Tag: power supply

Despite ongoing challenges such as inconsistent power supply and economic instability, an impressive 83% of small businesses have grown their revenue in the past year, and 90% are optimistic about their future growth. These findings from our 2025 State of Small Business Report may be surprising to most, but they prompt the question: What is driving this optimism? The answer lies in SMEs' bold embrace of technology.

Access to reliable electricity remains a significant challenge across Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in rural areas. Expanding grid infrastructure is often prohibitively expensive and impractical due to difficult terrain and large distances from urban centres. As a result, millions of people rely on costly and polluting diesel generators or go without electricity altogether. Off-grid solar solutions have emerged as a transformative tool in bridging this energy gap.

In an era of unprecedented environmental and operational challenges, South Africa's office parks stand at a critical juncture. Energy insecurity, water scarcity and ageing municipal infrastructure are no longer distant concerns but immediate challenges that demand innovative solutions.

Modernising Africa’s power grid to manage bi-directional flows is essential for enabling renewable-powered economic growth, following the crippling effects of prolonged periods of load shedding. Even though South Africa has experienced a protracted spell without load shedding, electricity outages persist due to network overloading.

As the world’s second largest continent, the vast expanse Africa lends itself to remote operations, often hundreds of kilometres away from civilisation and the hub of infrastructure and supply such as energy. Industries like mining, minerals and metals often must contend with considerable energy loss or high transportation costs of diesel (for self-generation) due to these vast distances.

Today, many power industry stakeholders are faced with mounting requirements for improved grid reliability, resilience, and distribution efficiency. It’s a challenge which requires power service providers to rethink their infrastructure, particularly making the most of smart grid philosophies in their deployments.

From smoke signals and homing pigeons, long-distance communications have come a long way – today telecom platforms and solutions have transformed how organisations and individuals share voice, data, video and information. The world has moved beyond the physical and into the digital with solutions that allow for clear, always-on, and accessible communications.

Accessing the right funding and financing, at the right time, can mean the difference between starting up, staying open, or shutting down. The economy is facing a challenging business environment, with slow global growth, economic volatility, and ongoing power supply issues. This means that many businesses in South Africa are still trying to find their financial footing

Innovations kept coming in 2023 and load shedding continues in 2024. This drives my choice of the year’s best load shedding gadgets. I have selected the best of the year’s gadgets that made life more convenient, enjoyable and manageable to ease the power outages.

The marriage of global expertise with local know-how cannot be overstated.  This is particularly true in the case of hyperscaler marketplace in Africa, which has enjoyed some tremendous growth in recent years. In South Africa, global cloud service providers (CSPs) like Microsoft, IBM, AWS, Oracle have expanded their cloud data centres which, in turn, has bolstered the hyperscaler market.