When billionaire Jannie Mouton’s family trust offered R7.2-billion to buy out Curro Holdings, his son Jan chose one word to describe it: donation. Not “acquisition”, not “takeover”, not “buyout”. If the deal goes through, Curro will convert from a profit-making listed company to a nonprofit public benefit organisation. All surpluses will be reinvested into classrooms, bursaries and school expansion – not paid out to shareholders.
This is the kind of big-picture, transformative thinking that South Africa desperately needs. It reframes education not as a balance-sheet liability, but as a public benefit. And it forces us to ask: what other parts of the schooling system need this kind of reset?
Because, make no mistake, our education system is in dire straits, and that severely limits our ability to succeed as a nation.
The statistics are staggering. More than 80% of 10-year-olds cannot read for meaning. Hundreds of schools have abandoned mathematics altogether because they lack teachers. In state-funded schools, there are 34 pupils per teacher, on average. The infrastructure backlog is crippling: 85% of schools lack science labs, and thousands still rely on unsafe pit latrines.
And then there is the energy crisis, which has only exacerbated the education crisis. Aside from load shedding – which has interrupted classes for nearly two decades – surging electricity costs have eroded school budgets.
Since 2007, Eskom has hiked tariffs by well more than 400%. As demand falls – partly because those who can afford it defect to solar – Eskom has introduced “make-up” tariffs to claw back revenue, creating a vicious cycle of ever-rising costs. Now, due to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s R54-billion calculation blunder, electricity tariffs are set to climb by nearly 9% in both 2026/27 and 2027/28, adding yet another layer of unaffordable increases for households and schools.
Wealthier schools have insulated themselves by installing rooftop solar – an investment that slashes their energy costs and frees up budget for other activities. But underresourced schools are being left behind as they cannot cover the up-front capital costs. The result: the growing energy divide reinforces the education divide, entrenching inequality with every blackout and electricity tariff hike.
What the Curro deal signals – and what it doesn’t solve
Curro teaches 72,000 children, which is less than 0.5% of South Africa’s pupils. The shift to nonprofit status is encouraging because it may open the door for more bursaries, more rural schools and more equitable access. But it does not solve the system-wide crisis.
For that we need scalable solutions. We need war-time urgency to train tens of thousands of teachers, introduce modern curriculums and rebuild crumbling infrastructure. And we need to find money to do it in a fiscally constrained environment.
This is where financial innovation enters the picture.
Schools collectively spend several billion rands on electricity every year. What if those funds could be redirected towards teachers and textbooks instead? Innovative solar financing mechanisms can make this a reality.
By removing the upfront cost burden, these commercial solutions ensure that all of the country’s 24,836 schools can access the cheapest form of electricity in history.
To demonstrate the cost-saving potential here, our Smart Schools platform – a social enterprise that finances and manages solar-plus-battery systems for low-income schools – is able to sell the clean energy generated at a 40% discount to municipal tariffs. This means each participating school frees up enough funding to hire another full-time junior teacher.
On a macro scale, the opportunity for impact is huge. If every school in South Africa hosted a medium-sized rooftop solar array, this would add 745MW of new generating capacity directly in local communities – that is nearly equivalent to one full stage of load shedding avoided.
It would cost about R8.6-billion to solarise every school, yet we could deliver R2.2-billion in combined energy savings in year one alone, freeing up enough resources to hire 25,000 additional junior teachers – thereby reducing the country’s average pupil-to-teacher ratio to 29:1.
Building on Mouton’s momentum
What Mouton plans to do with Curro is bold: shifting private capital into public benefit education at a scale South Africa hasn’t seen before. But if we stop there we will miss the bigger opportunity.
We need to pair education reform with infrastructure reform, and energy is the lowest-hanging fruit. The business case is proven. What’s missing is will – and leadership.
Just as Curro’s model opens the door to much-needed new schools in rural and township areas, solar financing makes it possible for all schools to become energy-secure, resilient and financially stronger.
Thanks to the ongoing solar energy revolution, we have a unique opportunity to bend South Africa’s distorted education landscape back towards equity, and ensure that we do not have another lost generation.
We cannot afford to tinker at the margins any longer. The scale of South Africa’s education emergency demands solutions that are bold, structural and systemic.
Curro’s move is one such solution. Solarising every school is another.
All that is required is political courage, catalytic capital and a recognition that doing nothing is no longer defensible – financially, morally or socially. DM