President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers the Keynote Address at the SEIFSA Business Breakfast_4
So our country should aspire to become the engineering workshop of the African continent with the only country that has the industrial capability and might that this country has. We should be exporting transformers to the continent and batteries. As I was saying earlier, we should be exporting mining equipment. We should be export as we are already exporting railway equipment. We should be exporting pumps, valves, fabricated steel and electrical equipment. And we should be exporting South African engineering expertise and government will continue to support exporters through trade negotiations, export promotion, trade facilitation and industrial uh financing. So ladies and gentlemen, for many years we've spoken about the decline of South Africa's manufacturing capabilities. We must now speak about its renewal. The opportunity is immense before us. The reforms we have undertaken in electricity, in logistics, in water are beginning to change the conditions under which our economy operates. and they're beginning to make our country more attractive to the inflow of capital and finance. Our infrastructure program is creating a substantial pipeline of demand. The energy transition is creating entirely new industries and the continental free trade area is opening a vast market on our doorstep. We must bring these opportunities together into a new program of industrialization. From now on, all we must be talking about is industrialization. And even as we look at towns that have really downscaled, I mean whether it's in on the on the east end in the Kurui, whether it's on the west end near Sassleberg, wherever, we must look at them as towns that must and factories that must now be revived. Government must provide certainty. Yes, we must remove constraint. Yes, we must become less bureaucratic. Yes, we must coordinate infrastructure investment and use public procurement strategically and responsibly. But industry must invest. It must innovate. It must compete. It must transform and train. Labor must be our partner in building productive workplaces, developing skills, and ensuring that workers share in the benefits of industrial growth. If we do these things together, South Africa can once again become a country that makes things, a country that manufactures the equipment of for our own development, a country that transforms its minerals into higher value products. It is eminently possible. a country that exports machinery, engineering expertise to the world. And most importantly, we can become a country that creates millions of productive jobs for our people. For real jobs are to be found in those key productive industries. We have the minerals, we have the infrastructure base, we have the engineering [clears throat] capability, we have the industrial experience, and we have the entrepreneurs. And here you are all and we have a generation of young people who are eager, hungry for opportunity, for skills and opportunity.