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        <title>Engineering News | Opinion</title>
        <description><![CDATA[Regular columnists and guest writers offer their commentary and opinions as well as analysis of current events in the energy, transport and economy sector to name but a few.]]></description>
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            <title>Big and small pictures</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/big-and-small-pictures-2026-05-29</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Much has been written in recent weeks about the geopolitical factors now driving the energy transition. Particular attention has been given to how the attack on Iran by the US and Israel, which precipitated yet another energy crisis when the Strait of Hormuz was inevitably choked, is amplifying the benefits of the ongoing shift to renewables-led electrification.]]></description>
            <author>Terence Creamer</author>
            <category>REAL ECONOMY: ENERGY TRANSITION</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
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            <title>How corruption is powering Nigeria’s darkness</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/how-corruption-is-powering-nigerias-darkness-2026-05-29</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Weeks before disappearing from public view, Saleh Mamman announced his intention to run for governor of the Nigerian state of Taraba in 2027. Earlier this month, the former federal Power Minister was sentenced in absentia to 75 years in prison for laundering billions of naira – equivalent to about R450-million – meant for electricity infrastructure. In many countries, such a sentence would signal a decisive anti-corruption breakthrough, but in Nigeria it raises the more troubling question of why convictions of powerful political figures are so extraordinary that they feel historic.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Zhuwakinyu</author>
            <category>AFRICA BEAT</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721636</a_id>
        <updated>1779779169</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Nigeria’s reforms come at a price</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/nigerias-reforms-come-at-a-price-2026-05-29</link>
            <description><![CDATA[With Presidential elections due in January 2027, Nigeria’s political elite is deep in negotiation, backbiting and influence peddling. There are no outstanding challengers to the incumbent, Bola Tinubu, as jostling has seen the opposition fracture.  Peter Obi – popular among the youth – has joined forces with Rabiu Kwankwaso, an equally influential northern politician who served as Defence Minister under Olusegun Obasanjo.  Obi has reportedly promised to serve only one term, creating the essential North-South coalition and obeying Nigeria’s unwritten rule that government by a southerner follows government by a northerner.  ]]></description>
            <author>Tara O’Connor</author>
            <category>AFRICA IN FOCUS</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721641</a_id>
        <updated>1779779169</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title> US notifies WTO of import surcharges</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/us-notifies-wto-of-import-surcharges-2026-05-29</link>
            <description><![CDATA[At the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Committee on Balance-of-Payments (BoP) Restrictions meeting on May 5, its members discussed the US’s new notification regarding the imposition of import surcharges to address the country’s serious BoP deficits. The US’s surcharges took effect on February 24 and expire on July 24 unless extended by an Act of Congress.]]></description>
            <author>Riaan de Lange</author>
            <category>TRADE@WORK</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721504</a_id>
        <updated>1779779168</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Opportunities, threats that new global era brings must  be dealt with smartly</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/opportunities-threats-that-new-global-era-brings-must-be-dealt-with-smartly-2026-05-29</link>
            <description><![CDATA[The new foreign affairs era that is already upon us comes with threats but also opportunities. South Africans are duty bound to seize the opportunities and to stave off the threats. An immediate opportunity is to enable public-private collaboration across mining, manufacturing, energy, technology and tourism. To ensure that mining has a good future, mineral exploration must be rapidly accommodated by government and mine logistics  made to work competitively. Green energy development must also involve putting green molecules to work and not only electrons. Datacentre and artificial intelligence (AI) studies must be quickened, and a firm stand must be taken early against all potential ill effects on human beings and on humanity as a whole that misplaced and wrongful AI implementation can bring.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Creamer</author>
            <category>FIRST WORD</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721439</a_id>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Risks to reform</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/risks-to-reform-2026-05-22</link>
            <description><![CDATA[The economic reform agenda has emerged as the defining feature of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency, especially the reforms under way to open the electricity and freight logistics markets to competition. It has been pursued largely out of necessity, as many of the theoretical risks associated with monopoly structures materialised in the form of devastating loadshedding and crippling price hikes and a threat of a near collapse of the port and rail systems.]]></description>
            <author>Terence Creamer</author>
            <category>REAL ECONOMY: ECONOMIC REFORM</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721246</a_id>
        <updated>1779176453</updated>
        <published>1779400800</published>
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        <editor>Terence Creamer</editor>
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            <title>Factories drive Africa’s billionaires</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/factories-drive-africas-billionaires-2026-05-22</link>
            <description><![CDATA[We in South Africa have long comforted ourselves with the assumption that, whatever the continent’s turbulence, our economy is Africa’s biggest, anchored by deep capital markets, globally integrated corporations and a currency that still carries weight in regional trade and finance. Yet, even within this established hierarchy, the very top end of private wealth is beginning  to show signs of movement, with Nigerian Abdul Samad Rabiu having overtaken Johann Rupert – a son of the South African soil – to become the continent’s second-richest individual, behind his compatriot Aliko Dangote.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Zhuwakinyu</author>
            <category>BUSINESS LEADER</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720991</a_id>
        <updated>1779170319</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>AI and the collapse of truth</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/ai-and-the-collapse-of-truth-2026-05-22</link>
            <description><![CDATA[South Africa is in the throes of the Madlanga Commission, established by President Cyril Ramaphosa to investigate corruption and malfeasance in the country’s police service. As we follow live coverage of the inquiry, it’s often difficult to discern who is the good cop and who is the bad one.  It is precisely in inquiries such as the Madlanga Commission that the law is used as a tool to uncover truth. Yet there are ominous trends beyond South Africa: legal edifices are being challenged and dismantled, making it increasingly difficult to rectify wrongs or to prevent the justification of wrongdoing through the abuse of law under the pretence of using the existing system. Law itself is becoming a weapon against truth.]]></description>
            <author>Saliem Fakir</author>
            <category>LOW-CARBON FUTURE</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720859</a_id>
        <updated>1779170318</updated>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>Zero-tariff scheme</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/zero-tariff-scheme-2026-05-22</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Announced on May 1 by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) in a media statement and notified by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) on May 8, but not yet operational. That said, you now have time to prepare for it, and also to keep an eye out for a Government Gazette notice. What is it all about? Do we know? SARS informed traders that China’s trade scheme officially came into effect on May 1, with some tariff lines subject to tariff-rate quotas.]]></description>
            <author>Riaan de Lange</author>
            <category>TRADE@WORK May 22</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Positive way Hillside Aluminium is working with Eskom is highly commendable</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/positive-way-hillside-aluminium-is-working-with-eskom-is-highly-commendable-2026-05-22</link>
            <description><![CDATA[The positive manner in which Hillside Aluminium is working with Eskom to ensure the longevity of aluminium production in South Africa is highly commendable. A remarkable aspect of the collaboration is the revelation that Hillside is working towards providing funding support for an aluminium rod manufacturing facility in Richards Bay to supply local content to Eskom’s electricity grid expansion. In addition, Hillside is working with local partners on a potential aluminium dross plant and a billet alloy plant. This is the sort of depth of teamwork that should be taken up as a model. Without it, Hillside could well have gone the same way as Mozal.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Creamer</author>
            <category>FIRST WORD</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721114</a_id>
        <updated>1779176520</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Don’t waste the crisis</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/dont-waste-the-crisis-2026-05-15</link>
            <description><![CDATA[South Africa is experiencing its third energy crisis of this decade. While electricity loadshedding has been a threat for far longer, the most extreme phase was definitely during 2022 and 2023, when protracted power cuts were a daily, sometimes twice daily, misery. That confidence-sapping period was fully self-inflicted and avoidable, but policy uncertainty, asset mismanagement, project delays and deep-seated corruption combined toxically to leave residents and businesses in the dark and an economy floundering.]]></description>
            <author>Terence Creamer</author>
            <category>REAL ECONOMY: ENERGY SECURITY</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720654</a_id>
        <updated>1778579791</updated>
        <published>1778796000</published>
        <expires>99999999999</expires>
        <editor>Terence Creamer</editor>
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            <title>Courts that constrict freedom</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/courts-that-constrict-freedom-2026-05-15</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Concluding an 11-day, four-nation African trip in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, last month, the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV spoke of the need to promote the dignity of prisoners and not to use the justice system to punish but to help rebuild lives and communities. His immediate audience may have comprised inmates at the infamous Bata prison, but the message his words carried resonates across Africa. In fact, his real audience might as well have been Africa’s ruling elites because, across the continent, many prisons are no longer institutions of justice but instruments of power.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Zhuwakinyu</author>
            <category>AFRICA BEAT</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720573</a_id>
        <updated>1778488581</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Cluckin’ quotas</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/cluckin-quotas-2026-05-15</link>
            <description><![CDATA[In the Government Gazette of April 30, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) gave notice of the retrospective increase, effective from April 1, of the annual quota for frozen bone-in cuts of the species Gallus domesticus, chicken to you and me, originating in or imported from the US. The quota increased from 71 963 tonnes (also known as metric tonnes) to 73 881 tonnes, as documented in the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (Itac) Minute M12/2025, which, at the time of writing, was not published on its website. (The document is accessible at https://itac.org.za/tariff-investigations/ministerial-minutes/.)]]></description>
            <author>Riaan de Lange</author>
            <category>TRADE@WORK</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720553</a_id>
        <updated>1778488579</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>We must lower our dependence on  imported energy</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/we-must-lower-our-dependence-on-imported-energy-2026-05-15</link>
            <description><![CDATA[We South Africans must go all out to reduce our reliance on imported energy for as long as the future global order remains uncertain.  We must minimise exposure to geopolitical energy supply shocks and save ourselves valuable foreign exchange in the process. Domestic energy production is the only durable answer and coming with it are valuable long-term jobs. It makes sense to turn every economically viable local opportunity to positive account.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Creamer</author>
            <category>FIRST WORD</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720618</a_id>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Policy conundrum</title>
            <link>https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/policy-conundrum-2026-05-08</link>
            <description><![CDATA[At the start of South Africa’s democratic era, the availability of cheap coal-fired electricity emerged as the country’s main instrument for attracting investors. It seems almost unbelievable now, but when loadshedding first started, government still viewed the disruption as temporary and continued to market South Africa as an investment destination for electricity guzzling facilities. That mindset eventually made way to reality, and close observers habitually questioned why Eskom did not simply move to cut supply to the smelters; particularly ones with secret deals of questionable commercial value.]]></description>
            <author>Terence Creamer</author>
            <category>REAL ECONOMY: ELECTRICITY DEALS</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720218</a_id>
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        <editor>Terence Creamer</editor>
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