In the podcast this week, Duncan McLeod and Regardt van der Berg chat about the looming layoffs at MultiChoice and what precipitated the move.

Naspers-backed cryptocurrency platform Luno is planning to increase its workforce by almost 60% to expand its South African headquarters and enter new markets in Southeast Asia.

Bitcoin breached $10 000 for the first time in about 15 months, recouping more than half of the parabolic increase that introduced mainstream investors to the digital asset.

The US is blacklisting five Chinese organisations involved in supercomputing, calling them national security threats and cutting them off from critical US technology.

Orange is considering a bid for a minority stake in Ethiopia’s state-owned phone monopoly as Africa’s second most populous country prepares to welcome foreign telecommunications investors for the first time.

A jobs bloodbath is looming at pay-television operator MultiChoice Group, which said on Friday it will enter into a “consultation process” with 2 194 of its employees as part of a “strategic realignment of its customer service delivery model”.

Naspers has finally given a name to its new global consumer Internet group, which it intends listing on Euronext Amsterdam in September, with an inward listing on the JSE.

Naspers has elected to cancel and reschedule a meeting of shareholders to approve the listing of its international Internet assets in Europe, with the target date for the listing now set for September.

Vodacom’s business services arm is selling assets in several key markets in the rest of Africa, outside South Africa, the telecommunications group said on Friday.

Since their arrival, regulatory sandboxes have started – though slowly – to appear in areas beyond fintech. South African policy-makers need to pay attention. By Gwen Ngwenya.