Author: The Conversation

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…

FTC lawsuit spotlights a major privacy risk: From call records to sensors, your phone reveals more about you than you think Where you’ve been and who you’ve interacted with are not difficult for governments and corporations to find out. Maskot via Getty Images Susan Landau, Tufts University The Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Kochava Inc. on Aug. 29, 2022, accusing the data broker of selling geolocation data from hundreds of millions of mobile devices. Consumers are often unaware that their location data is being sold and that their past movements can be tracked, according to the commission. The FTC’s suit…

A professional, efficient and effective public service is key to a government’s ability to deliver on its mandate. That’s why South Africa’s constitution requires that the public service be institutionalised as a profession. Appointments must be based on merit and public servants are supposed to be honest, neutral and fair. Such a public service is a distinctive feature of modern democracy. It means the government bureaucracy is not tied to an incumbent political party. It remains in place no matter which party is in power, and is non-partisan. Administration can continue when political power changes hands. A professional public service…

Globally, men are twice as likely as women to start a business. Most research into how to start a business has been focused on men. Not much has looked at why women are not fully represented among entrepreneurs or how to change this. Yet it’s known that women entrepreneurs play an important role as leaders of entrepreneurial teams who contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction. Research shows that women in South Africa are less likely to consider starting a business than men. They are also significantly less likely to act on their entrepreneurial intentions. One reason could be the…

Social media platforms have had some bad press in recent times, largely prompted by the vast extent of their data collection. Now Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has upped the ante. Not content with following every move you make on its apps, Meta has reportedly devised a way to also know everything you do in external websites accessed through its apps. Why is it going to such lengths? And is there a way to avoid this surveillance? ‘Injecting’ code to follow you Meta has a custom in-app browser that operates on Facebook, Instagram and any website you…

South Africa’s international relations department published a document on 1 August setting out the country’s new foreign policy. The outline of South Africa’s national interests is an important paper that sets out how the country will relate to the rest of the world for some time to come. The title of the document is: Framework on South Africa’s National Interest and its Advancement in a Global Environment. Governments are often cautious, for various reasons, about communicating their national interests. This is a first effort by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation to contextualise South Africa’s national interests. But the…

Nattie’s metaverse romance began with anonymous texting. At first “C” would admit only to living in a nearby town. Nattie eventually learned “Clem” was a man with a solitary office job like hers. For Nattie “lived, as it were, in two worlds” – the world of office tedium and an online world where “she did not lack social intercourse.” Texting drew them closer: “annoyances became lighter because she told him, and he sympathized.” Nattie soon realized “she had woven a sort of romance about him who was a friend ‘so near and yet so far’.” Their blossoming relationship almost failed…