The Satellite War on Terrestrial Telecoms Has Already Begun
The convergence of silicon‑carbon battery advances, relaxed FCC power‑limit rules and higher‑bandwidth LEO satellite capabilities is bringing satellite direct‑to‑device (DTD) connectivity closer to everyday use. Early demonstrations—MTN’s 2025 voice call in South Africa and Vodafone’s 2026 video call—show that smartphones can now communicate directly with LEO constellations without bulky hardware. Regulators are revisiting legacy power restrictions, potentially expanding spectrum for space‑based broadband up to seven times current capacity. While outdoor performance is improving, indoor coverage remains a hurdle, setting the stage for a competitive clash between terrestrial operators and satellite providers.
AI Sabotage in the Workplace Is Real – and SA Firms Aren’t Immune
A global survey of 2,400 knowledge workers found that 29% admit deliberately sabotaging their company’s AI roll‑outs, with the figure jumping to 44% among Gen Z respondents. Sabotage takes forms such as feeding proprietary data to public models, using unapproved tools,...
UK PM Keir Starmer Declares War on Doomscrolling
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told BBC Radio that endless scrolling on Instagram and TikTok is a public‑health problem and urged platforms to curb addictive mechanisms. He announced a government consultation on banning social‑media accounts for anyone under 16, with a...
Citroën Basalt SUV-Coupé: Connectivity, Comfort and Design Intelligence
Citroën South Africa has launched the Basalt SUV‑Coupé, a design‑focused B‑SUV featuring a 10‑inch floating touchscreen with wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, and a 7‑inch digital instrument cluster. The vehicle is powered by a 1.2 L turbocharged petrol engine delivering...
Epic, Must-Watch 4K Footage of the Artemis II Launch
NASA’s Space Launch System lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on April 1, 2026, carrying the Orion spacecraft named Integrity on a ten‑day lunar flyby. The Artemis II mission marks the first crewed flight beyond low‑Earth orbit since Apollo 17 and the inaugural crewed...
Icasa Moves to Mandate National Infrastructure Database
South Africa’s communications regulator Icasa has released draft regulations that will require every licensed network operator to submit detailed, geo‑referenced data on fibre, towers, ducts, poles and planned roll‑outs twice a year. The rules create a national rapid‑deployment GIS database,...
Big Tech Is Going Nuclear
Big Tech is injecting capital into the nascent small modular reactor (SMR) market to secure low‑carbon power for AI‑intensive data centres. Meta pledged funding for two Terrapower units totalling up to 690 MW and a 1.2 GW Oklo campus in Ohio, while...
5G Expected to Reshape South Africa’s Wireless Broadband Market
South Africa’s broadband access market is projected to hit roughly US$4.4 billion in revenue by 2029, adding 3.7 million new residential subscriptions. A compound annual growth rate of 8.6% is driven mainly by fibre‑to‑the‑home and fixed‑mobile broadband, with 5G expected to capture...
Warning that South Africa’s Digital Competitiveness Is in Retreat
The Development Bank of Southern Africa’s Digital Infrastructure Investment Study 2025 reveals South Africa’s digital competitiveness slipped to 54th out of 67 countries, only a modest gain from 2020. The report highlights severe weaknesses in training, education and regulatory frameworks,...
South Africa’s Biggest Banks Are Lining up Behind Optasia
Optasia, the Johannesburg‑listed fintech, closed a $330 million refinancing package that includes a $180 million term loan and $150 million of bank guarantees, with Standard Bank as joint lead arranger. Two weeks earlier, FirstRand boosted its ownership to 26.1%, injecting roughly $83 million for...
Software Rout Deepens as AI Fears Grip Investors
U.S. software stocks slumped on Thursday as AI‑related anxieties resurfaced after Anthropic announced its new Claude Mythos model, which is being restricted to roughly 40 leading tech firms. The S&P 500 Software and Services Index is down 25.5% year‑to‑date and fell another...
US Officials Warn Banks over Powerful New Anthropic Model
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened an urgent meeting with CEOs of the nation’s largest banks to warn of cyber‑risk from Anthropic’s newly unveiled Mythos AI model. Anthropic says Mythos can locate and exploit...
Anthropic Mulls Building Its Own AI Chips
Anthropic is weighing the development of its own AI chips as the industry grapples with a persistent silicon shortage. The move follows a surge in demand for its Claude chatbot, which pushed run‑rate revenue to roughly $30 billion, up from $9 billion...
Microsoft Is Sacrificing Edge on the Altar of Copilot
Microsoft is testing an auto‑launch feature for Edge in Windows 11 beta builds, positioning the browser as the default gateway to its Copilot AI suite. Despite Edge’s technical improvements and a 12.9% desktop share in March 2026, it trails Chrome’s 69.4% dominance....
Vertiv AI Innovation Roadshow Returns to Africa as Virtual Event
Vertiv, a global critical‑infrastructure provider, is holding its AI Innovation Roadshow for Africa as a fully virtual webinar on April 15 at 11 am SAST. The event, themed “AI‑ready data centres for Africa: building infrastructure for what’s next,” will explore how power,...
The Open Banking Divide in South Africa
South Africa’s Reserve Bank has warned that the country’s market‑led open‑banking model could entrench financial exclusion, while Standard Bank argues that commercial innovation can drive inclusion. The bank highlights its PayShap API, which lets clients initiate payments through their own...
What South African Parents Look for in an Online School
South Africa’s online schooling market has surged, tripling since 2020 as traditional schools lose credibility. Parents now vet providers rigorously, comparing accreditations, reviews, and university acceptance rates within days of research. CambriLearn distinguishes itself with dual South African registrations, Cognia...
Shoprite Bakes AI Into Sixty60 with Pixie Launch
Shoprite’s innovation unit, ShopriteX, has introduced Pixie, an AI‑powered shopping assistant embedded in the Sixty60 grocery app, initially available to Xtra Savings Plus members. Pixie uses a personalized recommendation engine that analyzes purchase history, restocking habits, and preferences to surface...
Anthropic’s Mythos Is the Cyberthreat Every CISO Feared
Anthropic is quietly developing Claude Capybara, code‑named Mythos, an AI model that excels at finding vulnerabilities, crafting exploits and chaining multi‑step attacks. The leak of Mythos signals that frontier AI has crossed a cybersecurity threshold, allowing attackers to automate sophisticated code‑review...
Modernising Legacy Systems – without the Downtime
Legacy platforms still power core banking, insurance, trade and public‑sector operations, but they constrain innovation and customer experience. BBD Software argues that modernisation must move work, not just data, by coordinating people, systems and decisions. Their approach starts with a...
Why South Africa’s EV Market Is Going Nowhere Slowly
Audi South Africa’s sales chief says the country’s electric‑vehicle market is stalling because a 25% import duty makes EVs pricier than comparable gasoline cars, which carry an 18% duty. Premium‑segment EV sales fell last year, leaving battery‑electric vehicles at under...
M-KOPA’s 2025 Impact: Women at the Heart of Digital Inclusion
M‑KOPA South Africa’s 2025 Impact Report shows the company has financed over $19 million in credit for more than 100,000 customers, delivering affordable smartphones and a suite of digital financial services. Women now comprise 49% of its user base and 84%...
Africa Switches on as Europe Dims the Lights
A new Nature study using over a million daily satellite images shows global nighttime lighting rose 16% between 2014 and 2022, but the trend is uneven. Sub‑Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia experienced the sharpest brightening as rural electrification and urban...
Major Boost for Starlink
The FCC will vote on April 30 to lift longstanding power caps on satellite spectrum, a move that could boost Starlink’s capacity up to seven times and generate about $2 billion in economic benefits. Existing 1990s rules limit transmission power, restricting speeds...
MVNOs Take Centre Stage in Legislative Shake-Up
South Africa’s parliament has approved an amendment to the Electronic Communications Act that puts mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) at the centre of regulatory reform. The bill, slated for public comment, seeks to curb discriminatory practices by mobile network operators...
ICT Sector BEE Code Under the Microscope as Starlink Circles
The B‑BBEE ICT Sector Council has opened a formal review of the 2016 ICT sector code and released an updated equity‑equivalent investment programme (EEIP) framework. The new rules clarify two measurement options – a contribution equal to 30% of the...
Theft and Power Cuts Hammer SA Telecoms Operators
South Africa’s telecom sector faced a sharp surge in infrastructure theft, with losses climbing from roughly $3.8 million in 2024 to $10.9 million in 2025 – a 189% increase. Operators also saw battery expenses jump to $20.9 million and generator outlays rise to...
Naamsa CEO Mikel Mabasa to Step Down
Naamsa CEO Mikel Mabasa announced his departure after six and a half years at the helm of South Africa’s Automotive Business Council. Mabasa, a transport economist, has been the most vocal advocate for a coherent new‑energy‑vehicle (NEV) policy, warning that...
MTN’s Top Brass in Line for R160-Million Share Windfall
MTN Group disclosed a R160.2 million (~$8.4 million) performance‑share award to 14 senior executives, with CEO Ralph Mupita receiving the largest grant of R40 million (~$2.1 million). The shares, priced at R192.50 each, are conditional and will vest on 10 December 2025, an acceleration from the original...
Cape Town Start-Up Powers Six-Month Netflix Production with the Sun
Cape Town start‑up Cinergy deployed its CineRay mobile solar PV array and CineVault battery system to power Netflix’s season 2 production of *One Piece* for 24 weeks, with an additional eight‑week off‑site deployment. The solar solution eliminated the need for diesel generators,...
R230-Million in the Bag for Endeavor’s Third Harvest Fund
Endeavor South Africa closed its Harvest Fund III at R230 million (≈ $12.4 million), after a R190 million (≈ $10.3 million) first close in October 2024. The rules‑based co‑investment vehicle targets Series B and later‑stage technology firms across South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya, deploying capital alongside qualified lead...
TCS | Donovan Marsh on AI and the Future of Filmmaking
Award‑winning South African director Donovan Marsh is transitioning to AI‑driven filmmaking, using a suite of generative tools to create complex scenes from a desk. He argues that AI collapses traditional production overhead—crew, equipment, locations—into digital workflows while he still directs...
Maidar Secure, Strike48 Bring Agentic AI to the SOC
Maidar Secure has teamed up with Strike48 to embed the latter’s agentic AI platform into its managed security services and SOC operations. The integration promises autonomous threat detection, real‑time attack simulation and machine‑speed incident response, turning traditional reactive defenses into...
Cabinet Approves Draft AI Policy for Public Comment
South Africa’s cabinet has approved the draft national artificial intelligence policy and opened it for public comment. The policy, announced by Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, is built around six pillars covering talent development, inclusive growth, responsible governance, ethics, cultural preservation and...
How Agentic AI Is Reshaping Banking in South Africa
Agentic AI is moving from hype to operational reality in South Africa’s banking sector, with 79% of senior executives worldwide already deploying AI agents, according to PwC. Absa’s partnership with Salesforce introduced the Agentforce platform, testing three autonomous agents that...
WhatsApp Is Eating South African Operators’ Revenue
South Africa’s mobile operators saw a 21.5% rise in voice traffic in 2025 yet lost roughly $547 million in mobile services revenue, which fell 7.9% to about $6.4 billion. The decline was driven by a 38% plunge in SMS and multimedia messaging...
EV Charging Start-Up Charge Bypasses JSE for Token-Based Raise
South African off‑grid EV charging start‑up Charge is preparing a public token offering on the Mesh decentralized exchange, sidestepping the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The company has already secured R100 million (≈$5.4 million) from the Development Bank of Southern Africa and plans a...
Ring, Reject, Repeat: South Africa’s Spam Call Crisis
South Africa faced an unprecedented spam call surge, with Truecaller reporting over 30 billion unwanted calls in 2025 and a 20% year‑on‑year rise in the first quarter of 2026. The flood of scam calls has conditioned users to reject unknown numbers,...
Amazon in Talks to Buy Satellite Operator Globalstar
Amazon is in advanced talks to acquire satellite‑telecom firm Globalstar as it accelerates its low‑Earth‑orbit (LEO) broadband project, Kuiper. Globalstar, valued at about $8.8 billion, saw its shares jump 24% to $85 after the news. The deal would give Amazon access...
Synthesis Helps Financial Enterprises Transform with New Gemini Enterprise
Synthesis, a Digicloud Africa partner, became the first African firm to deploy Google Gemini Enterprise for two financial institutions within a month. The platform, upgraded to Gemini 3.1 Pro, delivers enterprise‑grade reasoning across Google Workspace and third‑party systems. Clients such as Lombard...
Sars to Give Every Taxpayer a Digital Identity in Sweeping Tech Overhaul
South Africa's revenue agency SARS unveiled Modernisation 3.0, a digital overhaul that will issue every taxpayer a biometric, two‑factor digital identity. The programme adds AI‑driven case management, instant payments with the Reserve Bank, and automatic VAT assessments. In FY 2025/26...
R12.1-billion Wasted as Government IT Projects Collapse
South Africa’s Auditor‑General flagged the State IT Agency (Sita) as a systemic risk after 41 government ICT projects, worth R12.1 billion (≈ $653 million), failed to meet objectives. The audit of 191 entities revealed 27 vacant CIO positions (14% vacancy) and 156 unfilled...
R99 DStv Deal to Keep Showmax Subscribers From Bolting
MultiChoice is offering Showmax users a 12‑month DStv Stream Compact subscription for R99/month (≈ $5.35), a 67% discount from the regular R299 (~$16.15). The promotion aims to retain subscribers as Showmax will shut down on 30 April. Migration is not automatic; users...
The Biggest Untapped EV Market on Earth Is Hiding in Plain Sight
Across sub‑Saharan Africa, 27 million motorcycles transport commuters and goods, yet less than 0.1 % are electric. A Stellenbosch University team rode a locally built electric bike 6,000 km from Kenya to South Africa using only solar power, proving the technology works in...
Mining’s Problem Isn’t Output, It’s Execution – Workday
South African mining firms are not lacking strategy or demand, but they are struggling with consistent execution. Leaders at a Workday‑TechCentral roundtable highlighted that even in a strong gold and PGM pricing cycle, electricity, water and labour constraints still pressure...
Paratus Launches Starlink-Powered Connectivity for Africa’s Essential Services
Paratus Group has unveiled Paratus Essential Access, a Starlink‑powered satellite service that delivers high‑speed, low‑latency connectivity to essential‑service organisations across Africa. The offering targets law enforcement, hospitals, schools, emergency responders, and agricultural initiatives, providing preferential pricing and priority support. It...
US-Listed Data Centre Operator Equinix Doubles Down on South Africa
Equinix is investing roughly $405 million to add 160 MW of data‑centre capacity in South Africa, bringing its total under development to 332 MW across Johannesburg and Cape Town. The company acquired about $48 million of land, expanding its footprint beyond Gauteng. All funding...
Bookmakers Want Banks to Cut Off Offshore Online Gambling Sites
South African bookmakers, represented by the South African Bookmakers Association (Saba), report that unlicensed offshore gambling platforms now account for roughly 62% of online betting activity, siphoning about R50 billion (≈ $2.7 billion) in gross revenue abroad each year. The report, commissioned from...
Government Steps in as Fuel Shock Hits
South Africa’s government announced a temporary one‑month cut to the general fuel levy of R3 per litre (about $0.16) to cushion the shock from the Iran‑Israel conflict that has driven Brent crude up 55% in March. Despite the relief, diesel...
Uber Commits R5-Billion to South Africa Amid Licensing Woes
Uber pledged roughly $260 million (R5 billion) for South Africa over three years, mixing existing spend with new funds for electric‑vehicle fleets, charging infrastructure, merchant hardware and township‑focused Uber Eats. The announcement, made at the South African Investment Conference, is timed to...
