Author: Chris Anu

‘Please Call Me’ inventor Nkosana Makate. As the argument over who funded Please Call Me inventor’s court case might go to arbitration, an ITWeb investigation reveals that there may never have been a contract between Black Rock Mining and Nkosana Makate in the first place.Earlier this month, British Virgin Islands-registered Black Rock Mining lost its battle to urgently freeze money Makate won after an almost 20-year battle, pending further court action over whether it is entitled to 40% of the pay-out as it claims.The company says it has funded the court case to the tune of R5 million in return…

Communications minister Solly Malatsi last week gazetted amendments to the Postal Services Act that have effectively removed the Post Office’s monopoly on the delivery of sub-1kg parcels. The rule allowing the Post Office to hang onto its monopoly had been extended multiple times, with the last extension provided by former communications minister Mondli Gungubele – now deputy to Malatsi – in 2024. Gungubele set an April 2025 deadline for the rule to remain effective. A month prior to its expiration, in March, Malatsi issued a discussion paper calling for industry stakeholders to weigh in on the matter. The formally legislated…

Lineshree Moodley, country head of Visa South Africa. Visa’s newly launched Johannesburg data centre is gaining strong uptake from South African banks and fintechs, emerging as a core component of the country’s payments ecosystem.Launched in July, the data centre is Visa’s first on the African continent. It forms a major part of a R1 billion investment by the payment card services firm over the next three years, to boost local digital payment infrastructure, process transactions within SA, enhance security, speed up innovation, support SMEs, and position the region for digital growth.During an interview, Lineshree Moodley, country head of Visa South…

It’s been a banner year for South Africa’s technology industry, one that was defined by major acquisitions, costly legal battles and intense competition. From telecommunications and broadcasting to intellectual property and platform power, the people on this list shaped outcomes that reached beyond boardrooms – affecting consumers, markets and policy debates. Traditional incumbents are being reshaped, new competitive dynamics are emerging and long-running battles are being resolved. From the man leading the revival of Telkom to the one who took on a corporate giant and won (eventually), these are the people who, for better or worse, moved the needle in…

Edtech giants Coursera and Udemy will merge in a major deal. Edtech firms, Coursera and Udemy have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Coursera will combine with Udemy in an all-stock transaction.According to a statement, based on the closing prices of Coursera and Udemy common stock on December 16, the implied equity value of the combined company is approximately $2.5 billion.Under the terms of the agreement, Udemy stockholders will receive 0.8 shares of Coursera common stock for each share of Udemy common stock, representing a 26% premium to the average closing prices of Udemy and Coursera over the…

In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence, smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance. Completed in early 2025 and now undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML, which reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines or EUVs, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold…

Global services grounded to a halt in 2025. In 2025, digital services proved both indispensable and fragile, with Amazon Web Services (AWS), PlayStation Network, Snapchat and Cloudflare leading the largest outages of the year. This is according to a report compiled by research firm Ookla. Using Downdetector data from 2025 to analyse millions of user reports, Ookla has identified the largest website and service outages of the year, globally and per region. Global outage data is based on total reports across all impacted services, while the regional outage figures are based on data for individual services.According to the report, 2025…

Technology in 2025 was shaped less by breakthrough products than by power – who holds it, how it is exercised and where its limits lie. From trade wars and tariffs to artificial intelligence and global connectivity, decisions taken in boardrooms and political offices rippled across markets, supply chains and societies. This year’s list of TechCentral’s international tech newsmakers reflects that shift. It is dominated not by founders chasing the next app, but by figures whose influence now extends deep into geopolitics. At the top sits US President Donald Trump, whose return to power has redrawn the global technology landscape. The…

Mastercard Boosts Africa Acceptance Network by 45% in 2025, Accelerating the Continent’s Digital Economy. (Photo: AETOSWire) Mastercard has grown its acceptance network across Africa by 45 per cent in 2025 – a major milestone that brings millions more consumers and small businesses into the continent’s fast-expanding digital economy. This accelerated progress underscores the strong advancement of digital payments, technology, and innovation in Africa—a transformation that traditionally would have taken several years to accomplish. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251217224950/en/The surge comes in a year defined by new market entries, significant investment, product innovation and an…

ACT CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi Telecommunications industry body the Association for Comms & Technology (ACT) has called for greater transparency of equity equivalent investment programmes (EEIPs) should sector regulator Icasa choose to implement last week’s ministerial policy directive on black economic empowerment. Speaking to TechCentral on Wednesday, ACT CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi said EEIPs in other sectors lack transparency, with big investments often touted by multinationals without any clarity into how the funds are spent or how effective the programmes are. “As ACT, we don’t have an issue with the minister’s policy directive. Actually, he has taken most of our concerns around…