Author: Admin

In today’s era characterised by unparalleled technological progress, the dynamics of communication and interaction are swiftly changing. At the core of this transformation lies ChatGPT, an innovative breakthrough technology that gives us the capability to engage with an AI virtual assistant in a dynamic and meaningful way.

As the influence of this groundbreaking technology continues to resonate throughout South Africa, it is imperative to fully grasp its impact and implications. In On Africa’s comprehensive report, “ChatGPT in South Africa”, offers valuable insights into how ChatGPT’s innovative technology affects the lives of working South Africans. This report presents findings from a survey conducted with over 3,000 South Africans across various industries, providing a holistic understanding of how ChatGPT is used both professionally and personally.

Read more →

Analysis in brief: If African nations can ensure their entrepreneurs can legally protect the rights to their inventions, innovation will lead to business and economic growth, poverty reduction and the unleashing of Africa’s intellectual capacity.

Without IP protection, innovation is discouraged at the expense of national growth

No one wants their ideas stolen without credit or to never see their hard work pay off in terms of recognition and profit. The prospect of not being able to protect an entrepreneur’s intellectual property (IP) halts innovation. At a company level, businesses do not invest in research and development for fear their investment cannot be protected. Nationally, jobs that might exist through innovation remain uncreated, and economic growth that would result goes unfulfilled. Because of all this, there is little wonder that economists are urging national governments to do all they can to ensure IP protection. Such assurance for inventors would unlock Africa’s innovation potential.

Read more →

Analysis in brief: Recently, the economic group BRICS expanded its membership. The organisation that seeks to boost the voice of countries in the Global South in world affairs has its political agenda but is primarily driven by economic concerns, as was evident at its recent 2023 summit in Johannesburg. While achievements are far more difficult to accomplish than the rhetorical expression of desire to be economically independent from the Global North, they are obtainable.

BRICS expansion driven by investment ambition

In 2001, an economist with the investment firm Goldman Sachs coined the word BRIC for the four countries he believed would dominate world trade by 2050: Brazil, Russia, India and China. These countries were so enamoured by the prospect of such an outcome that they banded together in an organisation by that name in 2009, which became BRICS in 2010 with the addition of South Africa. The goal was to give the Global South the name, voice and respect that the Global North has always enjoyed in its dominance of world affairs, in particular world economic developments. Not a formal international body like the European Union or the African Union, BRICS is designed as a means to boost member states’ trade and investment opportunities.

Read more →

Analysis in brief: A continent plagued by poverty and economic mismanagement may seem an unlikely place for international investors to put their money. However, the proliferation and performance of African national stock exchanges reveals there is more to the continent’s economic picture. Trading in stocks of African companies shows Africa is an exciting investment location, where opportunities are showing themselves today, and future profitability seems assured by the continent’s demographics, buttressed by better economic growth policies.

In 1993, the African Securities Exchange Association (ASEA) was established, with Kenya’s Nairobi Stock Exchange as its founding member. The three original associated members were the Stock Exchange of Mauritius, the Uganda Securities Exchange and the Dar-es-Salaam Stock Exchange. Observing its 30th anniversary in 2023, ASEA has 25 African exchanges as its members, representing 37 countries that collectively incorporate 1,100 listed companies and have market capitalisation of US$2 trillion. There are several other African exchanges not yet affiliated with the group.

Read more →

Analysis in brief: Once thriving, Ghana’s garment and textile industry collapsed under the weight of cheap Asian imports and international development treaties. However, the 2020s has seen the beginnings of a comeback for Ghana’s clothes makers due to savvy marketing, utilisation of social media and a crop of talented local designers, making high fashion of distinction.

Ghana – the origin of Africa’s most iconic fabric, the Kente cloth – had the continent’s largest garment and textile (G&T) industry. Its demise has been a sad case study for economic planners, the end of employment for thousands and a national tragedy for Ghana itself. At its height in the 1970s, the G&T industry had 16 major manufacturers that, along with 138 medium- to large-registered garment manufacturers, employed over 25,000 people.

Read more →

Analysis in brief: A clean energy source that is widely available in Africa, hydrogen may be the solution to not only the continent’s but the world’s energy needs, as well as being a sustained form of employment and poverty-ending revenues.

Hydrogen is an abundant and naturally occurring gas found in water and fossil fuels, which makes the element particularly energy-rich. By separating it from water and coal or other fossil fuels, hydrogen can be used as a fuel on its own. The separation process can be done with renewable energies like solar or wind power, creating a product that is known as ‘green hydrogen.’ What is left over from the separation process is merely water, making hydrogen the least-damaging fuel environmentally. Unlike other fuels, hydrogen does not warm the atmosphere when it is used. What is required for a successful hydrogen industry is not only the base product from which it is extracted but also abundant solar and wind energy to power the separation. Africa has both requirements.

Read more →

By Jacques du Preez

Analysis in brief: Media has been abuzz over the past two weeks with reports of how a regional power was seemingly almost toppled by the world’s largest private army. Though the meteoric rise of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, appears to have reached its zenith, his group’s influence in Africa is far from over. With a new dawn for private military contracting on the continent apparently underway, it serves to ask what this will mean for security – both in Africa and the world at large.

Neither fear nor fidelity

The old saying goes “Neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men.” This age-old maxim amongst students of politics and international relations shows that mercenaries are fundamentally unreliable. This piece of wisdom was rendered in perfect clarity on 23 June 2023 when Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the private military company Wagner Group, seemingly locked swords with Putin’s inner circle in Moscow and brought a nuclear armed nation within a hair’s breadth of civil conflict. 

Read more →

Analysis in brief: Cryptocurrencies are at the stage that the automobile was a century ago: recognised as an important innovation that is here to stay. African governments are working to protect consumers in the digital money age, while also entering this new financial field to bring a host of benefits to their citizens.

The growing acceptance of digital currencies

They exist only as electronic impulses. A digital currency is any asset that calls itself money and is managed, stored or exchanged on digital systems, using the internet as the means of buying, selling and trading. Digital currencies are called variously ‘cryptocurrency’, ‘virtual currency’ and, when they are issued by governments, ‘Central Bank Digital Currency’ (CBDC). Some digital currencies can be used to purchase real-life goods and services. Since their introduction, always accompanied by scammers and hype, investment in cryptocurrencies has not been for the faint of heart. Governments have generally cautioned citizens against putting their money in so-called phantom currencies that are not backed by anything tangible like gold or that aren’t guaranteed by the monetary power of a government. That attitude is changing. The digital currencies market has stabilised somewhat in 2023, and their trade has become so widespread that African investors now expect to have them as an option if they choose to make some of their investment portfolios digital. Against the tide of growing demand, governments are taking their first regulatory steps. Some are getting into the cryptocurrency market themselves.

Read more →