Author: Staff Writer

Small businesses have suffered extraordinarily at the hands of the pandemic, with certain sectors feeling the true brunt of lost business, but July brings with it a slew of additional challenges that will affect SMEs – and their supply chains – financially. A trifecta of cost increases came into play over the past few weeks, affecting, among other things, the cost of goods and raw materials, consumers’ pockets and quite literally, the price to keep the lights on. This as electricity increased again, municipal services including water and sanitation and property rates rose and fuel prices shot up thanks to…

Ex-Global Switch Managing Director to lead data centre platform expansion as Africa’s data demand accelerates. Actis, the global sustainable infrastructure investor, and Convergence Partners have appointed Jasper Lankhorst as the CEO of the group’s pan-African data centre platform. Jasper will be responsible for the expansion of data centres across the continent to meet Africa’s accelerating demand for data and digital infrastructure. The new appointment follows Actis’ wider strategy to capitalise on the growing demand for digital infrastructure across the globe. With over 25 years of experience within the international data centre and internet infrastructure sector, Jasper will lead on expanding…

Employee wellness app Strove has raised a R4 million seed funding round led by VC firm Launch Africa. Strove, founded in 2020 by Chris Bruchhausen in partnership with venture builder The Delta, released their initial product in January this year and has already raised R4 million. Strove is an activity-based mobile rewards application that empowers organisations to inspire their employees to live a healthy and active life, combatting inactivity, burnout, and chronic stress. It uses activity-tracking and gamification to incentivize workforces to be their best selves, with rewards coming from over a dozen partner brands, such as Old Khaki, Poetry,…

CMCNetworks, Africa, and the Middle East’s premier data network provider has announced enhancements to its SD-WAN delivery network. Long recognized as an innovator in the world of networking, CMC Networks has changed the game in service delivery by standardizing on Juniper Networks’ STEP (Service and Topology Exchange Protocol) for service delivery to its customer base across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The move allows CMC to leverage the intelligence of Juniper Session Smart™ Routers to build an infrastructure that can learn network topology and service information dynamically, enabling the delivery of intelligent services with unprecedented speed and efficiency. Geoff Dornan,…

The DA has today laid incitement to violence charges against Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, Edward Zuma, Duduzane Zuma and EFF leader Julius Malema in Cape Town. DA MP Glynnis Breytenbach laid the criminal charges in Cape Town on Wednesday. Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla has posted a number of tweets over the course of the last few days encouraging and inciting the violence and looting which has destablised KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng, said Breytenbach. “These tweets have typically included images of destruction, arson and looting with Duduzile expressing her support of these actions in the captions of the tweets.” Please see screenshots here and here. There is…

Koa Academy, an online school that combines online learning and the flexibility of home-schooling for grades 4 – 12, in South Africa has bagged R4 million investment from Enygma Ventures. “The education sector has been in need of an overhaul for a long time and the Covid-19 pandemic further highlighted this need for innovative solutions in the space” said Sarah Dusek, Co-founder and Managing Partner for Enygma Ventures. “The Koa team brings with them years of experience in education, combined with an innovative and exciting approach to tackle this challenge.” Koa was launched in October 2020 with a vision to…

TymeBank, South Africa’s fastest-growing challenger bank, has scored high in the latest digital banking SITEisfaction report, with a positive shift – from fourth to third place – in how respondents rate TymeBank’s mobile banking offering. This achievement places the challenger bank ahead of some of the country’s legacy banks. The 2021 index also shows the bank maintained its status as one of the country’s top three providers of digital banking, as rated by customers. It is only the second time TymeBank has featured in the survey, which measures customer experience across a combination of internet and mobile banking platforms since…

The government has issued a stern warning to those inciting violence and disregard of the law with inflammatory messages on social media. This warning was on Tuesday relayed by Ministers in the Justice, Crime Prevention, and Security (JCPS) cluster during a media briefing amid a flurry of public violence flare-ups in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. Chaotic scenes have been playing out in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, leaving many businesses gutted and looted by protesters, who are reportedly calling for the release of former President Jacob Zuma from jail. The Cybersecurity Act states that any person who “unlawfully makes available, broadcasts…

As violent looting and damage to businesses and infrastructure continue in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, police had by Monday evening arrested 489 people. Of these, 166 were in KwaZulu-Natal and 323 in Gauteng. The National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (NATJOINTS) on Tuesday welcomed the deployment of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in support of the operations of the South African Police Service (SAPS). The NATJOINTS said it had intensified deployments in all the affected areas in the two provinces and this would be augmented by SAPS recalling operational members from leave and rest days. This will increase the…

One of South Africa’s most prominent tech solutions providers, Altron Systems Integration (Altron SI), has officially partnered with Teraco Data Environments (Teraco), Africa’s largest vendor-neutral colocation data centre provider. Through this partnership, Altron SI and its customers have the advantage of deploying within the most interconnected cloud ecosystem in Africa. Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Altron SI, Vaugn Naidoo believes this marks the beginning of a beneficial partnership for his business and its customers. “The interconnection density present within Teraco’s facilities is not available elsewhere in Africa.” He says Teraco’s diverse ecosystem is home to all major cloud on-ramps…