by TINTSWALO BALOYI
JOHANNESBURG – SOUTH Africa has attributed some achievements in the digital space to collaborations with partners in the BRICS+ bloc.
BRICS is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and has grown to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Recently, the bloc held the 11th Communications Ministers Meeting in Brazil.
Mondli Gungubele, Deputy Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, represented South Africa.
He told fellow ministers South Africa had expanded its network infrastructure, as it now has over 42 percent of geographic coverage on fifth generation (5G) networks.
Gungubele said among the successes is expanding access to 1,4 million households in rural areas – contributing to 75 percent of South African households having access to the internet.
In 2024, the country published the National Data and Cloud Policy to accelerate the rollout of the digital infrastructure, ensuring data privacy and security, and promoting open data and data interoperability whilst preserving data sovereignty.
To ensure digital uptake, the government launched the National Digital Transformation Roadmap in May (2025), to ensure the single view of the citizen of all e-services and to enable efficient planning on the side of government and business.
In the next three years, the government has a target to roll out the digital identity (ID), digital payment and data exchange throughout government and the public.
“Many of our successes owe to the collaboration and partnership amongst the BRICS partners,” Gungubele said.
“We look forward to discussions of these and the other priority areas, to learn from and exchange best practices from our BRICS brothers and sisters,” he added.
– CAJ News
