Area studies

• Attributable proven and probable mineral reserves now stand at 77 million ounces2 at 1.65g/t, increasing from 76 million ounces3 at 1.67g/t in 2022.
• Led by the Africa & Middle East region, Barrick has delivered a third consecutive year of organic gold reserve growth over and above annual depletion.
• Successful drilling programs at Lumwana drove the growth of proven and probable copper reserves by 330 thousand tonnes2 of copper in 2023.
• Looking forward to 2024, the regional mineral resource base is forecast to be a key driver of future growth.

• The largest components of the South African social grant system were introduced, or expanded to include the full population, in the 1990s.
• Since then, the system has evolved into one of the most comprehensive in the global south.
• In addition to their direct financial benefits, the grants have been found to have a wide range of positive effects.
• Across a series of recent studies conducted as part of an extensive research project in a rural part of South Africa, we have established that social grants can help older South Africans protect their cognitive health and live longer.

How we did the studies and what we learnt

• This rural campus of the University of the Witwatersrand was established to track and understand health and well-being in these rural environments.
• The Agincourt project is also a platform for other studies to collect more detailed information on certain community members.
• We also used data from Health and Aging in Africa: Longitudinal Studies in South Africa.
• In a second study we examined the impact of the older person’s grant, a public pension, on men’s later-life cognitive health.
• We also observed a “stair step” pattern, where cognitive function was progressively better for each extra year of pension eligibility.

Looking forward

Our results so far clearly point to the benefits of South Africa’s social grant programmes for older adults as they are currently structured. They suggest that as South Africa ages in the upcoming decades, sustained investments in these programmes will pay off in better health and well-being of the country’s most vulnerable older adults.
Molly Rosenberg receives funding from the United States National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (grant number R01AG069128) Lindsay Kobayashi is supported by the National Institute on Aging of the US National Institutes of Health (grant numbers R01 AG069128 and R01 AG070953).
Chodziwadziwa Whiteson Kabudula and Kathleen Kahn do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• This initiative built on pioneering work by a Wits team to establish a health systems development unit in a typical rural setting.
• Agincourt, in the Bushbuckridge district in rural north-eastern South Africa adjacent to Mozambique, was a microcosm of the neglected health and socioeconomic systems in rural areas during apartheid.

Why is this work so important?

• Key to this was establishing a relationship of mutual trust and understanding between ourselves and those communities.
• Drawing on early experiences with community-oriented primary care, we resolved to establish a longitudinal research and development platform.
• We gathered valuable data on age, sex and gender, household type and income – producing a robust population “denominator”.
• Today, the data generated over the past couple of decades is enabling work that was not possible in the early years.

In 2013 a project was launched to focus on ageing. Why?

• Ageing is not only about old people; it starts at birth, even earlier, because experiences at key periods influence a person’s life.
• People were dying at a younger age during the height of the HIV/Aids epidemic.
• For women living in Agincourt, life expectancy dropped from about 74 years in 1993 to around 57 years in 2005, a loss of 17 years.
• Today we see an increase in life expectancy thanks largely to the widespread uptake of antiretroviral therapies for HIV/Aids.

What stands out when you look back over 30 years?

• Bushbuckridge has become the land of the shopping mall.
• Even a person living in what previously was talked about as a deep rural area can now easily reach a mall by taxi or walking.
• The proportion of households with dwellings built with either brick or cement walls increased from 76% in 2001 to 98% in 2013.
• As a result we piloted a home-based testing option for middle-aged and older adults, with promising results.

• He is affiliated with the SA Population Research Infrastructure Network and INDEPTH Network of population-based health and socio-demographic information systems.
• Kathleen Kahn receives funding from the South African Medical Research Council, Dept of Science and Innovation SA, and the National Institute on Aging, USA.

• AI vision system vendor Micropsi Industries will showcase reflective disk picking and hook hanging applications at ATX West in Anaheim this week.
• Too complex to automate with traditional programming, these applications exemplify the cutting edge, variance-heavy solutions the company can solve with its MIRAI system.
• The main focus of the lab includes:
  Feasibility studies and innovative approaches: using Micropsi Industries' AI-based vision system, MIRAI, the partners explore and test novel robot applications.
• Tailored and complex automation challenges: manufacturing companies can present their specific automation challenges to the use case lab.