Germany has announced that its new funding commitment of R6.2-billion (€355-million) for South Africa includes funding for the country’s “just transition towards climate neutrality”.

The announcement of the two-year funding commitment follows government-to-government negotiations, led on South Africa’s side by the National Treasury, on South African-German development cooperation, which took place on October 5 in Pretoria.

Head of the German delegation Birgit Pickel described the Just Energy Transition Partnership, or JETP, which was announced at the COP26 climate negotiation in Glasgow, Scotland, as a “milestone in international cooperation” and underlined Germany’s strong commitment to the partnership.

Besides Germany, the JETP includes the European Union, France, the UK and the US, which have offered potential funding of $8.5-billion for an investment plan that is currently the subject of negotiations between South Africa and these developed countries.

It is anticipated that the investment plan, which will have a strong electricity focus but will also include green hydrogen and electric vehicle elements, could be signed off at or before the upcoming COP27 climate talks to be held in Egypt in November.

Following the recent bilateral talks, South Africa and Germany issued a joint statement that emphasised the importance of the “just” component of the transition to protect livelihoods and the economic base of the coal basin in policy discussions on the JETP.

Separately, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen signed a $95-million loan agreement on October 6 for the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), and indicated that its contribution would help drive the overall JETP programmes in “South Africa, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines starting in October 2022”.

The CTF is a multilateral trust fund which helps to scale-up low carbon technologies in developing countries.

Meanwhile, the joint statement issued by South Africa and Germany also reconfirmed their five bilateral focal areas, including: peaceful and inclusive societies; climate and energy; sustainable economic development; training and employment; and health and pandemics.

Besides the emphasis on the JETP, it was announced that South Africa and Germany would further strengthen existing bilateral  technical and vocational education and training skills development cooperation, which would be complemented by further initiatives focusing on “pathways from learning to earning”.

To strengthen governance and fight the ‘second pandemic’ of gender-based violence, Germany made additional commitments in the areas of violence and crime prevention and to tackle corruption.