Mining is a significant economic activity in most Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, and mineral beneficiation has been identified and controversially discussed as one of the possibilities for industrialisation. With many member countries being economically too small to muster the human and financial resources which beneficiation requires, the recently adopted Regional Mining Vision (RMV) envisages interventions at a regional level. An opportunity arose to ask industry role players to what extent the SADC appears to support regional beneficiation policy interventions undertaken by member countries, and what the challenges are in undertaking beneficiation regionally, as a complement to, or substitute of country-specific beneficiation policies. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts from SADC member countries during the 2019 Mining Indaba. Participants were divided on whether beneficiation should be carried out nationally or in the SADC region. While beneficiation could support value-keeping, key challenges were found to be infrastructure development (i.e. energy, water), scarce skills, access to technology and related cost, but also lack of free trade and movement. We submit that a more integrated beneficiation strategy for the SADC region, as is being developed through the RMV, would indeed be relevant in the future. Keywords: Mineral beneficiation, Regional integration, Beneficiation policy interventions, African mining vision, Mining, SADC.
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Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) are the important players of the emerging markets in the global economy and their innovation profiles matter for the economic growth of individual countries and the block. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse and compare the international rankings in innovation outputs in terms of knowledge and technology outputs among the BRICS-countries in relation to their economic growth in the last two years. A systematic review methodology was used, the innovation topic was investigated from the practice-based problem. Secondary data is collected from sources and institutions that use statistical data to build country rankings produced by the world intellectual property organisation (WIPO) and the World Bank. The findings show China is well-positioned in innovation ranking followed by Russia. Similarities in innovation evolution are observed among the other three BRICS- countries. Although these similarities exist, India portrays a slightly high prospect in innovation because of its information communication technology success, followed by Brazil and South Africa. The findings also show that their GDPs improve with the innovation ranking of the countries. This study recommends the member countries to strengthen their innovation cooperation and to revisit and adapt the education systems to their innovation aspirations through the production of relevant knowledge.
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South Africa needs a sounder mineral beneficiation policy to tackle the challenges the country faces, particularly rising unemployment. Its beneficiation policy is not very demanding and isn’t pursued with any vigour. For example, South Africa should be pursuing trade cooperation with Brazil, Russia, India and China. Together with South Africa they make up the BRICS grouping, which was formed in 2010 with the purpose of pursuing economic development.
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Abstract
As the use of languages play a critical role in economic activities within the globalized countries’ economies, there are growing perspectives and interests in the relationship between languages and the volume of trade among trading partners. This study looks at one such perspective in the lenses of gravity model, a theory of international trade, that measures the impact of language on trade or Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The study explores challenges facing Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) in respect to the impact of language diversity in their trading matters, and the potential of multilingualism in spurting trade within this trading bloc.
The study employs a qualitative approach with the use of exploratory design. The data is based on secondary sources stemming from reports, research, books to policy papers. This study findings show that various trading blocs such as European Union (EU), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the West Africa’s Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), with some members of BRICS such as South Africa and China as having adopted multilingualism as a strategy of addressing the language factor in their bilateral trading matters. This study proposes the promotion of multilingualism as a way of mitigating the impact of language barrier in international trade among the BRICS and beyond.
Keywords: Economics of language, Gravity model, Bilateral-trade, Economic
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1. INTRODUCTION
Nigeria has huge geo-resources including gas and is the 10th largest oil reserves in the world (PWC., 2019: 19). It is the first economy of Africa (the most populated country in the continent), but this does not mean the people are out of poverty. The recent violent protests speak volume about the prevailing situation of economic inequality in that country. The petroleum industry makes an insignificant contribution to the economy of Nigeria (+- 10% of the GDP) based on comparisons with other nations. Compared to other petrol states or oil-driven economy such as
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Kuweit (50% of the GDP), Saudi Arabia (42% of the GDP), and UAE (70%) one can say that the impact of oil activities in Nigeria is insignificant (Omoregie, 2016; Uwakonye, Osho and Anucha, 2006; PWC., 2019). As far as Nigeria is concerned, the biggest hindrance to performance in the oil sector is insufficient or the lack of domestic petroleum refining capacity – it is similar to the case of former Zaire (Omoregie, 2016). In both Nigeria and the DRC, the difficulties are not of recent, although the situation is exacerbated by factors such as corruption, maladministration and conflicts (war/terrorism) – similar to the resource curse conundrum.
On the other hand, minerals in the DRC contribute up to 8% on the GDP (Tutalife and Jourdan, 2019) – all the same poorly. And the DRC is among the potentially richest countries in the world on the account of mineral deposits. However, it is also the country where the population live in extreme misery (Gregson, 2018) – below poverty line.
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Abstract
As the fourth industrial revolution begins and amid an uneven ground of its developmental path, the world sees the realities of digital economy and impact thereof, like never before. Digital economy has influenced the way companies conduct businesses both internally and externally by impinging the life of the most important assets of the company i.e., the informed personnel. Online opportunities have made a significant difference in profit-making and networking of people by impacting their lives economically. Failure to access information, therefore, is detrimental to business networking and marketing as much as it stops the sharing of valuable business information. It is worth noting that the digital economy comes at a price as cybercrimes and political interference counterbalance its positive influence on other aspects of the economy. This paper considers the effect of digital economy as it plays out artisanal gold mining sector in Tanzania and compares it in other African countries.
Keywords: digital economy, digital democracy, digital dictatorship, Tanzania, economic growth
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This article focuses on the identification of drawbacks that hamper the effectiveness of secondary metal, non-metal and mineral product operations, with the aim of addressing health, safety and quality. The rationale for this study was based on the information that the financial turmoil has led to a significantly reduced demand for scrap metals. The research required interdepartmental and interdisciplinary inputs. The results revealed that excellent quality initiatives have a positive impact on the value-adding operations. A total of 75.5% of respondents agreed that quality enhancements increase productivity. Keywords: continentalised beneficiation, mineral products, productivity and innovation, quality initiatives, quality improvements, scrap management, secondary metal. SEE FROM PAGE 97 IN THE JOURNAL
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Summary. Research demonstrates that there are over 6,000 languages in the world and countries believe that their national interest should come first, and in this case the national language(s) must be prioritized. However, it became imperative for people, let alone countries, to use a language they can understand for trade (economy) and sociopolitical or cultural relations. This raised a number of problems including the fact that colonial masters’ language was upheld to the detriment of their once “slaves” language which they called a dialect. With the advent of democracy and improvement in international bilateral and multilateral relations, linguistic rights were recognized as part and parcel of other human rights, and subsequently, a win-win approach became reasonably what countries would expect in international co-operation. Today the reality is that English serves as a lingua franca in trade and co-operation but this is to some extent abusive to people’s democratic and linguistic rights. The study is predominantly qualitative although a survey is also used to balance the findings. Further research is recommended in the future especially on the same or similar topics in any other BRICS country. Keywords: BRICS; Esperanto; multilingualism; linguistic human rights; auxiliary language.
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Abstract The metal recycling industry is an important job creator in developing countries and is highly competitive in the provision of green jobs. The world’s financial mayhem sent shockwaves globally, and in particular, to the scrap recycling industry with dire consequences to metal trade. This impacted negatively on the economy. In KwaZulu-Natal, for instance, many companies had to retrench or put employees on short time in an attempt to contain the effects of productivity shortages based on the metal business impairment as a result of the global economic crisis. The aim of this article is to present the managerial perspectives when dealing with scrap recycling operations. Quality theories were revisited and formed the basis for the investigation. The rationale is to suggest solutions to a plethora of problems caused by the financial turmoil. A thorough review of literature was conducted. A mixed method was used ISSN 1728 - 9157 JMA – Issue I – 2017 [26] throughout the study and particularly during data collection phase. In total, 90.9% of the respondents revealed that their management followed the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industry (ISRI) specifications. The study posits that continuous improvement is paramount for successful secondary metal operations. Suggestions for future research include the need to conduct research of this magnitude at provincial and national levels. Keywords: Scrap metals, quality initiatives, metal recycling operations, health and safety, financial crisis, productivity, and global economic crisis.
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