African Tech Round-Up

According to a ruling made by South Africa's Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), an employer-employee relationship does, in fact, exist between Uber and driver-partners. This follows Uber being dragged to the CCMA several months ago by seven driver-partners who alleged that they were unfairly deactivated by the service. The ride-hailing service has long contended that it is simply a virtual marketplace that connects drivers and passengers and not an employer-- citing the fact that Uber doesn't own cars or have drivers on their payroll. In this African Tech Round-up episode, Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga discuss some of the legal implications of this ruling, and how they might compromise Uber's business model. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

In this chat with Baba Zoumanigui, IBM's General Manager for French Speaking Africa, he shares insights drawn from his international IT career. Baba gives us a sense of the lucrative value IBM is determined on unearthing in Africa and reflects candidly on what it takes for an African IT pro to navigate and thrive in a corporate scene dominated by Europeans and North Americans.

Rebecca Enonchong is an award-winning Cameroonian-born technology entrepreneur who is affectionately known as the "Queen of African Tech". Rebecca is the founder and CEO of AppsTech, and quite notably a co-founder and Vice-President of the African Business Angels Network (ABAN). In this catch-up chat with Andile Masuku, Rebecca reflects on the #BringBackOurInternet campaign she continues to back, explains why she's annoyed by all the foreign aid money flooding Africa's tech scene and gives us a status update on her very public spat with MTN.

Shaun Kirby oversees product development for Cisco's automotive and connected car business unit. He is responsible for evangelising and acting on trends that will disrupt and transform the world's mobility industry. In this conversation, he explains why he's excited about IoT and talks about whether it's sensible to anticipate that Africa will leapfrog the traditional motor vehicle to adopt more advanced mobility options, this as the global trend towards ride-sharing and self-driving vehicle deployment continues.

Wolf Stinnes is smart buildings and digital cities solutions architect at Dimension Data. In this conversation, he talks about some clever top tier sport and health tech solutions that he and his team are beta testing and taking to market at the moment.

It's no secret, Africa's largest tech company by market cap, Naspers, has been buckling under the pressure to perform for some years now. The fact is, the company hasn't scored any big wins in any of the legacy internet and pay-TV verticals it once used to dominate with ease. Naspers' most recent financial results seem to validate the notion that except for the firm's exceedingly lucrative 33 percent stake in the Chinese cash cow that is Tencent, there seems to be little else to write home about in terms of outstanding performance. In this episode of the African Tech Round-up, Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga discuss the merits of an open letter penned by a certain Albert Saporta - the managing director of the Geneva-based investment advisory firm and Naspers shareholder, AIM&R - accusing Naspers CEO Bob van Dijk of destroying approximately $25.6 billion of shareholder value since his appointment more than three years ago. Sniper! Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under

John Lewis is the Director Business Partnering at Rockwell Automation. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, taped at the Internet of Things World Forum 2017 hosted at London's Tobacco Dock (creaking floorboards and all), John talks about how his company is adapting to changing times by drafting software developers and tech-savvy business specialists who can speak to the myriad of optimisation challenges faced by their clients all over the world. He also rebuffs the widely-held belief that the global trend towards aggressive factory automation is destroying livelihoods.

The Sub-Saharan Africa heads of the likes of Huawei, Oracle, Cisco, IBM and perhaps even Amazon, Facebook and Google, have no doubt already booked first class tickets to Lilongwe to advise the Malawian government on what to do with the $72.4 million line of credit the country has secured from the World Bank to "help Malawi build the digital foundations needed to help the country connect to the global digital economy". This development comes in the wake of the World Bank resuming "budget support financing" for Malawi in May 2017 after a four-year hiatus. In this African Tech Round-up, Musa Kalenga and Andile Masuku discuss some of the things that Malawian policy-makers ought to prioritise as they engage with potential technology partners. News like this helps contextualise some of the sentiments expressed by David Meads, Cisco's Africa business head, in a recent IoT-focussed chat he had with Andile, in which he highlighted his organisation's commitment to assisting African governments with their digital transf

Anton Jooste is Dimension Data’s Global Director for the Internet of Things. In this chat, he contextualises the promise of IoT for African enterprises and citizens, and candidly outlines what's at stake if Africans don't prepare themselves to participate in the new digital economy.

Prathap Dendi is an engineer-turned startup executive with over 15 years of experience in technology leadership positions in companies ranging from startups to giants. He is currently the general manager for emerging technologies at the application performance management and IT operations analytics start-up AppDynamics, which Cisco recently acquired in the US for a whopping $3.7 billion. Prathap hails from the South of India and in this conversation he shares insights regarding how technological innovation, not least IoT, might be wisely harnessed to deliver life-changing solutions to the world’s poorest populations.

David Meads has lead Cisco’s Operations across Africa since 2012 and is responsible for the company’s go-to-market strategy across the continent as well as the field execution of that strategy. As Cisco’s VP for Africa, David is responsible for how Cisco partners with African Government’s and private sector companies alike to help them define and implement Digital strategies that will help them unlock the full potential of the "Internet of Everything". In this conversation, David explains how his company hopes to ensure that the trend towards IoT adoption delivers value for the average African citizen.

This week's African Tech Round-up is dedicated to sharing insights gleaned from the recent Internet of Things World Forum (2017IoTWF)hosted in London. The Global IT and networking giant, Cisco, convened the invite-only gathering to facilitate dialogue among key stakeholders and innovators in business, government and academia and to “bring industry leaders together to collaborate, network, partner and solve the challenges facing IoT”. To ascertain how the trend towards IoT adoption is likely to impact African enterprises and citizens alike we caught up with Dimension Data’s Global Director for the Internet of Things, Anton Jooste, David Meads, who heads up Cisco’s Africa business, Prathap Dendi, who is the general manager for emerging technologies at the application performance management and IT operations analytics start-up AppDynamics, as well as Alan Griffiths of Cambashi-- an analyst specialising in industrial IoT, cloud computing, and their effect on the technical software applications market. Music Credi

Kenya's finest digital-head, Mark Kaigwa, joins Musa Kalenga and Andile Masuku on this week's African Tech Round-up for two glorious hours of straight-talk. Using the biggest tech and innovation headlines from the past couple of weeks as a springboard, the trio chats candidly about everything from major broadband infrastructure developments to cyber security issues-- touching on the implications of M-PESA's imminent interoperability and even discussing the politics of Africa's startup funding scene. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Etop Ikpe and his team at the Nigerian vehicle marketplace, Cars45.com, are no doubt feeling great following the successful close of the company's $5 million Series A funding round a couple of weeks ago. Given the tough time Nigeria's e-commerce industry has been having of late, the significance of this achievement is not lost on us. Previously the Commercial Director of Konga-- one of Nigeria’s largest online shopping platforms, and formerly the CEO and Co-MD of DealDey, Etop is unquestionably an e-commerce veteran at this point. Etop joined DealDey after the startup acquired Three Stitches-- Nigeria’s first e-commerce website dedicated to fashion, which he founded in 2008. Prior to that, Etop founded Tinker Bell Media LTD, which produced We Run the Game-- a syndicated sports program broadcast terrestrially across 12 Broadcast Networks. Cars45 is Nigeria's largest used car sales platform and runs local inspection centres in strategic locations around the country which help customers value and sell their cars

Etop Ikpe and his team at the Nigerian vehicle marketplace, Cars45.com, are no doubt feeling great following the successful close of the company's $5 million Series A funding round a couple of weeks ago. Given the tough time Nigeria's e-commerce industry has been having of late, the significance of this achievement is not lost on us. Previously the Commercial Director of Konga-- one of Nigeria’s largest online shopping platforms, and formerly the CEO and Co-MD of DealDey, Etop is unquestionably an e-commerce veteran at this point. In this episode of the African Tech Round-up, he explains why Nigeria's e-commerce scene hasn't lived up to many of the lofty expectations that were set for it five or six years ago. Also in this show, Andile chats with Ammin Youssouf, who formerly founded and helmed the celebrated creative agency, Big Youth, before co-founding and serving as CEO at Afrobytes Ventures. Listen in to hear what Ammin and his team have in store for those of us attending Europe's premier Africa-focussed

Scientists have found a way to remove the HIV virus from the DNA in mouse cells using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. According to the journal, Molecular Therapy, use of the technique has led to the complete elimination of infection in mouse organs and tissue after just one treatment. Now, that's the kind of international tech news that really gets us excited around here! And, yes! The team at the African Tech Round-up is back from a much-needed break, and we're super-stoked to catch up on news like this CRISPR HIV breathrough, as well as dive into some of the other significant headlines that dropped while we were away. We're pleased to announce that Musa Kalenga will be joining Andile as a guest co-host on the show every fortnight starting this week to chat about the most important stories and to unpack major trends impacting Africa's tech ecosystem. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Monica Brand Engel is a Peruvian American investor and entrepreneur who has been involved with a number of investment vehicles and products aimed at broadening financial inclusion. Monica spent her formative years in Silicon Valley and is a disciple of agile development and user-centered design. The financial inclusion businesses she helped launch include Quona Capital, Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund and its predecessor fund, Frontier Investments Group, Anthuri Catalysts (Cape Town venture capital accelerator), a Calvert index fund (Bethesda based socially responsible mutual fund), lending intermediaries sponsored by The Development Fund (San Francisco based) and new business lines with Compartamos (now Gentera, the largest microfinance institution in Mexico). In this chat, Monica talks to Andile Masuku about Quona's recent investment in the South African fintech startup, Yoco, and comments on some of the criticism frequently levelled at the impact investment community.

Allard Luchsinger is the Director for Private Equity at the Dutch VC firm Velocity Capital Private Equity. Allard supports all of Velocity’s portfolio companies as an active board member for TradeKing, an innovative US online brokerage firm; 8 Securities, Asia’s next-generation online broker based in Hong Kong; Five Degrees, a progressive banking software provider from The Netherlands; as well as Cellulant, a leading mobile commerce and payment technology provider from Kenya. He joined Velocity Capital in 2011, after co-founding and serving as the COO of the groundbreaking San Francisco-based online brokerage firm Zecco. At Zecco, Allard drove all operations, growing the firm’s client base to more than 250,000 accounts. In 2012, Zecco merged with competing brokerage firm TradeKing in 2012 to create the industry’s sixth largest online broker, TradeKing Group Inc. Previously, Allard served as associate partner at the Dutch strategy-consulting firm Boer & Croon, as well as co-founder and CEO of TradingCars.c

Andile catches up with Stephen Ozoigbo at the inaugural Enterprise Africa Summit that was recently hosted by the British Council in Accra, Ghana. Ozoigbo is the CEO of The African Technology Foundation. He has dedicated his energies to addressing the obvious gaps in Africa’s tech startup pipeline by championing some of the most high profile ecosystem growth initiatives on the continent— not least, by serving as Managing Partner of Lions@frica, being an key executive supporter of DEMO Africa and helping to organise the Geeks on a Plane Africa Tour which ended in April 2017.

We’re still in celebration mode for crossing 100 weekly podcasts in a row. And so as promised, this week, we’re sharing more awesomeness from that event. Enjoy this candid fireside chat with the talented digital specialist, marketing maven, author, former Africa Client Partner at Facebook, current Head of Brand at IAB South Africa, and Founder and CEO of a new adtech startup called Microtising, Musa Kalenga. In this conversation, Musa shares loads of insights on starting up in Africa, and talks about the challenges of navigating Africa's corporate digital scene. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution