Andrew Stegmann
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SAA Launches Direct Service to Guangzhou – China’s ‘Manufacturing Hub’

South African Airways (SAA) announced on Sunday that it will launch direct flights between Johannesburg and Guangzhou, China, on September 18, 2019, giving customers access to the heart of China’s export led manufacturing industries.

According to a statement by SAA, this is yet another strategy implementation initiative aimed at enhancing its route network.

“The decision to launch this direct service between Johannesburg and Guangzhou means we remain on track in executing our strategy to transform SAA into a fit for the future airline that will operate both efficiently and competitively,” commented SAA CEO Vuyani Jarana.

The Guangzhou route will cater for a spectrum of travellers between Johannesburg and China including business and corporate travellers and will be of special interest to traders. Cargo operations will complement the viability of this route considering that high value cargo is sourced from Guangzhou.

SAA will be the only carrier operating a direct service between Johannesburg and Guangzhou, with flight time of approximately 13 hours and 40 minutes, providing the shortest travel time on a nonstop basis between the two points.

There will be three new flights per week to Guangzhou, in South China, and these will complement SAA’s current operations to Hong Kong. This means, SAA will fly four times a week to Hong Kong. Airbus A340-300 aircraft will operate both the Guangzhou and Hong Kong routes.

Guangzhou is the largest city in the Guangdong province in South China and the third largest Chinese city after Beijing and Shanghai. It is an important transportation hub and trading port, located on the Pearl River about 120km Northwest of Hong Kong.

“Adding a direct service to mainland China, combined with our current popular flights to Hong Kong provides SAA with immense growth opportunities to and from mainland China. It also gives our traders access to the centre of Chinese manufacturing,” said Jarana.

The province of Guangdong is the centre of China’s export led manufacturing industries and described as “the world’s manufacturing hub”. Formal and informal traders source the majority of goods purchased in Sub-Saharan Africa from the province, due to Africa’s poor manufacturing capacity.

For more travel options for SAA customers flying to and from Guangzhou, the airline has interline agreements with China Southern Airlines, China Eastern, Air China and Hainan Airlines.

SAA said it is also negotiating a code share agreement with Hong Kong Airlines, anticipated to be in place this financial year, for further travel options for customers travelling beyond Hong Kong. Hong Kong airlines will codeshare on SAA’s Hong Kong-Johannesburg sector and provide feeder traffic from Japan, Korea, Philippines and China.

 

For information as to how Relocation Africa can help you with your Mobility, Immigration, Research, Remuneration, and Expat Tax needs, email marketing@relocationafrica.com, or call us on +27 21 763 4240.

Sources: [1], [2]. Image sources: [1], [2].

Andrew Stegmann

South African Visa Issues to Be Resolved

In the days to Africa’s Travel Indaba fete in South Africa, a number of tour operators were denied visas, sparking an uproar on social media platforms.

However, in his remarks at Africa’s Travel Indaba at the ICC Durban on Saturday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said his government was working towards reducing the enormous and often unnecessary bureaucratic red tape that tourists, who want to visit his country, face.

“If a tourist is held back by a lot of red tape, they immediately give up and go to another destination. This clearly requires that we should streamline our tourist visa regimes and as South Africa we are committed to working towards the African Union’s goal of a visa free travel dispensation and a single African air transport market,” Mr Ramaphosa said.

He added that his country was in the process of overhauling the visa dispensation and introducing world class e-visa system.

In his Facebook post, Uganda’s tour operator Amos Wekesa, the executive director of Great Lakes Safaris, condemned the continued denial of visas to Ugandans to travel to South Africa, irrespective of travel frequency.

South Africa’s tourism minister Derek Hanekom said:

“I met with a number of hosted buyers, sellers and media from more than 80 countries and asked them what would be a befitting welcome to our president and their message is recognition of tourism industry but from Nigeria to Ghana, from Kenya to Uganda to India and China, the sector has massive potential and to realise it, the visa dispensation must be overhauled.”

Indaba is the continent’s top annual travel and trade fair that attracts thousands of people and media from some 80 countries.

Uganda, represented by Uganda Tourism Board, won the gold certificate for an outstanding stand characterised with structural traits of eco-friendliness thanks to use of grass thatch, natural sticks and showcase of attractions such as gorillas, birds, wildlife and culture among others.

It was Uganda’s third gold win under the category of Southern African Development Community and Africa, having bagged the same award and recognition in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

 

For information as to how Relocation Africa can help you with your Mobility, Immigration, Research, Remuneration, and Expat Tax needs, email marketing@relocationafrica.com, or call us on +27 21 763 4240.

Sources: [1], [2]. Image sources: [1], [2].

Andrew Stegmann

Media Freedom Remains Under Threat in Southern Africa, Says Amnesty International

Media freedom remains under threat in several countries in Southern Africa with journalists put in jail for simply doing their job, Amnesty International said on Friday as it took stock on World Press Freedom Day.

“In the past year we have seen blatant attempts to muzzle the media and restrict the right to freedom of expression in countries such as Madagascar, Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, with journalists being harassed or jailed simply for doing their work, with far-reaching implications including self-censorship,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s regional director for Southern Africa.

Citing several instances in recent years during which journalists or media houses in the region were attacked, Muchena said this onslaught is undermining the very essence of free societies, where journalists must be able to do their work without fearing intimidation, harassment or other reprisals.

Media freedom in SA is guaranteed but fragile, according to Reporters Without Borders, a nongovernmental organisation that conducts political advocacy on issues relating to freedom of information and the press. The organisation said that while SA’s 1996 constitution protects the freedom of its very diverse media, apartheid-era legislation and the 2004 terrorism laws are used to limit coverage of government institutions when “national interest” is supposedly at stake.

“The State Security Agency spies on some journalists and taps their phones. Others are harassed and subjected to intimidation campaigns if they try to cover certain subjects involving the ruling ANC party, government finances, the redistribution of land to the black population or corruption,” Reporters Without Borders said.

According to its latest index, which rates 180 countries in terms of media freedom, SA dropped to 31 from 28 in 2017. North Korea is rated 179, while Turkmenistan was at the bottom of the ladder. Norway clinched top spot, followed by Finland and the Netherlands.

Amnesty International said several journalists in Southern Africa continue to face intimidation and harassment. In 2018 investigative journalist Estacio Valoi was abducted by the military and held incommunicado for two days in Mozambique accused of spying and aiding and abetting militant groups. He was later released without charge, though his equipment remains confiscated by the military for “further investigation”, Amnesty International said.

In Zambia, the editor-in-chief of The Rainbow Newspaper, Derrick Sinjela, is serving an 18-month jail sentence after being convicted in December 2018 on contempt of court charges for publishing an opinion piece written by an activist alleging corruption in the judiciary.

In Madagascar investigative journalist Fernand Cello spent nearly two years in jail after he was convicted on trumped-up charges related to his work, concerning the fabricated accusations that he stole a chequebook. He was acquitted by the Fianarantsoa Appeal Court on April 2 2019.

In Zimbabwe police raided the offices of online news site 263 Chat and fired teargas into the newsroom after chasing reporter Lovejoy Mtongwiza to the adjacent offices of 263 Chat on April 4. This was after he filmed the removal of street vendors by the police in the capital, Harare.

“Authorities must stop treating the media with contempt and open up the space for journalists to do their work safely without having to look over their shoulders,” said Muchena. “A vibrant and independent press is essential for the enjoyment of human rights. Journalists should not be treated as enemies of the state.”

 

For information as to how Relocation Africa can help you with your Mobility, Immigration, Research, Remuneration, and Expat Tax needs, email marketing@relocationafrica.com, or call us on +27 21 763 4240.

Sources: [1], [2]. Image sources: [1], [2].

Andrew Stegmann

Smart Tech Becomes the New Tool for African Farmers

Farmers and crop buyers have started to harness smart gadgets and crunch numbers to improve productivity and reduce costs.

How do you manage the trick of feeding school children better and at a lower cost? How do you count the number of mangoes on your farm so that you get a fair price? And what is a clever-but-cheap way for a farmer to cut down his irrigation bill?

Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa may have the image of relentless toil and low productivity, but experts say new tech is changing the picture.

Farmers, crop buyers and other sector professionals have started to harness smart gadgets and crunch numbers to improve productivity, reduce costs and smooth out wrinkles in the markets, they say.

“There’s a digital revolution unfolding in Africa,” says Pascal Bonnet, a deputy director of Cirad, the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development.

“Around the continent, there are excellent researchers in information technology, digital agriculture is a real opportunity for qualified young Africans.”

The idea of directly linking farmers to consumers, cutting out wholesalers and stores is a familiar story in Europe and North America.

Awa Thiam, a 28-year-old telecoms engineer, is following suit in her native Senegal. The company she founded, Lifantou, connects school canteens with farming co-operatives with the help of big data.

“There’s a huge need for this,” Thiam said, showcasing her work at an agri-tech conference in Dakar in April.

“Today, between 25% and 50% of the cost of school meals goes to intermediaries, but schools have limited budgets. If you shorten the supply chain, canteens can bring down the cost of meals and offer the children more varied menus.”

Her one-stop platform draws on a databank of crop production and schools to match potential demand with supply.

It group-purchases to lower the cost for schools and in a final flourish organises the transport of the goods, with operations monitored in real time.

Margin for mistakes

A project called Pix Fruit, meanwhile, aims to help farmers who have until now estimated their mango crop by counting the fruit on a bunch of trees and then extrapolating for the whole plantation.

This rough-and-ready method has considerable room for error.

Emile Faye, a French researcher in digital agro-ecology who works for Pix Fruit, says the margin for mistakes could be as much as a factor of 10.

A purchaser, for instance, could pay the price for two tons of mangoes while taking delivery of 20 tons from the farmer, although errors may go either way.

Pix Fruit’s alternative uses advanced modelling software to produce a more precise count of the crop.

Using a smartphone, the farmer takes photos of a selection of trees in his fields.

Agritech concept smartphone app accessing dairy cows data and statistics in a grassy field

Fruit-recognition technology then calculates the likely overall harvest, drawing on a databank compiled with the help of drones that also includes information on climate, soil and administrative constraints. That way, farmers learn the true worth of their crop, while wholesalers and price negotiators have a better take on the risk of glut or undersupply.

The system, jointly developed by Cirad and the Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research, could be extended to coffee, lychees and citrus fruits.

That the smartphone should play such a central role is no surprise. The advent of mobile helped Africa to leapfrog the cost of installing landlines, spurring innovative use, from ride-sharing to money transfer.

The pioneering work is now spreading into the rural world.

The continent’s third-most downloaded app, according to Africa.com, is Esoko, which collects and shares crop prices, provides weather information and farming tips, and arranges payment via a mobile money system.

It operates in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, Madagascar, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

The Widim Pump, made by a Dakar firm called Nano Air, is a box controlled by SMS messages that a farmer sends to manage his irrigation system.

The savings are substantial, even for poor peasant families, says Oumar Basse, a 27-year-old engineer and the company’s co-founder.

“There’s no more need for the farmer to walk several kilometres every day or use up fuel or hire someone to monitor the pumps. He can switch on the water or turn off the supply using his mobile phone.”

With 12 employees after two years in operation, Nanoair has sold 250 Widim systems and received orders from Morocco and Zambia.

Basse has also founded another firm helping with handling deliveries and after-sales services.

 

For information as to how Relocation Africa can help you with your Mobility, Immigration, Research, Remuneration, and Expat Tax needs, email marketing@relocationafrica.com, or call us on +27 21 763 4240.

Sources: [1], [2]. Image sources: [1], [2].