At an energy stakeholder meeting in parliament held on 19 September 2013, all four presentations by the nuclear lobby – including the Department of Energy (DOE) – typified what behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman calls a ‘planning fallacy’. This essentially describes plans and forecasts that ‘are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios [and] could be improved by consulting statistics of similar cases’.
The South African Durban Youth and Children’s Protocol negotiated and agreed upon at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Durban, South Africa on 11 November 2011.
The 2012 SAIIA Young Leaders Declaration negotiated and agreed uponat the 1st SAIIA’s Young Leaders Conference.
Just over a month ago, President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya wrote an op-ed about the tremendous opportunities that were opening up to Kenya and east Africa from their geographical positioning in one of the world’s most dynamic regions – the Indian Ocean Rim.
As part of the Global Economic Governance project undertaken by the South African Institute of International Affairs in collaboration with the International Development Law Unit at the University of Pretoria, a critical assessment was recently undertaken to evaluate how effectively Africa’s interests and concerns are directly and indirectly addressed in the Group of Twenty (G-20) processes.
Despite their widely recognised socioeconomic and ecological value, mangroves are among the world’s most threatened vegetation types.
A full agenda of dialogues with US Congress, US business and the US administration has been prepared for South Africa’s Trade and Industry Minister, Rob Davies, as his department starts South Africa’s lobbying effort for the seamless renewal of the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA). Minister Davies and his senior aides travelled to the US last week to cajole the US congress and other thought leaders of the importance of US–Africa economic relations, as well as to argue South Africa’s case for an unfettered renewal of AGOA.
South Africans may not appreciate that a diplomatic Bilateral Forum between South Africa and the United Kingdom is something unusual for the British. Pretoria has many similar arrangements and it can be difficult to keep track of them all, but for the United Kingdom it is rare and in Africa, it occurs only with South Africa.
Mozambique is in a period of rapid transition. Since the end of civil war in 1992 sound governance, infrastructure investments and support from the donor community have helped to boost commerce and tourism.
Public submissions to parliament on the revised Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill (MPRD-AB), originally gazetted in December 2012, were due last Friday September 6, 2013. It is hard to overstate the extent to which the final incarnation of this Bill will affect South Africa’s economic wellbeing.
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