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    Teenagers Build South Africa’s First Fully Solar-Powered Train

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    A group of 20 South African teenagers have built their country’s first fully solar-powered train. The students of Soshanguve Technical School were led to undertake this remarkable innovation after watching their parents’ struggle to use trains for daily commutes over the years, owing to load shedding and cable thefts.

    Trains are the cheapest mode of transport in the country, making it the choice option for the poor and working class.

    “Our parents, the mode of transport that they normally use is train [sic]. They use train to go from home to work and they use train to go from work to home, but then the issue is that they no longer use trains as part of their main source of transport. So that’s why we came across the solution that why don’t we actually create and build a solar-powered train”, said 18-year-old Ronnie Masindi, one of the student-innovators.

    The angular blue-and-white test train has photovoltaic panels fitted to its roof, and moves on an 18-metre track on the school ground in Soshanguve township north of the capital Pretoria.

    The train is fitted with car seats and a flat screen TV for entertainment purposes. It can travel at 30 km/h (18.6 mph) – a decent speed compared to the 100mph South Africa’s high speed trains can undertake. It was showcased at a recent universities’ innovation event.

    Currently, the test train can run for 10 return trips on the test track, but improvements may still be made as more research is conducted. The prototype will later be presented to the government. If scaled, the invention could revolutionise railway travel in South Africa.

    “And why trains? We looked also in the automotive space to say many people are interested in electric cars and other types of transport modes. No one was particularly looking at application of solar technology in locomotives”, explained Kgomotso Maimane, the project’s supervising teacher.

    The innovation is not entirely new as solar-powered trains are currently being used in some parts of India, London and Australia, although the former two are not fully solar-powered. The applications in all three countries are still in the early stages.

    The 2-year journey to complete the “Shoshanguve Automotive SOS” project was riddled with challenges including a lack of funding, however the S. African government later contributed. “It was not a straight line. It was like taking a hike to the highest peak of the mountain,” said 17-year-old Lethabo Nkadimeng, another student-innovator.

    Nonetheless, the students soldiered on and arrived at this excellent result. “What we have realised is, if we you give township learners space, resources and a little mentorship they can do anything that any learner can do around the world,” Maimane said with pride.

    The state power utility Eskom had imposed power rationing in South Africa for the past 15 years as a way to curb total blackouts. These power outages, otherwise called load shedding, have worsened over the years and caused major disruptions to commercial and industrial operations, including rail services.

    The railway operator Transnet has been unable to maintain the smooth flow of rail traffic since the economic challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic caused a surge in cable theft.

    In 2020, the use of trains among public transport users had reduced by over 60% compared to 2013, according to the National Households Travel Survey. The survey revealed that more commuters were turning to more expensive minibus taxis.

    The adoption of the solar train on a national scale just may be a solution to the rail mobility issues caused by South Africa’s looming power issues.

    HeidelbergCement Signs Agreement with Tanzanian Cement Producer

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    Heidelberg Cement

    HeidelbergCement, one of the world’s largest integrated manufacturers of building materials and solutions, has signed an agreement to acquire 68 % of the shares in the Tanzanian cement producer Tanga Cement.

    Through its subsidiary Tanzania Portland Cement, the largest cement producing company in the country, HeidelbergCement already has a good market position in Dar es Salaam in the Eastern part of Tanzania.

    As part of this transaction, HeidelbergCement secures an important limestone quarry with measured resources for at least 30 years on top of its already existing reserves. The quarry and the associated cement plant with a capacity of 1.3 millions tonnes of Tanga Cement are located in the Northern part of Tanzania.

    The closing of the transaction is subject to the fulfillment of customary conditions precedents (especially the clearance by several local authorities), which have to be fulfilled or waived within an agreed timeframe.

    As of today, closing of the transaction is expected in the second quarter of 2022. Upon closing, HeidelbergCement will make a public tender offer to acquire the remaining outstanding shares in Tanga Cement, following Tanzanian law and in alignment with the respective local authorities.

    Both companies, Tanzania Portland Cement und Tanga Cement, are publicly listed.

    In Africa, War is the Major Cause of Hunger

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    Africa War

    A new study, just published in the journal Nature Food, says that increased hunger in sub-Saharan Africa is caused by long-running wars, not the climate. Rising widespread, long-term violence has displaced people, raised food prices and blocked outside food aid.

    For years, it seemed the world was making progress eliminating hunger. Then, starting in 2014, the trend slid back slowly and reversed in many nations; now, some 700 million people—nearly 9 percent of the world’s population—go to bed hungry, according to the UN.

    One of the hardest-hit regions is sub-Saharan Africa. Here, many people reflexively blame droughts stoked by climate change. However, a new study looking at the question in granular detail says that is not the case: long-running wars, not the weather, are to blame.

    The study, just published in the journal Nature Food, finds that while droughts routinely cause food insecurity in Africa, their contribution to hunger has remained steady or even shrunk in recent years. Instead, rising widespread, long-term violence has displaced people, raised food prices and blocked outside food aid, resulting in the reversal.

    To reach their conclusions, the researchers analyzed 2009-2018 data from the Famine Early Warning System, a USAID-funded network that provides information to governments and aid organizations about looming or ongoing food crises in dozens of countries. The system shows that the number of people requiring emergency food aid in monitored countries surged from 48 million in 2015 to 113 million in 2020. The system is not designed to quantify the different factors behind the emergencies. But Anderson and his colleagues were able to tease these out for 14 of Africa’s most food-insecure countries. The nations reach in a band from Mauritania, Mali and Nigeria in the west, through Sudan, Chad and other nations, to Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia in the east. The study also took in several nations further south, including Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

    Not surprisingly, the researchers found that periodic, well-documented droughts have been behind food crises across large areas. However, the overall effects of drought did not increase during the study period; of anything, they went down in some areas. When drought did hit, farmers usually bounced back in the next planting season, within a year or so. Animal herders took twice as long to recover, because the areas where they live saw with more extreme conditions, and it took people time to rebuild their hard-hit livestock herds.

    Amid the usual ups and downs of rainfall, violence has been responsible for the progressive increase in hunger, the study found. Long-term conflicts ranging from repeated terrorist attacks to pitched combat between armies have caused shortages lasting year after year, with no end in sight, the authors say.

    This has been especially the case in northeast Nigeria, where the Boko Haram guerrilla army has waged a relentless hit-and-run campaign against the government and much of the populace for the past decade. Also in South Sudan, where a messy, multi-sided civil war that started in 2013 continues to sputter along. Sudan and Somalia also have seen warfare-induced increases in hunger, but in those nations, droughts have been the more dominant factors, the study found. In most cases, pastoralists are again the most affected by violence as they are with drought, because they are more likely to live in the most violence-prone areas.

    The latest casualty is Ethiopia, where hunger has arced upward across the country in recent years, mainly due to below-average rainfall. But civil war erupted in the country’s Tigray region last year, greatly adding to the misery. The study did not examine this new conflict, but a recent UN report said that more than 5 million people in the region urgently need food aid, and many are already seeing out and out famine. “This severe crisis results from the cascading effects of conflict, including population displacement, movement restrictions, limited humanitarian access, loss of harvest and livelihood assets, and dysfunctional or nonexistent markets,” a top UN official said. On top of that, the drought in Ethiopia is projected to continue through this year.

    The researchers looked into a third possible cause of hunger: locusts. Again,  not surprisingly, locusts affect food security in some years by damaging forage and crops—but not on a scale large enough to account for the increase in hunger during the study period. (The study did not look at the unusually large waves of locusts that swept much of East Africa in 2019-2020; these may have had more drastic results.)

    One further factor the researchers looked at: whether the onset of drought contributed to flareups of violence, and thus more hunger. One of the report’s coauthors, climatologist Richard Seager of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, connected the dots in this regard in a widely cited 2015 study arguing that one spark for the ongoing Syrian civil war was a multi-year drought that drove many people off their land, into cities. This does not seem to be the case for the African countries, he said. The authors write, “We found no systematic relation between drought and either frequency of conflict or deaths related to conflict. Conflict may be affected by environmental stress in some cases but the relationship across Africa in recent decades is complex and context-specific.”

    While warfare has been the predominant driver of hunger in some countries, that does not mean others have completely escaped the violence that can disrupt food supplies. For instance, over the last decade, much of Mali has been subject to on and off attacks by separatist and Islamist insurgents who at times have taken entire cities. Since 2015, the once largely peaceful nation of Burkina Faso has seen hundreds of attacks by rebels and jihadists, including a raid on a village in early June this year that killed more than 100 people.

    Should African Start-Ups Worry About Silicon Valley Bank Sudden Crumble?

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    The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week has sent shockwaves through the tech industry as the largest lender to venture capital funds suddenly seized up.

    Ever since its establishment in the early 1980s, SVB – the 16th largest bank in America – has played a fundamental role in the development of the influential Silicon Valley ecosystem by providing crucial financial support to start-ups and investors alike.

    What really led to the SVB’s downfall?

    During the Covid-19 pandemic, SVB found itself inundated with deposits, which it invested in US bonds and mortgage-backed securities with a fixed return. However, the recent rise in interest rates led to a decline in the value of its assets.

    As economic conditions worsened, Silicon Valley firms began to withdraw their deposits from the bank, leading SVB to sell off its bonds at a significant loss and dilute its stock. That ultimately led to a run on the bank as clients withdrew their funds in fear of the bank’s stability. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was forced to step in and seize SVB’s assets, leaving many in the tech industry reeling from the sudden collapse.

    What effects does the collapse have on Africa’s start-up ecosystem?

    There appears to be a mixed impact on Africa’s tech ecosystem due to the collapse. As Nigerian tech journalist Frank Eleanya noted in a recent article for BusinessDay, “Nigerian start-up founders say the impact on the local ecosystem will be minimal,” mainly due to the fact that only a small number banked with SVB.

    However, there are some firms that have had dealings with the stricken bank. Chipper Cash, one of Africa’s start-up unicorns (start-ups valued at more than $1bn), is one that might be directly impacted, having received a $100m SVB-led investment in May 2021. No official statement has been released by Chipper Cash regarding how much of that funding is banked in SVB.

    Other businesses appear immune. Future Africa, one of the largest Africa-focused venture capital funds, recently assured that its funds have minimal exposure to Silicon Valley Bank. The fund noted, nonetheless, that its team is “working very quickly to build new account relationships with established global banking institutions as soon as funds are available”.

    In an interview with BBC Focus on Africa, Tanzanian start-up founder Benjamin Fernandes, founder of cross-border payments firm NALA, said that he managed to withdraw the firm’s money prior to the collapse after hearing of the bank’s struggles. Nevertheless, he bemoaned that some industry contacts in the US had not managed to move their funds in time.

    However, he believed that the impact on Africa’s tech sector may be limited given the small number who bank with SVB. Indeed, the difficulty that African start-ups face in opening US bank accounts may have protected the continent from the worst of the fallout, he said.

    But if ripple effects are not yet fully apparent, observers believe that the long-term implications could be more significant. Venture capital funds, in particular, may be less willing to take risks in the wake of SVB’s collapse, potentially slowing down start-up funding across the continent after a record-breaking year of $4.8bn raised by the end of 2022.

    In a blogpost, Ngozie Dozie the founder of digital finance platform Carbon cautioned of a possible slowdown in investments on the continent, more pulled term-sheets and delays in getting that critical follow-on funding.

    A key opportunity to boost local funding for start-ups.

    In the wake of the bank’s collapse, founders in Africa have been forced to review their banking options to cushion their start-ups from such eventualities.

    As with every financial external shock, calls to protect African businesses through reduced reliance on foreign capital have since emerged.

    Expert Investment analyst view SVB’s collapse as an opportunity to strengthen Africa’s start-up ecosystem and encourage greater investment from local sources.

    “When we rely on foreign investors, then we expose ourselves to imported problems,” said Dozie, highlighting the need for more local investment in Africa’s burgeoning start-up scene.

    Max Cuvellier, founder of the start-up deals database Africa The Big Deal, has reported that 1,400 investors were involved in at least one start-up deal in Africa in 2021-2022. Among them, 36% were from North America, 27% from Africa and 21% from Europe.

    As the tech industry grapples with the aftermath of SVB’s collapse, it is clear that the lessons learned from this event will have far-reaching consequences for start-ups and investors across the continent.

    Samaritan’s Purse Strives to Diminish Malnutrition in Ethiopia

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    The food crisis in Ethiopia has caused a spike in malnutrition and could get worse very soon. Samaritan’s Purse is airlifting supplemental food for children and families, which could solve the issue for thirty more days.

    Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian relief organization, is airlifting life-saving food to children suffering in northern Ethiopia. Months of internal conflict within the country have left millions without access to basic necessities. The situation is dire, and tens of thousands of children are at risk of acute malnutrition.

    Today, Samaritan’s Purse is transporting 1,800 cases of ready-to-use supplemental food to Ethiopia’s affected areas—enough to meet the nutritional needs of 18,000 children for 30 days. This supplementary food is critical for children at risk of acute malnutrition because it is specially developed to contain the right nutrients and protein to ensure a child’s needs are met.

    “Ethiopian families in Tigray are in trouble. They are struggling to feed their children after months of endless conflict depleted local resources,” said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse. “We are seeing extreme needs—children are malnourished, families are hungry, and millions are suffering. Please pray for these families—that we can reach the most vulnerable people with life-saving support, feed the hungry, and do it all in Jesus’ Name.”

    Disaster response specialists are already on the ground in Tigray, working alongside local church partners and in coordination with the World Food Programme to meet people’s greatest needs. In addition to the airlift, Samaritan’s Purse is trucking in enough food parcels to feed 1,000 families for 30 days. These packages include rice, wheat flour, beans, oil, and salt.

    IMF Rewards Tanzania for Joining Great COVID Conspiracy?

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    Tanzania Covid Times

    After Tanzania’s COVID realist President died under mysterious circumstances and his COVAXist Vice President took over, money has started flooding into the country.

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) just approved a disbursement of US$189.08 million under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and a purchase equivalent to US$378.17 million under the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) for a total of $567.25 million.

    According to the IMF, this emergency funding is intended to help finance Tanzania’s urgent balance of payment needs resulting from the collapse in tourism. The collapse in tourism was caused by the needless COVID lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed in other countries and not by any impacts of the virus within Tanzania itself, which has reported only 1,367 infections and 50 coronavirus-related deaths since the plandemic began.

    The IMF claims that the funds will “help finance the interventions needed to mitigate the severe socio-economic impacts of the pandemic and help catalyze support from development partners.”

    According to the IMF, Tanzania faces an “urgent balance of payment need of about 1.5% of GDP as the authorities implement a comprehensive plan to mitigate the effects of the pandemic and preserve macroeconomic stability in the face of a reported third wave of the virus caused by vaccines.”

    This kind of contradicts the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) Monetary Policy Statement in 2020 that reports a deficit reduction in the current account to $333.3 million from the $1,620.2 recorded in the corresponding period of 2018/19. Tanzania also reported 4.8% economic growth in 2020, which is substantially better than most countries around the globe.

    Tanzania had previously opted out of the COVID craziness and exposed the conspiracy for what it is, that is, until the country’s President died and was replaced by someone more compliant. Since Tanzania has become proCOVAX, it has been getting more loans and cash handouts.

    While heavily reliant on tourism and foreign aid, in recent years the country had expanded exports of gold and cashews to become less reliant on tourism. While the demise of the tourism industry has certainly had substantial impact on the country’s ability to service it foreign debt and has had some impact on the micro level, not so much has changed for the average Tanzanian and the country continues to enjoy strong economic and social development.

    EMTECH Unveils Collaboration with The Bank of Ghana

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    Emtech

    EMTECH, a first-of-its-kind fintech for central banks, announced a partnership with the Central Bank of Ghana to deploy its Modern Central Bank Sandbox Platform™.

    The Central Bank of Ghana confirmed the collaboration in a release. The partnership with the Bank of Ghana will leverage EMTECH’s software to test innovative solutions, including blockchain, while accelerating their time to market. This approach promotes new products and services, bridging the gap for unbanked and underbanked, and creates new pathways for the efficient and secure movement of money for individuals and organizations.

    “EMTECH is proud to partner with the Bank of Ghana on its digital transformation journey, and I believe that our partnership establishes a template that other regulators and stakeholders can embrace as together we test and deploy the inclusive, robust central banking infrastructure of tomorrow. This is also a great opportunity for fintechs looking to engage as they aim to go to market,” said EMTECH founder and CEO Carmelle Cadet.

    The Bank of Ghana said in its announcement that the sandbox will be available to banks, specialised deposit-taking institutions and payment service providers including dedicated electronic money issuers, as well as unregulated entities and persons that have innovations that meet the sandbox requirements. “EMTECH’s solution introduces process improvements to assist Central Banks in meeting their stated and implied strategic goals while enhancing timely, yet prudentially responsible, implementation,” EMTECH’s Chief Risk Officer, Diane Maurice, said.

    Innovations eligible for the Bank of Ghana sandbox environment consider the following broad categories:

    • New digital business models not currently covered explicitly or implicitly under any regulation
    • New and immature digital financial service technology
    • Innovative digital financial services products that have the potential for addressing persistent financial and economic inclusion challenges

    “The Bank of Ghana through this project, would like to reaffirm its commitment to addressing the financial inclusion needs of the unbanked and underserved persons and businesses,” according to the statement issued by the Bank of Ghana announcing its partnership with EMTECH.

    Nigerian Herdsmen Continue Murdering Christians

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    Nigerian Herdsmen

    Islam’s genocidal war on non-Muslims continues unabated in Africa where Muslims continue to kill Christians just because they aren’t Muslim.

    The most recent massacre in Nigeria this month was in the Central Plateau region.

    David Mali, spokesman for the Irigwe Development Association (IDA) said, “Irigwe nation has again been thrown into the state of grief, heart-brokenness following the unwarranted killing of four of our Christian men by the Fulani herdsmen at two villages of Kwall District, Bassa LGA of Plateau state. Four of them from Rikwe-Chongu village were ambushed along Ri-Bakwa axis near Kpachudu, and three were killed instantly while one sustained gunshot injury. The other one from Zirshe (Ntireku) was ambushed and killed instantly.”

    Mali identified the murdered Christians as Ezekiel Maja, 29; Emmanuel Agaba, 39; Moses Daburu, 26; and Kefas Bulus David, 31. Wounded was Bitrus Ezra, 42.

    The Muslims also burned several houses and food grains.

    “Irigwe nation is our land, and no amount of evil force can compel us to relinquish it to those who hate us and our Christian faith,” Mali said. “We are known for resilience, and so we shall remain till the end of age.”

    The killings followed an attack by Muslims on Feb. 7 in the villages of Kishosho and Zirshe in southern Kaduna state’s Kauru County in which church elder Danlami Sunday, 40, and four other Christians were killed.

    In Plateau state’s Miango area, in Bassa County, Fulani herdsmen on Feb. 2 ambushed and killed two Christians on a road in Dudu village.

    Muslims in the region have killed hundreds of people and displaced thousands. The Islamic herdsmen are in conflict due to religion but also due to the climate crisis which is making it harder for them to practice their traditional herding lifestyle. Overpopulation is also a huge factor. Nigeria’s population has exploded from 30 million in 1952 to more than 200 million today. And it is not just Fulani herdsmen and local issues that help drive the violence, it is also Saudi Arabia and the international war industry/CIA that funds and directs international Islamic terrorism.

    Across Africa, hardly a day goes by when Islamists haven’t killed someone for no reason other than the victim not being Muslim.

    Oligarchs make more money from instability than stability. Conflict and violence drive arms sales and keeps wages low. Maintaining highly lethal armed paramilitaries also makes it easier to replace politicians who don’t provide favorable treatment to multinational criminal corporations.

    One of the ways that the oligarchs perpetuate conflict is by stamping out criticism of Islam so that it continues to spread and takes more and more victims.

    NIH Awards Nearly $75M To Catalyze Data Science Research in Africa

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    Training Network

    The National Institutes of Health is investing about $74.5 million over five years to advance data science, catalyze innovation and spur health discoveries across Africa.

    Under its new Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) program, the NIH is issuing 19 awards to support research and training activities.

    DS-I Africa is an NIH Common Fund program that is supported by the Office of the Director and 11 NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices.

    Awards will establish a consortium consisting of a data science platform and coordinating center, seven research hubs, seven data science research training programs and four projects focused on studying the ethical, legal and social implications of data science research. Awardees have a robust network of partnerships across the African continent and in the United States, including numerous national health ministries, nongovernmental organizations, corporations, and other academic institutions.

    “This initiative has generated tremendous enthusiasm in all sectors of Africa’s biomedical research community,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “Big data and artificial intelligence have the potential to transform the conduct of research across the continent, while investing in research training will help to support Africa’s future data science leaders and ensure sustainable progress in this promising field.”

    The University of Cape Town (UCT) will develop and manage the initiative’s open data science platform and coordinating center, building on previous NIH investments in UCT’s data and informatics capabilities made through the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) program. UCT will provide a flexible, scalable platform for the DS-I Africa researchers, so they can find and access data, select tools and workflows, and run analyses through collaborative workspaces. UCT will also administer and support core resources, as well as coordinate consortium activities.

    The research hubs, all of which are led by African institutions, will apply novel approaches to data analysis and AI to address critical health issues.

    The research training programs, which leverage partnerships with U.S. institutions, will create multi-tiered curricula to build skills in foundational health data science, with options ranging from master’s and doctoral degree tracks, to postdoctoral training and faculty development. A mix of in-person and remote training will be offered to build skills in multi-disciplinary topics such as applied mathematics, biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical informatics, analytics, computational omics, biomedical imaging, machine intelligence, computational paradigms, computer science and engineering.

    Design-build Contract Awarded for Morocco’s First High Speed Train Line

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    Morocco High Speed Train

    Colas Rail and its subsidiary Colas Rail Maroc, as part of a consortium with Egis Rail, won the design-build contract for a 185-kilometer long double track high speed train line between Tangiers and Kenitra in Morocco.

    The work involves track (studies and construction), catenary systems and two work site facilities (studies, supply of materials, construction).

    The total contract value amounts to 136 million euros, of which 124 million euros are earmarked for Colas Rail and Colas Rail Maroc.

    With work slated to last 42 months, the line is scheduled to open during the first half-year 2016.

    Colas Rail has thus chalked up yet another successful endeavor in the MENA region (Middle East, North Africa), following the longstanding metro project in Cairo, Egypt, as well as the construction of tramways in Rabat and Casablanca, Morocco.

    The Group has also recently been awarded contracts for the extension of the Algiers metro in Algeria (end 2012) and the Tunis Rapid Train Network in Tunisia (beginning 2013).

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