Category: English

Source: APO

.

South Africa’s energy conversation is changing. With Eskom recording more than 400 consecutive days without load shedding, the focus for energy-intensive businesses is shifting from simply securing electricity to ensuring that energy supports industrial competitiveness, investment and growth.

For South Africa’s mines, manufacturers, smelters and other large power users, significant challenges remain. Grid capacity, rising operating costs, renewable energy integration, power quality and the financing of alternative energy solutions are increasingly influencing investment and operational decisions.

These issues will take centre stage at the EIUG Conference, taking place 28–29 October 2026 at The Maslow Hotel, Sandton, Johannesburg, focused on the challenges and opportunities facing South Africa’s energy-intensive users.

The next industrial energy challenge

Large energy users are already changing how they source power. Seriti Green’s 155 MW Ummbila Emoyeni wind farm, which began commercial operations in July 2026, is supplying Seriti’s mining operations through wheeling, illustrating how industrial users are increasingly combining grid electricity with private renewable generation.

At the same time, transmission capacity is becoming critical as more generation connects to the system. Recent collaboration between the Development Bank of Southern Africa and National Transmission Company South Africa is aimed at accelerating investment in South Africa’s transmission network.

The EIUG Conference programme reflects these changing priorities.

The session “Industrialisation Under Threat?” will examine whether current energy and market conditions are supporting or constraining South Africa’s mining, manufacturing and smelting sectors, including the impact of energy costs, self-generation and changing industrial demand.

A dedicated Grid Security discussion will explore ageing infrastructure, renewable penetration, frequency stability, voltage fluctuations and the roles of NTCSA, Eskom, municipalities and industry in maintaining a reliable electricity system.

Delegates will also explore renewable energy integration for heavy industry, including how solar, wind and hybrid energy systems can support the continuous power requirements of mining, manufacturing, metals and cement operations.

Financing these changes will be equally important. The programme’s Finance for Transition Masterclass will cover financing models, de-risking, storage economics and investment in industrial decarbonisation projects.

From energy security to competitiveness

South Africa’s improved electricity availability is an important milestone, but the next measure of success will be whether the country can turn a changing energy system into stronger industrial growth.

The EIUG Conference will bring together industrial energy users, policymakers, utilities, financiers and technology providers to examine what South Africa’s next phase of the energy transition means for the businesses that power its economy.

The question is no longer only whether South Africa can keep the lights on, but whether its energy system can keep its industries competitive.

Event details

EIUG Conference 2026
28–29 October 2026
The Maslow Hotel, Sandton, Johannesburg

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of VUKA Group.

https://apo-opa.co/3Vkbp2Z
https://apo-opa.co/4cNrCnj

Source: APO

.

The President of the Pan-African Parliament, H.E. Dr. Fateh Boutbig, and his delegation were given a tour of the Milli Majlis (Parliament) of the Republic of Azerbaijan by its Speaker, H.E. Ms. Sahiba Gafarova.

The delegation was briefed on the functioning and key aspects of the Milli Majlis. According to the Speaker, the Milli Majlis of the Republic of Azerbaijan consists of 125 deputies.

The Milli Majlis is a unicameral legislature, originally established on 28 May 1918, following the declaration of independence of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic under the name National Assembly. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was re-established on 26 November 1991 by a decision of the Conciliatory Commission of the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan.

The President of the Pan-African Parliament, H.E. Dr. Fateh Boutbig, is in the Republic of Azerbaijan for an official visit from 16 to 18 September 2026, at the invitation of H.E. Ms. Sahiba Gafarova, Speaker of the Milli Majlis.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Union (AU).

Source: APO

Speaking at the commissioning ceremony, President Museveni, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), said the investment reflects a principle that guided the National Resistance Army (NRA) from its early years: institutions should prioritise what is most essential and develop according to their means.

Quoting a Banyankole proverb, the President said, “The shape of the head determines the hairstyle.”

He explained that the principle means institutions should plan according to what they can afford rather than attempting projects beyond their means.

President Museveni recalled that when the NRA began its armed struggle, it had only 27 guns while facing an army of about 60,000 soldiers.

“That is why we did not make the mistake of the old armies of Amin and Obote. They started with remuneration, paying soldiers very well and building barracks for them,” he said.

The President said the NRA instead prioritised weapons and training, while welfare was progressively improved as resources became available.

“What a soldier needs, apart from food and some clothes, is weapons and training. Even if that is all you have, you can still fight,” he said.

He said the approach enabled the force to gradually build its capabilities, including acquiring advanced equipment, expanding its numbers and investing in military accommodation.

President Museveni also noted that the force had over time faced another challenge—corruption—and stressed the importance of ensuring that soldiers and commanders are properly accommodated in organised facilities.

He credited the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba with supporting efforts to channel resources towards military infrastructure.

“He would get that money which was used for operations and instead use it to build barracks. We were always insisting that commanders must stay in the barracks,” President Museveni said.

He said accommodating soldiers together was not only a welfare matter but also had a strategic dimension, particularly during times of conflict.

“Now that we have a bit of money, let’s address that,” he said.

President Museveni commended State House Comptroller Jane Barekye and the technical team involved in delivering the project, particularly Prof. John Stanley Ralph Senfuma, whom he said had done a good job.

Ms. Barekye thanked the President for entrusting the State House with the project and providing the resources required to complete it.

“Thank you, Mzee, for believing in us to serve and for the support in terms of resources to deliver this assignment in time. We promise to serve you at all times, Your Excellency,” she said.

She credited the successful completion of the project to teamwork among the State House Estates Department, consultants, contractors and SFC personnel.

Ms. Barekye said the Estates Department provided technical supervision, while consultants led by Prof. Senfuma were responsible for quality monitoring and ensuring timely delivery.

She also thanked the SFC for its cooperation and support throughout the construction process.

According to Ms. Barekye, the project started in 2023 and was completed in 2025, with the two dormitory blocks providing accommodation for 518 people.

The Commander of the Special Forces Command, Maj. Gen. Asaph Mweteise Nyakikuru, described the commissioning as an important occasion for the SFC and welcomed the President on behalf of the command.

“On behalf of the SFC, it is my honour to welcome you on this important occasion of the opening of these dormitories for our soldiers,” Maj. Gen. Nyakikuru said.

He said the investment demonstrates the commitment to improving the welfare and professional development of SFC personnel, adding that better accommodation contributes to the morale and effectiveness of the force.

Maj. Gen. Nyakikuru also highlighted other areas of investment within the SFC, including technology, command centres, situational awareness, coordination and decision-making systems.

He thanked the State House Comptroller and the teams involved in delivering the facilities and urged the personnel who will occupy them to take care of the structures and ensure their proper maintenance.

Prof. John Stanley Ralph Senfuma, the technical adviser to the project, said the team had been tasked with improving the living conditions of soldiers while ensuring that the facilities met the required standards.

“We have not compromised on the quality because our objective is to deliver work of a quality that should not shame you for having tasked us to do it,” Prof. Senfuma said.

He emphasised the need for regular maintenance and proper budgeting to preserve the facilities, noting that even high-quality buildings require consistent maintenance.

Prof. Senfuma also highlighted the local expertise behind the project, saying the construction was carried out entirely by Ugandans.

“This work has been done by Ugandans, 100 percent. There is misinformation among some people that you have to hire foreign labour. These people can work if they have proper management and support,” he said.

He thanked President Museveni for the trust placed in the technical team and said the project forms part of broader efforts to improve facilities serving Uganda’s security institutions.

Also in attendance were senior SFC commanders and State House administrators.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of State House Uganda.

Source: APO

.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) today convened the inaugural meeting of the High-Level Advisory Group (HLAG) on health financing, meeting at ECA headquarters in Addis Ababa in a closed, hybrid session that opened with remarks setting out the scale of the financing challenge facing African health systems and the mandate the HLAG has been asked to carry forward. The Initiative  supports African governments in mobilizing sustainable, predominantly domestic financing for health, building on the Tangier Declaration adopted by African ministers of finance, planning and economic development in March 2026 and is coordinated by ECA in collaboration with partners.

Opening the meeting, the ECA’s Executive Secretary Claver Gatete,  emphasized stronger coordination between health and finance ministries, alongside domestic resources, innovative financing and private investment. “There’s nothing that can be done without people. We need them to be healthy to be able to contribute.”

Mr. Gatete framed the HLAG’s work around the sharp contraction in official development assistance for health and the debt burdens narrowing the fiscal space available to African governments, and grounded its mandate in the Tangier Declaration, which frames health spending as an investment in human capital and economic resilience rather than a cost to be managed. 

Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, former Vice President of Nigeria and Champion of the Initiative, welcomed the High-Level Advisory Group’s constitution as the moment the continent’s health financing debate moves from aid dependency toward domestic ownership, with ministries of finance and health expected to work jointly rather than in parallel.

Joining virtually, Prof. Senait Fisseha, Vice President for Global Programs at the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, who co-organized the April 2025 meeting of African health ministers that launched the Initiative, echoed that shift, speaking to philanthropy’s role as catalytic rather than a substitute for government financing, to be judged by the institutions and systems it leaves behind rather than by grants renewed. 

Representing the African Union Commission Chairperson, Prof. Julio Rakotonirina, the Commission’s Director for Health and Humanitarian Affairs, set out five guiding areas identified by the AUC for the Initiative: domestic resource mobilization, efficiency, equity, financial protection and fiscal space, calling for alignment with Agenda 2063, the Africa Health Strategy and the Abuja Commitment, and pointing to the continent’s ongoing Ebola outbreak response as a reminder that health financing and health security cannot be treated separately.

Underlying these remarks was the urgency behind the High-Level Advisory Group’s work. External financing for health is contracting sharply, a decline accelerated by the closure of USAID and a broader retrenchment in concessional resources, leaving up to half of health budgets in many African countries dependent on external funding. Domestic revenue bases remain narrow, with an average tax-to-GDP ratio of about 16 percent across the continent, and out-of-pocket spending remains the primary source of health financing in roughly half of African countries, while debt servicing continues to consume fiscal space that would otherwise be available for health and other essential services. Five countries, Botswana, Ethiopia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Togo, are already engaged as an early-adopter cohort under the Initiative, with technical assessments under way and country-led financing solutions in development.

Following the opening remarks, the High-Level Advisory Group moved into closed deliberations for the remainder of the afternoon. The sessions brought together ministers and senior officials from across the continent, including from Guinea, Seychelles, and Togo, reflecting the Initiative’s emphasis on countries learning directly from one another’s experience as they build sustainable, domestically financed health systems.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

Source: APO

.

• The inpatient malnutrition ward of Mudug Regional hospital in Somalia has been operating beyond capacity, with over 1,300 children admitted in the first half of the year.
• Children are arriving to the ward later and sicker, after health facilities within communities have closed across Mudug region.
• MSF calls on donors, UN agencies, and health authorities to restore and scale up malnutrition treatment at the general healthcare level across Mudug.​

As healthcare and nutrition services close across Mudug region in central Somalia, and children arrive at hospital in critical condition after treatment closer to home has failed them, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling on donors, UN agencies and health authorities to restore and scale up malnutrition treatment at the general healthcare level across the region.

The inpatient malnutrition ward MSF supports at Mudug Regional hospital in Galkayo has 28 beds. Since early April 2026 it has been running beyond that capacity. Due to the overwhelming need for care, the team has continued to admit children despite the ward being full. At its peak in late May, almost twice that number of children were being treated there.

Between January and July, MSF admitted 1,389 children for inpatient treatment of acute malnutrition and medical complications, 809 of them severely malnourished. Between May and July, 1,322 children were admitted to outpatient malnutrition treatment, compared with 788 over the same three months in 2025 — an increase of nearly 60 per cent.

The caregivers of most of these children had already sought care somewhere else first. Of eleven children newly admitted over one week in June, ten had already attended a health facility closer to home. Their caregivers brought them to the MSF-supported hospital because there was no medication or therapeutic milk, or because their child was not getting better.

Sabrin Ahmed travelled 12 hours by car from Abudwak, around 270 kilometres away, after a doctor in a local hospital there told her he could not treat her 11-month-old, and after she learned that the therapeutic milk the child needed was out of stock in the town.

“By the time these children reach us, they are not only malnourished,” says Emmanuel Omale, MSF project coordinator in Somalia. “They have pneumonia, or measles, or diphtheria on top of it, which is much harder to treat and increases the risk of death. They are not arriving late because their families waited. They are arriving late because there was nothing left closer to home.”

“An inpatient ward is the last step in a chain,” says Omale. “It cannot replace the rest of it, and it is already full.”

Somalia’s humanitarian response plan was reduced to US$852 million for 2026 and was still less than one-third funded by July, according to UNOCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme has cut emergency food assistance from more than two million people to just over 600,000. More than 70 health facilities in Puntland, one of Somalia’s federal member states which covers the northern part of Mudug region, have closed.

Rainfall has been substantially below average across Mudug through 2026, and pastoral families have moved in search of water and pasture, taking them further from facilities that are still functioning.

MSF calls on donors, UN agencies and health authorities to restore and scale up malnutrition treatment at the general healthcare level across Mudug. That means providing functioning inpatient and outpatient treatment for acute malnutrition close to where families live, and uninterrupted supplies of ready-to-use therapeutic food and essential medicines.

Children treated early for acute malnutrition, in their own district, can avoid getting sicker, and the need for a hospital bed.

MSF will continue to admit and treat every acutely malnourished child who reaches Mudug Regional hospital, and we will keep looking for ways to add capacity. But an emergency ward cannot substitute for a health system. The severely sick children arriving now show the significant access to care that has already been lost.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Médecins sans frontières (MSF).

Source: APO

.

OCHA says that ongoing violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to drive displacement and complicate efforts to respond to the Ebola outbreak.

In the province of Ituri, local sources indicate that at least 60 civilians have been killed in attacks in Mambasa Territory since the start of the month, triggering fresh displacement.

In the neighbouring province of South Kivu, humanitarian partners report that clashes in Fizi Territory have displaced more than 40,000 people since July. In North Kivu, active fighting in parts of the province continues to force families to flee their homes.

These developments are unfolding in areas affected by Ebola, where insecurity and population movements continue to hamper surveillance and response efforts. As of 14 September, national health authorities had reported more than 7,300 confirmed cases and over 3,500 deaths.

Despite these challenges, the UN and its humanitarian partners continue to scale up their response. In North Kivu province, where Ebola cases continue to rise, three additional treatment facilities are under construction, while screening and control points are being expanded to support early detection.

UNICEF is also supporting the Ministry of Education in providing infection prevention and control supplies to 190 schools in outbreak hotspots in North Kivu. The World Food Programme continues to provide nutritional support to Ebola patients, caregivers and frontline health workers.

OCHA again calls on all parties to protect civilians and ensure safe, sustained and unhindered humanitarian access. Maintaining access to communities in need is essential to delivering life-saving assistance, supporting public health interventions, and bringing the outbreak under control.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

Source: APO

.

In Kenya, more than 883,000 children under age five now require immediate assistance as acute malnutrition worsens across the country, according to the new IPC Acute Food Insecurity and Acute Malnutrition Analysis. This represents an increase of over 20,000 cases in children since the last analysis published in March 2026 when the total stood over 810,000, underscoring a steady deterioration in national nutrition security. The data also revealed that an estimated 110,854 pregnant and breastfeeding women are currently experiencing acute malnutrition.

The humanitarian burden remains heaviest in Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs). A recent assessment report on the impact of 2026 long rains on food and nutrition security by the Kenya Food Security Working Group (KFSSG) found that, in these counties, an estimated 522,547 young children are acutely malnourished, including 123,856 suffering from Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), a life-threatening condition requiring clinical intervention.

“These figures are a clear warning that Kenya cannot afford to treat acute malnutrition as a standalone nutrition problem,” said Dancliff Mbura, Advocacy, Communication and Partnership Coordinator at Action Against Hunger Kenya. “Children and mothers are facing the combined effects of disease, poor diets, unsafe water and sanitation, food poverty, and reduced access to essential health and nutrition services. There is need for urgent and integrated action to identify, treat, and protect children and women before malnutrition becomes life-threatening.”

KFSSG found that the surge in acute malnutrition is driven by a complex convergence of systemic factors:

• Disease Dynamics: Disease outbreaks paired with reduced access to preventive health and nutrition services.

• Service Disruption: Limited outreach and constrained Integrated Management of Acute Malnutrition (IMAM) programs.

• Dietary Deprivation: Severe child food poverty and poor household dietary diversity.

• Environmental Pressures: Inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure combined with persistent household food insecurity.

Key Action Items for Emergency Response

To prevent further loss of life and stabilize affected communities, Action Against Hunger and its partners are calling on the Government of Kenya, international donors, and development partners to immediately execute the following measures:

• Integrated Outreach: Scale-up mobile outreach services in hard-to-reach hotspot areas to diagnose and treat cases early.

• Supply Chain Logistics: Ensure uninterrupted pipelines of specialized nutrition commodities for moderate and severe cases through improved procurement and rapid redistribution.

• Community Screening: Expand active case finding via Community Health Promoters and mass screening initiatives for early referral.

• WASH Interventions: Rapidly deploy safe water access, household water treatment, and sanitation infrastructure in high-risk zones.

• Surveillance & Coordination: Strengthen real-time nutrition tracking and multisectoral coordination to deploy resources quickly as new hotspots emerge.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Action Against Hunger.

Source: APO

Members of the Prison and Rehabilitation Service of the central office and in the Central Region voluntarily donated 45 units of blood to help replenish blood supplies at the National Blood Transfusion Service.

Ms. Gimja Gebrezgiabhier, coordinator of the program, said that the donation was conducted under the theme “Let’s Save Lives with Our Renewable Blood.” She explained that the members had been donating blood collectively for many years and had established a voluntary blood donors’ association in 2017, making annual donations since then.

Participants said that voluntary blood donation, besides saving lives and providing spiritual satisfaction, helps donors become more aware of their health. They also called on members of the public to follow their example.

Nurse Mehari Abraham, head of blood donation services at the National Blood Transfusion Service, commended the initiative taken by members of the Prison and Rehabilitation Service and called on the public, particularly the youth, to follow their example.

Nurse Mehari further noted that, as a result of growing public awareness, the National Blood Transfusion Service is meeting more than 80% of the blood requirements of hospitals across the country.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Information, Eritrea.