Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has described the record R12.3-billion spent by the city on infrastructure last year, which he said was the biggest investment yet by a city-government in South Africa, as the “minimum” level of investment needed.

To match the rise in demand for services and to support higher levels of economic activity far higher levels of investment would be required in the future, he added.

“Even at those record levels of investment, we are only just keeping pace with the rapid growth of our city,” Hill-Lewis said at the 2026 edition of the Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium South Africa, where he pointed to rapid urbanisation as a key driver.

“That should give us some pause for thought and some perspective nationally. If a city is investing at record levels, but still regards this investment as the minimum required, we need to ask what level of infrastructure investment South Africa's cities and towns across the country will require to prepare for the years ahead.”

The leader of the DA said he had studied the infrastructure budgets of all the other major cities and had concluded that a major increase in infrastructure investment was required.

As a “rule of thumb” he postulated that yearly spending would have to rise to between R10-billion and R15-billion across the major cities to address backlogs and begin preparing for growth.

“That budget should grow every year by at least the combination of inflation and population growth in your city,” Hill-Lewis added, describing it as a “budget rule” that was being implemented in Cape Town currently.

Such spending could not be funded by government alone and would require support from development finance institutions and private sector finance in the form of public–private partnerships.

“South Africa needs to become much better at identifying where public resources should be used, where private capital can fill the gap, and how to combine those two to deliver infrastructure at much greater scale,” Hill-Lewis said.

The mayor also stressed the importance of project preparation as “a construction project on paper is not infrastructure. It becomes infrastructure when it is properly planned, financed, procured, constructed, maintained and operated well.”

This theme was underlined by both President Cyril Ramaphosa in his address and by Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson, who noted Infrastructure South Africa had R600-million available to disperse through competitive bid windows to help public institutions transform promising concepts into investment-ready projects.

“The first bid window received 277 submissions with an estimated combined capital value of roughly R322-billion. Infrastructure South Africa is now providing preparation support to more than 26 projects with an estimated capital value of approximately R148-billion,” Macpherson reported.

He also announced that projects selected following Bid Window II represented a potential capital investment value of about R57.8-billion, while Bid Window III had opened in July to create another opportunity for the public sector to bring forward high-value projects requiring preparation support.