The African armyworm is a highly destructive migratory pest that damages maize, sorghum, millet and sugarcane. These caterpillars also cause indirect damage to livestock as they destroy grazing lands and pastures. The last major outbreak of armyworm in southern Africa was from February to April 2025. It affected South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal, Limpopo, Gauteng and…
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. Image: John Sears Barely a month after the Fable 5 shutdown showed the world that Washington can switch off the most powerful AI models overnight, the industry has coalesced around a plan to make sure it never happens so chaotically again. The catch, critics say, is that the plan may…
Eighteen months ago, one of South Africa’s largest retailers wasn’t worried about AI. Onboarding worked. Compliance checks passed audits. Fraud was a known, managed cost of doing business. Then a syndicate found them. The attack looked ordinary. Customers submitted genuine South African ID documents. Except they weren’t genuine anymore. Using AI, fraudsters had altered key…
The South African Bookmakers Association (Saba) has waded into the fight over blocking illegal offshore gambling websites, calling for “urgent action, not further debate” — a direct response to the Internet Service Providers’ Association’s position paper last week cautioning against the National Gambling Board’s blocking plans. South Africa’s problem, the licensed bookmakers’ lobby said in…
More than eight million South Africans are living with HIV – the highest number of any country in the world.
A Lebanese culture ministry official told the French news agency AFP on Monday that Israeli bombardment had damaged a UNESCO World Heritage site in the southern city of Tyre, as correspondents there reported damage at the site. One of the oldest cities on the Mediterranean coast, Tyre, in antiquity, was at various times Phoenician, Persian,…
Uganda is mobilizing its hard-earned Ebola expertise as eastern DRC’s outbreak threatens to overwhelm borders, and strain economies Uganda is once again finding itself standing at the centre of Africa’s battle against Ebola as a fast-moving outbreak spreading through eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is crossing borders, infecting healthcare workers, disrupting movement corridors and forcing…
The death of former Botswana president Festus Mogae should force Africa into an uncomfortable but necessary conversation: why does staying too long in power so often end badly on our continent? Mogae belonged to a rare generation of African leaders who understood that leadership is temporary but institutions must endure. He served, governed, and stepped…
David Malpass also said that Beijing’s claim to be a developing nation is no longer credible.
Security awareness training has become one of the most consistent line items in corporate budgets. Most companies run it quarterly and employees click through it, answer the questions and collect their certificates. And yet, the breaches keep coming and the post-incident reports point to the exact same thing: human error. In a recent Forrester’s security…
