Consultancy

Rud Pedersen Global Affairs enters sponsorship agreement with Africascan Media AB

africasc_admin — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:34:53 -0500

STOCKHOLM. The Swedish-Danish Public Affairs consultancy Rud Pedersen has formed a sponsor partnership with Africascan Media AB, the publisher of Africascan.com and Indiascan.net.

“These two newsletters are filling a gap in the market as they supply relevant news that is useful for companies entering two important emerging markets, Africa and South Asia. This kind of business information needs to be promoted as it inspires companies to do business in emerging markets”, says Roger Hällhag, MD for Rud Pedersen Global Affairs “we therefore see the value in sponsoring the publications and promote business with two regions, that – to the surprise of many – now are among the most dynamic”.

The combined services of Rud Pedersen and Africascan help to prepare the ground for large and small companies wanting to enter emerging markets. By reporting on business news and practices more companies will gain the necessary courage to move further away from their home shores to find new markets and new revenue.

Last month Rud Pedersen appointed Christer L. Pettersson, Africascan’s founder and publisher as its Director for South Asia. Mr. Pettersson, a former correspondent for Swedish business daily Dagens Industri and quality newspaper Dagens Nyheter, continues to oversee the development and publishing of the publications.

“Rud Pedersen, as political consultants, and the Scan-publications, have a common interest in finding ways for the Nordic public and private sectors to co-operate with Africa and South Asia. That is the raison d’etre behind our partnership. Another reason is that state sponsored trade facilitation agencies are not scouting around for all the business news that is around in these markets. So we do it for them”, says Christer L. Pettersson.

Said Mr. Hällhag:

“We deal with these exciting world regions, where growth and change happen right in front of your eyes. South Africa and India, in particular, are both Group 20 countries and both were relatively unaffected by bad debts. This suggests that growth will continue and these markets will become even more important for companies that otherwise operate in negative growth environments”.

Africascan.com’s monthly newsletter reaches some 4000 recipients, mostly decision makers and analysts dealing with government- and business between the Nordic countries and Africa.

Indiascan.net’s newsletter, about to be launched, will initially reach some 1000 decision makers in the Nordic countries and India.

Swedes teach urban planning in SA

africasc_admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 06:08:02 -0600

JOHANNESBURG. Next month (from Feb. 2 to 10), Sweden is sponsoring a workshop in urban planning in South Africa’s Port Elizabeth. It’s the second leg of a course put on by Swedish Hifab International AB, sponsored by Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

Twenty-five participants from developing countries will attend, including many Africans, including participants from Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mozambique.

South Africa has been chosen as a location for the course partly because many of the participants travel from countries in Africa. Hifab also has good contacts in South Africa who are able to put the participants in touch with good real examples of urban planning, explains Åsa Forsman, Hifab project leader for the course.

For example, the course administrator in Port Elizabeth has good contacts with the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, in Port Elizabeth, which will be able to give the students practical experience.

“And South Africa has also come a long way when it comes to urban planning, so that’s a good example show other countries,” Forsman tells Africascan.

The first phase of the program took place in Sweden last year, when the same participants first came study at Blekinge Institute of Technology, one of Sweden’s leading Universities in terms of Urban Planning, and then met up, in Stockholm, with Swedes working in the urban planning sector.

“There is a good context in Sweden for doing this,” says Forsman. “There are many independent municipalities. In Africa, often times, one, as a municipality, often doesn’t have the opportunity to affect urban planning much.”

The second phase always takes place in a developing country.

The course participants come from many different walks of life. For example, they work for NGOs, or government departments like Ministry of Public Works.

“The person doesn’t need to be the head of an agency but should be in a position in which he or she would be able to implement change, says Jenny Tholin, another Hifab project leader.

“Some of them have travelled the world as speakers, while others have never left their country,” she adds.

Some work in very rural areas, and come from really small places. So for those participants one of the most valuable experiences of the course is to spend time with the other participants, exchanging professional experience.

While on the course, the participants work on personal projects – or “projects of change” - to be implemented in their home region. “It’s not supposed to be an academic product,” says Forsman. “It should be something that realistically can be implemented.”

A good measure of the course’s success is what participants have been able to do afterwards, says Tholin. ...

Sweco to ensure Maputo water supply

africasc_admin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:35:58 -0600

JOHANNESBURG. Swedish Sweco AB has been hired to come up with a strategy to avoid water shortage in Mocambique’s Maputo. The rapid growth of the capital means that the city's water need will triple by 2027, says the consultancy company.

“Sweco has comprehensive experience working with water-resource planning in Africa. At the same time, we are now strengthening our local presence with an office in South Africa,” says Bo Carlsson, who heads up the environmental consultant’s branch in Sweden.

About 1.5 million people live in Maputo today and the city is growing by 3 percent every year. And already today there is barely enough water, says the company.

Sweco’s brief is to analyze how much water could be made available to Maputo by making use of three nearby rivers and what consequence that would have for others already using the water of those rivers.

In addition, Sweco’s assignment is also to study possibilities and make suggestions on how to reduce the water consumption in Maputo.

Sweco won the 4-million-SEK contract from government bodies in Moçambique, Swaziland och South Africa and is financed by development-aid money from the Netherlands.

Sweco upgrades Maputo electricity grid

africasc_admin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:57:08 -0600

JOHANNESBURG. Swedish Sweco AB is being contracted by Mocambique’s capital Maputo to advise the city how best to improve and expand its electricity grid.

The lack of electricity is still a big problem in many countries in middle and southern Africa – and makes the every-day lives of ordinary people more difficult and hampers businesses growth possibilities, says Sweco.

”During the past few years, Sweco has been contracted for similar assignments, among other places in Botswana, Ethiopia and Tanzania. The contract brief is to supply the populations in both cities and the countryside with functioning electricity systems,” says Anders Ståhl, who heads up this project at Sweco.

The contract from electricity company Electricidade de Moçambique is worth SEK 17 million.

Sweden makes point to meet Africa

africasc_admin — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:53:36 -0500

JOHANNESBURG. When the Swedish Embassy in Namibia closes on October 15, The Swedish Trade Council will move from its temporary quarters at the Embassy and into the House of Sweden in Namibia, in a nearby Windhoek location. While the Council won’t take over any consular duties when the Embassy closes down, its office will serve as the official Swedish presence in Namibia.

“We will keep the Swedish flag flying here,” Karin Sundby, Country Manager for The Swedish Trade Council in Namibia tells Africascan. “The Swedish presence will stay, but it will have a different focus.”

The new offices will be “a bit of a hub for Sweden,” explains Sundby. There will be offices for Swedish companies to rent, and space to host company functions and ‘Meeting Point’ events.

‘Meeting Point’ is the new buzz word for Swedish-Namibian trade relations.

The concept was born out of discussions between The Swedish Trade Council in Johannesburg, The Swedish Development Agency (Sida) and the Swedish Foreign Ministry (UD) to create a coordination mechanism – a virtual and physical Meeting Point – that can be used to stimulate ‘Actor Driven Cooperation’ between Namibia and Sweden.

(Actor Driven Cooperation being the other buzz word that fairly recently was introduced by the Swedish government in its re-branding of Swedish foreign development aid.)

The Namibia Meeting Point will partly be financed by the Swedish Trade Council and Sida, during 2008-2010, with Sida’s contribution to be phased out by 2010. “A precondition for long-term, sustainable partnerships is the gradual replacement of Swedish grant funding by other forms of financing, e. g. commercial investment and/or direct cost sharing,” says the Council’s development plan.

Under the Meeting Point concept, The Swedish Trade Council identifies potential sectors where Swedish and Namibian ‘actors’ could meet and work together, explains Country Manager Sundby. “This year, transport has been one of the focus areas,” she says.

Concentrating on the transport sector, the Council organized a trade summit in Johannesburg earlier this year, where Swedish companies importing wares to Namibia via South African ports could meet Namibian transport companies and officials from the Namibian port authority in Walvis Bay. The idea being to give Swedish companies the nudge, and the facts, to consider importing their goods directly through the Namibian port instead.

Although no specific contracts have come of this yet, the conference provided a forum for the players to meet. “We are creating a platform … We are pushing for meetings to take place,” she says. And since the meeting, some test imports to Walvis Bay have also taken place.

Other sectors the Swedish Trade Council has identified for potential cooperation are energy and mining. And next year, the Council plans to host several Meeting Point opportunities within the sectors, in both Namibia and Botswana. “Within the mining sector, there are big Swedish actors (companies) who are interested in both Botswana and Namibia,” she says.

Among other Namibian sectors drawing Swedish interests are heavy industry and tourism, especially outdoor activities such as game reserves and wildlife safaris.

In the energy sector, Sundby says she thinks there is a good chance that Swedish-Namibian relations will be kick-started this month already. On October 13-14, the International Council of Swedish Industry hosts a High Level Energy Conference in cooperation with the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs – and representatives of 12 Sub Saharan African countries will attend.

The overall objective of the conference is to identify sustainable solutions to the energy situation in Southern and Eastern Africa, particularly regarding access to electricity, by utilizing the private sector’s possibilities to contribute.

Sweco to review SADC water resources

africasc_admin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:13:44 -0500

STOCKHOLM. Swedish Sweco AB is about to embark on a three-year project mapping groundwater drought-vulnerability in Southern Africa, on behalf of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The inter-governmental organization SADC furthers socio-economic cooperation and integration as well as political and security cooperation among 15 southern African states.

The groundwater drought vulnerability project has a budget of about 8 million Swedish crowns (or 1.3 million USD), and will employ about 8 people. In addition to Swedes, locals from South Africa and Botswana will also be working on the project, Vice President Per Olof Seman tells Africascan.

Many countries in the SADC region are completely dependent on their groundwater for their water supply. So the project will measure the strength of the groundwater against drought. When the three-year survey is finished, solutions will eventually also be presented in regards to how to best manage and distribute existing water resources.

Climate change has put the focus on water management in Africa. “Trans-boundary water resources projects in Africa have become increasingly important and observed by international donors and regional organizations,” says Seman. Such organizations include the Nile Base Initiative (NBI); the African Development Bank (AFDB); the World Bank; and SADC, he adds.

“Water ministers have also at the world summit on the environment in Johannesburg 2002 formed AMCOW, African Ministers' Council on Water, who regularly meet to discuss and act on important water issues on the continent.

“Thus, the start of 2000 seems to be a strong water focus to meet the millennium target (which is) to halve the population (who live) with no access to clean water and proper sanitation,” explains Seman, who was stationed in Swaziland in the 80s as a lecturer for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) at the University of Hydrology, Irrigation and Soil & Water Conservation.

Seman was also stationed in Ethiopia for three years for Sweco, managing projects for the Red Cross, SIDA and various UN and government organizations in the soil and water field.

Sweco is a provider of international consulting engineering services whose engineers, environmental experts and architects are working together to contribute to a sustainable society. The Sweco Group has annual sales of about SEK 4.6 billion and 5,400 employees in ten countries, including Sweden, and currently has projects underway in some 80 countries worldwide.

From Sweden, Sweco runs an extensive project export business to countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

Managing Nile Water Resources

Sweco is just finishing up a water resource panning project in Sudan. As part of the Nile Basin initiative sponsored by the World Bank, Sweco researched how water- and natural resources around the Nile could be used more efficiently. “We check how much water is running… and how to distribute the water when there is a drought,” Seman explains. “To distribute the water a bit more equally … that’s not how it was earlier.”

Water resource planning is an important part of the fight against poverty in the country. Water and natural resources around the Nile are of vital importance for the sustenance of millions of people, according to Sweco. Climate change that result in drought and flooding; the rapid population explosion; and an increasingly intensive use of the water resources is a threat against sustainable development. But initiatives are under way to reduce the threats and increase cooperation between the countries that are sharing the water in the area, Sweco adds.

Financed by SIDA, the Swedish Development Agency, Sweco also planned the use of water and natural resources around Lake Victoria, to develop a sustainable plan for the area along the border-rivers between Kenya and Tanzania and Kenya and Uganda.

In other African water projects, Sweco was commissioned by Mozambique’s national water directorate DNA and funded by the Nordic Development Fund, to review the water conditions in the Umbeluzi river between Swaziland and Mozambique. The findings served as a framework for water management cooperation agreement between the countries.

Commercial Contracts in Angola

While many of Sweco’s projects in Africa are contracts won from development agencies, the company also has several projects paid for commercially underway in Africa.

Sweco is currently executing two Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in Angola, for a contact value of about 1 million USD. One is for a new airport in Luanda, and the other is for two oil spills in the country.

Sweco will also tender for an EIA for a new harbor and a diamond mines in North Angola, and will also participate in the refurbishment of water supply and energy production facilities that were destroyed during the war.

To grow its business in Southern Africa, Sweco has created a position in Pretoria. Swedish employee Richard Liden will open his office there in September. ”It’s an investment the company is making (to further explore the market),” Seman says.

Expats locked up in gated communities

africasc_admin — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:38:19 -0600

JOHANNESBURG. To protect their employees, Swedish companies often require that their (Swedish) employees, and their families, live in gated communities while working in South Africa. These communities are built as safe havens from the rest of, what’s perceived, as one of the world’s most crime-ridden societies.

“Ericsson makes it a condition (of the contract) that you live in a secure (i.e. gated) community,” says Cecilia Gewerth, who has been living in South Africa since 2004, when she moved here with her husband, an Ericsson employee.

Eva Karlberg of Consido, which provides expatriate advice to Swedes and others moving to South Africa, says gated communities also provide families with a quick-fix solution when making a new home in South Africa. ”The majority of the Swedish expatriates live in gated communities. And that’s not only for security reasons,” says Karlberg. “They get a social life in South Africa from day one,” she adds.

”It makes sense for a family with young children, coming here to live for a short period of time, to live in a gated community,” Karlberg adds. “It makes the settling-in process so much smoother.”

Of Johannesburg’s gated communities, many situated in the northern suburbs, most Swedish expatriates seem to be living in Dainfern, where Gewerth also lives. “Dainfern is clearly a safe gated community,” says Karlberg. “And so is Fourways Garden.”

Kyalami and Cedar Lakes are also popular gated communities in the area.

By arranging for your employees to live in a secure community, “you have then done the outmost to ensure your employees security,” says Karlberg.

But while increased security is obviously an upside, the welcoming aspects of such a cookie-cutter community also can lead to isolation from the rest of South African life.

With the lifestyle in those communities, many of the Swedish expatriates end up with little knowledge about how the rest of South Africans live, and miss out on some of the positives being offered, such as the rich culture, Karlberg explains. “Few have been South of Rosebank (a shopping mall situated in the posh suburbs north of downtown Johannesburg,)” she says. “They are isolated from the rest of society.”

As part of the Consido services, Karlberg and her business partner Gunilla Malmqvist offers a ‘ladies programme,’ through which they take spouses of expatriate employees out on the town to show them their new surroundings. There is often a resistance to come along outside the realm of what may be perceived as safe, Karlberg explains. “They hesitate if we have a planned outing downtown (Johannesburg),” she says.

When Gewerth and her husband first came to South Africa, they lived in a smaller gated community called ‘View Studios’ in Bryanston. Then they moved to Dainfern, where many other Ericsson employees also live, alongside many other expatriates.

“Had I been able to choose myself, then I would have chosen Greenside or Parktown North,” Gewerth says. “They are very cosy, older kind of neighbourhoods.”

However, Gewerth says she has gotten used to Dainfern life, and is appreciative of the secure environment. “Dainfern is considered the safest,” she says. “There is crime in Dainfern too, but not as much as in other places.”

And Gewerth has friends with personal experience of the crime on the outside of the Dainfern walls. “I have friends who had some very bad things happen to them,” she says. “They’ve now moved to Australia because of what happened to them.”

The couple was held at gunpoint in their own home, and the men who came to rob them threatened to kill the couple's two small children, she explains. “He thought she was going to be raped, and she thought he was going to die,” Gewerth says about the husband and wife.

While Gewerth says likes the fact that she can move about safely within the Dainfern compound, she says living behind walls took some getting used to. “It felt very claustrophobic… these high walls felt very foreign when you come from Sweden,” she says. But “I can run, I can walk, whenever I want to, around the clock.”

Dainfern is a large community, comprising 1800 houses, “so you don’t feel so fenced in,” she says. “You get used to living that way.” And Gewerth and her husband often walks and cycles on the outside of the walls of Dainfern as well.

And these days, Gewerth drives around on her own – everywhere. When she first came to South Africa, she didn’t have a license, but that didn’t stop her from exploring her surroundings. “I managed to find two black taxi drivers who took me everywhere,” she says. “They taught me a lot about life. I got a very good introduction to the South African society.”

At the time she said other Swedes warned her of her pursuits, telling her ‘that is very dangerous.’

The first friend Gewerth made here was a South African woman who was also a resident of View Studios… And through her, Gewerth says she met a lot of other South African friends. “I think (therefore) we have a wider social life than many of the other expats,” she says.

“For many it’s a security… to have other Swedes around,” Gewerth says. “But because people move often in this (expatriate) community, it’s important to have a wide social life.”

Gewerth who doesn’t have South African employment interacts with society here in other ways. For example, she does volunteer work, including helping out at a women’s shelter in Johannesburg’s downtown area Hillbrow, and takes Zulu classes.
She says that while gated communities, such as Dainfern, isn’t such a new idea, she says she feels the climate in South Africa has changed a bit since she and her husband arrived in 2004. She says the country that Mandela worked for is changing, and that it’s a country fertile for crime.

“You no longer talk about a rainbow nation; now you talk more about blacks and whites,” she says. “That’s not what Mandela worked for.”

“It’s a country with 50 percent unemployment, and no social security,… that creates a climate that leads to crime and makes the poorer get poorer,” she says. “It’s a worrying trend.”

However, on a more personal note, she says she generally feels very welcome and safe among the people in South Africa. “Of the people who live here; it’s the smallest percentage of people who are forcing everybody else to live behind walls and electric fences,” she says.