This is edited from a BusinessTech report published on 24 November 2025.
The Plant Improvement Act, like the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act, has been sitting in the legislative waiting bay, both having been sign off in principle by the President. President Ramaphosa originally signed the Act into law in March 2019, alongside the 2018 Plant Breeders’ Rights Act. However, the Act has not put into full effect until now.
On 24 November 2025 a presidential proclamation was finally published in the Government Gazette for the new laws to kick in on 1 December 2025, which will repeal the previous 1976 Act in its entirety.
The new laws are centred around a national listing of plant varieties and maintaining quality standards for them. This also includes the registration of businesses relating to these varieties and the cultivation and sale of them.
The new laws are all part of the process of reforming and modernising South Africa’s legal framework for plant breeders’ rights, aligning it with international standards and contemporary challenges in agriculture.
Together, the laws form the basis for a more modern and diverse farming sector.
Notably, the laws enable a 2022 declaration wherein hemp varieties were included as protectable varieties, delivering a significant boost to the local production of low THC cannabis plants.
Taken with the 2022 declaration on hemp, legal experts noted that the laws show a clear intention on the part of the government to enable large-scale industrial or agricultural production of hemp for the fibre, seed, oil and hemp flower markets.
South Africa has been slowly progressing on the hemp and cannabis front, working to decriminalise the private use of the plant, while also boosting and enabling local production.
The implementation of the long-touted plans to build a multi-billion rand hemp and cannabis industry has hit various bureaucratic and legislative snags, however.
Broadly, and beyond how they apply to cannabis, the laws facilitate:
- The registration of certain types of business relating to plants and propagating material intended for cultivation and sale, and the registration of premises on or from which that business is conducted;
- Quality standards for plants and propagating material intended for cultivation and sale and conditions of sale of plants and propagating material;
- A system for national listing of plant varieties;
- The evaluation of plant varieties in order to ensure value if there is doubt in respect of the value for cultivation and use of plant varieties intended for cultivation and sale;
- Import and export control of plants and propagating material; and
- A system for different types of schemes for plants and propagating material, and to provide for matters connected therewith.
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