A keynote on trust at the Project & Investment Network Breakfast at Enlit Africa landed on an unusually practical point for the energy sector: without credibility, even the best projects struggle to attract capital, secure permits, or hold together through policy shifts.
Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Bruce Whitfield argued that trust is the invisible infrastructure beneath functioning economies, supply chains and institutions – and that its erosion is accelerating in an era shaped by information overload, geopolitical rupture and heightened uncertainty.
In a discussion that ranged from South Africa’s public institutions to global supply chains and critical minerals, Standard Bank Group’s Chief Economist and Head of Research, Goolam Ballim, contended that “commercial trust” is rapidly replacing efficiency as the organising principle of global trade and investment.
For Africa’s energy transition, that shift matters. As developers, lenders and governments seek bankable certainty in an increasingly fragmented world, the continent’s ability to present reliable, investable pathways could determine whether it captures a share of the new industrial build-out — or watches opportunity flow elsewhere.
Whitfield opened by challenging the room to notice how much daily life depends on trust – even when it is implicit or taken for granted.
People get on aircraft piloted by strangers; they drive expecting others to obey rules; they eat food they have not inspected; they assume systems will work as advertised.
Yet, he suggested, the same instinctive trust often disappears when decisions feel politicised, when institutions disappoint, or when repeated scandals weaken confidence.
He tested the room with a quick set of questions about who and what audiences tend to trust: justice systems, police, doctors, scientists, the energy industry, boards, banks — even one’s spouse.
The point was not to provoke cynicism, but to surface an uncomfortable reality: trust is unevenly distributed, and in many societies it is in decline.
Whitfield referenced global polling that consistently places nurses, firefighters and pharmacists among the most trusted professions, while politicians, clergy and parts of the media sit near the bottom.
But the bigger trend, he argued, is that trust has eroded across the board, even among traditionally trusted professions.
For the energy sector, where policy signals, regulatory decisions and long investment horizons intersect, this erosion has direct commercial consequences.
“In the green industry, where the rules seem to change from time to time… and goal posts get moved, trust begins to fray,” he said.
Whitfield’s central warning was about how the modern information environment shapes decision-making. The news cycle rewards fear, conflict and outrage; algorithms amplify certainty and tribalism; and public debate drifts from what is true to “my truth”.
He cited research examining long-run shifts in the tone of news coverage, suggesting that even as living standards have improved over decades, reporting has trended more negative – particularly since the rise of 24-hour news and social media. The outcome is a public primed to expect danger, to be suspicious, and to overestimate risk.
To illustrate how easily misinformation can feel plausible, Whitfield ran through a set of widely repeated “headline truths”, asking the audience to guess which one was actually correct.
He used the exercise to show how beliefs harden through repetition — and how people can become confident about claims that are, at best, contested.
The deeper trust issue, he argued, is that deception increasingly arrives not through outright lies, but through selective truth-telling — framing that omits crucial context.
Whitfield offered a personal anecdote about arriving at a London venue to deliver a keynote and seeing a large crowd outside.
He described the scene as proof of their anticipation to hear him — then revealed the missing detail: a fire alarm had forced everyone out. The crowd was not there for him. The story was “true”, but the omission changed its meaning.
For energy and infrastructure communication, the lesson is pointed: reputations can be damaged not only by incorrect statements, but by partial claims that later look manipulative. In an era of heightened scrutiny, credibility is fragile.
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Whitfield placed trust in the broader context of a world experiencing compounding shocks: geopolitical conflict, supply chain volatility, and a heightened “world uncertainty index”.
In such conditions, he argued, organisations tend to retreat: projects pause, hiring slows and capital becomes cautious.
Yet Whitfield also argued that the same period of global instability has produced dramatic innovation, with technology-driven companies scaling rapidly and outsized returns accruing to long-term investors willing to look past short-term noise.
His point was not to promote blind optimism. It was to underline a behavioural pattern that affects investment and leadership: “human nature [is] to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity”.
For the energy sector, this tension is live. Accelerating the build-out of grids, renewables, storage and new fuels requires long-term risk-taking — but in many markets the perception of instability pushes capital to the sidelines. Trust is the bridge between those two realities.
Whitfield noted that some of the world’s most trusted industries have earned trust precisely because they have faced trauma and responded with structural change.
He pointed to aviation safety reforms after historic disasters, particularly the shift to “cockpit resource management”, which formalised the expectation that crew members at every level must speak up if they see a risk — and that the captain must listen.
Similar principles, he argued, have migrated into surgical theatres and emergency response environments, improving outcomes and building public confidence.
The broader argument: trust is not restored through slogans, but through systems that reduce error, reward transparency and make it harder for power to silence dissent.
For energy regulators, utilities and developers, the analogy is instructive. When projects fail or scandals occur, the response determines whether trust continues to decay or can be rebuilt.
Transparency, clear accountability and institutional learning are not “reputation management”; they are operational necessities.
Ballim took Whitfield’s theme into the geopolitics shaping trade, investment and energy security. He argued that the commercial world is “pursuing vigorously” the idea of commercial trust as supply chains shift from “just in time” efficiency to “just in case” resilience.
He linked that shift to a tangible change in the global order: the fraying of transatlantic ties, uncertainty in US policy posture, and a general move from shared norms to what Canada’s Mark Carney has described as a “rupture” rather than a transition.
In Ballim’s framing, middle powers and “middle nations” are increasingly compelled to form new alliances and refashion rules that support stability.
He suggested that what has long been referred to as emerging markets, the global south, and groupings such as BRICS and BRICS Plus are now becoming more central – and that developed markets are increasingly looking to partner with them as the reliability of old arrangements weakens.
That matters for energy investment because the financing, technology transfer and manufacturing capacity underpinning the transition will follow trust. The winners will not simply be the lowest-cost producers, but the most dependable partners.
Ballim argued that Africa has seldom been more central to an emerging opportunity set. He referenced Standard Bank’s “geographical arc of prosperity” thesis — a growing web of economic linkages between Africa, the Middle East and the Far East that is shaping new trade, investment and capital flows.
He noted that capital flows from the Middle East into Africa have grown sharply, and that trade between the Middle East and Africa now surpasses US-Africa trade.
In his view, the Middle East’s liquidity and investment appetite — particularly in energy, logistics, hospitality, agriculture and real estate — are becoming structurally important for the continent.
Ballim also maintained that, despite near-term disruption from conflict-driven commodity price swings, Africa entered 2026 “in its best form in decades” in macro terms.
Over a longer horizon, he projected sustained growth rates in the four to five percent range across the continent, with East Africa higher, and Southern Africa lagging but holding “optionality value” due to critical minerals, energy transition pathways and the appeal of more neutral manufacturing platforms amid geopolitical fragmentation.
His most pointed line for the room: “for Africa, this decade is ours to lose.” It is a call for execution — for governments, regulators, financiers and industry players to translate potential into bankable pipelines and investable frameworks.
Ballim ended by positioning banks, and by extension other institutions with influence, as needing to evolve. In a world shaped by volatility and trust deficits, he said, it is not enough to intermediate between depositors and borrowers.
Institutions should become enablers: leaning into regulatory dialogue, sharing risk beyond traditional lending, and supporting the conditions in which long-term capital can commit.
For the energy sector, that speaks to the practical architecture of the transition: blended finance, de-risking instruments, credible offtake structures, predictable grid access regimes, and permitting systems that are transparent and time-bound. All are, in effect, trust mechanisms.
Whitfield’s keynote and Ballim’s geopolitical lens converged on the same conclusion: trust is no longer a soft value. It is becoming the hardest currency in a world seeking reliability over rhetoric.
And for Africa’s energy investment landscape, the work of building and maintaining that currency may define what gets built — and what does not.
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