Thursday, November 18, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Brad Dubbelman.

Making headlines:

Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping signed an energy deal with resources-rich South Africa on Wednesday, in a visit aimed at obtaining minerals that the Asian giant needs to fuel its growth.
South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and Xi cochaired the fourth China-South Africa bilateral commission and signed a number of agreements, including an energy deal.
Motlanthe said that "the Chinese government undertook to encourage more imports from South Africa, especially value-added products, and will urge Chinese companies to invest in infrastructure development, automotive manufacturing, energy and information and communication technology." South Africa has also signed a deal with China's Yingli Solar to build a $435-million manufacturing plant with a local partner.
South Africa exports about $5,5-billion a year in minerals to China and has increasingly been a destination of Chinese foreign direct investment.

Development agencies worldwide are joining forces to spend $200-million in a ten-year programme to help the agriculture sector prepare for climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions. The funding will go to research on how to feed a growing, more affluent world population in the face of expectations of worsening floods and droughts.
International Food Policy Research Institute senior research fellow Gerald Nelson says that humans face a huge food security challenge. By 2050, as a result of climate change, global "potential to produce food" could decline by between 5% and 10%, says International Centre for Tropical Agriculture policy expert Andy Jarvis.
Climate models point to accelerating declines in production of rain-fed wheat worldwide of 2,2% by 2020, 4% by 2050 and 18,6% by 2080, unless climate change is curbed or effective adaptive measures are put in place.

A fundamental shift in South Africa's migration policy is required to deal with the country's prevailing skills crisis, argues a new report from policy research group the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE), adding that even much-needed improvements to the domestic education and training environment will not be sufficient to deal with what is a deepening skills deficit.
The study effectively calls for a reformulation of immigration policy away from the current focus on controlling movement, to one that is more strongly aligned to South Africa's economic growth objectives.
CDE executive director Ann Bernstein argues that government's 7% growth aspiration will not be achieved without "a rapid infusion" of foreign skills and the opening of the country's doors to "very large numbers of skilled immigrants".

Also making headlines:

National Union of Mineworkers president Senzeni Zokwana rejects the African National Congress Youth League's proposal for the nationalisation of South Africa's mines as a reckless, ill-conceived idea that will not come to fruition.
The Auditor-General's office names and shames departments guilty of irregular expenditure, with the Department of Defence being the worst offender, followed by the Department of Justice and the Department of Home Affairs.
Mineral Resources Deputy Minister Godfrey Oliphant questions whether there is enough coal to meet the demands of Eskom's build programme.
And, Guinea's government declares a state of emergency after three days of violence following the announcement of the result of its November 7 Presidential runoff.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.