Hi guys, it is Friday! Once again, we bring you the latest and hottest in African Tech News. It is the Big 5 Daily.
We start with news that Airbus and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) have announced the top 10 African tech start-ups chosen in their #Future4Africa Accelerator. The startups that make up the shortlist were chosen based on their aerospace-based solutions which aims to solve important social challenges like transportation, agriculture and healthcare. The competition was tight, as over 316 Startups pitched for the accelerator. Kenya made up three startups on the list while South Africa had two. Malawi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mali and Ivory Coast make up the rest with one each.
Next up is news that Rendeavour, which is an Africa-based Urban Development Organization partnered with ATC Ghana to improve network connectivity in Appolonia City, Greater Accra. They will do these by deploying mobile towers in strategic positions in the city. ATC Ghana has autonomy on the provision of shared wireless infrastructure in the country. This upgrade will surely result in an increase in quality of internet in Appolonia and that is something we are pretty excited about.
Talking about Tech and travels, e-Kiosks, which is a self-service e-immigration solution has partnered with Gemalto to integrate technology into processes in the Entebbe Airport. The new technology includes facial recognition, fingerprint identification and passport scans. This will improve homeland security and also, optimize their processes. The Entebbe Airport, which in 2017 hosted over one and a half million travelers is fast growing and this is a welcome development.
In a bid to battle the increased prevalence of phishing on small to midsized businesses. Cofense has developed a free variation of their esteemed Phishing software called ‘Cofense PhishMe Free’. Phishing is the fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information through disguise and is a huge problem as 55% of small to medium businesses in the world have experienced cyber-attacks in the past 12 months.
We end today’s Big 5 Daily with interesting news as HP announced Elisabeth Moreno as the new Managing Director of HP Africa. She replaces David Rozzio who will move on to take a leadership role at HP in Central Europe. Moreno will be tasked with the provision of leadership and drive of profitable growth in the country. Moreno has previously held senior management roles at Orange and Shell and was recently President and General Manager of Lenovo in France. This is coming just days after Microsoft South Africa appointed Lillian Barnard as their Managing Director. It feels really good to see Women taking senior managerial positions in Tech Companies.
With that, we end the Big 5 Daily. See you next week.
