Last year, education made up the biggest part of the corporate social investment of South African companies, continuing the trend that companies believe investing in a culture of learning makes the most sense. Almost all the big hitters in corporate social investment invested in the education sector.
Cellphone technology is the way of the future, was the overwhelming response from people who took part in a survey on mobile banking for low income customers. The survey is the first of its kind in the world on how low income people view mobile banking. South Africa was used in the study because it is the only country which a mobile banking service is targeted specifically at low income people with enough of a sample base
China plans to produce its own large commercial jet by 2020 to challenge the dominance of Airbus and Boeing in the world’s fastest-growing aircraft market. Beijing has accelerated the development of a home-grown passenger aircraft to compete for the billions of dollars it is spending on foreign planes.
Recently, judges in Uganda went on strike to protest against government interference with the judiciary. The strike action followed government security agents’ raid on the high court in Kampala to arrest six opposition supporters. The six men, members of the Forum for Democratic Change led by Kizza Besigye, had been granted bail after being accused of planning a coup and of being members of the People’s Redemption Army.
South Africa is investigating two main sources of biofuel, maize and sugar, and already proponents are starting to square off. The windfalls task team has recommended investment incentives for the manufacture of biofuels, or liquid fuels from indigenous raw materials, excluding crude oil and natural gas.
Over the past decade, the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been pummelled and massaged to suit countless agendas. Both campaigners and corporates thumb their noses at a term whose meaning zigzags from ethical supply chains to carbon trading to human rights.
I once spoke to a journalist who had covered the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s. He said that he and his colleagues kept heading into harm’s way, because they believed that once the world knew of the horrors they had witnessed, the world would be stirred to act. They filed their reports and waited.
A strong link between droughts and violent civil conflicts in the developing world bodes ill for an increasingly thirsty world, say scientists, who warn that drought-related conflicts are expected to multiply with advancing climate change. "Severe, prolonged droughts are the strongest indicator of high-intensity conflicts," said Marc Levy of the Centre for International Earth Science Information Network .
For two years, the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> Investing in Life Awards have been recognising the outstanding contributions made by corporates and foundations in the struggle against HIV/Aids. Over this time, the context of HIV/Aids in South Africa has changed dramatically.
There is little to cheer a United States president on a visit to Latin America these days. Where it once enforced its will on the region, the US now looks increasingly out of touch. The presidents of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile were not elected as friends of the US, and China has quietly filled the economic gap left by seven years of US distraction and neglect.