Author: Brand Spot

By Lillian Barnard, President of Microsoft Africa. It’s difficult to imagine a time before the widespread adoption of mobile technology in Africa – particularly where financial services are concerned. For millions of unbanked people, transactions were limited to cash, postal services or even the barter system. Now, in much the same way as mobile payments completely disrupted the status quo, AI has the potential to propel the fintech industry into a new era of financial inclusion. And perhaps most exciting of all is that Africa is not simply catching up with AI-powered developments, but surging ahead with innovative solutions that…

Less than a decade ago, to play with your friends you would all have to be playing within the same ecosystem. That meant you were a part of the PlayStation, Xbox or PC gaming communities—especially if you were gaming in high school. But that’s not the case anymore. Many modern games have embraced cross-play gaming, allowing gamers to play with those using other devices and even generations of hardware. But is this a short term-trend or a new standard? Let’s take a closer look. What is Cross-play Gaming? If a game is cross-play, it means that you can play online…

By Akua Gyekye Over the last year and a half, the audience for AI has grown from IT experts to almost anyone with internet access. Large Language Models enable online users to interact with AI systems, regardless of whether they can code. A large part of why Generative AI has been such a game changer is that it eliminates the need for specialised AI knowledge to reap the benefits of technology. In short, the opportunity to democratize AI has never been better. However, for Africa to seize this opportunity and truly democratize AI, much work remains to be done in…

By Christopher Saul, Territory Sales Lead for East Africa at Red Hat Demand for cloud infrastructure and services across East Africa is prompting vendors to significantly invest in the region. Recently, it was announced Oracle will open a public cloud region in Nairobi, Kenya, its second on the continent after the Oracle Cloud Johannesburg Region, which launched in 2022. This reflects the upward trend of cloud services across the entire MEA region, resulting in a competitive infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market where enterprises have the opportunity to migrate and meet all their enterprise IT needs. Cloud adoption sets the stage for Kenya…

By Dr Jacki O’Neill The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked widespread debate about its potential impact, particularly on jobs, in recent years. Africa is on the verge of a transformative era that has the potential to reshape the continent’s labour landscape. To be sure, the potential benefits and challenges of AI in Africa’s labour markets are complex and multifaceted, necessitating a nuanced approach to capitalise on the opportunities while mitigating the risks. One of the potential consequences for Africa is the possible displacement of jobs. As AI technologies improve, entire industries will find new ways to work…

It is truly amazing to see how quickly bitcoin and blockchain technology have grown around the world. New digital assets and decentralized ledger systems are shaking up old ways of doing business in the financial world and opening up new business possibilities. Kenya is one of the first countries to use cryptocurrency. As of 2022, about 6.1 million people, or 10.71% of the population, owned cryptocurrency. Kenya is one of the first places in Africa to adopt these technologies because it has a strong ecosystem of crypto enthusiasts, companies, and regulations that support them. These new ideas are set to…

In today’s fast-paced business world, time is of the essence. Every second counts and any delays or inefficiencies can result in lost opportunities and revenue. That’s why businesses are constantly on the lookout for ways to streamline their processes and increase efficiency. One area that has seen significant advancements in recent years is receipt management. Thanks to the development of Receipt OCR APIs, businesses can now easily and accurately extract data from receipts, eliminating the need for manual data entry. In this blog post, we will explore the benefits of using receipt OCR APIs and how they can help businesses…

Sophos has released the Active Adversary analysis, “It’s Oh So Quiet [?]: The Sophos Active Adversary Report for 1H 2024.” The report, which analyzes more than 150 incident response [IR] cases handled by the Sophos X-Ops IR team in 2023, found that cybercriminals abused remote desktop protocol [RDP]—a common method for establishing remote access on Windows systems—in 90% of attacks. This was the highest incidence of RDP abuse since Sophos began releasing its Active Adversary reports in 2021, covering data from 2020. In addition, external remote services such as RDP were the most common vector by which attackers initially breached…

Visa announced continued expansion of its global value-added services business with the addition of three new AI-powered risk and fraud prevention solutions. The new products, part of the end-to-end Visa Protect suite, are designed to reduce fraud across immediate account-to-account and card not present (CNP) payments, as well as transactions both on and off Visa’s network.  Visa Protect is part of a broad suite of Visa value-added services that have grown to nearly 200 products, spanning five high-demand categories: Acceptance, Advisory, Issuing, Open Banking and Protect. To help clients navigate a growing number of complexities, Visa has combined decades of expertise…

Did you know that you can transfer money to other networks through Airtel Money at an affordable rate of as low as Sh6? Airtel Money, in its strive to enhance its customers’ lives, guarantees affordable transaction fees to improve financial inclusion. Recently, the Central Bank of Kenya approved Airtel Money’s request to raise the daily mobile money transaction limit to Sh500,000 from the previous Sh300,000. As a result, customers can now make multiple transactions within the daily limit of Sh500,000, with each transaction capped at Sh250,000. This has increased flexibility allowing Airtel Money users to manage their finances more conveniently.…