Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) chairperson Rubben Mohlaloga has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for fraud and money laundering. Mohlalonga was sentenced - alongside former acting head of the Land Bank Philemon Mohlahlane and attorney Dinga Rammy Nkwashu - on Thurday at the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court, the National Prosecuting [...]

Ford Motor and Volkswagen are progressing toward a potential agreement to join forces on self-driving cars and have overcome earlier obstacles, according to people familiar with the talks. Breakthroughs in the deliberations Thursday include a possible framework for Volkswagen to work with and invest in Argo AI, the Ford-backed autonomous-vehicle startup, said the people, who [...]

The Makana municipality has given the green light to disaster relief organisation Gift of the Givers to start drilling boreholes as a medium-term solution to the Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown) water crisis. The town has been without water for the better part of February. On Thursday morning, Gift of the Givers hydrologist Gideon Groenewald gave the [...]

Tanzania's Stiegler's Gorge Dam, due to be built on a Unesco World Heritage site, will cost more than double the government's estimates, an independent study showed on Thursday. In December, Tanzania signed a deal with two Egyptian companies, El Sewedy Electric Co and Arab Contractors, to build the $3-billion hydroelectric plant.

The complete preferred list of bidders for South32’s energy coal interests is still being finalised, South32 CEO Graham Kerr told Mining Weekly Online on Thursday, when he also provided three reasons why the company’s Australian manganese operations are doing better than its South African manganese operations, and also commented on the steps that his group's [...]

The adoption of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol to the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment is expected to be a game changer for South Africa, said Rail Working Group chairperson Howard Rosen on Thursday. The treaty, which is expected to enter into force late in 2019, can open doors and is considered [...]

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has expressed deep unhappiness with the decision of President Cyril Ramaphosa to announce the unbundling of Eskom in the absence of any prior consultation with the union, which is a formal ally of the governing African National Congress (ANC). The union, which has 15 000 Eskom members, also indicted [...]

As part of its cost-reduction me and drive to manage its carbon footprint, the Loulo-Gounkoto gold mine is to install a 24 MW off-grid solar hybrid plant to support its existing 63 MW thermal power station, by harnessing Mali’s abundant solar resource. The 24MW off-grid solar plant has the potential of saving ten-million litres of [...]

Dr Mark Bristow has snapped into fast action wearing the Barrick crown. His Randgold Resources, which now falls under the Barrick Gold umbrella, on Wednesday bowed out with panache when it declared a 35% dividend increase to $2.69 a share, buoyed by record production of 807 000 oz of gold at the Kibali mine, in [...]

Amid confirmation that Eskom is technically insolvent and will require a capital injection by April to remain a going concern, a leading economist is cautioning against the proposed transfer of R100-billion of the utility’s debt to government’s balance sheet. Instead, Standard Bank chief economist Goolam Ballim is proposing that government commits to taking over some [...]

Bushveld Minerals subsidiary Lemur has completed the review of the bankable feasibility study (BFS) for the power aspect of its Imaloto integrated thermal coal mining and independent power producer (IPP) project, in Madagascar. It has also issued a request for proposals for legal advisory services to draft and negotiate engineering, procurement and construction contracts for [...]

Corruption and State capture are major reasons why coal plants Medupi and Kusile are not delivering electricity as planned and why South Africa is facing crippling blackouts, say energy experts. Kusile and Medupi, the third and fourth largest coal power plants in the world, were originally due to come online in 2014 and 2012 respectively, [...]