tech news
African Union Forms Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing on the Continent
The Commissioner for Social Affairs, Amira Elfadil Mohammed, today rolled out the Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing (PACT) at the African Union Commission headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In his message to participants in the rollout event, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, says that “We have set four goals for PACT: to scale-up testing for COVID-19, to continue training healthcare workers on the continent, to establish a platform for pooled procurement at Africa CDC, and to deploy one million community workers who will help trace contacts of confirmed cases. PACT is a vital component of the continental response to COVID-19 and it is the key to ensuring that we unlock our economies in a safe manner.” Anchored on the African Union Joint Con...
How Will AI Reshape Leadership Practices in a Post-COVID-19 Economy?
Sourced from Shutterstock. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are accelerating at an unprecedented pace. Today, business leaders are able to augment their decision-making and problem-solving capabilities through a myriad of capabilities powered by AI. With a continued rise in the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Analytics, Machine Learning and Big Data, organisations have access to many data sources across their entire ecosystem, which previously was not always available to them. The tools to digitise analogue data sources and then mine and analyse them for insights are becoming more powerful. Organisational leaders in both developing and developed economies now have access to world-class AI-powered systems, that are able to significantly en...
COVID-19 Threatens Cybersecurity in South Africa
According to researchers at IBM X-Force, Sphinx, a modular malware based on leaked source code of the infamous Zeus banking trojan began resurfacing in December 2019. However, a substantial increase in volume was reported in March 2020. This was due to Sphinx’s operators taking advantage of the interest and news around government relief payments in the U.S, Canada and Australia. Across the globe fraud and cyberattacks have soared. This is of particular concern for South Africa as funds are collected to uphold the economy during lockdown and new grants are implemented to ensure the wellbeing of citizens. The local situation South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced a significant package of social and economic relief to address the fallout from the country’s COVID-19 lockdow...
Investment in Digital Transformation is Expected to Reach $7.4 trillion by 2023, says Report
As organizations look to transform their business operations and revolutionize customer service, Digital Transformation (DX) is at the top of most CXOs’ agendas; in fact, DX spending is expected to approach $7.4 trillion between 2020 and 2023, a CAGR of 17.5%. However, according to the latest industry data released today from Veeam Software, almost half of global organizations are being hindered in their DX journeys due to unreliable, legacy technologies with 44% citing lack of IT skills or expertise as another barrier to success. Moreover, almost every company admitted to experiencing downtime, with 1 out of every 10 servers having unexpected outages each year — problems that last for hours and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars – and this points to an urgent need to moderniz...
Energy Leaders Give Insight on the Future of Kenya’s Oil and Gas Transition
Sourced from Construction Review Online. Kenya’s oil and gas industry is in a state of transition, as its major oil and gas development — Blocks 10BB and 13T in Turkana — has been put on hold, with Tullow Oil submitting a notice of force majeure to the Kenyan Ministry of Petroleum and Mining, citing complications from COVID-19. Meanwhile, Uganda’s Lake Albert Project is moving ahead, with Total announcing plans to acquire Tullow Oil’s stake in the project. The massive development in Uganda, which is set to include a pipeline and refinery, could easily have an impact on regional oil and gas developments and opportunities. In a webinar, Kenyan energy industry leaders shared strategies and thoughts on how Kenya’s oil and gas sector can deal with the implications caused by COVID-19. According ...
Facebooks New Photo Transfer Tool Goes Global
Facebook has announced that it’s Google Photos transfer tool is officially available to all users across the globe – after first being released in the US and Canada in April. “Today, we’re releasing a tool that will enable Facebook users to transfer their Facebook photos and videos directly to other services, starting with Google Photos,” says the company in an official blog post. This tool allows users to create copies of photos and videos from their Facebook account that can be transferred to their linked Google Photos account. The company says that it believes if users share data with one service, they should also be able to move it to another. Here’s how to use the photo transfer tool in five steps: Step 1: Go to “Your Facebook information” in your Facebook settingsStep 2: Select “Tran...
Twitter Clarifies Policies on Misinformation After Labelling Trump’s Tweets
Image sourced from Mission Statement Academy Twitter has taken to social media to set the record straight regarding the platform’s new policies on misinformation. In a series of Tweets, Twitter says that it’s is not focused on flagging or labelling every piece of misinformation as it’s rather tackling the content with “the highest potential for harm”. This is, according to the company, because people have insisted that the platform “shouldn’t determine the truthfulness of tweets,” but rather “provide context to help people make up their own minds in cases where the substance of a tweet is disputed.” We are NOT attempting to address all misinformation. Instead, we prioritize based on the highest potential for harm, focusing on manipulated media, civic integrity, and COVID-19. Likelihood, se...
Ride-Hailing Businesses Begin to Recover
Sourced from Forbes. Uber Technologies Inc.’s global rides business is down 70% from this time last year, a small improvement from its rock-bottom fall during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Though slight, it is an indication that recovery is coming, albeit slowly. The decline in rides seems to be offset, if partially, by a boom in food delivery. Uber Eats’ gains have more than doubled, and they continue to accelerate, says Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s CEO, speaking at a virtual tech conference hosted by Bank of America. Bloomberg reports that the ride-hailing company intends to continue to look for opportunities in the food delivery market. Khosrowshahi declined to comment on Uber’s proposal to buy Grubhub Inc., which was first reported by Bloomberg last month. Since being so hars...
Dropbox Launches New Password Manager in Private Beta
Sourced from TechSpot. Dropbox has quietly launched a new password manager named Dropbox Passwords. The app is only available in a private beta on Android, and although it can be downloaded, users won’t be able to use it yet – at least not until they get an invite. The app’s Play Store listing notes that the app is currently “in development” and therefore may be unstable. Sourced from Dropbox. While still currently in a very basic state, like most password managers, it creates unique passwords, stores them in a single place and synchronises them across your devices in order to automatically and quickly fill-in login fields. /* custom css */ .tdi_3_44e.td-a-rec-img{ text-align: left; }.tdi_3_44e.td-a-rec-img img{ margin: 0 auto 0 0; } There’s still no mention of other useful features like i...
Nashua Appoints New CEO
Nashua has announced the appointment of Barry Venter as CEO – the company says this comes at a time when the challenging economic and social times we face would have many on the run. Venter’s career has mostly been within the ranks of Nashua Group. He says “Nashua forms part of my DNA as I have grown and evolved over 22 years with this business. It is an aspirational, truly South African brand and the value system and culture within the business is very important to me.” Venter started at the very bottom in Nashua – he was a contractor, worked in the warehouse, packed SIM cards and even sold second-hand phones to dealers – along the way, was exposed to great mentorship and opportunities, moving into IT to implement new technology and create a call centre before moving back onto the busines...
Slack and Amazon Join Forces to Take On Microsoft Teams
Sourced from TechSpot. Slack is partnering with Amazon in a multi-year agreement that means all Amazon employees will start to use video-conferencing and business communication platform Slack. This deal comes on the heels of Slack facing increasing competition from Microsoft’s Teams platform. The deal will also see Slack migrate its voice and video calling features over to Amazon’s Chime platform, alongside a broader adoption of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon’s roll-out of Slack to its employees is a key part of the deal, thanks to an enterprise-wide agreement. It’s not immediately clear how many of Amazon’s 840,000 employees will be using Slack, though. Up until today, Slack’s biggest customer has been IBM, which is rolling out Slack to its 350,000 employees. /* custom css */ .tdi_3_7e...
Twitter Suspends Account that Posts Exact Copies of Trump’s Tweets
Image sourced from Al Jazeera In an attempt to prove that social media giant Twitter is more than lenient when it comes to its A-list users, an account under the name ‘@SuspendThePress’ copied and posted US President Donald Trump’s tweets. This account will tweet what the President tweets. Let’s see if it gets suspended for violating twitters TOS. Follow along with this social experiment. Report any tweets that violate the rules. Thank you. — Will they suspend me? (@SuspendThePres) May 30, 2020 This experiment comes shortly after US President Donald Trump threatened to regulate or even “close down” social media platforms – after a number of his tweets were branded as containing misleading information. According to TechWeez, the owner of the account “wanted to see how long it would tak...
