Dr Nik Eberl is the founder and executive chair: The Future of Jobs Summit™ (Official T20 Side Event). He is also the author of Nation of Champions: How South Africa won the World Cup of Destination Branding).
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For more than fifteen years, South Africa has struggled to generate meaningful economic growth.
Since the global financial crisis, the economy has expanded at an average rate of less than 1% per year, far below the levels required to absorb new entrants into the labour market, attract investment and reduce unemployment.
During the same period, unemployment has risen to among the highest levels in the world, with more than 8 million South Africans actively seeking work.
Yet while much of the country has been focused on what is broken, something remarkable has been happening in unexpected places.
Far from the boardrooms of Sandton and the policy debates of Pretoria, a small town in the Northern Cape has quietly been building a world-class agricultural industry on the verge of becoming worth billions of rand.
The town is Prieska. Located in the heart of the Karoo, Prieska is hardly the place most South Africans would identify as an economic growth story. Yet its pistachio industry offers a powerful lesson about how South Africa can reignite growth and create jobs at scale.
The story begins with an insight that many overlooked.
The same harsh environmental conditions that make the Karoo appear inhospitable are precisely what pistachio trees require to flourish.
The region offers scorching summers, cold winters, low humidity and access to irrigation from the Orange River. In other words, it possesses many of the same climatic advantages that made parts of California and the Middle East global leaders in pistachio production.
But Prieska enjoys an additional competitive advantage: production costs estimated at roughly half those of many American producers.
What appears to be a disadvantage from the outside turned out to be a globally competitive asset.
The real story, however, is not about climate. It is about persistence.
The Industrial Development Corporation initially invested in pistachio production during the 1990s. When the project failed to meet expectations, the investment was eventually written off. By conventional standards, the experiment had failed.
Yet a group of determined local farmers refused to abandon the vision.
They spent years solving technical challenges that many outsiders would never appreciate. Pistachio production depends on precise pollination cycles. Male and female trees must flower simultaneously. Wind direction affects productivity. Orchard design matters. Timing matters. Every variable had to be tested and refined.
What followed was years of experimentation, learning, adaptation and perseverance before the industry finally became commercially viable.
Today, that persistence is paying off. Prieska's pistachios are ranked among the highest quality globally. Once mature, pistachio orchards can remain productive for more than fifty years. While the upfront investment is substantial, the long-term returns can be exceptional.
Perhaps most importantly, the economics are resilient. When international pistachio prices decline, many producers in higher-cost regions struggle to remain profitable.
Producers in Prieska continue to generate healthy returns. That advantage allows farmers to invest confidently over decades rather than seasons.
This matters because sustainable economic growth is built on long-term investment horizons.
South Africa desperately needs more sectors where investors can commit capital with confidence for ten, twenty or even fifty years.
The timing could not be more favourable.
Global demand for pistachios continues to rise steadily. Industry analysts estimate that thousands of additional hectares must be planted globally each year simply to keep pace with consumption.
At the same time, production challenges in traditional supply regions are creating opportunities for new entrants.
Prieska is positioning itself to capture part of that growth. But the significance of this story extends far beyond pistachios.
The real lesson is that South Africa is full of hidden champions waiting to be discovered.
Every successful economy has sectors, regions and businesses that quietly outperform expectations.
Germany built much of its industrial strength on what economists call the Mittelstand — highly specialised, globally competitive companies located far from major cities. These hidden champions became engines of exports, innovation, employment and regional development.
South Africa has its own hidden champions.
They exist in agriculture, renewable energy, tourism, technology, business services, mining innovation, advanced manufacturing and the growing green economy. They are often found in places that rarely make headlines. They emerge when entrepreneurs identify unique competitive advantages and persist long enough to unlock them.
The country's globally competitive citrus industry, world-leading business process outsourcing sector, renewable energy developments in the Northern Cape, specialised manufacturing exporters and agricultural innovators all demonstrate the same pattern: world-class performance emerging from focused excellence rather than scale alone.
In fact, while writing my forthcoming book, South Africa's Hidden Champions, I have become increasingly convinced that the country's greatest economic opportunities are often hidden in plain sight.
The challenge is not a lack of potential. It is our failure to identify, celebrate and scale what is already working.
The challenge is that South Africa's economic narrative is often dominated by our failures rather than our possibilities.
We spend considerable time discussing what government should do differently, but comparatively little time identifying and replicating the success stories already creating jobs, attracting investment and generating growth.
If South Africa is serious about accelerating growth, the next phase of economic development will not come from a single mega-project, government intervention or policy announcement. It will come from identifying hundreds of Prieskas.
It will come from finding overlooked opportunities hidden in our geography, our climate, our natural resources, our people and our entrepreneurial communities.
It will come from supporting those who are willing to invest patiently, innovate relentlessly and build globally competitive businesses in unlikely places.
If we can identify these hidden champions, learn from them and scale their successes, we may discover that the blueprint for economic growth has been with us all along. South Africa does not need a miracle. It needs more Prieskas.
Dr Nik Eberl is the founder and executive chair: The Future of Jobs Summit™ (Official T20 Side Event). He is also the author of Nation of Champions: How South Africa won the World Cup of Destination Branding).
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