> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Roundup — Friday, 28 August 2026 - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-friday-28-august-2026/ - Published: 2026-08-28T04:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-28T03:59:59.000Z - Author: Christian Maidman - Tags: The Roundup Today's edition Short Haul Good morning. South Africa has two working oil refineries, one of them lost a single downstream unit on Wednesday, and by that afternoon the busiest airport in the country was short of jet fuel. MTN wants AI data centres across Africa badly enough to go and buy the land, and not badly enough to own much of them. Nvidia sold $96 billion of chips in three months, then committed $279 billion to locking up the parts it needs to sell more. Nobody has enough of what they need today, except the company selling it. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--30--1.png) --- REFINED OR NOTHING ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-sasol-1.png) ## One unit went down at Sasolburg, and OR Tambo cannot simply ship the jet fuel in Sasol lost a single downstream unit at Natref, its refinery in Sasolburg, on Wednesday, and said it can no longer meet full supply commitments on some fuel grades. Jet fuel for its customers at OR Tambo is one of them. It will keep supplying them, just not in full. By that afternoon the Department of Energy had called an emergency meeting with the airports company and the fuels industry. The reason a refinery fault reaches an airport is a rule from 1964\. Jet fuel cannot be landed straight into an import terminal, so it has to come through a licensed refinery, and South Africa has two of those left. **How the fuel gets there:** - Natref is the only inland crude oil refinery in the country, which makes it the natural supplier to Johannesburg. - Two refineries are still working, Natref and Astron in Cape Town, and by law the jet fuel has to route through one of them. - FlySafair, which carries more than half of South Africa's domestic passengers, is buying extra supply from other providers to cover the gap. Sasol has given no restoration date, no volume figure and no estimate of how long the shortfall runs. A fire at the same refinery did the same thing to OR Tambo in January 2025. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/natref-shutdown-jet-fuel-or-tambo-import-rule/) --- MINOR DETAILS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-mtn-data-centres-1.png) ## MTN is building AI data centres across Africa and will not say how much of them it owns MTN told the market in its half-year results that its digital infrastructure arm has entered a partnership to build AI ready data centres across the continent, through a new company called Africa Data Hub Holding Limited. The booklet named no partner, no stake and no rand figure. Chief executive Ralph Mupita filled in some of it at a roundtable the next day: 150 megawatts in the first phase, split between South Africa and Nigeria, with MTN as a minority investor. Bloomberg supplied the name the day after that, Dubai-based Tarek Al Ashram, co-founder of the KKR backed Gulf Data Hub. The split is the design. MTN brings 317.7 million customers across 19 markets, the land it has been buying and the power deals it has been negotiating. The capital comes from the other side. The plan is to run MTN's own workloads and rent the rest to the big cloud companies, other large businesses and governments that want their data held inside their own borders. Africa holds less than 1% of the world's AI data centre capacity, and the biggest project announced for the continent, a gigawatt facility from Microsoft and G42 in Kenya, has not been built. MTN still has not said what share of Africa Data Hub it owns, what it has committed, or when the first megawatt comes online. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-africa-data-hub-al-ashram-ai-data-centres/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which of these fruits is botanically a berry?** **A.** Banana **B.** Strawberry **C.** Raspberry --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-nvidia-2.png) **Nvidia sold $96.2 billion of chips in three months and told investors this quarter will be bigger.** Revenue for the three months to 26 July was more than double a year earlier, data centres supplied $89 billion of it, and the guidance of $108 billion for the current quarter assumes no data centre sales in China at all. On the same earnings call Amazon Web Services agreed to take another two million chips, five months after committing to more than a million. The biggest names on that order book, OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Anthropic, are all building their own chips to lean on Nvidia less. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/nvidia-second-quarter-results-aws-gpus-custom-chips/) **Naspers put a $100 million bonus to a vote it cannot lose.** Norges Bank, CalPERS and others published plans to vote against the pay proposals or against two directors before Wednesday's annual meeting. The award goes to chief executive Fabricio Bloisi only if the combined value of Naspers and Prosus doubles and the group also beats the median return of a global technology peer group. Insiders hold shares carrying a thousand votes each against one for everyone else. Last year about 71% of ordinary shareholders voted against the pay policy and it passed anyway. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/naspers-prosus-agm-pay-vote-super-shares/) **Municipalities owe Eskom R119 billion, and fourteen of them have until 1 September to hand over their electricity business.** Under a distribution agency agreement Eskom takes over the whole distribution function and runs it for a fee. Samwu has rejected the arrangement and wants government to stop enforcing the agreements it already has. At the other end of the customer base, the mines that can generate for themselves keep contracting more: Anglo American's renewables venture now covers about 30% of what its mines use, and Sibanye expects renewables to cover close to two thirds of its South African energy demand by 2028\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-distribution-agency-agreements-samwu-mining-renewables/) **Discovery expects headline earnings for the year to June to rise between 31% and 36%.** Much of that is the building it works in. The insurer bought its Sandton head office outright in February for just over R4 billion, and ending the lease produced an accounting gain rather than money arriving. The businesses underneath grew more slowly, with normalised profit from operations up between 15% and 20%. The full results land on 3 September. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/discovery-headline-earnings-head-office-lease-gain/) **Absa closed 79 branches last year and ended up with more places to walk into.** It took the traditional branch count from 438 to 359 and pulled out 120 cash machines, then lifted its smaller outlets from 122 to 215\. Those outlets do advice, sales and service, and will not hand you notes. Chief executive Kenny Fihla said a branch that dispenses cash costs substantially more to run than one that does not. Absa's own cash machine estate has fallen 41% in six years, from 8,435 machines to 4,976\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/absa-branch-closures-cashless-outlets-atms/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--26--1.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--29--1.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-yMDJMMvvAPgirw81k&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. Banana** Botanically, a berry is a fleshy fruit that develops from a single flower with one ovary, which makes the banana a true berry. Strawberries are aggregate accessory fruits, and the small dots on their surface are actually tiny fruits called achenes, each containing a seed. Raspberries are clusters of many small fruits called drupelets. So despite their names, strawberries and raspberries are not true botanical berries. --- That's your Friday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew.