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Hollard gains East Africa foothold in deal with Kenya’s APA Insurance

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APA

It’s an exciting time for APA because the Hollard International partnership will open new doors and new avenues of growth for our busines

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, November 1, 2023/APO Group/ — 

Hollard International (https://apo-opa.info/3tUpGWD) will extend its footprint in Africa through the finalisation, on 31 October 2023, of an agreement to acquire a significant interest in Apollo Investments Limited, the holding company of Kenya-headquartered insurer APA Insurance.

This strategic investment, subject to regulatory approvals, gives Hollard International a presence in the East African market, supplementing its existing operations in Southern and West Africa.

Hollard becomes the second international investor in the Kenyan group, following Swiss Re, which acquired a stake in 2014.

For APA, the partnership gives Kenya’s second-largest insurer access to a larger market and expanded opportunities for growth, says Ashok Shah, Group CEO of Apollo Investments Limited.

“It’s an exciting time for APA because the Hollard International partnership will open new doors and new avenues of growth for our business. We’ll have access to substantial new expertise in classes of business such as Motor, Engineering, Marine and other specialist lines of insurance – which we believe will open up a number of profitable business opportunities.”

Expressing the significance of the partnership, Shah notes, “In addition to expanding our operations in Kenya, this venture will also enable us to strengthen our foothold in Uganda and Tanzania. Moreover, it positions us favourably to seize opportunities in the Ethiopian market once it becomes accessible.”

Pravin Kalpagé, CEO of Hollard International, is equally upbeat about the transaction, heralding it as “a vote of confidence in the Kenyan and East African markets”.

For APA, the partnership gives Kenya’s second-largest insurer access to a larger market and expanded opportunities for growth

He says, “Hollard International has been looking for an East African partner for some time, and APA ticked so many boxes – it has an established track record, an impressive value proposition with strong broker and customer relationships, and it shares our values around community, reliability and customer-centricity. All these elements resonated strongly with us.

“This investment continues Hollard International’s African model of finding strong local businesses and management teams with whom to partner in-country, rather than parachuting expatriates into a new market.”

He adds that exploring options in Francophone West Africa is next on Hollard International’s to-do list.

Kalpagé has also pledged to bring Hollard International’s model of “impact beyond insurance” to the East African market – as demonstrated in Mozambique and Ghana, among other countries.

Hollard Mozambique has developed risk-mitigation insurance products to protect smallholder and subsistence farmers – whose livelihoods are totally reliant on their crops – from extreme weather events through a partnership with local seed providers.

In Ghana, the MeBanbo microinsurance product arose from a partnership between Hollard Life, Vodafone Ghana and Sasai Fintech, a business of Cassava Technologies. It offers accessible, affordable life insurance cover, via an end-to-end digital platform, to the underserved Ghanaian market.

“This focus on being a catalyst for social impact in Africa is in line with Hollard’s business purpose, which is to enable more people to create and secure a better future,” concludes Kalpagé.

In South Africa, Hollard is the largest privately owned insurance group, offering both life and non-life product suites. Hollard International extends insurance solutions outside of South Africa through operations in Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia, Lesotho, Botswana and Ghana, with East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) being added to the list through the APA transaction. 

APA Insurance is owned by Apollo Investments Limited, which was founded in 1977 with a mission to provide “present and future peace of mind to the East African market and, in turn, enhance the quality of life for both our clients and loved ones”. Built on commitment, integrity and innovation, Apollo has since become one of the leading financial services groups in East Africa, with six companies under its belt.

Issued by Flow Communications on behalf of Hollard. 

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Hollard.

Events

Wuzhen Summit Puts Spotlight on Tongxiang’s Expanding AI Industry

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Wuzhen Summit

TONGXIANG, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 20 October 2026 – The 2026 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit will open on Nov. 2, bringing technology leaders, researchers and companies to the historic water town as Tongxiang firms expand AI applications from commercial cleaning and autonomous delivery to industrial control and data-center cooling.

For Tongxiang, long associated with the annual internet conference, the summit is also a chance to demonstrate how local companies are commercializing AI technologies for customers at home and abroad.
 




 

Ahead of the event, reporters visited seven Tongxiang-based companies working in robotics, intelligent vehicles, synthetic data, industrial automation, logistics and computing infrastructure.

Singapore Changi Airport earlier this year placed a fourth order for commercial cleaning robots from CenoBots, a Tongxiang-based company whose machines are used in airports, supermarkets, hospitals, factories and warehouses.

CenoBots has sold products in more than 40 countries and regions. Its customers include Changi Airport, British retailer Tesco, the University of Minnesota and pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. This year, the company supplied about 600 autonomous cleaning robots for Tesco Express stores across the United Kingdom.

“Cleaning robots are appearing in more and more settings,” said Shen Jizhong, CenoBots’ co-founder and vice president. “It is much like electric vehicles becoming a familiar sight on the roads — a trend that is gathering pace.”

The company’s machines are adapted to different settings. Hospital robots must move through busy corridors without disrupting patient care, while those used in supermarkets navigate around shoppers and carts. Factory robots operate near forklifts, and airport models must handle both fine debris in carpeted areas and small obstacles on smooth floors.

CenoBots continues to refine its robots through real-world testing, focusing on reliable operation and consistent cleaning performance across diverse environments. The company has expanded its research, development and production facilities in Tongxiang from approximately 3,000 square meters in its early years to more than 20,000 square meters. Local malls, hospitals and sports venues have also served as long-term testing sites.

While CenoBots focuses on service robots, TEEMO is developing the vehicle platforms that support autonomous mobility. The company makes drive-by-wire skateboard chassis and core components for autonomous vehicles used in last-mile delivery, patrols and logistics.

Its standardized chassis can be equipped with different vehicle bodies and hardware for specific uses. One of TEEMO’s strategic customers, autonomous delivery-vehicle maker Zelos, was selected for all lots in China Post’s centralized procurement program for 7,000 autonomous delivery vehicles.

TEEMO’s customers already span the United States, the Middle East, India and Russia, said Zhang Yongjian, the company’s director of operations.

“In some overseas markets, distances are long, populations are dispersed and last-mile delivery is difficult to staff,” Zhang said. “Autonomous delivery vehicles have strong potential there, and overseas business will become an important growth driver for us.”

Other Tongxiang companies are concentrating on the data and perception systems that allow machines to function in physical environments.

Dayan Technology, founded in Tongxiang in May 2025, provides synthetic-data and toolchain services for autonomous-driving and humanoid-robotics companies. It combines real-world data collection, digital twins and simulated training environments to help developers train robots before they are deployed.

Its wearable devices record human movement and interactions with objects. A haptic glove uses liquid-metal and pressure sensors to capture hand gestures, finger movements and contact force. A multi-camera headset records a user’s visual field, body posture, hand movements and the position of nearby objects.

Dayan said its tactile-perception model can process touch signals in milliseconds. The technology is intended to help robots do more than identify objects visually: They can learn how firmly to grip an item, recognize when it is slipping and apply force without causing damage.

Freetech is applying related sensing and decision-making capabilities to intelligent driving. The company develops intelligent-driving systems and 4D imaging radar for passenger and commercial vehicles, and said its technology has been selected for hundreds of vehicle programs.

Its ODIN AI platform supports products at different levels of driving automation. The radar is designed to complement cameras in heavy rain, fog, darkness and abrupt changes in light, including when vehicles enter or leave tunnels.

At its intelligent-manufacturing base in Wuzhen, Freetech is also using AI in production. An in-house system reads customer orders and calculates the components and materials needed for each production line before manufacturing begins. The company said the system has increased overall efficiency by more than 20%.

“Transportation combined with a specialized function will be an important direction for the future,” said Dr. Zhang Lin, Freetech’s founder and CEO.

Freetech sees potential applications beyond passenger vehicles, including robots, elder-care vehicles, mining equipment and agricultural machinery.

Beyond mobility, Tongxiang firms are using AI to address the complexity of industrial operations. Founded in 2019, Shuhan Technologies provides on-premises industrial AI for chemical plants, energy facilities and wastewater-treatment systems. Its AI-driven control layer continuously ingests data from central control systems and field sensors, identifies dynamic conditions and autonomously adjusts operating parameters in real time.

“Fundamentally, all industrial process challenges can be framed as control and optimization problems,” said Zhai Zhengjun, Shuhan’s Chief Technology Officer.

At a coal chemical plant with annual capacity of 1.2 million metric tons, Shuhan said its system reduced raw-material consumption by 6%. The company estimated that the deployment generated more than 176 million yuan, or about $26 million, in annualized economic benefits and reduced carbon emissions by more than 500,000 metric tons.

SENAD is targeting bottlenecks in logistics operations, including loading, unloading, sorting and pallet handling. It develops autonomous loading and unloading robots, as well as a multimodal logistics model called Robot Insight, for sectors including beverages, tobacco, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals and logistics.

Tongxiang’s AI sector also includes companies addressing the infrastructure needed to run increasingly powerful computing systems. SynthCool is tackling a basic constraint of the AI boom: heat.

SynthCool develops two-phase liquid-cooling systems to address the heat generated by increasingly powerful processors. Inadequate cooling can trigger thermal throttling, reducing performance and energy efficiency.

“Heat dissipation is infrastructure,” said Zhu Zhijiang, SynthCool’s general manager.

SynthCool’s two-phase cooling technology uses the latent heat of vaporization to remove heat from processors. The cooling fluid absorbs heat and boils into vapor, which is then condensed back into liquid and recirculated.

Depending on ambient conditions and system design, two-phase cooling can also support free cooling and reduce reliance on compressor-based refrigeration. Waste heat may be recovered where temperatures and local demand make reuse practical.

According to SynthCool, its technology supports heat dissipation of more than 3,000 watts per chip and heat flux above 250 watts per square centimeter. Under comparable cooling requirements, the system requires approximately one-third of the flow needed by conventional single-phase water-cooled cold plates, helping reduce piping requirements and pumping demand.

SynthCool’s portfolio includes two-phase direct-to-chip and immersion cooling solutions, along with distribution units and control systems for AI data centers.
 




 

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GE Vernova secures order aimed to strengthen regional energy capacity in Côte d’Ivoire

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GE Vernova 9E turbine technology to support reliable power delivery for industrial growth and millions of households

We are honored to support Songon Energies with our proven 9E technology for this crucial infrastructure project

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, October 20, 2026/APO Group/ —

  • Developed by Songon Energies S.A., Songon power plant is built to strengthen energy security and support future growing electricity demand in Greater Abidjan
  • GE Vernova 9E turbine technology to support reliable power delivery for industrial growth and millions of households
  • Infrastructure development expected to create up to 1,400 new jobs and drive positive community impact

 

GE Vernova (https://www.GEVernova.com/) announced today that it will provide the gas power technology for the new Songon combined-cycle power plant, located in the Songon region near Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Following the signing of financing agreements (https://apo-opa.co/3U5xBxI) last June, Songon Energies (https://apo-opa.co/483QKTX) – Ivorian development investment company focused on advancing energy infrastructure – selected GE Vernova to supply a 9E gas turbine and generator. The plant – to be built by the EPC contractor China Energy International Engineering Co., Ltd. – is expected to deliver 372 megawatts (MW), a capacity equal to the power needs of approximately 5 million Ivorian homes.

 




  

Download infographic: https://apo-opa.co/3UBqA7W

 

Supporting a growing national energy landscape. Côte d’Ivoire has made significant progress, reaching an electrification rate of 94.3 percent by 2024 through initiatives like the “Electricity for All Program” (PEPT), in line with the national goal to achieve universal electrification and improved power quality by 2030. Despite these gains, the nation faces an annual demand growth rate of 10 to 15 percent and rural areas still require expanded access. In this energy landscape, this new power plant will help fill a critical gap. The facility is projected to represent up to 12 percent of the country’s total installed base upon its scheduled 2029 operational launch, playing a vital role in meeting these ambitious development targets. Furthermore, the project is expected to generate up to 1,400 new jobs, creating economic opportunities for the local community.

 

“The Songon Energies project is designed to strengthen energy security and support future growing electricity demand growth in the Greater Abidjan region while reinforcing the country’s position as a regional energy hub in West Africa,” said Mr. Wang Xiaoming,  Deputy General Manager (Acting CEO) for Songon Energies. “The facility is expected to ease energy pressure on the Abidjan metropolitan area, providing a reliable foundation for the development of skilled workers, the growth of industrial zones, the expansion of small and medium-sized enterprises, and a tangible improvement in the daily lives of millions of Ivorian households. We selected to work with GE Vernova for this new power plant, because of our deep trust in their efficient technology and their constant, proven presence in Côte d’Ivoire, which gives us great confidence in the long-term success of this facility.”

 

“We are honored to support Songon Energies with our proven 9E technology for this crucial infrastructure project,” said Joseph Anis, CEO of Gas Power in Europe, Middle East, and Africa at GE Vernova. “Our commitment to power plant operators is rooted in delivering advanced gas power technology that provides the reliable, dispatchable energy necessary for long-term growth and positive community impact. Beyond the turbine island, we look forward to applying our expertise in powering the HV sub-station, providing digital software, and long-term services to support the broader energy system in its goal to enhance grid stability, operational efficiency, and local prosperity.”

 

GE Vernova’s commitment to Côte d’Ivoire remains steadfast, built upon a long history of supporting the nation’s electrification goals. The company’s footprint in the country centers on a large installed base, key power transmission hardware, digital software deployments, and long-term service contracts. GE Vernova utilizes its global expertise and local presence to help power plant operators increase power capacity, while supporting a more secure and reliable energy future.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of GE Vernova.

 

 




 

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Energy

Algeria’s Hydrocarbons Minister Joins MSGBC 2026 as Sonatrach Eyes Senegal Partnerships

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Etu Energias

Algiers and Dakar are preparing an energy agreement as Sonatrach pursues partnerships across the MSGBC basin

DAKAR, Senegal, October 19, 2026/APO Group/ –Mohamed Arkab, Algeria’s Minister of State and Minister of Hydrocarbons, will join the speaker lineup at MSGBC Oil, Gas & Power 2026 in Dakar this December, bringing one of the continent’s most senior energy ministers to a forum focused on investment and regional cooperation. His confirmation serves as a bridge between one of Africa’s longest-standing oil and gas producers and one of its newest, paving the way for greater collaboration across upstream exploration, infrastructure and power.

 




  

Algerian cooperation with MSGBC nations has already gained momentum. Minister Arkab hosted Senegal’s Minister of Energy and Petroleum, Dr. El Hadji Abdourahmane Diouf, in Algiers on October 4. The two-day visit produced a cooperation agreement between Senegalese utility Senelec and Algeria’s Sonelgaz, while Petrosen and Sonatrach held discussions on a potential partnership spanning upstream exploration and infrastructure.

Senegal’s government has said the visit sets the stage for an intergovernmental agreement to be signed in Dakar during MSGBC Oil, Gas & Power 2026. The two national oil companies first signed a memorandum of understanding in 2022, and Minister Arkab discussed putting it into effect with Senegal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Cheikh Niang in July.

The potential partnership comes as MSGBC countries look toward the next phase of upstream development following the start of production at Senegal’s Sangomar oil field and the cross-border Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) LNG project. Regional priorities are now shifting toward advancing the next generation of projects, including Senegal’s Yakaar-Teranga gas development and Mauritania’s BirAllah discovery, while attracting fresh exploration investment across the wider basin. Moving these opportunities toward development will require capital, technical expertise and partnerships with established producers – creating scope for deeper cooperation with countries such as Algeria and companies such as Sonatrach.

Minister Arkab’s participation at the upcoming conference also arrives as Algeria advances its own exploration strategy. The event convenes shortly after bidding closes for the Algeria Bid Round 2026, which the National Agency for the Valorization of Hydrocarbon Resources launched in April with seven exploration blocks on offer. Submissions are due November 26, and Sonatrach expects to finalize contracts with successful bidders by the end of January 2027. Exploration and production will absorb three-quarters of the $60 billion Sonatrach intends to spend between 2026 and 2030, as the company works toward lifting annual gas output to 200 billion cubic meters within five years.

With a bilateral agreement potentially headed for signature on the conference sidelines, Minister Arkab’s participation promises to be one of the defining moments of the 2026 edition and reinforces MSGBC Oil, Gas & Power’s standing as the region’s leading meeting point for governments and investors.

Organized by Energy Capital & Power and held under the High Patronage of Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, MSGBC Oil, Gas & Power 2026 takes place December 1–3 in Dakar and will convene heads of state, ministers, investors, operators and development partners from Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea-Conakry. Explore opportunities and secure your participation at www.MSGBCOilGasandPower.com.

 

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Energy Capital & Power.

 




 

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