Author: Chris Anu

The first Amazon Think Big Space in Africa will host field trips and boot camps, providing flexible before- and after-school programmes. Amazon has launched its first Think Big Space on the African continent at its Cape Town headquarters, expanding its global network of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills development programmes.Through a partnership with Tangible Africa, a non-profit organisation, the initiative’s goal is to train 100 educators to reach 10 000 learners (Grade 8-12) across six South African provinces: Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Northern Cape and Western Cape.The programme is fully funded through Amazon’s commitment to education in…

Artist’s impression of rockets blasting Project Kuiper satellites into orbit. Image: Amazon.com Amazon.com plans to launch the first 27 satellites for its Project Kuiper internet network next week, pinning down a long-awaited start to the company’s plan to deploy a massive constellation that will rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system. In a statement, Amazon said it will launch the “Kuiper Atlas 1” mission on 9 April at 4pm GMT (6pm SAST) from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. An Atlas 5 rocket from the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture, United Launch Alliance, will send the satellites to space,…

As AI regulation and ethical frameworks take shape, developing nations must be involved. The global artificial intelligence (AI) market is projected to reach $4.8 trillion by 2033; however, AI could impact 40% of jobs worldwide.While the emerging technology is poised to bring many benefits, market dominance may widen technological divides, leaving many developing nations at risk of missing out on the benefits of AI.This is one of the key findings of the Technology and Innovation Report 2025, compiled by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which sets out a catalogue of policies countries should consider adopting to…

Audio streaming giant Spotify’s royalty payments to artists from South African and Nigeria, its two biggest African markets, spiked to around US$59-million (R1.1-billion) last year as performers rode a wave of growing interest in music from the continent. The Swedish company paid out some $10-billion in royalties worldwide in 2024. And while Africa represents only a small part of its offering, interest in African artists has ballooned, buoyed in part by internationally recognised acts like South African singer Tyla and Nigeria’s Burna Boy. Around 250 million user-created playlists now feature at least one Nigerian artist, and 220 million contain a…

The winners and finalists of the 2025 Wired4Women Awards. (Photograph by Strike A Pose Studios) From the tenured to the rising stars, South Africa’s female tech change-makers were lauded at the second annual Wired4Women Awards ceremony last night.The awards showcase is an initiative of the Wired4Women Tech Forum, in partnership with Telkom and ITWeb Brainstorm. This year, it attracted close to 500 submissions, with 65 finalists selected across the 13 award categories.The accolades recognise women’s achievements within the predominantly male-dominated tech sector, while also inspiring the next generation of women to see ICT as a viable and rewarding career path.This year’s…

Thousands of people swooned in a dark conference hall that felt more like a rock concert when a Microsoft product manager demonstrated the company’s latest feature: how to sum numbers in Excel, with the click of a button. “It was literally like Mick Jagger walked out,” said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s consumer chief marketing officer, who started as an intern. That was more than 30 years ago. On Friday, the day Microsoft turned 50, the company’s leaders and staff gathered at its Redmond headquarters to remember the software maker’s glory days while trumpeting what they hope will bring it into the…

John Green, System Engineer, Radware. According to Radware’s new Global Threat Analysis report, web applications and APIs have become prime targets for exploitation, with EMEA the second-most targeted region for these attacks.The report indicates that applications and APIs have become a significant attack surface, making advanced application protection crucial, says Uri Dorot, senior product marketing manager at Radware, a Gold sponsor of the upcoming ITWeb Security Summit in Johannesburg.Radware’s report finds that in 2024, web application and API attacks climbed 41% compared to 2023, with vulnerability exploitation accounting for more than one-third of all malicious requests. North America experienced 66%…

South Africa has no immediate plans to retaliate against the US over tariffs announced by Donald Trump this week and will instead seek to negotiate exemptions and quota agreements, senior government officials said on Friday. Trump imposed a 31% tariff on US imports from South Africa on Wednesday when he announced a 10% baseline tariff on all imports and higher targeted duties on dozens of countries. The US is South Africa’s second largest bilateral trading partner after China. Trump’s far-reaching tariffs suggest that a renewal of the Agoa trade accord enacted in 2000 is now unlikely South Africa has said…

Trend Micro and NVIDIA have announced Trend Cybertron’s availability in open source. Global cyber security firm Trend Micro has made its AI model and agent framework, Trend Cybertron, available in open source. The model is designed to accelerate the development of autonomous cyber security agents. Trend Cybertron Open Source is the name given to select components of Trend Cybertron, available as open source through the NVIDIA NIM Catalogue, Hugging Face and GitHub sites. NVIDIA provided support and AI micro-services for developing and deploying the model. Trend Micro trained and optimised the Trend Cybertron model for inference using NVIDIA DGX supercomputing…

Google-owned YouTube is hiking the cost of YouTube Premium in South Africa by almost 14% to R81.99/month, though that price remains well below most markets, including the US. YouTube Premium offers ad-free access to the video platform and includes access to YouTube Music, a competitor to the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. The price of YouTube Premium Family plans will jump to R149.99/month, from R109.99 previously, representing a huge increase of 36.4%. The price of the standalone YouTube Music plan is also being increased “We hope you are enjoying your YouTube Premium benefits, including ad-free and downloadable videos, background…