President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa has lauded Japan’s willingness to adjust tariffs for its strained partners, viewing it as a significant opportunity for deeper bilateral tariff cooperation in a bid to bolster South Africa’s international trade in the face of evolving global tariffs.
Speaking at the South Africa-Japan Business Forum on the margins of the 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD9) Summit in Yokohama on Thursday, Ramaphosa said Japan is a key pillar in South Africa’s outreach.
Ramaphosa made clear South Africa’s readiness to engage in strategic sectors such as battery minerals, automotive components, renewable energy equipment, and hydrogen technologies.
He outlined how his government has swiftly activated diversification strategies in the wake of recent tariff decisions by the United States that have challenged South Africa’s historical reliance on certain markets.
“The recent tariff decisions by the United States have tested South Africa’s reliance on historical markets. We call on our Japanese counterparts to support tariff cooperation to ease market access for African goods,” Ramaphosa said.
“We seek partnerships in infrastructure, energy and digital development through blended finance. We also seek partnerships in financing skills development, youth innovation and small business scaling.”
Ramaphosa highlighted the impressive growth of trade between South Africa and Japan, which reached R132 billion in 2024, resulting in a R52bn trade surplus for South Africa.
South Africa is a leading global supplier of strategic and industrial minerals used in Japan’s green tech industries. South Africa exports automotive components to Japanese auto manufacturers across global supply chains, chemicals and polymers, and stainless steel and fabricated metal products.
More than 270 Japanese companies have a notable presence in the South African economy, sustaining over 200 000 local jobs.
Ramaphosa emphasised that the nation was modernising infrastructure and stabilising energy supply, paving the way for private sector investment in port and rail operations.
As part of its industrial policy, Ramaphosa said South Africa aims to enhance trade with key countries and improve market access for both agricultural and industrial products.
He said the government was particularly focused on its proactive role in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
“We are incentivising electric vehicles and battery production, and supporting green hydrogen value chains through infrastructure and skills investment. South Africa is growing its health manufacturing capacity, with a focus on vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics,” Ramaphosa said.
“Our country is also expanding digital infrastructure to bridge gaps in access and enhance service delivery. South Africa seeks to deepen intra-African trade while becoming a continental industrial platform from which Japanese and other global firms can export into Africa.
“We are actively working with the AfCFTA Secretariat to finalise value-chain protocols in automotive, agro-processing, pharmaceuticals and textiles.”
Piet Croucamp, an associate professor of political studies and international relations at the North-West University, commented on the trade dynamics with Japan, suggesting that it makes sense to expand South Africa’s market share in Japan due to its relatively small percentage of Japanese international trade, making it a stable and predictable market.
“They are a very stable, very predictable market for most of our goods and services, which are more or less from time to time depending on the cycle in the international economy. It’s a good visit, it’s a massive, enormous market, very vast and its possible to broaden our scope of trade with them,” Croucamp said.
“It just makes sense for us to trade in an environment where tariffs are not determining the volumes and that is the case with Japan.”
On the other hand, political analyst Professor Andile Siswana pointed out challenges in energy security within the Southern African Development Community (SADC), noting the need for South Africa to stabilise its Energy Availability Factor from the current 61% to at least 70%.
“There are big questions about energy security in the SADC region as a whole including South Africa, the President should have been clear as to whether in that domain there is any specific scope for collaboration,” Siswana said.
Additionally, Siswana said Ramaphosa needed to have clarified how incentives to the Electric Vehicles (EVs) sector linked up with Japan, which was not wholly into EVs.
“Obviously, Toyota is into hybrids engines. The optimum, they believe, is in hybrid not exclusively electric vehicles. They don’t believe EVs surpass that. There is a big controversy at the moment around that,” Siswana said.
He also said with some of the mentioned industries, including pharmaceuticals, South Africa’s weakness in the manufacture of vaccines and pharmaceuticals generally was exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You would want a clear understanding of what Japan’s capabilities are and what we would want them to say we can collaborate in specific domains within the broader sector,” he said.
“It is important to define how we are going to work together in terms of the tariffs, realignment of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.”
(IOL)
