What the SONA Reveals About the Future of Agriculture and Innovation in South Africa

Each year, around February, the State of the Nation Address (SONA) offers a moment for the President to reflect on where the country stands and to outline its direction for the year ahead. This year, I listened with particular interest to how innovation and agriculture would be framed within that national story. The good news is that agriculture featured prominently in the speech, signalling its strategic importance to South Africa’s future. However, as the sector moves deeper into a future shaped by digital technologies, climate pressures, and evolving innovation dynamics, the address also opened space for a broader conversation about what comes next.

President Ramaphosa’s recent SONA offered a clear declaration that agriculture remains central to South Africa’s development agenda. The sector was positioned as a driver of growth, employment, and rural opportunity, supported by practical commitments around financing, extension services, and responses to biosecurity risks. At a time when policy attention is spread across many urgent demands, giving agriculture this level of visibility carries real significance. It highlights the sector’s role at the intersection of economic performance, social stability, and long-term resilience.

At the same time, national speeches often reveal their deeper significance not only through what they emphasise, but also through the themes that remain in the background. Reflecting on the agricultural segment of the address, a few emerging dimensions of innovation stand out as areas likely to shape future policy conversations, even if they were not explicitly foregrounded this time.

One of these is the growing role of digital and data-driven agriculture. Across the world, farming systems are increasingly shaped by sensors, digital platforms, precision technologies, and data analytics that influence everything from input use to market access. South Africa’s agricultural sector is already experiencing elements of this transformation. Making these shifts more visible within the national narrative could help signal the importance of building digital capabilities alongside traditional agricultural support systems, particularly as competitiveness becomes more closely tied to access to information and technology.

A second area relates to climate-smart innovation as a systemic priority. Changing weather patterns, water stress, and environmental uncertainty continue to shape how farmers make decisions and invest in new practices. While resilience appeared as an underlying theme, future policy dialogue may benefit from articulating climate-related innovation more explicitly as a core driver of agricultural transformation. Framing adaptation and sustainability as innovation opportunities can help align technological development, investment strategies, and environmental stewardship within a shared vision.

Perhaps most importantly, there is an opportunity to bring measurement more explicitly into the conversation. President Ramaphosa’s emphasis on implementation and delivery naturally raises the question of how progress will be tracked and understood. As agricultural systems evolve, measuring innovation becomes essential for understanding what works, for whom, and under what conditions. Indicators that capture technology uptake, capability development, and innovation outcomes across different types of farming enterprises can strengthen the link between policy intent and learning.

Recognising agriculture as a strategic sector is an important beginning; expanding how we talk about innovation within it may define the next stage of policy maturity.

This is an area where institutions like HSRC’s CeSTII have focused their efforts for more than two decades, and where the flagship Agricultural Business Innovation Survey (AgriBIS), which I have had the privilege of leading since its inception, has sought to build a clearer picture of how agricultural businesses innovate in practice. Measurement in this sense helps build feedback loops that strengthen learning and improve decision-making over time.

None of these reflections diminish the significance of agriculture’s place in the SONA. Rather, they suggest that policy conversations evolve in stages. Recognising agriculture as a strategic sector is an essential foundation. The next step involves expanding how innovation within agriculture is discussed, integrating digital transformation, climate adaptation, and evidence-based measurement into the broader narrative. As the sector continues to navigate complex economic and environmental pressures, these dimensions may increasingly define what successful agricultural development looks like in practice.