Author: Chris Anu

Each smart meter installed under the National Treasury programme costs it R7 500. (Photograph by Nicola Mawson) As National Treasury sets a target of installing 250 000 smart electricity meters by the end of the 2027 financial year, it is facing pushback from communities that have not been adequately educated on the programme’s purpose and process.The government-funded meters are being installed to make it possible for municipalities to pay debt due to Eskom, which is approaching the R100 billion mark.So far, under National Treasury’s R2 billion RT29 transversal programme, 67 000 meters have been installed at a total cost of…

Benjamin Rosman Benjamin Rosman, founding director of the Wits University Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (Mind) Institute, has been named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential thinkers in AI for 2025. Time said on Rosman: “[He] is tired of being asked about the ‘African angle’ on artificial intelligence. That’s not because he has nothing to say – a professor of computer science and applied maths at Wits University in South Africa, Rosman co-founded both the Deep Learning Indaba, an annual gathering for Africa’s AI community, and Lelapa AI, a company developing AI for African languages –…

Dean Wolson, Lenovo Infrastructure Group For security experts, backups are often referred to as the Achilles’ heel of cyber defence. They’re the safety net an organisation relies on during a crisis, yet they’re often misconfigured or overlooked, making them a prime target for cybercriminals. In Rubrik Zero Labs’ ‘State of Data Security in 2025: A Distributed Crisis’ report, 74% of organisations had their backup or recovery systems compromised during attacks. And in over a third of cases, these systems were rendered unusable, leaving organisations without a way to recover. A separate study by Continuity looked at 10 000 storage and…

Image: Reuters Alphabet shares closed more than 9% higher on Wednesday after a US judge ruled against breaking up the Google parent, clearing a major regulatory overhang and adding about US$210- billion to the company’s market value. The ruling on Tuesday by Amit Mehta allows Google to retain control of its Chrome browser and Android mobile operating system, while barring certain exclusive contracts with device makers and browser developers. Google was also allowed to keep making payments to partners such as Apple to feature its search engine. Shares of the iPhone maker closed up 3.8%. This outcome … signals that the…

The investigation will scrutinise whether contracts were fair, competitive, transparent, equitable, or cost-effective. The beleaguered State IT Agency (SITA) is facing yet another probe, this time over its involvement in National Treasury’s integrated financial management system (IFMS) project.This, as the scope of the Special Investigating Unit’s (SIU’s) investigation of the IFMS tender has been broadened, with president Cyril Ramaphosa signing proclamation 281 of 2025.In 2020, Ramaphosa instructed the SIU to investigate contracts around National Treasury’s bungled IFMS project, going back as far as 1 January 2016. Based on the president’s mandate at the time, the investigation solely focused on the…

Vodacom South Africa CEO Sitho Mdlalose Vodacom said on Wednesday that it has become the first company in South Africa to operationalise virtual wheeling fully in South Africa as it moves to minimise its reliance on Eskom’s coal-fired energy supply. Built with Sola Group, an independent power producer, the solution allows Vodacom to procure renewable energy for its commercial operations across the national grid. The telecommunications operator said the project provides a “blueprint for other South African companies to follow”. The teams involved utilised an “agnostic” platform developed by Vodacom subsidiary Mezzanine, with renewable electricity wheeled across the grid from…

Sitho Mdlalose, CEO of Vodacom South Africa. Vodacom has fully operationalised its virtual wheeling project, marking a step forward in the company’s energy transformation journey.Virtual wheeling of electricity is a mechanism that allows electricity generated in one location, often from renewable sources like solar or wind, to be credited to a customer at a different location without requiring a direct physical connection between the two points.Instead of physically transmitting the electrons from the generator to the consumer, the energy is fed into the national grid, and tracking and settlement systems ensure the customer receives the financial and environmental benefits of…

Silicon Valley loves to talk about disruption. However, some of the most significant educational disruptions happening right now aren’t coming from San Francisco; they are coming out of Johannesburg, Nairobi and Lagos. In a quiet yet powerful shift, African-founded education platforms are beginning to address real-world problems. They do so in ways that Western models can’t or won’t. One of the clearest examples of this is CambriLearn. This South African-born online school is scaling a global education model across more than 100 countries. What makes CambriLearn compelling isn’t just the estack. It’s the fact that it’s designed from the ground…

Emerging technologies continue to impact businesses as leaders are forced to revise strategies, ensure compliance and balance digital interests. ITWeb has assembled a powerful line-up of speakers for its ITWeb GRC 2025 event. They will present on a range of pertinent topics, including the critical link between cyber security and GRC. The event takes place on 30 October at The Forum in Bryanston.The event, endorsed by the IITPSA, will feature a number of tech and business experts, including Ureka Rangasamy, chief audit executive at Eskom; Adv Carien van Dijk, CISO at Deus X Pay; and Dr Xolile Sibande, senior manager:…

Carlos Barria/Reuters Google won’t have to sell its Chrome browser, a judge in Washington said on Tuesday, handing a rare win to Big Tech in its battle with US antitrust enforcers, but ordering Google to share data with rivals to open up competition in online search. Google parent Alphabet’s shares were up 7.2% in extended trading on Tuesday as investors cheered the judge’s ruling, which also allows Google to keep making lucrative payments to Apple that antitrust enforcers said froze out search rivals. Apple shares rose 3%. US district judge Amit Mehta also ruled Google could keep its Android operating…