Author: Gugu Lourie
New research from credible network speed-testing services Ookla has put MTN ahead of rivals – Airtel, Orange, and Vodacom – in terms of the speed available on their respective network. The report by Ookla revealed that MTN was the fastest mobile operator among the top four providers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Speedtest Intelligence data shows that MTN South Africa delivered the fastest median download speeds across analyzed operators, at 65.95 Mbps in Q2 2022. However, Vodacom in Johannesburg was the fastest operator considering speeds across top cities, reaching 81.36 Mbps median download speed in Q2 2022. In South Africa, MTN outperformed Vodacom…
Mteto Nyati has been appointed as an independent non-executive director and Nedbank’s IT Committee member. His appointment is effective from 1 October 2022. Nedbank informed investors that Nyati’s appointment has been made in terms of the group’s policy on the nomination and appointment of directors. Mteto is Chairman of Wazo Investments, and a non-executive director of Telkom. Previous roles include being Chief Executive at Altron, Chief Executive of MTN South Africa, and Managing Director of Microsoft South Africa. He was named one of the Yale University’s World Fellows on Global Leadership in 2004. Mpho Makwana, Chairman of Nedbank Group, welcomed…
Brazilian FinTech company Ebanx is expanding its operations and payments solutions outside Latin America. The company said in a statement that it has started operations in Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria in late August amid soaring demand for payments via mobile phones in recent years. Ebanx believes Africa is the next big growth frontier for digital payments and the digital market during the 2020s. Ebanx solutions in the Africa region will contemplate popular local payment methods including: In South Africa: Instant EFT by OZOW, lets online shoppers access internet banking to make an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) that gets instantly…
Attacq, the JSE-listed REIT developing Waterfall City, today announced the resumption of dividends of 50.0 cents per share for the year to end-June 2022, representing a pay-out ratio of 80%, as well as an increase in distributable income per share by 34.2% to 62.8 cents. Attacq said its performance was particularly satisfying in the context of South Africa’s record unemployment levels and low-growth environment, and emphasised the underlying quality of the portfolio, characterised by continued growth in the burgeoning mixed-use Waterfall City precinct, which continues to attract quality local and global blue-chip corporate clients. “During the past year, we emerged…
TYMEBANK, one of South Africa’s digital banks, has attracted 5 million customers as of 30 June 2022. The digital bank owned by billionaire Patrice Motsepe was launched in February 2019. “While progress continues to be made on customer acquisitions, the bank is placing increased focus on tracking customer activity and ensuring new product rollouts,” African Raibow Capital Investments informed investors today. “The bank is continuously adapting its product set to reflect the changing needs of customers, which includes diversifying the customer base.” TymeBank has no monthly banking fees and in most cases, transaction costs are 30 to 50% lower than what customers would pay…
Eskom said this morning that three units at the Kendal Power Station tripped, forcing the power utility to implement stage 4 load shedding. Eskom said state 4 load shedding will start at 10am until 5am on Thursday. The power utility tweeted this morning: #Loadshedding #Stage4 A sudden tripping of three Kendal Power Station units (1 920MW maximum generating capacity) has forced the implementation of Stage 4 loadshedding starting at 10:00 THIS morning until 05:00 on Thursday morning. A full statement will be published shortly — Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) September 13, 2022 “In the early hours of…
Strong bi-national relationships between Nigeria and South Africa are critical for Africa’s progress,” said MTN Group Chairman Mcebisi Jonas. This week, MTN Group hosted MTN Nigeria’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee in Johannesburg for a strategy retreat during which the leadership of the Group’s largest subsidiary reflected on its strategic priorities for the next three years. “As MTN, we appreciate that our own progress cannot happen without the two nations building stronger and stronger ties and providing leadership to the continent,” said Jonas. The MTN Nigeria delegation was led by Chairman Ernest Ndukwe and CEO Karl Toriola. During the trip,…
Discovery Bank, part of Adrian Gore’s Discovery Group, said on Wednesday that new business volumes continued to be strong, achieving more than 800 average daily new-to-Bank sales (vs 500 in June 2021). Discovery Group said the bank is showing significant progress toward a medium-term target of 1 000 sales per day and 1 000 000 clients by 2026. The Bank has also continued to attract high-quality clients, resulting in high levels of average non-interest revenue (NIR) and a low credit loss ratio of 1.56%. However, Discovery Group informed investors that Discovery Bank’s operating loss for the financial year was R990 million,…
Rider-hailing company Uber has launched a new feature on its platform enabling you to record audio while on a trip in the event of an emergency. Uber is piloting the feature in Pretoria and Johannesburg. The new feature will now allow riders and drivers to use the app to record and share audio of their trip as evidence in case of a safety incident. This is something that drivers have been asking for based on their feedback from roundtable sessions. The new opt-in audio recording feature has been successful in the US and Latin American regions where Uber has a…
Fixed broadband speeds in South Africa doubled over the past three years – from 15.11 Mbps median download speed in Q1-Q2 2020 to 31.34 Mbps in Q1-Q2 2022, benefiting from increased competition and growth in Fibre to the Home subscriptions, a report by speed test service Ookla revealed on Tuesday. China topped the rankings across the BRICS countries, posting a median download speed of nearly 160 Mbps. South Africa, meanwhile, finished last, indicating that South Africa still has room to grow in terms of fixed broadband performance and adoption. Ookla said Gauteng, home to the country’s largest city, Johannesburg, had the best…
Johannesburg performed well across the five cities we looked at in terms of median download and upload speeds, a report by speed test service Ookla revealed on Wednesday. Ookla said download speeds in Johannesburg ranged from 25.53 Mbps to 51.49 Mbps, while in Port Elizabeth, speeds were much lower, ranging from 6.36 Mbps to 30.11 Mbps. “Typically fibre networks first reach rich and affluent communities that present a fertile ground for their services. For example, a northern suburb of Johannesburg–Parkhurst–was Vumatel’s first suburb.” Ookla added that across the nine South African provinces, Gauteng is the smallest by land mass, but…
Cool Ideas is ranked first among South Africa’s Internet Services Providers (ISPs), reaching almost 50 Mbps symmetrical speeds, with a 48.32 Mbps median upload speed and 47.89 Mbps download speed, a report by speed test service Ookla revealed on Tuesday. Afrihost, Webafrica, Vox Telecom, Axxess, and Rain achieved median download speeds in excess of 30 Mbps. Ookla said operator performance in the region could be heavily impacted by the technology offered, with pure fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) provider Cool Ideas topping our rankings. Ookla, which owns and operates the popular speedtest.net Internet speed testing service, published its latest Speedtest Global Index rankings for South Africa for…
Woolworths reported today a 45.4% surge in online food sales as the retailer benefited from the further rollout of its on-demand online offering. The Woolworths Food business grew turnover and concession sales in the second quarter by 4.6%, with trading momentum improving throughout the period, as Covid-19 base effects eased. Sales for the full year grew by 4.2%, and by 3.1% in comparable stores, reflecting the impact of the high base and the return to out-of-home consumption, an increasingly competitive backdrop, and low product inflation across our key categories. Price movement averaged 3.5% for the full year, with underlying product…
South African banks will fully transition to digital banking within five years as consumers embrace digitisation. A new report on the future of retail banking drafted by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on behalf of Discovery Bank found that more than two-thirds of South Africans (69%) believe that the country’s banks will transition to a fully digital banking system within five years. The Discovery Bank-BCG survey also found that most South Africans (60%) believe that in just five years, there may be no need for banks to have physical branches. The survey was based on responses from 1,000 consumers from all walks…
Swift intervention by the Financial Intelligence Centre’s Fusion Centre has seen government recover R659 million to the fiscus deemed to have been proceeds of crime. Through the Fusion Centre, the FIC’s crime fighting public-public collaboration has secured several positive outcomes, including the preservation and recovery of pilfered public funds. In a statement, the FIC said the two-year-old Fusion Centre had secured achievements in improving efficiency in financial investigations related to corruption, fraud, abuse of power and maladministration. “In addition, the collective work of the Fusion Centre has resulted in the recovery of tax revenue, identification of fraud in the temporary…
MTN today informed investors that negotiations to buy South Africa’s Telkom are still in progress. “Shareholders are advised that discussions are still in progress which, if successfully concluded, may have a material effect on the price of the Company’s securities,” MTN said on Monday. “Accordingly, shareholders are advised to continue to exercise caution when dealing in the company’s securities until a further announcement is made.” Last month, MTN announced that it was in early talks to buy Telkom, the partially state-owned fixed-line telephone operator. Africa’s largest mobile phone operator said in a statement it had entered into discussions to buy…
EasyEquities, which is 70% owned by JSE-listed company Purple Group, has reached terms with an e-wallet provider (Provider) in the Asia Pacific Region. The company will launch investing services within the Providers e-wallet Application (e-wallet APP). The Provider will offer the EasyEquities investing services to its significant user base in the region, comprising tens of millions of users, through its e-wallet App. The Provider has requested for limited disclosure at this time so as not to pre-empt the commercial launch of the product planned for September 2022. “This is an exciting opportunity for EasyEquities and the Purple Group to expand…
Prosus, a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world, today announced it has agreed to acquire the remaining 33.3% stake in iFood, from minority shareholder Just Eat for €1.5 billion or R25.6 billion in cash plus contingent consideration of up to €300 million or R5.1 billion. Following the transaction, Prosus and its affiliate company, Movile (a Brazilian investor in technology companies) will fully own iFood. iFood has performed exceptionally well since Prosus first invested in the business through Movile, founded by Fabricio Bloisi, in 2013. Starting as an online food ordering website, the…
Data-only network provider Rain has withdrawn its statement that it wants to merge with partially state-owned telecoms group Telkom. Following engagement with the Takeover Regulation Panel (TRP), at the TRP’s instruction, rain hereby withdraws its press release of 11 August 2022, said in a statement on Tuesday. “As rain, we are pleased with Telkom’s SENS announcement stating that if an offer or formal proposal is received from rain, the board of Telkom will consider it. rain intends to submit a formal non-binding proposal to Telkom in due course,” said Vivian Ngalo Chief Communications Officer at Rain. “Further details will be published…
MTN Group is flirting with 20 million InsurTech registered aYo policies for the six months ended-June 2022. The company informed investors today that its InsurTech platform reached 17.9 million registered aYo policies, up by 31.9% year-on-year. MTN said active policies reduced by 26.9% year-on-year due to a shift in the strategy to focus on a higher average revenue per policy and new revenue streams, particularly in Uganda. This resulted in termination of free policies in the portfolio. “Active policy growth was also impacted by platform migration and integration challenges as we shifted to a proprietary infrastructure,” said MTN. In total,…
MTN GROUPsaid on Wednesday that it expects to spin off its Fibre Business within the next two years. “The structural separation of the fibre business is also underway and is set to be completed within the next two years,” Ralph Mupita, MTN Group CEO, informed investors on Thursday. He added that in this business, MTN made encouraging progress with the additional build of 670km of fibre in the period. “Across the portfolio we now have 101 800km of proprietary fibre.” MTN also disclosed that MTN GlobalConnect (MTN GC) continued to drive fibreco ambitions, scaling its fixed connectivity and wholesale mobility services…
MTN Group said on Wednesday that the process with potential strategic investors for its FinTech business had been initiated, the outcome of which is anticipated to be concluded by the end of December 2022. In March, MTN announced plans to spin off its FinTech Business. For more read: MTN Set To Spin Off Fibre, FinTech Businesses, Invite Third Party Investors “The work to structurally separate the fintech business from the GSM business within the operations progressed well, and the implementation of inter-company agreements and necessary regulatory approvals are tracking in line with expectations,” Ralph Mupita, MTN Group CEO, informed investors on…
The Walt Disney Company has announced that Disney+ now has 221 million total subscriptions across our streaming offerings after adding 14.4 million new subscribers in the nine months to end-June 2022. “We had an excellent quarter, with our world-class creative and business teams powering outstanding performance at our domestic theme parks, big increases in live-sports viewership, and significant subscriber growth at our streaming services,” said Bob Chapek, CEO, The Walt Disney Company. Most of Disney+ growth for the quarter occurred outside of the United States and Canada, where the service added 100,000 subscribers to reach 44.5 million. The company reports…
Nedbank’s Avo super app continues to attract customers and businesses as it competes with Vodacom’s VodaPay app. Nedbank announced today that Avo has added 500 000 new customers in the past six months to end-June 2022 pushing its total users to 1.5 million. Since its launch in app stores on 19 June 2020, Avo has over 24 000 businesses registered and offering their products and services on this e-commerce platform, up by 37% year-on-year. Avo is a one-stop super app enabling clients to buy essential products and services online and have them delivered to their home, with seamless secure payments and credit enabled by the…
The South African government has published draft proposals to address the widespread theft of copper cable and other forms of metal from public infrastructure that has crippled power supplies, left trains unable to operate and damaged public facilities in many parts of the country. The proposals have been developed following consultations by the Departments of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic), Police, National Treasury, Mineral Resources and Energy, Public Enterprises (including state owned enterprises), and Transport and was published in the Government Gazette today by Minister Ebrahim Patel. The draft measures propose a six-month export prohibition on scrap and waste…