Economic Development Partnership - EDP

12/10/2026

Three questions worth sitting with:

1) What economic opportunities exist within South Africa's different climate change mitigation scenarios?
2) Who gets to define those pathways?
3) And how do we ensure the answers serve inclusive growth, not only efficiency?

These are the questions at the heart of the Presidential Climate Commission's Climate-Informed Economic Pathways project, supported by the UK Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions (UK-PACT) programme.

Through a consortium of partners, this work translated decarbonisation scenarios into tangible economic opportunities and asked hard questions about who is at the table when those translations are made.

The EDP shares honest reflections on what the process of leading this consortium has taught us: about the complexity of linking national climate modelling to local economic realities, about the partnering disciplines required to hold a diverse consortium together, and about what it means to build pathways that are genuinely climate-informed rather than merely climate-adjacent.

We believe the process of building these pathways - designing who is involved, how decisions are made, and whose knowledge counts - matters as much as the pathways themselves.

Read the full reflection: https://wcedp.co.za/reflections-on-building-climate-informed-economic-pathways-for-south-africa/

What has your experience been in translating climate science into economic planning? We'd value the conversation.

07/10/2026

In the night skies of the southern hemisphere, the Southern Cross has long guided travellers home. Unlike the North Star, which is fixed and singular, the Southern Cross is a constellation. Navigation by it requires orientation, context and the ability to read multiple points at once.

It is a fitting metaphor for how South Africa must approach the Just Transition.

Alexandrea Roberts' blog post uses this image to explore what it means to ground global climate imperatives in the lived realities of local communities - from coal-reliant Mpumalanga to the coastal Eastern Cape.

The argument is that the Just Transition cannot be navigated from a single fixed point: it requires local knowledge, locally-owned processes and the kind of orientation that only comes from being genuinely embedded in place.

This piece speaks directly to why the EDP, working alongside South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the New Economy Hub and the African Climate Foundation, designed the Local Just Transition Dialogues to be grounded, adaptive and relational.

Read the full blog post here: https://wcedp.co.za/navigating-by-the-southern-cross-grounding-the-just-transition-in-local-realities/

28/09/2026

NOW OPEN | Call for Proposals: Western Cape Growth Opportunity Coalitions Programme 2026-2029

The Western Cape Government Department of Economic Development and Tourism is backing industry ecosystems that bring government, business and social partners together to build competitive, connected and innovative sectors.

Priority sectors include manufacturing, food & beverages, clothing & textiles, green manufacturing, kelp, tomato paste, cannabis, and film, TV, games & animation.

If your association, cluster, chamber or business support organisation convenes an industry network, this call is for you.

Read more details about the CFP and apply here: https://www.westerncape.gov.za/edat/western-cape-growth-opportunity-coalitions-programme

28/09/2026

One of the EDP’s core partnering principles is simple: sustainable impact happens when stakeholders have the capability for collaborative work.

Through designing, building capabilities for, and convening multi-stakeholder processes, the EDP supports partners across government, civil society, academia and business to clarify roles, recognise overlaps and act with agency when facing shared challenges.

Drawing on our partnering capability assessment tool enables partners to assess own their collaboration processes and keep partnering long after our team steps back. That’s how partnership becomes a practice instead of a transaction.

Learn more about our approach to : https://wcedp.co.za/partnering-method/

24/09/2026

Wishing all our stakeholders a happy 2026!

The EDP team is grateful to be - and work in - a place where the diverse and dynamic cultures, languages, and traditions that make up the people of South Africa can be celebrated.

How are you celebrating your heritage today?

18/09/2026

Northern Cape. Eastern Cape. Western Cape. Seven very different green hydrogen projects: some only ideas on paper, others close to breaking ground. What did they have in common?

None of them started out knowing exactly how to work with their host communities.

But through a two-year learning pilot, they figured it out together by testing new approaches, checking in regularly and adjusting as they went.

The result is a toolkit that's built from real conversations, responds to real challenges and has been shaped by real communities across South Africa.

See what they learned:

Green hydrogen is often described in terms of what it can produce but seldom in terms of what it will cost.

15/09/2026

How do you plan for a future that no one can predict?

That was the challenge behind the Presidential Climate Commission Climate-Informed Economic Pathways project, which brought together people from across South African society to explore possible climate and economic futures and identify practical actions that make sense across different scenarios.

Rather than asking experts to produce all the answers, the project was built around collaboration. Stakeholders helped test assumptions, strengthen the evidence and ensure that the pathways reflected South Africa's realities, challenges and opportunities.

One message stood out throughout the process: climate transitions aren't just about technology or policy. They're about people, institutions and the choices we make together.

Read the case study: https://wcedp.co.za/impact-planning-for-uncertainty-climate-pathways/
Engage with reflections by project lead, Innocentia Modau: https://wcedp.co.za/reflections-on-building-climate-informed-economic-pathways-for-south-africa/

15/09/2026

In the lead up to EDP X-Change 2026, we're remembering some of the insights from last year's event.

At , Kentse Radebe and Mirjam van Donk reminded us that learning is a core ingredient for resilient partnerships, not an afterthought.

How do you embed learning into the foundation of different partnerships?

Explore others' responses: https://wcedp.co.za/edp-x-change-2025-knowledge-product/

09/09/2026

"We are all capable of providing knowledge and expertise to national planning processes."

In her first blog for EDP, Michelle du Toit writes about a common assumption in climate and energy planning: it's too technical for community voices to weigh in on.

Her experience working on the Presidential Climate Commission economic scenarios project tells a different story.

When people from outside the "usual" climate space joined the conversation, they surfaced challenges that experts had missed entirely.

Messy? Yes. Worth it? Undoubtedly.

Read her full reflection:

After nearly a years’ worth of gentle prompting I am – at last – sitting down to write my first blog post for EDP. It is on the recently-ended Developing Scenarios for Economic Pathways project led by the Presidential Climate Committee (PCC).

08/09/2026

From the Northern Cape to Mpumalanga, from Limpopo to the Free State — over the past year, communities across South Africa have opened up about what the Just Transition means to them.

For some, it's about jobs. For others, water security, or land, or simply being heard after years of promises that didn't materialise.

"You cannot build solar farms on land where people still feel displaced."

That single line, from a participant in the Northern Cape, captures why this work was so critical to implementing a Just Transition.

Read what nine provinces had to say: https://wcedp.co.za/local-just-transitions/

South African Local Government Association (SALGA)