{"id":833835,"date":"2025-08-03T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=833835"},"modified":"2025-08-01T17:03:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T15:03:24","slug":"facebook-and-microsoft-pumping-billions-into-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/833835\/facebook-and-microsoft-pumping-billions-into-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook and Microsoft pumping billions into South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Major investment projects may have declined in South Africa, but tech giants and energy companies are still pumping billions into the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Nedbank\u2019s latest Capital Expenditure Project Listing, planned fixed investment projects declined sharply in the first half of 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nedbank said that the annualised value of newly announced projects fell to R316.2 billion, nearly half of the R592.2 billion recorded in 2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although lower than last year, it remains above the R215.3 billion figure in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The public sector, which includes general government and public corporations, did not announce any new projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, the public sector accounted for 83% of the total, reflecting projects worth R199.8 billion by the general government and R290.7 billion by public corporations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The private sector accounts for all new projects announced in the first half of 2025, which includes major tech players. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is the largest investor in the transport, storage, and communications sector, with Project Waterworth accounting for 75% of the R26.4 billion worth of planned projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The initiatives involve developing a 50,000 sqm global subsea cable system linking the US, India, Brazil, South Africa and other strategic regions to support AI and data infrastructure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meta is not the only \u201cMagnificent Seven\u201d company pumping funds into South Africa. Microsoft is also investing in its Al R5.4 billion cloud infrastructure expansion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa\u2019s newest fuel giant, Astron Energy, is investing R6 billion to upgrade its Cape Town refinery. Cement giant PPC is also expanding its Riebeeck West facility at a cost of R3 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The largest overall project is Earth & Wire’s R40 billion “Energy Fields” project, which will blend 700 MW of wind, 800 MW of solar PV and 400 to 500 MW of battery energy storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roughly 63% of the new private sector projects are energy-related, underscoring the structural shift toward renewable energy and the central role of energy security in driving fixed investment activity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe momentum reflects continued efforts to tackle South Africa’s energy crisis and move away from coal-fired generation,\u201d said Nedbank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other energy projects include the Overberg and Ishwati Emoyeni wind farms, Photon Energy’s concentrated solar PV plant with thermal hydrostorage and the Khauta solar project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second project overall is SUISO’s R31.5 billion coal-to-fertiliser facility in Kriel. The project aims to produce 1.5 million tons of nitrogen-based fertilisers annually, reducing reliance on imported fertilisers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other significant investments include DRDGOLD’s expansion of its Withok tailings facility, Exxaro’s renewable energy project in the Karoo and Sasol’s R1 billion upgrade of its Twistdraai export coal plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking ahead <\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
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South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa and Microsoft President Brad Smith<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Nedbank said that renewable energy will remain a key investment focus, but momentum will likely slow in the near term. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capacity constraints within the national grid and limited transmission infrastructure have started to weigh on new project activity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, implementing the National Transmission Development Plan could unlock a new wave of energy investment over the medium-to-longer term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interest rate cuts will lift domestic demand more meaningfully, gradually absorb spare capacity, and encourage firms to consider expansion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat said, global headwinds, including weaker external demand and lower commodity prices resulting from the unfolding tariff debacle, pose a downside risk,\u201d said Nedbank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cElevated public debt, constrained fiscal space and continued uncertainty over the government’s ability to implement reforms could further weigh on private sector confidence and discourage investment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The private sector will likely remain cautious until the government implements its large-scale public infrastructure projects in water, energy, and logistics.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nedbank expects a mild recovery in investment as the year progresses, driven by the implementation of public sector projects, improved financing conditions and the modest recovery in domestic demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHowever, this is unlikely to lift investment significantly over the year. Despite pockets of improvement, the underlying conditions for broad-based investment growth remain weak.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Major projects <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Project Name<\/th>R million<\/th>Major Industry<\/th>Infrastructure Type<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Energy Fields<\/td>40 000<\/td>Electricity, gas and water<\/td>Distribution of electricity<\/td><\/tr>
Coal-to-fertiliser and methanol project<\/td>31 500<\/td>Mining and quarrying<\/td>Coal & lignite<\/td><\/tr>
Meta Project Waterworth<\/td>20 000<\/td>Transport, storage and communication<\/td>Telecommunication<\/td><\/tr>
Overberg Wind Farm<\/td>13 000<\/td>Electricity, gas and water<\/td>Distribution of electricity<\/td><\/tr>
Concentrated solar PV plant and thermal hydrostorage project<\/td>11 557<\/td>Electricity, gas and water<\/td>Distribution of electricity<\/td><\/tr>
DRDGOLD Gold Recovery Expansion (Vision 2028)<\/td>8 000<\/td>Mining and quarrying<\/td>Gold & uranium mining<\/td><\/tr>
Astron Energy Refinery Upgrade<\/td>6 000<\/td>Manufacturing<\/td>Petroleum refineries<\/td><\/tr>
Microsoft AI & Cloud Infrastructure Build-out<\/td>5 400<\/td>Transport, storage and communication<\/td>Telecommunication<\/td><\/tr>
Ishwati Emoyeni Wind Farm<\/td>4 900<\/td>Electricity, gas and water<\/td>Distribution of electricity<\/td><\/tr>
Karreebosch Wind Farm<\/td>4 700<\/td>Mining and quarrying<\/td>Coal & lignite<\/td><\/tr>
Khauta south solar PV project<\/td>3 200<\/td>Electricity, gas and water<\/td>Distribution of electricity<\/td><\/tr>
PPC cement plant<\/td>3 000<\/td>Manufacturing<\/td>Other non-metallic<\/td><\/tr>
Sedibeng malting facility<\/td>2 085<\/td>Manufacturing<\/td>Beverages<\/td><\/tr>
Critical mineral refining facility project<\/td>1 778<\/td>Manufacturing<\/td>Other non-metallic<\/td><\/tr>
Olympus Sandton mixed-use residential and retail development<\/td>1 000<\/td>Finance, real estate and financial and business services<\/td>Own or rental basis<\/td><\/tr>
Sasol Twistdraai Brownfield Destoning Plant Upgrade<\/td>1 000<\/td>Mining and quarrying<\/td>Mining services<\/td><\/tr>
N4 toll route upgrade<\/td>1 000<\/td>Transport, storage and communication<\/td>Other land transport<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The private sector is leading South Africa’s major capital expenditure, which includes undersea cables from Meta and AI infrastructure from Microsoft. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":833860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[12043,16370,169,3246],"class_list":["post-833835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-growthpoint","tag-meta","tag-microsoft","tag-sars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833835"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":833894,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833835\/revisions\/833894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}