by Tech Talk | Mar 15, 2023 | Articles
Africa is ripe for renewable energy innovation, with the adoption of wind and solar resources a key solution to addressing energy security.
According to the World Economic Forum, as of 2019, the electricity access rate was 46% with 570-million people not having access. By 2050, Africa’s population will reach 2-billion. This further shines a light on the importance of renewable energy, to not only achieve sustainability goals, but to also provide a reliable and crucial source of energy for millions across the rapidly growing continent.
However, cross-border payments are traditionally slow, and costly, and hinder growth for the renewable energy sector. How can cutting-edge technology impact such an important industry in today’s climate?
Understanding Africa’s potential
According to data from Energy, Capital & Power, Africa has an estimated 10 terawatts of solar capacity, 350 gigawatts of hydro power, and 110 gigawatts of wind power. Some areas are starting to adopt expansive solar facilities, such as Morocco and Egypt, but there is ample room for further renewable energy resources to be put in place in other markets.
Ola Oyetayo, CEO of Verto, says this makes it a crucial sector to watch in emerging markets, with room for both innovation and growth. “This will require collaboration between markets, however, cross-border payments remain an issue and can hinder the development of resources and expansion across regions in need.”
He says the use of alternative payment methods, such as digital wallets, is increasing in the infrastructure industry at a compounded annual growth rate of up to 30%. “That said, the renewable energy sector seems to fall short, with the majority of cross-border payments still being made through traditional methods, such as wire transfers and cheques. Not only does this result in delays to funds landing in the recipient’s account, but transaction fees can add up quickly to make it costly and inefficient.”
Then there are also the safety risks to consider using these channels. So, what is the reason for this reluctance to catch up to more innovative payment methods, and what impact would this switch have on renewable energy businesses in emerging markets such as Africa?
Out with the old
Oyetayo believes there are several reasons why the renewable energy sector is reluctant to adopt these alternative payment methods. “Some of these include a lack of awareness, not having the appropriate technology with these capabilities, regulation concerns, and a resistance to change over concerns of interrupted operations or preference for traditional methods.
“Sticking with the traditional methods, however, may be leaving these businesses vulnerable to problems that prevent them reaching their full potential. Common issues surrounding traditional methods are the high costs associated with cross-border payments, from high transaction fees, long settlement times, and losses due to exchange rate fluctuations. There may also be the perception of digital wallets being an increased cybersecurity threat and a lack of clarity around them being a safer alternative payment method,” he explains.
Understanding the benefits of enhanced financial technology and digital payment methods such as e-wallets could be the necessary steppingstone for renewable energy companies to reach their growth goals and innovate African markets more quickly. Often, this involves a transition to a new payments provider that is not a traditional bank, but will offer the solution to the problems associated with the traditional methods.
Acceleration of digital wallets
Adoption of digital wallets is on a fast upward trajectory in emerging markets, particularly in Southeast Asia where consumer numbers are projected to reach 310 million by 2025, according to Bain & Company. This study also found that India and China accounted for 70% of the world’s 2.1 billion digital wallet users.
In comparison, it was found by McKinsey that only up to 7% of all transactions in Africa were made via digital payments, compared with 50% in Turkey. The adoption of digital wallets not only presents an opportunity for renewable energy companies to grow across the continent, but also to connect with other businesses using this payment method.
For renewable energy firms, remaining innovative with clean energy solutions to reach sustainability goals is imperative, but this needs to go hand-in-hand with innovative technology when it comes to making and receiving payments. Accessing digital financial services catered to delivering solutions to African markets provides support for business growth, an improved way of life, and ultimately, a better planet.
Opportunities for Africa’s renewable energy
According to the World Economic Forum, an estimated 60% of healthcare facilities in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have access to a reliable electricity supply. This presents a strong use case for renewable energy solutions like solar panels or wind turbines to provide a source of energy.
The use of digital wallets can improve security and flow of funds, cutting out the need to rely on cash payments, cheques, or slow bank transfers with multiple touchpoints.
There has already been attention on the growth opportunities for renewable energy from Jack Dorsey’s digital payments company, Block, and the bitcoin-focused venture firm, Stillmark, who led a $2-million seed investment into Gridless, a Kenyan-based bitcoin mining company. This investment will help open more mines across Africa. According to Gridless’ founder, Erik Hersman, the power generation and mini-grids will help solve the power access issue that roughly 600-million across Africa face.
“Evidently there is ample opportunity for renewable energy businesses to help address the issue of limited access to energy across Africa. The adoption of improved financial technology and alternative payment methods like digital wallets can bring growth opportunities for the renewable energy sector and could be transformative for people and businesses across Africa,” concludes Oyetayo.
Editor@tech-talk.co.za
by Tech Talk | Mar 6, 2023 | Articles
President Cyril Ramaphosa will announce changes to the national executive at 7PM today, presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya said.
A cabinet reshuffle has been widely expected since Ramaphosa was re-elected leader of the ANC at a party leadership contest in December, paving the way for him to run for a second term in 2024.
“The president is finalising his reconfiguration of the national executive,” Magwenya said at a news briefing, adding that some members of parliament would be sworn in ahead of the reshuffling announcement.
Ramaphosa is expected to name a new deputy president after the presidency announced David Mabuza’s resignation from the post on Wednesday. The new position of electricity minister is among the roles to be filled.
He announced last month he would create the position of electricity minister to help address the nation’s power crisis, as state-owned utility Eskom implements the worst power cuts on record. — Reuters
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by Tech Talk | Mar 6, 2023 | Articles
Apple’s top executive in charge of cloud initiatives, including iCloud and the infrastructure for services like iMessage and FaceTime, is leaving the company, adding to a wave of recent departures.
The executive, Michael Abbott, is stepping down in April, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the move isn’t public. Abbott will be the second top lieutenant to services chief Eddy Cue to leave this year, joining a growing list of company vice presidents who have departed the iPhone maker in late 2022 and early 2023.
Abbott’s exit leaves a major hole in one of the company’s most critical divisions. As Apple’s vice president of cloud engineering, he’s in charge of the iCloud.com service, iCloud Mail and new features like iCloud data encryption. He also runs the company’s platform that powers iCloud, key communication services, the Find My feature and Emergency SOS on iPhones.
A spokesman for Cupertino, California-based company declined to comment.
The executive is one of a handful of Cue’s direct reports, a list that includes the heads of Apple TV+ content, music, financial services, maps, advertising and productivity apps. He also runs CloudKit, a service that developers can use to power third-party apps, and software offerings for both education and enterprise users. And he’s in charge of privacy and security engineering for Apple’s services.
The cloud services group had invested heavily in building an infrastructure to power its offerings. But more recently, the company has pared back that effort in favour of using servers hosted by Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Abbott’s group oversees a custom layer that sits on top of that infrastructure to optimise it for Apple’s offerings.
In recent years, Abbott has hired several cloud industry leaders to bolster Apple’s operations, but the integration of the new talent hasn’t gone as smoothly as some within the company had hoped, people familiar with the effort said.
Peter Stern, the other Cue deputy to leave this year, departed at the end of January. He was widely seen as a possible successor to Cue and ran many components of the company’s services business, including subscriptions and business matters for Apple TV+ and Apple News, as well as marketing across the services portfolio.
Abbott has held his role for five years. He joined Apple in 2018 after serving as an investor at venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins and an executive at Twitter, Microsoft and Palm. Apple employee shares vest in April, when Abbott plans to depart.
Beyond the departures of Abbott and Stern, Apple has recently lost executives in charge of industrial design, its online store, information systems, procurement, and parts of its hardware and software engineering divisions.
Apple has struggled in some cases to find successors, leading it to reshuffle roles. It chose not to name new privacy and design chiefs and split up the responsibilities of departing executives among remaining leaders.
Still, the company has had some success recruiting new executives. Its first chief people officer, Carol Surface, is joining Apple from Medtronic this month. — Bloomberg
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by Tech Talk | Mar 6, 2023 | Articles
Canal+ used a creeping takeover tactic to slowly acquire a significant portion of MultiChoice, threatening the company’s control structure.
During company takeovers — when one company acquires a controlling stake in another company — the acquisition price is typically valued at a premium to its market value.
It means the price per share paid is higher than the market value for the acquired company.
A buyer can be willing to pay a premium for another company they want to own for many reasons.
A deal may provide synergies between operations, the combined value can be worth more than their components, and it can lower costs.
As such, acquired companies rarely sell a majority share of their firm without pricing in a considerable premium.
It would, therefore, be beneficial for a purchasing company to increase its exposure to a target company without paying a “takeover premium”.
A popular way is buying a target firm’s shares in the open market and gradually increasing your stake without disclosing the motive behind the purchase.
This is known as a creeping takeover. With enough willing sellers, the acquiring company could gain a majority share in the target company without paying a premium.
A great example of a creeping takeover is the French media company Canal+ buying a large stake in MultiChoice through open market trades.
Over the last thirty months, Canal+ gradually increased its stake in MultiChoice — from 6.5% in October 2020 to its current level of over 30%.
In February 2023, MultiChoice announced that French media company Groupe Canal+ SA had increased its stake in the company to 30.27%.
Since MultiChoice first announced Groupe Canal+ was buying a large number of shares, the share price has traded relatively flat.
Canal+ was, therefore, able to increase its exposure to MultiChoice without needing to pay a premium on the DStv provider’s market value.
The creeping takeover strategy is likely to conclude soon as JSE regulations automatically trigger a mandatory buyout offer once a 35% ownership threshold is exceeded.
It means Canal+ would be forced to make an offer to buy all of the outstanding MultiChoice shares at this point.
Canal+ is close to this threshold level and, if it wants a majority position, it can no longer avoid paying a premium for the remainder of the stock.
It may be what Canal+ intended — buying as many MultiChoice shares at market value as possible and only paying a premium on the rest.
However, regulatory hurdles may prevent Canal+ from buying MultiChoice outright.
The Electronic Communications Act 36 of 2005 (ECA) puts limitations on foreign control of commercial broadcasting services through strict ownership rules.
- A foreigner may not, whether directly or indirectly, exercise control over a commercial broadcasting licensee.
- Not more than 20% of the directors of a commercial broadcasting licensee may be foreigners.
MultiChoice said their compliance with the ECA is ensured through restrictions in their Memorandum of Incorporation (MOI), where voting rights for foreigners collectively are limited to 20%.
The limited voting rights may bypass the ECA foreign ownership restrictions to some point, but a full takeover is a completely different beast. It is unlikely to be approved.
An alternative is for Canal+ to use its significant MultiChoice shareholding to gain control of MultiChoice Africa – the main prize it is after anyway.
MultiChoice Africa, which has around 12.8 million subscribers, is particularly valuable for Vivendi and Canal+ as synergies could unlock value for both companies.
MultiChoice Africa is mainly operational in South and East African countries like Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.
Canal+, in turn, mainly operates in francophone countries of Central and West Africa, as well as some non-francophone countries like Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ghana, and Cape Verde.
Although there is some overlap, like in Nigeria and Ghana, the two companies focus on different parts of the continent.
Richard Cheesman, a senior investment analyst at Protea Capital Management, said the benefits of a tie-up include lower content costs, better satellite leases, and the expedited use of MultiChoice Africa’s tax losses.
Merging Canal+ and MultiChoice Africa’s subscriber bases will give a new entity better negotiation rights on satellite costs, rights on sports and movies, and channel distribution agreements.
Combining Canal+ and MultiChoice Africa’s advertising sales teams will extend their reach and improve efficiency.
A combined advertising offering reaching most countries on the continent will appeal to many global and African brands.
MultiChoice’s expertise in online streaming — DStv Now and Showmax — can also assist Canal+ in its online endeavours.
Sa Eva Nébié, head of research at Dataxis, said, although the two companies are still managed independently, an operational merger would create an undisputed pay-TV leader in Africa.
Nebie highlighted that Canal+’s ultimate intentions remain undetermined.
However, its investment in and closer ties with MultiChoice give it more control over the African market, which will count more than 1.3 billion people by 2027.
“This strengthened collaboration would make it all the more difficult for new entrants to penetrate an already concentrated market with success,” Nebie said. – Mybroadband
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by Tech Talk | Mar 6, 2023 | Articles
In support of relief efforts after severe flooding in Mpumalanga, Vodacom has donated food and care packs to hundreds of families who have been left vulnerable in the Mbombela and Nkomazi local municipalities. The donation includes grocery hampers and toiletries, such as feminine hygiene products and facecloths.
At the handover, Zakhele Jiyane, Managing Executive for Vodacom Mpumalanga Region, said, “The recent floods have devastated communities in Mpumalanga and we want to ensure that affected families are supported during this time. In addition to making sure that we repair infrastructure as quickly as possible so that people in the region can stay connected, our flood relief efforts support our commitment as a company to improve the lives in the communities we serve. As part of our Social Contract, we are using our capabilities to help the people of Mpumalanga in this time of crisis and ensure they have access to the most basic of needs.”
Over the past few weeks, large parts of South Africa have been hit by heavy rains, leaving numerous areas under water. Flooding in Mpumalanga has affected Thekwane, Elandshoek, Hazyview, and Nkomazi, which has caused extensive damage to infrastructure and even resulted in fatalities. In addition, many residents in low-lying villages situated near rivers and dams have been displaced and have lost access to basic needs such as food, clothing, and toiletries.
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by Tech Talk | Mar 6, 2023 | Articles
China pledged to pool together all of the nation’s resources to achieve self-reliance in technology, underscoring the government’s determination to secure key breakthroughs in areas such as semiconductors as tensions with the US escalate.
In his government work report released at the start of the annual National People’s Congress on Sunday, outgoing Premier Li Keqiang reiterated the call for a “whole nation strategy” to edge out Washington on basic scientific research and advanced technologies ranging from advanced intelligence to space. His remarks come days after the Biden administration blacklisted more Chinese companies in the chip and genome industries.
“The new system for mobilising resources nationwide should be improved,” Li said. “We should better leverage the role of the government in pooling resources to make key technological breakthroughs, and enterprises should be the principal actors in innovation.”
Li’s speech, along with recent calls from Chinese President Xi Jinping, signals the top leadership’s determination to break choke points for an upper hand in the tech war with the US. Choke points refers to key technologies to make things like chips or jet engines that China lacks and the US and other nations control.
China should encourage private capital to collaborate on major government initiatives and projects aimed at addressing areas of weakness, Li said. Having “effectively countered external attempts to suppress and contain China’s development” in the past five years, China should “pool quality resources and make concerted efforts” to achieve breakthroughs in key technology fields in the future, he said.
The Chinese government’s hefty investment in the chip industry has borne little fruit in recent years, with technology champions from Huawei Technologies to Semiconductor Manufacturing International struggling to advance their chip technologies following US blacklisting. Sanction-hit Yangtze Memory Technologies, the country’s best shot to make memory chips for smartphones and computers, is also having trouble expanding capacity despite receiving additional state capital.
Xi has ordered the ruling Communist Party to exercise more control over the country’s science and technology agenda, paving the way for the creation of an even more powerful overseer to steer strategically critical industries. — Bloomberg
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