OVERVIEW
Regional overview: Northern Cape Big sky country, the Northern Cape is the largest of South Africa’s provinces but has the smallest population, making it one of the more remote areas of South Africa.
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he province has many major attractions, including its vast, open spaces, unique vegetation – notably the beautiful spring flower spectacle that transforms a semi-desert landscape into one of striking colour and beauty – and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, which is famous for its lions.
And, of course, the Northern Cape has diamonds. Who knows what sort of country South Africa would be today, were it not for the discovery of diamonds in the hot, dry flat interior of the country in the late 1800s? The small western portion of the Northern Cape Province bordering the Free State is now known as The Diamond Fields. Kimberley, which is also the Capital of the Northern Cape and the location of the Kimberly Big Hole, is at the heart of the province’s diamond fields. There are several diamond-mining and historical attractions in Kimberley itself, including the Big Hole and Kimberley Mine Museum. Agriculture With extensive stock and vegetable farming land, agriculture is central to the Northern Cape economy, but cutting-edge renewable-energy projects are revitalising this arid land.
Major exports include fruit, especially table grapes and meat from the widespread sheep and goat farming in the province. Agriculture contributes more than its fair share to the economy, especially in terms of employment creation. For this reason, the revitalisation of the agriculture and agri-processing value chain is critically important. Initiatives like the Vaalharts Irrigation Scheme will be prioritised to meet the needs of irrigation across a large swatch of the province. Northern Province is also the lead province in South Africa when it comes to solar renewable energy initiatives and in terms of its Renewable Energy Strategy. It plans to be an exporter of renewable energy to the rest of South Africa by 2020. Renewable energy For its part, Eskom has connected 950 Megawatts (Mw) of renewable energy from Independent Power Producers (IPP) to the grid, ahead of deadline. Eskom has also recently spent over R300-million on capital improvements in the Northern Cape, including the new Schmidsdrift Substation and the Canal Substation near Van der Kloof. These projects provide significant added ca-
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