President Cyril Ramaphosa (centre) and attendees of the SA Investment Conference at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg.

Three forces are reshaping the global economy – South Africa is well-positioned for all of them, writes Alistair Ruiters.

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The world is reorganising around three strong forces: the need to diversify supply chains away from increasingly complex and shifting geopolitical risks, the imperative to decarbonise energy systems, and the race to build digital infrastructure.

For investors trying to position ahead of that shift, South Africa’s case deserves a serious look – not as an emerging market story of potential, but as a set of specific, structural advantages that line up precisely with where global capital needs to go.

Last week’s SA Investment Conference in Johannesburg welcomed investors and business leaders from all over the world, and produced a record. Investment pledges reached a new cumulative high, surpassing every previous edition since the series began in 2018.

But the number that President Cyril Ramaphosa wants foreign investors to focus on is not the pledge total. It is the target he set at the close of the conference: R3 trillion in new investment over the next five years – a substantial step up from the previous R2 trillion target, and a deliberate signal that the pace and scale of South Africa’s ambition has shifted because the moment demands it.

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Domestic capital

First, one signal worth reading carefully is domestic capital. South African investors, who carry no illusions about the country’s complexity, are starting to put their own money in at scale.

Much of the Investment Conference’s record total is domestic capital. That signal is worth more than any ratings action or diplomatic communiqué. When people who know this country best choose to double down, it tells you something that no investor roadshow can replicate.

They are not alone, however – combining with an influx of development finance investment and foreign direct investment.

Diversification, decarbonisation, digitalisation

Let me explain why three Ds make the R3 trillion target achievable:

Diversification is no longer an optional portfolio consideration – it is a strategic imperative for multinationals overexposed to supply chains running through contested geographies. South Africa offers a stable, rules-based operating environment at the southern tip of a continent with the world’s fastest-growing labour force and some of its most underexploited mineral wealth.

Our platinum-group metals, manganese, chrome, and rare earth deposits are central to the global energy transition, not incidental to it. Companies investing here are securing upstream positions in supply chains that will tighten over the next decade. Toyota’s R10.4 billion commitment in KwaZulu-Natal and South32’s R3.9 billion in manganese rail infrastructure are exactly this kind of positioning – incumbents with deep roots choosing to go further.

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Decarbonisation is where South Africa’s potential is most dramatically under-priced. We have among the best wind and solar resources in the world. The private power market – locked behind a single-buyer wall for decades – is now open, and the results are visible: energy availability has improved materially, and the loadshedding that paralysed the economy is in retreat.

Mulilo’s R14.8 billion in renewable energy projects and Sasol’s R60 billion plant upgrade reflect investor conviction that this transition is real and fundable. We are not asking investors to take a faith position. We are offering shovel-ready projects in a jurisdiction where contracts hold.

Digitalisation is the third pillar, and one where South Africa punches above its weight. Deep capital markets, a sophisticated financial sector and competitive digital infrastructure have already attracted Google, MTN, Naspers and Vodacom.

Teleperformance’s R145 million business services investment, creating 2 600 jobs, is the kind of downstream dividend that follows. The next phase – spectrum allocation, broadband expansion and smart logistics reform – is in motion.

None of this would be credible without the institutional architecture to back it up. The rule of law is not a slogan here. It is an operating condition. Operation Vulindlela – the joint structural reform initiative between the Presidency and National Treasury – has driven reforms across energy regulation, water licensing, spectrum release, logistics and visa policy with a discipline that would previously have taken a decade of negotiation. Investors are noticing our visa reforms in particular, which have long been a concern of many global businesses. We listened and have delivered.

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Cabinet has been united behind this agenda. In a government of national unity spanning parties with different constituencies, that consistency across ministers – trade, finance, energy, transport – is itself a market signal. The reform agenda is durable.

The recovery is real, but the growth dividend is still ahead of you. Fixed investment sits at just under 15% of GDP; doubling it is the task.

The R3 trillion target is the stake in the ground to start that path. The new criminal justice reform initiative – modelled on Operation Vulindlela, targeting organised crime and corruption – is the institutional bet that investment can be protected once deployed.

For investors deciding where to place long-term capital in a more fragmented, more uncertain world, the 3Ds are not a conference theme. They are the structural logic of the next investment cycle. South Africa is positioned across all three. The companies that see it now will have the advantage.

Alistair Ruiters is the investment envoy for President Cyril Ramaphosa.

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