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Workplace Health Surveillance Tool Launched in South Africa

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Sourced from ISHN.com As more South Africans return to work in May, workplaces are re-designing to combat COVID-19 infection, while simultaneously reassuring workers are the new priority. Fortunately, South African innovation is rising to the challenge of reimagining shared workspaces in the COVID-19 era and a timely example of this is HealthID. Launched this week by a group of Cape Town-based entrepreneurs, HealthID helps employers comply with new government regulations that stipulate they should not only screen employees for signs of COVID-19 infection, but they must specifically create and maintain a database outlining the health status of individual workers. “It’s doubtful any reputable employer would want to incur the wrath of the Department of Labour inspectors by recording something...

Politics

GovChat to Digitise Africa’s Largest COVID-19 Social Relief Campaign

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GovChat, the South African civic engagement technology platform, has announced a partnership with the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) to support the digitisation of the COVID-19 social relief grant application process. The partnership with GovChat could enable millions of unemployed citizens to access the largest social security programme on the African continent directly from their mobile devices. GovChat’s platform – accessed through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS and USSDchannels – is said to provide a secure application portal for pre-qualifying citizens, automating filling, verification and applicant assessment. The automation of processes, using the GovChat artificial intelligence tools, enhances the agency’s productivity and allows them to respond to more application...

Politics

Cell C Faces Potential Job Cuts

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Image sourced from Town Press South African network provider, Cell C says that it’s reevaluating some of the jobs at executive and management level – this process could deem certain positions redundant and ultimately result in job cuts. “In early March 2020, Cell C initiated a consultation process in terms of section 189A (2) of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995, specifically at a senior manager and executive level, and advised employees of the possibility of redundancy of certain positions and contemplated retrenchments,” says Cell C to My Broadband. The telecoms provider then went on to say that the process is still underway and it’s not yet sure how many positions will be cut. /* custom css */ .tdi_3_b38.td-a-rec-img{ text-align: left; }.tdi_3_b38.td-a-rec-img img{ margin: 0 auto 0 0;...

Politics

Ericsson Appoints New Head of South and East Africa

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Ericsson has announced the appointment of Todd Ashton as the Vice President and Head of Ericsson South & East Africa. Prior to assuming this role, Ashton served as the Head of Ericsson Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and Global Customer Unit Axiata within Ericsson in Market Area South East Asia Oceania & India. “We are committed to our customers’ success in Africa while also building a strong position in the continent as the market evolves to 4G and 5G. Throughout his years of experience, Todd has demonstrated strong leadership and has been successful in driving growth in very competitive environments. I am confident Todd has the right background and experience to lead the customer unit and deliver on our customers’ commitments,” says Fadi Pharaon, President of Ericsson Middle E...

Politics

HPE Offers Digital Learning Platform to all South Africans

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Sourced from Silicon Angle Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced that it will give 30 days free access to the company’s Learning-as-a-Service Platform – provided users register before the end of May 2020. Offering around 5000 hours of training across numerous modules, the HPE Digital Learner Platform acts as a global example of how digital learning is exploring access to education and skills. “As a prominent global edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service provider, HPE is acutely aware that COVID-19 has increased the pressure on technology companies to innovate ever-more effective remote operability”, says Renay Rampersadh, Education Manager at HPE South Africa. “COVID-19 has not only cast the demand for remote capability into stark relief, but has also highlighted the shortage of skil...

Politics

Children’s Internet Activity Increases by 200% During Lockdown

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South African children have become more active on the Internet as the national lockdown progresses. Comparing their activity in the first week of January and the last week of March, the overall number of website visits grew by 200%. This became evident from the analysis of Kaspersky Safe Kids parental control module of Q1 2020. Children’s activity on the Internet is as important nowadays as their behaviour and social environment outside. This is why it is crucial to help a child to navigate through the information that surrounds them on the web, making sure that the experience is positive. During the worldwide lockdown, children are prone to look for entertainment online more than ever, so this period has shown some important changes in their behaviour that correlated with the increase in ...

Politics

AWS Partners with Vodacom to Improve Business and Cloud Solutions

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Image sourced from Blog dbi services Amazon Web Services (AWS) – alongside launching its next wave of data centres in South Africa – has partnered with  Vodacom to grow the South African mobile networks offering further and deliver improved business and cloud solutions. “Vodacom is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner with operations across the African continent, so naturally we are very pleased that they have made the decision to invest in the South African market, as well as the broader African market, by opening these data centres in Cape Town,” says Shameel Joosub, Vodacom Group CEO. “The most exciting aspect of this is the integration of AWS into the Vodacom Network, which will allow our clients to take advantage of the benefits of both offerings, and use them to transform their bu...

Politics

Teraco to Build Second-Largest Data Centre in Africa

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Teraco has officially confirmed the construction of Teraco Cape Town 2 (CT2), a new 30MW data centre facility. This follows the company’s recent 60MW expansion announcement of its Johannesburg data centre campus in Isando and makes the Cape Town facility the second-largest on the continent. Jan Hnizdo, CEO at Teraco, says that the company is standing by its 2019 commitment to support the South African Government’s investment drive and with this build will be investing Billions of Rands in South Africa’s digital infrastructure: “We are truly proud that we can keep investing in the region and make good on our promise.” Driving this investment, according to Hnizdo, is the growth of cloud in the region, resulting in increased demand from cloud providers, enterprises and sub-sea cable operators...

Politics

Huawei P40 Lite to Launch in South Africa

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Image sourced from Connected Devices Huawei is about ready to release the first device from its highly-anticipated P40 series. According to the Chinese tech giant, the P40 Lite is more powerful and robust than its predecessors – it also marks the second Huawei smartphone to launch in South Africa that comes standard with Huawei’s HMS ecosystem. The Huawei P40 lite is powered by the Kirin 810, a high-end 7nm chipset, which is integrated with a Mali G52 GPU that boasts excellent graphics processing capabilities. In addition, the 4200MAh battery and 40W Huawei SuperCharge support offer lower power consumption and long-lasting battery life. With its 6.4-inch Punch FullView Display, 90.6% screen-to-body ratio and 48MP quad-camera, Huawei believes this handset is all about creating and viewing h...

Politics

MTN Plans to Re-open Stores across South Africa

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Sourced from The Techie Guy As South Africa’s economy slowly starts regaining traction, MTN has announced that all of its 410 stores across the country would reopen. Around eighty per cent of MTN’s stores already began trading on May 1. Limited trading hours, a strictly controlled shift system, 2m social distancing barrier markings, and regular health-checks are among the key proactive measures MTN has put in place. “Our focus is on continuing to give customers all the support they need to stay connected to their friends and family.  Of course, safety is of paramount importance and we ask all customers going into our stores to please adhere to the protocols in place to help them, and our employees, to stay safe,” says Jacqui O’Sullivan, Executive for Corporate Affairs at MTN. All...

Politics

Vodacom’s Chatbot Answers up to 20 000 Customer Queries per day

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With the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in full effect, Vodacom has put numerous measures in place to protect customers and employees. These include measures that have seen frontline agents now working from home as well as stepping up its reliance on TOBi – Vodacom’s chatbot. Using the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, TOBi was created and designed to resolve issues as quickly and efficiently as possible online. According to the network provider, TOBi now solves between 10 000 to 20 000 customer queries a day via SMS, WhatsApp, the My Vodacom app and on the Vodacom website. “Since TOBi’s launch, we have seen how the deployment of a powerful chatbot can transform the way our customers engage with the brand, especially when the chatbot is of high quality,” says Ugestra Alwar, Man...