The coal heartland of Nkangala, the district municipality in Mpumalanga with Middelburg as its seat, is set to become a solar frontier thanks to a $35m project.
It is part of a tie-up with the county of Wucheng in China’s northeast coastal province of Shandong. Wucheng and Nkangala have partnered to build a solar panel assembly plant in Nkangala in a drive towards clean-energy manufacturing just as coal mining, the dominant industry in the area, begins to decline.
The planned solar-panel plant aims to create employment, with the first phase — valued at $10m — expected to deliver between 150 and 200 new jobs. The area is important for South Africa’s just energy transition.
The partnership agreement was signed in July. The rollout of subsequent phases is to be finalised during Nkangala mayor Thomas Ngwenya’s visit to Wucheng in December, says district official Dumisani Hleza.
The deal was an outcome of a partnership supported by the organisations Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs (AYE) in South Africa and Golden Bridge Expo and involving the government and private business. Golden Bridge is an international economic and trade platform that enables bridging arrangements for business and industrial owners.
AYE head Imram Makama says his organisation visited five cities in China to identify suppliers. Hank Guan of Golden Bridge tells the FM: “That process helped us build relationships with private companies interested in partnering with South African firms.”
Infrastructure and workforce readiness are essential enablers. “Nkangala is well positioned for the solar assembly plant: it has existing heavy-industry infrastructure and transport links to Gauteng and regional corridors, a workforce experienced in the energy and manufacturing sectors and an active district development model process that aligns government support with strategic projects,” Hleza says.
The project includes the neighbouring Victor Khanye local municipality, which also borders on the Tshwane and Ekurhuleni metros. The municipality is positioning itself as a logistics and skills anchor for the solar plant’s rollout. “This partnership is about more than infrastructure; it’s a blueprint for inclusive growth, youth empowerment and continental leadership in renewable energy,” says Vusi Buda, mayor of Victor Khanye.
The solar plant has been designated a catalytic project, as it is meant to create jobs, boost economic development and generate business opportunities.
This partnership is about more than infrastructure; it’s a blueprint for inclusive growth, youth empowerment and continental leadership in renewable energy
— Vusi Buda
“We’re unbundling value chains to create space for local small and medium enterprises in logistics, maintenance and services,” says Buda.
He says the municipality wants to become the preferred logistics hub for solar products bound for the rest of the continent under the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement. “This is how district-level industrialisation becomes continental strategy,” he says.
Hleza highlights Nkangala’s coal legacy as a strategic advantage, saying the region’s existing infrastructure and experienced workforce, as well as its location, will lower the cost and time to establish renewable manufacturing. He says: “By pairing these assets with targeted reskilling, local content requirements and the development model’s co-ordinated planning, Nkangala can convert a historic carbon economy into a competitive clean-energy hub.”
The African Prosperity Fund, which played the role of an observer and adviser in the transaction, described the partnership as a model for readiness. The fund’s Yavi Madurai says: “Makama, who comes from Middelburg and has long viewed Nkangala as South Africa’s energy centre, wanted to create a private sector investment aligned with that identity. Wucheng is also an energy centre for China, but its innovation and industrialisation of energy are far beyond anything in South Africa. It became the perfect partnership.”
Yavi says the first tier of the strategy has been to secure a government-to-government agreement, “as governments hold the mandate for twinning-city strategies and public-private partnerships of this size. Tier one was to formulate a partnership between governments before anything else could move forward, so that the benefit would be for the whole community and not just for the private sector bottom line.”
