Minister Parks Tau: 20 years of the aerospace industry support initiative and Africa aerospace and defence 2026
Theme: “Building Industrial Capability from Emerging Enterprises to Globally Competitive Aerospace, Defence, Maritime and Advanced Manufacturing Industries”
Programme Director and the originator of the Aerospace Industry Support Initiative, Ms Nomfuneko Majaja,
Honourable Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Ms Angie Motshekga,
Chief Executive Officer of the CSIR and the Executive Team,
Chief Executive Officer of SAAMDEC,
Senior Government Officials,
Captains of Industry,
Leaders of our Research and Academic Institutions,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning.
INTRODUCTION
Twenty years ago, South Africa made a deliberate choice, not to remain consumers of imported defence and aerospace technology, but to build the capability to research, design, develop and manufacture it ourselves. Standing here today, among the entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators of this exhibition, I can tell you that choice is paying off. Despite a difficult trading environment, I see an aerospace and defence industry that is thriving, and whose innovations are spilling over into the rest of our economy.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
AISI PROVES THAT INDUSTRIAL POLICY WORKS
The story of the Aerospace Industry Support Initiative (AISI) began with a strategic question, posed through South Africa's National Aerospace Manufacturing Strategy: how do we build a sustainable, globally competitive aerospace and defence industry capable of advancing our economic prosperity, our technological progress and our 1 national security? Government's answer, developed with the CSIR following the recommendations of the Aerospace Strategy for a Sustainable, Economical and Growing Aerospace Industry (ASSEGAI) strategy, was AISI.
The programme started modestly, with an annual budget of roughly R300 000. Today it operates at close to R50 million a year, leveraging further co-investment from the very firms it supports. Over the past decade alone, AISI has supported 142 small and medium enterprises, helped create and sustain more than 1 236 jobs, enabled the development of 148 new technologies and products, and assisted firms in securing 49 international certifications and standards.
Together, these interventions have generated approximately R381 million in local industrial output and more than R332 million in direct exports. These numbers are modest, admittedly, but they point to a strong foundation upon which we can direct real ambition as we implement our new Industrial Development Strategy. Those numbers also don’t tell the full story. Behind every one of those figures is a company.
Jonker Sailplanes, supported by AISI and the CSIR through flutter analysis and ground vibration testing for European certification, is now exporting its JS5 sailplane to Europe, with export revenue exceeding R30 million, and is commissioning new production facilities this year. LambdaG has developed a space-qualified Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) antenna for low-earth-orbit satellites, strengthening our local Radio Frequency and microwave manufacturing capability.
Kutleng Dynamic Electronic Systems has built a flight-certifiable avionics platform now being integrated into a South African Air Force programme. AutonoSky has designed, developed and manufactured the A22 Manqoba unmanned aerial vehicle for military applications, right here at home, reducing our reliance on imported systems for a capability our own defence force needs. And our “New Space” cluster, Simera Sense, NewSpace Systems and Dragonfly Aerospace, has put South African-built satellite technology into orbit.
South Africa’s satellite and space ambitions carry real regulatory weight, which means our aerospace and space activities are governed by international obligations as much as by commercial ones. I have appointed the members of the South African Council for Space Affairs at the end of last year, to ensure a conducive environment for the responsible and peaceful use of space. I want to recognise the Council's members who are with us today. 2 AISI does not do this work alone. Alongside it, longer-standing instruments such as the Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme (THRIP) and the Support Programme for Industrial Innovation (SPII), continue to link our researchers, universities and industry, smaller in scale, but just as important to the innovation pipeline that feeds programmes like AISI.
Given this record, I welcome the CSIR's work to consider a broadened mandate for the programme, extending its reach across the marine and wider advanced manufacturing sectors it already touches. Whatever its future shape, the model AISI has proven, patient, targeted, partnership-based industrial support, is one government intends to keep backing.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
THIS IS THE MOMENT TO SCALE, NOT SLOW DOWN
Nowhere is that more urgent than in defence. The ability to design, build, maintain and export our own platforms is a matter of national sovereignty. The global economic, technology and trade order is undergoing a fundamental shift. Artificial intelligence and cybersecurity are transforming the aerospace and defence sectors. Nations are reconfiguring supply chains around critical minerals and strategic technologies, and reshoring the industrial capabilities they consider sovereign.
Countries that fail to innovate risk becoming dependent on those that do. South Africa cannot afford to do nothing. This exhibition itself is evidence of the scale of the opportunity in front of us. AAD 2026 brings together more than 300 exhibitors and over 50 official delegations, alongside global primes such as Airbus, Embraer, Leonardo and Saab, here at Waterkloof. I cannot stress enough how important it is for South African industry to utilise this platform to form strong partnerships and secure real investment for our industry goals.
Consider what is already happening. South Africa's defence exports reached a record R10.1 billion in 2025. Munitions alone, led by Rheinmetall Denel Munition (RDM), accounted for R4.8 billion, close to half of that. Earlier this year, RDM committed a further multi-billion-rand investment over the next three years, on top of the roughly R1 billion it already spends annually upgrading its four South African plants, in order to double capacity in response to global demand. That is what happens when local capability meets global market access, and it is precisely the outcome our Industrial 3 Development Strategy is designed to multiply across our three key pathways of decarbonisation, diversification and digitalisation.
RDM's own history makes the point. It exists because Denel, our state-owned aerospace and defence company, brought decades of sovereign engineering capability into a joint venture that could then compete for, and win, contracts on this scale. That is what a strong state-owned defence capability makes possible, and government remains committed to Denel's continued stabilisation as a strategic platform for exactly this kind of partnership. Our manufacturers still carry real burdens, high energy costs, constrained access to capital, logistics constraints and skills shortages. Government's task is to keep removing that weight, so our companies can compete on the strength of what they build.
The recent Defence Industry Lekgotla reaffirmed why this work matters. Preserving sovereign industrial capability, advancing dual-use technologies, and retaining and upskilling our critical technical skills are essential to our national security and our longterm competitiveness. Armscor's acquisition and localisation requirements remain one of government's most powerful levers here: every defence contract that specifies local content and local skills development builds industrial capability in a way that no grant or subsidy can replicate on its own. Government will keep exploring how programmes with a national footprint, our Special Economic Zones among them, can anchor these technologies and grow into advanced manufacturing clusters and corridors.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS MUST BE MORE AMBITIOUS, AND MORE INCLUSIVE
The technologies that will define the next chapter are already emerging around us: artificial autonomous systems, advanced materials, additive manufacturing, space technologies, digital engineering and UAV technologies. AISI must keep helping emerging enterprises cross the barriers to entry that define these high-technology industries. Importantly for this sector, transformation must not become a side issue in this work. AISI requires the firms it funds to hold at least Level 4 B-BBEE status, and it is deliberately building a pipeline of black industrialists, innovators and technology 4 entrepreneurs able to compete in local and global markets.
Achieving this at scale requires deeper collaboration, continuing the work already under way with the IDC, ECIC, Armscor, Denel and major OEMs on co-investment, enterprise supplier development and industrial scaling. Transformation matters here more than in most sectors, precisely because aerospace and defence have always been among the hardest industries to enter. Capital intensity, certification requirements and decades of concentrated ownership have kept these industries largely closed to black entrepreneurs and emerging enterprises. If we do not deliberately open that door, the next twenty years will simply repeat the exclusions of the last. A sovereign industrial capability that is not also a broadly-owned one is neither complete nor sustainable, and it is why AISI's transformation mandate is not an addon to our industrial strategy, it is a measure of whether that strategy is succeeding.
Let us commit ourselves to strengthening partnerships between government, industry, academia and our science councils. Let us commit to supporting emerging enterprises until they become globally competitive champions. And let us commit to investing in the innovation and industrial capability that will carry South Africa's aerospace, defence, maritime and advanced manufacturing industries into their next twenty years.
Programme Director,
CLOSING
Twenty years ago, AISI was created to answer one question: how do we build a sustainable, globally competitive aerospace industry in South Africa? Today, the answer stands all around us, in the aircraft, satellites and defence systems built by South African hands, and exported to the world. South Africa has the talent, the ingenuity and the ambition. Let us use the next twenty years to match that ambition with scale.
I thank you.
#GovZAUpdates
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