Every Friday morning, SAfm's AMLive's radio anchor Tim Modise speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday's At the Coalface transcript:

Modise: Martin, it's a pleasure to have you with us. The story about the space agency, this is likely to be launched in a matter of weeks?

Creamer: Yes. South Africa is going to get its South African national space agency. It will be called Sansa. That is going to be launched in a matter of weeks. It will probably be after the April 22 election, which is when a board will be assembled. Already they are going to use existing infrastructure. Hartebeeshoek has got the Satellite Application Centre and Houteq, in the Western Cape has also got the Institute for Satellite Applications. Those will obviously be brought into this new Sansa, which is the South African National Space Agency, but they're also looking to creating new bodies and they're calling them centres of excellence. They will be linked to universities and industry, possibly even sited at universities. But the big pillar of Sansa will be earth observation and earth observation satellites and what that can do for environmental protection and also security. We are obviously going to lift our capacity so that there will be more people who know all about satellites and science technology and we will have our own satellite, which we will have built here and we will be launching towards May 6-10, with the help of the Russians.

Modise: Now, on the energy front. It appears that South Africa is willing to pay top dollar to companies that are prepared to produce green energy.

Creamer: Yes, it's incredible, you know, the tariffs that have come through have encouraged everybody. Nersa, I think is doing it right, that's the National Energy Regulator of South Africa. They haven't been parsimonious, they haven't been mingy. Although their first estimates were quite low, they have now come in with generous tariffs that are stimulating activity already. We're going to hear the first hearing on wind energy and application is coming in for that because they're prepared to pay R1,25/kWh. I think the first offer was 65c/kWh, so it's virtually double that. This has stimulated activity.

We see that in Jefferey's Bay there's another possible wind energy farm coming up. Even on the land fill gas, that is, the trash gas when we throw away a whole lot of rubbish. But inside those rubbish dumps is gas that we can get out and use for energy. They want to pay 90c/kWh for that. We see in Richards Bay possibly the first one coming through already since this announcement. So a lot of appreciation for what the NGOs called for, something long, loud and legal. Well, they've certainly got something loud in terms of the tariffs that Eskom will pay for a feed in of this green electricity and minihydro at 94c/kWh. We know that there's a minihydro project at Bethlehem, in the Free State, and some more being considered, so I'm sure that will stimulate that and then the most they will pay for is what they call concentrating solar energy, for which they will offer R2,10/kWh.

Modise: And there is now a new Housing Development Agency being mooted, and apparently this will assist in achieving the government's goal of eradicating slums by 2014. How strong is the move?

Creamer: The move is strong. We've already got it in place. The Housing Development Agency has been put in place by Housing Minister [Lindiwe] Sisulu. There are high hopes for it, because what is needed with housing is to unlock access to land and this is what will be the target of this housing development agency. We've seen that the UN has said that every three out of our ten urban settlements is regarded as a slum. The government has this target to get rid of these slums and the feeling now is that this new development agency will energise that.

We already see it active in KwaZulu-Natal, where 75 000 house projects going up for R20-million, another 68 000 home activity in the Northern Cape and even in the inner city of Johannesburg, they are now going ahead with the one thousand home project close to Noord street taxi rank, and another 5 000 home project in Limpopo. But the big thing about this is that we need to look to affordable housing being an economic stimulus. We know that from after 2010, we will be looking for things to stimulate the economy. You need that counter-cyclical stimulus. There is nothing better than affordable housing, because you're killing two birds with one stone. You're dealing with the socioeconomic issue and you're stimulating the economy. And it's been proven that the demand on our construction materials is not as strong as it used to be. That was the big problem, the cost of construction materials was so high. But we're going to need some more demand pull for things like steel, cement, glass. That's what housing does. So this can be a nice stimulus package if we do it correctly for our economy going beyond 2010, into 2011 and even further.

Modise: That's Martin Creamer, publishing editor of the Engineering News and Mining Weekly. He will be back at the Coalface at the same time, next Friday.