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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>Burning platform</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/burning-platform-2026-09-25</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Prior to the stabilisation of Eskom’s operational performance, the issue of loadshedding was undoubtedly South Africa’s ‘burning platform’. Besides holding back growth and sapping citizens of confidence, the State-owned utility was also a serious financial drain. Many South Africans felt doubly robbed when their taxes were used to bail-out the entity while electricity tariffs rose steeply, and triply so when stories of corruption, as well as fruitless and wasteful expenditure, flowed like the diesel being burned in huge volumes in costly open-cycle gas turbines.]]></description>
            <author>Terence Creamer</author>
            <category>REAL ECONOMY: JOHANNESBURG</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
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            <title>Map-makers, mind your colours</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/map-makers-mind-your-colours-2026-09-25</link>
            <description><![CDATA[The UN General Assembly may have voted overwhelmingly for a new map that – unlike the Mercator map, which has been used widely for centuries – depicts Africa in its correct size relative to other continents, but dissatisfaction lingers among a handful of countries. You would think the US is among those dissatisfied with the adopted map, called the Equal Earth map, having been the sole dissenter in a ballot in which 164 nations voted in favour, with six abstaining. It appears Donald Trump’s America doesn’t actually give a damn; its reason for nonparticipation is its utter contempt for “debating map projects from the sixteenth century” instead of focusing on genuine problems, as US deputy representative to the UN Economic and Social Council Yaryna Ferencevych put it.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Zhuwakinyu</author>
            <category>AFRICA BEAT</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
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            <title>Light at the end of Senegal’s debt tunnel</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/light-at-the-end-of-senegals-debt-tunnel-2026-09-25</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Talya Parker explores how Senegal’s new $2.2-billion International Monetary Fund programme and plans to reprofile its debt could offer a way out of its deepening debt crisis, while making the country a test case for an untested ‘enhanced’ G20 Common Framework After multiple credit downgrades, eight International Monetary Fund missions since April 2024, and a political divorce, Senegal has announced it will reprofile its debt, estimated at 132% of GDP.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>AFRICA IN FOCUS</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>729996</a_id>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>33 columns, one conversation</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/33-columns-one-conversation-2026-09-25</link>
            <description><![CDATA[If space were not a concern, the title ﻿would have been ‘Trade@Work+AI: 33 columns, one conversation,’ subtly acknowledging both my 33 columns of 2026 and my conversation ﻿﻿with an AI assistant.]]></description>
            <author>Riaan de Lange</author>
            <category>TRADE@WORK</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
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        <updated>1790586462</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Much more effort needed to take freight pressure off our national road networks</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/much-more-effort-needed-to-take-freight-pressure-off-our-national-road-networks-2026-09-25</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Much more effort is needed to integrate South Africa’s rail and road networks. There was a time when the bulk of freight traffic was on rail by some margin. Now, the economically damaging excessive pressure on our national road network is worsening by the day. Rail must return to being the big container deliverer over distance, with trucks playing a short-distance role from rail stations to final destinations. There is simply too much big freight on freeways, which snarls up the works for everyone else. Hold ups are far too frequent and safety is going out the window.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Creamer</author>
            <category>FIRST WORD</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Share the strategy</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/share-the-strategy-2026-09-18</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Most South African manufacturers, besides those few companies benefitting from market tailwinds linked to the deadly conflict disrupting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, are under strain. The pain is broad-based, with upstream, midstream and downstream value-chain participants all feeling the effects of weak demand, surging imports and inadequate trade enforcement. The latest Absa Purchasing Managers’ Index partly reflects this unhappy reality. It declined for the fourth consecutive month in August to 45.8 points, the lowest reading so far this year. South Africa’s second-quarter GDP contraction of 0.2% also underlines the distress, with manufacturing recording its third consecutive quarterly decline.]]></description>
            <author>Terence Creamer</author>
            <category>REAL ECONOMY: INDUSTRIAL POLICY</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>729770</a_id>
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        <editor>Terence Creamer</editor>
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            <title>Africa gets bigger on paper</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/africa-gets-bigger-on-paper-2026-09-18</link>
            <description><![CDATA[There are two ways to make Africa smaller. You draw it smaller, or you teach the world to look at it that way, and that’s precisely what the Mercator map – which you will find on most office walls and in countless atlases – has done. This may not have been deliberate, but it’s been effective.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Zhuwakinyu</author>
            <category>AFRICA BEAT</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>729754</a_id>
        <updated>1789455680</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Export block exemption</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/export-block-exemption-2026-09-18</link>
            <description><![CDATA[When last did you joyously utter – no, shout out loud – “Block 1, 2, 3, in, save all”, thus freeing everyone who was previously caught, or did you simply yell “Block 1, 2, 3, out”, waking up the neighbourhood on a sleepy Sunday afternoon in the process? If you are not of that age, this was a classic childhood outdoor game similar to a combination of hide-and-seek and tag that was called “Block 1, 2, 3”.]]></description>
            <author>Riaan de Lange</author>
            <category>TRADE@WORK</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>729665</a_id>
        <updated>1789455679</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Honesty, integrity, governance, meritocracy  must be emphasised at every turn</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/honesty-integrity-governance-meritocracy-must-be-emphasised-at-every-turn-2026-09-18</link>
            <description><![CDATA[South Africa’s illicit economy is a tough nut to crack. The main outcome of the many years news reports on illegal mining, unlawful tobacco trading, dangerous drug trafficking and even black-market food merchandising is that these aspects of South Africa’s illicit economy have failed to even be dented. Given the calculation by Econometrix that South Africa loses up to R68-billion a year in tax revenue and 87 500 direct jobs because of our R280-billion illicit economy, it would pay the Government-Business Partnership on Growth and Jobs to fund the world’s very best detective unit to, once and for all, uncover the identities of criminal kingpins controlling all this. For our part, we all need to emphasise, at every turn, the value of honesty, integrity, governance and meritocracy, as African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) chairperson Dr Patrice Motsepe did to his credit during ARM’s latest annual results presentation.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Creamer</author>
            <category>FIRST WORD</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
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        <updated>1789458121</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Hands on</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/hands-on-2026-09-11</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Admissions by Bill Gates about various personal indiscretions – notably his association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – have raised questions about his personal judgement and continue to weigh on his reputation. Even though he is not accused of any involvement in Epstein’s crimes. However, there is no denying how influential Gates has been personally, as well as through Microsoft, in driving the technological developments that now shape how we work, communicate, learn, and even play.]]></description>
            <author>Terence Creamer</author>
            <category>REAL ECONOMY: AI REGULATION</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>729310</a_id>
        <updated>1789121184</updated>
        <published>1789077600</published>
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        <editor>Terence Creamer</editor>
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            <title>My Hichilema hunch needs revisiting</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/my-hichilema-hunch-needs-revisiting-2026-09-11</link>
            <description><![CDATA[A few weeks back, I congratulated Hakainde Hichilema on his re-election as Zambia’s President. I did so with the confidence of a journalist who had watched the votes come in, watched the results settle and, perhaps a little too quickly, decided the story had acquired its ending. It hadn’t.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Zhuwakinyu</author>
            <category>AFRICA BEAT</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>729242</a_id>
        <updated>1788850997</updated>
        <published>1789077600</published>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>The T. rex’s closest relative returns</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/the-t-rexs-closest-relative-returns-2026-09-11</link>
            <description><![CDATA[If antidumping investigations concerning a good were a movie genre, would they be considered a franchise or a reboot? It is a trick question because, although a reboot is almost always part of an existing universe, it discards previous continuity to start all over. This brings us to the reasoning behind this aricle’s working title, ‘Welcome to Jurassic Park’. Confused? Intrigued? Or a little bit of both?]]></description>
            <author>Martin Zhuwakinyu</author>
            <category>TRADE@WORK </category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>729072</a_id>
        <updated>1788850997</updated>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>Mastering energy can help South Africa to master economic destiny</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/mastering-energy-can-help-south-africa-to-master-economic-destiny-2026-09-11</link>
            <description><![CDATA[The Canadian Prime Minister is right about electricity being one of the biggest opportunities of our generation. South Africa must build on its distinctive natural energy strengths while seizing every available new technology opportunity in the book to transmit and distribute electricity in the efficient new ways that modernisation enables. South Africa is fortunate to have a Government-Business Partnership for Growth and Jobs and it is from a public-private platform such as this that we can master energy in a way that helps us to master our economic destiny as well.]]></description>
            <author>Martin Creamer</author>
            <category>FIRST WORD</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>729020</a_id>
        <updated>1788855086</updated>
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        <editor>Martin Zhuwakinyu</editor>
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            <title>Beyond catch-up</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/beyond-catch-up-2026-09-04</link>
            <description><![CDATA[For most South Africans living in the country’s largest cities, the infrastructure backlogs are not only visible but painfully disruptive. Driving without hitting a pothole has become a perilous art, as has navigating piecemeal water or electricity repairs where the resultant holes are left gaping for months, if not years. The stench of sewer leaks pollutes the air in many neighbourhoods, where water supply is also erratic and power cuts continue despite the official demise of loadshedding.]]></description>
            <author>Terence Creamer</author>
            <category>REAL ECONOMY: CITY INFRASTRUCTURE</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>728837</a_id>
        <updated>1788247479</updated>
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        <editor>Terence Creamer</editor>
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            <title>First the English, then deportees</title>
            <link>https://newsletter-en.creamermedia.com/article/first-the-english-then-deportees-2026-09-04</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Last year, when Donald Trump invited a select group of African leaders to the White House, Liberian President Joseph Boakai found himself on the receiving end of one of those remarks that can sound like a compliment until you reflect on them. “You speak such good English,” Trump told him, before asking: “Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?”]]></description>
            <author>Martin Zhuwakinyu</author>
            <category>AFRICA BEAT</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>728728</a_id>
        <updated>1788246790</updated>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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