PARIS – During the climate summit COP21 last week, 10 African countries announced their commitment to a plan to reforest huge tracts of the continent over the next 15 years. The announcement was made during the Global Landscapes Forum at the Conference of Parties (COP21). AFR100, the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative, is a pan-African, country-led effort to restore 100 […]

South Africa’s supermarket chain Shoprite has opened its first shopping centre in Tete Junction, Mozambique. The opening, on 3 December, marks the entrance of Africa’s largest food retailer to the Tete province. Since starting out as a small chain of only 8 supermarkets in Cape Town in 1979, Shoprite has grown to more than 450 stores […]

Johannesburg and Cape Town won two of 10 environmental leadership awards during a ceremony that took place at the same time as the COP21 summit in Paris last week for their efforts to tackle climate change. The awards were given by C40 Cities, a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change. The C40 Cities Climate […]

Everything from unidentified flying objects over Durban’s UFO-like stadium to women taking to the roads of Cape Town – to fix them, no less – to reminiscences about walking the famed “camino” trail across northern Spain, those are a few stories you might not have seen this week. 1. Good grief, green light a UFO? The […]

BLOEMFONTEIN – A full panel of five judges of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa has found Oscar Pistorius guilty of murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, saying that the lower court erred in its decision of culpable homicide. The ruling was read on Thursday by Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Eric Leach. He […]

PRETORIA – During the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to South Africa for the China-Africa summit this week, the two countries signed 26 agreements worth R94 billion ($6.5 billion) on Wednesday, the South African government announced. Xi arrived in South Africa on Wednesday from Zimbabwe, ahead of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit in […]

Almost 60 percent of Africans believe that corruption in their countries has increased over the past year, although in South Africa this figure is 83 percent, according to a new survey released on Tuesday. According to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer for 2015, done together with Afrobarometer, it spoke to 43,143 respondents across 28 countries […]

South Africa has made incredible strides providing anti-retroviral treatment to millions of people since 2004. HIV has been transformed from a grim and inexorable death to a chronic disease controlled with a cheap, safe tablet-a-day, rendering a person with HIV healthy and non-infectious. Treatment is freely available at primary care clinics, administered largely through nurses. […]

HARARE – The Chinese president, who is on his way to South Africa for an Africa-China summit, is stopping off in Zimbabwe first, making him what media have called the most important foreign leader to visit the country since independence in 1980, according to news reports Tuesday. On Friday and Saturday Xi Jinping will attend the Forum […]

A new book by veteran South African journalist John Matisonn claims that once-beloved (by many readers, at least) editor of the Sunday Times, Tertius Myburgh, was an apartheid spy and that Thabo Mbeki tried to warn US and UK leaders off attacking Iraq. These are two of numerous revelations made in the just-published “Gods, Spies and […]

South African Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba has attempted to clarify the current situation regarding the recently announced concessions to the immigration regulations. In a nutshell, as discovered last weekend by British actor Idris Elba – foreign children are still required to comply with the visa requirements which were implemented on 1 June this year…until such […]

It has been only three weeks since Tanzania elected John Magufuli, the son of a farmer, to take over from Jakaya Kikwete, whose government was scarred by scandals and excesses, and it’s already clear why the can-do, cost-cutting, austere, corruption-hating new leader is known as Iron Fist and the Bulldozer. There might be tongue-in-cheek celebrations on Twitter – […]

A slick new video made by a young German doing a trip around South Africa – great music, thrilling footage from a drone – includes a scene less than halfway through that might throw some viewers into a moral dilemma. He rides an elephant. The scene is jarring because in the rest of the video, titled “For that […]

The traditional huge post-Thanksgiving sale day in the US, Black Friday, had South Africans lining up outside stores early on Friday, with stores packed with shoppers and, in some cases, even battles over cheap Coca-Cola. Checkers, which together with Shoprite is one of the biggest promoters of Black Friday this year, put out an ad beforehand […]

Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Front, addressed the Oxford Union at Oxford University on Wednesday during a trip to the United Kingdom, including in his speech everything from expats to Nelson Mandela. Here are some of his quotes to the “most famous debating society in the world” pulled from the news media. On rich South […]

NEW YORK – South Africa joined 13 other countries including North Korea, Sudan, Syria, China, Russia and Zimbabwe on Wednesday to vote against adopting the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, according to news reports. The declaration recognises the extreme importance and legitimacy of human-rights activity, and those who carry it out. Fourteen countries voted against the bill in […]

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will not be at a summit in South Africa next week, nearly six months after he left the country during a dispute between the Pretoria government and the judiciary, which had ordered he be detained until it reviewed his indictment for alleged war crimes. News reports on Thursday said South Africa […]

PRETORIA – A South African judge on Thursday lifted a domestic trading ban on rhino horn that was imposed by the government in 2009 to try stem poaching of the animals. The decision by Judge Francis Legodi in the Pretoria High Court came after Malelane game farmer John Hume and Limpopo farmer Johan Kruger fought a legal battle to […]

Move over, Starbucks, doughnut-maker Krispy Kreme and competitor Dunkin’ Donuts are also opening up in South Africa. While much attention has been given to the fact that coffee giant Starbucks will open its first branch in South Africa in 2016, it’s been less publicized that at least two other very successful US chains will be doing likewise. (Krispy Kreme’s first […]

In a story coming out of Bronkhorstspruit, a company called Bio2Watt in October started giving off its first power created by cow dung and other waste, and one of the main users of its energy is a nearby BMW plant. See how it all works at the Bio2Watt plant serving BMW: According to a news report […]

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest carrier, wants to buy 10 narrowbody planes and is considering Canada’s Bombardier and Brazil’s Embraer jets among others, as it plans to nearly double its fleet between now and 2025, chief executive Tewolde Gebremariam said Monday. Tewolde, speaking on the sidelines of a global aviation forum in Montreal, […]

JOHANNESBURG – The state-owned freight and logistics company Transnet has secured R12 billion ($853 million) for its locomotive programme, it announced on Monday, bringing to R48 billion the capital raised to buy the trains. Transnet said it sourced the latest money via a club loan from Absa, Nedbank, Bank of China, Futuregrowth Asset Managers and Old Mutual Specialised Finance.   “I think […]

ACCRA – The former president of Namibia, Hifikepunya Pohamba, became the fourth president to be awarded the Mo Ibrahim Foundation prize for African leadership, last given in 2011, at a ceremony in the Ghanaian capital on Friday. The award, created to reward an African leader who serves out his constitutional term and then leaves office, was created in […]

GABORONE – A 1,111-carat diamond was unearthed in a mine 500 km north of the Botswana capital this week, the biggest diamond find in the country and the largest in more than a century, it was announced on Thursday. The discovery of the stone, weighing 222 grams, was made at the Karowe mine owned by the Canadian Lucara Diamond Corporation, the firm said in […]

NEW YORK – Sixteen of Africa’s 50 richest people are from South Africa, which takes over the lead from the 2014 No. 1 country, Nigeria, which only had 10 on this year’s list, according to Forbes magazine. South Africa also has six of the continent’s 23 billionaires, Forbes said when it publicised the list on […]