Archive for 'South Africa'
Shameless Self-Promotion
Brand South Africa’s US country manager Simon Barber is interviewed about the bloggers tour by John Maytham on Cape Talk. Click below to listen. The Business Day column John mentions can be read here.
Eugene Terre’ Blanche lives…
Can you believe the man is still around. Meneer Eugene Terre’ Blanche. Ha! Who woulda thunk it?
Here’s what he had to say about his time in prison, sounds sort of bitter to me. What do you think?
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South African Innovation to be Seen by Top Bloggers
South African innovation to be seen through the eyes of top bloggers on an upcoming blogger tour staring on November 29th. Some bloggers leave in less than a week, and are heading to Cape Town and Johannesburg to prepare for a nine day tour north to south and then back again. I announced the tour about a week ago and will be posting updates until the tour officially starts.
All South African blog posts on Down the Avenue will be automatically pushed to newly launched blog We Blog the World. Posts from eight other American bloggers, one French blogger and four South African bloggers will also be sharing content on-the-ground, posting directly to their own blogs as well as We Blog the World, including Ndumiso Ngcobo, author of “Some of My Best Friends are White,” and Nicholas Haralambous of SARocks.co.za.
The tour is being sponsored by Brand South Africa/IMC who with the help of Graeme Addison is putting together a top notch agenda that will wow even the savviest of travelers. Simon Barber of IMC also announced the tour on the Brand South African blog.
We’ll be armed with mobile devices, camcorders, laptops, cameras, 3G wireless modems donated by Vodacom, and digital recorders so we can be connected around the clock, even in remote rural areas she hopes with a geeky yet coy smile. While the schedule hasn’t been finalized, it will include:
A helicopter ride out to De Beers’ state of the art mining ship, Peace in Africa, off the west coast
A glimpse of South Africa’s sustainable energy and green technology projects, including the Joule electric car and the Darling wind farm
A close to 4 kilometer trip down to the ore face at the world’s deepest mine: Anglogold Ashanti’s Tau Tona
A hike in the Magaliesberg with an innovative programme to rescue troubled youth
An overnight in Soweto to get a feel for its history and transformation
A visit to Soccer City to get the latest on World Cup 2010
A sampling of South African wine at Stormhoek Winery, one of the early pioneers of using web-based social networks to become an internationally-respected brand (go Web 2.0 🙂
I have been helping organize this upcoming wild ride. Thanks to Michael Gray once again for his technical expertise and patience in getting We Blog the World off the ground, not to mention various other sites and social networks that will present our journey visually.
We have set up We Blog the World accounts on YouTube, Twitter and flickr and bloggers may also be posting to Zoopy, a South African social network that includes photos, podcasts, video and more. Please join our feeds, follow along on Twitter, YouTube and flickr and tune into our individual blogs, the Brand South African blog, and We Blog the World (South Africa page).
South Africa Struggles With Carbon Footprint
South Africa’s growing economy may be slowing, but its appetite for energy is not. The nation has struggled to keep pace with its need for fuel and power and continues to expand its use of coal — and therefore its carbon emissions.
According to a new government report, South Africa is now ramping up efforts to at least account for and disclose its CO2 emissions without promising reductions. The country’s leading private coal producer also says emissions are on the rise, and is hoping for new technology to offset the continued expansion of coal used for electricity and transportation.
The government of South Africa just released its second Carbon Disclosure Report, which included more than double the amount of participating companies from the prior year. While more companies are beginning to track their carbon emissions and set goals, the data is far from complete, according to the report:
Relatively few companies (23 percent) have disclosed specific, company-wide GHG emissions reduction targets; and most of those companies that have emissions targets have focused on reducing their emissions-intensity, rather than striving for a reduction in absolute emissions.
Other South African companies that are expecting an associated cost for carbon emissions to be added in the coming years are starting to track their emissions internally.
South Africa has been slower to address climate change than other nations because of a lack of international obligations to do so, according to the report. While South Africa, signed onto the Kyoto Protocol, as a developing nation, it is not required to set or meet emissions reductions targets.
Energy company Sasol, which participated in the report, issued its own sustainability report this week that stated that greenhouse gas emissions grew from 69.8 to 72.7 million tons during the past year. Sasol is the nation’s leading producer of transportation fuel derived from coal (coal to liquids, or CTL). CTL fuel requires three times as much energy to produce than gasoline, losing 40 percent of the energy during the conversion process.
Sasol, one of the world’s top emitters of greenhouse gases, is pursuing a new coal to liquids plant, saying it would create jobs and help to ease the country’s energy crunch.
Sasol hopes that new technologies will someday help to green its business. The company does not have wind, wave or solar power generation facilities because according to CEO Pat Davies, they are not part of its core competencies.
Coal provides 90 percent of the electricity and one-third of the transportation fuel in South Africa, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
State-run utility Eskom hasn’t been able to keep pace with electricity and has resorted to rolling blackouts while it ramps up the construction of new coal plants. South Africa’s growing economy has been slowed by the international financial crisis, but the power demand is growing as the nation modernizes.
In addition to its 13 coal plants, Eskom operates two hydropower plants, one nuclear power plant, and a small pilot wind farm.
Image courtesy of Flickr, DanielDVM.
(Matter Network’s John Gartner will be touring South Africa and blogging about sustainability initiatives starting on November 29 as part of the Blogging South Africa program. Sign up for the RSS feed here.}
Bafana take down Cameroon
photo: Alexander Joe, AFP
3-2 to Bafana Bafana. You know it.
Very short post but have to show my pride that Bafana has taken on Africa’s best and won. Great work.
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Get your South African and African initiatives on Muti
Yes, Muti.co.za is a submission site where anyone can submit content and have it voted up or down by the community.
But the Muti folk (Neville, Dave and Charl) have kindly placed the SA Rocks banner in the advertisement spot in the Muti sidebar.
I cannot express my gratitude enough to Neville for helping me […]
Mobile surpasses traditional web in South Africa
It’s what we predicted would happen. In fact it’s what we thought had happened sometime ago, but here are some authoritative figures that confirm it.
According to a piece in Bizcommunity, Rick Joubert of Vodafone estimates there are now at least 9,5-million mobile wap users (read: mobile web) in the country. These are combined user figures […]
Click on headline link to visit matthewbuckland.com for full article
SA innovation to be seen through eyes of top bloggers
I published the list of top US bloggers a while back for a local tour out here. We’ll be doing an event in Cape Town. Will announce that soon. But for the moment, here is some more info on the tour:
Blogger tour
Travelling with the group will be two of South Africa best-known bloggers, Thoughtleader’s Ndumiso […]
Click on headline link to visit matthewbuckland.com for full article
Sports Star of the year – Get voting
It is that time of year once again. The time of year when sports people that we all support throughout the year are rewarded. This years candidates have been announced, they are on the radio being promoted so what you need to do is go and vote for one of the following candidates for SA’s […]
DA’s online presence disappoints
I had high hopes for SA’s political parties and their use of the web. In an interview with Sapa on IOL my colleagues didn’t share my optimism. In an Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) presentation in Pretoria this year, I urged political parties to take online seriously and demonstrated the Barack Obama website’s innovative use of […]
Click on headline link to visit matthewbuckland.com for full article
