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Martin Zhuwakinyu

Martin Zhuwakinyu is Senior Deputy Editor for Engineering News and Mining Weekly. Dr Zhuwakinyu holds a PhD in communication (media studies) from the University of South Africa.

Cry, my beloved ‘profession’
2nd August 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

My association with journalism dates to the mid-1980s, when I enrolled for a national diploma course in mass communication. I have been a voracious reader of several major African newspapers ever... 


Scourge of hunger rising in Africa
26th July 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Last week I wrote about an imminent dilemma that Africa faces: its farmers are old, aged 60 on average, and convincing their offspring to take over when they call it a day – which should be in the... 


Making farming cool for youngsters
19th July 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

I recently read of a Ghanaian university graduate who was reluctant to tell anyone – including his mother – what he intended to do for a living. The youngster’s heart is in farming but, on a... 


Africa’s new export
12th July 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

My news staple includes newspapers from all over Africa. This means I am fairly au fait with trends on the continent. And one of the latest trends is the emergence of a new type of export, which,... 


Maritime scrimmages
5th July 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Far from the madding crowd characterised by in-country political tensions and economic vicissitudes in much of Africa, litigation that in most cases escapes the international media glare is playing... 


Namib wild horses face extinction
28th June 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

It’s a distressing time for conservationists: the sun appears to be about to set on Namibia’s famed wild horses. The population of the desert-dwelling animals has been dwindling at an alarming rate... 


What are Bafana’s chances at Afcon?
21st June 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Apologies to readers of this column who cannot tell FIFA from UEFA or CAF: this week I focus on football, which the Brazilian legend known to much of the world simply as Pele famously described as... 


The latest on Swahili ‘project’
14th June 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Where are the hot-heads at the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) and the other teacher unions? We need them to stop Angie Motshekga in her tracks. She quietly slipped out of the... 


Prime Minister Boris Johnson? Heaven forbid!
7th June 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

The story is told of a correspondent for British news agency Reuters who, in 1961, was sent to verify whether then United Nations (UN) secretary-general Dag Hammarkjold had landed at Ndola Airport,... 


Urgent need for tech advance
31st May 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

I made a subtle confession in last week’s column: that I rate the dear departed Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first post-independence leader, as one of the greatest Africans of all time. In my estimation,... 


Remembering Kwame Nkrumah
24th May 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Barring unforeseen glitches, this edition of Engineering News will hit the newsstands on May 24, a day before the fifty-sixth anniversary of the day when then Ethiopian leader Emperor Haile... 


New broom that’s sweeping clean
17th May 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

It always comes as a breath of fresh air when an African leader receives a pat on the back for his or her accomplishments. This is because political leaders who distinguish themselves are something... 


Medicine delivery drones take to the skies in Ghana
10th May 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

A post on Ghanaian Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia’s Twitter feed towards the end of last month caught my eye. It was a twenty-worder: “Not a single Ghanaian, irrespective of his or her remoteness,... 


Just when will coups end?
3rd May 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Another dictator has bitten the dust. As I write, Sudanese strongman Omar Hassan al-Bashir is languishing in the notorious Kobar prison, on the outskirts of Khartoum, where thousands of political... 


Man-made meat for supper tonight?
26th April 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Huge sums have been pumped into research and development in recent decades, and the upshot is that science and technology are on fast forward. Over the past century, thousands of ideas across many... 


Needed: A curriculum that means business
19th April 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Unemployment is a major socioeconomic problem in South Africa and the rest of the continent, and the youth bear its brunt. The massive investments in education by governments have not made a... 


A region in mourning
12th April 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Southern Africa is in mourning. More than 1 000 people have perished since the tropical cyclone, Idai, lashed parts of Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe last month. The toll will likely increase, as... 


Kudos for Kenyan science teacher
5th April 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

I have in the past used this column to lay into a top KwaZulu-Natal Education Department official for ranting about the rather lacklustre performance of the province’s matriculants, despite the... 


Tardiness Must Fall
29th March 2019

It has been 14 years since my employers persuaded me to become a desk-bound pen-pusher. This spelt an end to my career as a reporter, which I had thoroughly enjoyed, save for the all-too-frequent... 


Academy for Rwanda’s ‘born to code’ youngsters
22nd March 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Education accounts for the lion’s share of the Budgets of many countries. This huge investment, it is reasoned, is a prerequisite for future prosperity. But, as survey after survey has... 


Youth jobs: HP pledges big
15th March 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Like the rest of the world’s developing regions, Africa is faced with a youth bulge. Coined in the mid-1990s by German demographer Gunnar Heinsohn, the term refers to the phenomenon whereby success... 


Zimbabwe’s dagga strides
8th March 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

That the politics of the governing party in Zimbabwe are repellent is common knowledge. Zanu-PF has perfected the art of rigging elections over well-nigh four decades and has not hesitated to... 


Customs and excise proposals in the Budget
8th March 2019 By: Riaan de Lange

It is just before 14:00 on the afternoon of February 20 as I wait for the National Budget Review 2019 to be published in its electronic form. While doing so, I am reminded of a time, not so long... 


Malawi: a shining democracy
1st March 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

It’s election season in Africa. At the time of writing, Nigerians and their fellow West Africans in Senegal were due to go to the polls in a few days, while the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)... 


Silver lining
22nd February 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

That I am an Afro-optimist in no secret. This simply means that, unlike doomsayers like Donald Trump, who once likened our countries to latrines, I strongly believe in the Africa Rising narrative.... 


The rot continues
15th February 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Just more than a year ago, African heads of State and government converged on the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to launch 2018 as the continent’s Anticorruption Year. No stone was going to be... 


Matric pass rate improves, but …
8th February 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Our 2018 matriculants – those who wrote the National Senior Certificate (NSC) exams and those who attended schools affiliated with the Independent Examination Board (IEB) alike – deserve a huge pat... 


SA passport among Africa’s ‘strongest’
1st February 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

A couple of weeks back, I mentioned in this couple that the African Union will this month be providing details of its plans to launch a pan-African passport as part of its efforts to improve the... 


Growth forecast for sub-Sahara
25th January 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

In last week’s instalment of this column, I took issue with African institutions’ not-so-golden silence while rogue governments on the continent ride rough-shod over their citizens. One of the... 


Movement, at last, on pan-African passport
18th January 2019 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

African institutions have often been accused of being long on talk and short on action. A case in point is the deafening rhetoric about good governance by the likes of the Southern African... 


The year that was
14th December 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Time flies indeed. It has already been a year since my editor invited me to contribute a weekly column in Engineering News, an opportunity that I grabbed with both hands. During the past 50-odd... 


M-Pesa goes global
7th December 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

First things first – M-Pesa stands for mobile pesa, with pesa Swahili for money (I have been busy building up my Swahili vocabulary ever since Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced a... 


Bridging the gap – literally
30th November 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Mozambique’s founding President, the late Samora Moises Machel, is famous for having coined and popularised the slogan Aluta Continua! (Portuguese for ‘the struggle continues’). He used it to rally... 


Graduating into unemployment
23rd November 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

At the end of this month – or at least by the middle of December – scores of young men and women will be completing their undergraduate studies at South Africa’s 26 public universities and at the... 


Latter-day Cape to Cairo vision
16th November 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Nineteenth-century British imperialist and entrepreneur Cecil John Rhodes had grand plans to construct a railway line from Cape Town, on the southern tip of the continent, to Cairo, in North... 


Donald Trump’s praise-singers?
9th November 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

It’s mind-boggling. Donald Trump is a darling of more than half of Nigerians, the very people he derided as hut-dwellers not so long ago. This, of course, is if a new study conducted by the Pew... 


Disappearing forests
2nd November 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

In rather melodramatic fashion, one journalist, writing in June this year, portrayed the rate at which the world is losing its forests thus: “Image looking down on huge swathe of lush forest – but... 


Debt-trap diplomacy?
26th October 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

I have made no bones about my cynicism about Chinese generosity towards African countries, which has taken the form of top-dollar freebies, government and State-owned company loans and investment... 


Positives of migration
19th October 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Television footage of desperate Africans drowning in the Mediterranean Sea en route to Spain and other European destinations that hold out the promise of a better life has become all too frequent.... 


Joblessness scourge
12th October 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

South Africa’s inaugural Jobs Summit was convened in Johannesburg last week to brainstorm on possible solutions to the country’s stubborn unemployment scourge. Statistics South Africa (Stats SA)... 


SA to offer Swahili as a school subject
5th October 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Readers of this column who are not news junkies like yours truly may have missed the announcement, made last month: South African schools, both public and private, will be offering Swahili as an... 


Flicker of hope in Zimbabwe?
28th September 2018 By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

The main opposition party across the Limpopo insists that “we wuz robbed” in the July 30 elections that returned Zanu-PF to power and gave Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been caretaker President since... 


Lingering misgivings
21st September 2018

I start with a mea culpa this week. In the September 7 edition, I waxed lyrical about the exploits of Sophia, the humanoid robot, at the SAPNow conference, which had been held in Johannesburg the... 


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