Nearly four months after the launch of its Tier III facility at Appolonia City, Accra, Ghana, MDXi, a MainOne company, has announced the expansion of its data center facilities in Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria.

This expansion tagged “Lekki II” will be the latest addition to the portfolio of MDXi, which is already the leading commercial data center provider in the region. The new Tier III data center is being deployed on a very aggressive timeline and with provision for growth using the latest modular data...

Africell, the fourth mobile operator in Angola, has selected Angola Cables to provide wholesale IP transit and connectivity solutions for its network.

The partnership will give Africell customers high speed data, low latency and nationwide internet access through the advanced Angola Cables infrastructure. This robust network currently connects to Angola’s primary IXP, Angonix, and provides backhaul support and connectivity to all the major Telecom operators in Angola and internationally. Angelo...

AfricaNenda, an emerging and independent Africa-led coalition of dedicated digital payments experts on Thursday launched a new digital financial inclusion advisory platform aimed to expand financial access in the continent.

This will be done through partnerships with African governments, regional economic communities, and private sector associations. AfricaNenda will address the key bottlenecks around critical pre-project support and institutional capacity building that are currently restricting...

Liquid Intelligent Technologies through its innovation and partnerships arm Liquid Labs, has partnered with Africa Legal, an organisation that connects legal professionals across the African continent to launch three online courses on legal technology.

The courses are targeted at supporting career development amongst students, budding entrepreneurs, and lawyers. Liquid Labs aspires to make relevant tech training programmes accessible to students and professionals to bridge the...

Cellulant’s Board of Directors is has announced that Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Akshay Grover, has been appointed as Group CEO and Director of Cellulant with effect from 1 October 2021.

The appointment follows an executive search process following the announcement in January 2021 by then Group CEO Ken Njoroge of his intention to transition from his position. Akshay has been serving in an acting capacity since April 2021. “We are delighted to appoint an executive of Akshay’s calibre and...

MTN Group announced the appointment of Benjamin Adekunle Awobodu as the new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for Digital and Fintech. Kunle is a business and finance professional who has spent most of his career at MTN, including serving as CFO for MTN Nigeria and for the MTN Irancell joint venture.

In his 22 years in management roles, Kunle has built processes, teams and dealt with regulatory and compliance issues. Most recently, from 2019 to 2021, he was an Executive Consultant at MTN Nigeria, where he led Oracle...

Out of the more than 206 000 mobile malware attacks blocked by Kaspersky solutions for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) region in just 6-months measured, between January to June 2021, over 30 000 of these attacks combined originated from Nigeria (14 071), Kenya (10 697), and South Africa (5 499).

Significantly, for African countries monitored, Nigeria only trails Egypt (19 466) by the number of attacks blocked, pointing to how prevalent mobile threats have become in this highly connected country. In fact, Kaspersky’s latest...

Pan-African fintech startup and digital bank Carbon Bank has partnered with Network International, an enabler of digital commerce across Africa and the Middle East, as part of its plan to boost its digital payment offering.

Under the agreement, Network International will issue and process physical Visa debit cards on behalf of Carbon, enhancing the bank’s offering to customers. True to Carbon’s mission of empowering all people with the financial access they need to pursue a life of dignity and prosperity, the...

Last week, tech giant Google announced that it plans to invest up to $50 million in African early- and growth-stage startups via its Africa Investment Fund. 

Google made this announcement during its very first “Google for Africa” event that was held on Oct. 6. At the event,  Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company will invest $1 billion over the next five years in tech-led initiatives in Africa. The investment will run over the next five years and will cover a range of initiatives, from improved connectivity to...

With the large-scale migration of business data and IT services to the cloud – particularly in light of the global pandemic driving a 35 percent increase in online traffic – there has been a notable rise in global data centre construction.

However, while data centres remain the backbone of the internet and cloud-computing processes, they are also some of the world’s greatest energy guzzlers. The cooling systems that data centres use to maintain a temperature-controlled environment and prevent servers from overheating, for...

Technology has transformed every aspect of our personal and professional lives, and has left no sector of the economy untouched. In the highly competitive retail sector, where consumers place a premium on convenience in their shopping experiences, the pervasiveness of technology has influenced a shift in customer expectations.

To remain relevant in a rapidly changing market, retailers must be agile and adaptable. A Deloitte report on how the pandemic has affected retail consumer sentiment in South Africa found that the “COVID-19 crisis has fast-tracked the...

Patient data is essential in healthcare, especially when managing an individual’s care. Safeguards governing the processing and storage of patient data are required and will be bolstered by the introduction of the Protection of Personal Information Act, No 4 of 2012 (PoPIA).

Since this law came into effect on 1 July 2021, all private and public bodies processing personal information are now required to have implemented policies and procedures in order to be compliant. Xperien ITAD specialist Bridgette Vermaak...

With COVID-19 accelerating the digital transformation of businesses, many organisations were forced to adopt a work-from-home strategy, and customers began to increasingly purchase goods and services online.

The outbreak highlighted the critical nature of software and its impact on people's lives, both professionally and personally. At the same time, the function of the IT department has evolved and it has been crucial in supporting organisations in shifting to a new way of working. While numerous departments have...

In our last Africa cloud review column, we highlighted how cloud can help power smart cities in Africa. Cloud provides the digital infrastructure for smart cities: in other words, a city’s cloud will function as a storage and analysis system for the data used in everything.  

Other than smart cities, the education sector in Africa is also poised to benefit from cloud.  In an interview with IT News Africa back in 2019, head of E-Learning at the University of Pretoria, Dolf Jordaan noted that the cloud is transforming...