Author: Akin Naphtal

NBCUniversal, a major American media company, is set to acquire a 30% stake in Showmax, the streaming video entertainment service offered by MultiChoice Group, in a bid to create the top streaming platform in Africa. The deal includes technology supply and new content for Showmax subscribers and is a collaboration between NBCUniversal sister company Sky, both of which are owned by Comcast. MultiChoice will retain a 70% stake in Showmax following the transaction, with NBCUniversal holding an indirect 23.7% stake in the local subsidiary in Nigeria. The deal deepens an already strong relationship and builds on the Sky Glass technology…

Airtel Uganda has announced a collaboration with ATC Uganda to launch the country’s first Smart Pole, located on Luwum Street in downtown Kampala. The Kampala SMART pole is a form of Distributed Antenna System (DAS) technology, specially designed to address service gaps resulting from mobile data growth and heavily trafficked areas. The poles are also intended to facilitate the transition to 5G internet technology and ATC Uganda is working closely with all mobile network operators to support this transition. The Managing Director of Airtel Uganda, Manoj Murali, expressed that Airtel received many complaints of weak signals in areas of high…

Ad Dynamo by Aleph, a leading digital advertising enabler in emerging markets, has appointed Stephen A. Newton as the Managing Director for Africa. With over 25 years of experience in leading EMEA businesses across the digital space, Newton’s main priority will be pan-African expansion and assisting Ad Dynamo by Aleph’s partners in overcoming the challenges of doing business across the continent. Newton says “As both a developing market and a continent with a rapidly growing population, Africa is poised to house not only a sizeable portion of the world’s population but also a sizeable portion of the world’s eligible workforce”,…

MTN Group, the leading network operator in Africa and Huawei have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen their strategic cooperation in environmental, social and governance matters. The signing took place during this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC 2023) in Barcelona. According to MTN Group’s Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer, Nompilo Morafo, the MoU is in line with MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy and Huawei’s Corporate Sustainability Development strategy, including its TECH4ALL initiative. “Collaboration with companies like Huawei is essential to achieving digital solutions for Africa’s progress”, she emphasized. The Member of Huawei’s Supervisory Board and President of the…

MetroFibre Networx, a fiber broadband infrastructure operator, has announced that it will be providing massive speed upgrades and substantial price cuts to its customers. The move comes as Openserve, Telkom’s wholesale subsidiary, has increased its prices to internet service providers following its own speed improvements. MetroFibre has described the changes to its fiber-to-the-home portfolio as “unprecedented in the market”. Customers with 50Mbit/s and 100Mbit/s connections will see their line speeds increase by five times at no additional cost, while customers on the company’s 1Gbit/s plan will see a significant price reduction. MetroFibre plans to roll out the new line speeds…

Liquid Intelligent Technologies, a business of Cassava Technologies, announced a new collaboration to deliver internet access to 20 million underserved people in Africa by the end of 2025, with Microsoft Corp. Working together through Microsoft’s Airband initiative, the new collaboration will initially target regions that include but are not limited to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia. Additionally, the partnership will allow for increased proliferation of high-speed connectivity to the farthest parts of Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. Working together, the companies will empower individuals and businesses in some of the United Nations’ least developed countries to help…

At the ongoing 2023 Mobile World Congress, Huawei made history by announcing that it has extended its innovation streak to mineral extraction by using 5G technology to connect all mining equipment at Botswana’s Jwaneng mine, creating the world’s first 5G-oriented smart diamond mine. The Chief Technology Officer of Huawei Mine BU, Xu Jun, explained that the company’s ICT technologies such as 5G, cloud, AI and IoT were used to develop smart mine solutions based on an industrial internet architecture. “In this instance, Botswana’s Debswana and Huawei jointly established the world’s first 5G-oriented smart diamond mine. Located in Jwaneng, it uses…

Vodacom South Africa has announced that it will increase the subscription prices for its Red tariff plans from 1 April, with an average subscription fee hike of 6.7%. However, the company has decided to add 20% extra anytime data to all the plans affected by the price increases. In a statement, Vodacom assured its customers that it was committed to minimising the financial impact of the cost increase while still keeping them connected to what matters most. Vodacom’s move follows MTN South Africa and Telkom’s price increases, with MTN citing load shedding and criminality at its base stations as reasons…

US payment giants Visa and Mastercard have decided to delay the launch of certain products and services related to cryptocurrency until market conditions and the regulatory environment improve. The move comes after high-profile bankruptcies of industry majors FTX and BlockFi rattled investors and increased regulatory scrutiny on the sector. Both Visa and Mastercard had announced multiple partnerships with crypto firms and put in place dedicated teams to explore blockchain technology. However, recent events have made the companies more cautious. “Recent high-profile failures in the crypto sector are an important reminder that we have a long way to go before crypto…

The Biden administration is set to release a new national cybersecurity strategy that seeks to shift the blame from companies that get hacked to software manufacturers and device makers. The 35-page strategy asserts that software makers must be held liable when they fail to live up to the duty of care they owe consumers, businesses or critical infrastructure providers. President Joe Biden said in a statement that the strategy “takes on the systemic challenge that too much of the responsibility for cybersecurity has fallen on individual users and small organisations”. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,…