Author: The Conversation

The governor of the South African Reserve Bank recently announced an increase in the lending rate by 75 basis points. This means the repo rate (the rate at which the central bank lends money to commercial banks) will increase from 5.5% to 6.25% and the prime rate (the rate commercial banks charge their clients when lending them money) rises from 9.0% to 9.75%. South Africa isn’t alone. Countries across the continent – and the world – have also been hiking rates to manage rising prices. South Africa is the most recent African country to hike rates. Others have included Ghana…

Imagine the following scenario. A phone rings. An office worker answers it and hears his boss, in a panic, tell him that she forgot to transfer money to the new contractor before she left for the day and needs him to do it. She gives him the wire transfer information, and with the money transferred, the crisis has been averted. The worker sits back in his chair, takes a deep breath, and watches as his boss walks in the door. The voice on the other end of the call was not his boss. In fact, it wasn’t even a human.…

Elon Musk’s space tech company SpaceX is rapidly advancing towards its goal of establishing Starlink – a massive satellite network capable of providing high-speed broadband internet across the world. Starlink claims the network is already servicing more than 30 countries with high-speed internet, including the United States, parts of Australia and most of the United Kingdom. There are about 2,500 Starlink satellites in orbit, with plans to eventually create a constellation of 42,000. The satellites are in “low Earth orbit” at an altitude of about 550 kilometres. This relative proximity provides the benefit of low latency (less delay in data…

Last week, the US government released six principles for reforming Big Tech. It’s the latest example of growing efforts to regulate the handful of companies with enormous influence over the internet. But while there’s a growing appetite for a new, better kind of internet, it’s hard to imagine what that might look like. We’ve just published research that looks at one alternative – a social network called Scuttlebutt, which provides an example of a platform that puts people before profit. The internet wasn’t supposed to be like this In the 1990s, many thought the internet would make the world a…

The Woman King is a big-budget Hollywood movie that has been anticipated since 2018, when US star Viola Davis was announced as the lead in the story of the “amazons” of Dahomey. Rising South African star Thuso Mbedu also takes a key role in the film, which has premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is heading to cinemas worldwide. The action blockbuster is adding to renewed global interest in the historical women warriors of Dahomey, a kingdom that flourished in the 1700s and 1800s in what is today Benin in west Africa. The “amazons” were exceptionally skilful women…

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea People appear to be more willing to lie for personal gain when they use a laptop versus a smartphone, our new peer-reviewed research shows. Given that the two devices have nearly identical technical capabilities – they’re both boxes with electronic brains – this surprised us and highlights the psychological impact of technology. Our first in a planned series of studies was a version of what economists call the ultimatum game. In the take-it-or-leave-it exercise, one player is told they’ll receive a certain sum of money, some…

US president Joe Biden’s invitation to South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa to meet at the White House, and the latter’s acceptance, are positive signs of renewed cooperation. But they do not suggest a return to the 1990s era of heady optimism between the two countries. These two diverse democracies are currently too divided domestically, amid new and escalating tensions globally that affect Africa. These negatives, however, add weight to the importance of the Biden-Ramaphosa meeting in Washington on 16 September 2022. There are four reasons for its political significance. Two speak to the two countries having a common agenda: both…

Cyber-attacks are on the rise globally, with seriously negative implications for countries’ strategic, national, economic and social well-being. A cyber-attack can be defined as an unauthorised attempt – successful or not – to infiltrate a computer or computer system for malicious purposes. Reasons for such attacks vary from financial gain to espionage, gathering strategic and national information and intelligence about an adversary. Such an adversary can be a nation state, a corporate entity or a private individual. The authoritative international Cybercrime Magazine expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15% a year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion…

Amid the continuous noise about cryptocurrencies, it’s often hard to pick out what really matters. However this month, if all goes to plan, the energy-hungry digital sector will undergo its biggest shake-up in years. Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, is tomorrow expected to start a technology changeover which, once complete, should cause its carbon emissions to plummet by 99%. The rapid growth in cryptocurrencies in recent years has been staggering. Unfortunately, so too has been their contribution to climate change, due to the enormous amount of electricity used by computers that manage the buying and selling of crypto coins.…

Millions of people with email accounts have undoubtedly encountered fraudulent emails that originate from Nigeria. Online fraudsters from the huge west African nation are also known as Yahoo Boys. According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation analysed in academic research, they have defrauded millions of victims worldwide. Statistics about the actual value of Yahoo Boys’ scams do not exist. But the wider cost of scams in general in the UK alone has been estimated at £9.3 billion. Educated Yahoo Boys relied primarily relied on information technological expertise to defraud victims. The value of their scams are much greater…