Author: Chris Anu
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…
Artificial intelligence has been deployed across multiple Vodacom business units. Vodacom is investing in modernising its infrastructure to democratise artificial intelligence (AI) and make its benefits accessible to more Africans.This is according to Mohamed Sami, group CIO of Vodacom, speaking recently at the launch of Google’s first Africa-based cloud region.According to Sami, Vodacom’s AI strategy is premised on providing innovative customer experiences, driving financial and digital inclusion, and leveraging emerging technologies to provide sustainable value.“In order to deliver on our promise, and to make use of the advancement of technology, it is natural that we continue heavily investing in the…
US President Donald Trump. Leah Millis/Reuters US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on US imports sparked threats of retaliation on Thursday as companies and governments rushed to count the costs from an escalating trade war that threatens to shake up global alliances. The penalties announced on Wednesday unleashed turbulence across world markets and drew condemnation from other leaders facing the end of an era of trade liberalisation that has shaped the global order for decades. Trump said he would impose a 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the US and higher targeted duties on some of the country’s biggest…
The GSMA has added the MTN Group’s Ralph Mupita to its board. MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita has been named deputy chairperson of the GSM Association’s (GSMA’s) board.This follows last month’s announcement of Gopal Vittal, CEO of the Bharti Airtel Group, as the new chairperson of the board.Vittal and Mupita will serve for the remainder of the board term, until the end of 2026.Mupita will support the chairperson and board in overseeing the strategic direction of the organisation, says the GSMA in a statement. Vivek Badrinath, director-general of the GSMA, comments: “My warmest congratulations to Mr Mupita on…