Zachariah George and Janade du Plessis, co-founders of Launch Africa Ventures. (Image by Launch Africa Ventures) Pan-African venture capital firm Launch Africa Ventures says it has returned cash to investors for the first time, demonstrating that African technology start-ups can generate real financial returns despite a challenging global funding environment. According to a statement, the…
Pepkor CEO Pieter Erasmus Pepkor is merging its Flash business with Shop2Shop to create one of South Africa’s largest fintech platforms focused on the informal economy. It’s a combination valued at R21.3-billion that the retail group plans to list separately in the medium term. The JSE-listed group said on Wednesday it will take a 57.1%…
The City of Johannesburg’s call centre was only down ‘temporarily’. (Graphic: Nicola Mawson | Freepic, Pexels & Wikimedia Commons.) Action SA has lambasted the City of Johannesburg after its call centre went offline, saying this is “deeply concerning and wholly unacceptable” while criticising the city’s financial management and investment in critical infrastructure. The city, in…
The cloud industry has measured success using the wrong metric. For a decade, adoption was the metric that mattered. How many workloads migrated, how many organisations crossed the threshold from on-premises to cloud. These are real achievements. The effort that went into them is not in question. But adoption was never a measure of value….
Manufacturing remains the biggest adopter of humanoid robots as businesses automate repetitive, hazardous and precision-based tasks.(Image created via ChatGPT) The global humanoid robot market is on course for rapid expansion over the next decade, as advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and automation fuel demand across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and retail. According to a report…
One of the research houses tracking the humanoid robot industry has sharply revised its own numbers, and the size of the revision is eye-watering. Grand View Research (GVR) has published an updated edition of its humanoid robot report, putting the global market at US$40.5-billion by 2033 and growing at a compound annual rate (CAGR) of…
The expansion of remote work opportunities shows employers increasingly recognise flexible work as a strategic advantage rather than a short-term response. Remote work is no longer confined to South Africa’s ICT sector, with employers increasingly offering work-from-home vacancies across the finance, business management, sales and marketing sectors as organisations compete for skilled talent. According to…
Companies working on South Africa’s digital communications infrastructure will earn the maximum sector score under the second phase of the department of home affairs’ Trusted Employer Scheme (TES), which opened for expressions of interest on Monday. The scheme, which pre-vets employers so that their work visa applications face reduced documentary requirements and priority processing, was…
Tlali Tlali, head of corporate affairs at SITA. The State Information Technology Agency (SITA) says the in-house tool built in response to last year’s Eastern Cape floods has been deployed at scale, reaching municipalities across the province. Named the Provincial Disaster Management Application System (PDMAS), SITA says it’s a fully integrated, web-based digital platform developed…
Higher education & training minister Buti Manamela Higher education & training minister Buti Manamela has referred governance and leadership concerns at the Media, Information and Communication Technologies Sector Education and Training Authority (MICT Seta) to the National Skills Authority for assessment. The referral follows recent developments relating to the Seta’s accounting authority and executive management,…
