South Africa has built a globally competitive automotive manufacturing sector, yet local content in vehicle production has remained largely unchanged for more than a decade. In his latest opinion piece for Business Day, NAACAM CEO Renai Moothilal explores why localisation has stalled and what needs to change.
Moothilal suggests that while South Africa has a strong automotive component sector capable of competing globally, current policy has placed greater emphasis on vehicle assembly than on expanding local manufacturing and supplier development. Evidencing this – in 2013, 514,000 vehicles were produced and average vehicle local content was 43%. In 2025, light vehicle production increased to over 577,000 vehicles yet local content has declined to 38.5%.
As the review of the Automotive Production and Development Programme (APDP2) gets underway, he argues that this is an opportunity to not only preserve assembly operations but to grow domestic value addition throughout the automotive value chain.
Read Moothilal’s full opinion piece and join the conversation on the future of automotive localisation in South Africa. Read the full opinion piece here: https://www.businessday.co.za/opinion/2026-07-06-renai-moothilal-why-south-africas-automotive-localisation-has-stalled-and-how-policy-can-fix-it/