Written by Luis Monzon One of South Africa’s big 4 telecoms, Vodacom, has announced the launch of a programme that will see over 600 young girls between the ages of 14 and 18 receive coding training virtually from 4-7 October 2021. The initiative is called the #CodeLikeAGirl programme and aims to encourage more girls to explore careers that…
Written by Luis Monzon Microsoft has revealed the launch date for its Office 2021 consumer release on 5 October 2021. The tech giant also announced that its Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) for Windows and Mac will be available for commercial and government users from today. According to The Verge, Office LTSC is designed for…
Written by TOM JACKSON Kenyan fintech startup Jumuisha, which helps churches and NGOs receive donations, make payments and manage events all in one place, has raised a round of seed funding to help it scale. Launched in October 2020, Jumuisha allows churches to receive donations via USSD, bank transfer, mobile money, online payment or credit cards, and…
Written by TOM JACKSON South African startup 6DOT50 is enabling crypto-holders to pay for goods and services at over 40,000 merchants across the country, including at Shoprite Holdings stores and all Zapper merchants. Until now cryptocurrencies have mostly failed to fulfil the primary purpose of money, namely its ability to be exchanged for goods and…
Liquid Intelligent Technologies, is now delivering affordable high-speed connectivity to communities in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) using state-of-the-art Wireless Optical Communication technology (WOC) from Project Taara at X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory. This achievement marks a robust high-capacity communications bridge between Kinshasa and Congo Brazzaville. Despite being just 4.8 kilometres apart, internet is more…
Written by Queenie Wong Facebook said Thursday that it’s taking a tougher approach against groups of accounts from real users who work together to cause harm. The social network says it may reduce the reach of content from these accounts or disable them if they’re working together to cause harm and evade the rules. The…
Written by Luis Monzon TECNO Mobile’s Spark 7 series of smartphones is set to officially launch in South Africa on 16 September 2021, a statement from the company reads. After the September launch, TECNO says the Spark 7 series will be available for purchase from October 2021. “We aim to provide the best contemporary technology in artistic designs…
Written by TOM JACKSON Kenyan startup Teleeza has developed a mobile content aggregation and advertising platform that utilises a smartphone’s lockscreen. Launched earlier this year, Teleeza allows users to easily and conveniently access customised content on their lockscreen, and has already onboarded over 55 local, regional and international publishers. The startup has 30,000 users on the platform,…
Facebook looks to offer users personalised shopping experiences with the new features. Facebook is rolling out new ways for businesses to find and chat with potential customers on its apps, the social media company said Thursday, as it seeks to become an online shopping destination. The new features will help Facebook, already a leader in digital advertising, offer personalised…
The first phone to sport a 108 MP main camera was the Xiaomi Mi Note 10, an upper-midrange offering launched in November of 2019. Since then, Xiaomi has expanded 108 MP sensors to a myriad of its products, but Samsung has so far only used this resolution for its top of the line offerings in the S…
Written by Taylor Hatmaker Facebook is in the hot seat again. The Wall Street Journal published a powerful multi-part series on the company this week, drawing from internal documents on everything from the company’s secretive practice of whitelisting celebrities to its knowledge that Instagram is taking a serious toll on the mental health of teen girls. The flurry of investigative…
Written by Shubham Pandey Africa has witnessed an immense amount of cryptocurrency adoption over the recent years. This doesn’t come as an unexpected move. Consider this, the fees paid to remittance service providers, to send money to Africa, average to nearly 9 percent. This marks the highest rate in the world and three times the Sustainable Development…
The Global Innovation Initiative Group (GIIG) stands out as an investment vehicle supporting early-stage tech startups by establishing a new fund aimed at investing in early tech innovations startups across Africa. The curaçao-based private investment fund, GIIG Africa Fund, invested annually in winner pools across the Africa region of the Global Startup Awards (GSA) – the world’s…
Written by Luis Monzon Logitech has today announced a partnership with Mustek Limited, one of the largest assemblers and distributors of personal computers and complementary ICT products in South Africa, to meet the growing demand for high-quality video conferencing technology across the region. “Through this partnership, even more businesses across South Africa will benefit from Logitech’s…
Written by Tage Kene-Okafor Less than 3% of genetic material used in global pharmaceutical research is from Africa. The staggering gap is quite surprising because Africans and people of African descent are reported to be more genetically diverse than any other population. Since launching in 2019, African genomics startup 54gene has been at the forefront of bridging this divide in the global…
Written by TOM JACKSON Coining the moniker “Dropbox for death” is newly-launched South African startup life.file, which has built a platform designed to help people navigate the legal parts of life and death while driving down costs. Launched by Claire Keet and Sinal Govender in June, life.file is a web app that helps people create, store and share…
Written by Luis Monzon Africa is often called the “leapfrog” continent for the ability of its people to leap ahead. In terms of technology, Africans are able to leap past generation upon generation of tech in order to advance to the now, to the latest, and do it as soon as possible. In 2020, we were…
Written by Luis Monzon Standard Bank and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced an expansion of their strategic relationship to drive the growth of Africa through digital infrastructure, digital ecosystems, and future-ready solutions that empower our customers and our partners. Building on a relationship that enabled Standard Bank’s migration to the cloud, Standard Bank will collaborate…
Written by Luis Monzon Fifth-generation (5G) wireless broadband is no longer a future technology – it’s here and is already available in limited key metropolitan areas in South Africa. The country, with its limited Internet access and infrastructure, high data costs and ailing economy, can benefit in multiple ways from 5G. However, there are also…
Written by TOM JACKSON Startup-focused news and research company Disrupt Africa has announced VC firm Global Ventures and startup accelerator AUC V-Lab have joined Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) as partners for the open-sourcing of the “Egyptian Startup Ecosystem Report 2021”. Since launching its research arm in 2016, Disrupt Africa has built up a significant…
Written by Carly Page Microsoft is further nudging users away from passwords by rolling out passwordless sign-in options to all consumer Microsoft accounts. The tech giant, like many others in the industry, has waged a war against traditional password-based authentication for some time. This is because passwords are a prime target for cyberattacks, since weak or reused passwords…
Written by Ingrid Lunden One of the biggest problems in the world of e-commerce is the predicament of shopping cart abandonment: when shoppers aren’t getting to what they want fast enough — whether it’s finding the right item, or paying for it in a quick and easy way — they bounce. That singular problem is…
Cybersecurity issue is on the rise in today’s interconnected world at a fast pace. As businesses become more reliant on the internet and technology, the threats posed by online criminals will only grow. In today’s world, no company can be considered secure against security breaches. Hackers prefer to target well-known corporations, but small businesses also have…
Written by South African startup FlexClub, a global vehicle subscription marketplace, has partnered with the sole distributor of Bajaj Auto in South Africa to offer motorcycle subscriptions to individuals and businesses in South Africa. Formed in November 2018, FlexClub is a managed marketplace that simplifies investing in cars rented to people using gig platforms to earn a living….
Written by TOM JACKSON Nigerian startup Releaf, which develops proprietary hardware and software solutions to drive the industrialisation of food processing in Africa, has raised US$4.2 million in seed equity and grant funding to support the development and scaling of technology solutions for the oil palm sector. Agri-tech startup Releaf was founded in 2017, and took part in the…
Written by TOM JACKSON Kenya’s Hello Tractor and Nigeria’s ColdHubs have been named winners of the inaugural AYuTe Africa Challenge, securing a combined US$1.5 million in grant funding to help fund rapid expansion plans. The AYuTe Africa Challenge, run by Heifer International, announced the winners of its inaugural edition at the African Green Revolution Forum…
Written by TOM JACKSON The story formation of Nigerian startup Sabi, a B2B marketplace serving Africa’s informal sector, is not a common one, with the beginnings of the company traced back to another Nigerian startup – Rensource. Rensource, which launched in 2016 and raised US$20 million in funding in 2019, is a renewable energy and merchant…
Written by The Federal Government of Nigeria has approved the deployment of 5G and asked the NCC to initiate immediate implementation of the same. The Federal Government has approved the deployment of the Fifth Generation Network, otherwise called 5G in Nigeria. The Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami) announced…
Written by Manish Singh Truecaller, which operates an eponymous caller-identification service, said on Wednesday it is looking to raise $116 million in an initial public offering on Nasdaq Stockholm. The 12-year-old Stockholm-headquartered firm, which counts India as its biggest market by users, is aiming for a valuation of about $3 billion in the IPO, according to…
Written By Luis Monzon A South Korean competition regulator, the Korea Fair Trade Commission, on Tuesday announced that it has fined Alphabet Inc’s Google $177-million for allegedly using its dominant position in the mobile operating system (OS) market to stifle competitors. Google’s Android OS currently holds the majority of the smartphone market share, being the…