Author: Staff Writer

MTN today announced the first two winners of the MTN CakeCrush competition launched in October this year. As part of MTN’s big 25th birthday celebrations this summer, the competition gives customers a chance to win one of 25 VW Polo Vivos and their share of millions more in prizes. Ntombizamabele Oscarina Maganga from Kokstad, Kwa-Zulu Natal and Andile Angelo Manci from Bhizane, Eastern Cape are the two lucky winners of the VW Polo Vivos. The new cars are a fantastic festive season gifts for Ntombizamabele and Andile who are looking forward to many happy miles, road trips and brighter adventures…

Summer’s here and school holidays are upon us. “Millions of young South Africans will soon be experiencing the lazy, hazy days of summer and with them, plenty of free time to surf both the sea and the web,” says André van der Walt, chair of SA’s Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA). With smartphone penetration well over the 100% mark, it’s clear that many South African families now have multiple devices in the home. Unfortunately, coupled with the convenience of always-on connectivity is the constant threat of unsavoury web content. Good news for parents in the run-up to the summer holidays…

The limited fastest Mini ever has been revealed and is known as the MINI John Cooper Works GP. The new car packs more power and some serious aero. The MINI John Cooper Works GP name has been used by the BMW-owned brand in the past and embodies maximum performance and uncompromising dynamics. It follows on from the likewise limited-edition John Cooper Works GP small series of 2013 and 2006. This model is limited to just 3,000 units. The MINI John Cooper Works GP distils the racing essence of the modern MINI. Classic MINI icons such as the elliptical headlights and…

It is not enough for business to simply stick to the fundamental products and services they have always offered. In the digital age it’s disrupt or die. Caption: Lu Baoqiang, Vice President of Huawei Southern Africa Region According to the IDC, digital transformation is essential for an organisation to adapt quickly to changing markets. Business opportunities are fleeting, the IDC said, and if your business does not have the agility to seize them, your competition will. The IDC said that digitally transformed organisations can react quickly to changing market dynamics, and adapt their strategies quickly and on-demand. Companies that are…

IBM, American Cancer Society (ACS), the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), today announced a new alliance to help improve access to high-quality cancer care and treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa called Allied Against Cancer. The Alliance will support a network of African oncology experts and technical assistance partners to help improve the quality of cancer care, including collaborating closely with the African Cancer Coalition to establish priorities and execute these initiatives locally. There are more than 800,000 new cancer cases each year in Sub-Saharan Africa and incidence is projected to double by 2040. And…

MTN South Africa announced on Monday morning that it has signed a new long-form roaming and services agreement with Cell C, subject to certain conditions precedent. In May 2018, Cell C signed its first roaming agreement with MTN, providing Cell C with 2G, 3G and 4G roaming services on MTN’s network in select areas of South Africa. The new agreement will see this access expanded to enable Cell C to roam on MTN’s network in all areas of the country. This is aligned to MTN’s strategy to further develop the group’s wholesale business and will allow both MTN and Cell…

Luno’s CEO Marcus Swanepoel, speaking at AfricaCom 2019, has outlined how the implementation and use of cryptocurrencies will be an important part of Africa’s future. Luno can see that as cryptocurrencies develop over the next ten years, they can become part of everyone’s lives, solving many of the issues currently associated with existing fiat currencies. Commenting after his keynote at AfricaCom, Swanepoel said: “Cryptocurrencies are on a growth path which can help solve the fundamental problems of the existing monetary system, which in many parts of Africa is not fit for purpose. At the moment we tend to hear about…

Safaricom and Huawei have jointly received the prestigious Most Innovative Service “the Business of Tomorrow” award at AfricaCom 2019 in Cape Town. Safaricom and Huawei Executives at AfricaCom 2019, winners of “Most Innovative Service” Award. George Njuguna, IT Director, Safaricom (Left) and Stanley Shen, Director Safaricom KAD at Huawei Kenya (right) This award recognizes the two companies for offering the new revolutionary Mobile Money Overdraft service, known as “Fuliza”. This service enables users with insufficient funds in their M-PESA accounts to borrow money to complete their M-PESA transactions. The service was officially launched in January 2019 and has been gaining…

Dale Capital, a Mauritian-listed private equity investment holding company, has completed its inward listing on the ZAR X stock exchange. The firm said this listing will enable South Africans to invest in a growing group with an attractive return in a tax-effective jurisdiction. Dale Capital wishes to raise $2 million (about R30 million post the listing), says Norman Noland, founder and CEO of Dale Capital. “By enabling participation for South African investors through this inward listing, we are diversifying the group’s capital base, improving liquidity for existing shareholders, and providing a diversified investment spread for investors as a result of…

Rand Merchant Investments, through its FinTech investment arm, AlphaCode, has taken a 25.1% stake in Guidepost, a high-touch diabetes health and InsurTech innovator that is poised for international expansion. The funding will be used to bring in key executive skills, further develop Guidepost’s differentiated clinical technology and scale the business locally and globally with insurance partners. Guidepost is a technology platform that enables highly personalised, data-driven diabetes management at scale.  The timing of this investment is marked by World Diabetes day on 14 November. It achieves radical clinical improvements in just four to six months of working with patients and…

Huawei will introduce the Kunpeng-powered cloud services to African customers by the end of December, the Chinese tech giant announced on Wednesday. The Kunpeng-powered cloud services and Partner Program 2.0 were launched at AfricaCom in Cape Town. The services will offer 15% faster multi-core computing power and a 30% higher performance/price ratio than the industry average, the company said. It added that these cloud services offer an unprecedented capability to meet the ever-shifting requirements of a diverse range of public and private institutions. Speaking at the Huawei Cloud, AI Forum, Rui Houwei, President of HUAWEI CLOUD Africa, noted the significance…

Sentech is introducing its new broadband offering known as Sentech Connect, South Africa’s biggest digital content services provider disclosed on Monday at AfricaCom. The state-owned company said the new broadband service will digitise healthcare, education and government services in underserviced and rural areas, bridging the digital divide with fast reliable broadband connectivity. The company said the broadband offering will range from a bandwidth of 10mbps-100mbps, allowing for the creation of Smart Classrooms; Smart City Services; Smart Clinics and Hospitals; the Internet of Things (IoT), and Public Safety Initiatives. These solutions will make use of various networks ranging from broadband to ultra-narrow…

MTN wants to bridge the digital divide by ensuring that rural people in Africa and the Middle East are connected to the internet through its network, Africa and the Middle East-biggest mobile phone operator disclosed on Tuesday. At AfricaCom, MTN revealed its innovative rural connectivity strategy. The company said it is amongst the Pioneers of OpenRAN – the technology which enables operators to achieve cost-effective deployments allowing for greater connectivity to previously unconnected areas. MTN announced it has deployed over 200 commercial rural sites across its footprint, using OpenRAN technology. The operator added that it is projecting to deploy more…

Vodacom Business is extending its pan-African network to Miami in the United States, the enterprise unit of Vodacom Group said on Tuesday. The company said it is extending its network through the new undersea South Atlantic Cable System (SACS). SACS is the first to directly link the African continent’s southern hemisphere with South America. This new trans-Atlantic route offers a significantly cost-effective and faster way for African-based American multi-national corporations to connect back to the United States, reducing latency by up to 40%. “Vodacom Business is undertaking this investment to shorten the distance between the American and African continents. The…

South African stock exchange A2X Markets launched on 6 October 2017 with three listings and four of the industry’s leading brokers on board. After just two years, A2X boasts a combined market cap of about R2 trillion with nine approved brokers, including five of the six largest brokers in South Africa. It was also recently named best new stock exchange in Africa in the 2019 Global Banking & Finance Awards. “We are very excited about how the business has developed over the past two years. Starting an exchange to compete with an incumbent that has been a monopoly for over…

MTN Group on Tuesday announced that its instant messaging platform, Ayoba has reached 1 million monthly active users. Ayoba is an advanced communications application localised for African and Middle East consumer needs, under an independent Over the Top (OTT) brand with unique features for MTN customers. The app supports many local languages spoken across the MTN markets including isiZulu, isiXhosa, Pidgin, Yoruba, Swahili, Hausa, French and English. MTN, together with its partners, is driven to improve access to affordable communications to ensure that people in its markets can reap the social, economic and developmental dividends of being online. Ayoba underscores…

EVINA is expanding into South Africa to help local telecoms players to protect their end-users from fraud, the French anti-fraud solutions provider said on Tuesday. The company, which is based in Paris and provides services in Ivory Coast, Morocco, Cameroon and Senegal, will provide local telecoms players with solutions to beat mobile fraudsters. Mobile digital marketing has become an eldorado for fraudsters. African telecoms firms are increasingly exploring partnerships with firms like EVINA in order to protect their end-users from fraud. EVINA is now protecting 90% of mobile transaction activities in Ivory Coast, Morocco, Cameroon and Senegal, and is also…

FNB customers have made over R14 billion in ‘tap’ or contactless payments in the twelve months to June 2019, with continued month on month growth. This upward trend points to a growing appetite for the convenience of contactless payments in South Africa’s consumer and business sectors. The bank’s customers processed over 60 million ‘tap’ transactions over the 12 months using their contactless-enabled FNB Credit and Debit Cards. In excess of 46 million transactions were on Debit Cards while Credit Cards accounted for nearly 20 million. “All our customers have contactless-enabled cards, and this contributes significantly to our efforts to empower…

Tomorrow (12 November 2019) marks the 28th birthday of the South African Internet. The year 1988 saw Mike Lawrie lead the Rhodes University team that established the very first South African Internet networking system. While SA’s first Internet Protocol (IP) address was established in 1988, it was on 12 November 1991 that the first local IP connection was made. “With over 10 000 days of Internet excellence under its belt, South Africa stands ready to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). “Mike Lawrie and his colleagues have provided SA with a phenomenal foundation…

The Presidential Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has presented President Cyril Ramaphosa with its draft diagnostic report towards the country’s 4IR plan and opportunities available to harness it. The report was presented to President Ramaphosa during a meeting on Thursday. The Commission, which was established earlier this year and chaired by the President with Professor Tshilidzi Marwala as his Deputy chairperson, is tasked with advising the President and government as a whole on relevant policies, strategies and action plan to position South Africa as a smart, connected and competitive global player. The Presidency in a statement said President…

Hlayisani Capital, which is chaired by former Nedbank chair Reuel Khoza and a majority shareholder, continues to invest millions in growing South African startups. The company, which also includes former FNB head Michael Jordaan as its investment committee chair, said in a statement it has so far invested R200 million to a number of enterprises in Southern Africa. The firm started operating early this year and is majority-owned by the Khoza family. The funds have been invested through Hlayisani Growth Fund which offers high-growth private equity investments in South Africa and Africa. The fund specialises in growing SMEs into large,…

The Post Office has warned the public about a parcel delivery scam designed to defraud them of their hard-earned money. “Members of the public receive SMS messages informing them that a parcel could not be delivered to them because VAT needs to be paid on the parcel.  A link on the SMS leads them to a web page where they are requested to deposit money into a bank account,” it said on Wednesday. The SA Post Office does not require customers to make any bank deposit before parcels are released. If VAT or any other fees are payable on a…

Volvo Cars will become the first carmaker to implement global traceability of cobalt used in its batteries by applying blockchain technology. The announcement follows the reveal last month of the company’s first fully electric car, the XC40 Recharge. Traceability of raw materials used in the production of lithium-ion batteries, such as cobalt, is one of the main sustainability challenges faced by carmakers. Volvo Cars is committed to full traceability, ensuring that customers can drive electrified Volvos knowing the material for the batteries has been sourced responsibly. According to Greg Maruszewski, Managing Director of Volvo Car South Africa, cobalt has long…

“Disruptive digital and e-commerce businesses, from scale-ups through to big giants like Amazon or Google, are growing at such unprecedented rates that the gap between the staff they need and the talent available in the marketplace is widening,” says Matt Putman, CEO of iKhokha, one of SA’s fastest-growing FinTech companies after returning from Paris where he attended Unleash World, the world’s top HR tech event. “This is particularly true in South Africa.” He adds: “To challenge entrenched market players, digital businesses need to innovate, but at times battle to find the technical expertise to do so. It’s ironic that in South Africa,…

Airports Company South Africa and BMW South Africa today announced the launch of BMW ChargeNow electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at O.R. Tambo International Airport, Cape Town International Airport and King Shaka International Airport. EVs accessing the BMW ChargeNow stations will now enjoy exclusive parking bays at three airports. O.R. Tambo International and Cape Town International Airport will each have two ChargeNow stations that accommodate up to four cars at a time, while King Shaka International Airport has one ChargeNow station able to charge two cars at a time. The BMW ChargeNow stations are located at prominent areas with maximum…