Israel was prepared to shoot down FlyDubai plane after attack on captain, sources say
Israel was prepared to shoot down a FlyDubai plane after the captain was attacked in the cockpit, even with over 150 Israelis on board, two Israeli sources with direct knowledge of the situation told CBS News. The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv last week was approaching Israel when the co-pilot allegedly stabbed the flight captain…
African Tech Startups Secure $583 Million in Q3 Funding
African tech startups collectively secured $582,808,000 in funding during the third quarter of 2026. This significant capital injection was distributed among 58 different startups across the continent. The period from July to September 2026 emerged as the most successful quarter of the year so far for the African tech ecosystem, indicating a potential strengthening of…
Behind DNI’s R500-million bet on Mission Mobile
Mission Mobile co-founder and CEO Timothy Strike Most of the up to R500-million that investment group DNI has committed to Mission Mobile, a Johannesburg start-up that sells smartphones on repayment terms through mobile operators’ stores, is debt, co-founder and CEO Timothy Strike told TechCentral. The package is “majority debt”, with DNI also taking an equity…
Africa: Five35 Ventures Posts 3.5x Return in First Portfolio Exit
Five35 Ventures has completed its first portfolio exit, generating a 3.5x multiple on its investment in Ghanaian agritech company Complete Farmer. The Africa-focused venture firm invested in Complete Farmer in April 2022 and exited in March 2026, producing an internal rate of return of 38% over about 4 years. Complete Farmer’s valuation increased from $6…
What is ‘Herod’s Pool’, and why is Israel developing it in the West Bank? | Israel-Palestine conflict News
Israel says that work has begun on a development project around an outdoor pool in the occupied West Bank filled after settlers illegally diverted water from a Palestinian village over the summer. Instead of restoring the water to the village of Fasayil, near Jericho, Israeli authorities are working to formalise what has now been termed…
Africa: Wave Joins the BCEAC’s PI-SPI Instant Payment Network
Wave Côte d’Ivoire has joined the PI-SPI instant payment network, developed by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO). The mobile money operator is now listed among the authorized participants as of September 30, 2026, after having been absent from the list on July 31, 2026. This integration marks a significant expansion of the…
Top ICT tenders: School admin system heads to the cloud
Service providers are sought for the supply of cloud services for the South African School Administration and Management System. (Image source: iStock) It’s another quiet week on National Treasury’s eTenders Portal, requiring the ICT industry to turn to local government, as a wide range of metro, district and local municipalities come to the party with…
African Newsrooms Can No Longer Delay Creating the Conditions for Women to Stay
When one Black South African journalist decided to leave the profession after only four years, she did not walk away because she had stopped believing in journalism: ‘I mourned because I knew I could have done so much in that space.’ Her experience is documented in a 2025 Reuters Institute fellowship paper by South African…
Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta execs testify NYC Council AI hearing
Former Google DeepMind researcher Alex Turner warned that “misaligned” artificial intelligence could prove more dangerous than China’s aggressive development push during a New York City Council meeting on Monday. “China is not our only potential adversary,” he said. “With reasonably high chance, we are racing to build and grow our own adversary here at home,…
Africa: The Ancient African Rice That Could Help Farmers Grapple With Climate Change
Thousands of years ago, farmers in West Africa took a wild ancestor of rice and turned it into a crop of their own. But it was difficult to harvest and, over time, globally dominant Asian rice pushed it aside. Yet African rice survived in some of the region’s harshest growing conditions, coping with drought, deep…
