Toby Shapshak is editor-in-chief and publisher of Stuff, a Forbes senior contributor and a columnist for the Financial Mail and Daily Maverick. He has been writing about technology and the internet for 28 years and his TED Global talk on innovation in Africa has over 1,5-million views. He has written about Africa's tech and start-up ecosystem for Forbes, CNN and The Guardian in London. He was named in GQ's top 30 men in media and the Mail & Guardian newspaper's influential young South Africans. He has been featured in the New York Times. GQ said he "has become the most high-profile technology journalist in the country" while the M&G wrote: "Toby Shapshak is all things tech... he reigns supreme as the major talking head for everything and anything tech."
It’s like a tale from a Hollywood movie. The crown prince and future ruler of the wealthiest oil-rich Middle East country uses the most popular messaging service in the world to send malware to the phone of the CEO of the largest retailer on the planet.
Like 1,5bn other people last week, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. A sense of relief that’s arguably as deep as when Eskom doesn’t load-shit the country for a week.
In South Africa, the biggest threats to democracy are pretty obvious: the stuttering economy, never-ending rolling blackouts (let’s call them what they are), the rampant unemployment (nearly 30% in total, over 50% for youth) and a delusional political elite that doesn’t know it’s out of touch, out of money (due to said economic woes and therefore the inability of Sars to collect revenue) and generalised arrogance.
The traditional first column of the year is usually a prediction of the events and trends to expect this year. I’ll give it to you in a sentence, then focus on the unfortunate reality in South Africa where the tech we need to focus on is somewhat more prosaic but infinitely necessary: solar.
You will laugh when I write this, but arguably the most innovative phone on the market is a clever little Alcatel 2019G. It is specifically designed for a market that is frequently overlooked: older people. It caters for those who are hard of hearing and need a phone with big numbers. And the older one gets, the harder of hearing one tends to be and the more one’s eyesight may diminish. Anyone in their late 40s can confirm the impending need for reading glasses or bifocals for those of us already wearing glasses for short-sightedness. But there’s a whole category…
Before Monday most South Africans would probably never have heard of competition commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele. But after his scathing attack on the “concentration and duopoly” of Vodacom and MTN as “a bias against the poor” they’ll know who he is.
Having proved themselves in East Africa, the largest public WiFi provider on the continent is launching its clever service here.
True to his Pretoria roots, Elon Musk has built a bakkie, but unlike one you’ve ever seen in the capital.
I was in Cape Town when news of the SAA strike broke. Luckily, I was a day ahead of it and I was flying a different airline back home to Joburg.
Even though it’s less than 0.5% of Facebook’s $66bn revenue in the last year, the social giant will still allow adverts from politicians, even if they’re false.