Africa’s Richest City Needs Major Infrastructure Repair

Traffic navigates a hole on a road in Johannesburg. 

Photographer: Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg

By Antony Sguazzin, Bloomberg News

August 6, 2024 at 12:00 AM EDT

Johannesburg, billed as Africa’s richest city because of its concentration of businesses and millionaires, needs 221 billion rand ($12 billion) to catch up on maintenance and overdue upgrades across its collapsing road, power and water networks.

The city council discussed the shortfall late last month and detailed it in documents seen by Bloomberg. It comes at a time when regular power outages — the result of distribution-network breakdowns — hit large swathes of Johannesburg. Officials leave potholes unattended for months and parts of the city had no water for as long as 11 days in March.

The work pileup “highlights significant risks to public safety, economic safety and the environment if not addressed,” the city said of the road network in the documents. “Ignoring the backlog could lead to deteriorating roads, unsafe bridges, flooding and increased accidents.”

Financial and political turmoil in recent years has beset the city of about 5 million people that’s had eight mayors since 2019 due to constantly shifting coalitions. While the African National Congress and Economic Freedom fighters are the largest parties in the ruling coalition with 119 seats between them, they have installed a mayor from the Al-Jama-ah party, which has just three seats. There are 270 councilors in total.

That’s in contrast to the national government where the ANC, which lost its majority in May elections for the first time in three decades, has allied with the Democratic Alliance and a number of other parties to run the country. The EFF is in opposition.

Last month, Johannesburg’s council imposed above-inflation increases for utilities and rates and forced through a 2.5 billion-rand loan from the Agence Francaise de Developpement despite initial objections from opposition parties.

The City of Johannesburg didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

The documents show that the city has missed its annual target for water-infrastructure investment every year since at least 2008 and that its electricity utility, City Power, has “urgent needs for upgrades and replacement to ensure network reliability and safety.”

A separate document, dated March 6, shows that the city is struggling with revenue collection from large customers, including government departments and companies, with 6.1 billion rand of payments more than 90 days overdue.