Author: Staff Writer

Sendmarc, a cyber-security email protection and compliance business, is planning to use Kalon’s Venture Partners follow-on investment to scale the business into global markets. South African venture capital firm Kalon Venture Partners announced last January its first investment in Sendmarc. For more read: Kalon Venture Partners Invest in Cyber-Security Email Protection Firm Sendmarc was launched in 2018 by Sam Hutchinson, Keith Thompson and Sacha Matulovich. These key founding members were the pioneers in identifying a need for a safer and more secure email environment for small to large companies. The company provides the setup, implementation and reporting functionality for a…

Shoprite has launched an exclusive free funeral benefit offering for its Xtra Savings members. The programme is underwritten by Outsurance and will provide free month-to-month funeral benefits to beneficiaries of those who opt in and swipe their Xtra Savings cards four times or more during a calendar month. The initiative is the latest value addition to Shoprite’s Xtra Savings programme, which has gained over 11 million members, who’ve saved a collective R1.6 billion, since its launch just six months ago. In the event of a successful claim, the Xtra Savings Funeral Benefit will provide a predefined beneficiary access to a…

Global cryptocurrency exchange Luno added almost a million new South African customers during 2020, and over 250,000 so far in 2021. It has achieved 300% year-on-year growth compared to January 2020 and recorded $8.3 billion in transactions worldwide. Luno processed nearly $3 billion in volumes in SA last year, and was already above this number at the end of March. An estimated 15% of South Africans have invested in bitcoin – the second-highest percentage in the world according to the Global Web Index, beating even the USA and Japan. With over 2.1 million users in South Africa, Luno has around…

Huawei South Africa has committed R7 million in bursaries to support 48 top ICT students at 5 universities, as part of its wider ICT Talent Ecosystem, which aims to grow and support ICT skills training and skills transfer in South Africa. The ICT sector, especially mobile telecommunications, is a scarce skills sector in South Africa. The number of students in ICT related courses is still low and competition for young recruits is fierce. In awarding these bursaries, Huawei aims to address some of the challenges it’s faced when it comes to recruiting in South Africa. The programme offers students from…

Students from Forge Academy, South Africa’s first fully inclusive Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) laboratory, recently took part in a tri-continental hackathon between students from South Africa, Finland and the USA. Organised by EduExcellence, the Finnish education specialists; the South African leg was hosted at Forge Academy in Gauteng. Student teams specialising in ICT studies each designed ChatBot software programme as a digital solution to guide ‘consumers’ through a symptom diagnostics programme for coronavirus symptoms. “The hackathon was a great opportunity for South African ICT students to represent their country and continent among leading tech nations and to grow their ICT…

Vodacom Group, part of Vodafone, will work with Auda-Nepad to build digital infrastructure to manage vaccinations across up to 55 countries, following successful deployments in South Africa – to manage COVID-19 vaccinations – and in Mozambique, Tanzania and Nigeria – to manage infant inoculations. The roll-out of mVacciNation, developed by Mezzanine, a member of Vodacom, is the first project in a public-private partnership that has been formed between Vodacom Group and Auda-Nepad to boost Africa’s digital transformation and build resilience for the post-Covid world. “Vodacom has been at the forefront of helping governments where we operate to curb the spread…

President Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africa must forge a new economy in a new global reality. “We have to both recover the ground that we have lost due to the Coronavirus pandemic, and to gain new ground by placing our economy on a fundamentally different growth trajectory,” President Ramaphosa said in his weekly newsletter on Monday. He said the country’s economic recovery plan is not about a return to what was, but about transformation to what is next. “One of the concrete ways that we can do this is by harnessing the job creating potential of the digital economy, whose…

BMW South Africa & Sub-Saharan Africa announced the appointment of new CEO Peter van Binsbergen, who officially took over the reins from Tim Abbott in January 2021. Van Binsbergen brings a unique and international perspective as the first South African CEO in the group’s history on the continent. Fittingly, he has returned to his home country to assume the position – the same place where he started his career with the BMW Group almost 27 years ago. Having worked in various leadership positions across the Group, van Binsbergen plans to use his wealth of expertise and leadership skills to drive…

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) and the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will see both regulators collaborating and sharing ideas on matters of mutual interest. The MOU was signed virtually by both regulators on Thursday, 8 April 2021 at 15h00. The MOU is a non-binding framework to facilitate the exchange of ideas in the field of telecommunications regulation and policy for the mutual benefit of the two regulators. “This is a momentous collaboration that illustrates the confidence that our global counterparts have in ICASA. This collaboration places the…

Discovery Vitality announced today a timeous new reward for members – a month of Netflix for the cost of a coffee or smoothie. For a limited time, Discovery Vitality is offering members an extra incentive to stay fit. From 3 April 2021 until 3 July 2021, you can access a R250 Netflix reward by attaining 150 Discovery Miles for a month.  “We have always enhanced our rewards aligned to what we know members will enjoy most as an incentive for keeping fit and healthy. Netflix is the premium streaming platform for current content, and we want to offer our members…

Greece’s Independent Power Transmission Operator (IPTO) has proceeded with the procurement of an integrated business information system with a total value of €6.5 million (R112 million). The system will be developed and implemented by the consortium of Intrasoft and OTE. The new system signifies a new era of digitization for all administrative corporate processes. The new system is aimed at renovating and upgrading all processes in the fields of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Human Resource Management (HRM), Fixed Asset Management (EAM – Enterprise Asset Management), Planning and Execution of Technical Tasks (WFM – Workforce Management) and Project Management (PS –…

The National Treasury says its technicians are working around the clock to solve a technical problem that saw its e-Tender portal experience technical difficulties. In a statement, the department on Wednesday said the ICT server infrastructure that hosts the e-Tender portal suffered a crash caused by a technical failure. “This resulted in data corruption, leading to the unavailability of the site. Technicians have been hard at work to solve the problem. Updates will be provided on progress and it is expected to be resolved as a matter of priority,” National Treasury said. The e-Tender portal downtime does not impact on…

Absa Group, one of the largest financial service providers in Africa, has launched a cloud incubator initiative in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud services provider, to enhance its cloud computing skills across its operations in Africa. As one of the largest cloud adopters in Africa, Absa is promoting cloud fluency as part of its broader efforts to promote learning, experimentation and innovation across the organisation to enhance the banking experience for its customers. By migrating to the cloud, companies can eliminate the expense of building and managing on-site data centres while gaining the ability to reduce infrastructure…

Microsoft revealed that it is the first cloud provider that is exploring two-phase immersion cooling technology. The tech giant said this experiment is part of the company’s multi-pronged strategy to make datacentres more sustainable and efficient to build, operate and maintain. The liquid cooling project is similar to Microsoft’s Project Natick, which is exploring the potential of underwater datacenters that are quick to deploy and can operate for years on the seabed sealed inside submarine-like tubes without any onsite maintenance by people. Instead of an engineered fluid, the underwater datacentres is filled with dry nitrogen air. The servers are cooled with…

Rectron, one of South Africa’s leading distributors of IT products, continues to strengthen its enterprise offering with the addition of Newland ID, a manufacturer of barcode scanners, to its portfolio. As part of the agreement, Rectron will be distributing the full Newland ID range, comprising (wireless) handheld scanners, stationary scanners, mobile computers, tablets, micro kiosks, and OEM scan engines, as well as offering pre-sales support and first-line technical support. This includes managing all repairs and RMA-related incidents in house and with third parties where necessary. “Through Rectron, the South African market will now have full access to the Newland ID…

As healthcare organisations scrambled to cope with huge surges in patient numbers in the wake of the pandemic, the past year has seen a major step-change in the adoption of technology and digital services.  But on World Health Day, any progress they have made in their digital transformation risks being washed away by the deluge of resulting data. According to research by Aruba, a HPE company, as of last year, the healthcare sector was among the furthest ahead in terms of its adoption of advanced technologies and the sense of urgency it felt around this. Around three-quarters of healthcare IT leaders had started to implement trials or applications…

Vodacom Group and Vodafone Foundation will donate R74 million to support the vaccine roll-out to vulnerable and hard to reach communities across its markets in Africa. The contribution will buy cold-chain technology and provide logistics support to help to ensure the safe delivery of COVID-19 vaccines that need to be stored at extremely cold temperatures. Separately the organisations will donate €0.8 million (R13 million) to Lesotho to purchase vaccines. The Vodacom Group and Vodafone Foundations have already contributed €10 million (R176 million) in cash and in-kind donations in response to the pandemic. “Targeted donations from Vodafone Foundation and Vodacom Group…

General Motors (GM) is building a Silverado electric pickup truck to offer customers an estimated range of more than 643 kilometres on a full charge. The company said in a statement it plans to deliver more than 1 million electric vehicles globally by 2025. The Chevrolet Silverado electric full-size pickup is designed from the ground up to be an EV, harnessing the best of the Ultium Platform and Silverado’s proven capability. It will be built at the company’s Factory ZERO assembly plant in Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan. “The vehicles coming from Factory ZERO will change the world, and how the…

South Africa’s largest landlord Growthpoint Properties has opened its first specialised surgical hospital. The hospital is known as Cintocare Private Surgical Hospital. Cintocare Hospital in the green Menlyn Main precinct is a tailor-made, high-performance clinical centre of excellence focused exclusively on head, neck, spinal and vascular surgery. Construction of the R470 million specialist surgical hospital began in July 2018 and, despite the COVID-19 lockdown, was completed on time at the end of 2020. The hospital was built by Growthpoint Healthcare, which invests exclusively in and manages healthcare property assets in South Africa, including hospitals, clinics, biotechnology facilities and laboratories. Growthpoint holds…

Africa Data Centres, Africa’s largest network of interconnected, carrier- and cloud-neutral data centre facilities, has confirmed a significant investment in constructing a new data centre facility in Lagos, Nigeria. Liquid Intelligent Technologies own Africa Data Centres. Nigeria is a key African market, says Stephane Duproz, CEO of Africa Data Centres. “This region is hungry for digitisation and to pave the way for our hyperscale customers to deploy digitisation solutions to West Africa, Africa Data Centres’ construction of a 10-megawatt data centre in Lagos is well underway. The Lagos build marks a significant step forward in its ambitious long-term strategy to…

Vodacom aims to focus on celebrating the human spirit and what it can achieve in partnership with technology. The new brand tagline, ‘Further Together’ it places the emphasis on how – through partnerships and collaboration – it is possible to connect everyone to the digital economy so that no one is left behind, says Balesh Sharma, Managing Director Vodacom South Africa. Vodacom launched “The future is exciting. Ready?” as its previous brand positioning only three-and-a-half years ago in October 2017. As the world transitions to recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Vodacom is celebrating what the human spirit…

The Pegasus Vertical Business Jet (VBJ), being developed in South Africa, is entering its next phase with two quarter-scale models to be ready for testing and engineering by May 2021 and a full-scale unmanned hover model by the end of the year. This follows the successful hover demonstration of a 1/8-scale model in July last year and the registration of patent rights in South Africa, Europe, and the US. The aircraft is set to revolutionize business travel globally and free travellers from the burden of the time-consuming drive to the airport. The aircraft, that combines and enhances the characteristics of…

South Africa’s only manufacturer of mobile devices has praised the South African Government’s massive vote of confidence in its decision to recognise Mara Phones as its preferred device brand in all procurements for the next five years. In the recently awarded RT15-2021 contract for ‘the supply and delivery of mobile communication services to the state for the period 01 April 2021 to 31 March 2026’, National Treasury requires preference to be given to local mobile device manufacturers and Mara Phones has been given first preference in the published list of nominated OEMs. “All other device brands supplied by Vodacom, MTN,…

A South African worker employed by one of the country’s biggest insurer was fired for tweeting to President Cyril Ramaphosa and the South African Police Service (SAPS). The case of this worker fired for a tweet was recently held by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA). At the end of March 2020, Ramaphosa declared the national state of disaster and the insurer decided to send its workforce home. Sean Jamieson, a senior associate at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, wrote in the law firm’s blog that two days later, management received confirmation that it was regarded as an essential service.…

Eskom loses a court battle to stop US-based software giant Oracle from withdrawing its crucial services over a dispute relating to billions of rands owed by the power utility. The Sunday World reported that South Africa is now at the mercy of Oracle to save it from plunging into darkness and keep the lights on. Eskom failed to convince the Johannesburg High Court to stop Oracle from withdrawing its crucial services. Oracle provides an online vending system that records 77 million transactions of electricity a month. The embattled power utility also uses Oracle’s products and services for load monitoring of…