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(Bloomberg) — South Africa secured a $1.5 billion World Bank loan to help modernize the country’s infrastructure and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the continent’s largest economy.
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The facility is the fourth in a series of stand-alone development policy loans to South Africa since 2022, aimed at easing infrastructure bottlenecks that have contributed to a decade of meager economic growth.
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The Washington-based lender said reform of the electricity and transport sectors supported by the financing could create almost 600,000 new jobs by 2032, including 280,000 next year.
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“The operation builds on reforms that are already showing results,” the World Bank said in a statement. “Load shedding has been virtually eliminated for a year and a half, private investment in renewable energy has increased sixfold, and rail and port freight volumes have risen by more than 50% since 2023.”
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Scheduled power outages — known locally as load shedding — have become increasingly infrequent after years of being an almost daily occurrence, thanks to efforts to fix the state-owned power utility under a reform program launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
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According to a reform tracker compiled by Business Leadership South Africa, a lobby group, almost 70% of the projects identified as priorities are either on schedule or completed.
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“This program reflects our government’s determination to remove the infrastructure constraints that have held back growth and job creation for too long,” Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said in the statement. “Working with the World Bank Group, we are deepening reforms already delivering results in energy and transport, while for the first time tackling the governance and investment gaps in our water sector that affect millions of households, particularly the poorest.”
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