TC|Daily: Recent Episodes
TechCentral
TC|Daily is a technology show from TechCentral, South Africa's premier business technology news website. It features interviews with newsmakers, ICT industry leaders and other interesting people.
The world of telephony might not be particularly sexy, but it is an industry that has changed fundamentally in the past 20 years.
And David Meintjes and Rob Lith of Telviva, a South African company specialising in cloud-based unified communications solutions for businesses, has been at the forefront of the technology changes that have swept through the industry in that time.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show, the pair tells TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod about the journey from the early days of the business – when it was known as Connection Telecom – to the cloud-based telephony specialist it is today, as Telviva.
In the interview, Meintjes and Lith chat about:
•The evolution of Connection Telecom, its original mission, and how the business evolved into the unified communications as a service (UCaaS) provider it is today;
•How the telephony market in South Africa has changed beyond recognition over the past 20 years; and
•Telviva’s international expansion plans and its strategy around acquisitions.
There’s plenty more in this interview with two ICT industry legends – don’t miss it.
South Africa’s rooftop solar installation industry has a bright future and is on track for its second-best year on record, despite the suspension of load shedding in March.
That’s according to Andrew Middleton, co-founder and CEO of GoSolr, one of South Africa’s largest rooftop solar installation companies, who spoke to TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) earlier this week.
According to Middleton, citing figures from Eskom, 749MW of rooftop solar capacity has been installed in South Africa this year, taking the total to 5.9GW. Some 162MW of new rooftop solar was added in the third quarter, down 267MW from the same three months in 2023, when load shedding was frequently at stage 4 or higher.
The figures are contained in the latest quarterly report published by GoSolr on the state of the industry.
In his interview with TCS, Middleton unpacks:
• The impact of the suspension of load shedding on the rooftop solar industry;
• What’s driving consumers to consider solar at home today;
• The impact of the adoption of electric vehicles on the demand for home solar – and what sort of solar installation consumers who own or are thinking of buying an EV need to consider;
• The state of play in the municipalities around feed-in tariff structures – an update on Cape Town, Johannesburg, Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay and more;
• The future role of embedded generation systems in communities – the way forward and the hurdles that might be encountered; and
• Why government was wrong to withdraw the tax rebate on solar panels and to impose higher taxes on their importation.
Don’t miss this insightful conversation about the state of South Africa’s rooftop solar industry.
Nasdaq-listed Equinix has completed construction of the first phase of a new data centre in Johannesburg, part of a R7.5-billion commitment to building cloud infrastructure in South Africa and the rest of the continent over the next five years.
The company’s South African MD, Sandile Dube – a former country manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and a former executive at Dimension Data (now NTT Data) – tells TechCentral Show host Duncan McLeod about the new Johannesburg data centre, which is located in Isando on the East Rand, and what type of clients it’s hoping to attract.
In the interview, Dube chats about:
•Equinix’s African investment plans and where it intends to build data centre facilities and why;
•The Isando data centre and what it offers;
•The Equinix company and its investment focus – including its investments in West Africa;
•Whether there is an overbuild of data centres taking place in South Africa. Can market demand sustain the level of investment taking place?; and
•How Equinix differentiates itself in an increasingly crowded market.
Don’t miss a great interview!
Lincoln Mali has been at the helm of Lesaka Technologies Southern Africa, a fintech with a sizeable footprint in Southern Africa’s informal markets, since 2021.
One of his main tasks has been to turn the company’s finances around by reigning in business units that were haemorrhaging cash in the past. Lesaka’s latest set of financial results suggests it’s making progress.
In this episode of TechCentral Show, Mali speaks to TechCentral’s Nathi Ndlovu about:
•Lesaka’s latest financial results, breaking down each of the group's key business units;
•The resilience of Lesaka’s loans business;
•The importance of data analytics in driving Lesaka’s merchant lending business;
•The impact of the interest rate cycle on business;
•How the digitisation of cash is progressing in the informal market;
•Lesaka’s acquisition strategy, including the recent blockbuster purchase of Adumo; and
•The rationale behind Lesaka’s primary listing on the Nasdaq in the US (it has a secondary listing on the JSE).
Don’t miss this fast-paced episode of the TechCentral Show.
Communications minister Solly Malatsi, a DA MP and the first non-ANC politician to hold the key technology portfolio in the democratic era, has been in the job for three months – sufficient time to get a broad handle on the big issues.
In this first interview with the TechCentral Show, TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod asks Malatsi a range of questions about the sector, including his views on how he plans to address some of the more intractable problems in his inbox.
The interview, which was recorded on Friday, 4 October – shortly before he announced he was issuing a policy direction to communications regulator Icasa that could see a big change to empowerment rules governing licensing in the sector – covers a wide range of topics, from Elon Musk’s Starlink to the ongoing feud between the SABC and Sentech.
Other topics covered in the interview include:
•The minister’s engagements with Starlink and the recent meeting in New York between Musk and President Cyril Ramaphosa;
•His views on black economic empowerment and why his top priority is reducing the cost of data and ensuring more South Africans can connect affordably to the internet and online services;
•His plan for private sector participation in the Post Office, and whether the company is really worth saving;
•The war between the SABC and Sentech, and how it can be resolved;
•Future funding models for the SABC and the future of TV licences in South Africa;
•The problems at the State IT Agency, and what the focus should be of government’s central IT procurement and services provider;
•The planned merger of Sentech and Broadband Infraco and why he believes it needs to happen;
•Government’s 40.5% stake in Telkom and what should happen to it;
•The road to digital migration and whether there is still a need for terrestrial television in 2024;
•2G and 3G switch-off in South Africa and whether this should be mandated by the government; and
•The legislative programme for the department of communications & digital technologies.
Don’t miss the interview!
Donald Valoyi saw the potential market for on-demand grocery delivery in South Africa early on, and his company Zulzi was a pioneer in the space.
It even went on to help Shoprite Holdings launch the Checkers Sixty60 app.
Zulzi was founded in 2013 as an “aggregator” of various shopping outlets to help consolidate online shopping for customers.
Today the company provides support to Sixty60 and continues to operate as a separate entity through seven of its own “dark stores”, or warehouses.
Zulzi founder Valoyi joins the TechCentral Show to chat about the company's journey, which began with his exit from corporate South Africa into entrepreneurship.
He shares his views on the innovations reshaping the e-commerce sector and how South African businesses should equip themselves to handle competition from international players.
Valoyi also chats about:
•His entrepreneurial ambitions and why he chose e-commerce as his focus;
•The early days of Zulzi, and how he built the business;
•How Zulzi’s relationship with Shoprite and the Checkers Sixty60 app came about;
•Why Valoyi believes the Post Office is key to driving e-commerce growth in South Africa;
•Why the medical sector is ripe for e-commerce disruption; and
•How technologies like artificial intelligence are changing the online shopping experience.
Don’t miss the interview!
South African scientists have launched a cost-effective air-quality monitoring system built using internet of things and artificial intelligence technologies.
Bruce Mellado, professor of particle physics and director of the Institute for Collider Particle Physics at Wits University, is one of the key people behind the new initiative, which is aimed at improving air quality in South Africa and eventually other markets around the world. He recently joined Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show to discuss the project.
Mellado, who also director at the iThemba Laboratories for Accelerator Based Sciences – a unit of South Africa’s National Research Foundation – takes TechCentral through the devices, how they were built and how they’re being deployed in South Africa to detect reportable problems with air quality.
“We decided to create, for the first time in South Africa, a cost-effective air-quality monitoring system based on sensors, IoT and AI. We have named this system Ai_r.,” Mellado wrote in a recent article for The Conversation and published on TechCentral.
“Our team of 25 people includes more than 20 years of experience as particle physicists in working with sensors, communications and AI,” he wrote.
“There are only 130 big air-quality measuring stations in South Africa. They only measure the air quality in the vicinity of the station. This is why we need cost-effective, dense networks made up of Ai_r systems set up all around these stations, to measure air quality in a much wider area. Our vision is to place tens of thousands of these devices all over South Africa.”
In this episode of TCS, Mellado chats about:
•The latest developments in particle physics, some of the work he is involved in and how a particle physicist got involved in an air-quality monitoring project;
•Where the idea for the Ai_r device came from, its development and how it works;
•The role of IoT and AI in the device, and why the development team made the technology choices it did;
•The data that’s been collected so far, and what it can be used for;
•How much the solution costs, and how you can buy one to monitor your air quality at home.
Don’t miss a great conversation!
Jorge Mendes has been in the hot seat at Cell C for just over a year, and the turnaround at the long-troubled mobile operator is starting to gain traction.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), Mendes sits down with TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod for a detailed interview in which he provides an update on what’s happened in the past year at Cell C, paints of a picture of the state of the business today, and sets out what comes next for the mobile operator.
To signal the management team’s intentions, and to declare the business is on a new strategic footing and is in the market for the long term, Cell C recently refreshed its brand identity and signalled its intention to take back market share from its bigger rivals.
In this episode of TCS, Mendes tackles a range of questions, including:
•Why he left what seemed to be a plum job at Vodacom to take on the difficult challenge of turning around Cell C;
•What went through his mind in the first few days on the job;
•Cell C’s plan to recapture the title of third largest mobile operator from Telkom – and to take the fight to MTN and Vodacom;
•Why Cell C has struggled to compete, how it accumulated huge amounts of debt and why the new strategy is its best but last chance of success;
•The state of Cell C’s finances – and especially its balance sheet – following the recent recapitalisation led by its largest shareholder, Blue Label Telecoms;
•His relationship with Blue Label founders and co-CEOs Brett Levy and Mark Levy;
•The role of regulatory support, especially in call termination;
•Why Cell C handed back the spectrum it secured in the 2022 spectrum auction, and its plans for participation in future auctions;
•The role of mobile virtual network operators and wholesale services in Cell C’s recovery plan; and
•Cell C’s strategy to capture more of the lucrative contract market.
There’s plenty more in the interview with Mendes – don’t miss the conversation!
The big mobile network operators in South Africa “have never shown a willingness to … accommodate smaller players”, so the notion that they should be entitled to “Fair Share” is “difficult to swallow for smaller operators who have been at the end of their [unfair] business practices”.
That’s the view of Dominic Cull, a leading specialist South African ICT lawyer and regulatory adviser to the Internet Service Providers’ Association (Ispa), who was speaking to the TechCentral Show (TCS) in an interview (published below).
Cull’s criticism of Fair Share – at least in the form being advanced by the large telecoms operators – comes as the Association of Comms & Technology (ACT), a lobby group that represents the country’s largest telecoms providers, agitates for its adoption by policymakers in South Africa.
Fair Share is an idea that has gained traction among operators in Europe, where margins have been pressured in a competitive market. They argue that so-called OTT – “over the top” – companies, which include streaming video providers such as Netflix, Disney+ and TikTok, should contribute a “fair share” to the development of broadband infrastructure.
Critics have said this is simply a move by infrastructure providers, which have experienced margin compression with the move from voice to data services, to try to claw back lost profits.
Speaking at last month’s Datacentrix Showcase 2024 event in Sandton, ICT industry stalwart Andile Ngcaba – who founded Convergence Partners – said the move by ACT to pressure policymakers and regulators over “Fair Share” is not needed or wanted in the South African context.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” said Ngcaba, who is a previous policymaker in South Africa and who served as director-general of communications in the Nelson Mandela administration.
In the interview with TCS, Cull echoed this view and said ACT’s lobbying for Fair Share is partly aimed at “catching the ear” of newly appointed communications minister Solly Malatsi and influencing what is included in forthcoming amendments to legislation that governs the ICT sector in South Africa.
In this episode of TCS, Cull chats about:
•Whether ACT has a point about Fair Share;
•How big content players impact smaller operators and internet service providers, and why the call for Fair Share is coming from the industry’s biggest players;
•The investments by the OTT players in both terrestrial and subsea fibre infrastructure, including Google’s investment in the Equiano cable and Meta Platforms’ involvement in 2Africa;
•Whether mobile network operators doomed to become low-margin “dumb pipes” like other utility industries. Can they somehow avoid that fate?
Don’t miss the discussion, and if you enjoyed it, check out our December 2023 interview with Dominic Cull on Starlink in South Africa.
Former Britehouse CEO Scott Gibson was recently appointed as chief executive of enterprise asset management company Pragma. He is the guest in this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS).
Gibson, who also previously headed Dimension Data’s (now NTT Data’s) global digital practice, tells TCS about his appointment and why he decided to join Pragma, which develops a software platform in South Africa that it exports to companies around the world. Gibson plans to step up that internationalisation effort as CEO.
“Pragma’s software competes comfortably with the world’s top brands, such as SAP, Maximo and IFS Ultimo. I plan to use my experience growing software businesses to help Pragma achieve its international expansion goals,” he says.
Co-founder and outgoing CEO Adriaan Scheeres, who led Pragma for 34 years, will remain a shareholder and member of the board.
In the interview, Gibson chats about:
•Pragma’s history and what it does;
•The size of the business, and the opportunities he sees abroad for the company;
•The firm's clients;
•The trends in the enterprise software market; and
•The application of artificial intelligence.
Don’t miss the conversation!
Herman Maritz, one half of the pair that developed the ESP load shedding app (formerly known as EskomSePush), is grateful that Eskom may finally have load shedding licked – even if that means fewer people are using the app.
Maritz, who returns to the TechCentral Show (TCS) – he was last a guest in 2021 – reflects on the past four-and-a-half months without load shedding, and what that’s meant for ESP – apart from giving himself and his business partner, Dan Southwood-Wells, to focus on other projects.
In this episode of TCS, Maritz unpacks the impact of the suspension of load shedding, what that’s meant for advertising and subscriptions on the platform, and what’s next for ESP.
He also chats about:
•How ESP is helping communities with load reduction;
•How they’re using generative artificial intelligence in the app; and
•The opportunities to launch the software in new markets.
Lastly, he reveals a few interesting statistics about ESP, including the number of times the app has been downloaded (it’s a staggering number).
The 24th of February 2022 is a day Ronnie Apteker – and millions of his countrymen in his adopted home of Ukraine – will never forget.
Apteker woke up early that morning – as millions of others did – to the sound of bombs and missiles raining down. After months of military build-up along Ukraine’s eastern flank, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had ordered a full-scale invasion.
In this special edition of the TechCentral Show, we chat to Apteker – a pioneer in South Africa’s internet industry – about his life in Ukraine amid the ongoing war.
Apteker has a storied career as co-founder of Internet Solutions, one of South Africa’s first and most successful internet service providers. He is also well known as a producer and promoter of movies, including Material and Beyond the River.
In 2015 Apteker bought an apartment in Kyiv and started a new life in the city, attracted by the country’s diverse tech scene and its incredibly beauty.
He had established a new and promising life for himself in Ukraine – he married a local woman, Marta, with whom he has a young boy (affectionately called “the Bunster”). Both Marta and the Bunster are now refugees from the war, living in Poland.
Never in a million years did Apteker expect he would be caught up in a major conflict, never mind the biggest land war in Europe since World War 2.
Today his life involves moving between Poland and Kyiv, where he has friends as well as business interests in the tech sector which he continues to nurture despite the chaos caused by Putin’s aggression.
In this sometimes emotionally raw interview, Apteker tells TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod about why he left South Africa to go and live in Ukraine, how the war started (he woke up early one morning to missiles raining down on Kyiv), what it’s like to live in a warzone, and how he’s coping with the daily hardships caused by the conflict.
Apteker, who is known for his wicked sense of humour – in a previous life he was even briefly a stand-up comedian – admits it’s been exceptionally difficult to stay positive about the future, but that he’s managed to keep going even us Putin’s war machine grinds on.
In the interview, Apteker chats about his daily life now and what it entails; the US election, and why Ukrainians fear another Donald Trump presidency; the new documentary film about the war that he’s been working on; his passion for moviemaking; and why love is the most important thing in the world.
Don’t miss the interview.
The Volvo EX30 is undoubtedly one of the most exciting electric cars to be launched in South Africa in 2024.
The vehicle, whose price starts at R792 000, offers a combination of price, performance and luxury tweaks that has attracted considerable appeal among South African consumers interested in making the switch to electric mobility.
But what is the Volvo EX30 like to drive?
TechCentral recently had the opportunity to spend time with the twin-motor version of the EX30 to put it through its paces. Apart from a few minor niggles, including the quality of materials used in the dashboard, we can confidently say this is a very compelling option for those interested in buying an EV in the sub-R1-million price category.
While it’s not as affordable as more entry-level EV models from the likes of China’s BYD, the vehicle offers many luxuries usually reserved for more expensive EVs, including a panoramic (non-opening) sunroof, high-end Harman Kardon audio and well-thought-out software features.
It’s easy to see where Volvo has compromised to get the price down, but the decisions it has made in this regard have mostly been carefully considered.
As for the driving experience, the power underfoot is extraordinary. The twin motor version TechCentral tested accelerated from 0-100km/h more quickly than a Porsche 911 – it really is a thrill to drive!
This is a sentiment shared by Greg Cress, who owns the EX30 and has been driving it since March, when he took delivery from Volvo. Cress joined TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) recently to review the vehicle and to talk about the state of the EV market more broadly in South Africa.
Cress, who works for Accenture – where he is principal director of automotive and e-mobility – told TCS about his experiences with the vehicle and what he likes about it and what he doesn’t.
He unpacks his experiences so far, including with the regular software updates that Volvo has issued and why he settled on the EX30 over other EV options available in the South African market. He also shares details about a recent long-distance return trip he did from Pretoria to White River in Mpumalanga and how he found utilising the charging points along South Africa’s national roads.
Then, in the second part of the TCS interview, Cress shares his views on the state of the EV market in South Africa, what is hindering its wider adoption and the outlook for electric mobility in the country.
Don’t miss a hugely informative interview.
South Africa’s telecommunications industry is facing a barrage of threats, from crime and vandalism to power cuts and overreach by politicians.
This is the word from Nomvuyiso Batyi, CEO of telecommunications industry lobby group the Association for Comms & Technology (ACT) and an industry stalwart who served as a councillor at communications regulator Icasa for eight years and as special adviser to the minister of communications. She was speaking to TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (watch or listen to the interview below).
ACT, which represents the six big telecoms operators in South Africa – MTN, Vodacom, Rain, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Telkom and Cell C – was founded two years ago as an interface between the industry and policymakers and regulators.
In the interview, Batyi unpacks a range of issues affecting ACT members. She discusses:
•Her first engagement with newly appointed communications minister Solly Malatsi, and her views on him;
•What her day-to-day work involves;
•Why government shouldn’t be setting deadlines for 2G and 3G switch-off in South Africa;
•Import taxes on cellphones, and why luxury taxes on 4G devices should be scrapped;
•How the load shedding problem has been replaced with the load reduction problem, and what the impact has been on operators;
•The scourge of theft and vandalism, and why urgent action is needed to address the problem; and
•South Africa’s upcoming spectrum auction, and why telecoms operators should get access to spectrum below 694MHz that has traditionally been reserved for broadcasting.
Don’t miss the interview!
Andy Higgins, founder of e-commerce solutions company Bob Group, knows more about e-commerce in South Africa than most people.
Higgins founded Bidorbuy (now Bob Shop) at the height of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, and over the past 25 years has actively participated in the industry as it has mushroomed from those nascent beginnings.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), Higgins has a look back at the growth of the industry, and what’s likely to propel its future expansion.
In the show, Higgins unpacks:
•How Bob Group has done since it was created nearly two years ago through the merger of Bidorbuy and uAfrica, and what the future holds for the business;
•What is driving the rapid growth in South Africa’s e-commerce industry – did Covid lockdowns give it the spark for its current rapid expansion, or is there more at play?;
•The rise of on-demand deliveries in South Africa and what it means for online retailers;
•The rise of Chinese competitors – how much of a threat are Shein and Temu really, and is the South African Revenue Service right to crack down?;
•The Competition Commission’s intervention in the market and whether it is warranted;
•Whether Amazon’s South African launch was a flop; and
•What trends to look out for as the market develops further in the coming years.
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion!
A new smart payment ring has been launched in South Africa – and it’s built by South Africans for South Africans.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod chats to VezoPay founders Jake Pinkus and Lawrence Baker about the launch of the ring – it’s available in three variants at launch – and what was behind the idea.
In the interview, they not only explain why they decided to build a payment ring, but also why they’re entering what could soon become a highly competitive market globally, with both Samsung Electronics and Apple expected to launch their own smart rings later this year.
Pinkus and Lawrence unpack:
•How long they’ve been working on the payment ring, and where the idea came from;
•How much research and development was involved, and who’s backing the innovation;
•How the technology works, and what exactly is inside the ring;
•The various options available at launch;
•How it works without having to be charged;
•How the security features work (without giving the game away);
•How VezoPay is working with South African banks;
•Whether the ring can be used for ticketing (concerts, Gautrain, etc);
•How much it costs;
•The potential competition from Samsung and Apple; and
•VezoPay’s plans to expand beyond South Africa’s borders.
Don’t miss the interview!
Kartik Mistry, recently appointed head of Standard Bank Connect, believes there is still strong growth ahead for South Africa’s mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) market.
Standard Bank, which recently rebranded its MVNO from Standard Bank Mobile to Standard Bank Connect and shifted its network partner from Cell C to MTN South Africa, has launched a new value proposition in cellular communications for its customers.
TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod is joined by Mistry on the TechCentral Show, where he explains the bank’s decision to partner with MTN and why it decided to engage directly with a mobile network operator rather than working through an “enablement” partner as it had done previously.
Kartik, who has experience in both telecommunications – he has previously served as chief operating officer at Rain – and in banking, talks about the state of the MVNO market in South Africa, where Standard Bank Connect is positioning itself strategically, and why the market might be primed for consolidation.
Don’t miss the discussion!
The big developer conferences by Microsoft, Google and Apple this year all focused on artificial intelligence, with each setting out a unique strategy to win in the AI race.
But what did Microsoft’s Build, Google’s I/O and Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference tell us about each company’s strategy, and which company is leading in the race to commercialise generative AI?
Dean Furman, a South African AI expert and keynote speaker, joins TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) to unpack the companies’ keynote presentations and what they tell us not only about their strategies but also where the technology is headed in the coming years.
Furman, who also provides training on AI to corporate South Africa, chats about what the latest developments mean for businesses and consumers, and dives into what the technology means for productivity.
MultiChoice Group has been involved in two major enforcement actions against piracy kingpins in as many weeks.
Frikkie Jonker, of MultiChoice subsidiary Irdeto, is the man leading the charge against these pirate operations, and he tells the TechCentral Show (TCS) that, despite recent arrests, the broadcaster’s war on streaming piracy is just getting started. More arrests and other enforcement actions are on the cards.
On 5 June, MultiChoice revealed it had succeeding in nailing the streaming piracy platform Waka TV in an operation that involved Western Cape police investigators. It described the dismantling of Waka TV as “a significant victory in the fight against internet streaming piracy”.
The broadcaster said it was involved in a “meticulously planned raid” on 31 May, which led to the arrest of a “key suspect involved in one of the most extensive pirate operations in Africa”.
A day later, on 6 June, the broadcaster announced that through Irdeto – and working with law enforcement agencies – it had acted against another pirate streaming operation, this one in Gauteng, where a suspect was arrested for the “illegal sale of internet streaming pirate devices that allowed individuals to access MultiChoice content”.
Jonker, who is antipiracy director in broadcasting and cybersecurity at Irdeto, takes TechCentral’s audience into some detail about the two law enforcement operations and what transpired. And he explains why MultiChoice is stepping up its battle against content thieves and pirate streaming operations in South Africa and the rest of the African continent.
In the interview, Jonker unpacks:
•How serious content piracy has become on the continent;
•Why it’s often associated with organised criminal syndicates, and why consumers are putting themselves at risk by signing up to pirate streaming platforms as well as encouraging further criminal activity;
•Why MultiChoice is now warning that, in addition to targeting the pirate platform operators, it may go after consumers who sign up to these platforms, too; and
•How the broadcaster is working with law enforcement authorities.
Don’t miss a fascinating conversation.
MTN South Africa last week announced that PayShap, South Africa’s rapid payments platform, is being integrated into its Mobile Money (MoMo) platform.
Bradwin Roper, chief financial services officer at MTN South Africa, is the guest in the latest episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS). He unpacks the PayShap development and what it means, and explores MTN’s fintech strategy and the future of mobile money in South Africa.
In this episode of TCS, Roper chats about:
The significance of MTN becoming the first non-banking platform to offer access to PayShap;
Why and how it’s working with Investec and technical service provider Electrum to deploy the solution;
What MTN customers will be able to do with PayShap;
The growth of mobile money in South Africa, and the work that MTN is doing to grow the ecosystem; and
* Lessons South Africa can draw from other emerging markets, notably India and Brazil, in mobile money and rapid payments.
Don’t miss the interview!
In this special episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS) – presented by MTN Business – Duncan McLeod chats to two South African biohackers, Daniel de Kock and Jarryd Bekker, about why they have voluntarily installed microchips in their bodies.
Respectively the chief technology officer and CEO of Riot Network – the wireless broadband specialist that is building low-cost networks in underserviced areas, including Olievenhoutbosch in Gauteng – they tell TechCentral about why they chose to implant the chips and what they’re used for.
The pair, who both profess a desire to receive brain implants from Elon Musk’s Neuralink, explain how they started augmenting their biological bodies with electronics, what’s involved, the information they’re able to glean from the chips, and where the fusion of human biology and electronics is headed over the coming decade.
In the interview, Bekker and De Kock unpack how electronic circuitry in the human body can help detect and manage serious health issues, and the impact this could have on fighting disease and prolonging people’s lives.
The two discuss a range of issues related to biohacking, including:
•What’s involved when it’s time to upgrade the chips;
•How one goes about having them installed;
•The growing online biohacker community;
•Integration with artificial intelligence; and
•Much more.
Don’t miss this offbeat but fascinating discussion!
Paratus Group is rapidly emerging as a major player in the telecommunications industry in Southern Africa. But who’s behind Paratus, and what’s its history?
From landing Google’s Equiano subsea cable in Swakopmund and building a new fibre route between South Africa and Namibia – providing a new data corridor between Gauteng and the world – to working with Meta Platforms to wire up Zambia and building expansive satellite ground stations, the Namibian-born group has its eyes firmly set on becoming a significant telecoms player in the region.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod chats to Paratus Group chief commercial officer Martin Cox about the company’s origins (although founded in Namibia, it cut its teeth in Angola), its current footprint and its future growth plans.
Among other topics, Cox discusses:
•The impact of the recent subsea cable breaks in West Africa and the role of diverse routes in reducing the impact;
•Paratus’s new fibre route from Swakopmund to Johannesburg, which runs through Botswana – its significance and what was involved in its construction;
•The group’s footprint in South Africa, including its new satellite ground station in Irene, near Pretoria; and
•Paratus’s culture, and why its management team is happiest in “the trenches”; and
•Whether a listing for Paratus Group could be on the cards at some point (its Namibian operation is already listed in Windhoek).
Don’t miss the discussion!
A dusty township in Gauteng is the site of a South African-developed mesh network that could change everything. Read the full story at https://techcentral.co.za/internet-revolution-in-olievenhoutbosch/241698/
South African firm Hydrox Holdings has developed a new way of extracting hydrogen for use in cars and other applications that it believes will help usher in a new era of plentiful clean energy for the world.
The company, based in Pretoria, has won a number of awards and other accolades for its patented intellectual property, which involves extracting hydrogen from water using a “membrane-less” electrolyser technology that it has patented globally.
Corrie de Jager, the CEO and founder of Hydrox Holdings, joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to chat about the progress the company has made in recent years in developing the technology – and why he is now looking for investors to help commercialise it.
De Jager, who has been working on the technology for more than two decades, claims the technology could help move the world to non-polluting and mass-scale hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars more quickly by dramatically reducing the cost of extracting hydrogen from water.
In this episode of TCS, he unpacks:
•Where the idea to build a membrane-less electrolyser came from;
•The proofs of concept the company has launched;
•The hurdles that Hydrox’s team has had to overcome while developing the technology;
•The cost and production advantages of membrane-less electrolysers;
•Why hydrogen could be the next big thing in clean energy production;
•What’s stopping the widespread adoption of hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars; and
•Where Hydrox plans to take the technology and how it intends to commercialise it.
Don’t miss a fascinating interview about a potentially ground-breaking South African innovation.
TechCentral, the publisher of South Africa’s leading business technology podcasts, is thrilled to announce the launch of TCS Legends.
The new show will feature interviews with (and about) some of the leading figures who helped shape South Africa’s technology industry into what it is today.
As the show’s name implies, we’ll be interviewing leading figures who achieved great things in – and for – the tech sector in South Africa.
From PCs to IT services and software to telecoms, TCS Legends features some of the leading figures in the industry over the last 30 years.
With season 1 launching later in February, TCS Legends is a by-invitation-only, editorially driven tech show that builds on TechCentral’s credible, market-leading multimedia productions, including the TechCentral Show (TCS) and TCS+.
TCS Legends is powered by Mitel. For all your unified communications and customer experience needs, visit Mitel.com.
Andile Ngcaba’s Convergence Partners last week announced it was buying storied South African IT services group Datacentrix from Alviva Holdings for an undisclosed sum.
Datacentrix’s long-serving CEO, Ahmed Mahomed, joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to discuss the acquisition, how it happened, why Alviva decided to sell and what the future holds for the company.
In the show, Mahomed unpacks:
•Datacentrix’s history, when it was founded, its JSE listing and the acquisition by Alviva;
•The business’s key focus areas today;
•What the Convergence Partners deal means for the future of Datacentrix;
•How Datacentrix will work with Ngcaba; and
•Whether the company might head back to the JSE at some point.
Don’t miss the discussion!
Kena Health took top honours at the recent MTN Business App of the Year Awards. Its chief technology officer, Pheello Maboea, tells the TechCentral Show (TCS) about the telehealth start-up’s journey so far.
Founded by Saul Kornik in 2021, Kena Health aims to improve the reach of quality healthcare services by digitising access to primary healthcare professionals.
The TCS interview, hosted by TechCentral’s Nkosinathi Ndlovu, delves into:
•Barriers to telehealth adoption in South Africa and how new entrants are legitimising the industry;
•The challenges of designing applications for two very distinct audiences – highly technical medical staff on one hand and vulnerable patients on the other;
•How the company approaches talent retention and recruitment in what can be described as a seller’s market for technical skills;
•How emergent technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence are going to disrupt healthcare provision; and
•What winning the MTN Business App of the Year means for the start-up.
Don’t miss a fascinating conversation on the future of healthcare.
There has been considerable noise about the launch – or otherwise – of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service in South Africa, much of it conjecture. What’s the real story?
To unpack what exactly is required of SpaceX-launched Starlink to launch in South Africa – including the rules around black economic empowerment (BEE) – the TechCentral Show spoke to Dominic Cull, a legal expert on the subject.
Cull, who serves as the regulatory adviser to the Internet Service Providers’ Association (Ispa), shares some surprising insights into the process.
Topics tackled by Cull in the discussion include:
•Who is really to blame for Starlink’s failure to launch in South Africa so far;
•What the law really says about BEE and the issuing of telecommunications licences?
•What Icasa’s licensing regime looks like, and which licence types Starlink needs to apply for to launch its services in South Africa.
•Why there is an artificial restriction on the issuing of new licences – and why this makes no sense anymore.
•How Icasa’s “type approvals” for communications equipment work and what they’re for.
•Why Ispa members are keen to work with Starlink.
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion that clears up some of the misconceptions in the market about Starlink in South Africa.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show, author, marketer and consultant GG Alcock chats to Nkosinathi Ndlovu about how South Africa’s informal economy is being digitised.
Alcock’s background as a white boy growing up in rural Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal has helped him develop a deep cultural understanding of township life and the way business is conducted there.
Indeed, he has built his career as a marketer and consultant based on his intimate understanding of the township economies.
In the show, Alcock shares some of his personal history, speaks about his earliest innovations and gives detailed insight into how the adoption of digital technologies has progressed in South Africa’s informal economy in recent years.
The conversation delves into:
•How the Covid-19 pandemic influenced the adoption of digital payments in the informal economy;
•Why card payments are outpacing banking apps, third-party payment platforms like Zapper and even PayShap in townships;
•Data-driven insights about what informal business owners really think about ditching cash for digital; and
•The outlook for digitisation and payments in the informal economy.
Don’t miss a fascinating conversation!
TechCentral reported on Friday that South African cryptocurrency platforms Revix and BitFund are joining forces and, together with Austria’s Coinpanion, have formed a new alternative investment platform called Altify.
Revix founder and now Altify CEO Sean Sanders joins Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show to unpack the merger, how it came about, and what Altify hopes to do in the alternative investment space not only in South Africa but the broader Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
In its new form, Altify will continue to offer the crypto investment products that Revix, Coinpanion and BitFund became known for, including a wide selection of ETF-style crypto bundles, along with other alternative finance products.
He said the recent downturn in the crypto market acted as a catalyst for the merger and accelerated Altify’s expansion into non-crypto investment options.
According to Sanders, these market dynamics have also primed the environment for consolidation among retail investment platforms, especially in the crypto space. “Altify is leaning into these opportunities and is engaging with other investment platforms in the UAE, the UK and Europe who could join Altify over the coming months.”
Don’t miss the interview!
Aidan Johnson, appointed by Massmart to lead on-demand delivery platform OneCart, believes South Africa is on the cusp of huge growth in online shopping – and that everything is to play for.
Johnson, who joins Duncan McLeod on this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), talks about the OneCart business, why Massmart bought it and where it’s headed.
The conversation delves into:
•Why OneCart works with third-party retailers that compete with Walmart-owned Massmart, the parent of brands such as Makro, Builders and Game;
•How OneCart fits into Massmart’s overarching e-commerce strategy for South Africa;
•The state of the e-commerce market in South Africa, including the on-demand segment, and the impact that Covid has had on its development;
•With the launch of Amazon.com’s retail marketplace operators in South Africa looming large, the impact this will have on the local retail industry – are local retailers ready to take on the global e-commerce giant?;
•The outlook for e-commerce growth in South Africa for the rest of the 2020s and what needs to be overcome for online sales as a percentage of total retail sales to reach 15%, from 5% now.
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion about online shopping in South Africa and how local retailers – including Massmart and OneCart – are preparing for significant disruption to the retail sector in the years ahead.
ShotSpotter, a technology that “listens” for gunshots to help law enforcement authorities pinpoint potential criminal activity, has been deployed in high-crime parts of Cape Town for some years.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), Duncan McLeod chat to Tom Chittum, senior vice president for forensic services at SoundThinking, the company that owns the acoustic gunshot detection technology, to learn about how it’s being deployed not only in South Africa but in cities around the world.
In the interview, Chittum chats about:
•How ShotSpotter is being used in Cape Town;
•How the technology works – its advantages and drawbacks;
•How law enforcement agencies use ShotSpotter to fight crime; and
•How ShotSpotter is being used in US cities to tackle gun violence.
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion.
The future of finance is on the blockchain.
That’s according to Connie Bloem, co-founder and MD of Mesh.trade, who was speaking to the TechCentral Show (TCS) about alternative (AltFi) and decentralised finance (DeFi).
Mesh is owned by 42Markets Group, which recently secured a R182-million funding round from technology investor Convergence Partners.
Much of that funding will be used in Mesh’s expansion plans.
Bloem, who lives in Paris, told TCS that Mesh is attempted to serve as a bridge between the world of traditional finance, also known as TradFi, and AltFi and DeFi.
Among other topics, Bloem chats about what these changes mean for ordinary investors.
Don’t miss a great discussion!
Earlier this month, Cape Town-based fintech Peach Payments announced it had secured US$30-million (R570-million) in a fundraising round led by Apis Partners.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show, Rahul Jain, co-founder of CEO of Peach Payments, tells TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod about the funding round and what the company plans to use the money to do.
In the interview, Jain unpacks:
His background growing up in India and how his career brought him to South Africa;
What Peach Payments does and why;
The company’s business model; and
Its growth plans, including expansion outside South Africa.
Jain also explains why Peach Payments went the private equity route with the latest funding round.
Don’t miss the interview!
TCS | Pansy Tlakula: Information Regulator bares its teeth
The Information Regulator, the agency responsible for enforcing the Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia), is starting to flex its muscles.
Among other things, the regulator is tasked with investigating data breaches – including cyberattacks – and will not hesitate to mete out punishment on companies and government entities that don’t take the protection of customer or citizen information seriously.
Already engaged in an enforcement action over a cyberattack at the department of justice & constitutional development – the department was fined R5-million – the regulator is seeing a flood of self-reported incidents reach its offices. In fact, more than a thousand such incidents have been reported this year alone, a sharp increase from the 2022 figure of about 600.
TechCentral recently welcomed the Information Regulator’s chair, Adv Pansy Tlakula, onto the TechCentral Show (TCS) for a discussion about the regulator, its enforcement actions and some of the investigations it is pursuing.
In the TCS interview, Tlakula chats about:
•Her day-to-day duties as chair of the Information Regulator;
•Popia and the Promotion of Access to Information Act and the Information Regulator’s role in enforcing both pieces of legislation;
•What organisations in both the private and public sectors should know about the work of the regulator;
•Enforcement actions that it has been involved in, including the ongoing matter involving the department of justice and a resolution to a dispute with pharmacy chain Dis-Chem over a recent incident involving customer information;
•The reported cyberattack on the State Security Agency and what the regulator plans to do about it;
•The rising number of cyberattacks on public sector infrastructure, what’s driving it and what can be done about it; and
•Much more besides.
Don’t miss a great discussion!
TCS | The Levy brothers on the future of Blue Label and Cell C
When JSE-listed Blue Label Telecoms released its annual results two weeks ago, it showed its core business continuing to grow at a respectable pace. Yet investors dumped the share, worried about a lack of disclosure about Cell C’s performance.
Now, in an exclusive interview with the TechCentral Show (TCS), the company’s founders and co-CEOs, brothers Brett and Mark Levy, have spelt out exactly why they believe investors have punished the share, why they decided not to publish numbers for Cell C (this time around), and what their strategy is for the long-troubled mobile operator after the completion last year of its second recapitalisation in six years.
In the interview, Mark Levy looks back to the founding of the company more than 20 years ago, how it pivoted into cellular airtime, and its listing on the JSE.
The conversation later shifts to a detailed discussion with Brett Levy on Cell C. He answers a wide range of questions, including:
•Why did Blue Label buy Cell C in the first place?
•What went wrong after the first recap?
•What’s stop things going awry again at Cell C?
•Why is Blue Label pursuing a controlling stake in the mobile operator?
•What’s the potential upside at Cell C?
•Just how important is the mobile virtual network operator business? (Cell C recently concluded an MVNO deal with Capitec.)
The brothers also tackle the difficulty in understanding Blue Label’s results, driven by the highly complex restructuring at Cell C. They tackle these questions:
•Shouldn’t Blue Label be doing more to make its results understandable to shareholders, especially ordinary investors?
•Doesn’t buying control of Cell C expose Blue Label to even greater potential risk?
•What’s the outlook for Blue Label’s core business?
•What are the exciting growth areas in the core business, such as betting/gaming?
•Is Blue Label mulling a buyout of minorities and a delisting from the JSE?
Don’t miss the most detailed and information-packed interview the Levy brothers have given in years. If you enjoyed the interview, please consider subscribing on YouTube or your favourite podcast app.
It’s been a year since investors, including the business’s own customers, came to the rescue the Sigfox internet-of-things (IoT) network in South Africa.
Now its chief commercial officer, Sumenish Naidoo, has told the TechCentral Show (TCS) that Sigfox South Africa is not only on a sustainable growth trajectory, but has big big growth plans for the rest of this decade.
This comes after Remgro’s CIVH in 2021 pulled the plug on Sigfox operator SqwidNet, citing weak customer demand. Founded eight years ago under CIVH subsidiary Dark Fibre Africa, the difficulties at SqwidNet came as a shock to its customers, including Discovery Insure and ADT, that had come to rely heavily on the nationwide Sigfox network.
Former CIVH CEO Raymond Ndlovu said in an interview with TechCentral at the time that the decision to shut down SqwidNet, which by then had been moved out of Dark Fibre Africa as a separate entity under CIVH, was because customer take-up had not been as strong as hoped.
The Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns resulted in depressed commercial activity, which worsened the problems at SqwidNet.
Support from SqwidNet’s customers, though, ensured the Sigfox network was saved. CIVH has remained a shareholder in the newly created Sigfox South Africa, albeit now as a minority one, along with Macrocomm, Discovery Insure, Fidelity ADT and Buffet Investments.
In this episode of TCS, Naidoo tells TechCentral editor-in-chief Duncan McLeod about what’s happened at Sigfox South Africa since the rescue deal last year, and why he believes there is still a significant opportunity for growth in IoT in the country, despite the troubles experienced at SqwidNet.
Naidoo also talks about:
•What IoT is, and why it could help grease the wheels of commerce;
•The history of Sigfox in South Africa, and how Sigfox’s technology differs from traditional cellular communication and other IoT protocols;
•What the Sigfox network in South Africa looks like today;
•How the network is being used; and
•How consumers can get their hands on Sigfox-capable IoT devices.
Don’t miss a fascinating interview!
Nigerian fintech Paystack, which was acquired by Stripe, the Irish-American firm founded by the Collison brothers in 2020 for US$200-million, has big plans to expand elsewhere in Africa.
Joel Bronkowski, Paystack’s country head for South Africa, joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to talk about these expansion plans as well as the state of fintech on the continent.
Paystack, which is headquartered in Lagos, was founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi and received early funding from Silicon Valley start-up accelerator Y Combinator.
In the TCS interview, Bronkowski also chats about:
•Paystack’s plans for the South African market;
•How the company is approaching the South African market in comparison to its strategy for Nigeria and other countries;
•The problems the company is trying to solve;
•The Stripe acquisition and what it means for Paystack; and
•Paystack’s growth strategy.
Don’t miss a great discussion about disruption in financial services in Africa.
Luke Jedeikin and Claude Hanan are well known for founding Superbalist, the online fashion store bought in 2014 by Takealot Group.
Now the pair has embarked on a new venture, launched in The Foschini Group (TFG) stable, called Bash, and they tell Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) all about it.
To start the discussion, Hanan and Jedeikin talk about the origin of Superbalist – it began life as a group-buying deals site akin to Groupon. They then chat about how the big Takealot deal happened and what it meant for Superbalist.
The conversation them turns to how the TFG opportunity came about and what the JSE-listed retail group is hoping to achieve with the launch of Bash – it’s online at bash.com. They also explain why they chose the name Bash and what was involved in securing a four-letter dot-com domain.
Among many other topics, Jedeikin and Hanan provide their views on:
•The state of e-commerce in South Africa;
•Why Bash is a mobile-first app shopping destination – it also works fine on the web;
•The complexities of selling fashion online; and
•The competitive landscape in South Africa and how it’s evolving.
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion!
What does the future hold for e-commerce in South Africa? Takealot Group CEO Mamongae Mahlare joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to unpack this and more.
In the interview, Mahlare talks about her career background and how she came to Takealot. She also discusses:
•The transformative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, how it drove up online shopping and why it’s impact is still being felt.
•Takealot Group’s slowing growth – why it’s happening, and what it says about the e-commerce space in South Africa.
•The impact of increased competition from traditional retailers embracing internet commerce.
•The Competition Commission’s investigation into online markets, and why the authorities need to tread carefully.
•The rumoured launch later this year of an Amazon marketplace in South Africa, and how this will impact the market and Takealot.
•What will shape the development of e-commerce in South Africa in the coming years.
•The role, if any, for the Post Office in e-commerce fulfilment.
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion.
Volvo Cars, part of Sweden’s Volvo Group, has seen a big growth in interest in electric vehicles from the South African motoring public – and the company hopes the introduction early next year of its most affordable EV yet, the EX30, will accelerate that.
That’s according to Volvo Cars South Africa MD Greg Maruszewski, who was speaking to Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) – watch or listen to the interview below.
Volvo has been one of the most aggressive car manufacturers in pivoting from internal combustion engines to electric motors. Indeed, it said two years ago already that it intends to become a fully electric car company by 2030.
In this episode of TCS, Maruszewski unpacks:
•Volvo’s transition to EVs and its strategy around electro-mobility;
•What South Africans think about EVs, and why they’re warming to the concept;
•Where Volvo is positioned in the car market, and why some of its newer models, like the XC30, are aimed at a younger audience;
•Volvo’s expectations for the EX30 compact sports utility vehicle in the local market, and more details about the new model – including performance, battery range, integrated technology and pricing, which is expected to start at about R776 000;
•Volvo’s relationship with Google;
•The development of charging infrastructure in South Africa;
•What government could be doing to encourage greater EV adoption; and
•The future of the cars – what can we expect in the coming years?
Don’t miss a fascinating interview!
Bryan Hattingh, CEO of Cycan, is well-known in South Africa’s technology industry for his leadership coaching and for helping companies find top talent.
Hattingh joins Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) to discuss what he believes is required of leadership in a post-Covid world – hint: it’s not more of the same.
He discusses a range of issues in the interview, including:
•How the pandemic changed what’s required of business leaders;
•How companies can maintain their unique cultures in the era of remote working;
•What artificial intelligence means for the modern workplace;
•What works best – hybrid, remote or in-office only – and why;
•Why companies might not be measuring success correctly – it should go beyond regular reporting on financial metrics such as Heps and Ebitda;
•How firms can help employees find meaning and satisfaction in the workplace; and
•The emigration wave in South Africa and its impact on the country.
Don’t miss a great discussion!
It’s been just over 20 years since Andile Ngcaba quit his government job – he was director-general of communications – and became an investor in the technology sector.
Now, in an interview with Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS), Ngcaba looks back at the past two decades, the formation of Convergence Partners, the investments the business has made and why, and its focus areas.
Ngcaba, who splits his time between Africa and Silicon Valley – where he has a home – unpacks the recent announcement that Convergence Partners Investments is rebranding as Solcon Capital and has appointed a new CEO, Pramod Venkatesh, and why its focus has been broadened beyond Africa to both developing and developed markets.
“Under this new brand, Solcon will focus on international deep tech investments in generative AI and large language models, synthetic data and big data, cybersecurity, and quantum computing across South Africa, India and Southeast Asia, leveraging scale through platform economics,” Solcon said in a statement last week.
Also in this TCS interview, Ngcaba talks about:
•What he has learnt from his time in Silicon Valley, and why it’s not easy to replicate the Valley model in other parts of the model. “It’s more a state of mind,” Ngcaba tells TechCentral.
•What he set out to achieve when he started Convergence Partners.
•The highlights of the investments the company has made over the years.
•What excites him the technology space today, and why.
The original Convergence Partners pitch presentation to investor Nedbank, which Ngcaba talks about in the opening minutes of the interview, is available to download on TechCentral's website.
Don’t miss a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion!
Following the recent decision to rebrand MTN GlobalConnect as Bayobab, founder and CEO Frédéric Schepens joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to chat about the telecommunications infrastructure provider’s expansion plans.
Bayobab, which owns stakes in a number of subsea cable systems and other telecoms infrastructure, is the result of “change under way to position the business as a world-class, Africa-focused open-access digital infrastructure platform serving not just MTN but other third parties as customers”, MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita said in May.
“We are also going to bring in strategic partners into the business over time who will provide skills and capital to support and accelerate the growth of this business.”
In this episode of TCS, Schepens unpacks all the infrastructure that Bayobab owns, the huge investments it is making in subsea and terrestrial fibre in Africa, and where the company expects to direct its capital spending in the years ahead.
Telkom is facing difficult times, but CEO Serame Taukobong has insisted the company “does not need a knight in shining armour” to come riding to its rescue.
In this TechCentral Show (TCS) interview with Taukobong, the Telkom boss provides his views on the interest received from a consortium that includes former CEO Sipho Maseko and Mauritius-based Axian Telecom, as well as MTN Group signalling that it, too, may still be interested in a deal.
MTN walked away from early stage talks with Telkom last year after the latter’s board agreed to entertain a rival offer from wireless broadband provider Rain, which had sought a merger with Telkom. But this week, during Telkom’s annual results presentation to. Investors, MTN issued a statement in which it said a deal makes sense for shareholders of both entities.
In the interview, at the JSE in Sandton, Taukobong answered several pressing questions:
•Without corporate action, can Telkom survive and thrive in the longer term?
•How supportive is government towards a partial or full sale of Telkom?
•How will market consolidation likely happen and can South Africa’s mobile market sustain four infrastructure competitors in Telkom, Vodacom, MTN and Rain?
•Are the retrenchments at Telkom over, or is there still more pain to come?
•What’s the prognosis for capital expenditure at Telkom, and why did mobile spending outpace revenue growth?
•What’s hurting Telkom’s free cash flow (a negative R2.7-billion in the 2023 financial year), and what is management doing to address the problem?
•Does it still make sense for Telkom to own an IT services business?
•What are the plans to unlock shareholder value, especially in Gyro?
Don’t miss the discussion!
Senior Altron executive Collin Govender is passionate about leadership – and believes South Africa needs much more of it if it is to solve its myriad challenges.
Govender – who started his career as a forklift operator in a Durban warehouse and who today heads two important businesses in the Altron stable, Altron Systems Integration and Altron Karabina – joins Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) to discuss the topic.
The conversation starts with a discussion about Govender’s career in IT, which included 17 years at T-Systems, and how the Altron opportunity (now opportunities, after he took the reins at Systems Integration in addition to his role leading Karabina) came about.
He also unpacks his plans for Altron Systems Integration, where it is positioned in the market and the opportunity for acquisitions – and why systems integration has become a scale game.
The conversation then turns to leadership, and the role it plays in business and society. Govender talks about his own management style, and also shares his insights into why he believes South Africa’s biggest problems flow from a lack of decisive and accountable leadership. The fix can be applied to business and politics. But what will it take? Govender’s ideas deserve attention.
The State IT Agency (Sita), government’s central IT procurement and services agency, has been through the wringer.
The entity, created in 1999, has been plagued for much of its existence by oftentimes poor leadership and well as widespread corruption – detailed in a 2017 TechCentral interview former CEO Setumo Mohapi.
Now, after several years without a CEO – the company had been placed into a form of administration by former communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams – Bongani Mabaso has taken the reins. Mabaso, previously a senior IT executive at Standard Bank Group, is promising to shake things up at Sita - by fixing what’s broken and focusing on service delivery to its government clients.
Mabaso, who has a PhD in machine ethics and computational morality from the University of Pretoria and a BSc in engineering from the University of Cape Town, tells Duncan McLeod in this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS) about his plan to turn around the troubled entity.
In the interview, Mabaso speaks about:
•The direction he intends to take Sita in and why;
•How artificial intelligence could be used in Sita’s procurement processes – and how it could help stamp out corruption in tenders;
•His strategic plan, and how he will measure its success;
•The IT skills shortage in the public sector and why it's at crisis levels;
•The announcement by communications minister Mondli Gungubele that Sita will build a R6-billion broadband network – much of this work is already, in fact, happening; and
•The impact of load shedding on public sector IT systems.
The rise and fall of Nokia’s mobile phone business has been well documented. Once dominant in the feature-phone era, the Finnish company was caught flat-footed by the launch of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android.
The acquisition of Nokia’s handset business by Microsoft – desperate at the time for its Windows Phone operating system to be a meaningful third player in smartphone software and also desperate for Nokia not to embrace Google’s Android – went awry.
Eventually, Microsoft exited the phone business entirely, selling the phone business back to Nokia (whose main business is selling telecommunications gear to network operators), writing off billions of dollars in the process, and leaving the mobile OS market as a virtual duopoly controlled by Apple and Google.
But the Nokia phone brand never went away. After the Microsoft collapse, a team ex-Nokia executives founded HMD Global, a Chinese-Finnish phone maker, and licensed the Nokia brand name to continue building smartphones – this time running Android.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), Duncan McLeod is joined in TechCentral’s Johannesburg studio by Patrick Henchie, head of product and operations at HMD Global in sub-Saharan Africa, to unpack some of the history of the Nokia brand, how HMD got its start, the company’s market focus, and what’s coming next from the firm in both handsets and tablets.
In this TCS interview, Henchie talks about:
•His favourite legacy Nokia phone and why he loved it;
•HMD’s relationship with Google;
•Why the company does not compete directly with Apple and Samsung in top-tier flagship devices, preferring instead to cater to the mid-market and entry-level tiers;
•The Nokia phone line-up: the C series, G series and X series, and where they fit in HMD’s portfolio and in the market;
•What South Africans think of the Nokia brand today; and
•Why HMD still makes feature phones.
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion about a storied brand.
JSE-listed retailer Woolworths is moving to replace its fleet of fossil fuel-burning logistics and delivery vehicles with fully electric alternatives.
To discuss the project, and more, Duncan McLeod is joined on the TechCentral Show (TCS) by Ndia Magadagela, co-founder and CEO of South African EV-as-a-service (EVaaS) start-up Everlectric.
Everlectric, through Woolworths’ logistics partner DSV, is deploying electric panel vans to help the retailer reduce its carbon emissions.
The new vans have a 300km range from fully charged and feature “live advanced telematics” that helps improve the efficiency of the vehicles – from managing the top speed (they are governed to 120km/h) to the maximum power output.
In this episode of TCS, Magadagela talks about the Woolworths project, and why she believes the EVaaS model is suited to the local market. She also talks about:
•Her and her co-founders’ backgrounds, and how Everlectric got its start.
•The proofs of concept that the company has run.
•The logistics behind managing in an EV fleet in a country plagued by load shedding – and why it nevertheless still makes sense.
•Learnings from the Woolworths project and how it fits into the retailer’s objective to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2040.
•How the internet of things helps Everlectric manage its fleet.
•Everlectric’s scale-up plans over the next three to five years.
It’s a fascinating interview … don’t miss it!
It’s been eight months since Werner Kapp took the reins from Mteto Nyati at Altron. Now firmly in his new role, Kapp joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to unpack his strategy for the storied JSE-listed technology group.
Kapp, who previously led Dimension Data, talks about Altron’s financial results for the year ended 28 February 2023 and how, despite the rotten economy, it still managed to produce revenue growth of 19%.
In the interview, Kapp unpacks:
•His strategy for Altron – and why he’s focusing on the areas he is;
•Which parts of Altron have him particularly excited;
•Value-unlock opportunities for Netstar and other operating companies;
•The role played by Altron investor Value Capital Partners;
•The plans for Altron Document Solutions;
•The opportunities and challenges facing Altron Karabina, Altron Systems Integration and Altron Security;
•The impact of load shedding on Altron; and
•Why he’s still cautiously optimistic about South Africa’s future.
Don’t miss the interview!
Planetworld, a distributor of audio gear from brands such as Sonos and Shure, has proven that there is still strong demand among South African consumers for specialist audio.
The company, which was founded by four brothers, has built a strong niche in the audio market, led by Sonos, but also representing brands such as JVC, Kenwood, Cambridge Audio, Alpine, Pioneer, Onkyo and Savant.
Planetworld co-founder, director and CEO Maurice van Heerden – one of the four Van Heerden brothers – joins Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) to chat about the history of the company, including:
•The 2008 acquisition of Planet Electronics, which formed the basis on what became Planetworld.
•The 2017 acquisition of Audiotronic, which brought the Sonos, Polk Audio, Onkyo and Dali brands to the stable.
•What it’s like going into business with siblings – and why it worked so well for Planetworld.
•Why Sonos has changed the world of audio, and why Planetworld believes there is still a huge market opportunity for the brand in South Africa.
In the TCS interview, Van Heerden also chats about the state of the economy and the impact – or not – that this has had on high-end audio sales.
Lastly, he unveils details about Planetworld’s new initiative, Rockstar Studios.
Don’t miss a great discussion!
For years, Cell C was the only game in town for brands wanting to launch a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). That’s changing -- fast -- and now MTN has said it is positioning itself as the “go-to network backbone partner” in South Africa.
MTN South Africa wholesale executive Quintus de Beer joins Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) to unpack in detail what this plan means for other network carriers and prospective MVNO players.
De Beer said MTN wants to be the “network of choice” for the wholesale market by 2025, even as rivals Vodacom and Telkom gear up to launch MVNO enablement platforms of their own -- in line with the requirements set out in last year’s broadband spectrum auction.
Already, both Telkom and Cell C both roam on MTN's infrastructure, with a number of MVNOs also launching on the operator’s network, including Pick n Pay’s PnP Mobile and Afrihost’s Air Mobile -- with more to be announced soon, according to De Beer.
In this episode of TCS, De Beer chats about:
Why wholesale is so important to MTN
MTN’s relationship with Cell C and Telkom
The MVNOs on MTN’s network
What’s involved in supporting MVNOs
The market size for MVNOs
Why it took so long for MVNOs to take off in South Africa
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion.
Muggie van Staden is CEO of one of South Africa's largest and oldest open-source software companies, Obsidian Systems. But ask him what he runs on his desktop, and he'll you it's a Mac. And he recently moved to it from ... Microsoft Windows.
Van Staden says his desktop computing choices are based on the fact that he's not particularly technical, and prefers the relative ease of use of both Windows and macOS.
Indeed, many of the non-technical staff at Obsidian run Windows PCs or Macs, while the company's developers tend to prefer either macOS or Linux.
That Linux hasn't succeeded in displacing Microsoft and Apple on the desktop, against the fervent wishes of many open-source software fans, doesn't worry Van Staden, who points out in this interview on the TechCentral Show (TCS) that Linux and open-source software have won everywhere else - on servers, in the data centre and on phones (Android).
In this episode of TCS, Van Staden chats about:
How Obsidian got its start;
The relevance of open-source software in the modern computing world;
Why Linux has never become popular on the desktop and whether it will ever be anything more than a niche on PCs;
Why Microsoft should no longer be seen as the enemy of the open-source community, and why the community should not distrust the company's motives in its embrace of Linux and other open-source software; and
* The role of open-source software in enterprise computing in South Africa.
Don't miss a great discussion!
South African Internet entrepreneur Calvin Collett is launching his latest venture, mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Melon Mobile, next week, hoping to lure customers looking for a simpler proposition for their telecommunications needs.
Collett joined TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) on Thursday to unpack the new company’s plans.
Melon Mobile, which will be launched officially next Thursday, piggybacks off MTN South Africa’s network and offers a full range of connectivity solutions, including voice, data and text messages.
Customers can choose exactly how much data, voice or SMSes they want upfront using sliders, offering them the sort of granularity that’s not available from the big network operators. Collett, speaking on TCS, explained that Melon Mobile has worked to remove the inefficiencies associated with subscribing to mobile services.
In the interview, Collett, who previously headed the MTN-owned Internet service provider Supersonic, talks about:
•Why the MVNO market in South Africa is mushrooming;
•Why Melon Mobile chose MTN as its network partner;
•Melon Mobile’s prices, and the company’s pricing strategy;
•The company’s target market and the market opportunity; and
•What its next moves are after launch.
Don’t miss the interview – and if you enjoy it, please subscribe to TechCentral’s tech shows on YouTube, Spotify and elsewhere (see details below).
Jan-Jan Bezuidenhout, CEO of MetroFibre Networx, believes fibre network operators (FNOs) in South Africa will soon find a way to deliver fibre broadband profitably into underserviced areas.
Speaking on the TechCentral Show (TCS), Bezuidenhout – who replaced former Absa boss Steve Booysen as CEO of MetroFibre in mid-2022 – said he is confident a solution to the challenge of delivering fibre affordably into these areas will be forthcoming.
MetroFibre and other FNOs are actively testing models for deploying fibre broadband into townships and even into informal settlements.
In this episode of TCS, Bezuidenhout speaks about:
The state of the fibre broadband market in South Africa;
The history of MetroFibre, including its investment rounds;
Consolidation in the fibre infrastructure industry – and the role MetroFibre might play in that consolidation; and
MetroFibre’s recent aggressive price cuts and line speed increases – why the company did it, and what it hopes to achieve.
Don’t miss the discussion!
Clive Butkow is one of South Africa’s leading experts on venture capital investment in technology start-ups.
The founder and CEO of Kalon Venture Partners joins Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) to chat about why the VC investment business has changed radically, especially since the world, led by the US Federal Reserve, started hiking interest rates last year to tame inflation.
Monetary tightening has meant the end of “easy money” and the need by start-ups to focus not on where their next funding round is coming from – it might not even happen in this environment, Butkow says – to managing cash flows and ensuring financial sustainability.
He provides advice to entrepreneurs as to what they should be doing differently to survive the current economic headwinds. For those wanting to start their own ventures, but who haven’t yet done so, he provides insight into the key issues they should be considering before setting out. Also, what are the biggest mistakes start-ups make? Butkow unpacks the key ones in this discussion.
Butkow, a former chief operating officer of Accenture South Africa, quit his day job 10 years ago to found Kalon Venture Partners, which has made several highly successful investments in South African tech start-ups over the years. Kalon’s new fund is now looking at investments elsewhere on the continent, too, seeking to take advantage of growth in the start-up ecosystems in countries such as Kenya and Nigeria.
In this episode of TCS, Butkow talks about the South African Revenue Service’s Section 12J incentive scheme, which drove investments in a large number of start-ups but which has now come to an end. He reflects on the impact that Section 12J had, and what else Sars – and government – could be doing to stimulate start-ups and small businesses.
Don’t miss a fascinating interview!
When Dutch colleagues and business partners Lars Veul and Derk Hoekert came to South Africa on assignment with e-commerce marketplace Groupon in 2012, they soon realised there was a problem: up to 30% of local online orders were not getting delivered.
This was due to various reasons, including consumers not being at home at time of delivery, office premises being difficult for couriers to access and difficulties associated with couriers making deliveries in areas without proper addresses, including in townships.
So, the entrepreneurially minded pair quit their jobs at Groupon and started Pargo in 2015 in an effort to solve the last-mile logistics headaches facing e-commerce businesses in South Africa.
“We spent two years trying to figure out the real problems,” Veul says in this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS).
The result was a sharp focus on the click-and-collect model and establishing partnerships with thousands of retail stores, allowing consumers to send and receive orders — and return items — over the counter, with a human being providing assistance.
Pargo, which doesn’t operate its own fleet of vehicles – preferring to partner instead with courier companies – now has plans to expand into new markets. In this TCS interview, Veul unpacks what comes next for Pargo.
He also chats about whether the South African Post Office could ever reinvent itself as an e-commerce player, or whether the state-owned postal service is a lost cause.
Don’t miss the discussion!
MTN South Africa hosted a media event in Soweto on Thursday to demonstrate to journalists the severe impact that criminal vandalism is having on its base stations.
In this interview, conducted at the site of an MTN base station in Mofolo South in Soweto, the company's chief technology and information officer, Michele Gamberini, tells TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod about the attacks taking place on its high sites and how it's fighting back.
MTN disclosed that it will spend at least R1.5-billion this year at it moves to secure its network against both severe load shedding and vandalism.
Gamberini said MTN will use the R1.5-billion allocated to building resilience in its network - protecting its infrastructure from vandals and deploying thousands of additional batteries to ensure its sites remain operational during extended power outages.
Gamberini said that in the past year there have been more than 400 unique attacks on its tower infrastructure in the Eastern Cape alone. Some sites have been hit as many as 15 times, he said.
In this episode of the TechCentral Show, Gamberini unpacks the impact of the vandalism and power cuts on its ability to service its clients. He also talks about how the company is working with law enforcement in an effort to address the problem, which is affecting all industry players.
The PC industry has been through a boom-and-bust cycle in the past few years, with demand first spiking higher due to Covid and work-from-home measures, only to fall back as people returned to the office.
Despite this, there’s plenty happening in the PC space, including interesting experimentation with new form factors, including dual-screen laptops.
Lenovo, the world’s biggest PC maker, recently took the lid off its latest computing devices at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The company’s head of the Southern African region, Yugen Naidoo, joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to talk about these new products, but also to unpack the state of the industry.
In this episode of TCS, Naidoo chats about:
•The impact of Covid on the industry, and why demand remains strong in the corporate segment, even as consumers take strain;
•The importance of innovation, even in a mature market;
•New form factors for PCs, and what’s coming next;
•Lenovo’s smartphone offerings, and whether we could see the company’s Motorola phones reintroduced into the South African market; and
•The launch of Lenovo’s ThinkPhone.
Don’t miss the discussion.
Robert Brine, director of Cyber & Intelligence Solutions at Mastercard in Southern Africa, joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to talk about security in the global payments industry.
Brine tells TechCentral’s Duncan McLeod about the security challenges in the fintech and financial services space, and what consumers and businesses need to know to protect themselves.
In this episode of TCS, Brine unpacks what exactly it is that companies like Mastercard do before detailing the work that Mastercard is doing to secure its platforms from attackers.
He also chats about the impact on consumer behaviour of the Covid-19 pandemic, and what consumers could be doing to better secure themselves when shopping online.
Brine touches on the history of payments technology from the early days of the credit card to modern tap-to-pay solutions.
Lastly, he unpacks what Mastercard is doing in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, and looks at whether a blockchain-based approach to global settlements makes sense.
TechCentral on Tuesday broke the news about Toco, a new payments platform and associated digital currency, toco, backed by the founder of Vumatel.
Now Toco CEO Paul Rowett joins the TechCentral Show (TCS) to chat about the project, which aims to fight climate change by “fixing the current economic model so it places a value on the environment”.
Read all the details about the launch of Toco and its digital currency on TechCentral, but in short, each unit of toco in circulation is represented by a carbon mitigation asset which is held and owned centrally by a Swiss-regulated entity called The Carbon Reserve.
The Carbon Reserve is an independent non-profit foundation responsible for toco issuance, purchases and custody of the carbon assets. It is mandated to maintain the convertibility of tocos to carbon assets and to grow the toco supply and expand the voluntary carbon market.
Founded by Rowett with Vumatel co-founders Niel Schoeman and Johan “Joe” Pretorius, Toco has also drawn early-stage investment from venture capitalist and former FNB CEO Michael Jordaan.
In this episode of TCS, Rowett unpacks the ideas behind Toco, how he partnered with Schoeman and Pretorius to launch the venture, and why they chose Stellenbosch to pilot the project.
The founders want to use the platform and currency to help save the planet. Rowett sets out in this TCS interview how exactly the company intends to do that. Don’t miss the discussion!
Naked Insurance, the South African digital insurance start-up, announced earlier on Wednesday that it has secured US$17-million (R306-million at the time of writing) in a series-B funding round.
Alex Thomson, Naked’s CEO and a co-founder of the company, joins Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) to unpack the investment, which includes funding from the International Finance Corporation and German development finance house DEG.
Described by Naked as “one of the largest-ever African insurtech funding rounds”, Thomson reveals in this episode of TCS what the company plans to use the money to do.
He also discusses why the insurance industry was ripe for disruption and how Naked uses artificial intelligence tools to reduce dramatically the need for call centre agents and to drive up efficiencies in the applications and claims processes.
Don’t miss the discussion!
Convergence Partners CEO Brandon Doyle joins Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) to unpack the recently announced closing, at $296-million (R5.3-billion), of the private equity company’s new Digital Infrastructure Fund.
Convergence Partners, which is chaired by well-known South African technology investor and entrepreneur Andile Ngcaba, unpacks what the fund – which surpassed its initial targeted fundraising amount by 18% -- intends to use the money for.
The new fund is Convergence Partners’ largest to date and brings total funds under management to about $600-million.
In this episode of TCS, Doyle chats about Convergence Partners’ investment philosophy and unpacks some of the bigger investments made by the company since its founding in 2006.
He also provides details about the sort of investments the company is hoping to make through its new fund and why.
Lastly, Doyle talks about the state of venture capital and private equity funding in Africa, especially in an environment of high inflation and rapidly rising interest rates, and what that means for technology investment on the continent.
Don’t miss a fascinating discussion!
Tim Humphreys-Davies, CEO of Alviva Holdings-owned technology distributor Pinnacle, believes the worst of the supply-chain challenges that afflicted the global and local tech industries in recent years is largely over.
Speaking on the TechCentral Show (TCS), Humphreys-Davies explains that although there are still some challenges in the networking space, the chip shortages that affected the PC industry have been resolved.
He unpacks how Pinnacle, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, weathered the storm, and how the current slump in PC sales is affecting the industry.
In this episode of TCS, Humphreys-Davies also chats about:
•The imminent delisting of Alviva Holdings and what that means for Pinnacle;
•Consolidation in the distribution market, including Alviva’s recent acquisition of Tarsus Technology Group, and what it means for the local industry;
•How Pinnacle and sister companies Axiz and Tarsus compete (and sometimes cooperate) with each other, and why it’s unlikely that the companies will be merged; and
•The big technology trends of 2023, including the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.
Don’t miss the discussion!
AfriForum, the vocal Afrikaner civil rights organisation, wants to deploy pebble-bed modular nuclear reactors (PBMRs) in South African communities to help solve the country’s crippling energy woes. But why PBMRs? And how will the project work exactly?
It might seem strange for a non-governmental organisation like AfriForum to want to involve itself in electricity generation, but the move makes perfect sense, argues Johan Kruger, its head of community independence. This is especially so as the state is failing to provide basic services like electricity, necessitating the involvement of private capital.
Kruger joined TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) – previously, TC|Daily – to discuss AfriForum’s plans. (Watch or listen to the interview below.)
In the show, Kruger unpacks how AfriForum wants to help homeowners and businesses extricate themselves from the Eskom mess by deploying their own power generation systems, including rooftop solar.
In the longer term, the organisation hopes to work with the private sector to reduce or entirely eliminate communities’ dependence on the state for electricity supply.
Kruger explains that the government’s inability to provide not only electricity reliably, but also water and other basic services, means that many of these will be offered in future by the private sector or by communities themselves working with private entities.
Rapport and City Press reported on 22 January that AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel was engaging with André Pienaar, a South African businessman and founder and CEO of C5 Capital – a venture capital firm that invests in companies focused on space, cybersecurity and nuclear energy – about deploying PBMRs in South Africa.
C5 Capital is an investor in X-Energy, a US company whose staff includes senior South African nuclear scientists. X-energy is taking forward some of the pioneering work into PBMRs that was done on South African soil before government withdrew its funding for the project in 2010.
In this episode of TCS, Kruger unpacks the South African origin of the PBMR technology and what an AfriForum-supported deployment of modular reactors into communities might look like.
Don’t miss this fascinating interview!
In the final TC|Daily interview of 2022, Duncan McLeod is joined in the TechCentral studio by +OneX founder Rob Godlonton for a wide-ranging discussion on the company and the South African IT sector more broadly.
Godlonton tells McLeod about his career history, including the 10 years between 2009 and 2019 he spent in senior management at EOH Holdings.
Godlonton, who EOH CEO Stephen van Coller said at the time of his (Godlonton's) departure that he was in no way implicated in the malfeasance that took place at the company, shares his views on what went wrong.
In the interview, Godlonton also talks about:
Why he returned to South Africa after a career abroad.
Where the idea for +OneX came from and how it became part of the JSE-listed Reunert.
+OneX's strategy, and where it's positioned in the market.
The company's acquisitions, and why it's still on the hunt for deals (even big ones).
Don't miss the discussion!
TC|Daily shows will return in mid-January. TechCentral wishes its readers a pleasant Christmas and New Year break and all the best for 2023.
Despite being one of South Africa’s oldest companies – it was founded in 1888 and listed on the JSE in 1948 – Reunert is a picture of health.
The group, which owns assets in engineering, electronics, IT and defence, last month reported a 16% improvement in full-year revenue to 30 September 2022 and a 17% improvement in operating profit – not bad for a company operating in an economy that’s going nowhere slowly.
Reunert CEO Alan Dickson joins TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod in the TC|Daily studio to chat about the group, its origins – it was founded by two immigrants, Theodore Reunert and Otto Lenz – and its storied history. Only two years older than the City of Johannesburg, Reunert was created to serve the needs of the early mining companies on the Reef.
But it has transformed itself many times over in the past 134 years, and it is this innate cultural ability to adapt to change, Dickson says, that has given Reunert its longevity.
The business, which had always had a purely industrial focus, later branched into new business areas, including office automation and telecommunications through brands such as Nashua, Nashua Mobile and, more recently, ECN and SkyWire.
In addition to chatting about Reunert’s history, Dickson also unpacks the group’s strategy under his leadership; why the business is outperforming the rest of the economy; and why he’s bullish about renewable energy and “new-age” IT systems integration.
Lastly, he talks about Reunert’s acquisition strategy, and why the group, which has always had an acquisitive streak, is on the hunt for deals.
Don’t miss a great discussion! – © 2022 NewsCentral Media
How would you like a R3-million TV in your living room? Samsung Electronics is happy to oblige – and they’ll even help you install it.
Next year, the Korean consumer electronics giant will launch its new range of ultra-high-premium micro-LED televisions in South Africa – and the top-end model, which measures a staggering 126 inches, will set you back a cool three bar. If that’s too much moolah, a 76-inch model is all yours for “just” R1.5-million.
In this episode of TC|Daily, Samsung vice president for mobile in South Africa Justin Hume and his colleague, Mike van Lier, consumer electronics director, join Duncan McLeod in-studio to chat not only about TVs aimed at wealthiest of the wealthy, but also about the more mass market-friendly products that the Korean electronics giant is bringing to the local market soon.
Hume kicks off the discussion with his views on the local smartphone market, what is driving consumer behaviour, why he thinks upgrade cycles are going to quicken, and why Samsung is all-in on folding phones.
Are foldables really the future of smartphones? Will folding phones ever reach down into the mass market? What are the trends in the middle tier and the low end of the market? And is government right to want to switch off 2G and 3G networks in South Africa? Hume answers all these questions, and more.
Van Lier then takes TC|Daily viewers and listeners through the company’s latest TVs – including those micro-LED monsters – and why he thinks 8K is going to be come the new standard in display technology in the home, displacing 4K by the end of this decade.
Van Lier also talks about the imminent launch of Samsung’s OLED sets in South Africa, and how these differ from its QLED technology. Other topics of discussion include a discussion about the interconnected home and the work Samsung is doing to connect your appliances and your smartphone to create an intelligent ecosystem.
Don’t miss the discussion.
Kayamandi, a township next to Stellenbosch, is the subject of two interesting experiments, which, if they succeed, could transform the way South Africans – and the world – connect to the Internet.
The township is the site of two fibre deployments, one being led by Vumatel and the other by Isizwe.
Both companies are experimenting with driving down the price of uncapped high-speed fibre to previously unheard-of levels – as low as R5/day in the case of Isizwe.
In this episode of TC|Daily, Isizwe CEO Steve Briggs – a well-known figure in South Africa’s ICT industry, and most recently a senior executive at Seacom – chats to TechCentral’s Duncan McLeod about the company’s Kayamandi deployment.
Briggs unpacks the lessons Isizwe has learnt so far, what uptake has been like in the township, how the technology works and what the business case is for delivering ultra-cheap uncapped Internet into traditionally underserviced areas.
He also explains the mechanics of the service and how it works, including Isizwe’s relationship with PayGoZo and VulaCoin, as well as what happens next if the Kayamandi project is successful – and early indications are that it will be – and why it could even prove transformative for South Africa and other emerging markets.
Don’t miss the discussion!
EOH Holdings is about to embark on a rights offer, seeking up to R600-million from its long-suffering shareholders as it moves to deal with the unsustainable debt on its balance sheet.
At the same time, the share price – R3.10 at the time of publication – has fallen to levels last seen in early 2020, soon after the start of the Covid-19 hard lockdown sent equity markets crashing.
Is it all bad news at EOH, or is the market overreacting?
Stephen van Coller, EOH’s group CEO, joins TechCentral’s Duncan McLeod in the TC|Daily studio to unpack the debt problem EOH faces: how bad is it, how much is it spending to service this debt, and what happens if the rights issue is not a success?
Van Coller, who joined EOH from MTN Group, says getting the capital structure right will put the IT services group on a sustainable footing for profitable growth. Could that mean a rerating of the share price, too?
In this episode of TC|Daily, Van Coller unpacks:
• The timelines for the rights issue, what shareholders are being asked to do.
• Whether EOH will need to sell more businesses, and investor concern that if it does it’ll be cutting into muscle rather than fat.
• Whether the entire EOH business could be put for sale.
• The profit margins that EOH can reasonably expect in the longer term.
The conversation then turns to the legacy corruption issues at EOH. Here Van Coller tackles several thorny issues, including:
• The civil suits against former directors, including ex-CEO and co-founder Asher Bohbot, how these suits are progressing, and their chances of success.
• Whether we are likely to see criminal prosecutions against former EOH executives anytime soon.
• The recent settlement with the Special Investigating Unit over corrupt dealings at the department of water & sanitation, and whether there are any other legacy issues that could cost EOH money.
• EOH’s relationship (or lack thereof) with Microsoft.
Lastly, Van Coller talks about his time at EOH – and why he would not have taken the job if he’d known he’d be spending his time cleaning up a nest of corruption. He also tells TC|Daily what he may do next when he eventually moves on from the company.
Don’t miss the interview!
Joao Zoio is a man on a mission. As CEO of Acumen Software, he is overseeing the development of My Smart City, a platform that integrates with municipalities to try to resolve service delivery issues quickly and efficiently.
The platform, available on the Web or via smartphone apps, allows residents to log issues that need attention, from potholes to broken streetlights.
It also allows people to connect with a range of on-demand "gig economy" services, including ad hoc home cleaning or gardening services, with more coming. My Smart City recently won the “best enterprise solution” category at the MTN Business App of the Year Awards.
Zoio told TechCentral’s Duncan McLeod in this episode of TC|Daily where the idea for My Smart City came from, how the company is working with municipalities to integrate the platform to help resolve service delivery issues faster, and how it makes money -- municipalities don't pay a cent for access.
Don’t miss the discussion.
The collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX has sent shockwaves through the crypto community worldwide.
In this episode of TC|Daily, Jon Ovadia, CEO of South Africa crypto exchange OVEX, joins TechCentral’s Duncan McLeod from Dubai to talk about FTX’s bankruptcy and what it means for South African crypto players and for the ecosystem more broadly.
FTX, which is a shareholder in OVEX, was forced to file for bankruptcy protection after founder Sam Bankman-Fried was unable to secure emergency funding to keep the business afloat after customers took fright and began withdrawing billions of dollars from the exchange.
John Ray III, an insolvency expert who oversaw Enron’s liquidation, has been appointed to oversee the FTX bankruptcy. He has described its collapse as the worst case of corporate failure in the more than 40 years he’s been in the insolvency business, and has compared it to the failure of Enron, the Financial Times reported.
In this episode of TC|Daily, Ovadia unpacks:
• The impact of the FTX collapse on OVEX clients, if any.
• OVEX’s decision to revoke FTX’s authority to market its offshore crypto derivatives products in South Africa and what that means.
• What went wrong at FTX, why it caught the crypto industry by surprise, and whether fraud or other criminality was likely involved.
• The damage to crypto as an investment class as a result – will this incident scare away investors from the crypto space for good?
• Whether investors should leave their money in crypto exchanges – is it safe?
• Whether better regulation would have prevented the FTX disaster – and are South African regulators doing enough to regulate the crypto space?
Ovadia also provides an update on OVEX and its international expansion plans.
Don’t miss the discussion!
Former Altron Group and MTN South Africa chief executive Mteto Nyati has strong views on South Africa, specifically regarding the country's potential with the right leadership in place.
Nyati joins Duncan McLeod on TechCentral's TC|Daily technology show to chat about the announcement this week that he has acquired a 40% stake in technology and business consultancy BSG (Business Systems Group) and how the deal came about.
Nyati, who will serve as BSG's executive chairman, explains why he felt BSG was a good fit for him, and why he believes it will afford him an opportunity to build on his legacy.
The conversation touches on a wide range of topics, including why Nyati joined the Eskom board -- an unexpected appointment, he says -- and decided to join the Nedbank and Telkom boards, too.
He also provides his views on the outlook for South Africa, and explains why he believes that the country has a bright future -- provided it gets the right leadership in the right places.
Russell Southwood probably knows more about the communications revolution in Africa than anyone. The founder and CEO of Balancing Act Africa, Southwood has covered the industry for decades.
In a new book, he's now shared the story of how Africa went from having fewer telephone lines than Manhattan in 1986 to having telecommunications serve as a platform for sweeping changes in the way Africans communicate, connect, entertain themselves and engage in commerce.
Southwood's "Africa 2.0 - Inside a Continent's Communications Revolution" tells the story of what sparked the telecommunications boom in Africa and the people and companies who led it from the front.
Southwood joins Duncan McLeod in the TechCentral studio to talk to TC|Daily about the book.
In the discussion, he relates some of his most memorable experiences of covering ICT in Africa.
Other topics covered include:
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The importance of prepaid in igniting the communications boom in Africa;
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The genesis and rise of mobile money;
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Why the sector only boomed when governments got out of the way; and
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How corruption has impacted - and continues to affect - the sector.
As investments in undersea cables, cloud data centres and fibre networks accelerates, Southwood gives his views what the next chapter might look like for ICT in Africa.
Don't miss this great discussion!
Wetility co-founder and CEO Vincent Maposa is a busy man.
The alternative energy start-up is helping South African homeowners go solar, overcoming (or at least reducing the impact of) load shedding in the process, using financing models that don’t result in prohibitive upfront capital costs.
Wetility – pronounced we-tility – is one of several South African start-ups in this space, including GoSolar and Vivica Group-owned Stage Zero – that help homeowners go partially (or even fully) off-grid while using clever financing models to amortise the cost of the installation over time.
In this episode of TC|Daily, Maposa tells TechCentral’s Duncan McLeod about Wetility’s approach to financing, and why the company offers homeowners a range of options, including the ability to pay in full, or to use a subscription model, where they are charged monthly for the energy they use from the sun.
Maposa tells McLeod why he started the business, his background as a management consultant with Deloitte and with Cummins, and how Wetility came to be backed by pay-television group MultiChoice.
The company, which in the next few weeks is expected to unveil a series-A funding round to help it scale rapidly, talks about why Wetility decided to focus on the residential rather than the business market, how its offerings differ from other players in the market, and what consumers should know about going solar.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone in South Africa as passionate about public broadcasting as Michael Markovitz.
A former journalist whose storied career has included serving as adviser to Mandla Langa, the former chairman of communications regulator Icasa, Markovitz has just completed five eventful years as a member of the SABC board.
He joins Duncan McLeod in the TC|Daily studio to talk about his experiences at the public broadcaster and why, despite its “capture” under former President Jacob Zuma and the abuse it endured under its former chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, he still believes there is a strong case to be made for public broadcasting in South Africa.
The question, Markovitz says, is who will pay for public broadcasting in an environment where few South Africans are prepared to pay their television licence fees.
What funding models are appropriate, and why? Should a household television levy be applied? Markovitz unpacks this thorny issue in this episode of TC|Daily.
He also chats about:
• His new role as head of the Gordon Institute of Business Science’s new Media Leadership Think-Tank, and what he hopes it will achieve;
• The mess the recently departed board of the SABC inherited from the Motsoeneng era and what it took to clean it up;
• Whether the SABC can avoid a repeat of that disaster, and policy changes might be needed to protect the corporation from abuse by the executive arm of government;
• Why the delay in appointing a new SABC board is highly problematic;
• The case for public broadcasting in South Africa and appropriate funding models;
• Planned changes to broadcasting legislation;
• South Africa’s digital migration disaster and what went wrong; and
• The era of streaming and media fragmentation, and what this means for public broadcasting.
Don’t miss this great discussion!
Television white-spaces (TVWS) spectrum – the gaps in the frequencies used by terrestrial TV broadcasters – has long been seen as a way of bringing affordable Internet to even remote areas.
But what’s happened with the various TVWS initiatives in South Africa?
Keith Pitout, a leading local expert on the subject and chief technology officer of Indigo Broadband, joins TechCentral’s Duncan McLeod in the TC|Daily studio to unpack the latest developments – and to explain why he believes TVWS has a bright future ahead of it, despite some early hiccups.
In this episode of TC|Daily, Pitout covers:
• What TVWS is and how it works;
• Why it’s so affordable to deploy and who will benefit from its roll-out in South Africa;
• The trial TVWS projects that took place in South Africa;
• The CSIR’s involvement, and why it’s been key;
• The regulations developed by communications regulator Icasa;
• The commercial TVWS projects now being rolled out in South Africa; and
• What comes next for TVWS, both from a business and technology perspective.
Don’t miss a great discussion about an important technology for bridging the digital divide in South Africa.
The leadership teams at Vumatel and Vuma parent Maziv don't dream small.
The company, South Africa's largest provider of fibre-to-the-home broadband infrastructure, has an audacious plan to deploy fibre not only to townships - a project that is already well under way - but also to informal settlements.
It doesn't intend doing this via wireless for the "last mile". It wants to deploy a fixed-fibre connection into every house and into every dwelling, even if the household's total income is less than R5 000/month.
It wants to drive down the price of uncapped broadband to less than R100/month, and in so doing make uncapped Internet access available to almost everybody in South Africa who wants it.
Pie in the sky? No, says Dietlof Mare, CEO of Vumatel and Maziv, in this wide-ranging interview with TechCentral's TC|Daily. The team is working hard to perfect the model and is confident it will be able to do it - and profitably, too.
In this episode, Mare talks about the success of the Vuma Reach prepaid fibre roll-out in Mitchells Plain in Cape Town, and how Vuma is replicating that model across the country, including in sprawling townships like Soweto, Vosloorus and Soshanguve in Gauteng.
He also unpacks Vuma Key, Vumatel's plan - now in pilot phase - to bring uncapped fibre Internet to places like Alexandra in Johannesburg and Khayelitsha in Cape Town.
Also in the interview, Mare talks about:
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The creation of Maziv, the new holding company of Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa, and why it was formed;
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The latest on the Vodacom acquisition of a significant minority stake in Maziv and what the operator brings to the table;
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Consolidation in the fibre network operator market in South Africa, and why the big mobile operators are going to play a leading role in this; and
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The importance of open access.
Don't miss this fascinating interview.
Cliff de Wit, a former Microsoft South Africa director and now chief technology at Altron's Netstar, is passionate about many things: skills development, the internet of things, artificial intelligence ... even astrophotography.
He joins TechCentral's Duncan McLeod in the TC|Daily studio for a wide-ranging -- and fascinating -- discussion on some of the latest technologies Netstar is exploring that take the company's offerings well beyond the traditional tracking and recovery of vehicles it's traditionally known for.
Well known in developer circles -- he maintains a keen interest in software development as well as in education and skills development from his Microsoft days -- De Wit chats about how Netstar is taking the vast amount of information the company collects daily, and refining it into something forward-looking, useful and actionable.
He also takes us into the world of astrophotography, and much more besides.
Don't miss the discussion -- and do subscribe to TC|Daily if you haven't already done so (details below). The full-resolution Milky Way image taken by De Wit that he speaks about in the interview can be found here.
Meet the man behind Showmax. As chief operating officer of MultiChoice Connected Video, Barry Dubovsky is leading the charge to bring the 2022 Fifa World Cup to Showmax Pro in 4K.
Dubovsky joins Duncan McLeod in the TC|Daily studio to chat about what has been involved in getting Showmax ready for the World Cup, and what the plans are for bringing other content to the platform in 4K once the global football event has concluded.
An Australian national who has previously worked for telecommunications operator Telstra chats about how he ended up working in a senior role for an Africa-focused video entertainment company. He also unpacks what’s involved in running a streaming video service like Showmax.
Also in this episode of TC|Daily, Dubovsky discusses:
• The tighter integration of Showmax into MultiChoice
• What drove the recent price cuts for Showmax Pro
• Fragmentation of the video entertainment industry and what comes next
• The long-term future of streaming vs satellite and cable
Don’t miss the discussion!
The launch of 4K for the 2022 Fifa World Cup, the development of DStv Glass smart TVs, the launch of uncapped fibre services, and more – it’s been a busy period for South Africa’s incumbent pay-TV operator.
MultiChoice South Africa CEO Nyiko Shiburi joins TechCentral’s Duncan McLeod in the TC|Daily studio to chat about all the announcements the broadcaster made at its recent DStv Showcase event, and what we can expect from the company in the months ahead.
In the discussion, Shiburi talks about:
• His background in MultiChoice Group, and how he worked his way up through technical and engineering roles into management, eventually becoming CEO of the key South African operation.
• What's been involved in getting MultiChoice ready for the World Cup and 4K broadcasts, including studio upgrades. This includes a look at the modern compression technologies used to minimise bandwidth utilisation as much as possible while still ensuring a good-quality image.
• What we can expect next from DStv in terms of 4K content, following the conclusion of the World Cup in December.
• How important it is for MultiChoice to be seen as a technological leader.
• DStv Glass, the relationship between MultiChoice and the UK’s Sky, and what we should expect from the product offering when it is launched next year.
• The strategic thinking behind the “coopetition” with Netflix, Disney and Amazon, which are available as apps on DStv platforms, including the Explora Ultra personal video recorder.
• Streaming vs traditional satellite and what’s involved in managing that transition from a technology and cost perspective.
• Why MultiChoice became an Internet service provider.
Don’t miss the discussion!
The “data-free” messaging app MoyaApp, which already has six million active monthly users in South Africa, is working hard to become as big as WhatsApp in the country.
The app’s founder, Gour Lentell, joins Duncan McLeod on TechCentral's technology show, TC|Daily, to talk about how the development of the app is progressing.
Lentell talks about the history of MoyaApp, how it’s able to offer “data-free” messaging to people who don’t have data or airtime, and why he believes this is a winning proposition in a country where Meta Platforms-owned WhatsApp has become entrenched.
In this episode of TC|Daily, Lentell unpacks:
• MoyaApp’s business model
• Its growth projections
• His background and how he came to create MoyaApp
• Why MoyaApp is succeeding in South Africa when China’s WeChat failed
• The evolution of instant messaging in South Africa, from Mxit to BBM to WhatsApp
• Super apps and their role in the ecosystem – including a discussion on Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter
• MoyaApp’s monetisation model
• MoyaPay, fintech and a cashless economy
Don’t miss this insightful discussion about a homegrown app taking on global giants.
Alviva Holdings’ latest financial results show a group firing on all cylinders – full-year dividend up 90%, revenue up 57% and headline earnings per share up 91%. But can the party last?
Group CEO Pierre Spies and Craig Brusden, CEO of technology distributor Axiz (Alviva’s largest subsidiary), join Duncan McLeod in the TC|Daily studio to unpack just how the group managed to turn in such stellar results amid a weak local economy and a constrained global supply chain.
Spies and Brunsden unpack:
• The impact of Alviva’s acquisition of Tarsus Technology Group.
• How Alviva’s three main distribution businesses, Axiz, Pinnacle and Tarsus, differ from each other – and why they are allowed to compete, within bounds.
• How the distribution business in South Africa is changing and what that means for the business model.
• The impact of the semiconductor supply crisis, which is now easing.
• How Amazon.com’s launch of an online retail marketplace in South Africa next year will change the IT distribution game.
• The talks to buy out Alviva and take it private – and why Spies believes there is no value in being listed.
Don’t miss the discussion.
There has never been a more exciting time to be in the satellite communications industry, says Dawie de Wet, CEO of Pretoria-based Q-KON.
In this episode of TC|Daily, De Wet, who is one of South Africa’s leading experts in satellite communications technology, tells TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod about the huge changes happening in the satellite space and what they mean for consumers and for industry.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get the latest episodes of TC|Daily
In the interview, De Wet talks about:
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The origins of Q-KON;
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Why satellite is going through something of a renaissance, despite the proliferation of terrestrial and subsea fibre infrastructure;
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GEO (geostationary orbit) vs MEO (medium-earth orbit) vs LEO (low-earth orbit) satellites – what are they, and what are the latest developments in each?;
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How satellite technology has advanced in leaps and bounds in recent years;
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Why it might not be the mobile operators that drive a consumer revolution in satellite adoption, but why a revolution is coming anyway;
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Starlink, OneWeb, Lightspeed, O3b mPower, AST SpaceMobile and other projects – and is there overinvestment taking place?;
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How Africa’s needs are different to the rest of the world’s; and
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Q-KON’s role in all of this.
This is a fascinating discussion about an often overlooked area of the technology industry – don’t miss it.
Spare a thought for Douglas Craigie Stevenson. The Cell C CEO is leading one of the most complex and difficult business turnarounds in South African corporate history.
Craigie Stevenson tells TechCentral's Duncan McLeod in this episode of TC|Daily that it's been a stressful few years for the company's management team, but that the long-delayed but recently concluded recapitalisation of the mobile operator's balance sheet has finally put it on a much more sustainable footing.
It could all have gone pear-shaped, but Cell C's stakeholders, including its bondholders and its shareholders, have stuck with the business, believing, he says, that, despite its troubles, there is real underlying value that was worth saving.
Unlike the previous recap, which did little to solve Cell C's balance sheet woes, Craigie Stevenson explains in the interview that a new strategy and operating model - one in which the company doesn't try to compete with bigger rivals MTN and Vodacom in capital spending - means that it isn't going to repeat the mistakes of the past.
That doesn't mean, though, that there isn't still hard work ahead for Craigie Stevenson, his leadership team and Cell C employees, but at least the operator is no longer facing the prospect of going bust.
In this episode of TC|Daily, Craigie Stevenson discusses:
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Cell C's balance sheet after the recap and what it will look like three years from now and why.
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Why Cell C was worth saving.
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How Cell C works with Blue Label, its largest shareholder.
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How Cell C's strategy differs from its rivals, and what that means for consumers.
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The progress in shutting down the company's radio access network and what's involved in the project.
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Who Cell C wants as a customer, and why consumers should choose Cell C over its rivals.
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The importance of mobile virtual network operators to its business.
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The importance of having the right company culture.
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Whether MTN's proposed acquisition of Telkom should be allowed to proceed.
It's a fascinating discussion - don't miss it!
In many respects, South African IT services firm BCX is at a crossroads. The storied company, which is now owned by Telkom, may soon bring in a strategic equity partner.
The industry is also facing significant changes, with the shift to cloud changing the business propositions of traditional systems integrators - BCX among them.
CEO Jonas Bogoshi joins Duncan McLeod in the TC|Daily studio for a wide-ranging discussion on the changes sweeping the industry. He talks about everything from the state of the South African IT services sector to BCX's recently announced strategic partnership with Alibaba Cloud.
In the interview, Bogoshi unpacks:
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His career background, and his love of mathematics;
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The state of South Africa’s IT industry;
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How is BCX itself doing;
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BCX’s cloud strategy;
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The relevance of traditional systems integration businesses like BCX in the cloud era;
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The Alibaba Cloud partnership and why it's a big deal for BCX;
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Corruption in the IT industry - and how to deal with it; and
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What government could be doing better, policy wise, to encourage growth in South Africa's technology industry.
Don't miss the interview!
Rob Walker, owner and director of the Sasol Solar Challenge, joins TechCentral’s TC|Daily to chat about the biennial event that sees local and international teams “racing” entirely solar-powered vehicles across the length and breadth of South Africa.
Founded in 2008 by now GridCars CEO Winstone Jordaan (himself a recent guest on TC|Daily), the 2022 edition of the Sasol Solar Challenge has just concluded. In this episode of TC|Daily, Walker, who bought the event from Jordaan in 2019, talks about the origins of the race and the highlights of the 2022 edition.
Walker explains that the “race”, which covers more than 2 000km, is as much about inspiring the youth into the science and engineering fields, with talks at schools along the route, as it is about the teams showing off their design, manufacturing and strategy skills.
The ultimate winner is the team that manages to clock the most kilometres travelled. The cars’ solar panels are at the “cutting edge of energy technology and stretch over the entire surface of the unique, knee-high cars”.
“The driver sits in an aerodynamic cockpit. Every piece of electronics, carbon fibre, aluminium and steel is as customised as the parts on a Formula 1 racer,” the Sasol Solar Challenge website explains.
“The event runs on public roads, sharing space with trucks and regular traffic, and passes through multiple small towns, to the fascination and excitement of local communities who come out in their thousands to witness science and technology in action.”
Walmart-owned retail group Massmart has ambitious plans to become one of the most significant players in e-commerce in South Africa. In this episode of TC|Daily, TechCentral’s new technology show, the retail group’s head of e-commerce, Sylvester John, joins Duncan McLeod in-studio to unpack its plans. John, who was a key figure behind the development of e-commerce platforms at Walmart, believes the online shopping market in South Africa is poised for lift-off – from less than 4% of total retail sales today, he expects the figure to jump to about 12% by the end of the decade. In the interview, John talks about: • How the Covid-19 pandemic changed the e-commerce game globally and in South Africa. • His predictions for the growth of e-commerce in South Africa. • How South Africa compares to other markets, including other developing countries, when it comes to e-commerce. • How Massmart is using its retail brands such as Makro, Builders and Game to go to market while building a supportive backend infrastructure. • Why the group is firmly focused on developing for mobile first. • The acquisitions of WumDrop and OneCart and what they bring to Massmart. • The relevance of Black Friday – and what Massmart has planned for the 2022 event. • The impending launch of Amazon.com retail operations in South Africa and why Massmart is ready for the competition. • The importance of B2B in e-commerce in South Africa. Don’t miss this fascinating discussion with a key player in e-commerce in South Africa. Did you enjoy this content? Please subscribe to our channel.
Former technology journalist and now author and entrepreneur Simon Dingle is the guest in this episode of TechCentral's TC|Daily. Dingle, who co-founded the rand-pegged stablecoin ZARP with Kenny Inggs, chats about some of the latest development in the world of cryptocurrencies. In this episode of TC|Daily, he unpacks: * The thinking behind ZARP * What it takes to run a stablecoin * Stablecoin regulation * Ethereum's big "Merge" - how important was it? * Is crypto bad for the planet? * What to watch for next in crypto * And more... Don't miss the discussion.
Alviva Holdings-owned GridCars has built South Africa’s largest network of charging stations for electric vehicles – more than 300 so far – yet the company is just getting started, says CEO Winstone Jordaan. Jordaan joined TC|Daily, TechCentral new technology show, for a discussion about the roll-out EV charging infrastructure in South Africa. In the show, Jordaan talks about the genesis of GridCars and why he thinks the EV revolution is about to get going in South Africa, despite the country’s electricity supply challenges. If you’re at all interested in EVs, or indeed the future of motoring in South Africa, don’t miss this fascinating interview.
Big changes are coming to the payments industry in South Africa early next year, including cheap and instantaneous payments directly to mobile numbers – no bank account number or branch code required. BankservAfrica has been working behind the scenes for years on a major system overhaul that, when it goes live, will dramatically shake up the financial services sector in South Africa, ushering in a new era of fintech-led innovation. Through a project called the Rapid Payments Programme (RPP) – which will be launched commercially under the name PayShap – South Africans will be able to transfer money instantly from their phones, even, once developed, from instant messaging apps like WhatsApp. The new platform will usher in a dramatic modernisation of the payments system, with cloud services, open application programming interfaces and a flexible microservices architecture forming the foundation for further development by industry players. Indeed, the launch PayShap early in 2023 promises to herald a new era of rapid digital payments in South Africa that BankservAfrica believes could begin to displace cash from the economy – astonishingly, despite the country’s sophisticated banking sector, almost nine in 10 transactions are still cash based. In this episode of TC|Daily, BankservAfrica CEO Jan Pilbauer joins TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod in-studio to talk about the RPP, the launch of PayShap, what it means for innovation in banking and fintech in South Africa, and how companies, including fintech start-ups and social media companies, can use it to develop cutting-edge solutions. BankservAfrica is a non-profit company established 50 years ago that serves as a financial clearing house for the financial sector. It is a vital cog in South Africa’s economy and is owned by the big banks – Absa, Nedbank, Standard Bank and FirstRand each hold about 23.1% of its equity, while the remaining 7.5% is held by an entity called Dandyshelf, whose shareholders include Capitec, Investec, Bidvest and Sasfin.
Andy Higgins is a pioneer in e-commerce in South Africa – just don’t call him a “veteran”, he says, because the industry is still just getting started and he plans to be a part of its development for years to come. In this interview on TechCentral’s new technology show, TC|Daily, Higgins joins Duncan McLeod in the studio to talk about his latest venture, called Bob Group, which is an amalgamation of two businesses he either founded or c-founded, Bidorbuy and uAfrica. Higgins, who started Bidorbuy in 1999 at the height of the dot-com bubble, has many interesting stories to tell – about venture capital excesses, global expansion and the inevitable pain that followed the dot-com collapse – and he shares some of these tales in this show. Now Higgins and his team are launching a new venture, which he hopes will make it easier for small and medium businesses to sell their products online in South Africa. It’s going to put Bob Group on a collision course with well-funded rivals like Takealot – and possibly Amazon from next year – but Higgins says he’s ready for it. Bob Group will offer a full suite of e-commerce services to South African businesses, including an online marketplace, inventory management, order fulfilment, a shipping tool, online payments and courier software as a service. It “offers everything e-commerce to all South African consumers and companies operating online, whether they are looking to sell, buy – or both”. “The merger means that merchants will now be offered a complete set of e-commerce services, including payments, logistics and a marketplace,” Higgins said earlier this week about the launch of Bob Group. In this episode of TC|Daily, he unpacks more details about Bob Group, and gives his views on what the (still not officially confirmed) launch of Amazon in South Africa early next year will mean for the local e-commerce landscape. Don’t miss this fascinating discussion.
Despite the challenges in convincing South African drivers to ditch fossil fuel-powered vehicles for electric alternatives, Mercedes-Benz South Africa co-CEO Mark Raine predicts that more than half of the company’s car sales locally by the end of 2026 will be fully electric. That’s just four years from now (plus a few months), yet Raine believes the South African luxury vehicle-buying market is ready for this massive shift. And he’s betting big on it, with Mercedes announcing four new EVs coming to local showrooms that it hopes will, umm, electrify fans of the badge. Speaking on TC|Daily, TechCentral’s new technology show, Raine unpacked in an interview with Duncan McLeod what must happen in the coming years for EVs to take off in the same way they are expected to in markets like Europe and North America. In the show, Raine chats about the state of the industry in South Africa following the Covid pandemic and last year’s riots in KwaZulu-Natal, as well as Mercedes’ investments locally, including in its flagship manufacturing plant in East London, which manufactures C-Class Mercedes-Benz vehicles for markets around the world. In the show, Raine talks about: • Why he believes the local market is ready to adopt EVs, despite concerns about load shedding, charging networks and range anxiety; • Whether government is doing enough to encourage the uptake of EVs (spoiler: it’s not); and • Whether we can expect Mercedes to build EVs in South Africa anytime soon. He then takes TC|Daily viewers through the EV models that Mercedes is introducing in South Africa this year: the EQA, the EQB, the EQC and the top-of-the-line EQS. If you haven't already subscribed to TechCentral's YouTube channel, please do so now. TC|Daily is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Pocket Casts.
In the inaugural episode of TechCentral’s new technology show, TC|Daily, Sean Sanders, CEO of Cape Town-based cryptocurrency platform Revix, chats to host Duncan McLeod about the imminent “Merge” affecting the ethereum blockchain and what it means. Sanders explains what the Merge is, how it will impact the blockchain and what it might mean for investors in the ether token. Could it even lead to the so-called “Flippening”, where ether overtakes bitcoin to become the most valuable crypto token by market cap? The wide-ranging conversation with Sanders also touches on the recent (current?) crypto winter and the impact this has had on South African investors in crypto (and on Revix specifically). Other topics discussed include: • Consumer vs institutional investment in crypto in South Africa; • Crypto’s correlation with US technology stocks – will it last?; • Could crypto still become a hedge against inflation?; • The Prudential Authority's recent “practice note” to South African banks regarding cryptocurrency exchanges – how significant is it?; • What’s happening when it comes to crypto regulation in South Africa?; and • Taxing crypto investments in South Africa – the current state of play with the South African Revenue Service.