Author: Staff Writer

Avon on Wednesday condemned unfounded, unsubstantiated and untrue social media allegation that the company has classified its business as an essential service. Government has stipulated which sectors of the economy it deems as essential services. “Avon takes a dim view to these unsubstantiated claims which it regards as malicious,” said Mafahle Mareletse, Managing Director: Avon Justine SA. “When the numbers of confirmed coronavirus infections steadily increased, Avon made provisions to protect its employees, suppliers and customers by instructing its employees to work from home.” As at yesterday, Avon Justine Head Office employees that been working from home since Wednesday last…

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) will remain fully operational throughout South Africa’s 21-day lockdown which will be implemented from midnight (SA Standard Time) tomorrow, Thursday 26 March 2020. JSE Group CEO, Leila Fourie said that the bourse was constantly monitoring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, continuously engaging with National Treasury, the Prudential Authority and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA). The JSE had already moved close to 90% of its employees out of the exchange to work remotely. Critical staff would be able to work from the exchange should the need arise to enable the JSE to seamlessly trade,…

Shoprite, Africa’s largest food retailer, has announced a once-off R102 million appreciation bonus for its shopfloor and distribution centre employees to thank and support them for their tireless efforts to feed the nation in these unprecedented times. The largest private employer in South Africa said this follows President Cyril Ramaphosa’s call on larger businesses, in particular, to take care of their workers during this period and to marshal every resource and their every energy to fight this epidemic. Supermarket employees are at the forefront of serving and safeguarding customers by implementing the group’s strict hygiene measures while distribution centre employees are…

ISPA calls on South African ISPs and other ICT service providers to take steps to support internet users engaged in online education during the COVID-19 National Disaster period. These steps may include zero-rating educational traffic, temporarily increasing bandwidth caps for some customers, or even providing limited free “lifeline” data packages to customers. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) play an important role in keeping South Africans connected, especially during a time of crisis. Given the ongoing disruptions to schools and universities, all ISPs should zero-rate traffic to national educational learning resources, including learning management systems, institutional repositories, library services and student support…

Access to the official South African COVID-19 website has been made 100% free. Working in partnership with the Department of Health, Vodacom has zero-rated the site so that any customer with a device can have access without data or airtime. With President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 21-day national lockdown declared last night, South African citizens need a trusted, up-to-date, accurate source of information about the COVID-19 pandemic during this uncertain time. The National Department of Health’s COVID-19 Connect WhatsApp line has provided this information to nearly 2 million people within the last week. In partnership with the NDoH, Vodacom is sending awareness…

At the stroke of midnight on Thursday, South Africa will go on a nationwide lock-down with the exception of essential services. President Cyril Ramaphosa made this announcement on Monday evening, following a meeting held on Sunday with the National Coronavirus Command Council. The lockdown, is government’s bid to contain and slow down the spread of the Coronavirus in the country. The announcement comes a week after the President declared the outbreak a national state of disaster. The nationwide lockdown comes as South Africa saw a surge in the number of confirmed cases rising from 274 on Sunday to 402 by…

In light of the Coronavirus pandemic, The National Coronavirus Command Council has decided to enforce a 21-day nation-wide lockdown with effect from midnight on Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Monday. In a televised address to the nation, the President announced that the lockdown is necessary in order to save lives in light of the Coronavirus. “This is a decisive measure to save millions of South Africans from infection and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. While this measure will have a considerable impact on people’s livelihoods, on the life of our society and on our economy,…

The South African business community has mobilised to combine its resources as a way of limiting the economic, social and health impact of COVID-19 on the country. This emerged at the discussions held by President Cyril Ramaphosa and the country’s business formations on Sunday. Business Unity South Africa (BUSA), the Black Business Council (BBC) and other companies and business associations, have established a Project Management Office aimed at ensuring collaboration with government and to use the available business resources and capacity to support public sector initiatives. “In a unique collaboration across public and private sectors, this will see business being…

South Africa has 402 confirmed cases of COVID-19, an increase of 128 from Sunday’s announcement. On Monday, the Health Department confirmed an increase of 128 cases. The Northern Cape has its first confirmed cases. The announcement comes just hours ahead of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s address to the nation on measures to be undertaken to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. The President is scheduled to address the nation this evening. “We will thereafter engage the public to give further details and explanations on the results including the significant rise, the ongoing testing processes, each province’s progress on contact tracing efforts,” said…

With the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the full economic impact on business needs to be critically considered. Especially for a country such as South Africa, that is still grappling with the effects of a recent technical recession. We are all very aware of the human toll that the virus has had on societies across the board. We have also seen the measures that various governments have put in place to try curb and gain some sense of control over the spread and intensity of the virus, by encouraging self-isolation during this pandemic. “Taking the necessary precautions is vital,…

As business and society, we are seeing a concerning increase in the transmissions of COVID-19 cases across multiple countries. The virus has had a far-reaching impact on our societies and is testing the resilience and tenacity of businesses and individuals alike. Globally, governments and companies are ramping up efforts to help mitigate the spread of the virus. In MTN’s footprint 17 of our 21 markets have COVID-19 infections. “MTN’s priority is keeping people connected during this period.  We need to play our part in the alleviation of the economic, social and educational impact through the support of key institutions such…

As South Africa and the international community continue to intensify efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, FNB has reaffirmed its commitment to help SMEs and individual customers whose financial position is adversely impacted by COVID-19. The Bank continues to work with the Banking Association of South Africa (BASA), in engaging with the SARB and Government on a variety of solutions aimed at supporting both consumers and businesses through these difficult times. We will make further announcements on the nature of this support in the days ahead. FNB believes that SMEs and an economically viable consumer market are vital to…

To play its part in reducing the impact of COVID-19 on customers,Nedbank says it will offer all clients “individual solutions to cashflow challenges”. The solutions will be available to clients in good standing who are impacted by this pandemic. “We undertake to work with our clients to help them through this period of enormous challenge for all South Africans,” the bank said in a statement. “This undertaking to work alongside and support our clients with suitable individual solutions to cashflow challenges they may experience as a result of COVID-19 extends to any loan agreement they have with us. “This support…

Call blocking by South Africa’s biggest network operators is negatively impacting many local telecoms customers who are finding they cannot always successfully complete phone calls. This is according to Anthony Engelbrecht, Technical Director at an independent telco, Huge Networks. He explains that some clients of SA’s many Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telecoms networks such as Huge Networks, Connection Telecoms and dozens of others are increasingly finding that calls they place are not reaching the intended telecoms user. VoIP operators are typically smaller telcos that came into being as the country’s telecoms landscape was liberalised in the 1990s. Their emergence…

The South African army could be deployed to patrol the streets in a bid to stop the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, according to a report in the Sunday Times. Health minister Zweli Mkhize told the newspaper that the government would gradually impose stricter measures as the virus spreads before the worse case of a national shutdown. “Right now it is restrictions. [We] might have to begin to bring in the army to go out and work around the people, talk to them about hygiene, getting them to go sanitise, and so on,” said Mkhize. It was announced yesterday that…

The time is past when tossing a single coin was already an added value. There are currently hundreds of coins and thousands of tokens in the world of cryptocurrencies, and therefore when a company wants to succeed it must offer not just one coin or one token, but an entire value proposition for an entire ecosystem. This is the case of the proposal that we bring today: Silk Road Coin by LGR Group. What do we understand by Silk Road? Before going in to talk in-depth, we must be clear about what we are talking about when we talk about…

Huawei Technologies has handed over a million rand donation to South Africa’s Department of Health, to support efforts to fight and contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Health Minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize who also received a further two million from the South Africa-China Economic and Trade Association, at the Chinese Embassy in Pretoria, says the money will be used for testing and managing the outbreak. The Minister hailed the donation as a very important mark of friendship, solidarity and partnership from Huawei and other Chinese businesses. He went on to say that there has been a huge amount of…

What do grocery shopping, performing a banking transaction, avoiding traffic congestion, booking a restaurant and hailing a ride all have in common? If this question was asked a little over a decade ago, the simple answer would have been a resolute “nothing”. After all, it was only in July 2008 that the entire mobile industry began to revolve around apps. Fast-forward to 2020, and now there is an app for almost anything and everything. With approximately six million apps available in the market today, consumers have uninterrupted access to a richer, hyper-connected experience. These apps have shaped the way we…

Zindi will host UmojaHack Africa, the first-ever pan-African inter-university machine learning hackathon, virtually due to coronavirus outbreak. The UmojaHack Africa competition which takes place on Saturday, 21 March 2020. Zindi will host the first-ever virtual inter-university artificial intelligence (AI) hackathon for students across Africa. Over 70 universities from 17 African countries, with an estimated 2500 students, have registered to participate in the hackathon taking place on Zindi’s online platform. “This level of collaboration and partnership across Africa is very exciting, and it is quite simple for students to join remotely through Zindi. The day’s activities will be live-streamed on our YouTube channel, from the launch…

Red Puppy, the latest South African, 100% black-owned online marketplace platform, today announced the launch of its website, with iOS and Android App to be launch by the end of March 2020. This addition to Red Puppy’s technology suite illustrates the startup’s initiative in bringing effective methods for delivering goods to South Africans. The platform features a variety of vendors displaying environmentally friendly products and will also be an advertising platform for services providers. The South African online shopping industry is a R10 billion market and stand to benefit from the Coronavirus pandemic. Global online giants such as Amazon and…

At Liquid Telecom, we believe that ‘every individual on the African continent has the right to be connected’. This enduring belief is guiding us as we respond to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak. The health and safety of our people and those of our customers, suppliers and other business partners is paramount. We have implemented robust contingency planning across the business to protect the health of our people and those with whom we come into contact. This includes, but is not limited to, implementing the advice of the authorities, particularly the World Health Organisation and other reliable sources. Liquid Telecom’s focus…

MTN Group announced on Thursday that it has completed the sale of ATC joint ventures. Africa’s largest mobile phone operator sold ATC joint ventures for R8.9 billion. The sale is part of MTN’s asset realisation programme (ARP), introduced in March 2019, which aims to reduce debt, simplify its portfolio, reduce risk and improve returns. Subsequent to MTN Group’s announcement on 11 March 2020 reporting its 2019 annual results and the conclusion of the disposal of its stake in ATC Uganda for R2,2 billion, MTN confirms that regulatory approvals have now been received for the disposal of its stake in ATC…

In these uncertain times, only one thing is really certain, and that’s that every company and its dog wants to tell you what it’s doing in the wake of the Corona crisis. Yet amidst the benign platitudes, gloomy headlines and pervasive uncertainty, here’s some really, really good news: TymeBank, South Africa’s first digital bank, will honour their commitment to their customers and keep their interest rate unchanged at 10%. Worth noting is that TymeBank has taken this decision before the Reserve Bank makes its announcement later today and likely cuts the benchmark interest rate by a considerable amount. TymeBank’s bold…

As part of its efforts to continuously give consumers more than what they bargain for, Telkom has announced that it has revamped its FreeMe offerings. From 20 March 2020, new Telkom mobile customers will get a bit of everything on the New FreeMe plans. This means more benefits across all tariff plans and MORE Monate for everyone. Some of the new product offerings like all network calls and extra data for streaming will be available across all packages. “Customers are at the core of how we innovate and improve our product offering. Over the years, we have been able to…

SA Express has suspended its operations effective as of Wednesday as a result of the Coronavirus (COVID-19). “In light of adverse recent developments including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, SA Express announces that it will suspend operations from 18 March 2020 until further notice,” said the airline in a statement on Tuesday night. In light of the suspension, the airline will accommodate its customers on alternative flights. In addition, all non-critical SA Express staff will be placed on compulsory leave during this time. “The airline will utilise this period to review its current network and streamline operations for improved…