South Africa’s first 15-seater electric minibus taxi, the eKamva, rolled into public view at the 2026 uYilo e Mobility Summit in Gqeberha, alongside the Thula, a locally engineered game-viewing vehicle built for silent, zero-emission wildlife safaris. Both vehicles, together with a locally developed Microcare electric vehicle charger, signal that domestic engineering capacity exists. The harder question is whether the country can build the industrial infrastructure to back it up.
That question framed the entire summit, held at Nelson Mandela University. Science, Technology and Innovation Deputy Minister Dr Nomalungelo Gina put it plainly: “The question is not whether electric mobility will happen. The question is whether South Africa will capture value from it.” Her framing was deliberate. South Africa holds the mineral resources, research infrastructure and industrial base to compete in battery and electric vehicle production. What it lacks, for now, is the operational alignment between government, academia and industry needed to move from demonstration to scale.
The Department of Science, Technology and Innovation is running green transition programmes built around two pillars: the hydrogen economy and the battery economy. Its energy storage research, development and innovation flagship programmes fund technology development, intellectual property creation and workforce training, all aimed at strengthening South Africa’s position in global battery and electric vehicle value chains. One concrete output: more than 70 percent of graduates from the energy storage programme have secured employment across multiple industries. Skills development, at least, is producing results.
One project shows what the mineral beneficiation pathway can look like in practice. The University of Limpopo and Manganese Metal Company have reached pilot-scale production of battery-grade manganese sulphate, using locally sourced manganese and publicly funded intellectual property. The process converts domestically mined material into a higher-value input for lithium-ion battery manufacturing, directly serving the country’s beneficiation objectives. Scaling from pilot to commercial operation, though, remains the step that has not yet been taken.
Nelson Mandela University Deputy Vice Chancellor for Learning and Teaching, Professor Muki Moeng, made clear that no single investment solves the problem. Reliable electricity supply, charging networks, battery testing facilities, reuse and recycling capabilities, technical workforce development and a domestic manufacturing base must all be built in parallel. The ecosystem only functions if its components develop together, with research and sustainability embedded throughout rather than bolted on later.
Meanwhile, the data infrastructure underpinning the sector needs attention. Chris Joseph Abraham, founder and CEO of Stellenbosch-based engineering consultancy EV Fleet, argued that reliable data sharing across the sector is essential to developing electric vehicle solutions that deliver financial, environmental and technical benefits at the same time. The summit itself serves as a coordination mechanism, giving organisations a platform to share operational data and identify partnerships that can support industrial participation.
Deputy Minister Gina closed with a direct statement of the implementation imperative: “We must convert innovation into industrial participation, investment, jobs and inclusive growth.” The gap between research demonstration and commercial-scale production is the operational challenge that will determine whether South Africa’s mineral wealth and technical capacity translate into a sustained role in the global electric mobility economy. Whether the pilot projects and workforce programmes now underway can attract the investment needed to cross that gap is the question the next phase of delivery will have to answer.