CEO Weekends: Piilo Software’s Phil Lötter On The Firm’s Plans For Africa

CEO Weekends: Piilo Software's Phil Lötter On The Firm's Plans For Africa
With offices in Cape Town and Boston, Piilo Software, an innovative People and Human Resources Management SaaS software has launched across Africa targeting small, medium and large businesses in a move to help them leverage the benefits of cloud computing and mobility for employee and talent management. Firms, irrespective of their size, location or industry ...

CEO Weekends: Mandela Grandsons Launch A Social Network, Mandela.is To Honour Madiba’s Deeds To Humanity

CEO Weekends: Mandela Grandsons Launch A Social Network, Mandela.is To Honour Madiba's Deeds To Humanity
Nelson Mandela’s grandsons, Ndaba Mandela and Kweku Mandela Amuah have launched a social network dubbed Mandela.is to honor their grandfather and have signed up over 20,000 users in three days of their soft launch according to Forbes. Ndaba and Kweku say Mandela.is is a collection of lessons they learned from their grandfather, Nelson Mandela and ...

CEO Weekends:Zuku Introduces Zuku Poa | Hikes Subscription Prices By 25 Percent

CEO Weekends:Zuku Introduces Zuku Poa | Hikes Subscription Prices By 25 Percent
East Africa’s Wananchi Group Holdings, the operates under as Zuku brand, offering PayTv, broadband internet and VoIP services has  increased its pay TV subscription prices by 25 percent average even after raising US$57.5million in growth capital from Liberty Global Inc., Oppenheimer Funds, and Canadian-based Sarona Asset Management. Zuku has increased its prices effective June 1 ...

CEO Weekends: Hillcrest International Schools CEO Wants Kids To Innovate

CEO Weekends: Hillcrest International Schools CEO Wants Kids To Innovate
Hillcrest International Schools new Principal / CEO Mr. Chris Wheeler wants to turn the school into a center of innovation in a move to stimulate the development of ICT  at Hillcrest and several other schools in the country. Mr. Wheeler said, ” We want kids to be innovative, learn to use ICT  and be ready ...

CEO Weekends: South Africa’s LAW Holdings Acquires Shares In AIS

CEO Weekends: South Africa's LAW Holdings Acquires Shares In AIS
LAW Holdings recently purchased a controlling stake in Assimilated Information Systems (Pty) Ltd. (AIS), a South African company established in 2006. Speaking about the transaction, Luis Casaleiro, CEO of LAW Holdings said; “We are pleased with the incorporation of AIS. This is a powerful, established business that has years of experience supplying and supporting technology ...

CEO Weekends: Kenya’s IProcure Brings Home Bronze From The GIST Startup Boot Camp – East Africa.

CEO Weekends: Kenya's IProcure Brings Home Bronze From The GIST Startup Boot Camp - East Africa.
IProcure, an online electronic procurement platform that connects suppliers to sellers online to make the bidding and tendering process transparent  emerged among third top startups at the Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) Startup Boot Camp – East Africa. Stefano Carcoforo and  Mohamed Gharib Mazrui the co-founders of  IProcure took home a Bronze Award ...

CEO Weekends:Nigeria’s Konga.com Vs Jumia.com | Who Is Real?

CEO Weekends:Nigeria's Konga.com Vs Jumia.com | Who Is Real?
Guest Post by @Naijaplayboy I recently received an email from one of Nigeria’s e-commerce guys  konga.com(which I have attached below) giving me a free 750 voucher because i haven’t shopped on their website in a while, and I remember a Nigeria blogger @MrBankole writing a story HERE about how Konga is Krazy about Conversion funnels ...

Internfit.co.za Launches To Help Students Find Internships In Companies, Faster

Internfit.co.za Launches To Help Students Find Internships In Companies, Faster
Each year thousands of tertiary students in South Africa struggle to find valid work experience that will help them grow their careers. They need to network, read newspapers or trawl many websites to find possible internships that fit into their studies with little desirable success. Now a new portal dubbed Internfit.co.za has launched to help ...

Tunisiana & Orange Tunisia Partner With Interoute To Deploy New Fibre Cable From Tunisia To Europe

Tunisiana & Orange Tunisia Partner With Interoute To Deploy New Fibre Cable From Tunisia To Europe
In a move to support and strengthen the ICT sector and offer Tunisians additional access to international broadband networks and at reduced rates, Tunisiana and Orange Tunisia have partnered with Interoute, Europe’s largest next generation network owner to deploy a submarine cable dubbed Didon. Connecting the city of Kélibia, Tunisia to Interoute’s landing station in Mazara ...

Gumtree.co.za Wants You To Put All Stuff On It To Easily Buy Or Sell Them

Gumtree.co.za Wants You To Put All Stuff On It To Easily Buy Or Sell Them
Launched in South Africa in 2005, Gumtree says it has helped millions of people buy and sell millions of things on its classifieds portal. Accessible both on web and mobile, Gumtree says their platform is easy to navigate and totally free. The classified ad marketplace helps users connect to others near them so as they ...

South Africa’s Absa Bank Launches Multi-Currency Cash Passport | An Intelligent Travel Card Of All Sorts

South Africa's Absa Bank Launches Multi-Currency Cash Passport | An Intelligent Travel Card Of All Sorts
South Africa’s Absa Bank, a subsidiary of Barclays has launched a Multi-Currency Cash Passport  which it says is South Africa’s first reloadable prepaid travel Multi-Currency Card to allow cardholders to load multiple currencies on the same card. According to Head of Retail Banking Arrie Rautenbach, “Although there are other prepaid travel cards in South Africa, ...

South Africa’s Pure Distribution Appointed Value Added Partner For Sony Mobile In South & Southern Africa

South Africa's Pure Distribution Appointed Value Added Partner For Sony Mobile In South & Southern Africa
Sony Mobile Communications has appointed South Africa’s Pure Distribution as its distributor for Xperia™ smartphone and accessories portfolio in South and Southern Africa regions. Per the agreement, Pure Distribution will supply and manage some of Sony Mobile’s clients in the region including retail chains. Pure Distribution will hold stock of all available local Sony Mobile ...

Orange Inaugurates A New Campus In Senegal For Managerial Development

Orange Inaugurates A New Campus In Senegal For Managerial Development
The new Orange Campus site in Senegal will help develop managerial capacity of Orange Group managers present in 20 African countries says France Telecom-Orange Group. The Orange Campus is located in the Dakar technology park and is set to offer development programmes to the 1,000 managers of the Group’s subsidiaries in Western Africa (Mali, Guinea, ...

Catalyst Principal Partners Acquires 50% Stake In Ethiopia’s Yes Brands Food & Beverages PLC

Catalyst Principal Partners Acquires 50% Stake In Ethiopia's Yes Brands Food & Beverages PLC
$125m private equity fund Catalyst Principal Partners has acquired a 50% stake in Ethiopia’s Yes Brands Food & Beverages PLC, a bottled mineral water company with a dominant brand and market share in the country. According to Catalyst CEO Paul Kavuma the funds will be used to grow Yes Brands business by enhancing its operational capacity, ...

Nigeria’s Zanfia.com Wants To Link Shoppers With Online Retailers Countrywide

Nigeria's Zanfia.com Wants To Link Shoppers With Online Retailers Countrywide
Set to be launched in beta soon Zanfia.com is an online resource for shoppers and retailers in Nigeria to help them navigate across the several online retailers in Nigeria to help them save money and time. Zanfia aims to give customers access to different online stores in Nigeria and rate them. Retailers also get customer ...

Kenya’s Online Furniture Marketplace Zenelo.com Launches With Door 2 Door Deliveries To End The Hassle With Carpenters

Kenya's Online Furniture Marketplace Zenelo.com Launches With Door 2 Door Deliveries To End The Hassle With Carpenters
Launched May 2012, Kenya’s Zenelo.com is an online furniture shop allowing users to visit the site, choose their preferred furniture, place an order and have it delivered right to their doorsteps. Larry Okumu, the co-founder Zenelo say theirs is locally made furniture and of high quality. “Just because our products are local does not mean ...

Rocket Internet’s payleven Introduces World’s First Cloud-based POS With Integrated Chip & PIN Card Payments

Rocket Internet's payleven Introduces World’s First Cloud-based POS With Integrated Chip & PIN Card Payments
Rocket Internet’s payleven, a Europe mobile payment service has partnered with MICROS, a hospitality and retail industries enterprise applications provider to introduce the world’s first cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) solution with integrated mobile Chip & PIN card payment technology. The affordable and advanced POS solution is based on MICROS’ new Kachng! and MICROS and payleven have ...

GSMA Launches Permanent Office In Nairobi To Support Africa’s Telecoms Market

GSMA Launches Permanent Office In Nairobi To Support Africa's Telecoms Market
GSMA,a trade association representing the interests of mobile operators worldwide in over 220 countries has opened its permanent office in Nairobi, Kenya. The office  based at the iHub, is set to help grow the mobile industry on the continent. According to Anne Bouverot, Director General, GSMA, “It is an exciting time to launch our new ...

MoboFree Mobile Social Network Wants You To Meet Friends, Find Love & Sell Online

MoboFree Mobile Social Network Wants You To Meet Friends, Find Love & Sell Online
Developed in Vilnius, Lithuania and claiming over 2 million active users in Africa and over  200,000 likes on Facebook, MoboFree is a mobile social network and marketplace for users to share love, friendship and find jobs or sell stuff. With a good following in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Malawi, MoboFree says it is a place for meeting ...

BlackBerry Introduces The BlackBerry Q5 For Youths In Emerging Markets

BlackBerry Introduces The BlackBerry Q5 For Youths In Emerging Markets
BlackBerry has introduced the BlackBerry Q5, a BlackBerry10 smartphone for emerging markets featuring a QWERTY keyboard with discrete keys plus a 3.1 inch touch screen. The BlackBerry Q5 Keyboard has discrete keys designed for faster typing and accuracy. Users can instantly switch from BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) chat to a BBM Video conversation. BlackBerry Q5 has ...

Nokia Lumia 925′s Metal Design Will Sell It

Nokia Lumia 925's Metal Design Will Sell It
Nokia’s new Nokia Lumia 925, from its Nokia Lumia 920 line introduces a metal design and showcases the latest PureView camera innovation and advanced lens technology with next generation imaging software to capture clearer, sharper pictures and video. The phone also has a new Nokia Smart Camera mode which Nokia says will be soon available ...

Orange Launches Its Third Edition Of Orange African Social Venture Prize

Orange Launches Its Third Edition Of Orange African Social Venture Prize
Following on from the success of the first two programmes, run in 2011 and 2012, today Orange is launching the third Orange African Social Venture Prize. The project promotes social innovations in support of development that use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Orange, which is present in 18 African countries and boasts over 70 million ...

Ghana’s Dropifi Joins Silicon Valley’s 500 Startups

Ghana's Dropifi Joins Silicon Valley's 500 Startups
Dropifi, a Ghanian startup that provides a WordPress widget replacement for “contact us” buttons on websites to allows companies to better analyze incoming messages, discover their contacts and re-channel messages to the right persons in their organizations announced today it has joined early-stage seed fund and incubator program 500 Startups based in Silicon Valley. The ...

mapIT to Present at Africa’s 4th Annual GIS Summit 2013

mapIT to Present at Africa’s 4th Annual GIS Summit 2013
Digital mapping firm, mapIT will be presenting on the first day of Africa’s 4th Annual GIS Summit 2013, taking place on 22 and 23 May 2013 at The Focus Rooms in Sunninghill, Johannesburg. “mapIT is looking forward to presenting to their peers in the GIS industry at this prestigious event,” said mapIT’s Managing Director Etienne ...

India’s JMR Infotech Expands Presence In Africa; Opens Office In Kenya

India's JMR Infotech Expands Presence In Africa; Opens Office In Kenya
End-to-end core banking solutions and services provider JMR Infotech launched its new office in Kenya May 8 in a move to reinforce its aggressive expansion strategy in key emerging markets. Its office in Nairobi, becomes the third after successful launches of offices in Nigeria and Ghana. The Kenya office serves as a regional support centre ...

Xtranet Announces The Launch Of Xtranet Cloud Solutions

Xtranet Announces The Launch Of Xtranet Cloud Solutions
Speaking during the Launch Company Chief Executive Officer Mr. Henry Njoroge said “Cloud computing provides computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services. Parallel to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid, wherein end-users consume ...

Airtel Launches Airtel Tosha | A Low Cost Voice, Data & SMS Subscription Service For Ksh 10 Per Day

Airtel Launches Airtel Tosha | A Low Cost Voice, Data & SMS Subscription Service For Ksh 10 Per Day
Airtel Kenya has today launched a new range of affordable, flexible bundle service dubbed Airtel Tosha in a move that will enable its customers to get much more on voice calls, SMS and data at low daily subscription rates- as a low as Ksh 10 per day to meet their unique individual needs. In a ...

Why Adopting McMethod.net Is Best For Business Control

Why Adopting McMethod.net Is Best For Business Control
To achieve maximum control over key business processes, including innovation management and methodology management, it is critical to have the right solution in place and the right experienced partner positioned to offer support and guidance. This is the view of experts behind McMethod.net, a project, portfolio and workflow management solution developed by project management consultancy ...

Twitter Goes Big Data | Acquires Lucky Sort To Build Its Revenue Engineering Dept

Twitter Goes Big Data | Acquires Lucky Sort To Build Its Revenue Engineering Dept
Twitter has acquired  Lucky Sort, a data mining and visualization startup in a move that might likely boost its data visualization capacity. Announcing the deal,  Noah Pepper, Chief Executive Officer of Lucky Sort said, “Two years ago I started Lucky Sort with several friends. Our goal was to make huge document sets easier to analyze, ...

How Google+ Shaped The March 4 Kenyan Election

How Google+ Shaped The March 4 Kenyan Election
Social media played a critical role in this year’s Kenya elections, which were the first general elections held under the new constitution by providing voters with relevant information, and in opening up debate and dialogue. Popular Kenyan personalities have also helped demonstrate the power of Google+ Hangouts to interact with Kenyans such as Raila Odinga ...

Google Gives Users 15 GB Free Shared Storage Between Drive, Gmail & Google+ Photos

Google Gives Users 15 GB Free Shared Storage Between Drive, Gmail & Google+ Photos
Google has changed the way we use storage in  +Google Drive, +Gmail, and +Google+ Photos for a more seamless experience for people using its Google products. Google announced, “Instead of having 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos, you’ll now get 15 GB of unified storage for free to use ...

Ethiopia’s Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu Among Fast Company’s Most Creative People In Business 2013 At #62.

Ethiopia's Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu Among Fast Company's Most Creative People In Business 2013 At #62.
Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, founder soleRebels, a shoe manufacturing firm based in Ethiopia but selling its products worldwide has been named top 100 among Fast Company 2013 ‘s top 100 creative people in business along data geeks, world-changers, actors, rappers and top innovators. The 2013 competition ranked top creative minds in business identified global leaders in ...

Google Wants Students To Celebrate Kenya’s Jubilee Year With Over $19,000 In Prizes For ‘My Kenya’ Doodle

Google Wants Students To Celebrate Kenya's Jubilee Year With Over $19,000 In Prizes For 'My Kenya' Doodle
As Kenya nears its jubilee year of independence this December, Google has launched a doodle competition dubbed Doodle 4 Google in a move that will see the kids use their artistic talents to design the best doodle and stand a chance to win for themselves and their schools prizes worth over Ksh 1.6 million (about ...

Why Africa Needs To Abandon SMS Addiction

Why Africa Needs To Abandon SMS Addiction
By Frank Odongkara Sure, it’s almost impossible to make mention of progress in technology in Africa without mentioning mobile phones. It’s also a matter of fact that SMS is a great contributor to this mobile craze in Africa. In 2012, Google went as far as launching an SMS search service for Africa(which has been killed). ...

Vibrant-Africa Wants To Be The Online Guide To African Cities

Vibrant-Africa Wants To Be The Online Guide To African Cities
  Vibrant Africa is a comprehensive online guide to entertainment, tourism, culture and lifestyle in “urban Africa”. The portal also has a catalog of  daily and weekly events, special offers, attractions across several cities.The site now open for Lusaka, Zambia was founded by an expatriate Jakob Hoff in 2012 is a guide to African cities, ...

Africa Domain Name System Forum Set For Durban, South Africa, 12-13 July 2013

Africa Domain Name System Forum Set For Durban, South Africa, 12-13 July 2013
The Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Forum will be held on 12 – 13 July 2013 in Durban, South Africa in a move to establish a platform for the DNS community across Africa and to advance the domain name industry and domain name registrations on the continent. Over the years, the Internet Society, AfTLD, and ...

Songstress Omawumi Megbele Is the New Face of Online Shopping In Nigeria

Songstress Omawumi Megbele Is the New Face of Online Shopping In Nigeria
Multiple Award Winning Songstress “Omawumi Megbele” is the new face of Online Shopping in Nigeria as she has just been announced as the face of konga.com, Nigeria’s Online Megastore. There have been speculations in the media about which Mega Star would team up with konga.com to increase people’s confidence and spread the gospel of online ...

LG Taps Digital Migration | Introduces Digital TVs With Inbuilt Digital Signal Receivers

LG Taps Digital Migration | Introduces Digital TVs With Inbuilt Digital Signal Receivers
LG East Africa is positioning itself to attract corporate clients with its integrated digital TVs that come with inbuilt digital signal receivers by capitalising on the mandatory analogue-to-digital migration. Speaking to hotel chain owners, TV distributors and other players in the hospitality industry, Mr Josep Kim, the LG East Africa Director said hotels will not ...

Under One Per Cent of Clean Energy Technology Patents Filed in Africa

Under One Per Cent of Clean Energy Technology Patents Filed in Africa
Less than one per cent of all patent applications relating to Clean Energy Technology (CET) have been filed in Africa, highlighting an opportunity for the continent to leapfrog existing fossil-fuel energy sources and thus cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions and bring major health benefits. A new study by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the European ...

Amazon Launches Amazon Coins With 500 Free Coins For Kindle Fire Customers

Amazon Launches Amazon Coins With 500 Free Coins For Kindle Fire Customers
Amazon has announced its Amazon Coins for its customers to purchase apps, games and in-app items in the Amazon Appstore and on Kindle Fire. Amazon will deposit 500 free Coins—a $5 value— into Kindle Fire customers in the U.S. accounts. According to the firm, Amazon Coins is an easy way to purchase apps and in-app ...

LAW Holdings Acquires Shares In Assimilated Information Systems

LAW Holdings Acquires Shares In Assimilated Information Systems
LAW Holdings recently confirmed its purchase of a controlling stake in Assimilated Information Systems (Pty) Ltd. (AIS). As such the LAW Group of companies, which combined provide secure web-based workflow solutions to a wide-range of industries, now incorporates AIS following its purchase of a controlling stake in the technology systems company. The Group was established ...

Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Reveals Increase in Cyberespionage | Threefold Increase in Small Business Attacks

Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Reveals Increase in Cyberespionage | Threefold Increase in Small Business Attacks
 Symantec Corp.’s Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 18 (ISTR) today revealed a 42 percent surge during 2012 in targeted attacks compared to the prior year.  Designed to steal intellectual property, these targeted cyberespionage attacks are increasingly hitting the manufacturing sector as well as small businesses, which are the target of 31 percent of these attacks. ...

Samsung Announces World’s First 5G mmWave Mobile Technology

Samsung Announces World’s First 5G mmWave Mobile Technology
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd yesterday developed the world’s first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the millimeter-wave Ka bands for cellular communications. The new technology sits at the core of 5G mobile communications system and will provide data transmission up to several hundred times faster than current 4G networks. Speaking in Nairobi, Samsung Electronics East ...

Rocket Internet’s Namshi.com Receives US$13M Funding From Summit Partners For Its Middle East Expansion

Rocket Internet's Namshi.com Receives US$13M Funding From Summit Partners For Its Middle East Expansion
 Namshi, the Middle East’s leading online store for fashion and lifestyle, has secured funding through its German holding company of US$13 million by the growth equity firm Summit Partners to sustain its accelerated growth target. This is the second investment by Summit Partners in Namshi, further affirming the investors’ confidence in the online retailer after ...

CEO Weekends: Kenya’s MyStrawberrystore.com Wants To Bring IKEA Stuff Into Your Home & Office

CEO Weekends: Kenya's MyStrawberrystore.com Wants To Bring IKEA Stuff Into Your Home & Office
Co-founded in 2008 by Naomi Konditi-Kivuvani, who is also its Managing Director, My Strawberry Store retails home, office furnishings and accessories from Swedish Home Furnishings store, IKEA. She said: “IKEA stores do not yet have an outlet in Africa, making The Strawberry Store the one-stop shop for unique and inexpensive quality furnishings in Kenya. The co-founder and ...

CEO Weekends: JobInRwanda.com Wants You To Get Employed With Ease

CEO Weekends: JobInRwanda.com Wants You To Get Employed With Ease
Job in Rwanda is an online recruitment and job advertisement service created in January 2011, to help bridge the gap between employers in Rwanda and job seekers in the country and in the diaspora but interested to find gigs back home. The privately held company allows users to create a free and open online platform ...

CEO Weekends: Adict.me’s Vince Matinde On The Future Of Advertising | Social Media For Video & Online Ads

CEO Weekends: Adict.me's Vince Matinde On The Future Of  Advertising | Social Media For Video & Online Ads
    Adict.me was started in 2011 in Kenya in a bid to have viewers comment and share television ads in their social media space. The initial aim was to create a community where ad viewers would share their views on good and bad adverts that they see on television. The platform was developed by ...

South Africa Payroll Industry To Gather For Accsys’ Interactive Forum

South Africa Payroll Industry To Gather For Accsys’ Interactive Forum
  Key role-players within the South African payroll industry are scheduled to meet at an Interactive Forum at the Woodmead Country Club on 12 June 2013 to discuss pertinent topics affecting payroll within commerce. The Payroll Interactive Forum will be hosted by Business Connexion Group (BCX) member Accsys, a national supplier of people management software ...

Facebook To Acquire Israeli Social GPS App Waze For $1 Billion

Facebook To Acquire Israeli Social GPS App Waze For $1 Billion
New reports claim Facebook is in its last stages of acquiring Israeli location Waze for $1 Billion. The Israeli startup was founded in 2007 by Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar and Uri Levine and is home to over 40 million active users worldwide and considered to be the world’s largest social GPS app. According to Israeli ...

YouTube Debuts Paid Channels With $0.99 Monthly Price

YouTube Debuts Paid Channels With $0.99 Monthly Price
YouTube has introduced paid channels with a $0.99 monthly subscription fees in a move the company says will encourage content creators to earn revenue from their content. The team announced, “Starting today, we’re launching a pilot program for a small group of partners that will offer paid channels on YouTube with subscription fees starting at ...