The wind industry in South Africa will generate up to 35,700 new jobs by 2030, paving the way for new careers in Wind
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Sarens Academy (Cape Town, South Africa) emerges as a beacon of hope and opportunity. Its aim is to bridge the gap between education and industry demands, creating a pathway for students to acquire high-quality global accredited training.
As a support development response to this demand of specialized workforce, Sarens operates a technical training center in South Africa specializing in onshore wind energy, renewable energy construction, and heavy lifting operations, with a strong focus on safety and technical excellence aligned with Global Wind Organization (GWO) standards.
South Africa’s construction sector showed a net increase of 55,000 jobs in the second quarter of this year compared to 2024, according to figures from the Quarterly Labor Force Survey from StatsSA.
As the workforce scales up to deliver on renewable energy targets, the demand for skilled wind technicians is growing faster than ever. Global Wind Organization (GWO) forecasts the wind sector (globally) will need a workforce of 532,000 technicians by 2028—40% of whom will be new recruits. Sarens Academy focuses on GWO (Global Wind Organization) and scarce-skills training, among other courses related to the renewable energy sector and beyond.
The wind industry in South Africa will generate between 22,300 and 35,700 new jobs by 2030 according to the Just Energy Transition Skilling for Employment Programme (JET SEP). This forecast for growth in employment in the sector comes at a time when the latest data from the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2025, developed by the South African government’s Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE), points to an onshore wind generation capacity in the country of 34,000 MW by 2039. Such enormous potential highlights the urgency for the country to develop a technically skilled workforce.
In this context, Sarens, world leader in heavy lifting, engineered transport and crane rental services, operates a technical training center in South Africa specializing in training that supports onshore wind energy, renewable energy construction, and heavy lifting operations, with a strong focus on safety and technical excellence aligned with Global Wind Organization (GWO) standards.
The wind energy sector is not the only one driving job creation in South Africa, as construction showed a net increase of 55,000 jobs in the second quarter of this year compared to 2024, according to figures from the Quarterly Labor Force Survey from StatsSA. This growth of 4.6% represents a clear opportunity in the sector, which requires highly qualified personnel to undertake all kinds of projects.
With this in mind, Sarens Academy is not limited to wind energy, but also works in other sectors that require safety training, such as construction, offering all mandatory health and safety training for the construction, onshore, offshore, oil and gas, transport, and crane sectors.
In fact, a unique and differentiating feature of the Sarens Academy, in addition to being part of the Sarens group, with international experience in thousands of lifting and heavy transport engineering projects, is its multidisciplinary nature, covering crane operation, lifting, logistics, and wind energy, within an accredited framework. In turn, the Sarens Academy provides access to accredited and internationally recognized technical training, which remains limited in Africa. Many countries still lack local facilities that comply with GWO ,ISO standards or even local recognized accredited skills development programmes, meaning that workers often have to travel abroad to obtain certification. Sarens Academy fills this gap by offering world-class training locally, reducing costs and enabling faster workforce readiness for African projects.
Although Sarens Academy’s main market is South Africa, with headquarters in Cape Town, many of its students come to GWO-accredited facilities in South Africa to receive internationally recognized training before returning to their home countries to support local wind energy and heavy lifting projects.
This model ensures regional capacity building and cross-border knowledge transfer. While the latest Quarterly Labor Force Survey (QLFS) for the second quarter of 2025 reveals that disparities between men and women in the South African labor market continue to exist, the differences are narrowing. There remains work to be done to reduce the differences in specific sectors that have always been dominated by men, such as mining and transportation. In this context, Sarens Academy thrives on inclusive development, encouraging and actively promoting inclusion of women and unemployed youth.
Sarens has extensive experience in lifting and heavy transport in southeastern Africa. In Zambia, they have been involved in the Zambia Fertilizer Project since November 2024, contributing their expertise in the global and local market in the region and their machinery to carry out critical lifting and transport operations, using a Terex Demag CC2800-1 crane. In Namibia, they contributed to the construction of the InnoVent Diaz wind farm by installing the wind turbine generators (WTG), each weighing 125 tons. These and other projects have earned Sarens the Excellence in Engineering Award at the2025 Lifting Africa Awards.
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