Tag: AI

Backup, disaster recovery, and operational resilience are often used interchangeably in boardroom conversations. However, they are three distinct disciplines. Each carries its own risk if organisations leave it unaddressed. Organisations that conflate the three are frequently the ones caught out when ransomware strikes.

South Africa’s mining industry has long been defined by what lies beneath the surface - vast mineral wealth that has shaped the country’s economy for more than a century. But as ore bodies become deeper, more complex and increasingly costly to access, the future of mining will no longer be determined by what we find underground alone. It will be defined by how intelligently we use the data above it.

South Africa’s founder-led tech ecosystem is deeper than it has ever been, but it is still structurally thin at scale. The most recent data tells a clear story. The Southern African Venture Capital and Private Equity Association 2025 VC Industry Survey recorded R13.35 billion in active venture capital investments across 1,325 deals. ICT accounted for nearly two-thirds of total deal value.

As industrial automation becomes increasingly software-driven and AI-enabled, the channel partner's role is undergoing a profound shift. The next generation of partners will be evaluated not on the products they sell, but on their ability to design, integrate, and support outcome-based solutions in complex, connected environments.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) should be embraced, but deception should not be, and South African businesses should understand that Europe’s AI rules may apply even if they have no office in Europe.

As a society, we are rightly asking some important questions about the future of our world. Some of the most important questions relate to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it could impact our lives and livelihoods. They also concern whom and what we trust. Other important questions arise from the changing geopolitical order.

From Ancient Egypt and the Stoics to Rome and Artificial Intelligence, humanity has never stopped asking what lies behind the extraordinary fact that we know we exist

If there is one thing organisations know well, it is that disputes are expensive. The expense extends beyond legal fees. It also includes management time, damaged relationships and strategic distraction. A supplier dispute that should take weeks can consume months of senior attention. For multinationals juggling cross-jurisdictional matters, the logistical burden alone can dwarf the value of the underlying claim.

Imagine this: It’s 7:30 a.m. in Nairobi, and your phone buzzes with an alert from the treasury dashboard. Overnight, a sudden Foreign Exchange (FX) shock in East Africa has threatened to erode your continent-wide supply chain margins by 5 percent. Yet, your factory in Lagos has already executed an automated hedge that caps the risk at 1 percent.

During my time working at South African Breweries (SAB), I watched young graduates arrive on the factory floor holding hard-earned chemistry degrees. They possessed brilliant theoretical minds. They understood molecular bonds and complex reactions on paper. Yet, when a critical machine on the production line broke down, those degrees often could not get the line moving again.