Author: Gugu Lourie

MTN is raising the levels of customer experience to the retail shop experience at your nearest mall. By Gugu Lourie Larry Annetts, Chief Consumer Officer at MTN South Africa, on Monday afternoon “let the cat out of the bag” when he said the country’s second biggest mobile phone operator had opened its first digital store. The high-tech retail store, which is designed to offer a seamless in-store customer experience, is situated at the newly opened Mall of Africa. The newly opened mall is Africa’s largest single-phase shopping centre, situated at the heart of Waterfall in Midrand, between Johannesburg and Pretoria.…

Staying relevant in a disruptive environment is top of mind for businesses today. To succeed, businesses must start evaluating innovative new cloud approaches, says Interactive Intelligence. By Andre le Roux, Africa region MD for Interactive Intelligence The advent of the ‘Uber era’ has traditional businesses running scared. While business disruption isn’t new, the world is now seeing a perfect storm of accelerated technology innovation and rapidly changing consumer expectations that’s bringing unprecedented disruption and threatening established players across all markets. Very often one finds that the fear of the unknown or a reliance on ‘the way it has always been done’…

The agriculture and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sectors are heading for a union that is being brought about by natural calamity, economic developments and changes in the ICT space. By Mariana Kruger, General Manager for Private Sector at MTN Business South Africa Natural disasters such as drought, coupled with farmers’ security and the rising operational costs in the agricultural space are driving the quest to help improve safety, efficiency and stimulate growth. ICT advancements such as the Internet of Things (IoT), improved connectivity, monitoring and control applications as well as M2M technology present an opportunity for farmers to help improve…

Figures released ahead of SWIFT’s 23rd African Regional Conference shows South Africa has outperformed the total growth of SWIFT globally with significant traffic increase across treasury markets SWIFT, is a global member-owned cooperative and is the secure messaging system banks use to exchange payment details. In the year to date, message volumes grew by 13.7%, driven by a big increase in treasury traffic of 72.2%. Securities traffic is also up 16.4%. This illustrates that even through turbulent economic times, South African volume growth remains robust. The rest of the continent has also seen major growth. Total message traffic volumes have…

Uber driver partners to be licensed as transport operators. The Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport has taken an official decision to license Uber driver partners as public transport operators. “The aim is to ensure the continuation of a public transport service for the people of Gauteng, who have come to rely on Uber as a mode of transport,” Gauteng Roads and Transport MEC Ismail Vadi said on Monday. He was speaking during the launch of the process of regulating Uber partner drivers as public transport operators. According to the Provincial Regulatory Entity (PRE) regulations, any public operator should be…

If recent moves are anything to go by, Naspers is ready to compete with the best on the global stage. Bob van Dijk is making his boldest move yet by betting on global start-ups such as LetGo and Twiggle in an apparent effort to compete against established giants including Amazon, Craiglist and eBay on their home turf. By Gugu Lourie Van Dijk is also aggressively expanding Naspers’ internet TV services ShowMax across the African continent to defend its market against Netflix and other local players such as iROKOtv. The Dutch-born CEO of Naspers has the financial muscle to do so.…

Despite the many benefits of moving to the cloud, South African businesses are still hesitant to make the transition. There is still much uncertainty about the move and how it will affect business. By Steven Cohen According to Vodacom Business, 32% of South African businesses are not confident that data is secure when using a cloud service. There are several reasons why wariness of transitioning to the cloud exists such as: Loss of control. Handing the performance of your business over to a 3rd What if the system fails? What position will the business be in if it isn’t able to…

Fintech is disrupting the way ordinary Africans manage and use money. And these fintech players are standing up to traditional institutions as a force to be reckoned with. By Dominique Collett Accenture estimates that over one-third of mainstream financial services’ revenue is at risk due to disruption in the industry from fintech. Many reports show how the rapid development of African fintech, which exploded in the years following the 2008 global meltdown, is threatening established players in the mainstream financial services sector. Africa is fertile ground for new fintech services which are leveraging the power of communities and social media to…

MTN today unveiled its first digital store at the newly opened Mall of Africa – Africa’s largest single-phase shopping centre, situated at the heart of Waterfall in Midrand, north of Johannesburg. The high-tech retail store is designed to offer a seamless in-store customer experience. The flagship store is the first of many to be rolled-out in South Africa, and caters to convenience and simplicity. Showcasing the latest devices as well as state-of-the-art technology, the store is geared towards self-service, one-on-one engagements and a digitally enhanced experience. The Mall of Africa store offers key functionalities such as interactive digital screens, electronic…

Vodacom on Monday posted a slight rise in earnings for the year to end-March 2016, boosted by mobile data usage but the mobile phone operator’s performance is not demonstrating consistent growth. By Gugu Lourie The mobile phone operator, owned by British cellular giant Vodafone, reported a fairly muted 2.7% rise in headline earnings per share (EPS) to 883 cents for the year to end March 2016, negatively impacted by remeasurement of foreign currency denominated intergroup loans and one-off BEE charges. Headline EPS is the main profit gauge in South Africa. At home in South Africa, Vodacom EBITDA growth was…