Author: Chris Anu

In episode 2 of Watts & Wheels, Duncan McLeod and William Kelly dig deeper into the forces reshaping South Africa’s automotive industry – from the growing dominance of Chinese brands to how legacy manufacturers are fighting back. The show also looks at some of the most interesting new vehicles heading for local roads, and features highlights from Duncan’s recent interview with BMW Group South Africa CEO Peter van Binsbergen. The team unpacks additional insights from SA Auto Week, where the pressure on local manufacturing, exports and policy certainty took centre stage – and where concerns about competitiveness were aired openly…

Zuko Mdwaba joins Xponential as group CEO. Zuko Mdwaba has been named group CEO of Xponential, a growth platform firm that operates across Africa and the Middle East. Mdwaba is best known for building Salesforce and Workday’s African businesses from the ground up, scaling both from relative unknowns on the continent, to household names generating billions in annual revenue. Last year, he was announced as strategic enterprise partner and investor of Jem, a local HR and financial platform for frontline workers.In a statement, Xponential says Mdwaba’s appointment marks a defining moment in its evolution – from a start-up, to a…

Maropene Ramokgopa, minister for planning monitoring & evaluation. Image: GCIS The roll-out of digital IDs, spearheaded by the department of home affairs, will begin before the end of the year, government has promised. Speaking at a media briefing on progress regarding government’s medium-term development plan in Pretoria on Friday, Maropene Ramokgopa, minister for planning monitoring & evaluation (DPME), said the digitisation efforts at home affairs will help other government departments, including transport, digitise their services, too. “The MyMzansi digital prototype was launched and is doing very well and we will be seeing that by the end of this year; the…

As the industry converges for MWC Barcelona 2026, iQmetrix prepares to host the first-ever Telecom Retail Summit, transforming the conversation from network intelligence to the intelligent storefront. iQmetrix, the only global provider of Interconnected Commerce solutions for telecom retail, today announced its return to Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona with the first-ever Telecom Retail Summit. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260122446809/en/The exclusive half-day summit designed to spark an overdue conversation: telecom sells the most advanced technology on earth, yet delivers one of the least inspiring retail experiences in modern commerce. Bringing together telecom industry leaders,…

ACT CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi The move by the European Commission, through a new Digital Networks Act, of not imposing a fee that “over the top” (OTT) platforms such as YouTube and Netflix ought to pay to terrestrial mobile network operators for carrying high-volume data traffic, does not put an end to the so-called “Fair Share” debate. According to Nomvuyiso Batyi, CEO of South African telecommunications industry lobby group the Association for Comms and Technology (ACT), Europe has done just the opposite by opening the door to further discussion regarding Fair Share. She has urged local regulators to follow suit by…

Ntuthuko Shezi, Livestock Wealth founder and CEO. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) says it has concluded its investigation into Livestock Wealth Financial Services (Mother Company) and Livestock Wealth, finding no evidence that the companies conducted unregistered financial business.The FSCA last January warned the public to exercise caution when dealing with Livestock Wealth, following concerns that the company appeared to be unlawfully offering investments to members of the public.Responding to ITWeb’s questions, the financial regulator says it was particularly concerned that Livestock Wealth was using the financial service provider (FSP) number of Livestock Wealth Financial Services on its website, potentially…

Copper is a foundational material used in the technology industry South Africa’s potential to compete more effectively as a producer of critical minerals used in the technology sector is hampered by structural inefficiencies and policy uncertainty, leading to investments flowing to other countries where investors perceive it is easier to do business. This is according to André Lourens, economist at the Minerals Council South Africa, who told TechCentral in an interview on Thursday that domestic output of these critical minerals, most needed in the tech sector, roughly amounts to only 5% of South Africa’s total production, even though more is…

South Africa’s switchover to digital TV project is over 10 years behind schedule. (Image source: 123RF, created via GenAI) While South Africa’s long-delayed digital migration project continues to linger, valuable spectrum remains locked up in outdated plansand there is no clear end in sight, say analysts. The International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU’s) deadline for migration, when it ceased to protect analogue broadcast, was mid-June 2015.However, the South African government missed the ITU’s deadline as well as several self-imposed deadlines, with the broadcast digital migration (BDM) project chugging along over the years. See also During this time, the project has faced several…

Astronomers using South Africa’s Southern African Large Telescope (Salt) near Sutherland in the Northern Cape have solved a cosmic mystery surrounding one of the most extreme stars ever observed. WOH G64, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, is famous for being one of the most luminous, coolest and dustiest red supergiants known. Such stars represent a late evolutionary stage of massive stars before they explode as supernovae. In recent years, however, WOH G64 behaved in ways that puzzled astronomers. The star faded dramatically, its pulsations weakened and its spectrum changed, becoming dominated by…

Sisvel has launched a groundbreaking Wi-Fi Multimode patent pool offering access to standard essential patents owned by 10 Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 technology leaders. As the successor to Sisvel’s highly successful Wi-Fi 6 patent pool – which, over a three-year period, closed agreements with nearly 40 companies, including Acer, Netgear, Cisco and HP – the new programme offers an efficient way to access essential Wi-Fi rights for years to come. The 10 founding patent owners in the Wi-Fi Multimode programme are Huawei, KPN, Mitsubishi Electric, Orange, Panasonic, Philips, Aegis 11 SA (a Sisvel affiliate), SK Telecom, Wilus and ZTE.…