Business
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SoftBank to Invest $2.25 Billion in GM’s Self-Driving Unit — Cruise
Cruise, a U.S. self-driving vehicle company majority-owned by General Motors Co (GM), on Friday revealed that a U.S. national security panel approved a $2.25 billion investment in the firm by Japan’s SoftBank Corp. SoftBank has come under increasing U.S. scrutiny over its ties to Chinese firms in the face of an escalating trade and technology…
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Vodacom Launches VodaPay Masterpass in South Africa
Vodacom has launched its new VodaPay Masterpass mobile app in South Africa, which uses Mastercard’s global digital payment service to facilitate tokenised bank card payments. The app is available on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, and is developed by the same company which created the Masterpass applications for South African banks. According to its…
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Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa Appointed Naspers SA First Female and Black CEO
A little more than 100 years ago, Naspers was created by white South Africans to produce a Dutch-language newspaper. Naspers, now Africa’s largest public company thanks to its investment in China’s Tencent, has appointed Phuti Mahanyele-Dabengwa its first woman, and first black person, as CEO of its SA business ahead of an offshore listing of its valuable…
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Safaricom’s M-Pesa Partners With AliExpress to Enable Kenyan Shoppers to Make Payments Online
Kenya’s Safaricom recently revealed that it had secured a deal to use its M-Pesa mobile payment service for online shopping on one of Alibaba’s platforms, part of a move to expand its most profitable product beyond Kenya. AliExpress customers in Kenya can now pay for goods using M-Pesa following a partnership deal with Safaricom and…
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Econet Adjusts Roaming and International Calling & SMS Services Tariffs Effective February 26
Econet Wireless has revised its roaming services and international outbound calling & SMS services tariffs following the Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) announced by the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe on the 20th of February 2019. The MPS designated RTGS balances, Bond notes and coins as RTGS dollars, effectively differentiating the same from any…
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DStv Prices to Increase as From 1 April
MultiChoice late on Tuesday confirmed 2019’s DStv price increases for its pay-TV packages, that will see an annual subscription increase of between 1.96% and 6.42% from 1 April 2019. The monthly subscription fee for MultiChoice’s most expensive and cheapest packages will remain unchanged, while there’s a price hike for all of the other DStv packages.…
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Airtel and Telkom Are Merging to Take on Safaricom in Kenya
Airtel and Telkom are merging to create a stronger challenger to the market leader, Safaricom. Indian-owned Bharti Airtel and Telkom Kenya announced a deal to operate under a joint venture company that will be named Airtel-Telkom. The two companies said the deal comprises their corresponding mobile, carrier, and enterprises services but won’t include Telkom Kenya’s real estate…
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MTN to Only Pay $53 Million to End Nigeria Dispute
Christmas has come early for MTN Group. The telecommunications operator’s shares are likely to soar when markets reopen on Thursday in Johannesburg after it announced late on Monday that it has settled a multibillion-dollar dispute in Nigeria. It will pay just US$53.2-million (about R777-million) in a settlement with Nigeria’s central bank, a tiny fraction of the…
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Strive Masiyiwa Grows Business Empire
Strive Masiyiwa, Econet Wireless founder, this week consolidated his position as one of Zimbabwe’s richest investors after his fintech company, Cassava Smartech (CSZL), became the most valuable counter by market value on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) when the company listed on the ZSE through an initial public offering. Masiyiwa, whose Econet Wireless Global group controls…
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DStv Opens up Premium Channels for the Festive Season
Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas…Guess what? DStv is giving lower-tiered subscribers an early Christmas gift by opening up some of the premium channels during the end-of-year and beginning-of-2019 festive period. From Tuesday, 18 December until Friday, 4 January 2019, SuperSport 1 (DStv 201) is being made available to DStv Compact Plus, DStv Compact, DStv Family,…
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Cassava Smartech Zimbabwe Listing on Tomorrow, December 18
Econet Wireless Zimbabwe’s fintech business Cassava Smartech Zimbabwe Limited (CSZL) will be listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) tomorrow. This comes after regulatory approvals to spin off the telecoms giant’s smart technology and financial technology businesses under a new holding company CSZL. The company controls 100 percent of Steward Bank, 100 percent EcoCash Limited,…