Day: June 1, 2024

In recent years, the development of China’s new energy industry has entered the ‘fast lane’.

The export of China’s ‘new trio’, namely: electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, and photovoltaic products has exceeded one trillion yuan in 2023.

As the world faces increasingly severe climate change, weak economic growth, and continued high inflation, China’s high-efficiency, high-quality, and cost-effective new energy products will bring new opportunities for global economic development.

China’s new energy industry will contribute to the global green transformation.

The development of China’s new energy industry has not only enabled the country to fulfill its own emission reduction commitments, but the export of its new energy products (all over the world) has played an important role in reducing global carbon emissions.

China’s wind power and photovoltaic products have been exported to more than 200 countries and regions around the world, and the export volume of new energy vehicles has reached 1.203 milli
on units in 2023.

China’s new energy products have greatly promoted the global popularization and efficiency of green energy, helping countries around the world to solve energy problems, achieve carbon reduction goals, and accelerate green transformation.

Its energy industry will support the stability of the global industrial chain. Currently, there is a serious shortage of high-quality production capacity in the world.

According to estimates by the International Energy Agency, global demand for new energy vehicles will reach 45 million units in 2030, 4.5 times that of 2022. Global demand for new installed photovoltaic capacity will reach 820 GW, approximately four times that of 2022.

The current production capacity for new energy products is far from meeting market demand, especially the huge potential demand in many developing countries.

As the world’s largest manufacturer of renewable energy equipment, China continues to provide the world with high-quality new energy products and has become an importa
nt force in stabilizing the supply chain and industry chain of the global clean energy.

China’s new energy industry will alleviate the pressure of global inflation.

China has started out early in the new energy-related industries.

Combined with her rich highly-skilled human resources and vast range of supporting industries such as raw material supply, parts manufacturing, complete machine assembly, and after-sales services, China is able to produce high quality new energy products with lower prices.

For example, a new energy vehicle manufacturer can find all supporting parts suppliers within a four-hour drive, significantly reducing the cost of that vehicles.

A report from the International Renewable Energy Agency shows that over the past decade, the average leveled cost of energy of global wind power and photovoltaic power generation projects has dropped by more than 60 per cent and 80 per cent, respectively.

A large part of this is attributed to Chinese innovation, manufacturing, and engineering.

How
ever, some countries have falsely accused China of ‘overcapacity’ in the new energy industry in an attempt to distort and discredit its economic relations with the world and maintain its monopoly in the global industrial and supply chains.

This fallacy that equates China’s large export of new energy products with ‘overcapacity’ is contrary to common sense and inconsistent with objective facts.

The behaviour that holds high the banner of green development while wielding the baton of protectionism is double standards.

To politicize economic and trade issue and arbitrarily link them to security will hinder global green transformation, shake confidence in climate change cooperation, and dampen the determination of enterprises to carry out foreign trade and investment cooperation.

China and Africa have complementary advantages and highly compatible demands in the green energy industry and have great potential and space for cooperation.

In recent years, China and Africa have continuously strengthened green ene
rgy cooperation, focusing on clean energy industry and the construction of power infrastructure, and have implemented hundreds of clean energy power generation and power grid projects, which has effectively promoted Africa’s green transformation and sustainable development.

China sincerely welcomes Ghana and all countries around the world to board the express train of her new energy industry development and work together towards a greener future for mankind.

Source: Ghana News Agency

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, has lost its absolute majority for the first time in three decades, the country’s electoral commission announced on Saturday following this week’s parliamentary polls.

With 97.51% of the votes counted, the ANC stood at 40.11% on Saturday morning, the IEC electoral commission said. The preliminary partial result shows a massive loss of power for the ruling party of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

For the first time in the country’s history, the party once led by anti-apartheid fighter Nelson Mandela will have to form a coalition.

Over the past 30 years, since the start of democracy in 1994, the ANC has always won an absolute majority, and governed the continent’s strongest economy alone.

The economically liberal Democratic Alliance (DA) came in at 21.71%, according to preliminary partial results, while the party founded only six months ago by former president Jacob Zuma, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), stood at 14.84%. The Marxist-influenced party Economic Fr
eedom Fighters (EFF) garnered 9.37% of the votes.

Political commentators largely attribute the ANC’s historic loss of power – nearly 17 percentage points since the 2019 parliamentary elections – to the new establishment of the MK, while also pointing to the party’s weak governing record.

The southern African country of 61 million people suffers from a struggling economy, mass unemployment, dilapidated state-owned enterprises, regular power outages, as well as high crime and corruption.

Members of 52 parties competed in the May 29 election for the parliament’s 400 seats. Once the results are announced, the newly elected parliament must form a government and elect a president within 14 days. Provincial governments were also newly elected.

Politically and economically, South Africa is regarded as the ‘gateway to Africa,’ a continent that is becoming increasingly important internationally due to its abundance of raw materials, needed for the global energy transition away from fossil fuels.

Although South Afr
ica maintains good relations with Western countries, the government is closely connected to Russia and China. The country has taken a strong pro-Palestinian stance in the Gaza war and has filed a genocide lawsuit against Israel before the International Court of Justice.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Nigerian military on Friday, vowed to respond fiercely to the recent killing of at least five soldiers by suspected members of an outlawed group in the country’s southeast region.

The five soldiers, murdered Wednesday, following an ambush by the outlawed Indigenous People Of Biafra at a military checkpoint in the Aba town of the southern state of Abia, were among troops deployed to enforce peace in the area and protect citizens, said Edward Buba, a military spokesman, in a statement on Friday.

In response to that ‘dastardly’ act, the military would be ‘fierce’ while bringing overwhelming pressure on the group ‘to ensure their total defeat,’ the statement said.

The suspected gunmen who carried out the attack, rode in three tinted sports utility vehicles, surrounded the military checkpoint, and sprang a surprise attack on the troops, killing at least five soldiers, the statement noted.

The military described the death of the soldiers as ‘a terrible loss,’ saying that it has commenced an investigation into t
he attack. ‘Accordingly, the military must retaliate against this dastardly act against troops,’ the statement added.

Source: Ghana News Agency

The Infrastructure Transparency Initiative, formerly called Construction Sector Transparency Initiative (CoST), has organised a training on infrastructure monitoring tools for selected personnel within the Sekondi Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly and the Effia Kwesimintim Municipality. 

The workshop highlighted Ghana’s legal framework supporting disclosure on projects, its compatibility with the CoST formal disclosure requirements at the subnational level, the CoST approach-core features, tools and standards.

The team, comprising planners, assembly members, media persons, persons with disability among other staff of the assemblies, were taken through the electronic infrastructure monitoring tools, step by step usage of the tools and social auditing skills.

Mr Isaac Aidoo, the CoST Manager, Sekondi-Takoradi, took the participants through the 67 proactive and reactive data points of CoST, which he encouraged them to use in disclosing project information to the citizens for effective citizen participation in in
frastructure delivery. 

Mr Aziz Mahmoud, CoST Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, said the integration of social accountability tools was to enhance impact and generate more success stories on the activities of CoST in the eight implementing entities under the project.

The team later undertook a field visit to test the tools. 

Source: Ghana News Agency

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the Flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), said the nation’s ability to make the most of the fourth industrial revolution is now more important than ever before.

The Government’s investments within the digital landscape ripened the grounds for Ghana to take full advantage of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution to attain exceptional excellence.

Addressing a packed auditorium of the Ho Technical University during his ‘youth connect’ programme in the Volta Region, Dr Bawumia said Ghana’s advancing digital landscape should encourage and facilitate a national progression towards competitive industrialisation.

He outlined the numerous investments in digital infrastructure, which should be the base for the launch of Ghana’s industrialisation.

‘I looked at the fourth industrial revolution where the world was going, and it is said that this world is going to be a digital world. We are moving in the fourth industrial revolution into the digital era, and Ghana and Afric
a, we missed the first industrial revolution, we missed the second and third, and we don’t have to miss the fourth…,’ he said.

‘We have to be ready, and I even believe that we can do even better in the fourth industrial revolution than many of the advanced countries that we see. It is possible.’

Dr Bawumia said digital IDs remained the foundation for any digital society, therefore the Government dedicatedly invested in the successful rollout of the Ghana Card, resulting in close to 20 million of the about 30 million population securely captured in a consolidated national database.

He touched on how mobile money interoperability had also been pursued to finality with the nation attaining 100 per cent access to financial inclusion, adding that with a world class digital address system, Ghana was well positioned for industrialisation in the new world.

The Vice President said the bundle of digital investments set the grounds for the development of an individual credit scoring system, which would be introduced
by the Government in the coming months.

‘Very soon I will launch an individual credit scoring system. It will enable us to get access to lots of commodities,’ he said.

The Government has established the ghana.GOV, a single point digital access platform for various payment and transactional services for the public sector, which the Vice President said had more than 1,500 non-fungible data (NFTs).

Dr Bawumia spoke of how the nationwide drone service for medical deliveries was second to none and coupled with the networking of hospitals across the country, health delivery had been revolutionised.

The present digital landscape greatly propelled the fight against corruption and through the national ID and other systems, hundreds of millions were being saved the nation in the area of ghost names on government payrolls, he said.

Dr Bawumia, who seized the opportunity to share with the youth his vision as flagbearer of the NPP, said a government under his leadership would transform agriculture on the commercial s
cale using digital technology, invest heavily in solar power, and reform Ghana’s tax regime.

Source: Ghana News Agency