ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS: ICASA ISSUED WITH B-BBEE-RELATED POLICY DIRECTIVE

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS: ICASA ISSUED WITH B-BBEE-RELATED POLICY DIRECTIVE

• 12 December 2025
• Communications & Digital Technologies
• SA Legal Academy

Please note: On 15 December 2025 ICASA issued a backdated media statement confirming that ‘in line with its mandate, the authority will review and consider the policy direction through its established regulatory processes’. 2) On 15 December 2025, National Assembly Communications & Digital Technologies Committee chair Khusela Diko issued a media statement among other things questioning the Minister’s authority to ‘reverse the gains of democracy through this unilateral action, unsupported by ... ICASA or the department he leads’. According to the statement, the directive flies in the face of a resolution on the then draft directive taken by the committee on 27th May 2025. Diko has also questioned whether the directive received Cabinet approval.

Communications & Digital Technologies Minister Solly Malatsi has issued a policy directive requiring the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to ‘urgently consider’ the alignment of its March 2021 regulations on the limitations of control and equity ownership by historically disadvantaged groups with the ICT sector’s amended broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) code of good practice. Amended in April 2022, the regulations are apparently perceived to have ‘deliberately moved away from … (certain of the approved code’s) recognised statements’.

Having been released in draft form in May 2025 for public comment, the final policy directive seeks to address this by requiring ICASA to take the steps necessary to:

• ensure parity among licensees
• promote the roll out of broadband to bridge the digital divide, and
• ensure the preservation of South Africa’s digital sovereignty by encouraging adherence to domestic data protection and data security policies.

This is noting:

• government’s national economic inclusion policy goals
• the scope of ICASA’s ‘own powers and duties under the 2005 Electronic Communications Act and 2000 ICASA Act in giving effect to these policy goals’
• the importance of promoting ‘numerous policy goals for the sector in relation to the availability, accessibility and affordability of communications services’, and
• ‘the contribution to investment and competition that can be made by international entities’.

Please click the links below for more information:

• final policy directive
• ICT B-BBEE code of good practice, as amended
• May 2025 draft policy directive

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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