A few months ago, MzansiStore successfully raised funds on local crowdfunding site Thundafund in order to support one of South Africa’s designers. More than R20 000 was raised to be used for supplies such as a T-shirt printer and screens. The designer now sells her products using an online storefront via MzansiStore to a global audience. This example fits in neatly with MzansiStore’s overall focus of providing local entrepreneurs in the craft industry with the tools and skills to help grow ...

Vodacom's well-known mobile money transfer service M-Pesa is having a second go at South Africa's mobile market. The telecom giant announced that, after two years of assessment, it's relaunching the mobile payment service which is set to transform the way South Africans bank. The Kenyan mobile service was first launched by Safaricom in 2007, where it has proved to be exceptionally popular, with over 70% of the adult population relying on the service. M-Pesa was then introduced in 2010 to South ...

You all remember BBM right? Good, just checking. Anyway, BlackBerry's instant messaging service has finally found its way onto Windows Phone. The announcement comes just under a year after the service, which is one of the things BlackBerry is hedging its bets on as it aims to survive as a company, launched on iOS and Android. According to BlackBerry, the latest version of BBM has been built specifically for the Windows Phone experience with a UI that will be familiar to ...

Gyft, the virtual gift card service founded by South African-born entrepreneur Vinny Lingham has been acquired by First Data, a big player in the payment technology and services space. Neither party has disclosed the terms of deal, although early Gyft investors have expressed pleasure at the deal. Karlin Ventures managing director TX Zhuo told Pandodaily that it was “a great outcome for everybody involved.” Read more on Ventureburn.

It's made headlines with its seemingly crazy unconventional project to bring internet access to the developing world with drones and lasers, but now it seems Facebook's Internet.org has simpler plans too. It has announced an Android and mobile web app, which will give users access to services like Google Search, the weather, Wikipedia and (of course) Facebook for free. The Internet.org app is initially rolling out in Zambia in partnership with local telcom Airtel, where it will offer its more than 4-million ...

Former Naspers CEO Koos Bekker predicts that print media will be extinct within the next 20 years. Speaking in a video interview at the Future of Media conference, Bekker prefaced this prediction by pointing out that prediction is a fool's game. "My recent predictions of the future were all wrong. Don't try and predict the future but try to adapt to it," Bekker said in his first interview since stepping down as CEO of the company earlier this year. Bekker, ...

Mobile doesn't just matter in South Africa. It pretty much defines the country's technological landscape. We are, after all, talking about a country with more SIM cards than people (mobile penetration is at around 128%). It's how the majority of people in the country access the internet and social networks. If you plan on using that knowledge to market your products and services to people in the country, you need to know a bit more than that though. On ...