Eskom CEO Dan Marokane stood before the Black Business Council’s annual summit in Kempton Park this week and made a declaration that reframed what South Africa’s electricity grid actually is. “That reliability is not only an operational achievement; it is an economic asset,” he told delegates. He was talking about 450 consecutive days without load shedding, the strongest energy availability performance the utility has recorded in six years. Unplanned outages have fallen to their lowest daily level in eight years.
For ordinary South Africans who lived through years of rolling blackouts, that number carries weight. But Marokane’s argument at the summit was that stability is only the starting point.
Eskom’s Integrated Resource Plan for 2025, valued at R2.23 trillion, requires 105 gigawatts of new generation capacity by 2039, 14,494 kilometres of new transmission lines, and more than 70% renewables in the system by 2039 excluding battery storage. The utility projects electricity demand will grow by 1.5% in the short term and 2% over the long term. That growth creates work across transformers, cables, substations, batteries, meters, gas infrastructure, nuclear skills, digital systems, finance, engineering and maintenance. Much of the local manufacturing capacity required does not yet exist at the necessary scale.
Marokane described the energy transition as an industrialisation programme by design. The South African Energy Infrastructure Investment Prospectus has positioned the electricity infrastructure pipeline as a coherent programme to drive localisation, beneficiation and export competitiveness. The Transmission Development Plan translates that into a visible, decade-long demand signal for manufacturers. “Predictable demand gives manufacturers the confidence to plan production, expand their workforce and invest in factories, technology and working capital,” he said. “It shifts transmission procurement from fragmented projects to a more coherent industrial programme.”
Eskom’s own investment pipeline covers 96 projects worth approximately R1.3 trillion, encompassing 23.9 gigawatts of new capacity and about 6,977 kilometres of new transmission lines.
The barrier, Marokane said plainly, is not opportunity but access. “Scale alone will not guarantee inclusion. We must deliberately remove barriers that keep capable black businesses from moving from small contracts to tier-one supply, manufacturing ownership and project equity.” He called on black-owned enterprises to organise around priority value chains, invest in quality and scale, form consortia where appropriate, and build technical and digital capability. The competition, he added, must be on safety, cost, delivery and innovation.
Meanwhile, Transnet group CEO Michelle Philips arrived at the same summit with a parallel argument: none of this industrialisation works if goods cannot move. “Manufacturers cannot compete globally if goods cannot move affordably and reliably. Exporters cannot access international markets if ports are congested. Investors will not commit capital unless infrastructure supports economic activity,” she said.
Transnet is advancing several transactions to rebuild that logistics foundation. The Durban Container Terminal Pier 2 reached financial close, forming the Durban Gateway Terminal in partnership with International Container Terminal Services Incorporated. The Richards Bay Dry Bulk Terminal is being transformed into a multi-user bulk terminal to support chrome and magnetite exports. The Container Corridor transaction between Durban and Gauteng involves rehabilitation of the strategic rail corridor to increase slot capacity from 18 to 33 and improve substation and signalling availability to 95%.
Philips was direct about what infrastructure alone cannot do. “It requires deliberate action to build local industrial capacity. It must promote inclusion by expanding opportunities for black industrialists, women-owned businesses and youth-owned enterprises. This transformation must be about building sustainable economic power and productive capacity.”
The summit, held under the theme “Growing the South African Economy through Economic Empowerment, Re-industrialisation and Localisation in the era of Artificial Intelligence,” drew industry leaders, government ministers, experts and former president Kgalema Motlanthe. The gathering signals a coordinated push across state enterprises to link infrastructure investment directly to the expansion of black ownership and manufacturing capacity.
The full strategy across state enterprises is detailed at https://mg.co.za/business/2026-08-13-soe-giants-set-to-create-black-industrialists/
Whether the pipeline of projects translates into genuine ownership shifts, or remains concentrated among established players, is the question that will define whether this summit becomes a turning point or another well-articulated intention.