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.

A parade of initial public offerings from Silicon Valley this year has garnered a mixed reception from investors. Slack Technologies took a different route, and saw its shares soar as it went public without an IPO.

EOH Holdings has moved to strengthen its board, appointing three high-profile nonexecutive directors, including a former MD of Vodacom South Africa.

5G networks will allow vast gobs of data to be transmitted at great speeds. And more data usually means more money for mobile carriers. But there’s a hitch. Cloud giants such as Amazon.com and Microsoft are lurking.

The communications minister will issue a policy direction to Icasa within a month, allowing broadband spectrum to be allocated to mobile operators, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his state of the nation address.