Featured Post

CAREERTIP: Construction Professionals should start treating AI like a new colleague

Posted by on
Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t going away and construction professionals need to embrace it and start working with it as if it were a new colleague. Across all industries, including construction, the adoption of AI is rapidly gaining momentum. This is because technology has finally advanced to the point where it can handle the complex and unstructured data involved in construction projects. Experts predict that AI will continue to develop into what they call "composite AI." Construction professionals, however, have some concerns about adopting AI. These concerns include: Regulatory Framework: Construction professionals must ensure that they comply with all applicable laws and regulations. They must also protect themselves, as AI can be programmed with specific guidelines to produce desired outputs. Ethics : There are important legal and ethical issues to consider when using AI. For example, who is liable if something goes wrong? Who is responsible if a disaster occurs as
0

NEWS: China says African countries want industrialisation over infrastructure

Posted by on
African countries want China to shift its focus from building infrastructure on the continent to local industrialisation,China's top Africa diplomat said at a briefing on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in South Africa.

"African integration is already escalating and many African countries (have) asked China to consider (a) shift (of) our focus," Wu Peng, director-general of China's department of African affairs at its foreign ministry, said.

Wu said the change was needed especially considering the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which was launched at the start of 2021 and is intended to enable African countries to trade tariff-free in future.

China will talk through its plans for African industrialisation with African leaders on Thursday at a special roundtable on the sidelines of the Aug. 22-24 meeting of the BRICS bloc - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Between 2000 and 2020, Chinese lenders - mostly state-owned banks - agreed to lend $160 billion to African countries, according to Boston University.

Loan commitments soared after Xi launched the "Belt and Road Initiative" in 2013 to fund infrastructure in developing countries, but then dropped sharply from a peak of $28.4 billion in 2016 to $1.9 billion in 2020.

Wu said the "urgent" discussion of "emergency issues" couldn't wait until the next Forum for China-Africa Cooperation, a regular meeting between Chinese and African ministers due to take place next year.

He also said that investments by Chinese companies in Africa, especially from small and medium-sized companies, would increase.

"No matter what happens about the global economy, or Chinese economy, the trend in the relatively midterm or long range, (is that) Chinese companies are willing to take some risk (to) go into Africa," Wu added.

The source for this hardhatNEWS is Reuters

Comments

Post a Comment