Recently launched by industry veterans such as tech journalist and TV producer Elizabeth Gould, former FNB CEO Michael Jordaan, serial entrepreneur and engineer Dave Weber and Cara Turner, CodeX wants to bridge the gap for Africa's growing demand for coders. "It’s critically important for our up-and-coming talent to learn what the industry demands, in real time," said Chairman Michael Jordaan. "The best way to do that is to build the curriculum in close collaboration with the people doing the ...

We have moved to a place in the business world where our customers are always looking for something different. In many industries, they have literally hundreds of choices of suppliers, all offering the same commodities at the same prices. How do you stand out as different and distinct in such a hard environment? What can you do to be unique – but without getting the financial director to start grumbling? There are a number of choices, and they include … Producing unique, ...

Project Isizwe seems to be raking up partners its grand mission to provide free information to low-income communities across South Africa. To help the startup achieve its vision, it will be partnering with one of South Africa's most popular online classifieds sites -- Gumtree. A bit more than a week ago, Project Isizwe, boldly announced it will be rolling out more than 200 new hotspots across the City of Tshwane, South Africa. The partnership between the eBay-owned site and Project Isizwe, ...

When the founders of the startup M4JAM (Money for Jam) secured a rare meeting with legendary banking innovator and investor, Michael Jordaan, he threw down a challenge to them. He encouraged them to stop the talk and build their product in 90 days. Just 105 days later, the company's new micro-jobbing platform is now set for launch, with more than 100 000 jobs lined up, supported by more than 10 brands. M4JAM has lofty ambitions, aiming to solve one of South ...

Anyone who's attended a South African startup event in the past few years is all too aware of the fact that there's still a massive gender disparity in the space. A 2013 survey by the Silicon Cape initiative revealed that among tech startups, some 80% of people involved in the space are male. That's slightly worrying given that, on the whole, female entrepreneurs are closing the gap on their male counterparts. According to the most recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, ...

Have an ingenious invention hidden in a lab or your garage? If so, listen up. The African Innovation Foundation (AIF) is currently looking for entries across the continent for the Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) 2015. The fourth edition of this initiative seeks to encourage Africa's pioneers to present creative technologies and ideas that could solve some of the region's biggest problems. In turn, the AIF will provide a sum of US$150 000 to selected innovators in order to support ...

After a heck of a long time spent in recruiting for large corporates, and then spending an almost equally hectic period in startups and smaller companies, I'm amazed at how people hire staff and look for new employees. Why am I amazed? Well, to be sure, in a small company the recruitment of new skills is fundamentally key to success. Get the wrong programmer on board and your entire product line could come crashing down. Hire a bad salesman and you ...

Tech4Africa has just announced that it will be running its first ever Cape Town event on 28 August. The popular South African annual tech conference has been running for the last five years in Johannesburg, and this year decided to include the Mother City in the mix. Tech4Africa focuses on deep technical workshops and sessions for practitioners, and then engaging talks which impart knowledge, perspective, African context and inspiration. The unapologetic vision for Tech4Africa is that the best tech ecosystems in the ...

According to recent research done by Standard Bank in South Africa, the greater continent offers US multinationals a compelling trade and investment opportunity thanks to the rapid economic growth rates across the continent, along with burgeoning population growth and increasing urbanisation. This nifty infographic below gives a comprehensive, colourful overview of US -- Africa's trade and investment opportunities: Click on image for actual size. As also found by an Ernst & Young report earlier this year, Foreign Direct Investment has increased together with ...

In the last three to four years, social media marketing has increasingly become popular. Consumer product companies have special budgets for social media, though when it comes to business-to-business companies (especially in India) its marketing benefits are overlooked. Most companies are apprehensive and believe it is not meant for them. “Our customers are not on social media,” is what I often hear. I run a business software discovery and recommendation platform. And as the name suggests, our customers are mostly ...