January 16, 2014
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Motshabi Hoaeane.
Making headlines:

Standard Bank joint CE Sim Tshabalala says 2014 could be the year South Africa catches up to African growth.

Egyptian voters overwhelmingly back a new Constitution.

And, US lawmakers, frustrated by South Sudan violence, question the efficacy of aid.
 

Standard Bank joint CE Sim Tshabalala said on Wednesday said there was good reason to expect that South Africa could, in 2014, catch up with the rest of the African continent in terms of growth.

Speaking at Frontier Advisory’s Africa Frontiers Forum, in Sandton, Tshabalala stated that, according to the International Monetary Fund, Africa’s growth would accelerate during the course of the year to about 6%, adding that similar predictions indicated that South Africa would, during 2014, possibly regain a growth level of 3%.

Tshabalala said, “Standard Bank’s view is that the country may very well perform far better, certainly in the medium term.”

Tshabalala added that, according to the banking group’s economists, if the regulatory environment was right, South Africa’s offshore gas endowment could potentially add another 1.4% a year to the country’s growth over the next five years.
 

Egyptians who voted in a referendum overwhelmingly approved a new Constitution, official sources said, citing early results of a ballot that could set the stage for army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to declare his candidacy for President.

About 90% of voters approved the Constitution, the State news agency and a government official said. State news agency MENA, citing early indications, said the approval rate exceeded 90% in many of the polling stations that had reported results.

An Interior Ministry official said turnout so far may have exceeded 55%, though MENA did not give a figure.

The referendum is a key step in the political transition plan the interim government has billed as a path to democracy, even as it presses a fierce crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's best organised party until last year.
 

US lawmakers expressed deep frustration on Wednesday over the wave of violence in South Sudan, questioning whether it made sense for Washington to continue sending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the fledgling democracy.

Four weeks of fighting, often along ethnic lines, has been ringing alarm bells in Washington over the prospect that the conflict could spiral into full-blown civil war, spawning atrocities or making South Sudan the world's next failed State.

US Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the latest fighting "infuriating," and blamed it largely on South Sudanese leaders' unwillingness to build an inclusive State.

US officials said President Barack Obama's administration is putting pressure on both sides as well as on South Sudan's neighbors to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict, which has resulted in a huge exodus of refugees.
 

Also making headlines:


The 2014 Index of Economic Freedom reports that gains in South Africa’s economic freedom are threatened by corruption and investment freedom decline.

And, President Jacob Zuma scores another F on the 2013 Cabinet report card released by the Democratic Alliance and Independent Democrats.
 

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.