The city of Lagos is a chaotic one. With horns blaring from 4am till 1am, the best ways to avoid getting caught up in traffic is to rent a helicopter or drive between 11pm and 4am. Since these are not the most realistic options for the majority of the city's residents, spending long hours in traffic is inevitable and lots of stuffs are compromised – including adequate sleep and good diet. It's not too surprising then that many residents of the ...

Canon releases some pretty badass digital cameras, in my opinion at least. The Canon 5D, 7D and their variants are up there with the best digital cameras in the world, perfect for both personal and professional photography. These cameras can be out of reach for those with shallow pockets though or those not requiring high-end specs, and so Canon has been making some affordable digital cameras too. For weeks now, I have been getting acquainted with the sexy Canon PowerShot G7X, and ...

As 2015 kicks into high gear for business – there is one technology trend that is the holy grail of businesses looking to expand their footprint – integration. Yet, despite its critical importance to business, most executives still don’t understand exactly what is meant by technology integration. For just about every national and multi-national business, especially those expanding throughout the African continent, integration within supply chains, logistics systems and even communications systems can be the difference between success ...

Aside from its political ramifications, last night’s events inside Parliament led to unprecedented numbers in local social media interactions. Focusing primarily on Twitter usage around the State of the Nation Address, Memeburn crunched the numbers and tapped into open-source sentiment tools to bring context to the important role Twitter played in our democracy. South African tweets go off the charts Over 8 million Twitter users saw the hashtag #bringbackthesignal that grew organically ahead of the opening of Parliament. As South Africans sat glued ...

When cellphones were first introduced to South Africa twenty years ago, the focus was almost entirely on the networks themselves. There were huge debates over rates, coverage, signal strength and benefits. It didn’t take long for the networks to become little more than tiny logos in the top right hand corner of the actual device. The quality gap between phones began to widen and consumer attention shifted towards the hardware itself. The ability to take and send grainy photographs or ...

I've never been a big fan of Valentine's Day. Not because it celebrates love and all that. I just hate the idea of commercialising things for the sake of squeezing money out of people, plastering your every living experience with roses, red hearts, chocolates and cute teddy bears. Luckily we can customise our experiences online. For those of you who would like to maintain sanity throughout the next couple of days, we've made a list of tools you can use online ...

We here at Ventureburn write a lot about mobile payments in Africa. From old favourites such as Kenya's M-Pesa to newer ones like South Africa's SnapScan, each one is keen on seeing a cashless society. So a startup that relies on cash immediately peaked our interest. "We are avoiding to reinvent the wheel," says Nomanini's co-founder Vahil Monadjem. "We're creating a product that serves a pressing need that the current model doesn’t serve." And so, after refining product after business model, ...

Despite having one of the largest telecommunications markets on the continent, only a third of South Africa’s mobile users own smartphones. This means that the majority of the population still relies on feature phones to stay in touch and may at some stage access the internet during their mobile upgrade journey. Africa’s smartphone adoption is steadily increasing as data becomes more affordable and lower-cost smartphones are entering the market, and smartphones will eventually outpace feature phones. Until then the contextual realities ...

There's nothing quite as exhilarating as having your very own stalker. And I speak from experience. Valentine's Day is perhaps the only one of the 365 available when receiving dodgy cards from overzealous strangers is wholly acceptable by society. Of course, what once (and still is, I believe) a Catholic and Lutheran feast, has become a massive money-making ministry otherwise, where millions of bills are spilled in the hopes of impressing that one person who has been impressing you for the ...

Facebook's Internet.org and WordPress are set to sponsor a major Ghanaian hackathon aimed at come up with solutions to some of West Africa's biggest social issues. The hackathon, which is also supported by the US government, is being organised by the Silicon Valley based non-profit Hack For Big Choices and will take place on 20-22 February in Accra, Ghana's capital and largest city. The ultimate aim of the event is to leverage the strength of everyday people to connect and solve for ...