In November 2022, President [Cyril] Ramaphosa presented his 2023-27 investment plan, a blueprint’ for South Africa’s economic transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and to address the country’s frequent blackouts, ‘unacceptable levels of poverty’ and the climate crisis,” Ms. Mfeketo said. “This investment plan is the first of its kind in both scale and ambition. It provides a vision of a future South Africa which is a leading player in a new low carbon global economy.” 

That vision includes not only wind and solar, but also green hydrogen, she said, and South Africa’s advanced mining sector can also play a role in providing the minerals for countries like the United States to complete their own energy transitions. 

She pointed to platinum used in electrolysis and fuel cells, vanadium used for energy-storage applications, rare earth elements for magnets in electric-vehicle motors and nickel for batteries and storage. 

In the short term, selling into the U.S. might become challenging for South Africa, however, as U.S. tax incentives now require the sourcing of minerals for electric-vehicle batteries at home or from countries with which it has free-trade agreements. 

Focus on Atlanta

Either way, the ambassador saw Atlanta as an appropriate conduit for its ambitions to develop closer trade ties with the U.S. 

That sentiment, based in shared culture, civil rights history and a large diaspora — both from South Africa and the rest of the continent — propelled her visit to the city and the luncheon discussion organized by the South African Chamber of Commerce in the USA and Global Atlanta.  

After her speech, the ambassador was joined on stage by Reginald Ncamane, the head of political affairs for the South African embassy in Washington, and chamber President Neil Diamond, for a question-and-answer session.

The capacity crowd at the chamber’s 191 Peachtree offices overlooking downtown were concern less about geopolitics and more about practical matters, askin about the mechanics of finding trusted partners and diving into new engagements in South Africa. Entrepreneurship, capacity building among youth, inclusion for women and tapping into film and cultural connections were among the themes discussed.

Mr. Ncamane welcomed Atlantans to use South Africa as a base from which to expand throughout a continent of more than a billion people which is seeing further integration. 

“We are already dominating its the region, with most of our multinational corporations already operating in Africa already, so the logistics and the supply chains are already existing,” he said.

A prime example is the African Continental Free Trade Area, which entered into force in 2019 and has now been ratified by 46 of 54 signatories. It’s expected to significantly boost intra-Africa trade, previously hampered by tariff barriers and other regulatory and customs hurdles, not to mention a insufficient infrastructure. (Cape Town is set to host the AfCFTA business forum in April).

The U.S., for its part, is honing its emphasis on Africa in the wake of the U.S.-African Leaders Summit held in December, during which many heads of state visited Washington to meet with President Biden and the U.S. government.

A major point of discussion, Mr. Ncamane said, was capacity building in the sphere of governance, a common prerequisite for many of U.S. economic aid programs. At the summit, the U.S. also pledged $55 billion in investments, hundreds of millions in new aid and the creation of a presidential advisory council on engaging with the African diaspora. 

Mr. Diamond of the South African chamber pledged to work with other sub-Saharan Africans in Atlanta to raise the profile of the continent.

“We are not just a standalone nation; South Africa isn’t an island. It really is connected to the continent,” he said. “For too long, we were hidden back in the borders as immigrants, even though we’re fairly new citizens, many of us, we’d like to see that Africans take their rightful role on Main Street USA. And we can only do that as a diaspora if we stand together.”

Here in Atlanta, Mr. Ncamane and the ambassador met with Mayor Andre Dickens, who recently embarked on his “Year of the Youth,” a program to keep the city’s young people safe by investing in after-school programs and job training to keep them off the streets.

Inevitably, Atlanta’s status as a burgeoning tech hub and South Africa as the country with the continent’s most developed financial infrastructure came up as a potential points of connection, as did the idea of leveraging South Africa’s experience in the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament to help Atlanta make the most of its 2026 hosting gig. 

They also discussed reviving the idea of a formal relationship between Atlanta and Cape Town, the western South African city to which Delta Air Lines launched a new nonstop flight in December. (The Atlanta-based carrier maintains its longstanding link to Johannesburg from here.) 

Not mentioned at the event was the potential fallout for business from South Africa’s coziness with Russia. Just before the anniversary of Russia’s Ukraine invasion Feb. 24, South Africa’s navy held drills with China and Russia off its coast, prompting hand-wringing in western capitals. South Africa asserts that it is neutral on Ukraine and should be free to set its own foreign policy. 

South Africa, which abstained from the vote to condemn the invasion at the United Nations, is a member of the Brics bloc with Brazil, Russia, India and China, and it holds longstanding ties that date back to Moscow’s support of the African National Congress during its long fight against apartheid and white-led government. 

View the full event here: