Aweh, Dear Ruminants and Groupies,
How many lanyards have you received in the past year? Can you judge your importance by how many you have? Do you throw them away?
South Africa has a genuinely consequential energy-investment ecosystem because the country is simultaneously trying to rebuild the grid, procure huge quantities of new generation, create an electricity market, decarbonise heavy industry, preserve coal-region livelihoods, develop green hydrogen, expand transmission and attract foreign capital. So, there are real reasons for government, banks, developers, DFIs, lawyers, engineers and equipment suppliers to keep meeting.
Unfortunately, this has also spawned a South African energy lanyard circuit, and once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
It has produced a thriving migratory species: Homo lanyardus energeticus, identifiable by a navy blazer, a lanyard, a conference goody bag, a biodegradable conference-branded water bottle, and the ability to say “decarbonisation”, “bankability”, “ecosystem”, “unlocking capital” and “just transition” in one sentence without committing to an actual commissioning date.
I confess to throwing most of my lanyards away, but my kitchen cupboard is now overflowing with branded water bottles.
The Cape Town Premier League
Cape Town sits high on the global coolness index for conferences: mountains, ocean, wine farms, expensive coffee, discreetly overdesigned hotels, and enough European consultants in linen shirts to make any energy-transition conference feel internationally consequential.
This is why the premium lanyard events gravitate there. It’s the poor man’s version of Davos.
Johannesburg gets the third-tier summits, workshops and imbizos, partly because it remains the country’s commercial engine and partly because, in conference planning, reliable electricity and the prospect of both water and a hot shower still count as meaningful destination amenities.
On the Cape Town circuit you repeatedly encounter the same travelling circus: officials from government departments and the Presidency/JET machinery; Eskom veterans and the alphabet soup of new electricity-market institutions; bankers assuring everyone that billions are available once someone else takes the risk; renewable developers insisting their projects are shovel-ready; law firms billing by the acronym; consultants converting obvious problems into 84-slide decks; engineers quietly wondering whether anyone has ordered the transformers; EU officials and assorted European governments announcing another partnership facility; World Bank/IFC/AfDB types discussing blended finance with the solemnity of medieval theologians; climate funds dispensing subsidies; NGOs and universities producing frameworks for frameworks; and, increasingly, Chinese equipment manufacturers standing at the back with an actual product catalogue and a price.
The Lanyard Pecking Order
And then, of course, there is the pecking order.
Not all lanyards are created equal.
At the upper end sits African Energy Week, which appears determined to settle the question of conference status through price discovery. The 2026 All Access pass costs $4,000 excluding VAT.
For this, you receive the conference, exhibition, networking events, Energy Club access, the JET Concert, site visits, tourist excursions and the Golf Day. The gala dinner is extra.
This is the level at which one might plausibly find oneself playing nine holes with a minister, a development banker and a man whose company has just secured a subsidy from the EU.
At this altitude, the humble conference lanyard has completed its metamorphosis into jewellery.
The Ultimate Status Symbol
But even $4,000 cannot purchase the most intoxicating commodity in the lanyard economy: invitation-only.
For that, we turn to the Africa Green Hydrogen Summit.
The 2026 gathering returns to Cape Town on 15–16 September and is explicitly invitation-only: prospective members of the hydrogen elite are instructed to watch their email for the official invitation and registration details.
This is conference design at a much higher level.
Charging thousands of dollars merely establishes that you have an expense account or access to taxpayers’ money. Refusing to let people buy their way in establishes that somebody, somewhere, has decided you matter.
I know this because last year I was invited.
This year, so far, I have been snubbed.
The Hydrogen Snub
The disappointment is difficult to convey.
One year you are apparently a valued member of Africa’s emerging green-hydrogen ecosystem, poised to help unlock a new era of sustainable industrialisation. The next, you are checking the spam folder and wondering whether your contribution to the hydrogen economy has been quietly reassessed.
Perhaps somewhere in the Presidency’s hydrogen apparatus there is now a spreadsheet with my name in a troubling shade of amber.
Perhaps this is simply what approaching retirement looks like: the slow realisation that I may already have reached Peak Lanyard.
I have been quietly transitioned from thought leader to Person We Probably Shouldn’t Invite This Year.
Relegation
Still, all may not be lost.
If the Cape Town Premier League has decided that my lanyard years are behind me, there may yet be a place in the second division in Johannesburg.
The fixtures are less glamorous: a municipal-energy imbizo in Germiston, a stakeholder workshop in Alberton, perhaps a half-day seminar at a Sandton hotel where the Minister is “unfortunately no longer able to attend” but has sent the Deputy Chief Director in his place.
There will be no golf, no Atlantic sunset and considerably less chance of discussing green ammonia over an artisanal canapé.
But there will be parking, functioning Wi-Fi and a backup generator.
The badge may be printed on thinner cardboard, and the networking drinks may conclude firmly at six, but a lanyard is still a lanyard.
Perhaps I am not retiring after all.
Perhaps I am merely being relegated. I have enough branded water bottles to survive several years of professional irrelevance, and somewhere in Roodepoort there is surely a half-day stakeholder workshop with my name on it. If that is not a just transition, I don’t know what is.
Until next time.
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 