Sona’s maritime blind spot: The blue economy missing from Ramaphosa’s vision

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2026 State of the Nation Address (Sona) highlighted a number of economic priorities, including investment in infrastructure and a push to position the country as a supplier of minerals, pointing to plans for high-speed rail, the expansion of renewables and growing our agricultural exports. The vision seemed to speak to South Africa’s stubborn challenges of joblessness and poverty, intending to leverage our natural resources to drive growth. Missing from this calculus was South Africa’s 3,000km of coastline and the manifold economic opportunities it offers, representing a critical gap in the President’s development vision and strategic priorities, once championed by his predecessor, Jacob Zuma.

With Ramaphosa emphasising the need to invest in sectors where South Africa has competitive advantage, the blue economy should also appear on that list. The geostrategic advantage of our ports, especially amid instability in the Middle East in and around the Red Sea, was not mentioned, nor was aquaculture, fisheries or ocean-based renewable energies.

While the President did speak about port efficiency, pointing to the need for improvements in infrastructure bottlenecks that constrain our export potential, his comments reflected a limited understanding of what ports represent. Ports can be gateways to the blue economy, act as security infrastructure and aid the combating of illicit trade. What’s more, South Africa’s exclusive economic zone contains valuable minerals on the seabed, if the country can generate consensus about such mining activities. Our fisheries, if sustainably managed, could simultaneously address food security and generate export revenue. Our strategic position on major shipping routes gives us natural advantages in maritime services. These opportunities demand the same presidential focus given to terrestrial critical minerals, yet they remain largely invisible.

Cross-cutting issues

Because Pretoria remains sea-blind, it also seems unaware of the costs that maritime insecurity poses to our economic interests at sea. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing costs our economy an estimated $60-million annually in abalone poaching alone, while undermining food security. Drug trafficking through our ports fuels the organised crime networks that the President identified in his address as a key threat. Our limited capacity for maritime surveillance leaves vast ocean areas effectively ungoverned. These are concrete problems that demand concrete solutions, and can bear the fruit of economic growth the Sona focused on so heavily.

Similarly striking was the treatment of climate change as a terrestrial phenomenon. Ramaphosa did acknowledge our “increasing vulnerability to extreme weather conditions”, pointing to the recent floods in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, but did not reflect on the threats to our coastal cities amid sea level rise, saltwater intrusion and intensifying storms. Cape Town’s Day Zero crisis, while primarily about freshwater scarcity, has demonstrated the vulnerability of coastal cities to climate shocks. But the Sona didn’t reference how coastal cities might need to supplement freshwater supplies in years to come. Climate change will see island states such as Tuvalu become submerged by the end of the century: it presents a lesson that while South Africa may be in a water crisis, there is still opportunity to practise its exclusive economic rights and tend to the symbiotic ties between its waters and land, including in how it addresses issues of climate change

The commitment to R1-trillion in infrastructure investment raises a series of obvious questions: how much funding is allocated for climate-resilient coastal infrastructure? As sea levels rise and storms intensify, are we building our ports, coastal roads and beachfront developments to withstand these changes? Or are we investing billions in infrastructure that will require costly adaptation as time passes and climate events become more severe?

Another area in which the oceans can serve the President’s priorities is in food security. Ramaphosa spoke of food poverty and malnutrition but made no mention of fisheries or aquaculture and the extent to which fish can contribute significantly to protein intake, particularly for poor households. Aquaculture offers opportunities for job creation in coastal communities while also diversifying food production. Instead, illegal fishing depletes these resources with little consequence amid poor maritime surveillance capacity and very limited ability to respond to maritime crime.

When it comes to South Africa’s foreign policy, Ramaphosa spoke of sovereignty and pointed to non-alignment, mentioning South Africa’s G20 presidency, but also overlooked the maritime dimensions of South Africa middle-powerdom, such as its membership of the Indian Ocean Rim Association, its potential to project power in the Indo-Pacific and its unique position of straddling the Atlantic, Indian and Southern Oceans. You cannot credibly lead Africa or champion the Global South while ignoring these dimensions of international relations, especially in a year described as a bellwether for the oceans, given a number of deadlines and milestones this year.

Implications

So, why the persistent silence on ocean matters? Part of the answer may be institutional. Ocean governance in South Africa is fragmented across many departments, with no single entity coordinating ocean policy at the level of presidential priority. Moreover, South Africa’s key ocean-facing policy project, Operation Phakisa, has been largely forgotten, while the country remains without strategic policy thinking around the maritime domain.

Maritime security, ocean economy development and coastal climate adaptation deserve the same level of priority. These aren’t niche issues but rather cross-cutting ones that deal with economic growth, food security, climate resilience and national security – issues that affect millions of South Africans in coastal provinces and those who rely on the oceans for their livelihood. The treatment of these issues determines whether we can leverage our maritime geography for competitive advantage or watch it become a source of vulnerability. Because ocean issues don’t fit neatly into existing structures, they remain perpetually on the margins of our development planning.

None of this is to diminish the genuine progress outlined in the Sona. Port improvements matter. As does infrastructure investment and the commitment to fight organised crime. But these measures are insufficient without attention to our maritime domain. At present, this provides the backdrop to economic activities and geopolitical posturing, as can be seen from the country’s recent joint naval exercises. Yet the maritime domain itself does not receive the central attention it deserves.

Our ocean is part of our natural heritage. It simultaneously binds together the past and the future, it holds resources that could drive growth, feed our people and anchor our place in a changing world. But the maritime domain faces pressures that demand urgent attention. In reality, it sits at the intersection of our economic, security and environmental challenges. We cannot build the stronger, more prosperous, more resilient South Africa that the President envisions while treating our vast ocean territory as an afterthought.

The next Sona should tell a different story, in which blue growth sits alongside green growth, maritime security is recognised as national security and our coastal cities’ climate futures receive the attention they desperately need. Until then, we remain a coastal nation that has not yet learnt to think like one. DM

Lisa Otto is associate professor and SARChI Chair: African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy at the University of Johannesburg. Yu-Shan Wu is a senior researcher at the University of Johannesburg.