Author: Staff Writer

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,…

Jaguar Land Rover is partnering with Tata Technologies, the global engineering, product development and digital services company, to accelerate the digital transformation of Jaguar Land Rover’s industrial strategy. The first phase will include UK core production facilities, with solutions subsequently deployed to other global locations. Tata Technologies will deliver end-to-end integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to transform Jaguar Land Rover’s manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, finance and purchasing modules by bringing data and knowledge from multiple departments into one single source. The intuitive new user interface of Tata Technologies award-winning software will drive stability in operations, improving visibility both between teams…

As online shopping continues to grow in the country, customers are spoilt for choice on how and where they shop. Trends show that many South Africans are increasingly choosing to shop both in-store and online, or often simultaneously, before making a purchase. iVend Retail found 90.8% of South African consumers shop on mobile devices while in a physical store, while a Shopify study reported that 59% of consumers are likely to browse online and buy in-store, and 54% are likely to look at a product in-store and buy online. As online shopping continues to grow in South Africa – with…

 PayShap, South Africa’s first low value, interbank, real-time digital payments service, has been launched in the country. It is currently available at four participating banks in South Africa, namely Absa, FNB, Nedbank and Standard Bank with more banks expected to go live in the coming months. “Widely anticipated in the market and global payments community since its journey kicked off in 2017, we are extremely pleased to announce that PayShap is officially live,” says Mpho Sadiki, Head of Real-time Payments at BankservAfrica. With no waiting periods, South African bank account holders can now easily pay and receive money (up to…

Cybersecurity in Africa: The digital landscape is overflowing with an ever-evolving array of solutions and services created to make lives easier, offices smoother and engagements richer. Smartphones, applications, social media, artificial intelligence (AI) platforms and multiple other tools have all become part and parcel of daily life on the African continent, transforming how people connect, collaborate and engage. Unfortunately, they have also opened up cyber windows that let in the attacks and the threats that compromise organisations and individuals. For Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy & Evangelist at KnowBe4 AFRICA, it has become critical for organisations to invest in training…

MTN Group announced the appointment of Marcin Waligora, Executive: Software Engineering with effect from 27 March 2023. With more than 20 years of progressive experience, exceptional technical skills, and solid business acumen, Marcin joins MTN Group from Citigroup in Tampa, USA. “As Executive: Software Engineering, Marcin will be responsible for defining, developing and executing our Software Engineering strategic programme to accelerate the PACE of Ambition 2025, and maintaining the long-term growth for delivering the software engineering on front-end customer experience layer systems, partnerships and integration points. He will also help achieve business agility, at scale, impacting a multiplier effect by…

MTN GlobalConnect, a digital wholesale and infrastructure services company and an operating company in the MTN Group, announced today that it has signed $90.8 million or R1.6 billion in fixed external infrastructure deals. MTN GlobalConnect has subsidiaries in five African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia and Kenya). The MTN subsidiary made further progress to drive its fibreco ambitions and continued to scale its fixed connectivity and wholesale mobility services. MTN group announced that MTN Global Connect’s external revenue grew by 19.3% YoY to $344.4 million or R6.2 billion, with mobility revenue up by 19.1%. MTN GlobalConnect is driving MTN’s fibreco…

MTN Group today announced that the loss of power utility Eskom (SA) has cost the local company R695 million in EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) in the 2022 financial year. The company said in South Africa, the extent of persistent power outages (load shedding) worsened in the second quarter, exacerbating the negative impact on network availability and pressures on the business. “We continued to implement our comprehensive network resilience plan to mitigate these impacts,” MTN said in a statement. “Our investment in this regard, which included dealing with vandalism and additional security on sites, put additional pressure…

MTN is making great efforts in shedding off its image as a pure mobile operator, with investments in FinTech, fibre, subsea cables, etc, fast tracking the company’s evolution from a ‘telco to a techno’. MTN today reported a strong 2022 financial performance, including an expansion in return on equity to 23.4% and a 10% increase in the dividend to 330 cents per share, in a challenging macroeconomic environment of elevated inflation across our 19 markets. In the year to 31 December 2022, total subscribers rose 6% to 289 million, with data subscribers growing by more than 12% to 137 million and Mobile Money…