As electricity demand is projected to increase by 1.5% in the short-term and 2% in the long-term, national power utility Eskom is gearing itself to expand procurement opportunities for South African businesses.
Making the announcement at this week’s two-day Black Business Council (BBC) annual summit at the Radisson OR Tambo Hotel and Convention Centre in Kempton Park, Eskom CEO Dan Marokane was bullish about economic gains derived from the electricity supply stability.
Eskom has passed the milestone of more than 450-consecutive days without load shedding.
“That reliability is not only an operational achievement — it is an economic asset,” said Marokane.
With unplanned outages also having reached their lowest daily level in eight years, Marokane said Eskom has achieved its strongest year-to-date energy availability factor performance in six years.
While Eskom remained “the central task before us”, Marokane said the state-owned enterprise (SOE) was “not a story about Eskom alone”.
“Every high-growth and high-performance economy depends on electricity that is reliable, sufficient and affordable. These conditions create the foundation for investment, industrial activity, job creation and shared prosperity.
“That is why Eskom regards itself as a critical part of the SA Inc story: we enable businesses to produce, communities to thrive and the economy to grow.
“This progress demonstrates what is possible when a national asset is stabilised, governed with discipline and aligned to a clear public purpose.
The challenge for Eskom was no longer only about operational recovery — “it is sustaining that recovery and translating it into long-term value for the country”.
To maintain energy security, Marokane said the utility “must use its procurement spend, capital programme and supplier-development instruments more deliberately to strengthen local manufacturing, increasing local content and expanding the participation of black-owned and women-owned enterprises”.
He described Eskom’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2025, valued at R2.23 trillion, as “an investment roadmap for our future energy infrastructure”.
Investment “must be translated, by design, into local factories, black industrialists, skilled jobs, intellectual property, viable small and medium enterprises — and globally competitive South African supply chains. Energy infrastructure has become one of South Africa’s most important industrial opportunities.
“The IRP requires 105GW (Gigawatt) of new generation capacity by 2039, 14 494km of new transmission lines and more than 70% renewables in the system by 2039, excluding battery energy storage systems. It creates demand for transformers, cables, substations, batteries, meters, gas infrastructure, nuclear skills, digital systems, finance, engineering, maintenance and local manufacturing.
“The energy transition must therefore … be approached as an industrialisation programme.”
The South African Energy Infrastructure Investment Pros-pectus has positioned the electricity infrastructure pipeline as a coherent programme to drive localisation, beneficiation and export competitiveness — anchored in the IRP and Transmission Development Plan.
“The Transmission Development Plan is particularly important because it translates policy into a visible, decade-long demand pipeline,” Marokane said. “Predictable demand gives manufacturers the confidence to plan production, expand their workforce and invest in factories, technology and working capital. It shifts transmission procurement from fragmented projects to a more coherent industrial programme.
“The opportunity is large enough to change the structure of the economy.
“But 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,” Marokane said.
The Eskom investment pipeline has identified 96 investment-book projects, 23.9GW of new capacity – about 6 977km of new lines and an estimated value of about R1.3 trillion.
“Eskom’s role is to make the opportunity more investable: improve visibility of future demand, package projects in ways that broaden participation, embed localisation requirements where appropriate, strengthen supplier readiness, work with government and development-finance partners to address funding and capability constraints. The aim is to crowd in investment, de-risk bankable projects and help capable black-owned enterprises scale into strategic energy value chains.
“We need black-owned enterprises to organise around priority value chains, invest in quality and scale, form consortia where appropriate, develop technical and digital capability. They should also compete on safety, cost, delivery and innovation.”
Transnet group CEO Michelle Philips, cautioned that South Africa could not industrialise without efficient logistics.
“Manufacturers cannot compete globally, if goods cannot move affordably and reliably. Logistics requires infrastructure, investment, skills, technology and capable businesses. Exporters cannot access international markets if ports are congested. Investors will not commit capital unless infrastructure supports economic activity,” Philips said.
“For this reason, one of Transnet’s most important contributions to industrialisation is restoring and expanding the freight logistics network that underpins the country’s productive economy.”
Some of Transnet’s key transactions are:
• Durban Container Terminal Pier 2, which successfully reached financial close, leading to the formation of the Durban Gateway Terminal in partnership with International Container Terminal Services Incorporated;
• Richards Bay Dry Bulk Terminal transaction of transformation of the facility into a multi-user bulk terminal to support chrome and magnetite exports, enhancing competitiveness.
• Container Corridor (Durban–Gauteng) transaction, entailing rehabilitation of this strategic rail corridor to increase slot capacity from 18 to 33 and to improve substation and signalling availability to 95%.
“Through these ongoing investments in rail infrastructure, ports equipment and operational efficiency, we are improving the movement of commodities, manufactured products and agricultural goods to domestic and international markets,” Philips said.
She warned that industrialisation required more than infrastructure.
“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. It must strengthen local manufacturing and improve our global competitiveness.”
The summit aimed at creating a platform for enhanced engage-
ment, under the theme “Growing the South African Economy through
Economic Empowerment, Re-indus-trialisation and Localisation in the era of Artificial Intelligence”, has been addressed by captains of industry, ministers, experts and former president Kgalema Motlanthe.