Search Results for: Zambia

BY DEIRDRE MASON

FEW issues have proved as globally divisive as the ability to modify crops genetically. For years, a line has been drawn between the cautious European Union (EU) and the go-for-it United States, which has seen them at loggerheads over trading genetically modified crops.…

BY MARK ROWE

A FUEL marker so complex that it is all but impossible for thieves to replicate has been developed by scientists; the marker is so sensitive, it can identify illegal stolen fuel by using nanotechnology-based components.
This nanotech-based tracer, developed by Authentix, a nano-science company based in Dallas, Texas, uses hand-held LSX-based technology, and which has already been taken up by Luke Oil, Shell and BP in the United States.…

BY MARK ROWE, in London
NANOTECHNOLOGY has huge implications for the oil and gas industry, according to leading scientists who attended a conference on the impact of this cutting edge science on the environment at the Royal Society in London. They stressed the technology offers the prospect of carbon emission reduction, resource use minimisation, hazardous chemical substitution, the chance to dramatically reduce fraud, and pollution reversal techniques.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has drawn up plans to lend Australia-controlled Albidon Zambia Limited Euro 32 million (US$40 million) to create a new medium-scale underground nickel sulphide mine in Munali, southern Zambia. The money would also help Albidon build and operate an associated ore processing plant and related infrastructure and provide the company enough capital to continue other exploration and business activities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations University’s Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) has launched a research project in Zambia, to identify failings within its important non-ferrous metals sector, regarding sustainable development, general wealth and environmental management.

The Tokyo-based international higher education institution wants to publish findings generating “clear policy implications” for the Zambian government, noting while copper exports have increased from 201,000 tonnes in 2000 to 423,000 in 2005 – generating GDP growth averaging 4.8% per annum – in December 2005, 67% of the population lived on under US$1 a day.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has drawn up plans to lend Australia-controlled Albidon Zambia Limited Euro 32 million (US$40 million) to create a new medium-scale underground nickel sulphide mine in Munali, southern Zambia. The money would also help Albidon build and operate an associated ore processing plant and related infrastructure and provide the company enough capital to continue other exploration and business activities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) is planning to lend Euro 80 million to help Australian-Canadian company Equinox Minerals Ltd develop a new copper mine in Zambia, that is outside the country’s established copper belt. Equinox wants to invest Euro 709 million in a dual site mine, a processing plant and associated infrastructure.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

SUB-SAHARAN Africa’s biggest cotton producer Mali is mulling GM cotton trials, a development which could open up cheap cotton supplies for the textile and clothing trade.

But resistance from local farmers to high seed costs and tough times for existing GM cotton growers in South Africa – the only African country where GM is commercially grown – may mean that Africa’s potential as a key supplier is still some way off.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

AFRICA’S tobacco leaf producers are facing troubled times.

Instead of capitalising on crop and currency woes in rival Brazil, too many producers across the world’s poorest continent are battling drought and low selling prices.

Brazil’s problems should have opened a door of opportunity for leading African producers to claim back at least part of the world leaf market lost to south American and other producers when Zimbabwe’s crop collapsed amid the violent seizure of white-owned farm land.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

ONGOING recruitment of South African nurses to the UK is pushing South Africa’s already hard pressed public health system close to the brink of collapse and putting patient care at risk, the country’s lead nursing union and health experts have warned.…