South Africa has made a massive financial and diplomatic investment in the BRICS Summit being held in Sandton this week.

Southern Africa’s wildlife economy is often hailed as a successful model. The idea behind this model is that biodiversity and wildlife are used as the basis of sustainable economic growth, through an increase in wildlife numbers and in a country’s revenue.

Biomass energy includes biogas, liquid biofuels (biodiesel, ethanol, methanol, butanol), and solid biofuels (typically wood, but could be any solid burned to create energy from heat). Solid biofuels can be burned directly to create energy, but both biogas and liquid biofuels must go through a conversion process to become usable fuel.  

“South African industrial gas users directly employ ±70,000 people and contribute between R300 billion and R500 billion annually to the South African economy. A cessation in the gas supply will result in multiple plant closures and a significant reduction in manufacturing output across KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, and Mpumalanga.”

There’s something deeply distressing about the most powerful and beautiful cat in the world staring vacantly from behind bars or a diamond mesh fence. A farmed tiger is really not a tiger at all, but an assembly of marketable parts awaiting export. In South Africa, on industrial-scale farms, hundreds can expect that fate.

Artificial intelligence or AI uses computers to perform tasks that would normally have needed human intelligence.

“In a nutshell, I have never felt so dependent on such incompetence,” says Johan* in frustration. His words encapsulate the sentiments of many of South Africa’s farmers confronting an unprecedented Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak.