The review, led by Takudzwa Musekiwa and Noeleen Murray of the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria, set out to answer a deceptively simple question: what are the measurable impacts of South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership on poverty reduction and economic opportunities in marginalized communities? The JETP, a collaborative financing framework between South Africa, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union, is designed to fund the country’s shift from coal toward renewables in a socially equitable manner. Yet the baseline conditions against which its success must be judged are sobering. Thirty-seven percent of residents in coal-host communities already live below the national poverty line, unemployment reaches 39 percent in some host areas, and 38 percent of off-grid households endure energy poverty.

Against those baselines, the employment numbers look impressive at first glance. Modeling studies project up to 43,000 solar photovoltaic jobs and 28,900 wind jobs by 2030, and one assessment counted more than 50,000 renewable energy jobs in 2020. The Expanded Public Works Programme, examined as a complementary green pathway, generated 4.2 million jobs including tourism routes serving some of the poorest communities. Industrial energy efficiency measures created or preserved 5,704 jobs while delivering 1.1 billion rand in savings. But the review’s technical analysis reveals a consistent pattern behind these figures: most renewable energy jobs are temporary, concentrated in construction phases, low-paid, and geographically disconnected from the coal regions where job losses are concentrated.

That spatial mismatch emerges as one of the most consequential technical findings. One modeling study estimated that 85,000 coal jobs could be lost while 72,000 green jobs emerge, producing a net job loss in Mpumalanga, the heart of the coal belt, unless the transition is carefully managed. New renewable energy hubs tend to arise in distant urban centers, while displaced coal workers in adjacent districts lack access to targeted retraining. The review documents ongoing skills gaps, noting that coal-community workers frequently cannot seize new opportunities without robust reskilling, and that women remain largely excluded from upskilling pathways. Gendered labor systems in solar plant projects were found to deliver neither justice nor gender equality for poor and working-class women.

Governance failures surface as the central mediating factor constraining outcomes. The review identifies fragmented procurement, weakly monitored community trusts, foreign-dependent supply chains, and limited participatory decision-making as recurring problems across at least three studies. A failed solar home system programme plagued by governance lapses illustrates the stakes: the same intervention could have delivered genuine poverty and environmental benefits if managed properly. Community solar PV manufacturing in coal phase-out regions was found to be unfeasible without significant subsidies, while foreign reliance in the wind sector supply chain limits local job creation. Trust in institutions is strikingly low, with one study reporting that affected workers and communities prefer independent actors to administer just transition funds, reflecting skepticism toward state-led processes.

Only three of the 25 studies reported any direct benefit associated with the interventions, and 22 made no mention of direct poverty or energy poverty reductions from implemented projects. Instead, the evidence points overwhelmingly to indirect benefits that mitigate vulnerability rather than generate sustained income gains. Expanded access to liquefied petroleum gas lowers household energy expenditures. Solar water heaters in low-income urban areas produce monetary savings and more productive use of time. Clean stoves and LED lighting reduce operating costs for small businesses. Biogas initiatives among rural women in Limpopo enhanced social inclusion and delivered savings on gas and firewood. Village-level solar installations improved comfort and educational outcomes in the Eastern Cape. These spillover effects are real, but they explain why baseline poverty and unemployment indicators remain largely unchanged across most empirical studies despite optimistic national-level modeling.

The divergence between models and lived experience is itself a key technical insight. Computable general equilibrium scenarios project that under an optimal decarbonisation path, national poverty could drop from 49 percent in 2010 to 18 percent by 2050, and unemployment from 25 percent to 12 percent. On-the-ground studies, by contrast, report temporary contracts, low wages, and limited upskilling among local populations. The review notes that the literature rarely triangulates poverty indicators, employment statistics, and qualitative community perspectives within a single framework, leaving policymakers without a cohesive evidence-based roadmap. Nine studies documented fully or partially implemented programmes, two described ongoing pilots, six analyzed planned or conceptual projects, four remained at the policy stage, and three presented purely modeled scenarios, meaning a substantial share of the evidence base describes potential rather than realized impacts.

Community responses tracked the quality of implementation closely. Nine studies reported explicitly positive reactions, including enthusiastic uptake of public works jobs in tourism pathways and improved wellbeing among rural LPG beneficiaries. Five identified concerns or governance failures, including local youth receiving only temporary, low-paid construction jobs with little oversight, and community apprehension over job losses and exclusion from decision-making in early-stage coal transition plans such as Komati. One study reported an explicitly negative response, highlighting frustration over the absence of justice and gender equity in solar plant projects. Thirteen studies made no reference to community perceptions at all, itself a signal of how rarely affected voices enter the empirical record.

The review concludes with a set of policy recommendations aimed at closing the gap between the JETP’s normative ambitions and its implementation on the ground. It calls for transparent community trusts with clearly defined accountability mechanisms, inclusive participatory platforms instituted at project inception with deliberate inclusion of women, youth and other vulnerable groups, and local oversight committees comprising civil society representatives, traditional leaders and municipal officials to monitor procurement, hiring and revenue allocation. Skills development should be aligned with local labor market needs through targeted reskilling for coal workers, gender-sensitive curricula, and decentralized training modules delivered by community colleges and NGOs to reduce travel and accommodation costs.

On the economic side, the authors recommend local procurement quotas in renewable energy contracts, incubation of small businesses led by women and youth through concessional finance and market linkages, and subsidized infrastructure with targeted tax incentives to support regionally anchored manufacturing such as solar PV assembly. Spatially targeted employment strategies, including conditional placement schemes linking urban renewable projects with employment quotas for displaced coal workers, would address the geographic mismatches that currently generate net losses in mining regions. Finally, the review urges a centralized JETP impact database aggregating disaggregated data on job types, wages, gender composition and upskilling outcomes, alongside longitudinal studies in representative coal-host and off-grid communities. Without such mechanisms, the evidence suggests, South Africa’s just energy transition risks reproducing the very patterns of marginalization it was designed to undo.

Subject of Research: South Africa's Just Energy Transition Partnership and its impacts on poverty and employment in marginalized communities

Article Title: Measurable impacts of South Africa's just energy transition partnership on poverty reduction and economic opportunities in marginalized communities

Article References: Musekiwa, T., & Murray, N. (2026). Measurable impacts of South Africa's just energy transition partnership on poverty reduction and economic opportunities in marginalized communities. Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy, 5, Article 1773893. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsuep.2026.1773893

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fsuep.2026.1773893

Keywords: Just Energy Transition Partnership, South Africa, coal phase-out, renewable energy jobs, poverty reduction, energy poverty, Mpumalanga, governance, skills training, spatial mismatch, social equity, systematic review