Accelerating South Africa's Infrastructure Programme: What is Holding us Back?

On 14 October 2021, CDE convened a workshop with leading people from the financial sector and senior government officials responsible for the state’s infrastructure drive. The government is committed to an infrastructure-led strategy to rejuvenate the South African economy. It is a key pillar of the President’s October 2020 Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP), with talk of investments in water, energy, sanitation, housing, roads, health, education, and public transport. Given South Africa’s fiscal situation, the government cannot afford large outlays on infrastructure and needs private sector investment to get this vision off the ground. There have been moves to include the private sector in the financing of specific assets, but progress has been inordinately slow. The core goal of the workshop was to identify the blockages holding back the infrastructure programme and to pinpoint the changes required to accelerate progress.