Engineering News | Columnist | Keith Campbell | Wheels Within Wheels

https://staging1.creamermedia.com/

Rebecca Campbell

Rebecca Campbell is Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor for Engineering News and Mining Weekly.

Post-Brexit Britain, like China, recommits to globalisation

By: Keith Campbell 27th January 2017 The speech delivered on January 17 by British Prime Minister Theresa May on her government’s negotiating objectives for Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU) – “Brexit” – contained nothing really surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to what she and her key relevant Ministers... →

The great autocrat

By: Keith Campbell 16th December 2016 One of the highest points of my career as a journalist happened, back in 1994, when I interviewed then Cuban President Fidel Castro, in Pretoria. He was attending the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela. Castro was unquestionably a very impressive man. And there can be no doubt that, love... →

Trumped by the Hunger Games

By: Keith Campbell 25th November 2016 Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. Now that we have US President-elect Donald Trump I feel entitled to remind you that, in my previous column, when many were assuming that rival candidate Hillary Clinton would triumph, I wrote "don’t fool yourselves – Trump could still win”. But I can only... →

The US faces an ‘interesting’ election and SA should be prepared

By: Keith Campbell 28th October 2016 Well, we are definitely living in interesting times, at home and abroad. China, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, has adopted a nationalist assertiveness in the East and especially South China Seas. Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, has been even more assertive, bringing the Crimea under... →

Reassurance in a stormy world

By: Keith Campbell 30th September 2016 After a review that lasted some two months, British Prime Minister Theresa May gave the go-ahead for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant (NPP), which will be built by a partnership between France’s State-owned Électricité de France (EDF) and China General Nuclear Power (CGN), another... →

It’s all about sovereignty

By: Keith Campbell 29th July 2016 On June 23, the British people voted, by 52% to 48%, to leave the European Union (EU). The turnout was 72.2%. This was the highest turnout in an election across the entire UK since the 1992 general election. There were regional variations in the voting, with England voting to leave by 53.4% to... →

Serious stresses remain at local level, but will they affect the elections?

By: Keith Campbell 24th June 2016 As is no doubt by now well known, the Institute for Security Studies recently reported that its violence monitoring project had identified 2 880 public protests in this country between 2013 and 2015, of which 53% had been violent. These protests are often, if not nearly always, described as... →

SA’s relative economic decline undermines its diplomatic ambitions

By: Keith Campbell 27th May 2016 The news, released earlier this month, that Egypt had become Africa’s second largest economy, pushing South Africa into third place, did not create all that much of a stir. There were two good reason for this. The huge shock had been to lose first place to Nigeria, back in 2014, whose economy was... →

After so many delays, let’s not now rush the nuclear programme

By: Keith Campbell 29th April 2016 South Africa’s programme to acquire a number of new nuclear power plants (NPPs) seems to be suffering from yet another delay. The Requests for Proposals to the various groups interested in constructing these new NPPs that were apparently meant to have been issued on April 1 were not, in fact,... →

EDF’s travails at Hinkley Point have no relevance to wider UK nuclear sector

By: Keith Campbell 25th March 2016 Normally, I like to vary my columns from month to month, but I find myself, for the the second month in a row, impelled to remain with the topic of nuclear energy. The reason is the current difficulties being experienced by the predominantly (about 84.5%) French State-owned group EDF regarding... →

Reality undermines nuclear conspiracy theories

By: Keith Campbell 26th February 2016 Since December, when President Jacob Zuma, with unbelievable incompetence, abruptly and, to this day without giving any good or believable reason, dismissed then Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene and announced his replacement by little known and low ranking politician David van Rooyen, immediately... →

Going through the ‘car wash’

By: Keith Campbell 29th January 2016 By now, everyone is aware that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut its economic growth forecast for South Africa from 1.3% to 0.7%. Which is utterly dismal. Unless you are a Brazilian. Brazilians would love growth of 0.7% this year. What they’ll get, the IMF forecasts, is a contraction... →

Mind-bending anniversary in science

By: Keith Campbell 27th November 2015 This month, November 2015, marks the centenary of the unveiling of his General Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein. He did so in four short papers published in the Proceedings of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, while the First World War engulfed most of Europe, the Middle East and... →

Some catching up needed

By: Keith Campbell 30th October 2015 Over the years, I have been to quite a few defence technology and industry conferences in South Africa. Invariably, they include lots of fascinating presentations and show just how impressive and high-tech the South African defence industry is. It certain areas, South Africa is one of only a tiny... →

The China syndrome

By: Keith Campbell 25th September 2015 South Africa’s ruling African National Congress certainly seems to have a fixation on China. It is already well known that the foreign affairs chapter of the party’s NGC 2015 Discussion Documents (NGC standing for National General Council, to be held from October 9 to October 12), contains... →

Groups, alignments, relationships and China

By: Keith Campbell 28th August 2015 Have you heard of Mikta? No, me neither – until very recently. (If you had heard of Mikta, congratulations! You have been keeping a sharp eye on international developments.) Mikta is, of course, an acronym: it stands for Mexico, Indonesia, the Republic of (South) Korea, Turkey and Australia. It... →

Remember the Brics bank?

By: Keith Campbell 31st July 2015 Last week – on July 21, to be precise – the New Development Bank (NDB) formally came into existence in Shanghai, China. Created by the countries of the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) alignment – alliance or bloc would be too strong a word to describe the association – it... →

Disturbing decisions and disastrous diplomacy

By: Keith Campbell 26th June 2015 There can be little doubt that the discreditable episode of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir’s attendance at the African Union summit in South Africa earlier this month has been most damaging to this country. That Al Bashir is wanted for most serious crimes by the International Criminal Court... →

Of Presidents, Emperors and nuclear power

By: Keith Campbell 29th May 2015 My irritation has reached the point that I can no longer ignore it. And I’m afraid that my irritation is with some of my journalistic colleagues (no, not at Engineering News, as will soon become apparent). I may seem to be being rather pedantic, yet I do feel it does have symbolic importance.... →

Despite many woes, Nigeria continues to lead

By: Keith Campbell 24th April 2015 As is well known, at the end of last month, retired General Muhammadu Buhari defeated incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria’s Presidential elections. A northerner and a Muslim, Buhari won a majority of the votes in predominantly Christian States in the south west of the country, as... →

If you can’t beat them, join them

By: Keith Campbell 27th March 2015 China’s emergence – or, more accurately, re-emergence – as one of the world’s most important economies and influential States received a powerful endorsement earlier this month. In a move that surprised nearly everyone, the British government announced that the UK would become a founder-member of... →

Storming ahead, lagging behind: Nigeria and South Africa in the future?

By: Keith Campbell 27th February 2015 Earlier this month, global assurance, tax and advisory services group PwC published The World in 2050: Will the Shift in Global Economic Power Continue? From an African point of view, the most striking thing was the prediction that, by 2050, Nigeria would be one of the ten biggest economies in... →

Good and bad news for SA in international open government report

By: Keith Campbell 30th January 2015 To start: absolutely nothing justified the murderous attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo or on a kosher supermarket, in Paris, early this month. Both were expressions of murderous bigotry. (Alas, bigots are to be found everywhere, but, fortunately, most are not killers.) Of... →

Defence – time for Plan C

By: Keith Campbell 28th November 2014 Some weeks ago, three economists – Prof Jannie Rossouw, head of the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Economic and Business Sciences, Adele Breytenbach and Fanie Joubert, both at the University of South Africa – published (in the Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe) the latest results from... →

Brics without mortar

By: Keith Campbell 31st October 2014 The BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) group was formed in 2009 and became BRICS when South Africa joined the next year. Many saw it as a force that would transform the world, profoundly changing the global balance of power. This was a particularly credible view in the immediate aftermath of... →

The Chinese economy has been transformed more than realised

By: Keith Campbell 26th September 2014 There can be no doubt that the rise of China – or, more accurately, its return to its traditional place as one of the greatest powers in the world – remains a process that causes worldwide fascination. It is undoubtedly the most profound development of our time. And there is also no doubt that... →

Good times, bad times

By: Keith Campbell 29th August 2014 There has lately been some quite important news from, and affecting, the local defence industry. For example, it has been announced that, provided all the regulatory and other approvals are obtained, State-owned defence group Denel will acquire the entirety of BAE Systems Land Systems South... →

Brics bank formally created but won’t be operational for at least two years

By: Keith Campbell 25th July 2014 The leaders of the five Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries signed an accord officially creating the New Development Bank, more popularly called the Brics Bank, at the recent Brics Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil. The signing was the outcome of two years of negotiations.... →

Winging it: when it comes to VIP aircraft, appearances can backfire

By: Keith Campbell 27th June 2014 Recently, US aerospace group Boeing announced that a VIP version of the company’s 777-300ER wide-body airliner had been ordered by a customer whose identity was confidential. Boeing refers to this version of the aircraft as the 777-300ER BBJ, BBJ standing for Boeing Business Jet. It is believed... →

How the (newly) mighty are (apparently) fallen

By: Keith Campbell 30th May 2014 Barely had the announcement been made that Nigeria had leapfrogged over South Africa to become, by a substantial margin, the biggest economy in Africa, than the West African country was subjected to the great humiliation and embarrassment of having between 200 and 300 schoolgirls abducted... →

The changing of the guard

By: Keith Campbell 25th April 2014 It had been expected, but not, I think, so soon. And the scale was greater than expected. So it came as quite a jolt. I am, of course, referring to Nigeria’s rather dramatic leapfrogging of South Africa to become by far the biggest African economy. This followed the rebasing of the West African... →

Ghost of globalisation past

By: Keith Campbell 28th March 2014 Globalisation. Love it or hate it, it is the economically dominant phenomenon of today. As much free trade as possible encompassing as many countries as possible, to mutual benefit and enrichment. Many countries have enjoyed rapid economic growth. Of course, when something goes badly wrong in one... →

BRICS and BRICs – 2014 a key year

By: Keith Campbell 28th February 2014 This year is going to be an important year for the loose alignment of countries known as BRICS. Three of them are going to have national elections. That’s 60% of the group. If you want to be really strict, you could say that 100% of the indisputably democratic members of BRICS will go to the... →

Decline and fall?

By: Keith Campbell 31st January 2014 Late last month – on December 26 to be precise – the London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) released its 2013 World Economic League Table. This estimates the gross domestic products (GDPs) of the 30 largest economies today (plus six smaller but significant emerging... →

China increasingly capitalist under communist rule

By: Keith Campbell 29th November 2013 One of the most significant recent events, worldwide, was the meeting of the Third Plenum of the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China. A plenum involves the entire Central Committee of the Communist Party, which is composed of 205 full members and 167 alternate members. These are chosen... →

Discouraging investors

By: Keith Campbell 25th October 2013 On October 21, Brazil should have auctioned the first element of its rich new “pre-salt” offshore oil resources, the Libra oilfield. (“Should have” because this column was written before the scheduled date of the auction.) Libra is estimated to hold between 8-billion and 12-billion barrels of oil... →

Starship voyager

By: Keith Campbell 27th September 2013 On September 12, the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (Nasa) announced that its scientists had concluded that the Voyager 1 space probe had left the solar system and entered interstellar space. It is, in fact, now believed to have done so more than a year ago, in August 2012. The... →

Defence still needs to achieve openness in a peaceful democracy

By: Keith Campbell 30th August 2013 Well, at long last, the Seriti Commission of Inquiry into South Africa’s acquisition of modern fighters, fighter-trainers, light utility and maritime helicopters, frigates and submarines is now under way. Commissions of Inquiry, in many countries, are often portrayed as instruments whose function... →

About

Engineering News is a product of Creamer Media.
www.creamermedia.co.za

Other Creamer Media Products include:
Mining Weekly
Research Channel Africa
Polity

Newsletters

Sign up for our FREE daily email newsletter

Receive daily sector news alerts

More

Subscriptions

We offer a variety of subscriptions to our Magazine, Website, PDF Reports and our photo library.

Subscriptions are available via the Creamer Media Store.

View store

Advertise

Advertising on Engineering News is an effective way to build and consolidate a company's profile among clients and prospective clients. Email advertising@creamermedia.co.za

View options

Subscribe