(This article was published on 28 May 2016 in the Weekend Argus, a weekly newspaper published by Independent Media in Cape Town, Western Cape province.)
Written by Yazeed Kamaldien
Innovative renewable energy businesses in Atlantis are not only contributing to Cape Town’s green economy but also creating jobs for locals.
Atlantis My Citi Trucking Stations Driver Mr George Nano from Atlantis
Atlantis is just under an hour’s drive from central Cape Town and is usually associated with poverty and accompanying social ills.
When Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille visited the small town yesterday, she met with renewable energy businesses to discuss their role in the energy eco-system.
Thirteen companies, all part of the South African Renewable Energy Business Incubator (Sarebi) in Atlantis, collectively received R500,000 from the City of Cape Town last year.
De Lille said assisting these businesses was part of a plan to ensure that locals could cope with Eskom’s power cuts and also save money by using renewable energy sources.
Instead of paying Eskom for electricity, locals could generate their own power at home via solar panel geysers, for example.
“Atlantis is an area that has faced difficult social and economic challenges, including high unemployment. Our support to this area underscores our commitment to building an opportunity city,” said De Lille.
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Mauritania: Visa-free to Mauritania
Nouakchott — After Algeria started requiring visas for Syrians last year, Mauritania became the only country in North Africa that offered visa-free travel for Syrians. They flew into Nouakchott, the capital, from Turkey or Lebanon.
Officially, there is still no visa requirement for Syrians, but starting in February, dozens of Syrians have been turned back after arriving at the airport in Nouakchott.
Mohamed Abdellahi Ould Zeidane, from Mauritania’s interior ministry, confirmed that a prior agreement on visa-free travel with Syria was no longer valid.
Abdelaziz Abderzak, a doctor from Darah in southern Syria, moved to Mauritania as war broke out in earnest in 2012.
“Our family has lost many of its members, including children. The survivors, besides me, are between Jordan and border villages in Israel,” he said. “I left a son in Algiers who I can no longer see.”
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Zonnebloem: Cape Town’s latest gentrification hotspot
(This article was published on 29 May 2016 in the Weekend Argus, a weekly newspaper published by Independent Media in Cape Town, Western Cape province.)
Written by Yazeed Kamaldien
Zonnebloem neighbourhood’s working class residents in Springfield Terrace flats feel threatened, claiming estate agents are pushing a new wave of gentrification on central Cape Town’s doorstep.
Springfield Terraces in Zonnebloem where residents say estate agents are lining up outside their doors to buy their apartments. PICTURE: YAZEED KAMALDIEN
An estate agent working in the area has confirmed buyers are interested, with an offer even coming through from a developer who wanted to buy up one of the nine standing blocks.
For some Zonnebloem residents, the current wave of gentrification feels much like apartheid era forced removals from District Six, just up the road from their homes.
Mary Wentzel, who was born in District Six almost 60 years ago, was forcibly removed from the area when she was a child.
Small town Atlantis a hub for green innovation
(This article was published on 28 May 2016 in the Weekend Argus, a weekly newspaper published by Independent Media in Cape Town, Western Cape province.)
Written by Yazeed Kamaldien
Innovative renewable energy businesses in Atlantis are not only contributing to Cape Town’s green economy but also creating jobs for locals.
Atlantis My Citi Trucking Stations Driver Mr George Nano from Atlantis
Atlantis is just under an hour’s drive from central Cape Town and is usually associated with poverty and accompanying social ills.
When Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille visited the small town yesterday, she met with renewable energy businesses to discuss their role in the energy eco-system.
Thirteen companies, all part of the South African Renewable Energy Business Incubator (Sarebi) in Atlantis, collectively received R500,000 from the City of Cape Town last year.
De Lille said assisting these businesses was part of a plan to ensure that locals could cope with Eskom’s power cuts and also save money by using renewable energy sources.
Instead of paying Eskom for electricity, locals could generate their own power at home via solar panel geysers, for example.
“Atlantis is an area that has faced difficult social and economic challenges, including high unemployment. Our support to this area underscores our commitment to building an opportunity city,” said De Lille.
Source
Why The World Should Be Following Africa’s Mobile Banking Example
Schalk Nolte, CEO Entersekt, looks at how African banks are responding to mobile security threats and points out that the rest of the world should be taking a page out of their book.
The growth of mobile banking has surged over the last two years. An October 2015 report from Juniper found that over a billion phone users would have used their device for banking by the end of last year, and expected this number to double by 2020. In fact, the uptake in emerging markets in particular required the company to revise its 2016 predictions to make allowance for the leap in users.
While international companies are certainly looking at the phenomenon and making sure that mobile forms part of their channel to market, many African companies are opting for a mobile-first approach, simply leapfrogging the traditional channel approach.
From a business perspective, banks understand the benefits of mobile banking and are actively driving its uptake. Mobile banking is ubiquitous, it’s self-service and low cost. Juniper has said that a mobile banking transaction costs a forty-third of what an in-branch transaction does, and we have heard some banks say that up to 60 percent of their operational costs go into providing for branch services.
What is interesting, though, is how African banks are placing security at the heart of their mobile strategy. They have good reason to do so. Security breaches threaten to build mistrust towards this innovative and low-cost channel, in turn slowing uptake and the ultimately impacting on the success of any mobile strategy.
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