South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced today that South Africa has imported 300MW of electricity from neighboring countries to cope with the constant 12-hour-a-day power cuts that continue to affect South Africans.

"Through a regional power pool agreement, we have already imported 300 MW of capacity from neighboring countries and we are working to increase it by another 1,000 MW," announced the South African head of state, quoted by Lusa, without giving details.

Speaking this morning at the African Mining Indaba 2023 in Cape Town, the South African President said that "in addition to the energy crisis and the problems in port and rail operations, the outlook for the coming year has been hampered by security concerns, illegal mining and the pace of the structural reform program".

Ramaphosa stressed that "government, industry, employers and communities have a responsibility to ensure that the [South African] mining industry can grow to become globally competitive", pointing out that "the electricity crisis has had a major impact on the mining sector".

"To achieve these goals, we need to firstly achieve a secure electricity supply, secondly accelerate economic reforms to improve the operating environment, combat illegal mining and damage to infrastructure, and fourthly improve the regulatory environment," explained the South African leader, who is also president of the African National Congress (ANC), in power since 1994.

The President recalled that "six months ago, we announced a National Energy Action Plan to improve the performance of our existing power plants and add new generation capacity to the grid as quickly as possible".

In this regard, the South African head of state explained that the South African government has since contracted "25 projects representing 2,800 MW of new capacity", and is "facilitating investment by private producers in new generation capacity", adding that "Eskom is considering acquiring additional capacity from companies with available energy capacity", and that the mining sector "is taking significant steps towards generating its own electricity".

In his speech, Ramaphosa pointed out that the Minerals Council of South Africa, which represents mining companies, "has developed some 89 integrated power generation projects since the lifting of licensing restrictions, with a focus on renewable energy solutions such as solar, wind and battery storage".

In this regard, the South African President highlighted Anglo-American's hydrogen project, which includes the world's largest hydrogen-powered ore transport truck and an ecosystem to support its local operations between the provinces of Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, in the south-east of the country.

Ramaphosa also pointed to the logistics sector as a "critical area of reform" for the government, adding that "it's a big problem for the mining industry".

"By way of example, in 2022 coal exports through the Richards Bay coal terminal fell to around 50 million tons, the worst performance since 1993," the South African head of state stressed, adding that "infrastructure inefficiencies resulted in a 15% drop in ore sales."

"Transnet [the state-owned ports and railroads company] has created partnerships with industry and private security to deal with cable theft and vandalism on the freight rail network through advanced technologies and additional security personnel," said the South African President.

South Africa's state-owned power utility, Eskom, once one of the most efficient in the world, has maintained large-scale power cuts in the country of at least 12 hours a day, due to a shortage of generation capacity resulting from breakdowns and delays in the return of some generation units to service.

Last year, the South African utility deprived the country of more than 200 days of electricity, according to data from the South African utility.

The precarious situation of the public company responsible for 90% of national production, the indebted Eskom, is at the root of the long-term electricity crisis in Africa's most developed economy.

The public company is also facing arrears from municipalities in South Africa, to the tune of 52 billion rand.

South Africa, which is considered the largest electricity producer on the continent, sources 80% of coal, and also imports 75% of the total production of the Cahora Bassa Hydroelectric Plant (HCB) in Mozambique, which is one of the world's main polluters.