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...

David Frankel played a pioneering role in the commercial development of the internet in South Africa as co-founder and CEO of Internet Solutions. Since then, he’s gone on to a successful investing career in the US, where he is co-founder and managing partner at Boston- and New York-based Founder Collective, a seed-stage venture capital fund whose successful investments have included Uber Technologies, Brontes (sold to 3M) and PillPack (sold to Amazon). Frankel, widely regarded as one of the...

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...

From the internet of things (IoT) to private 5G networks, MTN Group has a lot to offer public sector organisations, according to David Behr, CEO of MTN Converged Solutions. Behr, a stalwart of the local ICT industry and a recent recruit to MTN, tells TechCentral’s TCS+ business technology show about the solutions that MTN Business offers its government clients, including smart government solutions, IoT (for example, for smart metering) and private 5G (which has strong applications in areas...

TechCentral is thrilled to bring you an interview with Mike Lawrie, a pioneering figure at Rhodes University who helped bring e-mail and later the internet to South Africa. In this episode of TCS Legends – the podcast series that features interviews with (and about) some of the leading figures who helped shape South Africa’s technology sector into what it is today – TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod sat down with Lawrie to chat about the ground-breaking work that happened at Rhodes University...

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...

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/

David Kan, the late founder and former CEO of Mustek, is the focus of episode 3 of TechCentral’s new podcast series, TCS Legends – powered by Mitel. In this episode, TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod is joined by Mustek CEO Hein Engelbrecht and Carlos Vizcarra, CEO of CPS Technologies, who was close friends with Kan for decades, for a wide-ranging discussion on the man’s life and achievements. Kan founded Mustek in 1987 as a technology importer and distributor, and the company quickly became...

Data and identity governance should be a top-of-mind issue for business leaders in 2024. CYBER1 Solutions MD Jayson O’Reilly and senior cybersecurity architect Christiaan Swanepoel share their insights on this important topic in this episode of TechCentral’s business technology show, TCS+. They kick off the discussion with a definition of the topic, and why it’s critically important that companies get data and identity governance right in a world of significantly heightened cyber risk. It’s...

Vinolia Singh, chief people officer at JSE-listed workplace solutions provider Adcorp, joins the second episode of a series of interviews about enterprise cloud software provider Workday. In this TCS+ interview, grouped under the theme of “change makers”, Singh is joined by Kiv Moodley, MD of Workday South Africa, to unpack how the nature of work is changing, especially following the end of the Covid pandemic, but also as a new generation –with very different ideas about the nature of work –...

Persetel’s Roux Marnitz, Altron’s Bill Venter, Vodacom’s Alan Knott-Craig and Datatec’s Jens Montanana are all undisputed business legends in South Africa’s ICT industry. The four – all now retired except for Datatec CEO Montanana – are the subject of episode 2 of TechCentral’s new fortnightly technology show, TCS Legends. This episode, the second part of an opening double header, features insights from investing legend Duarte da Silva about the four businessmen who had an outsized impact of...

Protecting sensitive company information through data loss prevention (DLP) tools has become paramount for many organisations. But doing so without impacting employee productivity can be a big challenge. In this episode of TCS+, Next DLP executives Chris Denbigh-White (chief security officer) and Fallon Steyn (regional sales manager, South Africa) are joined by their customer, LRMG, to discuss this crucial topic in greater detail. LRMG’s information security officer, Nadia Veeran-Patel,...

South Africa has a new data consultancy. Called Calybre, it’s headed by CEO Alexa Bisschops and is positioned as “the best partner for any company’s data people”. Bisschops joins TechCentral’s TCS+ show to chat about the launch of the company, its co-founders and their backgrounds, and why the company believes the market is ripe for the launch of a “next-generation consultancy”. In the interview, Bisschops unpacks: • The background to Calybre and its market positioning; • What a...

Well-known investor and businessman Duarte da Silva joins TCS Legends to discuss Jeremy Ord, Roux Marnitz, Alan Knott-Craig, Jens Montanana and Bill Venter. -- Well-known investor and businessman Duarte da Silva is the guest in the inaugural episode of TechCentral’s TCS Legends, a new video podcast series focused on legendary figures who helped shape South Africa’s technology industry. A two-part scene setter for the rest of the limited series, Da Silva – who knows many of the individuals who...

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 developed and now patented globally. Corrie de Jager, the CEO...

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...

Big changes are coming to the way companies build and manage their network infrastructure. This is a key discussion point in the latest episode of TechCentral’s TCS+ technology show, featuring subject matter experts from Dimension Data – soon to be NTT Data – and Cisco. NTT’s 2022/2023 Global Network Report found that 70% of CEOs surveyed indicated that a lack of network maturity was negatively impacting business delivery. But what’s the solution? To unpack that question in some detail, TCS+...

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...

As South Africa experiences tough economic times, employers and workforces alike can benefit from solutions like telemedicine. In a nutshell, telemedicine is the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients by using ICT. This allows an individual to seek a doctor’s advice about non-emergency situations that don’t require an in-person visit. In this episode of TechCentral’s TCS+, Guardian Eye AVA specialist Justine Pillay chats to host Brendan Haskins about this powerful new combination of...

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...

As we approach 2024, KnowBe4’s content strategy vice president Anna Collard joins TechCentral’s TCS+ show to unpack reflections drawn from the world’s leading security events, as well as dialogues with industry leaders, academics and government representatives.

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’...

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,...

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...