Tag: Cape Town

Qatar Airways increases African routes, Cape Town, Durban, Maputo to join in February

Frank

SOUTHERN AFRICA – Qatar Airways, in line with its steady rebuild of its Africa network, has rolled out plans to increase flight frequencies to Cape Town to five weekly flights from February 1 and Durban increasing to three weekly flights from February 14. The state-owned flag carrier of Qatar will also increase flights to Maputo to three weekly flights from February 14. Qatar Airways group chief executive Akbar Al Baker, said, “We are proud to be the leading international carrier connecting Africa with Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and the…

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Private equity manager AIIM appoints new directors as CEO retires

Frank

AFRICA – African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), a member of Old Mutual Alternative Investments, has appointed two joint-managing directors to be based in Cape Town and Lagos, following the retirement of the CEO Jurie Swart. Vuyo Ntoi and Sola Lawson, have been appointed from within the business, and will continue to sit in their South Africa and Nigeria offices respectively, as two of AIIM’s key markets in sub Saharan Africa. As AIIM’s new joint-MD’s, they take over from Jurie Swart, who has been CEO of AIIM since 2014 and recently…

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Amazon opens first African AWS Region in Cape Town, South Africa

Frank

SOUTH AFRICA – Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs, has announced the launch of its African regional hub in Cape Town, South Africa.   AWS Africa Region will offer low latency digital services and a broad range of technologies to players in various sectors, mainly government organizations.  Peter DeSantis, vice president of AWS global infrastructure, said the company – which has a long history in South Africa and would like to continue supporting the growth of the local technology community…

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Kaap Agri invests US$8.62m in plastics subsidiary to bolster its manufacturing capabilities

Frank

SOUTH AFRICA – Kaap Agri, a group trading in agricultural, fuel and related retail markets, has made its first major investment of more than R150million (US$8.62m) to further bolster its manufacturing capabilities. The investment entails the establishment of Tego Plastics, a new subsidiary of the Kaap Agri Group, based in Brackenfell, Cape Town, which will be making large format, injection-moulded plastic products. According to Independent Online, one of the largest injection-moulding machines available in the global market was commissioned in the facility. Set to provide 33 new job opportunities at…

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GoDaddy acquires South African social media content startup Over

Frank

SOUTH AFRICA – Over, a startup that developed an app that allows businesses to easily create content for social media, has been acquired by American publicly traded internet domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy for an undisclosed amount. Launched in Cape Town in 2012, Over began life as a simple “text over photos” app for sharing goals and inspirational quotes but developed into a multifaceted tool that allows businesses to easily create photos and videos to post on their social media platforms. The service is now used by more…

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Creative Crafting Club launches education platform to foster entrepreneurship

Frank

SOUTH AFRICA – Creative Crafting Club, a Cape Town based startup, have launched a multifunctional online subscription site that offers tried-and-tested creative crafting lesson plans. The platform will offer resources and business acumen for parents, educators and budding entrepreneurs, to kick start their own kids’ creative crafting club in their community. This is expected to bridge the gap between entrepreneurship for stay-at-home parents and education for tots-to-tweens. The Creative Crafting Club membership’s STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics)-based lesson plans have been endorsed by occupational therapists, engineers, architects and artists…

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South Africa’s proptech startup HouseMe closes funding round valued at US$1.36m

Frank

SOUTH AFRICA – Cape Town based proptech startup HouseMe has closed a third round of multimillion-rand funding, valued at between R10 million (US$0.68m) to R20 million (US$1.36m) to help them in positioning for Series-A investment. HouseMe is a digital long-term letting platform that makes renting easy for both landlords and tenants. The startup’s CEO and co-founder Ben Shaw said the investment came from a large private fund which had taken part in a previous round in HouseMe. The private fund, it said, estimates HouseMe’s market size to be valued at…

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Lime set to launch the first ever electric scooters in South Africa

Frank

SOUTH AFRICA – Lime, a transportation company, will roll out electric scooters in Cape Town, South Africa early next year. It will become the first major micromobility operator to launch scooters in Africa. Unlike its model in the U.S. and Europe where it deploys scooters on public sidewalks, Lime will deploy its initial fleet of scooters at privately-owned locations throughout the city. “Cape Town is helping lead the way forward on technology and innovation in Africa, and we’re excited to be a part of that story,” Lime Global Head of…

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Akro selects 8 South Africa startups for its accelerator program

Frank

SOUTH AFRICA – Cape Town based venture builder Akro, which focuses on building and scaling high-growth startups, has picked eight South African startups for the second edition of its accelerator program. In line with the SA SME Fund’s objectives to support and fund more black African entrepreneurs, the accelerator sought to have just over half of the places in each cohort filled by startups with black African founders. Six of the startups selected for this, the second cohort have black African founders. The eight startups include, HotNozzle – a startup…

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