Last year, South African growers packed a record 203.7 million cartons of citrus, making South Africa the world’s largest citrus exporter. That achievement is usually credited to new orchards, upgraded infrastructure and years of work opening new markets. All of that is true. But it leaves out the factor that made the rest usable: the people trained to grow the fruit, meet the specifications, and run the packhouses, labs, inspections, and even parts of the logistics behind it.
By Jacomien de Klerk, General Manager of the Citrus Academy
The Citrus Academy Bursary Fund, established twenty years ago by the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa (CGA), exists to build that pipeline. In two decades, the Fund has awarded 1 093 bursaries totalling over R35 million. The goal was never simply to help a young person get a qualification, but rather to help them get one that leads into a career the industry actually needs filled.
That intent shows in how bursaries are allocated. Anyone can apply through the online Citrus Student Community portal. Applications are rated on field of study, academic performance, institution, financial need and existing involvement in citrus, with awards spread deliberately across producing regions and the academic disciplines the industry is in need of: plant pathology, agricultural economics, engineering, food science, and more.
A degree studied only in a lecture hall often stays theoretical. Since the Fund’s inception, it has created 617 experiential learning opportunities: sending students to local and international congresses, arranging vacation work, and placing graduates in AgriSETA-funded internships. Of everyone who came through an Academy programme last year, 89% were from previously disadvantaged groups, and 47% were women. These are figures that matter because the industry’s growth targets depend on drawing skills from the whole population, not a narrow slice of it.
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The Academy doesn’t set training priorities once and leave them fixed. We track shifts in the industry through grower and packhouse consultation, CGA’s own research and technical committees, and regular engagement with universities and agricultural colleges, and we adjust not only the bursary fund’s academic bands, but our short courses and work-readiness programmes accordingly. This is how we keep South Africa’s largest agricultural export industry skilled, relevant and competitive: not by training people for the industry as it was, but for the industry it is becoming.
The results show up in where graduates end up working. 40% are employed directly in the citrus industry. A further 43% work in the wider related agricultural value chain, in academia, or in government. This means eight in ten graduates stay in or around the sector that trained them.
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One remarkable story illustrates what the model can do when it works. One of the Fund’s first doctoral recipients could not initially afford university tuition. He travelled to the University of Zululand with a friend who had been accepted, slept on the floor of his friend’s residence room, and sat in on lectures without being enrolled. He wrote the semester exam anyway and asked the lecturer to mark it, simply to prove to himself that he had learned something. The lecturer did, and his result helped secure him a scholarship and formal credit for the work he had already done. From his second year, the Bursary Fund supported him through a master’s degree, a PhD supervised by another Academy graduate, and a lectureship and research post at Stellenbosch University. He now works in the Department of Agriculture.
The industry that trained him has grown considerably since he first sat in on those lectures. In 2005, South Africa exported 72 million cartons of citrus. The CGA’s Vision 260 has identified the potential of exporting 260 million cartons by 2032. Reaching that will require growers, technical staff and researchers who don’t yet exist in the numbers the industry needs, which is why skills investment has to keep pace with orchard investment, not follow behind it.
Also read: Vision 260 Strategy: Citrus exports deliver on growth promise
If all stakeholders work together, Vision 260 can add over 100 000 jobs to the industry, which is one reason the skills pipeline matters beyond the sector itself. South Africa’s official unemployment rate stood at 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026, with 8.5 million people out of work. An industry that is growing and needs trained people is one of the more direct levers the country has against that number, provided the training keeps up with the growth.
The applications for the 2027 Citrus Academy Bursary Fund recently closed, and the volume and quality of applications we’ve received this year has been genuinely encouraging. Every application on the Citrus Student Community portal represents a young person choosing to bet their future on this industry. Reviewing them is where the next decade of Vision 260 starts to take shape, one qualification at a time.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of African Farming.
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