At Davos, the contrast between Donald Trump’s economic nationalism and Mark Carney’s climate-first globalism could not be more pronounced, writes Richard Firth, CEO of MIP Holdings.
One was speaking the language of borders, tariffs, and domestic industry. The other framed competitiveness through decarbonisation, global co-ordination, and capital flows aligned to climate outcomes.
Yet beneath the ideological distance, both of them highlighted a shared priority: keeping jobs local.
Trump’s approach is blunt. He wants to reshore manufacturing, protect domestic supply chains, and reduce dependence on foreign inputs.
Carney’s framing is more subtle, but no less deliberate. He sees climate transition as an engine for local industrialisation, skills development, and long-term employment resilience.
Both recognise the political reality that transitions that shift value and employment offshore eventually face resistance at home, and, in both cases, energy policy is inseparable from industrial policy.
This convergence matters for South Africa as the country enters a new phase of its energy transition, and it matters far beyond the energy sector itself.
Strategic choices
According to energy experts, South Africa’s renewable energy sector is no longer defined by megawatts alone.
Capacity, reliability, and control are becoming even more important considerations, with hybrid energy systems combining solar, wind, and battery storage becoming the new baseline.
Unfortunately, South Africa does not manufacture batteries at scale. Today, almost every gigawatt of electricity produced locally creates domestic economic activity, from mining inputs, to construction, operations, maintenance, and grid services.
Even when equipment is imported, the generation itself is rooted in local labour and infrastructure.
Battery-led energy systems will change that equation, replacing local production with imported technology and foreign-currency exposure.
As storage becomes central to the power system, value will migrate from locally produced energy to globally manufactured technology. Lithium-ion cells, inverters, control systems, and balance-of-plant components will need to be imported in greater numbers, but these are priced in dollars, and tied to international supply chains dominated by a handful of countries.
In other words, the increasing focus on battery-led energy risks substituting resource dependence with technology dependence, and in doing so, quietly “dollarising” a localised part of the economy.
This is where the Davos contradiction becomes most visible. Global leaders speak about climate alignment, resilience, and long-term sustainability, but Trump’s protectionism and Carney’s climate capitalism both converge around the fact that energy policy that does not anchor jobs locally will not hold.
Looking to the future
If storage becomes the backbone of the power system without parallel investment in local manufacturing, assembly, or downstream industrial capacity, South Africa risks repeating a familiar pattern: Importing high-value components while exporting demand and absorbing currency risk.
This is ironic, considering that renewables were initially attractive precisely because they leveraged local, non-tradable resources.
There are a number of local examples that I can think of. For instance, I recently purchased a Toyota Fortuner for 2.4 4×4 for R650 000 and was amazed that what I perceived to be a lesser vehicle, the Rav 4, was in excess of R1-million for a smaller car.
When I looked into the reason for the price difference, I discovered that the Fortuner is made locally and the Rav 4 is imported, which means that the Rav 4 attracts exchange rate uncertainty and import duties.
Why aren’t we all driving the Fortuner, BMW X3, VW Amarok, Ford Ranger, BAIC or Mahindra pick-up that support local jobs rather than the new imports?
This is precisely what we have seen in the local ICT space. If software, platforms, and digital infrastructure are consistently imported alongside physical systems, local capability becomes peripheral.
Development work is done elsewhere, and local teams are left configuring, maintaining, or consuming technology rather than building and selling IP.
Many international software companies continue to thrive in South Africa in both the private and public sectors, even though a number of them have been fined for bribery and corruption in South Africa.
That dynamic locks companies into foreign-owned platforms, dollar-denominated costs, limited influence over product direction, and shrinking space for domestic IP creation.
Over time, this has affected more than just tech companies, ultimately shaping employment patterns, skills development, and the resilience of the broader economy.
Across multiple sectors, South Africa is importing core inputs, pricing is globally benchmarked, and local participation is concentrated at the consumption or implementation layer.
Energy storage illustrates the shift clearly, but the same forces are reshaping manufacturing, logistics, financial services, retail, healthcare, and the public sector – we are currently de-industrialising South Africa.
The conversations at Davos highlight a vital fact: Whether driven by nationalism or climate-driven globalisation, today’s leaders – and those of the future – are countries that are acting to ensure that they create domestic capability, not just imported efficiency.
South Africa faces the same choice across all of its industries, but with less margin for error.