Author: Tapiwa Matthew Mutisi

Zeal Rewards is an Egyptian mobile payments startup, a digital loyalty platform that effortlessly rewards you for visiting and ordering from your favorite venues has announced the conclusion of an undisclosed six-figure round of Seed funding. The purpose of the investment funding raised will assist the startup in expanding across…

Google has published its annual “Year in Search” findings, in which it reveals the 2020 top trending google searches terms across a number of categories in South Africa – and other countries around the world. In 2020, unsurprisingly, the search terms comprised a large number of COVID-19-related search terms and those…

Access to energy is critical to Africa’s development and growth. Energy is the sustenance of all economies and an enabler of better welfare; where there is a deficit in supply, this cripples economic growth and destroys livelihoods. Due to the urgent need to rapidly reduce carbon emissions and respond to…

Cape Town-based, animation, gaming, augmented-reality company Sea Monster recently won in the Data & Insight category at the International Content Marketing Awards in the United Kingdom. The award recognizes Sea Monster for the design and implementation of the Livin’ it Up financial education mobile game that was designed for Capitec…

While most of Africa’s well-known ventures into e-commerce have been designed to appeal to the continent’s burgeoning middle class, Sokowatch is aiming to bring goods and services to the millions of informal shop owners across the East African region, has launched the first commercially used electric tuk-tuks in East Africa. …

The global leader in intelligent automation, Blue Prism recently announced the availability of Blue Prism intelligent automation software in AWS Marketplace, giving Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Blue Prism customers another avenue for automation in the cloud. The listing includes Blue Prism on an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) instance with a set…

All African entrepreneurs with the next ‘big idea’ are encouraged to pitch for investment on the second season of “Shark Tank South Africa”. Shark Tank, the award-winning reality show that has reinvigorated entrepreneurship in America, will soon be returning to African shores. The new season of the exhilarating TV show, Shark…

The Pan African Fintech Accelerator programme, funded by the SANAD Fund for MSME, in partnership with MEST Africa and Impact Lab, has opened applications for its six-month virtual programme designed for high-potential technology businesses looking to scale their business, create partnerships and explore North African markets. Ten fintech startups that display a high potential…

Nokia leads the way in the next generation of wireless networks as the overall project leader for Hexa-X, the European Commission’s 6G flagship initiative for research that will drive the overall 6G vision. The project goals include creating unique 6G use cases and scenarios, developing fundamental 6G technologies and defining…

The Global Young Innovators Programme offers 60 forward-thinking, entrepreneurial minds from across South Africa and the United Kingdom (UK), a platform to join forces, ignite ideas and co-design solutions that can help solve some of the greatest challenges facing our global community, has officially opened for applications.  Only 60 applicants, collectively from South…

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has today announced its support for African agricultural startups through the Digital4Agriculture Initiative (D4Ag) which aims to foster African startups in the agricultural sector and strengthen the long-term living conditions of local small farmers by increasing productivity and quality. With the help of digital expertise from…

Reports coming from The Elec alleges that Samsung will launch three foldable smartphones in 2021 and the report is based off information from OLED research firm UBI Research, which claims that Samsung is busy working on three types of foldable OLED panels. The first foldable smartphone, which is expected to be…

Tsholofelo Molefe has been appointed the new MTN Group Chief Financial Officer (GCFO), following her resignation from her position as GCFO at rival mobile operator Telkom with immediate effect, and she will also join the group board and take over from Sugentharan Perumal, who has been acting in the position…

The Ghana Tech Summit is a 12-year initiative of the Global Startup Ecosystem which conducts the largest online digital accelerator in emerging markets. This year’s event will be on the 10th of December, and due to the global pandemic the event will be done virtually. Ghana Tech Summit aims to revitalize Ghana’s…

Tanzanian-based healthtech startup, Medikea, is an online healthcare platform that aims to make healthcare accessible to patients anywhere and at any time, hence, in a bid to achieve their mission has launched a platform that enables patients to book doctor appointments at their preferred clinics for free.  Medikea has achieved…

In October MultiChoice renamed its DStv Now streaming service to DStv, signalling the first step towards the full launch of its standalone streaming service and in a blog post MultiChoice said that once customers update their DStv Now application, the name of the platform will change to DStv. Now DStv has finally launched a…

BaseKit, a partner-friendly mobile sitebuilder for hosting companies, telecoms and enterprise, and since its foundation in 2008, they’ve grown into a global business, and more than 9 million sites now run on BaseKit. In an exciting move aimed to support more small businesses, BaseKit will partner with Africa’s largest fibre…

Huawei recently launched its mobile payments service, Huawei Pay, in Malaysia with UnionPay International and ICBC bank, enabling users to make contactless payments at terminals supporting UnionPay QuickPass, and the service will soon be coming to South Africa on 3 December. Huawei Pay will be integrated with Zapper locally and supports debit and credit…

According to world’s leading research and advisory firm Gartner, global smartphone sales to end-users totaled 366 million units in the third quarter of 2020, down 5.7% from the third quarter of 2019 and overall global mobile phone sales to end users totaled 401 million units, a decline of 8.7% year-over-year.…

As part of its annual design awards, Apple has revealed its App Store Best of 2020 winners of the year, recognizing 15 apps and games that proved to be essential this year. The company usually holds the Apple Design Awards as part of its Worldwide Developers Conference. This year, that…