Investors pledge over $22B to South Africa at conference: President

By Hassan Isilow

JOHANNESBURG (AA) - South Africa received 80 new investment pledges Thursday totaling 332 billion rand ($22.83 billion) during the country’s fourth investment conference, said President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“Four years ago, we set ourselves an ambitious target of raising 1.2 trillion rand (around $100 billion at the exchange rate of the time) over a five-year period,” Ramaphosa said.

He said with the pledges received Thursday, the total level of investment pledged at the four Investment conferences since 2018 has now reached 1.14 trillion rand ($82.6 billion).

South Africa’s investment conferences are aimed at marketing the country as a great investment destination by offering investors a glimpse of what it has to offer and discussing challenges that investors face and how these can best be resolved.

Ramaphosa said his country has reached 95% of the initial ambitious target set in 2018 with barely a year left to the target deadline.

“We are now only (around) 60 billion rand ($4.13 billion) short of our target,” he said in his closing remarks.

“I expect that by next year, we will not just reach our target – we will exceed it. The investment commitments that have been made here today are impressive.”

Ramaphosa revealed that some of the investment commitments were made by companies based in South Africa, Turkiye, Belgium, Canada, China and the Czech Republic.

They also came from companies based in Finland, France, Germany, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the US and the UK, among others.​​​​​​​

The sectors that attracted investments included the renewable energy sector, mining, infrastructure and logistics, telecommunications and agriculture.