The excitement over the potentially transformative effects of the Internet in low-income countries is nowhere more evident than in East Africa — the last major populated region of the world to gain a wired connection to the Internet. Before 2009, there wasn’t a single fibre-optic cable connecting the region
The day is coming, we are told, when the world as we know it ends. Somewhere in a laboratory, possibly Silicon Valley in the US or more likely a rogue research group in China or North Korea, an engineer or
This year saw the 43rd anniversary of e-mail. Compared to a human working life, e-mail has after more than four decades on the job now reached retirement age. Is it time for e-mail to step aside to allow us to embrace the alternative? Every minute in 2012 saw 168m e-mails sent around the world
Imagine launching a robotic spacecraft on a 10-year mission to land on a comet 600m kilometres from Earth knowing that you will not be able to make any physical repairs to the craft during the journey. This daunting engineering challenge has been the ultimate goal of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta
If your business does not have a solid online presence, you will lose out to your competitors when potential customers cannot find your services online. Fortunately, building a simple website to give your business a voice is not
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So reads the opening line of Leon Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The novel comes to mind when looking at the prospects that confront mobile money. Success stories have many similarities, but failed efforts fail for their own
Technology start-ups and the entrepreneurs who lead them should tackle the “many great opportunities” in South Africa and Africa more broadly rather than trying to emulate his decision to move to the US, says Gyft founder Vinny Lingham. Lingham, now one of the “dragons” in the South African
The aircraft industry is expecting a seven-fold increase in air traffic by 2050, and a four-fold increase in greenhouse gas emissions unless fundamental changes are made. But just how “fundamental” will those changes need to be
South Africa’s digital terrestrial television migration project is in a dire state and if the country fails to switch off its analogue signals after the mid-June 2015 cut-off date, it may be obliged to do so if analogue signals interfere with
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has written off R75m of the licence fees owed to it by the iBurst parent company, Wireless Business Solutions (WBS), which is entertaining a takeover offer to acquire the
