TCS | The Cape Town Start-Up Listening for TB with AI
AI Diagnostics, a Cape Town med‑tech startup, secured R85 million (≈$4.7 million) in a pre‑Series A round led by the Steele Foundation for Hope. The funding will accelerate deployment of Ostium, an AI‑powered digital stethoscope paired with the proprietary AI.TB model that identifies tuberculosis from lung sounds in real time. CEO Braden van Breda discussed the technology’s ability to empower nurses, pharmacists and community health workers across Africa and Asia, and outlined steps toward WHO certification and continent‑wide adoption by 2030.
Cape Town Agency Powers Biggest Gaming Kickstarter Ever
A Cape Town agency, Pulling Power Media, helped launch the Cyberpunk Trading Card Game on Kickstarter, which amassed over $28 million from more than 50,000 backers, making it the largest gaming Kickstarter ever. The campaign cleared its $100,000 goal in eight...
Schreiber Suspends Home Affairs Officials over Fake AI References
South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs has placed two senior officials on precautionary suspension after AI‑generated “hallucinated” references were discovered in the revised white paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection. This marks the second cabinet‑approved policy document in less...
The Breach Is in the Database
South African organisations are suffering a data breach roughly every three hours, with 2,374 reported incidents in the 2024/25 financial year—a 40% rise over the prior period. In the financial sector, the average cost of a breach has climbed to...
Logistics Start-Up Shiprazor Pulls in R44-Million Seed Round
Cape Town‑based logistics start‑up Shiprazor closed a $2.65 million seed round, bringing total capital to $3.3 million. The round was led by pan‑African VC Norrsken22 with participation from AAIC, E4E, Tremis Capital and Google senior angels. Shiprazor’s platform links merchants to more...
Why Big IT Projects in South Africa Keep Drifting Off Course
South African enterprises, both public and private, are repeatedly missing IT project deadlines and budgets, with failures often hidden until costs spiral. The article cites Absa's write‑off of roughly R2.4 billion (≈$130 million) and a major retailer facing litigation as emblematic cases....
Hospitality Sector Embraces Google Workspace and Gemini to Cut Admin
South African hotels are rapidly adopting Google Workspace, bolstered by Gemini AI, to replace legacy on‑premises systems. Rand Data Systems, a 44‑year‑old hospitality IT specialist, reports that the migration slashes administrative overhead, improves staff mobility, and strengthens cyber resilience. The...
Samsung Sees No Respite as Memory Shortage Set to Worsen
Samsung Electronics reported a record quarterly profit in its memory division, with operating profit soaring to $36.2 billion – a 49‑fold increase year‑over‑year. The company warned that AI‑driven demand will widen the memory supply gap through 2027, even as it signs...
Goodbye, Showmax
Showmax, Naspers' home‑grown streaming venture launched in August 2015, aimed to outpace Netflix in South Africa with a strong local‑content slate. After an early surge—10 million views in its first year and a projected break‑even at 800,000 subscribers—the service was folded...
State Broadband Merger Limps Into a Second Decade
The state‑owned Broadband Infraco (BBI) and signal distributor Sentech have seen their merger pushed to the 2028/29 financial year, marking the third major timeline shift since approval in 2017. BBI has posted consecutive losses since 2019, been declared technically insolvent,...
WhatsApp Becomes the Doctor’s Office in Turn.io’s Voice AI Play
Turn.io, the Cape Town‑based messaging platform, announced its 2026 "Chat for Health" accelerator, a 24‑week program that will fund ten health organizations in the Global South to build AI‑enabled chat and voice services on WhatsApp. The cohort receives up to...
Sub-Saharan Data Centre Roll-Out Slows as Smaller Players Falter
Sub‑Saharan Africa’s data‑centre expansion is decelerating, with the Balancing Act report showing planned carrier‑neutral sites dropping from 38 to 23—a 39% decline—and existing facilities slipping to 72. The slowdown is driven by weaker demand in smaller markets, high staff turnover,...
AI Governance: The Key to Growth for SA’s Financial Institutions
South Africa’s removal from the FATF grey list has restored regulatory confidence, creating a fertile environment for financial institutions to adopt advanced AI. The article argues that embedding robust AI governance frameworks is essential for safely deploying agentic AI in...
How AI Could Quietly Hollow Out South Africa’s Job Market
Global tech firms are citing AI as the primary driver of massive layoffs in 2026, with Snap cutting 1,000 jobs (16% of its staff) after AI wrote over 65% of new code. In South Africa, where unemployment sits at 31.4%...
Withdraw AI Policy, Malatsi Told, as Fake Citations Row Grows
South Africa’s communications minister Solly Malatsi withdrew the 86‑page draft national AI policy after News24 exposed at least six fabricated academic citations within its 67‑reference list. The scandal sparked criticism from opposition parties, the DA’s own senior figures, and former...
Cybersecurity in the AI Age: Speed and Trust Define Resilience
Cybersecurity now hinges on speed and trust as AI reshapes threat dynamics. CrowdStrike reports e‑crime breakout time has collapsed from 582 minutes in 2019 to just 29 minutes today, forcing organizations to detect and contain attacks within half an hour....
Malatsi Runs Out of Patience with Icasa on BEE Reform
Communications minister Solly Malatsi has publicly pressed the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to act on his BEE policy direction, which calls for the regulator to recognise equity‑equivalent investment programmes (EEIPs) as an alternative to the 30% black‑ownership...
DeepSeek’s Long-Awaited V4 Model Enters Preview
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek launched a preview of its V4 model, including a high‑performance Pro version and a lower‑cost Flash variant. In benchmark tests, V4 Pro beats all open‑source competitors, trailing only Google’s Gemini Pro 3.1. DeepSeek is seeking a...
South Africa Planning Big Overhaul of Public Sector IT
South Africa’s Department of Communications & Digital Technologies has formalised a three‑year plan to overhaul the State IT Agency (Sita), with quarterly milestones beginning in 2026 and a draft business model due by March 2027. The overhaul follows an auditor‑general...
Charge to Switch on First N3 Off-Grid EV Stations in May
Charge is set to launch its first two off‑grid electric‑vehicle charging stations on the N3 corridor between Johannesburg and Durban in mid‑May, marking the commercial debut of a network slated for 120 sites across South Africa’s highways. The stations, located...
Middle-Class South Africa Is Ditching Streaming for AI
The Discovery SpendTrend 2026 report reveals AI subscriptions exploding among South Africa’s upper‑middle class, with payment volume up 125 % in 2025 and 43 % of Visa‑using Discovery Bank clients now paying for AI tools. ChatGPT dominates at 67 % adoption, while AI is...
Mythos Forces South African Banks Onto High Alert
Capitec Bank has formally applied for early access to Anthropic’s Mythos, the most advanced AI model for cyber‑offence and defence, and is now in direct talks with the developer after clearing an AWS hurdle. The model, restricted to about 40...
Security by Design Is the Channel’s Strongest Pitch
South Africa’s cyber‑crime costs roughly $119 million annually, and POPIA fines can reach $540,000, prompting channel partners to prioritize security. Resellers now face legal obligations to ensure client environments meet POPIA, turning compliance into a competitive differentiator. Security‑by‑design—embedding access controls, encryption,...
Your Brand Is Invisible to the AI That’s Choosing Your Competitor
Research from 6sense shows most B2B buyers now rely on large‑language models like ChatGPT as a primary research tool. These models blend training data with live web searches, favoring content from established, attributed sources over corporate blogs or gated PDFs....
Capitec Blows up MVNO Pricing with Free On-Net Calls
Capitec Bank’s mobile‑virtual network operator, Capitec Connect, announced that calls between any two of its own SIM cards are now free, removing on‑net charges entirely. The move coincides with an expanded device‑financing program that now covers premium Apple and Samsung...
Eskom Developing Bitcoin Mining Plan but Needs Nersa’s Nod
Eskom is negotiating with regulator Nersa to create a framework that would let the utility sell its daytime surplus electricity to bitcoin‑mining operators, whose loads can be switched on and off instantly. The pilot is delayed pending a public consultation...
Capitec Bets Big on AI – and Keeps Hiring
Capitec Bank has equipped nearly 5,000 employees with generative AI tools, averaging four daily interactions per user, and deployed an agentic AI in its business‑banking credit‑processing unit. The bank’s AI‑driven fraud defenses blocked 131,000 fraudulent beneficiaries, stopped 394,000 scam payments...
Eskom to Decide Fate of Older Coal Stations by September
Eskom announced it will decide by the end of September whether to shut down, repower or repurpose five of South Africa’s oldest coal‑fired stations—Camden, Grootvlei, Hendrina, Arnot and Kriel. The decision depends on securing roughly 6 GW of new generation from...
After Mobile, Capitec Connect Eyes Home Broadband Push
Capitec Bank’s MVNO, Capitec Connect, more than doubled its net income contribution to R442 million (≈ $23 million) in the year to 28 Feb 2026, driven by a surge to 1.5 million active subscribers. Data traffic jumped three‑fold to 40.5 petabytes and voice minutes more than doubled...
The AI Agent Race Is on – and Google Wants to Win It
Google CEO Sundar Pichai used the Las Vegas cloud conference to unveil Gemini Enterprise, a unified branding for the company’s AI suite aimed at enterprise customers. The move repositions Vertex AI as the core platform for building custom AI agents...
RAM Price Relief? SK Hynix Plans $13-Billion Korean Fab
SK Hynix announced a $12.85 billion investment to build a new advanced‑packaging fab in South Korea, with construction starting this month. The plant will focus on high‑bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that power AI accelerators, addressing a surge in demand driven by...
Centracom’s Pindrop Takes the Pain Out of Wholesale Fibre
South Africa’s Centracom has launched Pindrop, a platform that consolidates wholesale connectivity options—including fibre, microwave, satellite and 5G—into a single address‑based view. The service not only shows availability and pricing but also handles ordering, project management and ongoing support, giving...
Conversational AI Is Rewriting the Customer Service Playbook
Customer expectations for instant, personalized service are at an all‑time high, prompting brands to move from reactive scripts to proactive, AI‑driven interactions. Conversational AI leverages natural‑language understanding, intent and sentiment detection to anticipate problems before customers reach out. By integrating...
Seacom Takes Aim at Regional Peering Costs
Seacom has introduced PeeringReach, a new connectivity service that extends South Africa’s internet exchange point (IXP) infrastructure into smaller towns and municipalities. The offering runs over Seacom’s national fibre backbone and provides 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps layer‑2 links into the Jinx,...
Liquid Dodges Debt Crunch – at a Hefty Price
Liquid Intelligent Technologies completed a $660 million refinancing that eliminates its near‑term default risk. The deal centers on a $300 million senior secured bond at a 10.75% coupon, replacing a 5.5% bond due in September. Additional financing includes a $150 million syndicated term...
NTT Data Claims Africa-First 400Gbit/S Peering at Jinx
NTT Data has become the first network operator in Africa to activate a 400 Gbit/s peering link at the Johannesburg Internet Exchange (Jinx). The upgrade, built on 400‑gigabit Ethernet ports introduced earlier with Nokia, expands capacity, resilience and low‑latency connectivity for...
New Wits-Built App to Warn South Africans of Pollution Spikes
Scientists at the University of Witwatersrand have built South Africa’s first real‑time air‑quality alert app, SACAQM, to warn Johannesburg residents of sudden pollution spikes. The app pulls data from hundreds of monitoring stations and pushes notifications with protective advice, such...
South Africa ‘Isn’t Ready’ for AI-Accelerated Cyberattacks
Anthropic unveiled Claude Mythos Preview, an AI model that can pinpoint software vulnerabilities within minutes, raising unprecedented cybersecurity concerns. A mis‑configuration leak revealed the model’s existence, underscoring the speed gap: 77% of organizations globally need over a week to patch,...
Specialists Leave Mobile Operators Behind on Home Internet
Vox captured every fixed‑broadband award in Opensignal’s Q1 2026 South African benchmark, outpacing the country’s largest mobile operators on home internet performance. The specialist ISP posted a 24.9 Mbps download speed, 17.5 Mbps upload speed and a reliability score of 363, beating Vodacom,...
DStv Drops Premium Paywall on Fifa World Cup in Canal+-Era Shift
SuperSport will air all 104 FIFA World Cup 2026 matches on every DStv tier, including the entry‑level Access package priced at R99 (~$5) per month. The move, announced under Canal+ ownership, marks a strategic shift away from using premium sport...
How a Connectivity Levy Became a Tax on Telecoms
South Africa’s universal service levy, a 0.2% charge on telecom licence revenue, is being funneled through Icasa and the national treasury, effectively turning it into a general tax rather than a dedicated fund. The Universal Service and Access Agency (Usaasa)...
Wits Project Pits African Creators Against AI Music’s Blind Spots
Charles Goldstuck warned that African music is missing from the data training generative AI, and the continent risks becoming a consumer rather than a shaper of the technology. The six‑month AI and African Music Project, run by Wits Innovation Centre...
Prosus Offloads 4.5% of Delivery Hero to Uber for €270-Million
Prosus, the Naspers‑controlled tech investor, is selling a 4.5% stake in German food‑delivery platform Delivery Hero to Uber for roughly €270 million (about $292 million). The transaction values the shares at €20 each, a 22% premium to the recent average price, and will...
Numsa Digs in as Eskom Wage Pact Splits Unions
South Africa's state utility Eskom offered a 7% annual wage increase for 2026‑2028, which the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Solidarity accepted. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) rejected the offer, demanding an 8% raise in...
Consumers Get New Weapon Against Phone Call Spam
South Africa has amended the Consumer Protection Act to require all direct marketers to register with the National Consumer Commission (NCC) and cleanse their databases monthly against a national opt‑out registry. The new regime imposes an initial registration fee of...
Standard Bank Data Breach Fallout Deepens
Standard Bank confirmed that data stolen in a March cyber‑attack has now been posted online, exposing client names, identification numbers, contact details and limited credit‑card information. The breach, attributed to a hacker using the handle “ROOTBOY,” involved a three‑week intrusion...
South Africa’s AI Moment Is Now – and We Risk Blowing It
AI investor Stafford Masie warns South Africa’s draft AI policy focuses on governance while ignoring the nation’s critical compute and power shortages. He argues that without affordable GPU access, reliable electricity, and clear incentive mechanisms, local AI startups will continue...
Stafford Masie: South Africa Risks Regulating Away Its AI Future
Prominent investor Stafford Masie has publicly warned that South Africa's draft National Artificial Intelligence Policy could "regulate away" the country's AI future. He argues the draft creates seven governance bodies before any investment in compute infrastructure or a clear energy...
Fibre: The Backbone of South Africa’s Digital Health Ecosystem
Mweb’s survey of over 40,000 digitally active South Africans shows that the internet, especially fibre, is now central to health‑seeking behaviour. Seventy‑three percent of respondents research symptoms online, while roughly half of those using the web for medical queries have...
Avast Business and Avert IT Distribution Rewrite the SMB Cybersecurity Playbook
Avast Business and its African distributor Avert IT Distribution are revamping cybersecurity for small and mid‑size firms by delivering a unified, cloud‑managed security suite combined with education and channel support. The platform consolidates endpoint protection, patch management, remote access and...