Author: Chris Anu

One of South Africa’s top courts on Wednesday annulled a government permit allowing Eskom to build a large power plant burning natural gas, saying there had not been proper public consultation. The 3GW plant in the east coast port city of Richards Bay is part of government plans to bolster the country’s generation capacity after years of electricity blackouts and pivot away from coal. “The effect of this order is that the authorisation is a nullity,” the judgment by the supreme court of appeal said. “This will necessitate a fresh application by Eskom for authorisation once the required public participation…

In 2025, over 16 000 South African schools still have no access to connectivity for learning and teaching. Government has admitted to challenges in driving digital transformation in schools, noting its financial limitations in providing access to ICT tools and connectivity.As it stands, over 16 000 public schools remain offline.This was revealed during yesterday’s joint meeting of the portfolio committees of basic education and communications and digital technologies. The delegation of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies and the Department of Basic Education (DBE), including basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube, attended the meeting. The joint presentation was held to…

Metrofile Holdings will be acquired by a special purpose company wholly owned by Mango Holding in a cash-for-shares transaction that values the group at R3.25/share. The deal and offer price, announced to shareholders on Wednesday through the JSE’s stock exchange news service, represents a substantial premium to Metrofile’s share price before talks became public. Mango Holding is a newly incorporated company incorporated in Delaware in the US and ultimately controlled by WndrCo (40.4%), businessman James Simmons and his family (25.3%), and selected high-net worth individuals. WndrCo is a multi-stage tech investment firm founded in 2016 with a thematic focus of…

KBS Partners with Rimini Street to Accelerate its AI Vision Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of end-to-end enterprise software support, management and innovation solutions, and the leading third-party support provider for Oracle, SAP and VMware software, today announced Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) has partnered with Rimini Street to provide support for its SAP ECC 6.0, a strategic move that has helped to fund and accelerate its AI vision. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250917964406/en/Central to KBS’s AI-enabled future is the valuable data stored in its core SAP system, a source that encompasses…

Image for illustration purposes only The Android operating system, owned by internet advertising giant Google, is the most used computing platform in the world. Google acquired Android in 2005 and chose to make much of the platform open source, ensuring a wide range of device manufacturers could ship smartphones by abstracting away the software layer, allowing them to focus on hardware design. Over the years, some of the most loved and well-reviewed smartphones were built on top of Android by manufacturers including Samsung, HTC, Motorola and even Google itself. This, then, is TechCentral’s list of the 10 most iconic Android…

Check Point Software Technologies aims to bolster end-to-end AI security for enterprises with its acquisition of Lakera. Cyber security solution firm Check Point Software Technologies has acquired Lakera, an AI-native security platform for agentic AI applications, in a $300 million deal that will enable it to deliver an end-to-end AI security stack to organisations.Founded by AI experts from Google and Meta, Lakera was engineered specifically for AI-native environments. The company operates major AI R&D centres in Zurich and San Francisco. Its flagship solutions, Lakera Red and Lakera Guard, provide pre-deployment posture assessments and real-time runtime enforcement to protect LLMs, AI…

Chinese vehicle manufacturing giant BYD on Tuesday unveiled South Africa’s new cheapest electric car, costing just R339 900. BYD, often describes as China’s Tesla – and which is even outselling Tesla now in some markets – unveiled two derivatives of the new Dolphin Surf in Cape Town. The first is the Dolphin Surf Comfort, which kicks off at R339 900 before an early adopter rebate of R10 000 that includes a “free extras” kit with a 7kW home wall charger, vehicle-to-load (V2L) socket, portable charger and point-to-point cable. The ride felt firm and comfortable, but the included karaoke system was not…

Patricia de Lille at the G20 Tourism Hackathon with the young innovators. A group of young innovators from across SA’s universities recently gathered at Sabi River Sun Resort, in Mpumalanga, for the G20 Tourism Hackathon. The event, launched by minister of tourism, Patricia de Lille, in June 2025 at the University of Western Cape, brought together 46 youth representing 21 institutions of higher education.The hackathon, held in partnership with the Future Leaders Challenges event, the Centre for Public Service Innovation and Geekulcha, focused on generating AI solutions to drive job creation and sustainable growth in the tourism sector.“The G20 Tourism…

The DA’s Glynnis Breytenbach The DA is intensifying its efforts to create a Cyber Commission, with news on Tuesday that it has tabled a private members bill in parliament to this effect. DA justice & constitutional development spokeswoman Glynnis Breytenbach said that while the response from the private sector and academia has been “overwhelmingly positive”, the bill’s reception in government and the public sector has been “predictably less positive”. “It appears from police statistics that they have only 544 cyber-related fraud cases on their register, yet in excess of 100 000 cyberattacks on banking accounts occurred in 2024, according to Sabric.…

AFRINIC is the regional internet registry for Africa and the Indian Ocean region. The Africa Network Information Centre (AFRINIC),the regional internet registry responsible for managing internet protocol (IP)address allocation on the continent, has finally concluded its latest board elections.Headquartered in Ebene, Mauritius, AFRINIC is the regional internet registry for Africa and the Indian Ocean region.Its core responsibilities include the allocation and management of internet number resources, primarily IP addresse sand autonomous system numbers, within its service region.It also provides support, training and community outreach to help build a resilient and secure internet infra structure in Africa.In a statement yesterday, AFRINIC…