Author: Staff Writer

If you’ve been working from home for the past year during the lockdown, you can claim a tax deduction from South African Revenue Services (SARS). Mostly it is workers who earn commission and independent contractors claim these expenses. “Claim for your home office if you started working from home at the end of March, and worked there for at least 6 months till the end of February 2021, to deduct this benefit in the tax year,” says Elani van der Westhuizen, senior tax technical at TaxTim, a digital tax assistant that helps you to complete your taxes by asking you…

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…