Author: Staff Writer

Africa has emerged as the global epicentre of iGaming fraud, according to Sumsub’s newly released iGaming Fraud Report 2026, with the continent recording the highest fraud rate of any region analysed worldwide. The findings highlight a rapidly evolving threat landscape in which fraudsters are increasingly using stolen identities, AI-assisted tools and coordinated fraud networks to target operators across African markets.   The report, based on analysis of more than three million fraud attempts and millions of identity verification checks conducted between 2024 and the first quarter of 2026, found that Africa’s iGaming fraud rate reached 2.54% in Q1 2026, significantly higher than Europe…

Disney+ announced that production on the highly-anticipated second season of FX’s “Alien: Earth” is underway in London. Created for television by Noah Hawley, the global hit series has added Tracey Ullman, Sam Spruell and Jerome Flynn to the cast, alongside the previously announced Peter Dinklage. Spruell reunites with Hawley after previously working together on “Fargo.” The second season will be streaming exclusively on Disney+ in South Africa. The newly announced trio join Sydney Chandler and an expansive international cast, including Alex Lawther, Timothy Olyphant, Essie Davis, Babou Ceesay, Samuel Blenkin, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Adrian Edmondson, David Rysdahl, Moe Bar-El, Sandra Yi Sencindiver…

South African fintech startup Zakhaa Pay has unveiled the Zakhaa Pay Leruo NFC Wristband, an innovative wearable payment solution that allows workers to receive tips and payments instantly with a simple tap from a customer’s smartphone. Designed for South Africa’s growing cashless economy, the Leruo Wristband eliminates the need for cash, QR codes, card machines or sharing bank account details. Linked directly to a user’s Zakhaa Pay Wallet, the NFC enabled wristband enables customers to tap their NFC-enabled smartphone, enter the payment amount and complete the transaction within seconds. The solution has been developed to address a growing challenge faced by workers in the informal and service sectors, where customers increasingly no longer carry cash, resulting in lost income for workers who rely on tips and small daily payments. The wristband is ideal for waiters, bartenders, hotel staff, barbers, salon professionals, taxi and e-hailing drivers, petrol attendants, delivery drivers, car guards, informal traders and thousands of other South Africans who receive tips…

iiDENTIFii has announced the appointment of Marco Wagener as CEO. Co-founder and former CTO of the company, Wagener takes the helm as the company enters its next strategic growth phase. The business has grown from a South African identity verification innovator into an enterprise identity verification platform that proves a person is real. Its clients include leading banks, payment service providers, MNOs and public-sector institutions across South Africa, Africa and in the UK. The appointment comes as identity fraud enters a new phase. Generative AI has industrialised attack tooling with a 740% year-on-year rise in iOS injection-attack tradecraft, which is…

As the age of agentic AI dawns, with autonomous systems set to reshape industries from mobile apps to intelligent vehicles, Huawei is set to host its premier annual event, Huawei South Africa Connect 2026. The conference takes place on 23 July at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, bringing together industry leaders, government officials and technology experts to discuss the technologies shaping South Africa’s digital future. South Africa is already beginning to feel that shift. Unlike traditional AI, agentic systems can act independently, interact with other systems and make decisions with limited human intervention. Supporting those systems requires more than…

The .za Domain Name Authority (.zadna) confirms that a 6.2% registry fee adjustment for the commercial second-level domains co.za, org.za, net.za and web.za will take effect on 1 October 2026. The annual adjustment is based on the approved CPI-linked pricing methodology adopted, following the public consultation on registry fees and the General Second-Level Domain Policy, conducted in 2024. This approach provides a transparent and predictable pricing framework, enabling accredited registrars, resellers and registrants to plan effectively while supporting the long-term sustainability of the .za namespace. This annual review reflects .zadna’s commitment to maintaining a stable, secure and resilient domain name…

Vodacom Group and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) partner for the 2026 Emerging Leaders Programme (ELP), a leadership development initiative designed to prepare the next generation of leaders for the future of work. The three-month programme is offered by the Development and Leadership Unit (DLU) in the Division of Student Affairs at Wits. Rather than waiting until students graduate to provide workplace exposure, this initiative proactively engages young people during their studies, ensuring they develop the digital capabilities, leadership mindset and strategic awareness needed to thrive in an evolving economy. The collaboration brings together Vodacom Group’s industry expertise and…

South Africa’s energy landscape enters a transformative new chapter this week as Eskom Holdings secures the final regulatory green light to officially launch its dedicated renewable energy subsidiary, Eskom Green. Following the launch of Eskom Green last month, Eskom Holdings has secured the required key approvals in terms of Section 54(2) of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), read with the applicable conditions of the Eskom Debt Relief Act, to proceed with the establishment of Eskom Green as a company to house Eskom Holding’s renewable energy business and raise funding. The approvals mark a key governance and unbundling milestone and…

With its launch imminent, the Range Rover Sport Electric arrives with a design language that remains virtually indistinguishable from its internal-combustion counterpart.. Range Rover has confirmed the forthcoming arrival of its second EV, Range Rover Sport Electric, which signals a new era of sporting luxury. Following the much-anticipated Range Rover Electric, which has been previewed at a series of curated events over the British Summer Season, Range Rover Sport Electric will again redefine the luxury electric SUV segment when it arrives later this year. It features the same unmistakable, muscular form – now driven by a fully electric powertrain to…

Stellantis South Africa has signed a new philanthropy partnership with Social Coding South Africa, focused on bringing coding, robotics and digital skills directly to learners and teachers in communities where access to technology and digital learning remains limited The partnership forms part of Stellantis Philanthropy, the Group’s global philanthropic program dedicated to creating positive social impact through education, youth development and access to opportunities. “At Stellantis, we believe that access to skills and opportunities is key to unlocking long-term social and economic progress,” said Sizwekazi Mdingi, Head of Communications and CSR for South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa at Stellantis. “Through Stellantis…

Cue today announced a $5 million primary funding round, co-led by Knife Capital and FAM Investments, to accelerate the development of its AI-powered customer service platform as businesses increasingly adopt autonomous AI to resolve customer issues end-to-end. The funding will support continued product development, international expansion and deeper investment in voice, security and enterprise integrations. Cue already powers customer conversations for more than 500 companies across the UK and South Africa, spanning automotive, retail, insurance, finance and education. The company grew ARR by more than 160% year on year in its latest financial year and now handles more than 500…

SOTRU Identity and Communications (Pty) Ltd, a South African verification and secure communication platform, launches in the market to tackle a fraud problem that traditional KYC and KYB checks were never built to solve: impersonation and payment fraud that happens after a supplier has been verified. Business email compromise hit 63% of organisations globally in 2024, with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recording US$2.77 billion in BEC losses. Locally, the Standard Bank data breach in April 2026 and recurring NHLS ransomware incidents have shown how exposed business identity and operational data have become, essentially weaponising this stolen data to feed sophisticated phishing,…

UP professor wins R3m grant to perfect diagnosis-and-treatment combination that promises to make killer disease manageable. Breast cancer is the leading type of cancer among women in South Africa, and globally. Too often it is discovered too late – but a new approach promises a radical change in survivability for patients. The solution, called theranostics, stems from the field of nuclear medicine. It holds the potential to turn the tide against breast cancer and, like the fight against HIV/Aids, change it from an outright killer to a manageable disease. Behind this initiative is world-renowned nuclear medicine specialist Professor Mike Sathekge,…

Airtel Africa’s CEO, Sunil Taldar, has announced the telco’s commitment to connecting 5,000 schools across its operating countries in Africa to the internet by 2027 through its philanthropic arm, Airtel Africa Foundation, in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). So far, the $57m partnership, which was launched in 2021, has cumulatively connected 3,296 schools and provided access to over 2 million learners and about 40,000 teachers. 64 digital learning platforms have been zero-rated thereby enabling more than 11m users to access educational content at no cost. Speaking during a visit to St. Monica’s Girls School in Lusaka, which…

Financial services group RMB today announced the appointment of Judy Kobus as CEO of Corporate, where she will lead the bank’s corporate client business and help drive its next phase of growth. “Judy combines strategic thinking with disciplined execution and a strong commitment to clients. She has built a high-performing team by empowering her people, setting high standards and delivering meaningful results. Those qualities position her well to lead Corporate as we continue to build a leading corporate bank across our markets,” says Emrie Brown, CEO of RMB. Judy joined RMB in 2008 through the Class Of Programme, the bank’s…

Eskom has reached an important milestone in its nationwide Load Reduction Eradication Programme, with five of South Africa’s nine provinces now free from load reduction. To date, 1 104 225 customers have been removed from load reduction schedules, representing 65.17% performance towards the programme’s load reduction eradication target. Originally implemented to address overloaded local networks and protect electricity infrastructure, the programme has removed 545 feeders from load reduction nationally, with the remaining load reduction areas concentrated largely in Gauteng followed by KwaZulu-Natal. This milestone follows the successful elimination of load reduction in Mpumalanga, joining the Western Cape, Northern Cape, Free…

Refiant, an AI optimisation company, today launched Protea – its suite of long-context AI models – with a 10 million-token context window, one of the largest ever made publicly available, accessible immediately via refiant.ai. Until now, AI has been constrained by how much it can see at once. The most capable models struggle with more than a few hundred thousand tokens in working memory, forcing elaborate workarounds to compensate for what the model can’t access. Protea removes those constraints. Entire regulatory archives, enterprise codebases, decades of clinical trial data – datasets that previously had to be broken apart and fed to…

South African health technology company Healthbridge has launched a Beta version of Practice Agent, an AI-powered platform designed to help medical practices identify chronic patients who have fallen out of care and reconnect them to funded consultations, tests, and preventative screenings. Embedded within the company’s cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) platform, Practice Agent continuously monitors patient populations, identifies missed care opportunities, and automates patient outreach on behalf of healthcare providers. The launch comes as Healthbridge’s macroeconomic data modelling reveals a significant gap in chronic disease management across South Africa. “In feedback from doctors across our client base, common challenges emerge:…

July is National Savings Month, an initiative driven by the South African Savings Institute (SASI) to build healthier financial habits across the country. This year, that message lands differently. Interest rates have risen, inflation is sitting at the upper end of the Reserve Bank’s target range, and household budgets that were already stretched are now being asked to do more with less. For many South Africans, “just save more” can feel like advice from a different economic reality. But that’s exactly why this discipline matters now, not despite the pressure, but because of it. Saving isn’t about deprivation or waiting…

Float, the card-linked instalment platform founded in South Africa, has expanded into the United Kingdom. The launch has been supported by the UK Government’s Global Entrepreneur Programme, which brings high-growth international businesses into the UK market. The South African fintech lets shoppers split any purchase into up to 24 interest- and fee-free monthly instalments, using the credit they already have on their existing Visa or Mastercard credit card. There is no new credit issued, no additional sign-up process, and no app download required. The shopper gets more time to pay with their credit card, and also keeps their regular loyalty…

Digital evidence has quickly become the smoking gun in white collar crime, but it’s worthless in court if handled by the wrong people in the wrong way. “As with a physical crime scene, digital evidence must be managed by forensic professionals who know how to preserve its integrity and prevent contamination,” says David Loxton, CEO and Senior Attorney at Loxton Forensics. Yet, many organisations make the fatal mistake of assigning critical digital evidence gathering, protection and analysis duties to IT personnel who know nothing of forensic science. The value of digital evidence Decades ago, white collar crime investigations focused on paper…

On the surface, South Africa’s digital credentials tell only part of the story. The country ranks 46th out of 147 economies in Microsoft’s Global AI Diffusion Report for Q1 2026, ahead of every other African country measured, and its generative AI usage has risen to 23.1% of the working-age population. Yet for the majority of South Africans, the conversation about artificial intelligence is happening in a world they cannot fully access. Only 16% of adults own a computer, and many have never used one. When a Laptop Costs More Than a Month’s Wages The reality, however, is more complicated. According…

Season 2 of Marvel Animation’s “X-Men ‘97” is now streaming exclusively on Disney+. The Emmy-nominated first season is one of the most-watched Disney+ Original animated series (based on hours streamed globally) and was a hit with fans and critics alike. Season 2 currently has a 100% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, as of today. “X-Men ‘97” Season 2 continues with the heroic mutant team of X-Men, divided and thrown across different eras in time as they struggle to navigate their return home. Meanwhile, back in the 1990s, suspicious foes and new strains of mutant intolerance are on the rise in…

Woolworths Financial Services (WFS) has launched MyDifference PLUS, an exciting addition to the Woolworths MyDifference loyalty programme, designed to help Woolies Credit Card and Store Card customers get more value. MyDifference PLUS rewards customers for shopping and for the way in which they manage their accounts. “Loyalty programmes are no longer defined by generic rewards, they are becoming intelligent, personalised ecosystems that recognise each customer’s unique preferences, behaviours and aspirations,” says Maré Louw, Chief Customer Officer of Woolworths Financial Services. “With MyDifference PLUS, we’re empowering customers to unlock greater value on their own terms through completion of actions that result…

As countries around the world race to secure leadership in quantum technologies – an emerging field expected to transform computing, healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture and cybersecurity – the University of Pretoria (UP) has been selected to play a significant role in South Africa’s next step into the quantum era. The University will host a new node of the South African Quantum Technology Initiative (SA QuTI), establishing UP Quantum Science and Technology (UPQuST – pronounced UPQuest) as one of six nationally funded quantum research hubs. Supported by the national Department of Science, Technology and Innovation over the next five years, the initiative…