Power utility Eskom is examining how the suspension of a pact that enables it to import nuclear fuel components from the US will affect its sole atomic plant. The Agreement for Cooperation in Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy between the US and South Africa expired on December 4. That resulted in Westinghouse Electric Co losing [...]

The portfolio committees on Public Enterprises, and Mineral Resources and Energy and the Select Committee on Public Enterprises and Communication will, on Thursday and Friday, meet various Eskom stakeholders to assess efforts to resolve the crippling energy crisis facing the country. Eskom announced earlier this week that loadshedding will remain at Stage 4 from 16:00 [...]

Mining and agriculture are two key sectors of the Zambian economy that are attracting foreign direct investment, which rose 158% to $8.5-billion in 2022, creating 74 000 jobs. The latest company to announce that it will be developing a new copper mine in Zambia is one linked to Microsoft's Bill Gates, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Virgin's [...]

The City of Tshwane (CoT) has been coming up short on its payments to Eskom for several months and it owes the State-owned power utility R1.4-billion as of January 25. Eskom has announced that CoT short-paid its November 2022 bill of R660-million and failed to pay its December 2022 account of R780-million entirely.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the US government and its partners are leading efforts to stabilise global energy prices by introducing a cap on the price of Russian oil, which should help mitigate further price shocks on emerging economies and reduce Russian revenues. While the policy is in the early stages of implementation, the [...]

Eskom has asked the department of cooperative governance & traditional affairs (Cogta) to intervene as the City of Tshwane’s electricity debt has ballooned to R1.4-billion. As of Wednesday, the city's debt had compounded to "a bulky R1.4-billion" due to its "short payment and non-payments spanning several months in the recent past", Eskom said in a statement.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) announced on Tuesday that it was collaborating with the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to build and demonstrate in space a nuclear thermal rocket engine. The joint programme is designated the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (Draco). This technology, once proven, would be used [...]

Farmers in Africa will need as much as $65-billion in loans annually to produce enough food to curb imports and cushion their economies from external shocks. The continent imports over 100-million metric tons of cereals at an annual cost of $75-billion, the African Development Bank said in a statement. Recent spikes in inflation, including increases [...]

African technology startup investment platform Partech Africa’s recently released Africa technology venture capital report reveals that, despite the global venture capital downturn, the African technology ecosystem grew faster than all other markets globally. Total funding invested into technology startups during 2022 in Africa reached $6.5-billion – an increase of 8% year-on-year, spread across 764 deals [...]

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued its so-called ‘Final Rule’ for the NuScale Power (NuScale) small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), completing the certification process for design. This made the NuScale SMR the first reactor in its category to be certified by the NRC. Although termed a ‘rule’, the NRC determination was actually a [...]

Those "aggrieved" by the upcoming 18.65% electricity tariff hike will have to lodge a court application to challenge the energy regulator's decision, power utility Eskom has said. This comes days after President Cyril Ramaphosa told delegates at the African National Congress Free State provincial conference that he asked the power utility to halt the tariff [...]

Eskom CFO Calib Cassim told lawmakers on Tuesday that the State-owned utility had spent R18-billion on diesel for its current financial year-to-date, which began in April last year, and that it would probably need to spend another R4-billion until the end of March, raising the overall diesel spend for the year to R22-billion. The utility [...]