Details are emerging about expansive new cooperation agreements between South Africa and China on electricity. They were signed during last week’s BRICS summit in Johannesburg, and they were somewhat overshadowed by the focus on the bloc’s enlargement.
But for South Africa, these deals are arguably much more important. The country has been going through ongoing electricity blackouts (locally known as load shedding) for years. They were particularly intense during the recent winter cold. There have been no days without load shedding in 2023 so far, and the SA Reserve Bank estimates the electricity crisis impacted GDP by 2.1% in the last quarter of 2022.
