Author: Akin Naphtal

One of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer and professional electronic products, SONY, has raised the price of PlayStation 5 due to global economic challenges it is experiencing. President & CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Jim Ryan confirmed this in a blog post, “We’re seeing high global inflation rates, as well as adverse currency trends, impacting consumers and creating pressure on many industries. Based on these challenging economic conditions, SIE has made the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price (RRP) of PlayStation 5”, he said. He added that the hike in price affects markets in Europe, Middle East,…

Africa Data Centres, a business of Cassava Technologies, is executing an ambitious plan to build datacentres in ten of Africa’s largest economic capitals – and has drawn US$83-million, the first tranche of a US$300-million investment from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) approved in 2021. Africa Data Centres plans to use the capital to build datacentres in Abidjan, Accra, Cairo, Casablanca and Lagos, adding to the company’s existing DFC-eligible African countries. Tesh Durvasula, CEO of Africa Data Centres, said, “The increasing demand for cloud and other digital technologies on the continent has directly increased the demand for African data…

Cisco, a network equipment manufacturer, has named Sarah Rae Murphy as part of its board of Directors. The said appointment took effect from yesterday August 24, 2022, increasing the board’s number to twelve. Sarah Rae Murphy has served in various executive positions at United Airlines, a stint that lasted 16 years. The most recent position at United Airlines was as the Senior Vice President (SVP) for Global Sourcing and Chief Procurement Officer. She also forms part of the board for Novus Media, a marketing and advertising company that offers media-related solutions. She was under the Crain’s Chicago Business 40Under40 for…

Highly rated tech magazine, TechBerg has unveiled Gwynne Shotwell, the President and Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX as its Woman in Tech Wednesday (WTW). WTW, one of the most high-profile tech personality ratings is a weekly review and rating of female tech personalities across the globe. It’s a special publication based on critical analysis and facts in the tech space. Gwynne Shotwell is businesswoman and an engineer. She has worked in both space systems, engineering and project management and was the director of the space systems division at Microcosm Inc. Her tech journey began during her encounter at a panel…

Paysend, the UK-based FinTech which has over 7m customers, has partnered with Currencycloud, the experts in simplifying business in a multi-currency world, to expand the capabilities of Paysend Business, its new digital end-to-end payments solution created to help small to medium enterprises (SMEs) take control of their financial health and accelerate their growth. The newly launched Business product is integral to the company’s goal of making money movement around the world easier for SMEs. Paysend Business removes the complexities SMEs face when making international payments, giving them access to a suite of international payment options, including SWIFT, local payment rails…

In a demonstration of its efforts in promoting and building a sustainable intellectual capacity among Africans, Africa Digital Economy Forum (ADEF) a forum promoting Africa’s digital economy agenda has kicked off its maiden Spelling Bee Competition to support educational development in Africa. ADEF Spelling Bee Competition is a literacy program to teach students the effective pronunciation of words, their meaning, and proper context of usage in the English Language. The Spelling Bee creates a platform for students from diverse backgrounds including public and private schools to engage and compete fairly in order to emerge as winners of the competition. The…

Mastercard is working on introducing a bank card payment option in the public transportation in Baku, Avsar Gurdal, Mastercard General Director for Azerbaijan and Turkiye said. “For over 10 years, Mastercard has been developing urban solutions and reshaping the public transportation experience. We are uninterruptedly working with the partner banks in Azerbaijan to enable the use of bank cards for the payment of public transportation fares in Baku,” he said. According to him, Mastercard intends to contribute to securing the leading position for Azerbaijan in the region’s cashless economy. He stressed that Mastercard’s primary mission in Azerbaijan is to increase…

Upholding its commitment to close the disability divide in employment, Microsoft today announced a collaboration with EnAble India to unlock 100,000 opportunities for persons with disabilities (PwDs). The initiative, called “Inclusion To Action”, aims to provide an opportunity platform, bringing together more than 100 organizations in the country across financial services, manufacturing, retail, and tech sectors to work together on various tech skilling, mentorship, internship and employment initiatives to achieve economies of scale in the common goal of economic empowerment for PwDs. Confronting several barriers to equal opportunities at work, people with disabilities experience higher rates of unemployment and socio-economic…

As contactless technology continues to grow in more than 90 million Mastercard card acceptance locations, Tap on Phone is being launched worldwide. Mastercard supports 131 Tap on Phone projects, 14 in the Latin American and Caribbean region, and many others under development. Locally, the partnership with Ton, Stone’s solution aimed at microentrepreneurs and the self-employed, now enables transactions with unlimited value. “Stone was the first Brazilian company – and one of the first in the world – to launch this novelty. Now we are ready to scale the product, with all the quality and safety that our customer deserves. TapTon…

eNaira, a Central Bank of Nigeria digital currency launched in October 25, 2021 has risen to N4bn as disclosed by the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele at the grand finale of the eNaira Hackathon yesterday, in Abuja. “Since the launch of this great initiative, the eNaira has reached 840,000 downloads, with about 270,000 active wallets comprising over 252,000 consumer wallets and 17,000 merchant wallets. In addition, volume and value of transactions on the platform have been remarkable, reaching above 200,000 and N4bn, respectively.” He said. eNaira is used just like cash. The eNaira wallet is…