This working paper asks a single practical question: how can China and South Africa rewrite the rules of green industrialisation so that renewable energy deployment builds industrial capability and distributive justice rather than reproducing dependency? It is written for the policymakers, funders and researchers working at the intersection of the energy transition, African industrial policy and South-South cooperation, and is designed to be read as a decision aid rather than a description. The paper argues that the outcomes of the bilateral relationship are set less by intentions than by rules, and that those rules are still open to revision in the window before the next decade’s infrastructure is locked in.
The paper is the culmination of 18 months of original research conducted in 2024 and 2025 under the SAIIA Futures Programme. Its evidence rests on two primary streams: the BRICS Climate and Just Energy Transitions Policy Innovation Labs, convened online on 14, 15 and 17 April 2025, and a parallel programme of strategic interviews with respondents across South Africa, Brazil, Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.1The research programme comprised the BRICS Climate and Just Energy Transitions Policy Innovation Lab, convened under the SAIIA Futures Programme on 14, 15, and 17 April 2025, and a parallel programme of strategic interviews with respondents from South Africa, Brazil, Russia, China, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia (2024–2025). See Appendix B These are complemented by a desktop review of primary policy instruments and reputable secondary analysis, and are read alongside the companion Decision Makers The BRICS Energy Compass: A Framework for working paper, of which this case study is the bilateral microcosm.2SAIIA Futures Programme, BRICS Climate and Energy Transitions Working Paper (working paper, 2026). The full method, evidence base and confidence protocol are documented in Apprendices A and B.
The paper opens with an executive summary and a findings at a glance synopsis, then tells the story in a narrative diagnosis, the two national stories and the bloc’s central contradiction, before moving through five analytical Sections. Section 1 maps the relationship as a single system of actors, rules, and material. Section 2 reads it as a transition in three layers, with landscape pressures, a vulnerable incumbent regime, and carrying niches. Section 3 sets out four scenarios for 2035. Section 4 offers a transformative theory of change. Section 5 translates the analysis into twelve transformative outcomes. A material trace of six projects, a short watchlist of signals to 2030, and the conclusion; two appendices document the method and the evidence base. Taken together, the narrative diagnosis and the five Sections form the paper’s six-phase analytical stack.
The headline conclusions are gathered in the Findings at a Glance that follows, so that a reader with limited time can take the argument in a single page before deciding how deep to go.
