Artificial Intelligence OP-ED - AI in Africa's context gap: a PwC partner, a Wits researcher, and a Ghanaian founder walk into the same problem A PwC partner says African organisations' AI tools are 'pretty useless' without clean data. A Wits computer scientist explains why. And a Ghanaian AI founder is betting he can close the gap. Part 2 of 2
Digital Transformation OP-ED - The US$140-million (R2.4-billion) reality check PwC’s latest Africa Cloud Business Survey says 98% of African organisations plan to expand their cloud architecture and 37% are implementing agentic AI. A sit-down with the man behind the numbers unearthed qualifications more revealing than the statistics.
Digital Economy OP-ED - When the crowd becomes the mob: prediction markets and the price of 'truth' A journalist threatened over a betting market. Insider trading on military strikes. Billions wagered on geopolitical chaos. The question must be asked: are prediction markets indispensable truth machines or sophisticated casinos with geopolitical consequences.
Social Media OP-ED - X marks the spot: your platform is someone else's country Open-sourcing a candid disagreement with Future in the Humanities (FITH) Founding Chair Prof Iginio Gagliardone about Mastodon and X. What are the tradeoffs of building an African intellectual project on platforms that might extract more than they give?
Digital Transformation OP-ED - What good navigation looks like: no machine sails itself From Block's standing ovation to Monday.com's manifesto to a South African consultancy that started with the social system, Part 3 asks what good AI navigation actually looks like when you prioritise the human element and demand results over rhetoric.
Digital Transformation OP-ED - The mine, the machine, and the intern From post-WW2 coal mines to modern codebases, history suggests AI transformation will rise or fall not on technical capability alone, but on whether organisations deliberately redesign the social systems that surround the machine.
Artificial Intelligence OP-ED - How solo sailors sleep Solo sailors don't forecast the ocean. They set an alarm and pay attention. In the age of AI disruption, that pragmatic sensibility turns out to be rarer and more valuable than anyone is admitting.
This Is Connectivity OP-ED - Video podcasts are just chatshows with visible microphones Twenty-five years of podcast evolution has come full circle. Adam Wakefield argues audio's so-called limitations are actually its greatest edge in the attention economy.
Digital Transformation OP-ED - My former teacher wants to put a conscience in AI. I have thoughts. Smart legal contracts might be AI's best guardrail. But the system they're designed to protect was never neutral to begin with.
Market Intelligence OP-ED - Afrexim walked away from Fitch. Cassava's creditors can't. Western rating agencies helped blow up the global economy, paid their fines, and kept it moving. Now they're the arbiters of African creditworthiness. But dismissing their scrutiny doesn't make the numbers disappear.
Digital Transformation OP-ED - After the launch party: who actually benefits from AI? What gets measured depends on who builds the scale.
Artificial Intelligence OP-ED - Cue ominous film score: is the AI agent apocalypse upon us? Last week, an AI startup watched its entire value proposition ship as a native feature. This is the story of what that moment reveals — and what some are betting it doesn't.
Venture Capital OP-ED - Cupid's cash flow: the matchmakers have marriage problems too When venture capitalists push portfolio consolidation, they're not just playing cupid. They're managing their own performance pressure.
Career OP-ED - AI augmentation in 2025: what Accenture's layoffs and a homeless Nigerian app founder reveal about the future of work The question isn't whether you're augmented. It's whether you can deliver.
Policymaking OP-ED - Nudge, don't shove: what Australia's social media ban gets wrong Prohibition makes for a satisfying sign. Behaviour change is messier.
This Is Connectivity OP-ED - Self-driving VC: Boardy, QuantumLight, and the end of the warm intro? AI is automating the art of the warm introduction. What happens when connectivity becomes a product rather than a relationship?
Digital Economy OP-ED - Bitcoin sells out? From peer-to-peer currency to Wall Street collateral: the maturation no one asked for Bitcoin needs institutional stability to fulfill its promise. But that stability requires exactly the gatekeepers it was designed to circumvent.
Social Media OP-ED - Week one of making YouTube Shorts taught me why my colleague calls it "twerking for the algorithm" When viral reach comes at the cost of analytical rigour, African creators risk becoming content farmers rather than discourse shapers.
This Is Connectivity OP-ED - AI is dismantling consulting's oligopoly. If McKinsey's using ChatGPT, what are you paying for? Ten years ago, a social media agency owner told me my consulting ambitions were naive delusions. He wasn't entirely wrong. But neither of us saw what was coming.
Infrastructure OP-ED - GPUs to gigawatts: how Africa’s energy potential could re-shape the AI landscape As AI’s hunger for power grows, Africa’s untapped energy reserves could redefine the continent’s role in the global tech race.
Artificial Intelligence OP-ED - Africa's AI awakening: from Western brainrot to homegrown tech sovereignty As Gen Z in the West abandons social media's endless scroll for "meaning," Africa is laying internet connectivity infrastructure at scale. Will it import yesterday's engagement-maximisation playbook or build for actual human flourishing?
Market Intelligence OP-ED - What do SAG Ventures and Balloon Ventures have in common? The intermediary trap Prince Nwadeyi's published research and Joshua Bicknell's operational experience expose the same problem: entrenched incentive structures don't serve those closest to real economic activity.
Impact Investing OP-ED - M-KOPA’s decade of discovery: when patient capital buys time to pivot M-KOPA’s lengthy path to profitability shows how patient capital can buy the time (and permission) to pivot until the real business emerges.
Digital Transformation OP-ED - What can standing in an iPhone 17 queue in Tokyo reveal about digital power and control? Plenty. Scarcity and sovereignty play out differently in Tokyo and Nairobi, but the underlying lessons for Africa’s tech builders are strikingly similar.
Market Intelligence OP-ED - Boring is beautiful, but can $50 million pyrethrum flower power fuel a natural insecticide industry revival in Kenya? When development finance meets agricultural nostalgia, the unit economics must be interrogated.
