Author: Staff Writer
Hot on the heels of its announcement that its customers have experienced Zero card fraud, Bank Zero is today announcing a second “Zero milestone”. In the 18 months since its launch, not one of its customers has fallen prey to the phishing scams that are taking in people and businesses all around the world. Kaspersky, a leading security software company, says that phishing attempts more than doubled to over 500 million in 2022, as compared with 2021. According to Fortinet, South Africa was one of the top 20 countries in terms of phishing attacks in 2022. This figure is supported…
Huawei has launched its Huawei Cloud’s all-scenario smart finance solution to Africa. The solution, announced at the Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit for Africa 2023, will effectively drive the digitisation and leapfrogging development of African’s financial and banking sector. In his keynote, which was titled “Choose HUAWEI CLOUD to Move towards All-Scenario Smart Finance”, Harrison Li, CTO of Huawei Cloud, Southern Africa Region explained how the new solution will help African banks act as pioneers in the in the financial sector. As Li pointed out, with the deepening of digital transformation in the financial and banking sectors worldwide, the “all-round cloudification”…
For the modern farmer, machinery is critical in delivering the agricultural output needed to be successful at scale. This is why Titan Global Wheel – providers of the Goodyear Agricultural brand of tyres and rims – has announced a range of Goodyear Lubricants, to further improve the operation and lifespan of this machinery. According to company MD, Theo von Bardeleben, the organisation has adopted a constant focus on innovation and on improving technologies that have been around for decades. Titan Global Wheel also works closely with almost all the major manufacturers, each of which places a strong focus on research…
The outlook for the global economy took a positive turn in the first half of 2023 as inflationary pressures began to ease, but ongoing geopolitical tensions and domestic challenges in key markets are slowing any return to sustained growth, according to the latest forecast from KPMG. According to KPMG’s latest Global Economic Outlook report, global energy prices returning to levels last seen prior to the invasion of Ukraine, combined with easing commodity and food prices, have helped put further downward pressure on inflation for the rest of 2023. Despite the positive news, major economies throughout the world – most recently…
Huawei today unveiled several new solutions aimed at improving operations and maintenance (O&M) for enterprise clients at the Huawei Enterprise O&M Summit 2023. Currently underway in Cape Town, the summit is being run under the theme, “Towards Intelligent Operation” and has seen Huawei bring together more than 40 technical experts, O&M executives, chief technical officers (CTOs), and chief information officers (CIOs) to discuss the latest advances in O&M as well as future opportunities brought about by ongoing digital transformation. During the keynote speech at the summit, Guo Guoqing, President of Huawei Southern Africa Enterprise, pointed out that Huawei’s long history…
As the world marks World Water Day and National Water Week in South Africa from March 20th to 26th, Procter & Gamble (P&G) stands in solidarity with the United Nations and the South African government in highlighting the fundamental human right to accessible clean and safe drinking water. This year’s World Water Day theme, “Accelerating Change to Solve the Water and Sanitation Crisis,” is particularly significant to P&G’s long-standing commitment to improving access to safe drinking water through the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Programme. In the late 1990s, P&G scientists invented the P&G Purifier of Water technology while attempting to…
Huawei today announced its ‘Non Stop Banking’ initiative. Unveiled at the Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit for Africa 2023, the initiative calls for hand-in-hand collaboration between the ICT and banking industries and facilitate a digital future of ‘non-stop’ services, ‘non-stop’ development, and ‘non-stop’ innovation. In a keynote speech announcing the initiative, Leo Chen, president of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa Region spoke about why going digital has become such a major imperative for the banking industry. Not only does it make it easier for banks to broaden their customer base, he said, it also saves operational costs, allows them to develop new products,…
On the evening of 15 February, NAPAfrica, the African continent’s largest Internet exchange point (IXP), reached the 3Tbps traffic threshold. This peak in Internet traffic was experienced globally on the back of some significant new gaming releases and software updates. This increase in NAPAfrica’s average traffic throughput has continued and peaked at 3.44Tbps on 19 March. The continued surge in data traffic is largely thanks to a dynamic African Internet community who have embraced the value of peering, the increasing use of data-intensive applications, enterprises continuing to move into the cloud, and ever-increasing demand for video, content, and gaming delivery…
Liquid Intelligent Technologies announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Cysiv MEA, a technology company that was formerly SecureMisr, headquartered in Cairo. The business specialises in providing enterprise cloud and cyber security services to some of Egypt’s leading companies, particularly in the financial services sector. The acquisition allows the London-based group with operations in Africa, UK, the US and Latin America, to bring some of the best global cloud and cyber security products to the Egyptian market. Liquid is a recognised integrator on behalf of some of the biggest technology companies in the world. The organisation will rebrand Cysiv MEA to…
MTN GlobalConnect and BICS today announced the renewal of their partnership to collaborate in international mobility and connectivity for Africa. This partnership will see the complementary strengths of both companies coming together to accelerate the growth of mobile and digital services in Africa. MTN GlobalConnect, a pan-African digital wholesale and infrastructure services company, and BICS, an international digital communications platform business, through this partnership, will extend affordable international communication across Africa. With expertise in innovation and digitalization, African operators & service providers will benefit from a Next-Gen technology-powered bouquet of services. “It’s important that we form strong partnerships to provide…
Eskom says loadshedding will continue to be suspended until 05:00 on Monday. Thereafter, Stage 1 loadshedding will be implemented from 05:00 until 16:00 on Monday. The companys said stage 2 loadshedding will be implemented from 16:00 on Monday until 05:00 on Tuesday. It added that loadshedding will be again suspended from 05:00 until 16:00 on Tuesday. Then Stage 2 loadshedding will be implemented from 16:00 on Tuesday until 16:00 on Wednesday. Eskom will publish a further update as soon as any significant changes occur. Please refer to the table below for the schedule: Breakdowns are currently at 15 645MW of…
MTN Group today alerted the public to beware of a new scam where the Group’s Chairman of the Board, Mcebisi Jonas, is being impersonated to solicit money. Today the group announced that it will be commencing an Internal Audit and Forensic process in an effort to weed out an organised crime syndicate after been made aware of incidents related to the false solicitation of funding under the guise of requests for sponsorship towards the company’s Corporate Social Investment (CSI) projects. “We have been made aware of an increasing number of incidents where our Group Chairman of the Board, Mcebisi Jonas,…
Huawei this week held an event at its Johannesburg campus honouring the winners of the South African iteration of its annual Huawei ICT Competition. At the same event, it kicked off the programme for its 2023 ICT Academy. The 2022 – 2023 ICT Competition is an ICT talent exchange event developed by Huawei for global college and university students. More than 5 000 students from South African tertiary institutions enrolled in the competition, with the top 53 students awarded during this ceremony. The national finalists come from some of South Africa’s top universities such as the University of the Witwatersrand…
Nigeria is at an inflection point where it needs to adopt enabling technologies at scale to support high growth in the telecommunications and digital sectors. Using the right technology as a catalyst, these sectors can support financial inclusion and widespread economic growth. Gur Geva, founder and CEO of iiDENTIFii, a world-leading biometric authentication platform, says, “Biometric technology is a crucial consideration in Nigeria’s ongoing digital expansion. If financial institutions, telecommunications companies and the public sector adopt enterprise-grade biometric authentication, they can provide services to Nigerian consumers safely, efficiently and at scale.” iiDENTIFii is in the process of rolling out its…
Telkom and the University of the Witwatersrand today signed a partnership agreement to establish the new Telkom Industry Solutions Lab. This is a commercial research and development (R&D) facility designed to accelerate synergistic collaboration between industry and academia. This collaboration will bring together multidisciplinary teams from Wits, the Telkom Group and beyond, and will pave the way for cutting-edge innovation in telecommunications and the development of transformative digital solutions for various industries. The new initiative was officially launched today at a ceremony where Jonas Bogoshi, Telkom’s BCX CEO, and Wits University Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, signed the agreement…
UiPath, a leading enterprise automation software company, has collaborated with the Media, Information and Communication Technologies Sector Education and Training Authority (MICT SETA) in South Africa to develop the first national qualification in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region. The initiative aims to provide the workforce of the future with valuable tech skills and will potentially have a positive impact on youth unemployment by creating new jobs in software development, setting up for further growth the expanding automation ecosystem in South Africa. “South Africa has seen the emergence of a strong automation ecosystem, which…
South Africa’s long awaited and highly anticipated rapid payment programme (RPP), PayShap, offers huge potential to boost digital payments and, when used in conjunction with technologies such as Chat Commerce, could serve as a real game changer for businesses. But the disparity in launch pricing from local banks could hinder uptake, blunting the effects of the initiative, says Chat Commerce and mobile messaging leader, Clickatell. “Instant account-based payments like PayShap are designed to help individuals and businesses improve cash flow by cutting the time to process payments from days to seconds. Who would say no to instant access to funds?…
Since its launch in November last year, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT has had a massive impact in just a few short months. Already, some schools have banned it as students quickly employed the bot to take shortcuts in their schoolwork, while debates rage on whether the bot will or won’t replace copywriters. It can also write code – so well, in fact, that when Google fed it a series of coding interview questions, its answers would have qualified it for an entry-level engineering position with annual compensation of $183,000. But Saša Slankamenac, Architect at Dariel Software, doesn’t agree…
As more South Africans look for alternative energy sources to cope with loadshedding, Massmart, in partnership with Retail Credit Solutions (RCS), has introduced a solar energy funding solution for its customers. Massmart said in a statement the funding is available in the form of a loan of up to R250 000, which can be released within 24 hours through a convenient application process. The retail group offers flexible payment plans, where fixed monthly repayments can be tailored to the customer’s monthly expense budget. To achieve this the repayment period can be extended from 12 to 60 months. Varsha Dayaram, Senior…
Santam, South Africa’s short-term insurer, has entered into an alliance with MTN South Africa, that will see the company purchase the mobile telecommunication firm’s device insurance book. The acquisition, and alliance, is aimed to support MTN South Africa in broadening the reach of device protection to their clients, in line with the importance of devices in the lives of customers. MTN South Africa’s device insurance book currently has just over 400 000 policies and an annual Gross Written Premium value of nearly R400 million. Tavaziva Madzinga, the Santam Group CEO, said the acquisition was an opportunity to expand the company’s…
At the heart of the digital transformation of South Africa’s healthcare sector is the drive to improve the safety and care of patients. The world is moving towards the vision of ‘Smart Hospitals’ where even the hospital bed can serve as a data-collection and analysing device that monitors a patient’s well-being in real-time and creates alerts in anticipation of a patient requiring assistance. In the current healthcare environment, patients will encounter many care touch points, with data being created at each point along this journey. Health-related data is amongst the most private and sensitive of datasets, and there are a…
The new all-electric Lexus RZ 450e is the first model to be developed by the company as a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) from the outset. With it, the intention is not simply to deliver zero emission, all-electric driving, but to re-invent the BEV driving experience. To achieve this, the car has undergone extensive track testing and refinement at the Shimoyama Centre in Japan, a venue that is soon to be Lexus’ new global headquarters. The RZ is not a vehicle that simply adopts battery electric power in lieu of a conventional engine; it adapts exciting new technologies to enhance performance…
Eskom said on Tuesday that due to some recovery in generation capacity over the past 48 hours, loadshedding will be reduced to Stage 3 from 05:00 on Wednesday until 16:00. Thereafter, Stage 4 loadshedding will be implemented until 05:00 on Thursday. This pattern will continue as illustrated, until further notice. A further update will be published as soon as any significant changes occur. Over the past 48 hours, the repairs to the damaged towers from Cahora Bassa in Mozambique were completed and restored to full capacity. We have successfully returned to service a generating unit each at Arnot, Grootvlei, Kriel,…
Independent power producer Red Rocket has placed a 373 MW order for the Brandvalley, Rietkloof and Wolf wind parks, to be located in Western Cape and Eastern Cape, South Africa. The contract includes the supply and installation of 64 V150-4.5 MW wind turbines, 12 V163-4.5 MW wind turbines and five V162-6.2 MW Enventus wind turbines. Vestas will service the wind parks through a 15-year Active Output Management 5000 (AOM 5000) agreement. Red Rocket’s CEO, Matteo Brambilla said: “Red Rocket has been investing and supporting South Africa’s electricity crisis for more than a decade and with a portfolio of more than…
Africa Data Centres has signed a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement with Distributed Power Africa; distributed Power Africa will supply 12MW of renewable solar energy for Africa Data Centres facilities in South Africa through wheeling; by working together, the two companies are also supporting several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Africa Data Centres, a business of Cassava Technologies group, is pleased to announce it has signed a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with DPA Southern Africa Pty Ltd (DPA SA), a joint company of Distributed Power Africa and the French utility company, EDF. Under the terms of the agreement,…