You can pick a pair up for under a grand. Just… pay no attention to the Takealot listing markdown. There is no universe where Honor’s Choice Pro cans were ever worth R3,700. A thousand bucks is too expensive. We’d even prefer to see these closer to the R600 mark. That said, there is some upside.

Look the part

There’s no denying that Honor’s budget headphones look good. They’re based on the style Sony and other premium headphone brands have popularised in recent years. The ear cups are generous enough, with good-looking padding. Said padding is covered with a rather thin artificial leather and the sponge pads are also just a touch too soft, but they look decent.

The build is entirely lightweight plastic. We’ve seen budget cans do this better, with thicker, more durable plastics, but they’ll serve for what we have in mind for them. Comfort is enough story, though. The Honor Choice Pro on-ears are uncomfortable from the outset. That’s not true for every person, but we’re rather generic in terms of head size and shape.

The twist-and-fold cup design just never seems to angle enough to make these sit comfortably on a skull. If you’re fond of leaving an ear exposed, the problem becomes even more pronounced. Too much tightness across the head would have made it all unbearable. Thankfully, Honor has missed that misstep. For R900 bucks or less, this is a mixed bag. Good looks, poor fit — we know how we’d rather have these overs arranged, and it’s not this way.

That’s fair

Honor’s Choice Pro headphones pack 40mm drivers, active noise cancellation, and transparency modes. We’ll get into the software/mic-assisted functions in a second. First — the sound. The headphones have a soundstage that’s just a little too far out for comfort, leaving some tracks feeling washed out. There’s a decent amount of low-end, but no consistency in its implementation. Clean separation of lows, mids, and highs is sometimes a feature, but other occasions will see your audio turn to mush.

Noise cancellation, as promised by Honor, is supposed to offer an adaptive experience. In practise, we kept the cancellation off. Audio playback was measurably worse when ANC was active. Transparency mode, while better, was also heaved over the side in favour of staying as far away from the microphone processing as we could possibly get. ANC overcompensates, intruding into tracks in ways the tech was never supposed to. Odd volume dips, uneven playback, even the soundstage rotating around our heads in a disorienting manner were the result. Bass pretty much disappears with ANC on, to boot.

Having it shut down may be a blessing, though, since you’ll get the best of the Honor Choice Pro’s battery that way. Honor reckons you’ll get 80 hours with ANC off (40 with it on), but actually maintaining it is up to you. There’s no automatic shutoff that we could see, but they’ll disconnect to save power that way. Uptime is pretty impressive though, even with the need to manually turn them off. We only chewed through about 10% of the battery during the review.

Honor Choice Headphones Pro verdict

It’s very easy to look at these over-ears and scoff. Even at the sub-R1,000 price point, there’s still a fair amount of utility here. The clue’s in the name. Not the Honor Choice Headphone Pro name. The other one. We’d consider the Honor VZ Sport Mate Headphones Pro disposable if we were frequent gym goers. There’s plenty of battery, in case you forget them in the boot. The lightweight, low-cost build makes them perfect sacrificial cans when you don’t want your ‘proper’ headphone ruined by sweat. And if someone happens to drop a kettlebell on them, you haven’t lost much.

The post Honor Choice Headphones Pro review – Sometimes you have no other Choice appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

Praise the Amazon overlords

Subscribers to Amazon Prime (or even Prime Video) are then given access to the current catalogue, all of which can be claimed to keep. The forever kind. Even after your subscription comes to a grinding halt, those games will stick around in your library. ‘Til Sony and the rest find a way to get rid of ’em in a couple of years, anyway.

It’s no Tomb Raider, but Amazon’s round-up for August is still worth checking out. The highlight of the bunch is SteelRising, an action-RPG from Nacon, while Airship: Kingdoms Adrift looks like one of the few dark spots to grace the list. Most of the titles for August have already made their way into our library, but four games still remain.

You’ll need a few things to claim ’em all. We’ve already mentioned the Amazon Prime subscription, which will set you back R60/m. Cheaper if you get it for the whole year. Then you’ll want to create accounts for Good Old Games (GOG), the Epic Games Store, and Legacy Games in turn. You’ll need them when claiming certain titles.

Available now:

• Pyramids and Aliens: Escape Room (GOG)
• Airship: Kingdoms Adrift (Epic Games)
• Right and Down (GOG)
• Hiveswap Friendism (GOG)
• Weakless (GOG)
• Zoria: Age of Shattering (GOG)
• In Sound Mind (Amazon Games)
• Mystic Academy: Escape Room (GOG)
• FRAMED Collection (GOG)
• Steelrising (Epic Games)
• Poly Vita (Legacy Games)
• Escape Academy (Epic Games)
• Space Grunts: Chrono Shard (Epic Games)
• Terraforming Mars (Amazon Games)
• Space Grunts 2 (GOG)
• XCOM: Chimera Squad (GOG)
• Space Grunts (GOG)

Landing later this month:

• Royal Romances: Forbidden Magic (Legacy Games)
• Spray Paint Simulator (Epic Games)
• Havendock (Amazon Games)
• Clash: Artifacts of Chaos (Epic Games)

The post Amazon Prime gets another batch of ‘free’ PC games this August appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

Don’t flip out; it’s got Google Play

That would be the HMD 2670 Flip 4G, according to @smashx_60 on X, who not only shared a whole host of specs for the device, but also gave us a look at the upcoming device. It looks mightily similar to the Nokia 2660 Flip. That makes sense. While not technically a successor to the Nokia 2660, it’s certainly an eerily close relative. It’d be more accurate to call the 2760 Flip a follow-up to last year’s HMD Flip 2660. It’s… a bit of a mess.

Not that it matters. We loved our time with Nokia’s take, and we doubt it’ll be any different here, especially if HMD can keep the price down. That shouldn’t be difficult, seeing as the 2760 Flip offers a 2.8in LCD for the main display, and a smaller 2.77in outer screen. It’ll get the Unisoc T310 SoC, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage.

Read More: HMD is bringing back the Nokia Lumia lineup’s design, and possibly the software interface

It’s about everything you’d expect a follow-up to a ‘dumbphone’ to be. Except that this one is a little smarter. It’s tipped to run Icon OS 13, which is based on Android 13 Go. That’s quite the step-up from last year’s device, which ran KaiOS, and enables the new 2670 Flip 4G to operate the Google Play Store. We’ll still take Snake, thanks.

If it’s anything like the Nokia phones of yore, the 2,500mAh battery should be more than enough to keep it chugging along day-to-day. It’s got the modern amenities like USB-C, a microSD slot, and even not-so-modern features like a 2.5mm headphone jack. All that’s left is the 5MP rear camera, complemented by a VGA front-facing camera. There’s no word on when or where we can expect to see the device turn up just yet.

Source

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There are two versions of the package, one of which comes with a folio cover. The other (for R9,250) adds in a keyboard so there’s less need to scribble on the E-Ink display. Either way, there’s a stylus included so scribbling is encouraged.

A better name for the B1051 Ultra?

As for what you’re getting in terms of hardware, Bigme is making a big deal of the device’s battery. At 6,900mAh, it certainly should handle note-taking operations for quite some time. The 10.3in Kaleido 3 ePaper display doesn’t draw much power, but the MediaTek Dimensity 1080 processor will be more power-hungry than Amazon’s counterparts.

The rest of the specs put the B1051 Ultra into tablet territory, even if the display doesn’t completely agree. Available is a 6GB/128GB version at the prices previously mentioned. The company also makes an 8GB/256GB version, but you’ll have to route through the Chinese storefront (and extra hoops) to acquire that one. Either edition supports microSD cards up to 2TB. If you’re using it as a sketchpad, bigger might be better in terms of upgrades there.

Android 14 is present, running behind the company’s Bigme System 5.0 skin. The B1051 Ultra supposedly supports screen refreshes of up to 50fps, thanks to what Bigme calls its xRapid screen tech. It still won’t match a modern Android display, but it should make functions beyond reading and writing more bearable. Maybe don’t try gaming or Netflix, though.

Finally, there’s also an AI function — because of course there is. It’s called BigmeGPT, and it’ll translate, summarise, and answer questions. Hopefully about the PDF documents you’re editing and not the nature of the universe. That would just be weird.

The Bigme B1051 Ultra is obviously after the Kindle Scribe’s lunch money. Relatively speaking, it has a shot, too. The stylus/cover/keyboard version is priced (before SARS gets its cut) below the standard-issue Scribe with stylus and cover.

The post Bigme’s 10.3in B1051 Ultra E-Ink notepad will set you back R8,100 without the optional keyboard appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

If you’re after a detailed (official) overview, though, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. The company only has a page to let you “register your interest” live for South Africa for the present. Orders open tomorrow, on 18 August, so we expect the full product details to go live then, too. Still, we’ve got most of what you’ll need right here.

B10 transforms driving?

Leapmotor calls its B10 compact SUV a REEV or Range Extended Electric Vehicle. The selling point here is that the 1.5l internal combustion engine (ICE) doesn’t actually drive the wheels. It’s electric all the way, while the ICE setup “acts solely as a generator, producing electricity when the battery level requires it.” It’s an interesting take, one that provides for 86km of claimed battery-only range and a total range (per 50l tank) of 900km. There’s also an all-electric version of the B10, but it doesn’t appear to be launching.

The B10 REEV’s work is done by a 186kW electric motor working with an 18.8kWh battery to keep drivers going. There should, in theory, be more interior space since the traditional motor replaced a massive battery pack. It also sort of misses the point of an EV. Still… petrol engine, EV torque… someone’s going to find this SUV fun to drive.

The cabin hosts a 14.5in touchscreen display (passengers only-we assume), remote unlocking, remote climate control, and charge scheduling. Most of this is facilitated by Leapmotor’s app. There are also “[h]igh levels of comfort and convenience equipment,” the specifics of which we’re supposed to wait another day for. You don’t have to wait to find out that there are seven airbags and seventeen Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, though.

The Leapmotor B10 hybrid arrives in two trim levels. The Style version starts at R500k, while the Design option begins at R550,000. The company isn’t very explicit so far about the difference between the two. The interior/exterior trim for the Design can be customised, with five exterior colour options and two interior selections available to buyers. Whether there’s more remains to be seen. We can’t promise that local features will match international spec, but it’s out there if you can’t wait.

The post Leapmotor’s B10 hybrid EV lands in SA starting at R500,000 appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

Ferrari doesn’t usually putter about with electric vehicles, but even it can be persuaded to dip its toes into unknown waters every so often. It did so back in May when it unveiled the Luce, a new EV designed by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, which attracted flak for straying from tradition. That didn’t stop Ferrari from selling a “tailor-made” model at a charity auction this weekend. It fetched a handsome R646 million ($40 million).

The buyer wasn’t identified, which is probably the smart move. Sotheby’s, the company behind the auction, stated that the proceeds would go to the Ferrari Foundation’s educational programmes. Don’t think too hard on it, yeah? It’s worth noting that the buyer paid more than 35 times the car’s actual value. Refer back to two sentences ago.

The buyer managed to score a unique finish and ‘bespoke’ parts in the process. It’s also the company’s first production car for the Luce. Whether that makes it actually worth the effort and doubloons is irrelevant. The Luce in question is quite literally valued at R646 million, likely bringing even more attention to the car.

Source

Citizen’s R8,100(ish) Citizen Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master wristwatch will Force you to wear it

Darth Vader doesn’t want you to wear this Citizen wristwatch, but you needn’t go to the dark side to show your allegiance to Lucas’ epic. Well, you can, with the Imperial Battle version, but the Citizen Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master makes it entirely clear whether you’re a Rebel or part of the Empire.

The fact that it has the company’s J810 Eco-Drive quartz movement, excellent visibility in darkness (Luke loves sneaking around in the shadows), a feature powered by ambient light, and an engraving on the rear of the stainless steel case reading “I am a Jedi like my father before me” is almost an afterthought.

Odds are you’re going to be more enthralled with the watch’s face, which features Luke’s silhouette, the Rebel Alliance logo, and the Jedi Master’s lightsaber hue. After folks are done staring at that, you can point out all of the other easter eggs.

Source

Your patience has finally paid off with the Zelda-themed Switch 2

If there’s one thing you can count on Nintendo for, it’s a custom Legend of Zelda-themed skin of whatever console it’s currently punting. The Nintendo Switch 2 is the latest such console to get the Zelda treatment — this time with a bit of Ocarina of Time flavouring. Ninty has yet to confirm the special edition, but we don’t really need it to.

Photos of the console, as well as a custom Pro Controller 2, appeared online last week, courtesy of @CentroLeaks on X. The leaker couldn’t quite snap images of the console itself, but rather the retail packaging you can expect to see on the shelves when it eventually launches. Which, according to the leaks, will be in November.

Honestly, with a 40th anniversary badge slapped on the box, we expected… more. The Joy-Cons are the laziest of the lot, featuring a slightly darker hue with gold and green accents — because Zelda, obviously. The dock isn’t all that much better, slapping a Triforce onto the front and calling it a day. That’ll be R15,000, please. It may have its issues, but the console does at least herald the return of The Ocarina of Time. We can get behind that.

Source

Battlefield 6 goes free-to-play for a week

If you haven’t had the chance to play Battlefield 6 yet, this week is a great time to jump in. Starting tomorrow, 18 August, EA are starting a week-long free trial that will run until next Tuesday (25 Aug). For the duration, players will have access to several game modes, including Conquest, Breakthrough, Escalation, Casual Breakthrough, and the new Top Gun: Carrier Strike mode.

The action will take place across four maps: Wake Island, Tsuru Reef, Cairo Bazaar, and Hagental Base. If the cinematic trailer is anything to go by (they usually aren’t, but still cool to look at), you’ll meet CGI Miles Teller and CGI Charles Parnell.

The good news is that any progress you make will carry over if you’re convinced enough to buy the game. The only catch is that to play the regular multiplayer for free, you’ll have to download Battlefield Redsec, the series’ free Battle Royale game mode that came out eight years too late. So you’ll need to make sure you have enough space. Did somebody say Danger Zone?

The post Light Start: Ferrari getting wealthier, Luke getting force-ier, Zelda getting Switch-ier, and Battlefield getting free-ier appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

In Greek mythology, King Midas got exactly what he asked for, but at the cost of everything else he valued. In the famous story of The Monkey’s Paw, a man’s wishes are granted through terrible and unforeseen routes.

These stories feel newly relevant with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) agents: systems to which we can give a goal, then leave it to work out how to get there.

As AI systems become more autonomous, they are coming to resemble wish-granting genies: finding routes and using methods we did not imagine from incomplete instructions.

This problem, known as AI alignment, was foreseen in theory as early as 1960. It has hovered in the background of AI research ever since – but as recent events have shown, the alignment problem is now both real and urgent.

Achieving the goal but missing the point

During a recent OpenAI cybersecurity evaluation, frontier AI agents were asked to solve some benchmark test problems. They broke out of the testing environment, reached the internet, inferred that another company might hold the solutions, and attacked its systems.

This is an extreme example of “specification gaming”: achieving the measurable objective while defeating the purpose of the task.

The incident shows how intermediate, or “instrumental”, goals can become dangerous. The AI systems did not “want power”, but gained access, resources and freedom as means to reach the final goal (solving the test problems).

Finding loopholes

The same problem has appeared in mundane settings. In Australia, a user asked a personal AI assistant to book gym classes.

The agent found the gym’s booking software did not actually enforce the restrictions it showed to human viewers. So the agent booked further ahead than it “should” have been able to, and when asked to move its user up a waitlist, it cancelled somebody else’s reservation.

The user had not told it to do this. Persistent AI can quickly find loopholes and pursue routes its human users never intended.

Adding more rules might seem like an easy solution: don’t hack third parties, don’t cancel other people’s bookings, don’t do anything harmful. These may help, but we cannot predict every route a capable agent might discover. And even a clear rule depends on understanding when it applies.

The context problem

In a third recent incident, Anthropic reported cyber evaluations in which agents were told they were inside a simulation. But they were mistakenly given access to real systems.

One model noticed evidence it might be on the open internet, but reasoned the systems could still be part of the exercise and continued attacking. The context had changed, but the agent stuck with its original task.

Context can fail in reverse too. During the OpenAI incident, Hugging Face – the company attacked by OpenAI’s agents – tried to use frontier AI models to analyse what had happened.

But the safety guardrails on the AI models blocked the requests, because they couldn’t tell the users were trying to defend against attacks rather than commit them. The safeguards were well-intentioned, but without enough context, they produced behaviour misaligned with the user’s legitimate intent.

So alignment depends on context and authority. How much judgement should be built into an AI model by its maker? And how much should come from a separate supervisory system? And finally, who should control that supervision: the maker, or the organisation or country responsible for the outcome?

AI guarding AI

One response to the first question comes from AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio. His Scientist AI proposal aims to build a powerful supervisory AI system to watch over agents. Instead of pursuing goals itself, it would estimate what is true and what consequences a proposed action might have, acting as a guardrail around more agentic systems.

In wish-story terms, before letting the genie “out of the bottle”, the supervisory AI would ask it to explain how it plans to grant the wish. Then it would ask a human or another AI to inspect the plan carefully.

Anticipating every surprising strategy is hard. But once a plan says “cancel somebody else’s booking”, recognising the problem is much easier.

Who watches the watcher?

But can we trust the supervisory AI? It can still be wrong.

Alignment cannot depend on one AI becoming perfectly trustworthy. My colleagues and I at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, are working with the Australian AI Safety Institute on one aspect of this broader challenge.

At CSIRO, we envisage combining AI supervisors with software rules, cyber-security controls, human strengths, monitoring, reversible actions, and human approval for critical steps. The aim is to correlate different sources of evidence rather than trust any single approach.

This is a “sociotechnical systems” approach to AI safety and alignment, rather than just a technical one.

Control is another question. Organisations and countries may need to govern these supervisory systems themselves instead of leaving them to an overseas AI provider.

The old wish stories gave people one chance to get the wish right. With AI, we can do better: check the goal, inspect the means, constrain what the system can do, watch what it does, and retain sovereign control over the power to intervene and stop it.

• Liming Zhu is a Research Director, CSIRO
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

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The Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration mission, or CADRE, will land on the side of the Moon facing Earth as part of NASA’s IM-3 launch, planned for late 2026. These rovers will spend roughly two weeks mapping the terrain as a self-guided team. No joystick will control them, and no human will approve each turn.

The rovers will elect a leader among themselves, assign their own tasks and redraw their plans as a group when one of them runs low on charge. If it succeeds, CADRE will be the first time NASA has operated multiple rovers beyond Earth as a single autonomous system.

That achievement will matter well beyond this mission, because NASA is scoping out future missions to the lunar South Pole, where water in the form of ice sits locked in craters that haven’t seen sunlight in billions of years. If researchers can chemically split that ice apart and turn it into propellant and breathable air, it could become the feedstock for a lunar economy built around fuel depots and life support made on the Moon.

Right now, the only demand for that ice comes from government contracts. And an operation that must be babysat from 239,000 miles (384,000 kilometres) away will not easily scale into a market. So, while a full-blown lunar economy is still far off, CADRE is testing whether robots can work unsupervised long enough, and in enough numbers, to keep a lunar operation running month after month.

I’m an aerospace engineering Ph.D. candidate researching guidance, navigation and control for spacecraft in-orbit servicing and active debris removal. I work on the same problem these rovers face: how a machine decides what to do next when it cannot call home for instructions.

Why Earth cannot drive

At the Moon’s South Pole, the terrain itself can cause communication disruptions. Commands reach a rover by way of relay satellites, and crater rims can block the line of sight to those relays. A rover that ventures down into a shadowed crater may lose contact for its entire trip.

Spotty communication doesn’t just make trying to drive annoying. It can cost the rover power it cannot recover.

A polar rover runs on a finite illumination budget. Solar panels charge the battery only while the Sun is up, and on the Moon, sunrise is not a daily event. Night lasts about two Earth weeks, and at the poles, only a few ridges stay lit for long stretches. So for every minute a rover spends idle, awaiting new instructions, it is spending stored energy it cannot replace until the Sun comes back.

Why the pole is the hard case

The lunar poles also come with unique challenges. Sunlight can swing from direct glare to absolute shadow as a rover drives down from a sunlit crater rim to the shadowed floor below, so a camera that worked at the top could go blind at the bottom.

The Moon also doesn’t have GPS satellites like Earth does, so rovers can’t know exactly where they are. They need to build their own maps from what their cameras and sensors see.

Temperatures inside permanently shadowed regions drop below minus 274 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 170 degrees Celsius). And the Moon’s dust is more dangerous than it sounds. An electric charge lifts it off the ground, and billions of years of tiny meteorite strikes have left every grain sharp and jagged.

That dust grinds at the wheel bearings and works past the seals. Keeping it out of the rover’s moving parts is still an unsolved problem. The dust can also film over the camera lenses that navigation depends on, leaving a rover unable to see where it is going or move safely.

Why one rover is not enough

Sending a single rover to check out a crater on the Moon is a risky mission. If it gets stuck, the campaign ends. If its instruments fail, no second machine can take the measurements. Multirobot teams distribute that risk and split up the jobs. One rover might carry the sensors and another the drill, while a lander positioned on a sunlit ridge acts as the power and communications hub.

Under a communications blackout, a rover team that waits for its commands from Earth has to stop. An autonomous team reassigns tasks among itself, selecting the next objective that it can reach and complete with the amount of power it has left. Dead time becomes work time.

In ground testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the CADRE rovers achieved this coordination. Faced with unexpected obstacles, they replanned paths as a group, and when one rover’s battery ran low, the whole team paused so they could continue together.

What remains uncertain

A campaign at the lunar South Pole would need to run for months, and no robot team has yet worked that hard, for that long, that far from help. Engineers are developing ways for rovers to navigate without satellite positioning and to make decisions onboard, but that software still has to be tested on the surface.

Meanwhile, as of mid-August 2026, China’s Chang’e-7 mission is waiting at Wenchang, the launch site on Hainan Island in China, with liftoff expected by the end of the year. Its lander, rover and hopping probe are meant to work at the pole as a team, with the probe built to leap into permanently shadowed craters. If the U.S. wants to keep pace, it will need its own robots that coordinate without supervision.

Finally, there is no agreed way for a rover built by one company to hand a task to a tool built by another, or to decide which one works the crater floor first. As autonomous rover teams improve, the groups building them will have to work out those rules.

CADRE will tell scientists whether three small rovers can reason together on the Moon. The harder question is whether a dozen different machines from different builders can do the same thing, reliably, for years.

• Wanjiku Chebet Kanjumba is a Ph.D. Candidate in Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

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In some areas, anyway. Diesel prices are showing signs of a slight recovery compared to last week, though the expected R2+/l increase is still a tough pill to swallow. Estimates for the price of petrol have actually worsened since, though the R0.74/l increase isn’t nearly as bad as it could be, considering, you know… gestures broadly.

Not looking good…

Of course, there’s still time for things to improve in the coming weeks. Or, indeed, head in the other direction. The CEF, in conjunction with the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR), gathers data relating to the economic factors that influence the price of fuel locally, providing an accurate glimpse of what’s to come.

The DMPR then officially adjusts the country’s fuel prices on the first Wednesday of the following month. In this case, that’ll fall on Wednesday, 2 September. It typically confirms the coming adjustments the previous Monday or Tuesday, offering residents enough time to plan accordingly. In this case, you’ll want to top up ahead of time.

One of the biggest deciders when it comes to fuel prices is the average price of oil globally. With the IS-Iran War still raging on, oil reserves are drying up, thus sending the price up. At the time of writing, oil prices are currently hovering around $88/barrel, far above the pre-war averages of $70/barrel. The Rand, on the other hand, has strengthened, leading to the reduced (but still high) price increases expected for the month of September.

Here are the petrol and diesel price predictions (so far) for September 2026:

• Petrol 93: increase of 63 cents per litre (R0.63)
• Petrol 95: increase of 74 cents per litre (R0.74)
• Diesel 0.05%: increase of 273 cents per litre (R2.73)
• Diesel 0.005%: increase of 289 cents per litre (R2.89)
• Illuminating Paraffin: increase of 215 cents per litre (R2.15)

The post Petrol and diesel on track for painful increases this September appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

Africa already supplies several of the metals used in alloys. Yet the continent captures far less value from designing and manufacturing advanced materials than from mining the ores that make them possible. For example, the continent supplies about three-quarters of the world’s manganese, 70% of cobalt, and nearly one-fifth of global copper production, but earns less than 1% of the value created through manufacturing clean energy technologies that use these minerals.

In effect, Africa exports wealth in its rawest form and imports value in its most advanced form. Correcting this imbalance requires a shift from raw mineral exports to domestic processing, refining, advanced materials production and manufacturing. It would enable African countries to retain a greater share of economic value while accelerating industrialisation, fostering innovation, and promoting sustainable development.

A big advance in metallic materials research provides an opportunity to change the story. It focuses on high-entropy alloys, an emerging class of metallic materials that have the potential to transform Africa from a “dig-and-ship” economy to a leader in material design for hydrogen storage applications. Hydrogen storage is a clean energy issue.

Instead of one prime metal, high-entropy alloys mix many elements (typically more than three) in equal or unequal portions. These materials, when optimised, are often stronger, more resistant to heat and corrosion, and last longer than most regular alloys. For example, what’s known as Cantor alloy and its variants are very tough and resist corrosion. Their mechanical properties improve at cryogenic (very cold) temperatures, making them promising candidates for certain applications.

The scientific challenge is to predict which combinations produce useful properties. Our interdisciplinary research team brings together expertise in materials science and engineering, chemical engineering and computational materials modelling, with experience in energy materials research. We have been looking at high-entropy alloys as a solution for an urgent modern problem: how to store and transport hydrogen safely in clean energy supply chains.

We’ve reviewed computational studies to better understand how alloy composition affects hydrogen storage. Our findings show how computational techniques can speed up the identification of good hydrogen storage materials by discovering interesting metal combinations before testing them in experiments.

The goal is to store hydrogen and release it in ways that can be applied in vehicles.

Hydrogen storage in clean energy

Hydrogen is considered a clean energy carrier since it produces low emissions when used. Global hydrogen demand was about 100 million tonnes in 2024. It has the potential to grow further in the coming decades. But storing hydrogen has many challenges. It needs space, and there are safety constraints. One of the methods to store hydrogen is as a solid, where hydrogen atoms are absorbed into a metal or alloy and later released when needed.

The major advantage in this metal hydride storage is that you can store more energy in less volume, more safely, than other methods. Literature shows that high-entropy alloys can be designed to absorb more hydrogen with high stability through multiple cycles of absorbing and releasing hydrogen. They can operate at near-ambient temperatures and pressure.

Relying only on experiments to develop high-entropy alloys for hydrogen storage is impractical, however. With so many possible combinations of elements, testing each resulting alloy in the laboratory would consume lots of time and resources.

Herein lies the importance of computational materials science. Researchers can model the behaviour of atoms within a material before it is created by using techniques like density functional theory. This uses the laws of quantum physics and high-performance computing to predict the behaviour of materials at the atomic scale.

These models can forecast an alloy’s stability, structure formation and hydrogen binding strength. They allow scientists to design materials before putting them in the furnace. This method lowers costs, speeds up discovery and opens up opportunities for new avenues for research and technological innovation without large-scale experimental equipment.

By gathering current knowledge and identifying research gaps, our work provides a roadmap for the future use of high-entropy alloys for hydrogen storage.

Africa’s natural advantage and challenges

Africa is particularly well-positioned to benefit. Titanium, vanadium, chromium and manganese are just a few of the elements that are now mined throughout the continent and are used in high-entropy alloys.

However, mineral wealth alone does not ensure advanced manufacturing. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) notes that sub-Saharan Africa still carries out little higher-value mineral processing. It faces constraints including finance, know-how, infrastructure, energy systems, transport networks and processing capacity.

The opportunity here is clear: African nations should focus on how to turn these resources into high-value alloys rather than exporting them in their raw form. This could boost industrial development and economic benefits. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to invest in research infrastructure, provide access to high-performance computing, and foster more cooperation between the private sector, government and academic institutions.

• Michael Oluwatosin Bodunrin is an Associate professor, University of the Witwatersrand
• Abdalrhaman Koko is a Senior scientist, National Physical Laboratory
• Nihad Omer is an Assistant professor, Sudan University of Science and Technology
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

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