Author: Staff Writer

Jaltech, one of South Africa’s largest commercial solar owners, is targeting more than R500 million in acquisitions of existing solar and battery systems within the next six months. This allows solar owners to sell their systems, with Jaltech then optimising the system to increase energy savings for the original owner. Until now, system owners had no choice but to hold onto their solar system. During the load shedding crisis, thousands of South African businesses rushed into buying solar and battery systems to keep their lights on. They were less concerned about energy costs and focused on securing supply, investing tens…

In a move set to redefine the cybersecurity landscape in Southern Africa, fast-growing Cape Town-based services firm Risk X Group (RXG) has announced the acquisition of South Africa’s Wolfpack Information Risk. The strategic deal merges RXG’s operational infrastructure with Wolfpack’s deep advisory expertise, creating an integrated security partner capable of covering every dimension of organisational cyber risk. The acquisition brings together two entities long recognised for their depth of expertise and client-centric approach. By combining RXG’s 24/7 managed detection and response capabilities with Wolfpack’s reputation in cyber risk advisory, threat intelligence, and security awareness, the group aims to offer a…

Financial exclusion is leaving millions of South Africans vulnerable to illegal lenders who operate beyond the protections of the National Credit Act, the Credit Association of South Africa (CASA) has warned. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, South Africans submitted 18 million credit applications, of which 13 million were declined. CASA says these figures reveal the scale of demand for credit, but also the growing number of people who are unable to obtain finance through regulated channels. “When a consumer is declined by a regulated credit provider, the need for money does not disappear,” says Leonie van Pletzen, CEO…

TikTok One has officially expanded to South Africa following a successful phased regional rollout. The integrated creative platform connects brands, creators and agencies and also supports more direct pathways to local brand partnerships and sponsored content. A platform connecting local brands and creators Following its global rollout, TikTok One is now available in South Africa, with local brands and creators already onboarded and using the platform. TikTok One is TikTok’s official collaboration platform connecting brands and creators for sponsored content and commercial partnerships. Built into TikTok Studio, TikTok One Creator Marketplace provides creators with a single destination to discover paid…

Obiflex, a doctor-led health management programme, has become one of the first companies in South Africa to offer a buy-now-pay-later payment structure for prescription medicine, launching monthly instalment plans for GLP-1 weight-loss treatment in a category estimated at R3 billion a year. The move follows recent regulatory and legal action against pharmacies that illegally compounded GLP-1 medicines, which supplied as many as 300,000 South Africans at a lower cost than registered alternatives. With that route now closed, affected patients face a choice between unregulated, potentially unsafe sources or registered treatment that costs between R3,000 and R6,000 a month, excluding consultations…

At the start of the two sales waves for the new iPhone 18 models, the buzz has extended far beyond customers and Apple enthusiasts – scammers are also attempting to capitalise on the hype. Kaspersky experts have identified fake websites promoting non-existent offers designed to deceive users for the new devices. These scam sites have been discovered in multiple languages, including English, Arabic, Portuguese and others. One of the identified websites offers users the opportunity to “purchase” new devices, complete with technical specifications and a 25% discount. Among the available payment methods, customers are also encouraged to pay in Bitcoin.…

South African democracy must be defended through resilient data infrastructure located firmly on home soil. That’s the word from Adriaan Venter, CEO of Cube ICT Solutions, a leading managed ICT services provider. “The current global trend towards hybrid warfare using cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns and economic pressure is less effective when there is sovereign control over critical information infrastructure like data centres,” Venter explains. Data hosted abroad is subject to the laws and politics of the host country. A number of European Central Banks have recently started moving their gold deposits closer to home in the face of increasing geopolitical risk.…

Prosus today announces a new leadership team for AI, technology and product. Euro Beinat takes on the role of Chief AI Officer; Paul van der Boor has been appointed Chief Technology Officer; while entrepreneur, investor and founder of WeTransfer and Boomerang, Nalden (Ronald Hans), joins Prosus as Chief Product Officer. They will lead on Prosus’s AI strategy, building and shipping products to help supercharge AI-led growth for the partners and SMEs within the Prosus extended ecosystem. For years, Prosus has been building technology to make life simpler for customers at iFood, OLX, PayU and more, training AI models on real…

Bank Zero, South Africa’s app-only, zero-fee bank, has reached its first monthly break-even, hitting the milestone in August 2026 less than five years after opening to the public in October 2021. The bank said its deposit base more than doubled over the past year, helping it cross into monthly profitability. Business accounts now make up 18% of its book, ahead of the 10% assumed in its original business case. More than 80% of those business clients are registered companies, which typically hold higher balances and process more transactions. Bank Zero was designed to break even on a fraction of the…

Madrid, Spain – [21 September 2026] – LIGAS Gaming, a new premium independent B2B digital games studio, today officially launched with an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with LALIGA to develop and distribute officially licensed real-money football games for licensed operators across global regulated markets. Purpose-built for the next generation of digital entertainment, LIGAS Gaming is introducing a new category of football gaming, bringing the emotion, intensity and unpredictability of live football into immersive real-money experiences designed specifically for today’s sports audiences. Created to solve one of the industry’s biggest commercial opportunities, LIGAS Gaming enables operators to seamlessly connect sportsbook audiences…

South African mobile technology company Mission Mobile announced that it will receive up to R500 million in funding from investment holding company DN Invest (DNI). The investment will enable the startup to expand its model, helping mobile network operators (MNOs) serve a broader customer base while giving more people access to smartphones and cost-effective connectivity. Mission Mobile was created to help network operators build more consistent customer engagement and help customers get more from their mobile spend. Though operators invest heavily to attract customers, many struggle to build longer-term engagement and realise the full value of those relationships. At the…

[Shanghai, China, September 18, 2026] – On September 18, Dr. Peter Zhou, Director of the Board at Huawei and CEO of Huawei Cloud, delivered a keynote titled “The Agentic Cloud for the Agentic World: Build Together, Grow Together” at HUAWEI CONNECT 2026. He shared Huawei Cloud’s latest progress. He announced the global launch of the latest AI Cluster Service (AICS), a key step in Huawei Cloud’s strategy to strengthen the silicon bedrock on the cloud and reinforce the foundation for agentic AI. The keynote also highlighted the Agentic Model as a Service (MaaS) platform, which brings together diverse models to…

UniComs Afrika has announced that it has been appointed as Monster’s authorised license partner for Africa. The partnership brings together Monster’s product heritage and global brand strength with UniComs Afrika’s regional market knowledge, retail relationships and channel development capabilities. Under the agreement, UniComs Afrika will lead the development, distribution, sales and marketing of authorised Monster branded products across participating African markets. The initial portfolio is expected to include consumer audio, professional audio, professional music-industry cables, audio/video cables, automotive audio and lighting, with additional categories planned as the partnership develops. “We are proud to partner with Monster and bring its legacy…

Salesforce today announced new Missionforce capabilities that give government agencies greater control over how they develop, customize, and deploy AI while streamlining policy execution, enhancing operations, and improving citizen support. Salesforce also announced a new Missionforce partnership with OpenAI to bring its leading AI models to secure government environments. The partnerships will unlock immediate operational impact: decision clarity for operators in the field; greater efficiency and mission readiness for agencies; and faster, more responsive services for citizens. “Government agencies want tailored AI that runs everywhere they operate while staying within the secure environments their missions demand.” said Kendall Collins, CEO…

Today at Dreamforce, Salesforce, the #1 AI CRM, and Live Nation Entertainment (announced an expansion of Live Nation’s use of Agentforce, bringing 24/7 fan support to Live Nation venues across the U.S. On-demand festival expertise This expansion builds on Live Nation’s innovation at BottleRock Napa Valley, a weekend of music alongside food, wine, and culinary experiences. With multiple stages and experiences happening at once, fans are constantly deciding what to see, where to go, and what to do next. To help fans arrive prepared and make it easier to discover everything the festival had to offer, Live Nation debuted Melody:…

One year ago, Salesforce launched Missionforce, its agentic platform for government that brings trusted AI, data, apps, and cloud technology to the government’s most critical missions. Since then, public sector has become Salesforce’s fastest-growing industry business at scale, with its defense sector business growing 80% year over year as demand accelerates. Today, Salesforce supports some of the government’s most complex and consequential missions across more than 30 countries, 60 U.S. federal agencies, all 15 U.S. Cabinet departments, all 50 states, and all six branches of the U.S. military. Salesforce was also named a Leader in the 2026 IDC MarketScape for…

New integrations bring Salesforce data, context, and actions into Amazon Quick, AWS agents into Slack, and Agent2Agent (A2A) support for real-time, bidirectional voice between Agentforce Voice and Amazon Connect Customer — putting AI where customers work, grounded in data they trust, without requiring migrations. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Salesforce today announced an expanded collaboration to help enterprises close deals, resolve customer issues, and move faster with AI. The expanded collaboration comes as AI influences not only what enterprises build but also how and where their teams work. Three dynamics are shaping adoption: the demand for AI that can act…

Salesforce has released its 2026 Agentic Enterprise Index, which analyzes aggregated AI usage data from the Agentforce platform to uncover how businesses are deploying, using, and getting value out of AI agents. The results this year show a tale of two rollouts, a bifurcation in the global business landscape in which an industry’s operational DNA and business needs can dictate how its digital workforce is deployed. High-volume, task-specific deployments: Most common among consumer-facing sectors, this approach leans into high volume and speed to tackle immediate customer needs. Versatile, multistep deployments: Seen in more operationally complex and heavily regulated fields like…

A new architecture that gives AI a shared understanding of the customer and the business — and enables it to act with trust Six trusted capabilities and a new AI Control Plane, built for an open and composable AI ecosystem Update: Salesforce has officially unveiled its Trusted Enterprise AI Harness, a new architecture designed to help enterprises deploy AI agents that can understand, reason, and act within trusted business controls. The Agentic Enterprise is changing how work gets done — and the role every person plays in it. As agents become part of how people work across every function of…

 Every company is racing to turn AI into realbusiness results. But the hardest part is no longer getting AI to answer a question. It’s gettingAI to do the work that matters across every business function. Over the past two years, Salesforce has worked alongside customers across thousands ofagentic deployments and delivered 7 billion Agentic Work Units (AWUs) across Agentforceand Slack, including 3.2 billion in Q2 alone. That experience has made one thing clear: putting 1/6 agents to work requires more than intelligence. Agents need to understand the job, workacross the business, and keep moving toward a goal as the work…

Every company is racing to turn AI into real business results. But the hardest part is no longer getting AI to answer a question. It’s getting AI to do the work that matters across every business function. Over the past two years, Salesforce has worked alongside customers across thousands of agentic deployments and delivered 7 billion Agentic Work Units (AWUs) across Agentforce and Slack, including 3.2 billion in Q2 alone. That experience has made one thing clear: putting agents to work requires more than intelligence. Agents need to understand the job, work across the business, and keep moving toward a…

South African corporate advisory and investment firm YW Capital and RMB have announced the completion of a R2.25 billion Pepkor logistics property transaction through IronOak, YW Capital’s real estate investment platform focused on industrial and logistics property. IronOak has been developed through a long-term partnership between YW Capital and RMB. RMB committed seed equity alongside YW Capital and provided financing to the fund, giving the partners funding certainty through the transaction and a foundation from which to grow the platform beyond the Pepkor portfolio. As its cornerstone investment, IronOak acquired a 65% shareholding in Badger Properties, the company whose portfolio…

South Africa’s campaign to position industrial policy, and electric vehicle (EV) development in particular, as a cornerstone of economic transformation for emerging economies has found new traction at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi (the BRICS countries are Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates). This adds real-world momentum to the case first set out by the B20’s Industrial Transformation and Innovation Task Force during South Africa’s Presidency of the G20. The Task Force, chaired by Toyota South Africa CEO Andrew Kirby, had pointed to India’s EV transformation, with sales surpassing…

DNI, a privately owned South African investment company, has announced investments exceeding R2.1 billion across connectivity, digital services, and fintech, expanding access to the tools and services that empower meaningful participation in the digital economy and drive greater financial inclusion for millions of people. The investments span Frogfoot, Vox and Hypa, Mission Mobile, and KnowRoaming, bringing complementary capabilities in fibre infrastructure, affordable device access, and eSIM services into one connected strategy. Together, these businesses expand on DNI’s investment strategy backing founder-led companies with deep sector expertise, to support their growth and create opportunities for collaboration and long-term value within the…

Sanlam is the highest-ranked South African company in the TIME World’s Best Companies 2026, published on 9 September 2026, climbing 321 places since 2025. A total of 1,000 companies from around the world are recognised and ranked by TIME each year for their performance and contribution to shaping the future of business. Compiled in partnership with Statista, companies are evaluated across three equally weighted dimensions: employee satisfaction, revenue growth and sustainability performance (ESG). Sanlam’s global ranking of 388th is up from 709th in 2025. CEO Paul Hanratty says: “At Sanlam, our purpose is to empower generations to be financially confident, secure…