In May 2020 the Cabinet approved the establishment of Infrastructure South Africa (ISA), a programme within the Ministry of Public Works and Infrastructure. The decision followed work undertaken by the Infrastructure and Investment Office in the Presidency, since 2019, to review and align the mandates of the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission Technical Task Team (PICC TTT) and the broader public institutional framework for the delivery of public infrastructure. These mandates are now housed under Infrastructure South Africa as the single point of entry for accelerated infrastructure investment, with a particular focus on both public and private sector catalytic social and economic infrastructure projects.Currently, ISA is Headed by Dr Alec Moemi, with Minister Sihle Zikalala overseeing the Programme as its Executive Authority.
ISA reports to the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission (PICC) Council, chaired by President Cyril Ramaphosa. With the increasing focus on a nationally coordinated effort to support Government’s drive to reignite the South African economy and place it on a sustainable and inclusive broad-based growth path, ISA oversees the project preparation, appraisal, and evaluation, required to package a credible and market-ready infrastructure project pipeline to bedrock the roll-out of South Africa’s Infrastructure Investment Plan and the National Infrastructure Plan 2050. It will redefine the institutional infrastructure for investment mobilisation and establish an investment intelligence
The ISA mandate has deliberately been designed to create a central coordinating point for all catalytic investments, across the public sector, including State-Owned Enterprises, as well as the private sector, to the extent their projects are addressing the national development agenda.
In practical terms, the ISA mandate straddles three areas: Investment facilitation, the Development of a Pipeline of public sector Infrastructure for growth and facilitating the ease, and cost of doing business.