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WEF Tech. Report 2016: Top 10 African countries ranking in harnessing technology

July 8, 2016July 8, 2016 Editor

10 Africa’s most industrialized countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2016 has included Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria among others that have shown an improvement in this year’s Networked Readiness Index (NRI) rankings (see table below) despite a deteriorating business and innovation environment . Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Israel, Singapore, the Netherlands and the United States are leading the world when it comes to generating economic impact from investments in information and communications technologies (ICT), according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2016. On average,…

Victory for DCA Trust: Judge Moot ZACR from .Africa case, Outs its Reconsideration

June 23, 2016June 24, 2016 Editor

Africa applied for 17 new gTLDs, among these, .Africa which as remained in the news due to a precedent setting court case in California may be available after the jury determines the case in February 28, 2017. ICANN recently terminated 9 out of the 17 African new Top-level Domain (TLD) as a result of missing their deadlines. Last week on June 20, 2016, the U.S. District Court determining the DCA Trust vs ICANN case for .Africa denied ICANN’s motion for reconsideration [PDF] on the Order enjoining ICANN from delegating new…

Banking Cyber-attacks could bring world economy to a halt

June 23, 2016June 23, 2016 Editor

Recent attacks give a glimpse of the sort of cyber-assault that could bring the world economy to a halt. Better defences are needed THIS May Anonymous, a network of activists, briefly hacked into Greece’s central bank and warned in a YouTube message that: “Olympus will fall…This marks the start of a 30-day campaign against central-bank sites across the world.” The warning struck a raw nerve. The financial system is little more than a set of promises between people and institutions. If these are no longer believed the whole house of…

2016 Innotribe Startup Challenge Winners Announced

May 19, 2016May 20, 2016

The winners of the 2016 Innotribe Startup Challenge were announced yesterday in Mauritius. The winners were South Africa’s Hello Paisa, a low cost international money transfer solution and The Sun Exchange, which deals with crowd lending for solar energy and Cameroon’s WeCashUp, that deals with mobile money transfer across Africa. The three each received a 10,000 USD cash prize. They also received invitations to attend Sibos, SWIFT’s annual global financial services conference that will take place in Geneva from the 26th to the 29th of September, techmoran reports. Sido Bestani,…

Bill Gates To Give the 14th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture

May 18, 2016May 19, 2016 Dianne Jacobs

This year, the Annual Nelson Mandela lecture will be delivered by Bill Gates, the Nelson Mandela Foundation in association with the University of Pretoria has announced. The lecture which will be delivered on July 17th, the eve of Nelson Mandela day, will focus on the theme, “Living Together”. The lecture is one of the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s programmes that seek to honor the late Nelson Mandela. In line with this, the lecture seeks to raise topical issues affecting South Africa and the rest of the world. Encouraging dialogue often about…

New ICANN CEO Göran Marby Will Take Over This Month

May 17, 2016May 20, 2016

Fadi Chehadé’s replacement Göran Marby, will begin his job as the new ICANN CEO and President from May 23, next Monday. He takes over form Fadi Chehadé who was at the helm of ICANN since 2012. Mr. Marby, before his appointment served as CEO and founder of Appgate, Swedish security software company (now Cryptzone in US), where he grew the organization to a global company with customers in 35 countries and operations in the U.S. He has over 20 years of experience that he brings to ICANN being a senior executive in…

The 2016 Verizon Data Breach Investigative Report (DBIR) Is Out

May 13, 2016May 13, 2016 Dianne Jacobs

10 African countries featured including Kenya and South Africa The 2016 DBIR by Verizon has been released. The report has revealed that there has been a 16% increase in ransomware attacks over the last 12 months, ItNewsAfrica reports. According to the DBIR, 89% of attacks involved financial or espionage motivations. Financial motivations were a clear catalyst. Because of the organizations that are being targeted and how prevalent ransomware has become, ransomware is a hot topic. Businesses have a higher degree of risk attached to them even though every individual is susceptible to…

Africa Code Week: SAP To Train More Than 150,000 Youth

May 12, 2016 Dianne Jacobs

SAP has said that it will train more than 150, 000 youth from 30 African countries in a bid to foster digital literacy and equip the continent’s youth through their Africa Code Week. Africa Code Week 2016 is slotted to run from October 15 to October 23rd. It will involve thousands of free coding workshops and online trainings for children between the ages of 8 to 24. The Africa Code Week kick off coincided with The World Economic Forum(WEF) on Africa that is being held in Kigali. The Minister of Youth…

Vodacom Will Discontinue M-Pesa South Africa From 30th June

May 10, 2016May 10, 2016

Earlier in the year, Vodacom said that it was reviewing M-Pesa South Africa. The service that was launched in 2010 and re-launched four years later, was expected to have millions of users but it only garnered 76,000 active users. Shameel Joosub, CEO, said in a statement that the decision was based on the fact that the business sustainability of M-Pesa is predicted on achieving a critical mass of users. Their revised projections and the high level of financial inclusion in South Africa meant that there was little prospects of…

A Greener South Africa Thanks To UberGreen

May 5, 2016May 6, 2016

A new initiative by Uber seeks to make the South African environment cleaner by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In South Africa, 13% of carbon dioxide emissions are on account of the transport industry. Uber through a partnership with BMW and Nissan is seeking to bring that percentage down with UberGreen. UberGreen is a pilot project where Uber users will be able to request Electric vehicles, the BMW or the Nissan LEAF. These vehicles will be operated by drivers at Uberx prices giving Uber users the satisfaction that they are helping…