Foresight Africa: Top Priorities for the Continent 2020-2030

The new year 2020 marks the beginning of a promising decade for Africa. Through at least the first half of the decade, economic growth across Africa will continue to outperform that of other regions, with the continent continuing to be home to seven of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Collective action among African and global policymakers to improve the livelihoods of all under the blueprint of the Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union's Agenda 2063 is representative of the shared energy and excitement around Africa's potential. With business environments improving, regional integration centered around the African Continental Free Trade Agreement progressing, and the transformational technologies of Fourth Industrial Revolution spreading, never before has the region been better primed for trade, investment, and mutually beneficial partnerships. The recent, unprecedented interest of an increasingly diversified group of external partners for engagement with Africa highlights this potential. Despite the continent's promise, though, obstacles to success linger, as job creation still has not caught up with the growing youth labor force, gaps in good and inclusive governance remain, and climate change as well as state fragility threaten to reverse the hard-fought-for gains of recent decades.This special edition of Foresight Africa highlights the triumphs of past years as well as strategies from our experts to tackle forthcoming, but surmountable, obstacles to a prosperous continent by 2030

An inquiry into the problems pertaining to the acquisition of servitudes for transmission powerlines based on a life-cycle approach

M.Sc.Electrical energy has evolved to become the main source of energy as it fuels the processes in industry and other sectors. Electricity, generated at a power station, has to be transmitted to the users through transmission powerlines. Strips of land, in the form of servitudes, need to be acquired for the erection of these powerlines. Because this land passes through agricultural areas, residential areas and industrial areas which do not belong to the power utilities, these utilities need to acquire this land. The inability to acquire these strips of land is proving to be a problem for Eskom; in fact, it has been dubbed one of Eskom’s greatest risks (Seabe, 2010, Personal Comment). Hypotheses in respect of the problems pertaining to the acquisition of servitudes for transmission powerlines have been formulated with the supposition being that, by nature, these problems are not only biophysical, but also socio-cultural. Those classified as sociocultural problems are dependent on human behaviour: it is people who grant servitudes, and also people who own the land on which the servitudes are required. These problems, if not identified and addressed, have the potential to manifest at a later stage, causing conflict between the proponent and the landowner and in turn resulting in the electricity supply in South Africa being sporadically curtailed. It is therefore imperative that the problems pertaining to the acquisition of servitudes be investigated and analysed, and that methods be devised from the lessons learnt through investigating these problems. These methods, if implemented correctly, should minimise conflict between the landowners and Eskom and subsequently avert the risk of Eskom being unsuccessful in acquiring servitudes. These methods should also facilitate an improved, effective and successful servitude acquisition process, which will in turn ensure a continuous supply of electricity