IN SHORT: Adebayo Ogunlesi, chairman of BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, told President Cyril Ramaphosa at a Cape Town summit on May 13 that BlackRock currently manages approximately R500 billion ($28 billion) in South African assets and expects to double that exposure over the next five years. BlackRock also separately committed $500 million to its African Infrastructure Fund III. South Africa’s reform trajectory across energy, logistics, rail and ports is what Ogunlesi said private capital is watching and rewarding.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with $14 to $15 trillion under management, has $28 billion deployed in South Africa and its infrastructure chief says that number is set to double, making South Africa one of the world’s most actively courted infrastructure markets in 2026. Ogunlesi made the disclosure at the BlackRock South Africa Infrastructure Investment Summit in Cape Town, appearing alongside President Ramaphosa in a meeting that was as much a public signal to global investors as a policy session.
- BlackRock manages approximately R500 billion ($28 billion) in South African assets across energy, transport and digital infrastructure. Ogunlesi said the firm expects that exposure to reach R1 trillion within five years. Ramaphosa responded that doubling was not ambitious enough and pressed for quadrupling.
- BlackRock committed $500 million to its African Infrastructure Fund III ahead of the summit, targeting energy systems, logistics corridors and transport infrastructure across the continent, not solely South Africa.
- Ogunlesi identified electricity transmission, renewable energy, rail, ports and digital infrastructure as South Africa’s highest-priority investment sectors, describing unreliable power supply as simply unacceptable for a modern economy.
- He warned explicitly that South Africa is competing for private capital against the US, Germany, GCC nations and Asian markets. Policy certainty, transparent procurement and the rule of law were the conditions he named as prerequisites for sustained foreign institutional commitment.
- South Africa secured a record R889.8 billion ($53 billion) in investment pledges at the 6th South Africa Investment Conference in March 2026, covered in depth by Africaspoint: South Africa pulls record $53bn in one day.
- Ramaphosa confirmed a government infrastructure spending plan of more than R1 trillion over three years, the largest such commitment in the country’s history.
The Ogunlesi summit is strategically important beyond the numbers. BlackRock’s participation puts the world’s largest asset manager visibly in the South Africa story at a moment when the investment narrative is still fragile. A sovereign rating upgrade, four consecutive quarters of growth and removal from the FATF grey list are the foundations. What remains incomplete is execution: energy bottlenecks, port and rail underperformance, and the broader logistics deficit are still weighing on the business environment. Ogunlesi said private capital is ready to move, but made the conditionality explicit in a way that amounts to a public scorecard.
The Bigger Picture: The $28 billion current exposure signals that global institutional capital already has meaningful South African infrastructure positions. The argument is not about whether to enter but how much to scale. If BlackRock delivers on the doubling target, South Africa would absorb roughly $56 billion from the world’s largest asset manager alone over the next five years. Set against the R1 trillion government infrastructure commitment and Ramaphosa’s R3 trillion five-year investment target, the public-private infrastructure push in South Africa is shaping up as one of the continent’s largest capital deployment stories of the decade. The variable is the pace of reform on the ground.
Source: IOL Business Report, May 13 2026 / BusinessDay, May 13 2026
