South Africa's airports
are going smart. Here is
what is actually happening.

The Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) invested R825 million in technology during the 2025/26 financial year. That is not a budget line. That is a direction. For an organisation that manages nine airports including the three busiest in southern Africa, spending R825 million in a single year on digital transformation signals a strategic commitment that is worth understanding in detail.

ACSA announced plans to invest R21.7 billion over the next five years to upgrade major airports, including OR Tambo, Cape Town, and King Shaka. Key projects focus on terminal expansions, runway realignments, cargo facility upgrades, and improved passenger technology. The technology component of this is not an afterthought — it is the layer that determines whether the physical infrastructure actually functions at the level passengers expect.

Cape Town International Airport recorded a record-breaking 11.1 million two-way passengers in 2025. That number puts Cape Town in a different category from the airport most South Africans have in their mental model. It is processing more passengers than many European international airports. The infrastructure and technology need to match.

The technology roadmap — what is coming and when

Central to the strategy is the ACSA mobile application. As of January 2026, the app had recorded more than 156,882 downloads across Android, Apple's App Store, and Huawei's AppGallery. Passengers primarily use it to track flights, book parking, and access airport information.

150,000 active users for a network that processed over four million passengers in December alone is a modest adoption figure. ACSA's chief technology officer Vishalan Govender acknowledged this — pushing back on the suggestion it is disappointing by arguing an airport app is inherently episodic: you use it when you fly, not daily. That is a reasonable point. But it also means the app needs to be genuinely useful in the moments it is used, not just present.

ACSA is preparing a series of quarterly updates to the application during the 2026/27 financial year as part of a roadmap to add new smart airport capabilities. Here is what is coming by quarter:

The Cape Town upgrade — what R11.3 billion actually builds

ACSA will spend an estimated R11.3 billion to upgrade and expand Cape Town International Airport. The infrastructure programme forms part of ACSA's long-term capital investment strategy aimed at strengthening capacity, modernising ageing infrastructure, and supporting projected passenger growth.

The domestic arrivals facility is the most immediate priority. The domestic arrivals facility was not fully replaced during ACSA's T2010 airport remodelling programme that started in 2006 and has since reached capacity. The new terminal will provide additional baggage reclaim belts, expanded ablution facilities, improved passenger circulation, reduced walking distances, and new contact gates. Anyone who has spent time in Cape Town's domestic arrivals terminal understands why this is overdue.

Beyond the terminal, the planned infrastructure interventions include developments across landside facilities, terminal infrastructure, and airfield operations — intended to ensure the airport can accommodate forecasted volumes efficiently. The runway realignment project — one of the most significant elements — involves repositioning the runway to allow simultaneous independent operations and significantly increase capacity.

The technology that matters most — smart security

ACSA will also embark on major security upgrades where AI will be the underlying technology platform. Artificial intelligence is also used in sustainability management. Through its integrated Control Monitoring Centre, ACSA monitors the airport.

The smart security programme is the piece most passengers will notice first. Currently, ACSA uses CCTV monitoring with thresholds that alert supervisors to open additional security lanes when queues build up. The upgrade replaces human threshold monitoring with video analytics that automatically identify congestion at check-in counters, security processing points, baggage claim areas, and boarding gates — and flag it for immediate action before queues become a problem rather than after.

Facial recognition and automation will also be introduced at security checkpoints and boarding gates, alongside biometric-based passport control. These measures aim to reduce wait times and enhance security protocols for departing and arriving South African passengers. For frequent travellers, this is the change that will materially improve the airport experience — faster processing, fewer manual checks, and a security layer that is simultaneously more thorough and less time-consuming.

The adoption gap — and what it means

The technology ACSA is deploying is ambitious. The adoption of what already exists is modest. 156,000 app downloads for a network that processed over 50 million passengers in 2025 is a participation rate of under half a percent. Even accounting for the episodic nature of airport app usage, that gap represents an opportunity and a challenge.

The augmented reality wayfinding and AI chatbot will be valuable for the passengers who discover and use them. The smart security and facial recognition systems will benefit everyone regardless of whether they have the app — because they operate at the infrastructure level rather than requiring individual passenger action. That distinction matters: the best technology improvements at airports are the ones that work without passengers needing to do anything differently.

There is increasing involvement of the private sector in the management and financing of airports worldwide, in both developed and emerging markets. South Africa is engaging with this trend — the airport development plan explicitly notes the appetite for private sector involvement. If private capital accelerates the technology deployment timeline, the improvements passengers are waiting for could arrive faster than the ACSA-only roadmap suggests.