Author: Contributor
By Vincent Chin, Boston Consulting Group’s Senior Partner and MD of South East Asian businesses and operations “Show me the money”- the famous mantra of Jerry Maguire seems to be all too familiar to the African infrastructure industry. Like Jerry, many leaders keep talking about the money problem when they should be acting on the capability problem. The availability of capital is not the fundamental challenge facing Africa’s infrastructure sectors, but a lack of public sector capabilities to support and develop large volumes of high quality transport, energy and water projects. African public sector organisations need to channel their investment…
By Wayne de Nobrega, CEO of Tracker South Africa To most people, Tracker is a Stolen Vehicle Recovery (SVR) company. But while Tracker still has SVR at its core, the business has evolved significantly since its inception in 1996. Today, Tracker is one of the many companies capitalising on the Internet of Things (IoT) and the data provided by connected devices. Tracker’s entire business was essentially built on the connectedness of things. While the company has not relied on the Internet as the primary data network, the principles are the same. Those principles being that a variety of objects –…
by Ben Dickson As internet privacy continues to unravel, it is becoming more and more evident that you’re on your own to protect your data against the many parties that are looking to hoard it. Perhaps one of the most pervasive collectors of data are Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the same companies that connect you to the internet. ISPs have a huge stake in collecting data, mostly in selling it to advertisers to serve more targeted ads. And they’re in the best position to do so with wild abandon, without fear of retribution. But a lot more than your preferences…
by Ben Dickson No one will argue that Artificial Intelligence has taken great strides in past years. Thanks to AI we’re getting targeted and personalized ads, becoming better in education, healthcare, agriculture and whatnot. So what’s preventing Artificial Intelligence from taking the next big leap? Maybe it’s intelligence. Fact of the matter is, AI algorithms are becoming very smart and efficient at doing specific tasks, but they’re not smart enough to explain their decisions. And neither can their creators. How does that amount to a problem? It doesn’t, as long as AI is making suggestions and not decisions. So for…
by Brandon Klien, Collaboration.Ai I have been interested in education since I taught my first Sunday School class when I was in 6th grade. Teaching from the book (as I was told) versus helping kids understand and enjoy — always seemed at odds with what I saw and experienced. Well outside of my schooling years now, having had the opportunity to train many hundreds on how to facilitate collaboration better — I realize that I have once again become a student. Daily the evidence builds that our education system, now more than ever, is in need of change. And with three young children for…
By Brett Parker, SAP Africa MD What a difference a century makes. If we stepped back in time to a hundred years ago we’d find a primitive China; a Middle East that had yet to discover the riches of oil and most of Southeast Asia consisted of countries that were barely distinguishable from medieval societies. It was an entirely different world. Roll back two hundred years and many European nations would be far removed from the modern countries they are today. It is an enduring myth that fools us to believe everything has always been like it is today; that the…
As a first-mover into automotive assembly in Sub Saharan Africa, Nissan joined a number of South African-based companies that are creating successful businesses on the continent. Mike Whitfield, MD for Nissan Group of Africa, gives some insights on the company’s strategy from an automotive perspective. Almost four years after Nissan ventured into auto assembly in Nigeria, it fills me with pride when I am asked to comment on our success as an auto company operating in Africa. Especially given that challenges often over-ride opportunities when considering the pros and cons of business expansion on the continent. These are some of…
By Darryl Bernstein, partner in Baker McKenzie’s Disputes and ITC Practice Groups in Johannesburg According to the Gemalto Breach Level Index, released in March 2017, South Africa experienced nine reported security breaches in 2016. Across Africa, 45.2 million records were stolen in 2016, compared with 38.5 million in 2015. Africa had 17 data breaches in total, compared with six in 2015. It was not the rise in security breaches that caused the most alarm, however. Gemalto noted in the survey that the delay in disclosing or identifying security breaches was the most concerning factor. In March 2017 Ster-Kinekor in South Africa announced that its website…
By Ahmed Cassim, MD of Hello Paisa The introduction of new banking, investment, credit and insurance products using established mobile money solutions will be critical in including more Africans into the formal financial system. Currently, most adults in the region mainly use mobile money solutions to either buy airtime or make domestic remittance payments to relatives and friends. However, after achieving great success in providing such a service to a large portion of the South African migrant population, the scope for Hello Paisa to launch a mobile money solution and convert an even larger fraction of the unbanked into not only…
by Ben Dickson As artificial intelligence takes leaps at an increasing pace, there’s fear that robots will conquer the future and put humans out of jobs. While technological unemployment is a worry that has its own merits, there are some fields where there is already a shortage of human experts. One of those fields is healthcare. It takes years of education and hands-on experience to train a decent doctor. And as the figures show, there’s a shortage of physicians everywhere. Fortunately, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can help alleviate this problem. AI-powered tools can help healthcare workers and doctors improve…