Essential infrastructure development under way at R84bn Modderfontein project

[dualmeister]

R84bn investment from Hong Kong :erm:

Hong Kong-listed property development group Shanghai Zendai is well into the first phase of its R84-billion Zendai Modderfontein development, in north-eastern Johannesburg, telling Engineering News Online on Thursday that several electrical substations had already been erected on the sprawling 22 km2 property, while a first-phase road extension project was currently under way.

Company spokesperson Ann Sun said construction work started in December on the first phase of the road network, which would see the extension of the existing Centenary road from the R25, or Modderfontein road, to the northern K113 provincial road.

This phase, budgeted at R50-million, was expected to take about nine months to complete.

Thereafter, work would start on extending the K113 road to connect with the newly lengthened Centenary road, which would provide an important east-to-west road linkage across the development.

While unable to immediately provide the name of the road contractor, Sun confirmed that it was a South African company and that it had been awarded the contract following an open tender process that concluded in November last year.

The company, meanwhile, spent R160-million to establish several electrical substations on the property last year, with more planned for erection later this year.

Sun added that the group was currently in the design phase of a residential development, which it expected to launch to the market in the first half of the year.

Shanghai Zendai’s efforts were now largely focused on updating its “rough conceptual plan” to a more detailed master plan and it had already commissioned several global and local planning firms to work collaboratively in this regard.

“We have also commissioned a company to do the economic study to accompany the planning process so that the new master plan will reflect the needs of the market.

“We will also consult with the City of Johannesburg to ensure that the master plan is acceptable both to the public and to government,” she outlined.

Further, in accordance with its rolling investment model to offload some of the property to third parties for development, the group had already sold a portion of the property to a private residential developer and another to an unnamed educational institution.

“[These] developments will form part of the overall R84-billion investment,” Sun noted.

Shanghai Zendai first introduced its ambitious project at a launch event in April last year, stating at the time that the development, dubbed Zendai Modderfontein, would house 100 000 residents and businesses that would employ a further 200 000 people on completion in 2024.

The new “ecofriendly and low-carbon” urban district in Johannesburg would encompass the functions of a conventional city, including finance, trade, logistics, commerce, exhibition, manufacturing, education, healthcare and housing.

The development, covering a floor area of 12-million square metres, would be located some 20 km from the original city centre, in Johannesburg, 7 km away from Sandton and 8 km from OR Tambo International Airport, in Kempton Park, and would boast a Gautrain station linking the project to other financial hubs and transport networks.

Shanghai Zendai founder and chairperson Zikhang Dai said at the launch that the group planned to spend R3-billion on the development of Zendai Modderfontein over the next three years, with a view to creating a “great city”.

The company said it would release more information on project progress in the coming week.

Source

 

[Ancalagon]

I hope they are going to allocate 50% of that to either running diesel generators or building small power stations.

 

[mister]

...telling Engineering News Online on Thursday that several electrical substations had already been erected on the sprawling 22 km2 property, while a first-phase road extension project was currently under way

Umm? Do they know they have to build their own power station?

 

[lived666]

between this and the new megamall being built in waterfall midrand, a lot of construction going on during these times of energy crisis

 

[The_MAC]

They are planning to run an under-sea power cable from China..

 

[mister]

They are planning to run an under-sea power cable from China..

That would be ****ing amazing!

 

[dualmeister]

Can joke, but it runs deeper.

How China is taking over Africa

You've seen the headlines: China is taking over Africa, and the United States and Africa's former colonizers in Europe have lost sway.

Mostly, it's true. Throughout Angola, Ghana and the Congo, some of China's largest companies are building roads and railways. They're backed by Chinese banks, and they'll pay off their loans in kind through mining and oil deals. All the while, small-scale Chinese entrepreneurs are moving to Africa, opening pharmacies, trading furniture or buying land to farm, much as earlier generations did in Southeast Asia and North America. African governments are welcoming them with open arms, and for the most part, so are Africans themselves.

Earlier literature on China's rise in Africa pushed us past the easy — and flawed — paradigm of China as Africa's latest "colonizer." But in his forthcoming book, China's Second Continent, Howard French argues the Chinese who migrate to Africa do so as individuals motivated by simple, familiar dreams of opportunity.

A former China bureau chief for The New York Times and veteran Africa correspondent, French traveled the African continent, speaking Mandarin with Chinese men and women who had grown weary of the daily grind in their homeland. The characters French encounters are risk-takers: sometimes foulmouthed, often lucky and universally ambitious.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

OZY: What has lured a million Chinese people to Africa?

French: Many Chinese people came here in the first wave because they were part of a work crew that built a big project somewhere. They typically came with absolutely no idea of what they were going to find on the ground, what Africa would be like. Some people that thought this place would be horrible, [with] hostile people or dangerous animals and diseases, find out it is also fairly pleasant: "I feel comfortable navigating in this society. And most importantly, everywhere I look, there are opportunities to make money." They come and see opportunity everywhere they look.

This is the beginning of … the creation of a massive diaspora of a trading and investment class of people of Chinese extraction.

OZY: What's the incentive for China?

French: Today, the opportunism is a capitalist opportunism. It's China looking out at the world, I think very astutely, starting 10, 12, maybe 15 years ago, saying: We have the possibility of having powerful companies that can compete on the big stage with the best of the rest. The West [isn't] engaged in any terribly dynamic or interested way in Africa, economically speaking, and therefore this is an opportunity for us to come in and allow our companies to expand, to build international expertise, to build markets, etc.

OZY: Why do you focus on the individuals?

French: This is the beginning of a historically important phenomenon: The creation of a massive diaspora of a trading and investment class of people of Chinese extraction. If you think about the economic history of the world in the last 500 years, big trading and investment diasporas — wherever they may be from — tend to have a huge impact on the subsequent political-socioeconomic [climate] of their destination countries.

Big projects completed by big, government-owned companies dominate the headlines about the advancing Chinese agenda in Africa. But history teaches us that very often reality is more meaningfully shaped by the deeds of countless smaller actors, most of them for all intents and purposes anonymous. – Excerpt from China's Second Continent

OZY: Is there something different about the Chinese people who decide to come?

French: They come from very ordinary places in China, where cosmopolitanism is not their experience. To get out to Africa — which is psychologically as remote a place as you can get — means almost by definition you're already dealing with a very special group of people.

These Chinese people, whether or not they knew what they were getting into (and usually they didn't), had a very special kind of pluck about them, a very special willingness to get out of the mainstream of their own society and to search and explore the world, to take some risks.

OZY: So they come to Africa to escape something back at home?

French: We have this image of China getting rich, the number of billionaires. China is in fact a really tough place for most Chinese people. So it's not such a stretch to imagine why 1 percent or 3 percent of the people of that country would say, "Hey, there's got to be some better way. There's got to be some place where things aren't so tough or where there's more readily available opportunity for me."

Time and again, Chinese told me they did not fully realize how oppressive things were at home until after they had left. Living in Africa, they said, it felt as if a lid had been removed from a giant pressure cooker. Now, they could breathe. – Excerpt from China's Second Continent

OZY: Is it true that the Chinese take an apolitical approach to the continent?

French: Apolitical in the sense that they don't project a system of values onto the country that they're dealing with. They are very political in terms of reading the scene in each country they go into… .The Chinese are interested in catching up with the West, which has an incredible legacy of investment in the continent.

OZY: Is this just temporary? Are Chinese just here to get rich and go home? Or are they truly immigrants, wishing to stay?

French: None of the Chinese I met while reporting this book said to me, "I plan to go home in three years," or whenever. The main thing for them is: "I've got to make this thing work." They don't want to go back to China, having spent three years or eight years or 15 years in Africa, and not having anything appreciable to show for it.

USA today

 

[Thor]

I don't like this.

Not looking forward becoming a factory Land in 10 years if not sooner

 

[TelkomUseless]

The Chinese have bought Africa... look at Zambia (copper for infrastructure)...

 

[Paul_S]

Faced with the options of becoming another war-torn African country or being taken over by communist overlords who know how to keep the wheels turning, I think I'll take my chances with the latter.

 

[Thor]

Of topic slightly, but is Eskom broke now ?

 

[Ockie]

Of topic slightly, but is Eskom broke now ?

mmm I think the article said 21 days.....but that was a few days ago, so lets say another 18 days to go.

 

[rebel998]

Of topic slightly, but is Eskom broke now ?

Apparently so. Don't know how they managed to get that done in such a relatively short time as they did.

 

[dualmeister]

Invasion is coming.

Chinese naval base for Walvis Bay

DISCUSSIONS are under way at the 'highest levels' regarding plans by the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy to build a base at Walvis Bay in the next 10 years.
According to reports in the Chinese media, Walvis Bay will be one of 18 naval bases that will be established in various regions: Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Mynanmar in the northern Indian Ocean; Djibouti, Yemen, Oman, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique in the western Indian Ocean; and Seychelles and Madagascar in the central South Indian Ocean.

“These three strategic lines will further enhance China's effectiveness in taking responsibility for maintaining the safety of international maritime routes thereby maintaining regional and world stability,” the media reports said.

Other naval bases are: Chongjin Port (North Korea), Moresby Port (Papua New Guinea), Sihanoukville Port (Cambodia), Koh Lanta Port (Thailand) Sittwe Port (Myanmar), Dhaka Port (Bangladesh), Gwadar Port (Pakistan), Hambantota Port (Sri Lanka), Maldives, Seychelles, Djibouti Port (Djibouti),

Lagos Port (Nigeria), Mombasa Port (Kenya), Dar es Salaam Port (Tanzania) and Luanda Port (Angola).

Ministry of Defence spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Monica Sheya confirmed these reports to The Namibian yesterday, saying that once a decision is made, the ministry will inform the nation.

“We have read about it. I believe it is being discussed at the higher levels, but that's all I can say now. Once a decision has been made, we will be sure to inform the nation about it, but we cannot say more yet,” Sheya said.

China plans to build replenishment, berthing and maintenance bases in foreign countries through mutually beneficial and friendly consultations. Furthermore, the reports state that the Chinese navy will not establish “US-style” military bases, yet it will not exclude the establishment of a number of so-called 'Overseas Strategic Support Bases' in accordance with prevailing international rules.

China has several major infrastructure development and resource extraction interests in Namibia. It also has a satellite tracking station near Swakopmund.

The decision for strengthening China's national armed forces in line with the country's international standing to meet the needs of its security and development interests, was taken at the Chinese Communist Party congress.

China's navy boasts of a personnel strength of 255 000 servicemen and women, including 10 000 marines and 26 000 naval air force personnel. It is the second largest navy in the world in terms of tonnage, behind only the United States Navy, and has the largest number of major combatants of any navy.

 

[Thor]

mmm I think the article said 21 days.....but that was a few days ago, so lets say another 18 days to go.

Apparently so. Don't know how they managed to get that done in such a relatively short time as they did.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what this means now as a colleague of mine said maybe this will be where China offers to bail eskom out....

In turn for some ownership especially with their plans to develop in SA

 

[nightjar]

That would be ****ing amazing!

It would be ****ing amazing if the cable was not stolen in the first week.

 

[Rubberpigg]

Chinese ‘New York of Africa’ Plan Is ‘Ambitious,’ AECI Says

by Kevin Crowley

February 24, 2015


(Bloomberg) -- Shanghai Zendai Property Ltd.’s plan to develop a suburb northeast of Johannesburg into what Chairman Dai Zhikang termed the “New York of Africa” is “extremely ambitious,” said AECI Ltd., which sold the land.

Shanghai Zendai bought the 1,600-hectare (3,954-acre) plot for 1.06 billion rand ($91 million) from AECI, a South African chemicals and explosives manufacturer last year and announced plans to build a financial center and 35,000 houses to rival Johannesburg’s current business hub of Sandton.

“The problem is a lot of it is agricultural land,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Dytor said by phone Tuesday. “You have to open it up, you have to put in roads, sewage lines, water, et cetera. Of course, you have to do that and fund it yourself.”

The area will become a hub for Chinese firms investing in sub-Saharan Africa, Shanghai Zendai Chairman Dai Zhikang said in November 2013. Modderfontein used to house an explosives factory that opened in 1896 to support the mining industry that’s the source of a third of all gold the world has yet produced. The company will spend 80 billion rand on the development over the next 15 years, he said.

“In reality, they will use the low-hanging fruit that is available for office parks and residential housing,” Dytor said. “To build another Sandton in Modderfontein right now is extremely ambitious,” he said, referring to Africa’s biggest financial district in northern Johannesburg.
Special Dividend

AECI declared a special dividend after the land sale. The payout of 3.75 rand a share is in addition to an ordinary dividend of 2.25 rand a share for 2014, itself a 7 percent increase from 2013, AECI said in a statement on Tuesday.

Profit attributable to ordinary shareholders climbed 16 percent to 1.1 billion rand in 2014 from a year earlier. AECI’s sales from its chemicals and international operations mitigated a drop in income because of last year’s five-month platinum strike, Dytor said.

“That’s the diversification of the group,” he said. “We’ve purposely decided not to be in any one geography or any one mineral.”

AECI surged as much as 8 percent, the most since November 2012, to 132.45 rand and traded 5.3 percent higher at 129.19 rand by 12:33 p.m. in Johannesburg.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-24/aeci-makes-special-payout-after-84-million-land-sale-to-chinese

Plans for the city include a central business district, churches, a library, hospital and medical facilities, a sports and international conference centre, schools, and low-cost housing, among others.

Chairman Dai Zhikang said in 2013 that the project would transform the property into a "New York of Africa".

"It will become the future capital for the whole of Africa," he said.

The new city is also being built with technology in mind, with PCCW Global, the Hong Kong-based operating division of telecom company, HKT, set to provide technology and telecommunications services for the project.