Macpherson welcomes steps taken to accelerate infrastructure delivery

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Public Works and Infrastructure Minister, Dean Macpherson, has welcomed two major steps taken by Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) to accelerate infrastructure delivery and attract additional investment into South Africa’s economy.

ISA first launched the second bid window for project preparation last week, which will assist in ensuring that public projects are ready for implementation, and secondly signed a framework with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to establish a Joint Project Preparation Facility.

The Bid Window II for project preparation support, launched on Thursday, enables National

and Provincial departments, State-Owned Entities, public entities and municipalities to apply for funding that will prepare projects to become bankable and ready for implementation. 

Building on the success of Bid Window I, which culminated in the unveiling of the Top 7 infrastructure initiatives at the Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium South Africa (SIDSSA) earlier this year, Bid Window II will provide financial, technical, legal and governance support to qualifying projects.

Meanwhile, the landmark Framework Agreement signed between ISA and the Afreximbank in Algeria on Monday will establish a Joint Project Preparation Facility (JPPF). 

Afreximbank has committed USD 5 million (roughly R87 million) to this collaboration, which will focus on advancing projects in critical sectors such as energy, transport and logistics, and digital infrastructure. 

The JPPF brings together Afreximbank’s financial expertise and ISA’s strategic oversight to accelerate the preparation of high-quality, bankable projects that can unlock investment, stimulate growth, and close South Africa’s infrastructure gap.

In a statement on Monday, Macpherson congratulated ISA’s acting head, Mameetse Masemola, on implementing these measures as they will strengthen South Africa’s project pipeline and help crowd in funding from Development Finance Institutions and private investors. 

He said these wins prove the importance of Infrastructure South Africa and the work they are doing, and the expanded role the entity could play in infrastructure delivery to help turn the country into a construction site, which will help grow the economy and create jobs.

“These two steps taken by Infrastructure South Africa represent an important move to turn our country into a construction site. 

“Bid Window II will ensure that more projects are properly prepared, de-risked, and ready to attract investment, while the Joint Project Preparation Facility with Afreximbank is a vote of confidence in South Africa’s infrastructure programme and its potential to drive economic growth and job creation.” 

The Minister commended ISA for taking action.

“I want to commend ISA and our partners for taking these bold actions to ensure that South Africa has a credible, bankable and investment-ready pipeline of infrastructure projects. 

“This is how we will get shovels in the ground, stimulate economic growth, and create thousands of jobs for our people,” the Minister said. – SAnews.gov.za