Elsewhere in this edition, I report on upcoming elections in Africa, drawing attention to continental observers’ concern that outcomes that increase political risk could dampen both domestic and... 

A topic that is very rarely written about or given the attention it deserves is ‘prohibited goods and restricted goods’. All countries have a ‘prohibited goods and restricted goods list’ of some... 

The re-industrialisation of South Africa is an absolute must and it is good to see that public-private collaboration has been successfully applied to bring dormant industrial infrastructure back to... 

Electricity trading in South Africa, as Etana Energy CEO Evan Rice explained recently, is at once active and in transition. Just how active, is reflected in a report commissioned by the South... 

It all happened below the media’s radar, but we now know that in the dead of night on January 14 nine men and women were handcuffed, bundled onto a plane and flown from the US to Yaoundé in... 

The African Union (AU) biannual summit and the Munich Security Conference both took place over Valentine’s weekend – traditional time for coupling – when much of the world is rapidly uncoupling,... 

“You wait ages for one – and then three come along at the same time!” You might well be familiar with this idiom, usually associated with a bus and used to describe a long period of waiting for... 

President Cyril Ramaphosa has brought the sudden uncertainty around South Africa’s electricity transmission future to a welcome end. In last week's far-reaching State of the Nation Address, the... 

There is currently a marked difference between how Eskom and Transnet are being assessed against their respective reform milestones. While the State electricity producer is being adjudged,... 

Regular readers of this column will recall the now scrapped and always controversial 2022 scheme under which the UK proposed to dispatch would-be asylum seekers arriving in small boats from France... 

An offhand remark caught my attention in the last stages of the Brazilian presidency of COP30. Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, the lead negotiator, acknowledged that Brazil could achieve only so... 

Customs and excises are called the ‘Cinderella taxes’ because they are often overlooked and undervalued. That said, they have what no other tax has – they have gods, with a planet named after one,... 

Eskom and the Electricity Ministry should be advised by the Cabinet to sit at the knee of their national transport cousin Transnet to learn just how positive public-private collaboration can be for... 

South Africa is weighing a range of policy measures as various manufacturing sectors – from ferroalloys and steel, to automotives – face existential threats. The causes of their eroded...