Author: Contributor

The MTN Foundation SA, Huawei and the Dept of Social Development have partnered to bring some early Christmas cheer to kids from Orange Farm, South of Johannesburg. Two hundred pre-teens and teens from the Afrika Tikkun Arekopaneng Centre were treated to a fun ICT themed party packed with activities and lots of festive cheer. Deputy Minister of Social Development, Henrietta Bogopane-Zulu says, “Through this initiative, we are spreading the spirit of giving and sharing, born out of the recognition that many vulnerable children cannot share the cheer and joy that traditionally comes during the festive season. We look forward to tapping…

by Ken Rotenberg When Dame Helen Mirren revealed she had been the victim of a “humiliating” scam on the press junket for her latest movie (in which, coincidentally, she also plays the victim of a hoax), it highlighted how everyone needs to be on their guard against fraudsters. Even members of the royal family are not immune, as was illustrated when Prince Charles was dragged into a major counterfeit art scandal. But what motivates scammers, other than greed? I believe the answer can be gleaned by investigating why humans lie in the first place. Online fraudsters carry out a sophisticated…

by Clement Prince Addo All over the world, the internet has provided extraordinary socioeconomic opportunities to businesses, governments, and individuals. But less developed countries still face numerous obstacles to maximise its potential. The problems range from obsolete infrastructure, the nonavailability, non-accessibility, cost, power fluctuations, policies and regulation. Many countries on the continent still have bandwidth as low as 64 kilobits. This is in contrast to the 270,000 megabits per second in the US. Data also shows that downloading a 5GB movie took 734 minutes in the Republic of Congo, 788 minutes in Sao Tome, 850 minutes in Ethiopia, 965 minutes…

Ever wondered if you are driving the ‘best’ or ‘worst’ vehicle on South African roads? Well here’s a breakdown of what we ranked as the best and worst vehicles to buy in 2019. We have based the best vehicles on their resale value. Here Are The Facts The vehicle evaluation group, True Price has provided us with the data on the cars you are about to look at with the best resale value in South Africa. True Price have taken results from vehicles sold on auctions around South Africa. “To determine which passenger cars have the best resale value, we…

With the festive season approaching, roadblocks will be in full swing with many people being pulled over for drunk driving and invalid license disks. Have you ever found yourself flashing your lights to an approaching vehicle to warn them of a roadblock? Although you may think you are helping them, you could find yourself facing the law. What Could Happen To Me? The Justice Project South Africa was formed to strongly warn motorists against warning others about police activity on the roads. Although law officials may struggle to catch those motorists warning others, if you are caught, you could face…

It must have happened to you at least once, where you buy either airtime or data and then the next day you are back to zero. Finding out that you have been using out-of-bundle data because your data has been depleted and you didn’t even notice can be extremely frustrating. Now what? Where Does Our Airtime Go? The answer is WASP  which stands for “wireless application service providers”. These providers secretly subscribe users to their content subscription, obviously without the user’s consent. This happens to thousands of users every single month. The mobile operators give WASPs the ability to bill…

Car insurance is definitely one of those expenses that we hate to love. The type that when it comes off our account each month we ask ourselves “do we actually need this?”. However, nine times out of ten this insurance saves us a ton of money when we least expect it. With the number of road accident fatalities on the rise, there is an increased need for car insurance. However this ultimately equates to: Increase in crashes + Increased car insurance claims = higher car insurance premiums for all of us. We decided to break down the five best car insurance…

Huawei South Africa has hosted its second Information and Communication Technology (ICT) job fair for Huawei ICT academy graduates, simultaneously boosting the country’s tech skills and helping to create youth employment for the fourth-industrial-revolution – as prioritised by the national government. The ICT talent shortage is an international challenge, and initiatives like the job fair are part of the Huawei ICT Talent Ecosystem, which aims to address this. The global programme sees Huawei collaborate with education and training institutions, industry associations and partners to build a platform for sustainable ICT skills development to bridge the digital divide and unleash society’s…

TerraPay, a mobile-first international payment network, today announced that it has partnered with UBA Group, a leading pan-African financial services group headquartered in Nigeria, to facilitate real-time money transfer services to its customers in 20 countries across Africa. The service which is currently live in five countries within UBA’s network including Ghana, Cote d’ivoire, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Cameroon, will be rolled out to the Bank’s other subsidiaries in Chad, Liberia, Senegal, Uganda, Congo Brazzaville, Guinea Conakry, Kenya, Mali, Zambia, Congo DRC, Gabon, Mozambique, Tanzania and Benin Republic soon. Sampson Aneke, Group Head, Transaction and Electronic Banking, UBA Group, noted that…

by Rozita Dara A few short years ago, personal digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant sounded futuristic. Now, the future is here and this future is embedded, augmented and ubiquitous. Digital assistants can be found in your office, home, car, hotel, phone and many other places. They have recently undergone massive transformation and run on operating systems that are fuelled by artificial intelligence (AI). They observe and collect data in real-time and have the capability to pull information from different sources such as smart devices and cloud services and put the information into context using AI…

by Basebone In 2014, Apple quietly discontinued the iPod classic. https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/9/4715274/ipod-classic-discontinued-a-visual-history The company issued a short press release, and that was it. Over 13 years the iPod had changed the world. Suddenly it was gone. How long before Apple confirms calls time on the iPhone? It’s almost impossible to imagine today. Apple sells more than 200 million iPhones a year. The mobile industry as a whole sells around 1.5 billion smartphones every 12 months. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/ The smartphone is so dominant, and the industry is so huge, that we think it will be here forever. But it won’t. If tech history…

by Basebone What time is it? Time for something interesting to happen in the smartwatch market. Yes, just a few days ago Google bought the smartwatch and fitness tracker maker, Fitbit. This was very unexpected news. Why? Because most people thought Google had given up on the wearables market. The company’s operating system – Wear OS – had been a flop. Google hardly ever talked about the platform any more. But here it was, spending a huge $2.1 billion on the world’s second biggest wearables company. https://blog.google/products/hardware/agreement-with-fitbit What’s going on? Before we dig into that, let’s re-cap how the wearables…

Openserve, a network and infrastructure provider owned by Telkom, reported a major incident of cable theft in Eisleben Road, Portland in the Mitchells Plain area, Cape Town. On Thursday, 12 December 2019, multiple cables of varying lengths were cut and stolen. This incident is impacting the surrounding communities that are connected to Openserve’s network via 20 different street distribution cabinets (SDC`s). Currently, 903 faults have been reported by customers, but it is estimated that approximately 1726 services have been impacted leaving customers, largely residential with Voice and ADSL lines in the Portland, Westridge and Rocklands suburbs, without connectivity. Openserve said…

by Dalene Deale FinTech start-ups have transformed the market for consumer lending in the United States and other mature credit markets, by giving people an alternative way of borrowing money without having to go through a bank or a traditional lending institution. We see a similar trend happening in South Africa, however, some of the drivers and market dynamics are very different to other markets. FinTech lenders provide a platform for investors to lend money directly to consumers and businesses. The application and approval processes are quick, as risk is assessed almost instantly using data and technology. As with most…

Just 20 years ago, only 4.1% of the world’s population had access to the internet. In 2019, there are over 4.5 billion active internet users, which makes up 58.8% of people on Earth. The pivotal role of internet in modern life is emphasized by the United Nations which issued a resolution claiming that access to the internet is one of the basic human rights and calling on the Member States to prevent the digital divide. How expensive is the internet nowadays? Where is surfing the net the cheapest? In which countries is super-fast internet easy accessible? And is the internet in…

by Sean Flynn The Office of the US Trade Representative has announced a review of South Africa’s eligibility for Generalised System of Preferences benefits. The office took the step after it was petitioned by the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a private sector coalition representing large US entertainment companies. At issue is South Africa’s Copyright Amendment Bill, which has been waiting for the South African president’s signature for eight months. Charl Blignaut asked Professor Sean Flynn and lawyer Jonathan Band to explain the issues. What is the Generalised System of Preferences and how does it work? These programmes give extra tariff…

by Carla Lever Bobi Wine has come a long way in two years. The self-styled “Ghetto President” of Uganda used to be a music star, playing politically charged reggae beats to packed houses. In 2017, the politics took over. Donning a red beret, he formed the People Power movement, running a successful grassroots campaign to be elected as a parliamentary representative. Now, he’s challenging Yoweri Museveni for the presidency in 2021. In two years, Wine’s red beret has become synonymous with a fiery spirit of Ugandan resistance, long since thought to be extinguished after 33 years of ironclad rule by…

As South Africans prepare to celebrate the festive season, MTN has been hard at work capacitating its network in high density areas and tourist hotspots in order to carry increased voice and data traffic over the festive season. Operations are underway to cater for additional coverage and capacity requirements in selected hotspots. The areas that have been identified for network optimisation are major routes including the N1 which connects Cape Town and the Limpopo, the N3 which links Gauteng and Durban, the N12 which connects Johannesburg and the Garden Route, the N2 which links Cape Town and Durban, the N4…

The arrival of Summer is the perfect opportunity for young South Africans to log onto the worldwide web and claim their digital identities within the dotZA (.ZA) and dotAfrica (.africa) namespaces.   “Schools are out and the youth are now able to turn their bright young minds towards implementing what should be their number one digital resolution for 2020: securing their digital identities in cyberspace,” says ZACR CEO, Lucky Masilela.   “Young people helped lay the foundation for South Africa’s democracy and they must now turn their attention to building the digital identities that will be so crucial to their…

by Byron Clatterbuck Africa may be a growing hub of digital innovation, particularly noticeable in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi and Lagos – with companies in these metropolitan areas taking advantage of high-speed fibre connections to embrace the cloud and develop new business models and processes.  These leading-edge companies are connecting with their peers more-and-more at a regional and global level. As a key part of this digital evolution, the Content Delivery Networks, the Content Providers, Hyper-Scalers, and the Cloud-based Service Providers are increasingly moving their capabilities, content and infrastructure to Africa. It’s easy to forget how far we’ve come in…

FNB is now expanding the Smart IDs and Passports service to its customers in Limpopo. The bank’s customers in the province can now apply via the online system of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and be able to collect their Smart IDs and Passports at FNB’s Burgersfort branch. The booking process for ID and 2nd passport documents is facilitated through eChannel, a Home Affairs online booking portal that captures the applicant’s personal details. Once the application has been processed online, the customer can schedule a booking to visit one of the designated branches for finger print verification. The final…

by Alan Kelly I have a radical suggestion: let’s ban processed and ultra-processed foods. Not the products, but the terms. With so many diet plans and nutritional instructions offering such varied advice on how to eat healthily, a simple message like avoiding processed food is understandably attractive. As a result, some journalists, social media influencers and even health charities and academics have gathered behind the idea that processed food is bad for you – and so-called ultra-processed food is even worse. This position has been taken to detailed extremes, with commandments not to eat food with more than five ingredients,…

by Genavee Brown Phones, tablets and laptops are usually at the top of many teenage wish lists at Christmas. But parents often worry that giving their children a mobile phone might mean they never see them again. Will they stay locked away in their room for the whole Christmas break? It turns out that might not be such a bad thing. In a recent study, we found that talking online and texting actually strengthened friendships more than just spending time in each other’s company. Rather than neglecting relationships and encouraging insularity, having a phone meant that young people were more…

Mr D Food is a truly South African technology business, started and run by South Africans. Its origins trace back to the days of Mr Delivery in 1992 when ordering was done via the phone from printed menus on the fridge. After a technology-led transformation, Mr Delivery became Mr D Food and is now South Africa’s leading online food delivery business, with over 100% year-on-year growth. It has already grown by more than 10 times in the past two and a half years. It is one of South Africa’s resounding technology success stories and a hub for ambitious individuals seeking…

by Angus Brown Despite crypto being unregulated in South Africa, the current regulatory stance is that South Africans may buy any cryptocurrency assets, store them and pay for goods and services. Like art and jewellery, even though cryptocurrencies are not registered as financial security, it is still legal to own and use them. At Centbee, we’ve provided detailed commentary and recommendations to the Intergovernmental FinTech Working Group (IFWG), which has been well-received by the regulators. We strongly believe that regulation supporting cryptocurrencies is necessary to protect customers. We have been a prominent voice in the South African and global media…