South Africa’s leading telco, Telkom, has said that a fibre cable break that occurred at 8am on Tuesday knocked out big chunks of its network. The company has appealed to affected customers for patience.
The damage is affecting mobile, fixed-LTE and fibre customers on Telkom’s network in the north of Gauteng as well as Limpopo province, Rustenburg in the North West and parts of Mpumalanga.
Telkom’s group CEO Sipho Maseko poses for a photograph after an interview with Reuters in Centurion, South Africa May 28, 2018. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko – RC19E559A590
“Customers on Telkom’s Internet service will experience congestion on the Telkom network,” the company said in an e-mailed statement issued at 11.25am.
“We request your patience as our technicians make every effort to bring services back to the affected areas.”
Downdetector, a website that provides updates on problems on telecommunications carriers and Internet service provider infrastructure, showed a sharp rise in reported incidents from Telkom customers shortly before 8am. At the time of writing at midday, the problems appeared to persist.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
One of South Africa’s largest groceries retails outlet Pick n Pay is partnering with Takealot Group, a subsidiary of Naspers in a commercial services agreement that will allow customers to buy Pick n Pay food, groceries and liquor on a new platform on Takealot’s Mr D app.
“Pick n Pay will bring its tremendous expertise in running fresh food and grocery, its nationwide store network, and its leading Smart Shopper loyalty programme. The Takealot Group will bring its proven ability to satisfy online customers, its technical expertise, and its unrivalled delivery network,” the companies said in a joint statement.
The companies explained that under the agreement, when a customer opens the Mr D app, they will be offered a choice either to “buy groceries” or “buy food from restaurants”.
Pick n Pay CEO Pieter Boone
The Pick n Pay Smart Shopper loyalty programme will be embedded in the Mr D app. By clicking on “buy groceries”, customers will enter a dedicated Pick n Pay “food and grocery experience”.
“Customers will be able to browse and select the items they want to buy, and conveniently create their baskets. Once the order is submitted and paid, Pick n Pay will pick and pack the order from the closest Pick n Pay store. It will then be collected by a member of the Takealot delivery fleet and delivered to the customer.”
The Pick n Pay Smart Shopper loyalty programme will be embedded in the Mr D app so that customers will be able to earn points when buying Pick n Pay groceries on the Mr D app.
Pick n Pay CEO Pieter Boone said in the joint statement in a clear challenge to Shoprite Group’s market-leading Checkers Sixty60 app: “There is huge potential for omnichannel retail in this country. Through this agreement with Takealot, we intend to regain market leadership in online grocery, and to do so in a sustainable and profitable way. We plan to increase our online revenue eight-fold by the 2026 financial year.”
The companies plan to launch the service on a trial basis in the in Cape Town in August and to roll it out rapidly across the country so that it’s available nationwide by February next year.
The agreement between the companies comes as South Africans increasingly turn to e-commerce and on-demand shopping apps like Pick n Pay’s asap! and Checkers Sixty60.
Pick n Pay earlier revealed that Pick n Pay asap! grew its sales by 300% in the year to February 2022.
The retail group’s annual financial statements for the 52 weeks ended 27 February 2022 said that the relaunched app – previously known as Bottles – has enjoyed robust growth since its repositioning and rebranding. Pick n Pay did not disclose the revenue from asap! or even its percentage contribution to the group’s 2022 sales.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Hundreds of billions of dollars in ephemeral wealth evaporated as the price of bitcoin plunged to its lowest point since 2020, down more than 50% in about six months. The exchange Coinbase dropped to about a fifth of last year’s initial public offering price. An algorithmic stablecoin called TerraUSD, a digital token that purported to be worth a dollar, melted down along with the blind confidence it had relied on.
The crypto market may well bounce back. But the message is clear: this stuff is not ready for prime time.
Those who stand to gain from crypto have been making great efforts to popularise and legitimise what they call a new asset class. In the US, they’ve renamed stadiums and hired celebrities to stoke people’s fear of missing out. They’ve encouraged state and local governments to provide tax incentives and even make cryptocurrency “legal tender”. Established financial institutions are launching exchange-traded funds focused on bitcoin futures and offering over-the-counter trading to wealthy clients.
Underlying all this activity is a technology that, for all its ingenuity, hasn’t found much practical use. Bitcoin, by far the largest cryptocurrency, is a terrible substitute for government-issued money. It’s highly volatile, transactions are slow and often expensive, and there’s little recourse when tokens get lost or stolen, as they often do. The computer calculations required to ensure security consume the energy resources — and hence produce the carbon footprint — of a medium-sized country. Efforts to remedy these flaws remain in their infancy and may never come to fruition.
Crypto is thus an unusually pure speculative vehicle: without the real-world purposes or cash flows that tend to underpin more traditional assets, it’s worth only what a greater fool will pay. The most reliable benefits flow to intermediaries — the exchanges, investment banks, payment apps, custodians and miners who take a cut every time somebody makes a trade. And, of course, to the scammers who hype new products only to take the money and run.
Dangers
The dangers go far beyond the risk that unsophisticated investors will lose their shirts. The more crypto grows — the more it insinuates itself into the financial system and attracts leveraged investors — the greater the chances that the next rout will trigger broader contagion. Even after the past week’s declines, the total amount deployed in cryptocurrencies and decentralised finance still exceeds US$1-trillion, more than enough to cause trouble.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has laid out a sensible framework for regulation. But officials and lawmakers need to act. Among other things, they should require that digital tokens claiming to be worth a dollar be backed by an actual dollar; ensure that important financial institutions don’t get overly exposed to crypto, directly or indirectly; and demand that all relevant intermediaries collect the customer information needed to enforce sanctions and anti-money-laundering laws.
No doubt, crypto has the potential to improve on an unnecessarily expensive and precarious financial system — for example, by making payments cheaper, more accessible and less vulnerable in times of crisis. The current speculative boom, though, isn’t helpful. Without a measure of restraint and some well-placed regulation, this could all end in disaster.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Global tech giant Google has announced 30,000 Android and Google Cloud training scholarships for aspiring and professional developers in Africa. The program is meant to increase the number of developers on the continent.
“Opportunities for software developers in Africa are at an all-time high. At Google, we have been supporting developers in Africa through community and training programs for over 10 years,” Africa Developer Training Program Manager John Kimani said.
Africa Developer Training Program Manager John Kimani
Kimani says there are more than 180 active developer communities in 30 countries across Africa that provide developers with the opportunity to connect, learn and grow together.
It could be recalled that 10000 Google Developer scholarships were disbursed across Africa to beginners and 5,000 to professional developers spread across Android and mobile web development tracks in 2021. Successful applicants will get mentors who will assist them on their journey and be assigned to peer learning groups.
In addition, they will get curated content on Android app development using Kotlin and Google Cloud, preparing them for Associate engineer level certification.
A 2021 Africa Developer Report by Google and Accenture reveals that opportunities for software developers in Africa are mostly driven by the booming startup ecosystem and the global demand for remote work.
The giant tech company announced last month that it is opening a tech hub in Kenya as part of its goal to invest $1-billion in Africa over the next five years.
Google will be working side-by-side with Andela and Pluralsight. Andela is a global job placement network for software developers that focuses on sustainable careers, connecting technologists with long-term engagements, access to international roles, competitive compensation, and career coaching. On the other hand, Pluralsight is an American privately held online education company that offers a variety of video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals through its website.
Africans who wish to apply for the opportunity may do so before the end of the month (31 May 2022) through the Pluralsight website.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
As the world takes base in this technological era, it becomes clearer that the future of banking is digital. Fintechs continue to deconstruct the traditional banking system, and future-focused financial industries are joining the bandwagon. Brick and mortar banks now understand the importance of incorporating digital banking solutions into their financial services to stay afloat. In 2020, bank digitization was strengthened as a strategy to reduce person-to-person contact and although it was in response to a global pandemic, digital banking has now become the new normal and is likely to gain more prominence in the future.
Team Bankingly
In the African arena, technological growth and funding have increased nine times what they were in the past five years. In 2021, tech startups in the continent raised close to $5 billion, and as reported by Briter Bridges, African fintechs took the larger chunk of the investment at $3 billion, tripling the amount invested in 2019.
As this new fintech space unravels in Africa, companies try to think innovatively and transformatively to take advantage of the global shift. The process proves to be easier for already established banks with the funding to support their transition. However, smaller, and often overlooked financial institutions like credit unions, microfinance banks, and small and medium businesses (SMB’s) have found this change, particularly challenging due to the tedious process involved.
Bankingly’s entrance into the African market is tailored to solve this problem by enabling inclusivity and financial health equally in Africa with simple and smart digital banking solutions.
Founded in 2015, Bankingly is a fintech company with the vision of transforming the way in which financial institutions in emerging markets promote their digital channels and, therefore, facilitate the financial inclusion of millions of people around the world. The provision of technologies hosted in the cloud, with a SaaS business model based on the number of active users that each institution achieves, allows Bankingly clients to adjust their costs to the benefits achieved. Through a brief, optimized implementation process with high functionality and cybersecurity standards, the Bankingly platform offers a mobile application, a transactional website, a chatbot, and other multiple products. Today, more than 1,500,000 people from nearly 100 entities trust Bankingly’s technology.
According to the Fintech Times’ 2021 report on the Middle East and Africa, South Africa is considered to be a top contributor to the fintech industry in the wider Middle East & Africa (MEA) landscape. These statistics show the rise of the fintech industry in Africa.
Concurrently, we understand that South Africa along with other African countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Mauritius, Ghana, and Tunisia was ranked tops in the tier-2 category – with Rwanda, Morocco, and Uganda as “emerging countries” in the tier-3 early-stage fintech hub category.
The South African financial market is one of the largest and its major city Johannesburg is home to leading banks in Africa including Standard Bank Group and Absa Group making it attractive to the growing fintech market.
These larger traditional banks across the country now partner with fintechs to build digital platforms that enable access to banking services globally. But the question of inclusivity comes in and Bankingly has identified this gap. In response, they provide the same high-quality digital platforms for smaller financial institutions, therefore bridging the gap. Their goal to create simple, smart, and accessible solutions will help aid the growth of financial inclusion not just in South Africa but in Africa as a whole.
That is why Bankingly’s aim remains to fill these gaps in the financial sphere and bring more people into the digital economy.
Bankingly’s solutions are simple but smart. They focus on democratizing people’s access to their money and better services, regardless of their resources or location. They are currently operating in eight African countries: South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Uganda, and Morocco to ensure that financial inclusion reaches all sectors of society.
Bankingly collaborates with banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions to provide banking services to accelerate financial inclusion through great digital experiences. They provide minority banks, MFBs, and credit unions amongst others with mobile banking apps, and web banking platforms to improve digitization in the African economy.
As the world is taking disruptive turns in technology, they provide training and awareness campaigns on the importance of digitizing financial institutions and building a financially inclusive economy.
Through their all-in-one platform, customers will be able to check balances and movements, make internal, national, and international transfers, check and pay loans, check, and pay cards, pay for different services, make fixed-term deposits, and request a new product among other numerous functionalities.
Bankingly’s value proposition stands out from its competitors by providing pay per real usage, a pricing model based on the number of monthly active users, and unbeatable time to market as their solutions are not only simple and smart but also fast, safe, and of high quality. Bankingly runs a simple and easy-to-use management system, 24/7 customer support, and flexible customizations.
With over 100 financial institutions subscribed in Latin America and Africa to its SaaS platform, Bankingly is quickly becoming South Africa’s choice for banking services.
If you would like to learn more about the services they offer, you can visit their website here. If you would like to build a more responsive banking app or web platform, you can also request a demo.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
The Nigerian tech firm Okra has been named among top 100 Tech Pioneers by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Okra was listed among other African tech firms such as Rwanda’s Ampersand and three tech firms from Kenya, namely Sendy, Access Afya and Pula Advisors.
Sendy is featured for its role in building fulfillment infrastructure for e-commerce and consumer brands while Access Afya has been recognised for offering high-quality healthcare for the global mass market
Okras Team
On the other side, Pula Advisors was recognised for its innovation and impact in using technology to provide agriculture insurance to millions of smallholder farmers in emerging markets.
“Farmers in emerging markets are the most hardworking citizens of the world yet the most likely to already feel the impact of climate change. They need products like agriculture insurance and digital agronomy advice to adapt to an increasingly unpredictable climate,” Pula CEO Thomas Njeru said.
Technology Pioneers are selected based on the WEF community’s selection criteria which consider innovation, leadership, and relevance to the global organisation’s platforms.
Pula, at the moment, has influence in 16 countries and has listed about 6 million smallholder farmers.
The selected firms will participate in WEF events to drive panel discussions on key industry and societal issues throughout the year.
“We are honoured to be recognised by the World Economic Forum as a technology pioneer. This recognition affirms our belief that the digital economy in Africa presents the biggest opportunity for young people to participate in the economy,” said Sendy founder and CEO Mesh Alloys.
Some of the companies that have been honoured by Technology Pioneer in the past include giant tech companies like Google, Airbnb, Mozilla, Spotify, Scribd, Kaggle, Kickstarter, Palantir Technologies, and Twitter.
Technology Pioneer was launched in 2000 for growing companies around the globe that are involved in the design and development of new technologies and innovations.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
PayPulse, the Standard Bank’s cashless transaction app which was rolled out in 2018 has gained significant traction in the Namibian market, processing just under a million transactions to the value of N$ 442 million ($29.7-million) during the period 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021.
Developed to allow anyone, no matter who they may bank with, to create a virtual wallet from which to pay for bills and services and send or withdraw money.
Rejoice Itembu Head of Client Solutions at Standard Bank
Rejoice Itembu Head of Client Solutions at Standard Bank says that the app is unique in that it is the first of its kind to let users link up to three different credit or debit cards from different commercial banks, which, Itembu says, is important for Namibians who are largely multi-banked and has contributed to the popularity of the app.
Standard Bank made enhancements to the PayPulse App throughout 2021 and added a series of new features including Bill Splitting, Money Request, self QR code creation, and a Pay-by-Link option, which it says is ideal for small businesses. With the app’s Pay-by-Link option, businesses can send a link request from PayPulse to their customer, who then pays, and the business receives their money.
The Money Request option is another feature that benefits those who may need money from friends or family urgently. Customers can request money from PayPulse users in a similar manner as making a ‘CallMe Request’ on a cellphone. Upon receipt of the request, the PayPulse user can choose to accept or decline the request and decide how much they wish to send.
Another feature is the ability for customers to create their own QR codes, which can be used by different users to make payments. This QR code simplifies the money-sending process because customers no longer need to manually enter a mobile number. Standard Bank says this payment option is convenient and great for fast-paced small businesses.
PayPulse also enables customers to instantly cash out their money at the till of any WiCode retailer such as Woermann Brock, Pick & Pay, Shoprite, Checkers, and USave while also enabling them to top up on electricity, airtime, and pay for bills such as DStv/GOtv accounts directly from the PayPulse platform.
“Standard Bank remains firmly committed to providing digital banking solutions and realizing the cashless society as more customers embrace digital solutions and the use of technology to conduct everyday activities like banking. With such solutions, we hope to make our services more accessible to more people,” Itembu said.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Meta owned message platform WhatsApp has announced the rollout of emoji reactions on WhatsApp. The company announced last month that the feature along with other features like increased file size would be coming soon.
WhatsApp users will now be able to react to messages. According to The Verge, the company said that users would be able to select only a few emojis at the beginning of the rollout but would be able to select “all emojis and skin tones” in the future.
whatsapp
Message reactions are useful in the sense that they let the other user express how they feel about the message you just sent them — they allow for seamless conversations. Telegram and Slack, other social platforms, have been using the feature for quite some time now. It is also available on Facebook Messenger, an instant messaging app and platform developed by Meta, the company that also owns the WhatsApp platform.
“We’re excited to share that emoji reactions are now available on the latest version of the app. Reactions are fun, fast, and they reduce overload in groups too. We’ll continue improving them by adding an even broader range of expressions in the future,” a WhatsApp blog post reads.
Another feature that Meta is adding to WhatsApp is the ability to add more people to a chat. Users will now be able to add up to 512 people to a group.
“Building private, safe, and secure communities takes work and we think this series of improvements will help people and groups stay close to one another,” the blog post reads.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
Nearly everything you use on your phone needs a password—from online banking and social media to productivity tools and e-commerce websites.
It’s wise to have strong and different passwords for each service you use to protect yourself from breaches of your personal data.
However, remembering multiple passwords made up of long strings of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters is far from simple. That’s where password managers are a great help.
Cybersecurity
They make it easy for you to create strong, unique passwords for each service you use and change them as often as you want. They streamline the process of signing in; plus, some have value-added features like secure access to credit card information.
For World Password Day on 5 May 2022, Alcatel recommends 6 password managers for Android smartphones. They are:
aWallet Password Manager
This app securely stores your passwords, credit card information, e-banking credentials, web accounts, and other custom data.
If you upgrade to the pro version, you can use fingerprint and face unlock as well as use the password generator.
Bitwarden Password Manager
Use Bitwarden to manage, store, secure, and share unlimited passwords across unlimited devices from anywhere. Bitwarden delivers open-source password management solutions for home, work, and on the go.
It helps you generate strong, unique, and random passwords for every website you use.
1Password – Password Manager
The popular 1Password was selected by Android Central as the best password manager for Android.
It remembers all your passwords for you and keeps them safe and secure behind the one password that only you know. You can also use it to store information such as credit cards, addresses, notes, bank accounts, driver’s licenses, and passports.
LastPass Password Manager
LastPass is a password manager and password generator that locks your passwords and personal information in a secure vault.
From your LastPass vault, you can store passwords and logins, create online shopping profiles, generate strong passwords, and more. Simply remember your LastPass master password and LastPass will autofill web browser and app logins for you.
RoboForm Password Manager
RoboForm is a password manager and form-filler that offers access to your passwords on all your devices. It provides secure one-tap logins for websites and apps with a single master password that only you know.
Dashlane Password Manager
Dashlane fills in all your passwords, payments, and personal details wherever you need them, across the web, on any device.
You can sync your Dashlane data to every device automatically, even if your phone and computer run on different systems.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
The Meta-owned social media platform Facebook, has announced that it is pausing on hiring, according to an internal memo that was first seen by the Business Insider on Wednesday. The source quoted the company’s CFO David Wehner as saying that this implementation is part of the company’s “reprioritisation” as it tackles challenges that caused it to miss revenue targets.
Facebook’s global head of recruiting, Miranda Kalinowski, said that the engineering team would be the first to be impacted by these hiring decisions. This was included in a separate memo that was also seen by the Business Insider.
David Wehner, CFO for Meta
A worker at Facebook said that the last time something of this sort was done it was at the start of the pandemic as the company scrambled to put in place processes to onboard new hires.
“The company regularly re-evaluates its hiring and according to our business needs and in light of the expense guidance given for this earnings period, we are slowing its growth accordingly,” a Meta spokesperson said.
“We will continue to grow our workforce to ensure we focus on long-term impact,” the spokesperson added.
David Wehner, CFO for Meta, said that the company is trying to “bring the metaverse to life”, which is pretty much what Facebook has been about since they rebranded to Meta.
“But we also have to be responsible by responding to the unpredictable market forces that have put pressure on our business over the past few months,” he said.
“As economies reopen after COVID-related lockdowns more people are spending time offline and returning to pre-pandemic spending patterns. That’s causing an industry-wide downturn,” Wehner added.
Kalinowski and Wehner said that they are still trying to figure out what the freeze means for other teams since the engineering team will be the first one to be impacted. They said that the implementation will, however, affect almost every team in the company.
They pointed out that one team that won’t be immediately impacted is Reality Labs, the loss-making unit in charge of building the metaverse.
“We will continue to actively hire for ML IC5+ candidates and IC7+ candidates across all SWE areas and will pause Director openings to assess our needs on a case by case basis,” Kalinowski said.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
