South African government to use “nanotechnology” to fix millions of potholes

The South African Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga has stated that the government is piloting the use of “nanotechnology” in an effort to address the country’s crumbling road infrastructure.

The initiative is intended to combat road problems in rural areas, using the “groundbreaking” technology to reinforce road surfaces and significantly reduce water seepage, the minister announced yesterday while on a trip to North West to discuss the province’s infrastructure.

In addition, the province’s crumbling roads will play host to a variety of initiatives that have the potential to be applied countrywide should they be successful.

These include:

• The Valazonke Pothole Initiative, allowing motorists to report hazards with a smartphone app
• Transferring strategic roads to the purview of the national roads agency (Sanral)
• Involving the private sector to assist in maintenance and repairs
• Mobilizing “yellow plant” machinery for the necessary repairs
• Training a new fleet of operators to address unemployment and man repair efforts

“Collaborative efforts with the national government and relevant stakeholders are vital in optimising spending and achieving efficient road networks for the benefit of all citizens,” said Chikunga.

Science fiction to an immediate solution

While the use of the term “nanotechnology” typically conjures up images of micro-robots and other tropes in science fiction, the term has a real-world application in the innovative use of chemical reactions and processes to reinforce road surfaces, wrote BusinessTech.

The “nanotechnology modifiers,” as they are called, can be used to improve the strength and environmental resistance of the materials used to build and treat roads, thereby vastly improving their longevity, according to research done at the University of Pretoria.

“The implementation of the recommended restoration programmes can go a long way towards road asset preservation while simultaneously addressing the urgent need for rapid employment generation,” the researchers said.

This is possible because the special materials, known as nano-silanes, nano-polymers, and new-age nano modified emulsions (NME), are hydrophobic, and have actually been in use for decades protecting buildings from extreme weather conditions.

A poor state of affairs

Towards the end of 2022, South Africa was estimated to have 25 million potholes spread out across its vast road network – a number which has gone up 67% from what it was five years ago.

The poor road infrastructure has had an incalculable toll on the country’s productivity, threatening supply chains as vital as food supply, but it also has a known cost in the form of the repair bill needed to address it.

At a repair cost of between R700 and R1,500 for each pothole, South Africans are looking at a collective tab of up to R37.5 billion to address the issue, which continues to grow larger with each passing day.

Worse still is the fact that the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) warned that this may be a conservative estimate, and that costs could grow as high as R675 billion.

In areas where the authorities’ reaction to potholes has been less than ideal, fed-up citizens have been taking matters into their own hands with rudimentary fixes, and private companies like Discovery Insure have started their own operations to address reported hazards.