Welcome back from the holiday.
Hope you had a great one!
Once again, here is the compilation of the biggest stories today, “the Big 5”.
rAInbow, a South African company launched in 2018 to assist victims of violence with access information on their rights, has been recognized by the United Nation. The company was awarded the Netexplo award at the Netexplo Innovation Forum, in Paris France. The victims of domestic violence report their cases on the rAInbow bot via Facebook Messenger to get immediate responses.
Uber has raised $1 billion from Toyota, DENSO and Softbank to develop driverless cars for its ride-hailing service. This is shortly after its recent file for IPO on the New York Stock Exchange to raise $10 billion to expand globally. There is high hope that the partnership will successfully deploy automated ridesharing services.
The CEO and Co-founder of Jobberman, Ayodeji Adewumi, has resigned after 10 years of building the job search company. The journey that began in 2009 now operates across eight sub-Saharan countries in Africa with over one million job seekers and 10000 registered companies. Matthew Page, the Head of Jobs of Ringier One Africa Media will serve as the interim head for now.
Microsoft, Strathmore University and Access Partnership have partnered to launch an event series titled “AI for Good”, to promote AI services and products to individuals and organizations in Kenya. The adoption of artificial intelligence will promote technological advancement in Africa. A white paper titled “AI for Africa” extensively explains how AI can solve some of the challenges faced by Sub-Saharan Africa in different sectors.
Finally, a recent blog post by Blackberry shows that BBM is ready to bid its final farewell on the 31st of May. Popularly known for its Blackberry Messenger, a call and messaging software that was designed for Blackberry devices before it later went cross-platform for IOS, Android and Window users. The company announced that it will close the BBM consumer service next month after about 14 years of functioning.
For more news, follow us on our social media platforms @techgistafrica to read interesting stories happening around Africa’s tech ecosystem.
Enjoy the rest of your day.