A new law signals Nigeria’s intent to position itself as a digital finance leader on the continent.



For the first time, virtual assets and investment contracts are formally recognized as securities in Nigeria, following the Investment and Securities Act (ISA) 2024 signed into law by its President Bola Tinubu.



This new legislation comes after years of regulatory uncertainty and tension between the Nigerian government and the burgeoning crypto community. In February 2021, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued a directive prohibiting financial institutions from facilitating cryptocurrency transactions, citing concerns over money laundering, terrorism financing, and the lack of consumer protection. The ban sparked widespread outrage, particularly among Nigeria’s tech-savvy youth, who had increasingly turned to cryptocurrencies as an alternative store of value amid inflation and economic instability.



Despite the crackdown, Nigeria emerged as Africa’s largest cryptocurrency market by volume, ranking second worldwide behind India, with citizens finding creative ways to bypass the restrictions through peer-to-peer (P2P) trading.



In response to the persistent demand and growing global acceptance of digital assets, the government began reconsidering its position, culminating in the enactment of the ISA 2024.



The new law provides long-awaited regulatory clarity, bringing Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), Digital Asset Operators (DAOPs), and Digital Asset Exchanges under the direct oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).



Nigerian financial analyst Olumide Adesina views this as a major breakthrough.



“The regulation brings clarity and affirms the input of digital assets in the Nigerian capital market,” Adesina says to FORBES AFRICA.



“The law would likely attract huge players in the global industry to engage directly by setting up a physical presence with Africa&#8217;s biggest crypto market. Finally, it will also widen tokenization usage built on traditional assets and intensify interest among the younger populace.”



While the move is celebrated for its potential to draw institutional investment, it also raises questions about the impact on grassroots innovation.



Nigerian crypto enthusiast Samuel Adebayo voices mixed feelings, noting that the legislation could have unintended consequences.



“This will likely accelerate institutional adoption of digital assets in Nigeria by providing legal clarity and investor protection. However, stricter compliance requirements may pose challenges for smaller crypto startups,” Adebayo explains to FORBES AFRICA. “While the framework enhances market legitimacy, its impact on innovation will depend on how regulations are enforced and adapted to industry needs.”

Silhouette of a man interacting with virtual computer graphics

Africa’s Largest Crypto Market Finally Legalizes Virtual Assets After Complex History

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Around 1,100 people reported issues with OpenAI’s ChatGPT just before 10 a.m. EDT on Monday morning suggesting a larger outage, according to tracking site&nbsp;<a href="https://downdetector.com/status/openai/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">DownDetector.com</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



Reports of issues with ChatGPT began to rise around 9:30 a.m. EDT and peaked at around 1,157 people just before 9:40 a.m., according to DownDetector.com.



Reports began to dip around 10 a.m., but rose again to just over 1,000 around 10:30 a.m.



The vast majority of issues reported, 93%, were with ChatGPT, though 6% of reports were about OpenAI’s website, according to Downdetector.



OpenAI’s&nbsp;<a href="https://status.openai.com/incidents/01JQP8238VGEYM9JN39NQ3P298" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">status page</a>&nbsp;said at 10 a.m. it was experiencing “increased error rates in ChatGPT” and they are investigating the issue, and at 10:54 a.m. the status page said OpenAI’s team was “working on implementing a mitigation.”



The&nbsp;<a href="https://status.openai.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">page</a>&nbsp;also says OpenAI has been having issues with new sign ups in certain geographies for one day in a bug affecting ChatGPT and other OpenAI products including Sora, Playground and Labs.



This story is developing and will be updated.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



More than 300 million. That’s how many active weekly users Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/OpenAINewsroom/status/1864373399218475440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1864373399218475440%7Ctwgr%5Ed69b681560ac4c2ae02bda66f7709df2cfda3dde%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2024%2F12%2F4%2F24313097%2Fchatgpt-300-million-weekly-users" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;ChatGPT had in early December. The company also estimated more than 1 billion user messages were sent daily.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-chatgpt">What Is Chatgpt?</h2>



ChatGPT is OpenAI’s&nbsp;<a href="https://openai.com/index/chatgpt/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">chatbot</a>&nbsp;model designed to operate in a “conversational way.” It was launched on Nov. 30, 2022 as a sibling to OpenAI’s InstructGPT, which was trained to follow instructions more than have a dialogue with users.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">Tangent</h2>



OpenAI’s outages follow two notable tech outages last week. On Thursday,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2025/03/27/reddit-outage-thousands-of-users-report-issues-with-app-website/">Reddit</a>&nbsp;experienced an outage for a handful of hours that impacted more than 35,000 users before they were resolved. And, on Tuesday, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram both had&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2025/03/25/users-report-outages-on-metas-facebook-and-instagram/">outage reports</a>&nbsp;spike on DownDetector.com, with more than 4,300 users reporting issues on Instagram, primarily with the app and comments, and nearly 1,000 users reporting issues with Facebook’s website and login.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">Further Reading</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2025/03/25/users-report-outages-on-metas-facebook-and-instagram/">Meta&#8217;s Facebook And Instagram Have Outages</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2025/03/27/reddit-outage-thousands-of-users-report-issues-with-app-website/">Reddit Outage: Thousands Of Users Report Issues With App, Website</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

In this photo illustration, the ChatGPT (OpenAI) logo is

OpenAI, ChatGPT Outage Reported

The artificial intelligence (AI) landscape is undergoing a profound transformation, moving away from its reliance on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). These powerful computer chips, initially designed for rendering graphics, have been the backbone of AI advancements for over a decade, enabling breakthroughs in deep learning, natural language processing, and self-driving cars. However, as AI systems become increasingly complex and demanding, the limitations of GPUs are becoming increasingly apparent.



GPUs are inherently energy-intensive, requiring vast amounts of electricity and water to power the complex calculations that underpin AI training. This contributes to rising operational costs and raises significant environmental concerns due to the carbon emissions associated with energy and water consumption. Furthermore, while adept at parallel processing, GPU architecture must facilitate handling the massive datasets and intricate algorithms that characterize modern AI workloads. This results in bottlenecks and inefficiencies that hinder developing and deploying advanced AI applications.



Beyond these technical limitations, the reliance on GPUs raises critical questions about sustainability and global equity. The production of GPUs depends



heavily on rare earth minerals, with Africa serving as a primary source of these essential resources. While the continent possesses abundant reserves of cobalt, nickel, and other critical minerals, the extraction and processing of these materials often come at a high cost. Child labor, exploitative working conditions, and environmental degradation are prevalent in many mining regions, highlighting the urgent need for ethical and sustainable practices in the industry.



Moreover, the current model of resource extraction perpetuates a system of global inequality. Despite being rich in natural resources, African nations often derive minimal economic benefit from their extraction. Raw materials are exported to other countries for processing and manufacturing, leaving African economies with little value addition and limited opportunities for technological advancement. This disparity underscores the need for a more equitable distribution of the benefits generated by the AI industry.



Fortunately, the AI landscape is evolving, presenting an opportunity to address these challenges and forge a more sustainable and inclusive path forward.



The industry is gradually shifting towards specialized hardware, such as Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and neuromorphic chips, which offer significant advantages over GPUs. These alternatives are explicitly designed for AI workloads, delivering superior performance, energy efficiency, and scalability.



This transition presents a unique opportunity for Africa to redefine its role in the AI ecosystem. The continent can become a leader in developing and manufacturing next-generation AI hardware by moving beyond its current position as a raw material supplier and embracing innovation. This would boost economic development, create high-skilled jobs, and empower African researchers and entrepreneurs to contribute to the global advancement of AI.



Strategic investments and collaborative efforts are essential to realize this vision. African governments, research institutions, and private sector companies must work together to foster a thriving AI ecosystem. This includes supporting local startups, promoting research and development in AI hardware, and attracting investment in manufacturing facilities crucial to ensure that Africa benefits from technology transfer and knowledge sharing.



The United Nations (UN) is vital in facilitating this transition. Recognizing the importance of responsible sourcing and equitable benefit-sharing, the UN has established a panel on critical energy transition minerals. This initiative brings together stakeholders from governments, international organizations, industry, and civil society to develop global principles that protect environmental and social standards throughout the mineral value chain.



By fostering collaboration and transparency, the UN aims to ensure that the transition to sustainable AI technologies does not exacerbate existing inequalities but creates opportunities for all nations to participate in and benefit from the AI revolution. This includes promoting fair trade practices, supporting capacity building in developing countries, and encouraging the adoption of circular economy models that reduce reliance on raw materials and minimize environmental impact. Africa is poised to become a key player in the future of AI. With its abundant mineral resources, growing technology hubs, and a young, dynamic population, the continent has the potential to drive innovation and shape the development of AI in ways that benefit not only Africa but the entire world. By embracing this opportunity, we can create a more inclusive and sustainable AI ecosystem that empowers all nations and contributes to a better future for humanity.

Working robots

Expert-Speak: Rethinking Tech And Why GPUs Are Not The Future Of AI Training

&#8220;This will be a defining year for AI,” said Mark Zuckerberg on his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/pfbid0219ude255AKkmk4JAueXZeZ9zpjNYio2tBkd7bNmCaRbJ6iJaVVjypUgDg78CNdq5l" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Facebook blog</a> last month, hyping his plan to invest $65 billion in 2025, most of it in support of growing Meta’s AI capabilities and building upon its Llama 4 model.



The locus of these efforts appears to be on 2,250 acres of flat farmland in northeast Louisiana, where Meta has begun work on a $10 billion data center project. This grandest of Meta’s 20 worldwide data centers will be called Sucré (i.e. sweet) and cover 4 million square feet of floor space on 2,250 acres



To power racks lined with thousands of Nvidia H100 GPUs, Sucre will require 2.23 gigawatts of 24/7 electricity (enough to power more than 2 million homes), which utility company Entergy will provide via twin high-efficiency natural gas turbines at a capital cost of $3.2 billion. Meta’s plans also call for $250 million in related infrastructure spending, including roads and water systems. Construction jobs will peak at 5,000.



Is this really going to get built? And is it even a good idea, given recent revelations from DeepSeek that building advanced machine intelligence might be cheaper, and less energy-intensive than initially believed.



For some perspective I talked with Zach Krause, an analyst at energy consultancy&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eastdaley.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">East Daley Analytics</a>, in Denver, who tracks data center announcements and works on handicapping both their likelihood of getting built, and how developers expect to provide for their electricity demand. Krause says he has been encouraging his institutional investor clients (many natural gas and power generation investors among them) not to panic over the implications.



“We’ve seen a short-term overreaction by the market to new tech,” says Krause, who includes on his list 290 datacenter projects with a decent likelihood of getting built.



Even if AI energy efficiency improves exponentially, the silicon brains of the future will need all of those server farms, and then some. That’s because of a dynamic called the Jevons Paradox, named after English economist William Jevons, who in 1865 noticed that efficiency breakthroughs in steam engine design did not reduce coal consumption at all, but instead caused demand for the fuel to surge. Jevons Paradox has also been observed, for example, in explosive demand for modern conveniences like air conditioning, passenger airplanes, and MRI machines.



Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in late January&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/satyanadella/status/1883753899255046301" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">tweeted about the Jevons&nbsp;</a>paradox: “As AI gets more efficient and accessible, we will see its use skyrocket, turning it into a commodity we just can’t get enough of.” Analyst Hugh Wynne, at Power Research Group, concurs: “The demand for power to train and operate AI models could be materially reduced. However, if these efficiency gains also drive down the cost of AI, the adoption of AI-based services could be significantly faster and more widespread” — thus wiping out any expected energy savings.



Krause sees America’s tsunami of advanced data centers demanding an additional 81 gigawatts of electricity by 2030. That’s enough to power all of Texas today. If developers used natural gas to run them all it would take about 12.9 billion cubic feet per day, he figures — equal to 10% of national natural gas supplies. “The Meta project is circled in red ink for its eventual impact to the natural gas market,” he says, figuring that Sucre will require 360 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, the energy equivalent of about 60,000 barrels of oil.



And Sucré is not even the biggest. OpenAI is partnering with Oracle, Softbank, Microsoft and others on the Stargate project, which they say will be a $500 billion, multi-site datacenter expansion, beginning with Abilene, Texas. In time, Stargate will need more than 5 gigawatts of electricity, though Krause has only factored in a small fraction of that demand until they build something. Microsoft plans $80 billion of capital investment on AI and cloud computing this year. Meanwhile, Amazon has earmarked $100 billion for AI over the next decade, and may spend $35 billion just in northern Virginia’s datacenter alley. Jeff Bezos has also invested heavily in the development of advanced nuclear technology.



A trend to watch: Energy giant Chevron has partnered with gas turbine specialist G.E. Vernova to develop the power systems for 4 gigawatts of datacenters. Chevron, Exxon and the like already have deep expertise in generating power at their giant oil refineries. By siting datacenters adjacent to existing natural gas fields, they can help AI developers sidestep time-consuming permitting hoops that regulated utility companies and pipeline operators must jump through. Says Krause: “The utilities are slower to react, while the pipelines and gas producers are drooling on the other side.&#8221;



Zuckerberg managed to sidestep NIMBY issues in Louisiana, where politicians handed Meta fat tax incentives to build. Gov. Jeff Landry oddly declared that the hyperscale server farm “revitalizes one of our state’s beautiful rural areas.” Northern Louisiana is also long on natural gas, thanks to fracking in the Haynesville shale.



Meta, which has committed to achieving carbon neutrality in its operations, is already working to assuage the guilt of relying on carbon dioxide emitting natural gas to run Sucré. In December Meta announced a deal with billionaire Michael Polsky’s power developer&nbsp;<a href="https://invenergy.com/news/invenergy-to-provide-over-760mw-in-renewable-energy-supporting-meta-s-energy-needs-in-line-with-its-clean-and-renewable-energy-goals" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Invenergy to buy&nbsp;</a>the green attributes (known as renewable energy certificates) from the 760 megawatt capacity of four big solar farms under construction. And in Louisiana Meta has pledged to invest $1.5 billion alongside Entergy to build out more wind and solar.



Give it another 10 years and Meta will hopefully be able to retrofit the datacenter to run on zero-emissions advanced nuclear. Zuckerberg already looked in to building a datacenter adjacent to a nuclear power plant (<a href="https://www.popsci.com/environment/meta-nuclear-power-bee/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">rumored to be California’s Diablo Canyon&nbsp;</a>site) but was stymied by the discovery of an endangered bee species nearby.



It’s why Krause excludes from his datacenter list dozens of other projects more aspirational than real. “The upper bound is inflated. Some developers take a shotgun approach to permitting — they&#8217;re trying to get land rezoned by the multitudes.&#8221;

Shot of a young female engineer using a digital tablet while working in a server room

The Trillion-Dollar A.I. Data Center Tsunami —Coming To A Field Near You

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



DeepSeek released an upgrade to its large language model this week, an update the company said featured “significant improvements” over its predecessor as the China-based startup appeared to escalate its rivalry with OpenAI and other U.S. artificial intelligence firms, after an earlier release rattled global tech stocks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



DeepSeek&nbsp;<a href="https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3-0324" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">launched</a>&nbsp;an upgrade to its V3 large language model, DeepSeek-V3-0324, on the AI development platform Hugging Face on Tuesday, which the startup marketed as including improvements in reasoning and coding capabilities over its earlier V3 model.



DeepSeek’s V3 large language model was released on Dec. 26, 2024, and the company claimed it was three times faster than its V2 model as it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/01/27/what-is-deepseek-new-chinese-ai-startup-rivals-openai-and-claims-its-far-cheaper/">ranked</a>&nbsp;among the top 10 in Chatbot Arena, a performance platform hosted by the University of California, Berkeley.



The latest update included “significant improvements” across several benchmark tests for the language model, DeepSeek said, in addition to upgrades to front-end web development, Chinese writing proficiency—with new features like “interactive rewriting,” according to the company—and Chinese search capabilities like “enhanced report analysis.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">What To Watch For</h2>



Whether the latest DeepSeek model impacts U.S. tech stocks. Shares for Nvidia dropped by 1.2% as of 9:35 a.m. EDT, while other stocks like Broadcom (0.6%) and Tesla (0.3%) declined slightly. Apple (0.3%), Meta (0.7%) and Microsoft (0.3%) were up Tuesday morning.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-deepseek">What Is Deepseek?</h2>



DeepSeek is an AI startup&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/01/27/what-is-deepseek-new-chinese-ai-startup-rivals-openai-and-claims-its-far-cheaper/">founded</a>&nbsp;by Chinese entrepreneur&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/01/28/who-is-behind-deepseek-heres-what-to-know-about-founder-liang-wenfeng/">Liang Wenfeng</a>&nbsp;in 2023. Liang started accumulating thousands of Nvidia graphics processors for an unnamed AI project in 2021, just before the Biden administration restricted trade of those chips to China. He called for China to “gradually transition” to being a contributor in the AI industry, “rather than continuing to ride on the coattails of others.” DeepSeek has claimed its products are more efficient and cost less to train and develop compared to similar products made by OpenAI and Meta. The company said training one of its latest models cost about $5.6 million, far less than the $100 million to $1 billion an AI executive&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-ai-deepseek-chatbot-6ac4ad33?mod=livecoverage_web" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">estimated</a>&nbsp;for costs to build a model.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-will-deepseek-be-banned-in-the-u-s">Will Deepseek Be Banned In The U.s.?</h2>



A bipartisan bill&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/02/06/deepseek-should-be-banned-from-federal-devices-lawmakers-urge-after-ai-chatbot-linked-to-banned-chinese-firm/">banning</a>&nbsp;Deepseek from federal devices was introduced in February, after a report linked the company’s chatbot to a banned Chinese state-run telecommunications company. It’s not immediately clear whether the bill will be supported by other lawmakers. The Trump administration is also mulling a ban over national security concerns, a person familiar with the matter told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-likely-ban-chinese-app-deepseek-government-devices-wsj-reports-2025-03-07/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Reuters</a>. Some U.S. agencies have already restricted access to DeepSeek, including the U.S. Navy, the Defense Department, the Commerce Department and NASA, among others. The House’s Chief Administrative Officer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/01/30/house-congress-bans-deepseek-ai" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reportedly</a>&nbsp;claimed “threat actors are already exploiting DeepSeek to deliver malicious software and infect devices,” as some congressional offices have been warned not to use DeepSeek.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



DeepSeek released its advanced reasoning model R1 in January, a move that appeared to put China in close competition with U.S. tech and AI giants like OpenAI and Meta. R1 achieved performance on par with OpenAI’s o1 model across several benchmarks and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/26/deepseek_r1_ai_cot/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reportedly</a>&nbsp;exceeded o1’s in the MATH-500 test. DeepSeek’s R1 model is available for anyone to access, use, study, modify and share, as the open-source model surged to the top of the iPhone download charts—surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT. R1’s release sparked&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/29/deepseek-panic-live-updates-nvidia-stock-drops-4-as-trump-reportedly-mulls-china-chip-sale-restrictions/">declines</a>&nbsp;across several U.S. tech stocks, led by Nvidia closing down 17% on Jan. 27. Nvidia’s dive cut $589 billion off its market cap, marking the largest single-day loss of value for any public company in history. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman praised DeepSeek’s products and noted the R1 model was “impressive … particularly around what [DeepSeek is]able to deliver for the price.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">Further Reading</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/01/27/what-is-deepseek-new-chinese-ai-startup-rivals-openai-and-claims-its-far-cheaper/">What Is DeepSeek? New Chinese AI Startup Rivals OpenAI—And Claims It’s Far Cheaper</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

Newly Launched Chinese AI App DeepSeek Causes U.S. Tech Stocks To Tumble, Amid Its Rapid Rise To #1 In Apple’s App Store

DeepSeek Launches AI Model Upgrade Amid OpenAI Rivalry—Here’s What To Know

Artificial intelligence boosts smartphones globally, but Africa faces challenges.



AI on smartphones is redefining how we interact with technology, from quicker search with voice to smarter photo edits and predicting daily needs before we realize them; plus, with AI’s pattern-learning, a more personalized user experience.



Samsung first introduced AI to the smartphone with the S24 line-up early in 2024, followed by its Z Foldable range mid-year. Subsequently, brands like Apple, Honor, Oppo and Xiaomi have all introduced some level of AI on its devices.



Androids share similar features, powered by Google AI, such as Gemini – a rival to ChatGPT; Circle to Search; Magic Eraser; Photomojis; and protection against spam and scam calls.



Other features per manufacturer include the ability to summarize notes, create bullet points, transcribe audio and turn it into notes, translate text into multiple languages, summarize web articles to bullet points, etc.



Some devices can compose emails, messages, and social media posts using generative AI, all natively. You just explain the message you want to convey and select different tones, such as professional, casual, friendly, and so on, to get the desired results.



A feature worth noting is Circle to Search, an intuitive way to search for anything you see online, even by pausing a video. You simply long-press the home button, circle what’s on your screen, and receive immediate Google results, with follow-up queries.



Apple also offers AI features, but was late to the party when Apple Intelligence rolled out to more English-speaking markets in December 2024, including South Africa, after its U.S. launch at the end of October. It helps you write; generate images by description with Image Playground or custom emojis; clean up photos by removing unwanted objects; and search intuitively with Siri, which uses ChatGPT when it can’t answer, but asks first if you want ChatGPT to fulfil the request.



You can already use the ChatGPT standalone app, but Apple gives you another layer of privacy when using it through Private Cloud Compute, which deletes your data after the request, whereas ChatGPT uses all your inputs to further train its AI.



AI’s global growth, but Africa’s smartphone decline



AI is revolutionizing industries, with companies and investors pouring billions into research and development across industries like healthcare, finance, entertainment, and consumer technology.



According to a TechCrunch article, the generative AI bubble did not burst in 2024. It reports that investments in generative AI worldwide raised $56 billion from VCs in 2024, from 885 deals. The data was compiled by financial tracker PitchBook for TechCrunch.



That figure is a new record for the segment, when compared to 2023’s total investment of $29.1 billion from 691 deals, it says.



According to the International Data Corporation (IDC)’s five-year forecast for GenAI-capable smartphones, it predicted shipments to reach 234.2 million for 2024, up 363.6% from 50.5 million in 2023, and projects 912 million in 2028.



The IDC predicted total smartphone shipments to grow 5.8% to 1.23 billion units in 2024, up from its previous forecast of 4% growth to 1.21 billion units.



While total and GenAI shipments for the year 2024 is yet to be released, data from research firm Canalys reveals that Africa’s smartphone market grew by 3% year-on-year in Q3 for 2024, reaching 18.4 million units, which it says reflects resilience amid a complex economic landscape.



“South Africa, after six quarters of double-digit growth, saw a sharp 10% decline in shipments as economic uncertainties dampened consumer spending, despite easing inflation and interest rate cuts,” it said.



In the same quarter, Kenya’s shipments also dropped by 10%, whereas Nigeria experienced a 1% growth. North African countries like Egypt saw a 34% growth, but Morocco experienced a 24% decline.



Manish Pravinkumar, Senior Analyst at Canalys for the Middle East and Africa, says the future of Africa’s smartphone market holds immense potential, but significant hurdles remain.



“Feature phones maintained a 55% share of total shipments as of Q3 2024, limiting smartphone expansion. High device taxes continue to hinder growth, posing a dilemma for policymakers between immediate revenue needs and the long-term benefits of broader smartphone adoption,” says Pravinkumar.



“Enhanced smartphone accessibility could drive the development of a robust digital economy, generating sustainable tax revenues over time. Despite these barriers, growing demand for affordable devices, expanding 4G network coverage and innovative financing models, are expected to sustain growth.”



Canalys forecasts a 1% compound annual growth rate for Africa from 2024 to 2028, with 4G remaining the primary driver of new mobile subscriptions over the next five years. The global race for AI may have started, but Africa is lagging behind.

Smiling boy using system AI Chatbot on mobile application. Chatbot conversation, Ai Artificial Intelligence technology. Futuristic technology. Virtual assistant on internet.

Call Into Question: AI On Smartphones

As artificial intelligence reshapes healthcare, the fight against cancer is witnessing unprecedented breakthroughs, from microscopic nanorobots to virtual treatment twins. This acceleration in drug discovery is just one example of AI&#8217;s impact on oncology, now and in the future.



According to the British Journal of Cancer, cancer research is one of the most heavily-funded areas of science. Billions are poured into research every year but the main ways in which we treat cancer – surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy – haven&#8217;t changed in the past 80 years.



But now artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming this landscape entirely, revolutionizing not just how doctors diagnose and treat cancer, but how we discover new treatments. “I think we are really in the golden age of scientific discovery, powered by the cloud and AI at scale,” says Dr Rowland Illing, Amazon Web Services’ Chief Medical Officer and Director of Global Healthcare and Nonprofits. At its core, cancer presents a fundamental challenge: cells that go rogue, growing and dividing uncontrollably without the normal genetic &#8216;braking system&#8217; that regulates cell growth.



“But finding a way to put the brakes on is where it gets interesting,” says Dr Divya Chander, a physician, neuroscientist and futurist. For Chander, there are three key areas where AI is making significant inroads: drug discovery, designing new therapeutics (like living medicines) and precision clinical trials and precision medicine.



From data to diagnosis



Traditional drug discovery is expensive and time-consuming but AI models can accelerate the process by identifying shared genomic features across diseases to predict effectiveness. “It&#8217;s incredibly helpful because with older medications, we already know they&#8217;re safe,” says Chander. “When we find drugs that are useful for another indication, it’s really an extraordinary gift.” This is particularly important for rare and undiagnosed diseases, including certain cancers, that affect over 300 million people globally (but only 5%-7% have FDA-approved treatments).



A new open-source AI model called TxGNN, developed by Harvard Medical School researchers, aims to close this gap by identifying drug candidates for over 17,000 diseases, including rare cancers, using existing medicines. Then there’s Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong-based biotechnology startup, who now has one of the first AI-discovered drugs to enter the clinical pipeline. The company’s own Pharma.AI platform, which includes tools like PandaOmics and Chemistry42, uses multiple AI models trained on millions of data samples to identify disease targets and design new drug compounds. What’s really exciting about this is the speed. Insilico reached the first phase of clinical trials in just two and a half years, compared to the traditional six-year timeline, and at a fraction of the usual $400 million cost. “It can cost over a billion dollars per drug and take over a decade and a lot of lives are lost in that time,” adds Chander.



This acceleration in drug discovery is just one example of AI&#8217;s impact on oncology. Working with Genomics England, Illing and his team faced an immense challenge: analysing thousands of scientific papers about genetic links to diseases. “They have a team of bio curators – experts who do searches, pull out papers, read them and work out the associations between disease types and genes,” explains Illing. But with so much key data on cancer and genetics being published, Genomics England’s manual review process couldn’t keep up with the sheer volume of research. Illing’s team worked on an AI solution – automated bio-curation – which transformed this landscape completely. “Over an eight to 10-week period, we built a generative AI platform that was able to look at all of those papers published and identify 20 new gene associations which previously were not known,” Illing says, adding that if they had manually looked at all the data, it would be out of date. “The role of AI is very much automation. It&#8217;s how do you take stuff which needs to be done at scale globally, make it faster and take off the burden of the care providers?”



The digital patient



This revolutionary approach isn&#8217;t simply fast-tracking research, it&#8217;s shifting how quickly scientific discoveries can become life-saving treatments. Among these innovations, AI is being utilized to create increasingly sophisticated simulations of disease progression in virtual environments called digital twins. In fact, Research and Markets have projected that the digital twin industry will reach $130.77 billion by 2029, driven by demand in healthcare and pharmacology. In a new research paper published in Nature Medicine on digital twins, Dr Eric Stahlberg, a Leidos scientist, explained that “if you look at the aerospace industry, they&#8217;re using digital twins extensively to simulate fluid dynamics and materials processing to improve engine and aircraft designs. There are many similarities between those models and newer models that simulate the human cardiovascular and circulatory systems,” he continues. “The complexity of the human body is so substantial that there will always be uncertainty in the models. But ultimately, digital twins will inform patients, help them rank various treatment options and increase their chances of survival.&#8221;



UK Biobank, a global biomedical database and research hub, currently has a project underway that’s using AI to create detailed digital twins that mirror how cancer develops and responds to treatment for individual patients. “Digital twins enable precision care in a way that could never be done before,” says Chander. These computer models are groundbreaking because they combine multi-modal data from genetic patterns and protein behavior to chemical changes in the body and patients&#8217; full medical histories. “Most of the models that are coming out to date, like ChatGPT or Claude, have been language models, but we&#8217;re seeing a shift into large data models,” explains Illing. “Healthcare isn&#8217;t just language – it&#8217;s also genomics, proteins and imaging. By integrating all of those different data streams you get a much better idea, upfront, about what kind of treatment a patient can have.” By analyzing this rich mixture of biological and clinical information, UK Biobank’s AI system can spot subtle warning signs that traditional methods might overlook. First tackling pancreatic cancer, where the complex mixture of different cells in tumors makes early detection difficult, the team is hoping to look at lung, breast, colon, prostate, skin and bladder cancers in the future.



These AI breakthroughs are reshaping how doctors approach cancer treatment, turning an uncontrollable disease into one they can analyze, track and target with unprecedented precision. It’s a new era in medicine where cutting-edge technology can customize care. “The promise of personalized medicine is that when you come in with your specific problem, you will be treated as an individual, rather than just one of a &#8216;this sex, this age, in this environment&#8217;,” ends Illing. “AI is already having a massive impact on this kind of tailored understanding of what patients have got but also how things evolve over time.”



Will next-gen oncology be driven by nanorobots?



Remember those illustrations in the 1976 children&#8217;s book The Value of Believing in Yourself: The Story of Louis Pasteur? Tiny warriors drawn inside syringes, ready to battle disease. What once captured children&#8217;s imaginations is now a scientific reality. Today, AI is turning this vivid imagery into a radical new approach to fighting cancer: nanorobotics – sophisticated molecular machines that are redefining how we target and treat tumors. “These are kind of like rocket ships,” explains Dr Divya Chander, “your rocket ship could be a bacterial cell, or it could be a virus&#8230; or it can be a nanorobot that we create, but essentially it can hold a payload. And so, the shell, the main structure, is something that can actually be activated, like a heat seeking missile.” These tiny machines, typically measuring between 1 to 100 nanometers, are programmed to act as precision delivery systems. One breakthrough example comes from Arizona State University, where researchers have developed DNA nanorobots loaded with thrombin. These microscopic warriors seek out cancer cells and effectively starve tumors by cutting off their blood supply – a far cry from the broad, systemic effects of traditional chemotherapy. The development of nanorobots goes hand-in-hand with what Chander calls “living medicines”. Instead of traditional drugs, living medicine uses nature’s own tools (like bacteria or viruses) to fight diseases. It&#8217;s almost like having tiny helpers that can do things our bodies can&#8217;t do on their own. “A living medicine involves programming a life form to deliver a specific treatment, unlike traditional medicines, which are molecules that spread passively through the body based on physics and chemistry,” explains Chander. “These targeted therapies are extraordinary because they don&#8217;t come with the same side effects as systemic drugs… and chemotherapy is toxic.” What makes nanobots so exciting for cancer treatment is their ability in precisely attacking tumor cells. One new study found that nanorobots reduced tumor size by 65.2% compared to chemotherapy&#8217;s 40.5% reduction. They also delivered drugs with an impressive 92.7% accuracy, detected tumors nearly twice as fast and caused significantly fewer side effects. Most strikingly, patients treated with nanorobots achieved a 78% survival rate within 12 months, compared to 54% for those on chemotherapy.

3D virus cells attacking a DNA strand

A New Era In Oncology: Tackling The Dreaded ‘C’ Word With AI

The speed of AI development is leaving countries with limited digital infrastructure behind, and the gap is widening at an unprecedented rate.



In Africa, there is a need for massive digital infrastructure investment that prioritizes bridging the digital divide, particularly where the gap is widening exponentially. As David Martinon, French Ambassador to South Africa and former French Ambassador for Digital Affairs, said at the recent Finance in Common Summit (FiCS) hosted in Cape Town: “AI may seem virtual for the end user, but it needs a skeleton. It requires heavy investment in infrastructure and increased connectivity to democratize access.”



Yet, Africa is lagging when it comes to digital infrastructure. Many countries lack the cloud, connectivity, high-speed networks and data centers required to handle the demands of the technology. Hun Kim, Acting Vice President of Investment Solutions at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), said: “African countries lack the backbone of cloud and connectivity, among other core infrastructure necessities, and without these, AI will remain a distant concept rather than an accessible tool. Already there’s a digital divide and AI is doubling, even tripling this, as countries without digital infrastructure risk falling even further behind.”



The gap is further wedged open due to limited access to funds. Infrastructure funding is challenging to source, and prone to bottlenecks that introduce lengthy delays. The result is that Africa is slipping down the AI hill because countries can’t get a grip on the infrastructure, they need to embrace the technology effectively. There is work being done to rectify the challenge, but it remains slow. The Agence Française de Développement (AFD) committed 288 million Euros between 2021-2023 for broadband construction and datacenters across Africa, but this is just a drop in the ocean.



AI drives a growing demand for materials and energy that’s a challenge in markets where access to energy is fragile or insufficient. Ygor Scarcia, Industrial Development Expert at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), also emphasized the risk of growing inequalities: “The challenge is risking the divide between industrialized and non-industrialized economies.”



Africa is already making strides in AI with initiatives like the African Union’s digital transformation strategy, various tech hubs across the continent, and notable AI research projects.



Finance institutions, governments and private sector need to collaborate to find smarter ways of building Africa’s digital infrastructure and prioritizing critical environmental and governance requirements to ensure the continent doesn’t sit at the bottom of the slope. The continent has the talent and the potential, now it needs the investment impetus to take hold of AI and take the lead.

The Power of AI. Transforming Industries and Customer Service. A Look into the Future. Yellow AI icon processing texts and commands on smart phone. 3D render

An Exponential Threat: Is AI Leaving Africa Behind?

The fact that Africa has a shortage of clinical oncologists has been widely publicized. One international medical journal estimated that Nigeria, for example, has around 70 oncologists to serve a population of 213 million people. In South Africa – and in Johannesburg, in particular – it’s been reported that Gauteng’s health department has allocated millions to cancer care to assist the main hospitals that have become overwhelmed with patients needing critical treatment. And while there is definitely a skills shortage, Dr Duvern Ramiah, the head of radiation oncology at the University of the Witwatersrand and Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital explains that no one had really done a deep dive into what is actually holding up access to these life-saving interventions.



“The main bottleneck with radiation and oncology treatment is a lack of radiotherapy planning. That’s the irst step to patients get- ting radiation,” he says. With prostate cancer patients waiting around 5 years for radiotherapy and breast cancer patients waiting around 18 months, Ramiah came to the realization that there wasn’t just a shortage of equipment; the unit wasn’t using the equipment that it had efficiently. “The unit wasn’t creating enough radiotherapy plans for these patients to be treated in time,” he adds. When a cancer patient requires radiation, radiation is prescribed by a radiation oncologist. What happens next is that the patient is scanned and goes through the long process of radiotherapy planning. “If a patient has prostate cancer, the doctor will say (for example), this person needs external beam radiation. I’ll see him and make that call. Ater that, he’ll go have a CT scan which is done in the position that he’s going to have radiation in,” explains Ramiah.



Once Ramiah receives the CT scan, he’ll have to manually draw in all the areas that need to get radiated, like the prostate and lymph glands, as well as key areas to avoid, like the bladder. “It’s a long process, and only once that’s done, I’ll send the scan off to a dosimetrist or planning radiotherapist,” he continues. Once a plan is created, it still needs to be approved by the radiation oncologist to ensure it meets the prescription requirements.



Depending on the type, stage and biological behavior, some cancers metastasize quicker which means these plans are needed pretty quickly so that they don’t become outdated. Ramiah turned to AI to create a new process where part of this journey could be automated. “So, instead of a doctor drawing in all of those organs on scans, we’ve got a convolutional neural network (CNN) running that will contour target areas. The time a doctor is spending doing this process is very mundane when it can just be automated. It reduces the time gap massively,” he says. Another way Ramiah has reduced the bottleneck is by using remote radiotherapists in America to create a detailed radiotherapy plan that oncologists at Charlotte Maxeke can implement. What Ramiah also found is that with the planning process, there is a lot of rep- etition. A plan for breast cancer can take up to two hours but around 70% of what is needed is actually the same from one patient to the next. “So, we’re also developing a script to automate some of that,” he adds.



With the help of AI, Ramiah has cut Charlette Maxeke’s two-month waiting time for radiotherapy plans down to between 48 and 72 hours. One of the most important parts of this AI journey is that the technology system Ramiah is piloting at Charlotte Maxeke is vendor-agnostic. So, because it isn’t tied to a specific brand or model of radiotherapy machine, it could potentially be implemented in any healthcare facility anywhere in the world.



“You can go to any unit in Africa with this solution, regardless of their technology infrastructure,” he says. “Unfortunately, within cancer, we get stuck in a lot of innovative things like gene therapy, which is a million-rand treatment but not accessible to everybody. What’s interesting about AI tech is that it increases access. It’s an enabler, which is why I push so hard for it in my department.”

Medical technology, doctor use AI robots for diagnosis, care, and increasing accuracy patient treatment in future. Medical research and development innovation technology to improve patient health.

AI Innovations: What This South African Doctor Is Making Possible

FORBES AFRICA was at MWC Barcelona looking into Agentic AI and a raft of new gadgets coming up.



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Making its global debut at MWC, Xiaomi also showed off its SU7 Ultra EV, which goes from 0- 100km/h in a ridiculous 1.98 seconds. It recently went on sale in China and sold over 10,000 units within two hours, reaching its annual sales target.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) and agentic AI seemed to be the central theme at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona, with most companies showcasing some form of AI.&nbsp;



Agentic AI refers to AI systems that can operate autonomously, i.e., make decisions or take action without human intervention.&nbsp;



An example on Android is to ask Google’s Gemini to find flight options and send the results in an email to a colleague, or find a specific recipe and share it directly to a contact.&nbsp;



The introduction of these features means users will rely less on an app-based interface to give rise to ‘AI as the new UI’.&nbsp;



Google provided us with a sneak peek to its conversational AI, Gemini Live, that requires an advanced subscription: Gemini Live with video and Gemini Live with screenshare features.



Most smartphone companies at MWC had similar demos as they are powered by Google’s Gemini.



Meanwhile, technology brand Honor unveiled its $10-billion ‘Alpha Plan’; a change in its corporate strategy: to move from a smartphone maker to an AI device ecosystem company.&nbsp;



It shared a three-step plan to create an ‘intelligent world’ and called on the tech industry to join forces to “‘maximise human potential, ultimately benefiting all mankind”.



Honor CEO James Li said: “I am calling on all of us to unite together to address the challenges, as well as the many opportunities, of AI technology. I also call on the industry to be truly open so that we can fully embrace this exciting AI future.”



Honor said it will leverage Gemini 2.0 to create its first intelligent phone with partners Google and Qualcomm that will “revolutionize human-to-device interaction”.&nbsp;



Part of its plan is to make devices on its ecosystem work seamlessly with others, including iOS, which it demoed through file sharing to multiple devices on Android and iPhone.



Proving to be a major player in the Android space since splitting from Huawei in 2020, Honor also announced seven years of Android OS and security updates, joining the ranks of Google and Samsung.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The best of the rest



AI aside, here are some gadgets that caught our eye this year, which felt somewhat underwhelming compared to our visits in <a href="https://forbesafrica.com/technology/2023/05/17/the-metaverse-in-your-pocket-nifty-tech-and-trends-that-africa-will/">2023</a> and <a href="https://forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2024/02/28/driving-a-car-using-your-eyes-a-good-look-at-the-ai-eye-tracking-feature-at-global-mobile-tech-show/">2024</a>.



Lenovo showed off its Yoga Solar PC proof-of-concept laptop, with a lid covered in solar panels that claims an over 24% conversion rate, which it says is one of the highest in the industry.&nbsp;



A 20-minute direct sunlight charge yields enough power for up to one hour of video playback, it said.



Realme showed off an interchangeable lens concept smartphone that lets you swap out DSLR lenses with your device. It used an older device with a Sony one-inch sensor to show its capabilities.



While Xiaomi showed something similar a few years back, this year revealed a magnetic modular lens prototype smartphone that lets you easily swap out lenses using its proprietary lens mount.



Making its global debut at MWC, Xiaomi also showed off its SU7 Ultra EV, which goes from 0-100km/h in a ridiculous 1.98 seconds.&nbsp;



It recently went on sale in China and sold over 10,000 units within two hours, reaching its annual sales target. The company announced it will sell its cars outside of China within the next few years.



On the topic of cars, the Catalonian police showed off a hyperconnected police car with a drone on its roof to help patrol and catch criminals, including a smart police management system featuring a 24 hour in-person and virtual police force. The concept is yet to receive backing and funding to become a reality.



Unveiled at CES but showcased at MWC, TCL showed off the TCL 60 XE Nxtpaper 5G smartphone, which makes the display look like paper for eye comfort, using its proprietary technology.&nbsp;



The phone features various ink paper modes for reading and limited app functionality and a black and white or colour paper mode.&nbsp;



Lastly, Samsung’s Project Moohan mixed reality headset was showcased at its booth, the first Android XR headset, however, no hardware specifications were shared. A rival to the Apple Vision Pro, it’s set to launch later this year.

Xiaomi SU7 Ultra_ image supplied

Hyperconnected Police Cars And More: Sneak Peak Into ‘An Intelligent World’ At GlobalMobile Tech Show

Our smartest technology just might be accelerating environmental challenges rather than solving them.



If you&#8217;re finding that you’re using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) more and more to search for things online, you’re not alone. There are a growing number of people who are ditching traditional search engines like Google for large language model (LLM) chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. And it makes a lot of sense. Instead of paging through lists of links hidden in-between ads, you get a direct answer to your question (with sources). It sounds brilliant but there’s a catch – running AI models (especially LLMs) require a lot of computational power. They also rely on massive data centers that can consume the same amount of electricity as a small city. And the more popular AI becomes, the more power these large-scale operations will need, with McKinsey &amp; Company predicting AI power consumption could reach up to 219 gigawatts by 2030 — that’s supposedly enough electricity to power more than 163 million (average) homes.



The hyperscalers, large cloud service providers like Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft, are all scrambling to secure renewable and low-carbon energy supplies. Both Meta and Microsoft are betting big on nuclear to bolster electric grids. Microsoft recently signed a 20-year power deal with Three Mile Island, an infamous nuclear plant in Pennsylvania that shut down in 2019.



“A lot of the energy plans that the big cloud providers and data centers have is focused on sustainable energy. Nuclear is not renewable but at least we are not burning fossil fuels,” says Chris Wiggett, Head of AI and Data Analytics at NTT DATA Middle East and Africa.



“Connecting to a grid is expensive,” adds Emad Mostaque, a British entrepreneur and the former CEO of Stability AI. “The human brain uses 20 watts. When ChatGPT first came out, it used over 1,000 watts for every influence, every query.” Now, every time someone puts in a prompt into ChatGPT,



it uses around 2.9 watts of energy, every hour. The energy use may be lower but it’s still nearly 10 times what it takes for a single Google search.



“We’re looking to build Africa’s largest interconnected hyperscale data center, but we need to be as efficient as possible in our design and operation,” says Finhai Munzara, ADC’s interim CEO. “Data centers are big capital and come at a high cost to operate. We do use a lot of power so it’s important to ensure that we take some of the burden off the grid and generate as much on-site as we can.” Munzara is also looking into what happens if they overproduce solar power – whether they will be able to bank that excess energy into the grid and then offset it against some of their other emissions elsewhere. “It’s not just about delivery capacity. It’s about how we are going to power it in the most sustainable way.”



Hugging Face – an open-source hub for AI – has over a million models in their library. The platform’s CEO, Clément Delangue, wrote that a new model is created every second on the platform. A Harvard report found that the training process for a single AI model, like an LLM which is what GenAI models are based on, can consume thousands of megawatt hours of electricity.



But Wiggett believes that as AI models evolve, there’s also a chance that they will consume less power. Open-source AI models, which are often collaborative, can be lower in energy consumption compared to a closed, proprietary AI model owned by a business. Wiggett also explains that algorithm solutions require less compute power than their AI counterparts.



A  great  example  is DeepMind’s AI model, AlphaGo, which was built in 2015 to master the ancient Chinese game of Go (a complex board game of strategy, creativity and ingenuity.) “AlphaGo was the first model, and it took a very long time and massive compute power to perform at the level it did. If you look at the subsequent models, they are all algorithm-based yet they outperform the first models,” says Wiggett. “If we look at the evolution of AI, we have to go heavy compute, and then over time, the evolution will involve going lesser compute. From a technology perspective, it will get better over time.”



You can already see a shift in how data centers consume water. Despite Amazon, Microsoft and Google all reporting that their water usage has escalated due to AI demands, the hyperscalers have plans in place to become water-positive in the near future.



Amazon Web Services (AWS) is funding over 20 worldwide water replenishment projects. In other words, they’re giving communities water instead of taking it away. In late 2024, Microsoft launched a new data center design that optimizes AI workloads and consumes zero water &nbsp;&nbsp;for cooling.



“Zero water means that until a data center is built, all the water pumped into the tanks is circulated in a closed loop,” explains Munzara. “The water is cooled with ambient air.” Water usage efficiency (WUE) is a metric that has been tracked since the first generation of data centers. To cut water costs, data centers are often built in icy areas to take advantage of natural cooling. Microsoft has even conducted experiments to see if underwater data centers could work and now, an American company called Lonestar, is looking to put data centers on the moon.



“The moon has no weather, no climate change, no atmosphere and it has a perfect view of Earth rotating underneath it,” said Lonestar’s CEO, Christopher Stott, in an interview. In the meantime, while AI workloads continue to strain data center resources, other eco-friendly cooling options to manage energy efficiency will have to do.

Specialist technician professional engineercontrol drone checking top view of installing solar roof panel on the factory rooftop under sunlight. Engineers holding tablet check solar roof.

Power Tussle: The Hidden Climate Costs Of AI

Access to vaccines remains a significant challenge across Africa, but technology is emerging as a key to breaking decades of relying on other nations for vaccine development- and to thereby stop the spread of disease much, much faster.



In 2021, Africa’s 1.3 billion people had to wait months for the Covid-19 vaccine. More than 40 million doses had reportedly been administered in wealthier countries hoarding the vaccine compared with just 25 doses given, in total, to one of the lowest income countries in Africa. 



The world was, said the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), on the “brink of a catastrophic moral failure”. It was a stark and unpleasant picture painted by lack of access, limited funding, and supply chain complexities. It’s also not the first time Africa has been left behind. The treatment for HIV/Aids took six years to become accessible to Africans who were among the hardest-hit by the disease, vaccines were hard to come by during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and in 2023, there was a shortage of cholera vaccines when an Indian manufacturer stopped making the vaccine during an outbreak. 



The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has stated that over 200 disease outbreaks were reported in 2024. And they all have a direct impact on education, economic development, security and health. Yet, Africa remains reliant on vaccines produced in other parts of the world reportedly producing less than 1% of the world’s vaccinations. Out of the 54 countries in Africa, only eight have the capacity to produce vaccines – South Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Algeria, Egypt and Ethiopia.



Today, Mpox is a growing threat in Africa. In 2024, the Africa CDC declared its first Public Health Emergency of Continental Security and WHO issued its Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), one of its highest global health alerts. Across Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa and, more recently in 2025, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mpox cases totaled more than 50,840 as of November 2024.



The continent’s leadership isn’t sitting still. The African Union and the Africa CDC committed to the ideal of Africa producing 60% of its own vaccines by 2040, signing two Memorandums of Agreement (MOUs) and forming partnerships with key organizations like Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, who were instrumental in ensuring Africa received Covid-19 vaccines. But, with the continent expected to now produce 1.5 billion doses a year – 73 times more than what’s produced locally today – technology has become an essential tool to supporting vaccine development and distribution in Africa.



It sounds expensive, but as Arthur Salaün, partner at Boston Consulting Group, tells FORBES AFRICA, “Vaccines are considered one of the most cost-effective global health interventions – for every dollar you invest in vaccines, you get $20 return across economic and societal gains.”



Technology can play into the limited supply of vaccines on the continent. For example, as Michael Mynhardt, CEO and co-founder of MMH &amp; Partners Africa, explains, data can provide rapid insights into where hotspots are forming, giving healthcare providers more time to react. “You can use data to pinpoint and track outbreaks, allowing for teams to develop more effective vaccination strategies.”



He also raises one of the most significant challenges when it comes to managing vaccinations in Africa – the supply chain. There’s a growing need for solutions that can manage the cold chain efficiently while delivering vaccines to remote and hard- to-reach areas. “Drones and autonomous delivery solutions are able to access rural areas quickly and at a lower cost,” he adds.



In Kisumu, a city in Kenya, Zipline drones are being used to deliver rabies post-exposure prophylactics, malaria vaccines and measles vaccines to children. Zipline has also ensured the distribution of more than one million vaccines in Ghana, while the DRC has invested in drones to deliver yellow fever vaccines to out-of-reach locations.



Then there is the role technology is playing in the delivery of the vaccine into the human body itself. As Professor Willem Hanekom, co-national principal investigator for the M72/ AS01E TB vaccine candidate trial in South Africa, explains to FORBES AFRICA: “Most vaccines are delivered by injection – it’s practical and we know how to do it, but what if we developed patches instead? There are trials going on globally to try and convert vaccines into patches but it’s not a simple transition. They have to be safe to use and easy to deliver, and there are a lot of regulatory steps that can take years.”



Patches would be easier to manage, more cost-effective to transport, especially if using UAVs, and less intimidating for children, but their development is lengthy thanks to safety and regulatory challenges. Hanekom takes the conversation back to the supply chain and the critical need to ensure that every vial and vaccine has remained at the right temperature throughout transportation. “Technologies are coming into play that make this more efficient, for example, markers on every vial that can show whether or not there has been an interruption in the cold chain,” he says.



Dr Meg Schaeffer, EdD, MPH, MPA, an infectious disease epidemiologist and National Public Health advisor at SAS Institute in the United States, adds: “Real-time field monitoring tools ensure vaccines retain their efficacy as they move through the delivery process, but another critical factor is more of an interplay on the epidemiology side using a regional model. Technology can help us to consistently monitor where disease outbreaks are occurring and then model and potentially forecast different scenarios to assess which populations will be affected next, and to what extent. It helps us to determine where to position our resources quickly. This is the next critical frontier for Africa – using technology to deploy vaccines exactly to where they need to be so we can stop the spread of disease much, much faster.”



Finally, of course, there’s artificial intelligence (AI). AI is helping organizations reduce the time to discover a vaccine and put it on the market, allowing developers and healthcare systems to react far faster than today. “We see a future for vaccines where instead of 10 years, they will take a few months which means that when you have an epidemic, you can react far quicker than in the past,” he says. “AI-discovered drugs have a success rate of 80%-90% in phase one which is way higher than traditional drugs. The hope is that it will help Africa develop vaccines for local, daily diseases that are of no interest to global pharmaceuticals and change the narrative on the continent.”

Doctor fills syringe with medicine from vial. Vaccination and immunization

The Next Critical Frontier: Vaccine Development In Africa

Chinese brands are gaining momentum and igniting a new era in South Africa’s automotive landscape. Whether it’s a sleek new SUV rolling off a Chinese assembly line or a locally produced vehicle designed to compete on the global stage, the industry is speeding with potential and possibilities.



A Few Decades Ago, South Africa witnessed the rise of Japanese automotive brands like Kia, Hyundai, and Suzuki, which boldly entered the market to challenge well-established mass volume players like Toyota, Volkswagen (VW) and Nissan. Over time, these brands not only carved out significant market shares but also won the hearts of South Africans with their affordability, innovation and reliability. Today, a similar story is unfolding – this time with Chinese automotive brands rapidly making their mark on South Africa and the broader African continent. Brands like Great Wall Motor Company (GWM), Haval and Chery have already secured spots in the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa’s (NAAMSA) top 10 sales charts. Meanwhile, newer entrants such as GAC, Jetour, LDV and Dongfeng are aiming to steadily build momentum. With 2025 promising a wave of exciting new launches, these brands are poised to redefine the automotive landscape and spark a new era of competition.



Vision for Growth



Jay Jay Botes, General Manager of Chery South Africa, reveals that the company has ambitious plans to introduce multiple new energy vehicles (NEVs) to the South African market in 2025. While the idea of establishing local manufacturing facilities is under consideration, Botes emphasizes that Chery is still in the feasibility study phase.



On the other hand, BYD – one of China’s largest electric vehicle (EV) producers – is entering the South African market with bold intentions. As BYD celebrates 30 years, the brand is leveraging its expertise in industries like rail transit, renewable energy and electronics to disrupt the automotive industry. Steve Chang, General Manager of BYD South Africa, highlights the company’s long-term vision: building trust in a competitive environment by prioritizing customer relationships over short-term profit margins.



BYD’s upcoming launches, including the Sealion 6 plugin hybrid and the Dolphin mini, underscore its commitment to innovation. The brand’s focus on R&amp;D, with 10% of its global workforce dedicated to it, ensures that its vehicles are not only technologically-advanced but also tailored to meet the needs of diverse markets like South Africa.



The BRICS Connection



The rise of Chinese brands in South Africa is closely tied to the country’s membership in the BRICS bloc. Since joining in 2010, South Africa has seen a significant increase in automotive imports from BRICS countries, with China playing a central role. However, this growth has also sparked debates about balancing the interests of legacy automotive manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, VW, Isuzu, Nissan and Toyota – many of which have invested heavily in local production facilities – and the influx of competitively priced imports.



Mikel Mabasa, CEO of NAAMSA, acknowledges the complexities. “The disruption caused by Chinese imports is a topic of concern, but any potential interventions must align with the South African Automotive Masterplan 2035 and the second phase of the Automotive Production Development Programme (APDP2),” he explains. Mabasa emphasizes that while competition is intense, it ultimately benefits consumers by offering more choices at competitive prices.



Competing on Value



In a fiercely-competitive market, Chinese brands have positioned themselves as champions of affordability and innovation. Their focus on SUVs – one of the fastest-growing segments globally – has struck a chord with South African consumers. Equipped with advanced features and cutting-edge technology, these vehicles offer exceptional value, making them highly appealing in a market where 66.3% of vehicles sold in 2023 were priced below ZAR500,000 ($26,787).



Despite this influx, locally-produced vehicles remain strong contenders. In 2023, eight of the top 10 selling models in South Africa were manufactured locally, showcasing the resilience and adaptability of the country’s legacy OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers). Mabasa notes that the presence of Chinese brands has spurred local manufacturers to innovate, offering aggressive marketing, attractive financing options, and new model launches to stay competitive.



The NEV Revolution



As the global automotive industry pivots toward NEVs, South Africa stands at the cusp of a transformative shift. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcements at the SA Auto Week in 2024 highlighted the government’s commitment to fostering NEV adoption through policy support and incentives. However, NEVs remain a niche segment, accounting for just 1.45% of total new vehicle sales in 2023.



Chinese brands like BYD are well-positioned to accelerate this transition. By offering affordable EV options, they could drive broader market adoption and pave the way for local production in the future. Mabasa believes that a combination of demand-side incentives and hybrid vehicle inclusion in the APDP2 framework could catalyze this growth. “The affordability of Chinese EVs makes them a key player in addressing the high costs that currently hinder NEV adoption,” he says.



A Continent Alive with Possibilities



The rise of Chinese automotive brands in South Africa is not an isolated phenomenon. These brands are also making inroads across sub-Saharan Africa, leveraging the continent’s growing appetite for affordable, feature-rich vehicles. With whispers of potential production facilities and partnerships, their influence is set to extend far beyond sales figures.



This shift is indicative of a broader transformation within the African automotive landscape. Consumers are becoming more discerning, demanding vehicles that offer not just affordability but also quality, reliability and innovation. As Chinese brands rise to meet these expectations, they are also challenging local and global players to rethink their strategies.



Shaping the Future



The automotive industry is undergoing a seismic shift, and South Africa is at the heart of this transformation. Chinese brands, with their relentless focus on affordability, technology and customer trust, are reshaping the competitive landscape and redefining what it means to succeed in the industry.



For consumers, this means more choices, better value and the promise of a future where NEVs become a mainstream reality. For manufacturers and policymakers, it’s a call to innovate, collaborate and adapt to a rapidly changing world.



As South Africa enters this new era, one thing is clear: the automotive landscape is alive with possibilities. Whether it’s a sleek new SUV rolling off a Chinese assembly line or a locally- produced vehicle designed to compete on the global stage, the industry is brimming with potential. And at the center of it all are the consumers, whose preferences and demands will ultimately shape the future. This is not just a story about cars – it’s a story about transformation, resilience and the unyielding drive to innovate. It’s a story about South Africa, its people and its place in the global automotive revolution.

3d render of automatic car production line with robotic arms welding parts

Sparking Competition: The Rise Of Chinese Automotive Brands In South Africa

As traditional banking remains out of reach for many still unbanked and underserved In Africa, is Cryptocurrency slowly beginning to take a share of African wallets. 



The continent is anticipated to reach $2.9 billion in cryptocurrency revenue this year, and this growth is only going to grow exponentially as crypto becomes increasingly relevant to a digital-savvy population that’s distrustful of traditional banking services. In 2022, the World Bank reported that well over 50% of adults in 16 economies across 36 surveyed have a bank account. While account ownership has increased, the continent remains a financial playground where innovative solutions and transformative approaches to money management flourish.



Mobile money, says the World Bank, has redefined financial inclusion in countries like Kenya – M-PESA, for example, is the continent’s biggest success story and the lingo around its transactions has crept into local dialect.



And cryptocurrency, says the 2024 Geography of Crypto Report by Chainalysis, has equally found its footing in developing economies where millions opt into alternative banking and financial management solutions. The report found that sub-Saharan Africa is currently in the lead for decentralized finance (DeFi) adoption because people are craving accessible financial solutions and while the region only accounts for 2.7% of global cryptocurrency transaction volumes, Nigeria comes second in global cryptocurrency adoption while Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa made the top 30. Middle East and North Africa (MENA) account for 7.5% of global transaction volumes and was the seventh largest crypto market in 2024.



In these markets where crypto opens up doors often held shut by traditional banking systems, these digital assets have evolved to become essential to economic survival. No longer just for use by wealthy investors exploring crypto’s potential on a digital playground, these currencies are being adopted by digital-savvy users from informal sectors who want to bank, invest and spend within a trusted and accessible ecosystem.



As Frank Leonette, Founder and CEO of AFRIDAX, tells FORBES AFRICA: “It’s not the white-collar individuals who are driving crypto, it’s people from informal sectors. They’re using their mobile devices to transact in crypto because the beauty of this technology is that it is peer-to-peer. It doesn’t need a bank or intermediaries. If I send you 10 bitcoins, you will receive them immediately on your device and it removes the barrier-to-entry significantly.”



Instead of proof of address – a challenge in most rural areas – and identification and other complex paperwork hurdles, crypto users can move into the market easily.



Leonette highlights how Zimbabwe was a superb example of how bitcoin transcended the challenges of local currency because it was so easily transactable in the country.



“Cryptocurrency also makes it easier to do cross-border transactions and send money home – users don’t have to pay the astronomical fees associated with legacy systems nor do they have to wait three to four days for money to clear. It’s an instantaneous transaction.”



Financial institutions are paying attention to this shift.



In South Africa, Auguste Claude-Nguetsop, Partner and Southern Africa Head of Financial Services at KPMG, tells FORBES AFRICA that digital banks like Bank Zero and TymeBank have evolved to meet the needs of the unbanked population, structuring their costs and services to deliver what these users need. However, he believes that while cryptocurrencies do lower the barrier to entry with regards to access, cost and borders, they aren’t that easy to use or understand.



“We have a growing digital banking sector which is now also experimenting with crypto, especially as it’s attractive to those looking for cross-border payments,” he explains. “However, the complexity of crypto makes it a barrier for a large part of that market.”



He’s right. Cryptocurrencies aren’t simple – there are multiple types, different levels of performance, an abundance of crypto exchanges and the increasing risks around fraud and cybersecurity.



Thomas Lobban, Tax Legal Specialist at Latita Africa, tells FORBES AFRICA that while the walls have come down regarding crypto and it has become increasingly easy to use and access, there are dangers, and it isn’t quite as useful as perhaps pundits would have you believe.



“People aren’t abandoning their bank accounts in favor of crypto because what you can purchase is still limited, even in areas that have a primarily informal economy they prefer cash, which has a tangible value to it in their hands, as opposed to crypto which is still volatile,” he says. “Where you’ve really seen an explosion of crypto is in places that have hyper-inflationary currencies. If your local currency isn’t going to hold its value between today or tomorrow, crypto becomes an incredibly attractive prospect.”



This is exactly one of the reasons why crypto has found its feet in countries like Zimbabwe and Turkey. According to Kaiko Research, Turkey’s inflation and currency devaluation alongside bitcoins growing value has led to the country’s rapid adoption of cryptocurrencies to offset this financial instability. These digital assets are being further enhanced by the fact that in 2024 there was a swathe of regulatory changes that have shifted the narrative around crypto. Standardized regulations and licensing are building more secure and trusted digital financial environments – South Africa was the first African nation to introduce licensing for crypto exchanges which, the Crypto Council for Innovation calls a “significant leap forward”.



Perhaps crypto’s expansion in Africa is less about the unbanked and more about finding smart ways of managing money across the financial solutions that best fit the environment. In Kenya, mobile money remains king, in Nigeria and Turkey, crypto is gaining significant traction, while in South Africa, regulations are placing crypto firmly in the investor space. That said, however, there are still challenges around regulations in Africa that are inhibiting uptake and that may yet put the brakes on the digital currency’s growth aspirations. As Claude-Nguetsop concludes: “Regulators are potentially not fully comfortable about the size of the risks and the instruments are not very liquid, but it’s worth noting that things are changing, and Africa isn’t left behind. The U.S., which is quite sophisticated, only allowed listings in January 2024. It will all be allowed on the continent; it’s just a matter of time because crypto is here to stay.”

Young Asian man managing finance and investment online, analyzing stock market trades with smartphone and laptop. Making financial plans. Banking and finance, investment, financial trading, mobile banking with technology concept

Africa’s Crypto Cred: Transacting With The Future

Heard of catfishing? Disturbing trends from the world of online dating and how these dangerous scams are on the rise. Watch out for the red flags.



A 19-year-old university student from South Africa, Tom Harris (name changed to protect identity), is urging people to be more cautious when it comes to social media scams. After being caught last year, he says “more and more of my friends are being catfished [online romance scams]”.



He claims even amongst teens who know what to look out for, the number of those getting caught out by unscrupulous scammers is on the rise. This could be more amongst older populations who might not be as savvy online. It’s a growing global problem and perpetrators are using advancing technologies to stay one step ahead.



Interpol’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2024 estimates there’s been a 23% year-on-year increase in the number of weekly cyber-related crimes in Africa, including catfishing and ‘pig butchering’ – a scheme that combines aspects of catfishing and cryptocurrency investment fraud, where scammers use fake online identities to build trust with victims before convincing them to invest in crypto-currency scams and then disappearing with the funds.



Many of the fraudsters are reportedly from West Africa. The ‘Ghana scam’ is a well-known tactic to deceive victims into believing they are in a relationship. Once trust has been built, the tricksters manipulate victims into sending them money. South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Cameroon are also home to cybercrime syndicates, the losses of which are estimated in hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. In Nigeria, the rise in scamming is largely due to a boom in cybercafes, a series of economic crashes from the 1980s, and the resulting joblessness amongst young people. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, ‘Nigerian Prince’ emails became infamous. As per online reports, they “typically involved someone claiming to be royalty and asking for money they promised to pay back with a hefty commission added”. The ‘Nigerian letter’ followed – a type of computer fraud “that aims to underhandedly get access to a user’s bank account or to extort money from them in a different way”. According to the United States’ Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Business Email Compromise (BEC) fraud reports have skyrocketed, with attempts to steal nearly $9 billion from American financial institutions since 2016. Here, the scammer uses email to trick someone into sending money or divulging confidential company information. The culprit poses as a trusted figure, then asks for a fake bill to be paid or for sensitive data they can use in another scam.



Then there’s the ‘419 scheme’, named for the violation of Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code. It combines “the threat of impersonation fraud with a variation of an advance fee scheme in which a letter, email, or fax is received by the potential victim”.



The syndicates work across the continent. Shane Theunissen, Managing Director of private security company, Special Ops 99, in Johannesburg, says the groups rent apartments in affluent areas. “Ten guys rent one unit and work out of it. We’ve arrested a lot of them and confiscated a lot of laptops with regards to 419 scams,” he tells FORBES AFRICA. “All these guys do is sit at home all day. They all drive fancy cars. They never go to work. That raises suspicion.” Theunissen says after his static security teams monitor strange activities in neighborhoods, his security teams pass the information on to the company’s tactical task team that then works closely with commercial crime units and crime intelligence to investigate. Confiscated laptops are sent to forensics for processing.



Tracing these criminals across borders is not easy.



Theunissen says his company works with international tracing agents and task teams, but the culprits are not easy to catch because they use sophisticated methods to cover their tracks. These include burner phones that can’t be traced, as well as VPNs. These are secure private networks that use encryption to hide their location. While they’re not foolproof, in many cases, criminals can continue their ruse for sometime as the VPN essentially sends out false location information.



The Nigerian ‘Yahoo Boys’ have been quick to exploit deepfake technology in their romance scams. Similar to traditional catfishing, they begin by luring victims through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter). These initial contacts are usually made through direct messages, where the scammers use manipulation to gain the victim’s trust. As the conversation progresses, they move the interaction to messaging apps like WhatsApp, making the communication feel more personal and frequent.



The crucial next step in their scheme is video calling. Here, the scammers employ deepfake technology to alter their appearance and voice in real time, allowing them to present themselves as the person depicted in the photos from earlier interactions. Victims, believing they are truly speaking with the person they have come to trust, continue to build the emotional connection.



Once the trust is established, the scammers implement the final part of their plan: defrauding the victim of money. By then, the victim is deeply invested in the relationship, making them more likely to fall for requests for financial help. Many of these techniques are reportedly borrowed from Chinese romance scams. Increasingly, scammers are turning to crypto to bypass safety checks. Hacked Facebook and Twitter accounts are bought with crypto or cash and then 15- and 16-year-olds are hired to generate content and create a profile. Sometimes a full persona is set up using Clip Art or photos from other social media accounts.



Building trust can take months.



When the money comes, the boss gets 60% and the young men take home the remaining 40%.



So how do we protect ourselves against these fraudsters? South African Harris found himself caught in the dangerous web of catfishing and blackmail after he met a woman named “Chloe” on Instagram. What began as seemingly innocent messaging soon spiralled into a nightmare when Chloe, who had convinced Harris to share intimate photos, threatened to expose him unless he paid her a fee.



Based on how catfishing works, it’s fair to assume that Chloe didn’t even exist. She threatened to send Harris’ intimate photos to his friends and family if he didn’t comply. He paid, hoping the nightmare would end.



“I was terrified,” Harris recalls. “She said she’d post my pictures everywhere, send them to my friends, my family… I thought paying her would make it stop. But that wasn’t the case.”



Chloe demanded more, and more money.



Emma Sadleir, South Africa’s leading expert on social media law, advised him to stop all communication, deactivate all social media accounts, and refrain from responding to any further messages. Sadleir notes that paying an extortionist only fuels the situation and encourages further demands. The best course of action, she says, is to block the perpetrator, gather evidence, and, if necessary, report the incident to the authorities. “Honestly, I thought I was going to be exposed. I thought she would send the photos out. But it didn’t happen. Maybe it’s because I blocked her and shut everything down. I don’t know for sure, but I’m relieved it’s over,” says Harris. Sadleir tells FORBES AFRICA: “What I’m finding more and more is that it’s just such a difficult crime to deal with because people are so very embarrassed to come forward. They often feel ashamed that they’ve sent these nudes to people they don’t know.” Among the red flags to look out for: scammers often make unsolicited contact; they may quickly express deep feelings; create emotional bonds, or fabricate sob stories like medical emergencies or family crises to ask for financial help; poor grammar and spelling; urgency and pressure to push you into making quick decisions; and background that cannot be verified. While the stakes are high, the cost of giving in can be higher.

Love scam and romance fraud with fake profile online. Dating website catfish. Scammer man with phone. Money deception with stolen identity on internet.

Falling Hook, Line And Sinker: Have You Been A Victim Of Catfishing?

There’s a new compact electric vehicle that holds the title of “cheapest EV” in South Africa, or “least expensive”, whichever way you look at it.



The Dayun S5 Mini SUV EV became available in January for R399,900 ($21,668), dethroning the BYD Dolphin at R539,900 ($29,254). It was announced in July 2024 as the Dayun Yuehu S5 but has since been renamed.



The Dayun S5 Mini SUV is a Chinese import, sold by Enviro Automotive, a Pretoria-based importer and distributor of EVs, and heavy-duty electric trucks and bakkies.



Despite its positioning, it still incurs a higher import duty of 25% when compared to the 18% on internal combustion engine vehicles.



The S5 Mini SUV has a closed-off front grille, LED lights, a 7-inch infotainment screen next to an 8-inch instrument cluster, climate control, Bluetooth and a USB-A port.



Other standard features include driver and passenger airbags, ABS brakes, traction control, hill start assist and cruise control.



The S5 Mini also comes in a “VIP” option for R449,900 ($24,375), which includes a SmartLink app access with additional remote features, larger wheels, and ultrasonic radars for its parking cameras.



The company provided FORBES AFRICA with a loan unit of the VIP model for a weekend in a pale green shade.



The small five-seater EV has a modest 35kW of power and 105Nm of torque and a tiny 31.7kWh battery. It yields a driving range of about 330km, according to WLTP ratings. Top speed is 110km/h.



We tested the vehicle over a rainy weekend in Gauteng, by splitting it between highway driving and urban roads.



The car’s limited 35kW of power was felt on the highway stretch, with vehicles behind flashing us because of our slow speed, which at the time was around 80km/h, yet three lanes away from the fast lane.



The highest speed achieved on the drive to Menlyn near Johannesburg was 107km/h, while going flat out, which felt like it was eating into the range unnecessarily.



While I used 36km of range for the 40km trip one way, on the previous week I netted 8km of range on the electric Mini on the same route.



There was a huge downpour on the return trip and due to a fogged-up windscreen and limited visibility, the aircon had to be used at full speed with the demister to clear the windows.



I felt the car had unintentionally gone through a worst-case scenario, so I was looking forward to city driving the following day. I completed a 25km trip using 18km of range, which was better than the highway stretch.



The speed on urban roads with frequent traffic lights meant I didn’t need to go beyond 80km/h. I found it better suited to urban roads.



When it came to recharging the S5 Mini, it struggled on certain DC fast chargers. It eventually cut off after a short while, but I had better luck with my home AC charger. Enviro Automotive is looking into the charging fault.



The S5 Mini can charge at a 6kW speed on an AC charger and maximum 30kW on a DC charger.



I charged about 16.78kWh of the battery on my home charger, which took about 2.5 hours and cost me less than R45 ($2.43) at a figure of roughly R2.45 per kWh. However, the vehicle comes with a 3-pin plug charger.



A full charge at home costs around R76 on Eskom rates. Comparatively, a public AC charger costs roughly R182 ($9.86) based at a rate of R5.88 per kWh and around R228 ($12.35) on a DC charger at R7.35 per kWh. Eskom charges per kWh while public EV chargers are based on speed.



The Dayun S5 Mini SUV is cheap to run but due to its output, is better suited for short urban commutes, school rounds or as a small business vehicle, including ones that deliver within its vicinity.

Image supplied

For Car And Tech Geeks Only: What It’s Like Driving South Africa’s Most Affordable EV

Abu Dhabi-based AppliedAI, which helps healthcare companies and insurers automate claims and billing, just raised $55 million in a deal led by G42 with Palantir and Bessemer



Abu Dhabi is best known in tech for bankrolling foreign startups, venture funds and now AI mega projects like OpenAI’s infrastructure Stargate via its massive sovereign wealth funds. But the UAE also has a small but growing AI ecosystem.



One such startup, AppliedAI, which was originally founded in London in 2021 but moved to Abu Dhabi the following year to take advantage of government grants, has now raised one of the region’s largest early-stage venture funding rounds. G42, the AI lab controlled by United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed, has led a $55 million Series A round into the company, along with Palantir, Bessemer Venture Partners, McKinsey, and Accrete Capital. The new funding puts a $300 million pre-money valuation on the startup, which uses a mix of humans and AI to automate back-office jobs.



AppliedAI founder and CEO Arya Bolurfrushan has zeroed in on highly regulated insurances like healthcare, insurance and pharma that have mountains of paperwork that need to be manually processed. Among AppliedAI’s current clients are Abu Dhabi’s state-owned health group M42, American law firm Morgan &amp; Morgan and British drug safety monitoring company Qinecsa.



Bolurfrushan’s pitch is that his AI, and human reviewers, can process complex medical billing records or insurance claims faster and more accurately than traditional outsourcing companies like Cognizant, Concentrix and Wipro.&nbsp;<a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785479" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Studies</a>&nbsp;suggest that such paperwork and other administrative expenses count for at least 15% of the $4.9 trillion spent on healthcare in the United States annually.



“All our work is what we call high cost of error workflows where often human lives are on the line,” Bolurfrushan told&nbsp;Forbes. “You can’t afford hallucinations and that’s why we have an essential harmony between our AI and human agents.”



Bolurfrushan declined to reveal AppliedAi’s revenue but said that company had processed over 4 million pages of U.S. medical records in the last year alone.



Applied had previously raised $42 million in 2022 from G42 and Dubai’s ruling Al Maktoum family,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-17/uae-royals-back-ai-startup-founded-by-former-goldman-banker" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>&nbsp;reported. Bolurfrushan, a former Goldman Sachs banker, told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;the new cash would be used to further develop its AI tools, and expand its team to work with more clients in the United States and Europe.



G42, Abu Dhabi’s flagship AI project, received its own funding boost last year when Microsoft invested $1.5 billion to take a minority stake. That investment came as part of a deal for G42 to divest from China and end its work with Huawei over fears from American lawmakers that this could allow China’s tech giants to access U.S. AI technology and chips.



One investor in the deal, London-based venture fund Accrete, was also cofounded by Bolurfrushan.



The deal marks Bessemer’s first investment in the UAE in what is one of the region’s largest Series A rounds for a startup. “What AppliedAI has built enables the automation jobs to be done faster and cheaper but with a human in the loop,” Sofia Guerra, vice president of Bessemer Venture Partners, told Forbes.

Asian business people team brainstorm meeting in sustainable office at night, using computer monitor. Discuss ESG (environmental social corporate governance) project planning. Responsible organization

AI Startup Raises One Of The Biggest Series A Rounds Ever For Middle Eastern Company

Africa’s next wave of innovation will likely emerge not from Lagos or Nairobi but from Kigali, Dakar, Or Tunis &#8211; offering global investors the chance to discover untapped potential in the continent’s diverse and rapidly-evolving markets.



LATE LAST YEAR, Penelope Terranova posted a call to action on LinkedIn. Her post wasn’t just another entry in the digital ether; it was a rallying cry to experts. She sought professionals skilled in accounting, legal, and business growth to help transform Africa’s overlooked startup ecosystems. The post, which listed 18 priority countries — excluding the continent’s ‘Big 4’ of Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa — sparked a reaction.



One comment from a Nigerian LinkedIn user encapsu- lated a common sentiment: “Coming to Africa and leaving out Africa’s most populous nation and biggest economy, which is Nigeria, is very strange.”



Terranova responded with a measured explanation. “The Big 4 capture over 80% of all investment on the con- tinent,” she wrote. “That is why they are not in our prior- ity of countries to invest in.”



Her reasoning was clear: Africa’s startup landscape is evolving, but much of the attention — and funding — re- mains concentrated in a handful of countries.



Initiatives are now on the rise with a mission to bridge that gap, focusing on regions often ignored by mainstream investors.



The Shit To Emerging Markets



This new approach reflects a broader trend. In 2024, startup funding across Africa dropped by 25%, down to $2.2 billion. How- ever, beneath the surface of this contraction, new markets were emerging as hotbeds of in- novation.



Ghana and Tanzania led the charge outside the Big 4, securing 26 deals each and raising $67 million and $53 million, respectively.



Senegal and the Ivory Coast, bolstered by regional trade integration and supportive policies, com- peted for leadership in Francophone West Africa.



In North Africa, the Tunisian Startup Act continued to bear fruit, making the country a leader in deep tech, spanning AI, biotech, and cloud computing, which shows promise for global adoption.



Emmanuel Adegboye, Head of Madica, a structured investment program for African pre-seed stage compa- nies, highlights the unique advantages of North African markets like Tunisia. “These regions have an abundance of technical talent, a low cost of living, and proximity to major markets,” Adegboye notes to FORBES AFRICA.



Morocco, with its robust research and development (R&amp;D) infrastructure and proximity to European mar- kets, remained a magnet for deal activity.



Meanwhile, in East Africa, Rwanda’s innovation- friendly policies and Uganda’s steady investment attraction turned them into rising stars. Terranova shares with FORBES AFRICA: “Sectorally, fintech remains the clear leader and is likely to remain so, even in untapped markets, as we see the rapid expansion of digital payments, lending platforms, and financial inclusion initiatives. However, other sectors such as agritech, healthtech and edtech are advancing quickly, addressing Africa’s pressing challenges of affordable and scalable solutions in those industries, with AI as a com- mon thread driving innovation across these sectors.’’



Untapped Potential In Underserved Regions



Terranova’s team at Digital Africa focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage startups, the most vulnerable phases in a company’s journey. Their model combines funding with robust support systems: mentorship, tools, and networking opportunities tailored to the unique challenges of operating in underserved markets. In 2024, their investment in media startup Makifaa reportedly marked the only re- corded startup deal in Togo.



The impact of this strategy is two-fold. It fosters localized growth, reducing dependency on the Big 4, while also presenting new opportunities for global investors.



“Several countries shine as bright spots for invest- ment,’’ Terranova explains. “Countries possess varying levels of the essential ‘ingredients’ for success, which can enhance or limit the chances of local startups to thrive – such as the quality of the infrastructure, the ease of doing business, the availability of capital, the market depth, or the level of education and availability of talent.’’



Catalyzing Inclusive Innovation



For Adegboye, the approach goes beyond financial invest- ment. “It requires building the ecosystem— strengthening local leaders, providing patient capital, and offering guid- ance on governance and scalability. This model ensures the long-term sustainability of startups, even in the most challenging markets.’’



Inclusivity is at the heart of Digital Africa’s mission. Gender diversity is a key metric; 50% of its portfolio consists of gender-diverse teams. The Talent 4 Startups initiative has trained tech professionals, bridging the talent gap for startups. “As a subsidiary of Proparco within the AFD Group and in collaboration with 60+ Startup Support Organizations across the continent, we amplify our reach, including co-investment opportunities, aligning with both financial sustainability and our mission to propel African startups,’’ Terranova explains. The future of African startups lies not in a few dominant markets but in the collective rise of many. Channeling resources to underserved regions, promoting inclusivity, and investing in early-stage ventures, initiatives are reshaping the narrative.

Business colleagues discussing project in office

In The Spotlight: Africa’s New Tech Centers Coming Into View

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Artificial intelligence startup OpenAI is in early discussions for a funding round that could value it at a whopping $340 billion, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-in-talks-for-huge-investment-round-valuing-it-up-to-340-billion-2a2d4327?mod=breakingnews" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">The Wall Street Journal</a>, which would more than double its valuation amid competitive threats from up-and-coming Chinese AI firm&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2025/01/30/heres-how-much-ai-firm-deepseek-and-its-billionaire-founder-liang-wenfeng-are-worth/">DeepSeek</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



OpenAI is in the early stages of raising up to $40 billion in a new funding round, the Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter who noted discussions are still in flux and could fall through.



The funding round would value OpenAI at $340 billion, more than doubling its latest valuation of $157 billion, which was secured after the company raised $6.6 billion in October.



The Journal previously&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/softbank-in-talks-to-invest-up-to-25-billion-in-openai-03d653fc?mod=article_inline" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reported</a>&nbsp;that Japanese investment firm SoftBank would spearhead the funding round and contribute somewhere between $15 billion and $25 billion.



OpenAI did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-does-openai-s-valuation-compare-to-its-competitors">How Does Openai’s Valuation Compare To Its Competitors?</h2>



OpenAI was valued at $157 billion as of October while the Elon Musk-owned xAI secured a roughly $50 billion valuation last fall. Amazon-backed AI startup Anthropic was valued at $18 billion and is reportedly in talks for a fundraise that would raise its valuation to $60 billion. DeepSeek is worth at least $1 billion, according to analysts who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2025/01/30/heres-how-much-ai-firm-deepseek-and-its-billionaire-founder-liang-wenfeng-are-worth/">spoke to Forbes</a>, though it could be worth far more despite the fact it generates little revenue as of today. Although they are not explicitly AI companies, Microsoft and Meta earmarked $80 billion and $65 billion, respectively, for AI in their current fiscal years,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-meta-ceos-defend-hefty-ai-spending-after-deepseek-stuns-tech-world-2025-01-30/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Reuters</a>&nbsp;reported.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



OpenAI has the highest valuation among all U.S. AI startups and more than quadrupled its value from 2023 to 2024. The nonprofit company generated $300 million in monthly revenue in August, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/27/technology/openai-chatgpt-investors-funding.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, which noted OpenAI expected $3.7 billion in annual sales for 2024. OpenAI is also at the forefront of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/21/oracle-stock-surges-ahead-of-500-billion-stargate-openai-trump-deal/">Project Stargate</a>, a Trump-backed AI infrastructure initiative also involving Oracle and Nvidia. The project seeks to construct several AI data centers across the country and establish hundreds of thousands of American jobs. However, the large bursts of money and funding behind OpenAI and other AI startups were thrown into question this week as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/01/27/trump-calls-deepseek-a-positive-development-but-wake-up-call-for-us-industries/">DeepSeek</a>&nbsp;surged in popularity and claimed it developed one of its AI models at a much cheaper cost than American startups. The Chinese startup claimed it spent $5.6 million on graphics processing units to train a model, though experts like Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon have remained skeptical of the figure, saying it disregards “substantial” additional costs that put toward the model’s development.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">Further Reading</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/10/02/openai-valued-at-157-billion-after-closing-66-billion-funding-round/">OpenAI Valued At $157 Billion After Closing $6.6 Billion Funding Round</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2025/01/30/heres-how-much-ai-firm-deepseek-and-its-billionaire-founder-liang-wenfeng-are-worth/">Here’s How Much AI Firm DeepSeek And Its Founder Are Worth</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

AI Illustrations

OpenAI Eyeing Funding Round That Would Double Its Value, Report Says

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Here’s everything to know about Chinese AI company called DeepSeek, which topped the app charts and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/27/deepseek-panic-heres-why-tech-stocks-are-getting-crushed-as-nasdaq-paces-to-worst-day-of-2025/">rattled</a>&nbsp;global tech stocks Monday after it notched high performance ratings on par with its top U.S. rivals.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



The DeepSeek startup is less than two years old—it was founded in 2023 by 40-year-old Chinese entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng—and released its open-source models for download in the United States in early January, where it has since surged to the top of the iPhone download charts, surpassing the app for OpenAI’s ChatGPT.



DeepSeek’s latest product, an advanced reasoning model called R1, has been compared favorably to the best products of OpenAI and Meta while&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-27/what-is-deepseek-r1-and-how-does-china-s-ai-model-compare-to-openai-meta" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">appearing</a>&nbsp;to be more efficient, with lower costs to train and develop models and having possibly been made without relying on the most powerful AI accelerators that are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp500-nasdaq-live-01-27-2025/card/what-is-deepseek-and-why-is-it-rattling-tech-stocks--mOeGwTTGQmyUTNPrqaIq" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">harder to buy</a>&nbsp;in China because of U.S. export controls.



The company&#8217;s R1 and V3 models are both ranked in the top 10 on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-uc-berkeley-project-that-is-the-ai-industrys-obsession-bc68b3e3?mod=article_inline" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Chatbot Arena</a>, a performance platform hosted by University of California, Berkeley, and the company says it is scoring nearly as well or outpacing rival models in mathematical tasks, general knowledge and question-and-answer performance&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-27/what-is-deepseek-r1-and-how-does-china-s-ai-model-compare-to-openai-meta" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">benchmarks</a>.



<a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/deepseek-stock-market-china-ai-4149ddc0#:~:text=DeepSeek%20said%20it%20had%20spent,Trump%20administration's%20Stargate%20AI%20initiative." rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">DeepSeek said</a>&nbsp;training one of its latest models cost $5.6 million, which would be much less than the $100 million to $1 billion one AI chief executive&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-ai-deepseek-chatbot-6ac4ad33?mod=livecoverage_web" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">estimated</a>&nbsp;it costs to build a model last year—though Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon later called DeepSeek’s figures highly misleading.



Despite the questions remaining about the true cost and process to build DeepSeek’s products, they still sent the stock market into a panic: Microsoft (down 3.7% as of 11:30 a.m. ET), Tesla (1.3%), Nvidia (15%) and Broadcom (16%) all slipped Monday following a selloff spurred by DeepSeek&#8217;s success, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 3.5%&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/27/deepseek-panic-heres-why-tech-stocks-are-getting-crushed-as-nasdaq-paces-to-worst-day-of-2025/">on the way</a>&nbsp;to its third-worst day of the last two years.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">Crucial Quote</h2>



&#8220;Deepseek R1 is AI&#8217;s Sputnik moment,&#8221; billionaire investor Marc Andressen&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/pmarca/status/1883640142591853011" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;Sunday.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">Big Number</h2>



1.6 million. That&#8217;s how many times the DeepSeek mobile app had been downloaded as of Saturday,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-27/what-is-deepseek-r1-and-how-does-china-s-ai-model-compare-to-openai-meta" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>&nbsp;reported, the No. 1 app in iPhone stores in Australia, Canada, China, Singapore, the US and the U.K.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-do-i-use-deepseek">How Do I Use Deepseek?</h2>



DeepSeek is free to use on web, app and API but does require users to create an account.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-does-deepseek-compare-to-openai-and-chatgpt">How Does Deepseek Compare To Openai And Chatgpt?</h2>



DeepSeek-R1 is most similar to OpenAI’s o1 model, which costs users $200 per month. Both are large language models with advanced reasoning capabilities, different from shortform question-and-answer chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGTP. R1 and o1 specialize in breaking down requests into a chain of logical &#8220;thoughts&#8221; and examining each one individually. R1 has achieved performance on par with o1 in several benchmarks and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/26/deepseek_r1_ai_cot/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">reportedly</a>&nbsp;exceeded its performance in the MATH-500 test. Chatbot Arena currently ranks R1 as tied for the third-best AI model in existence, with o1 coming in fourth.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-is-deepseek-r1-open-source">Is Deepseek-R1 Open Source?</h2>



Yes. DeepSeek-R1 is available for anyone to access, use, study, modify and share, and is not restricted by proprietary licenses.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-owns-deepseek">Who Owns Deepseek?</h2>



DeepSeek operates independently but is solely funded by High-Flyer, an $8 billion hedge fund also founded by Wenfeng. The company released its first product in November 2023, a model designed for coding tasks, and its subsequent releases, all notable for their low costs, forced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2025/01/26/all-about-deepseekthe-chinese-ai-startup-challenging-the-us-big-tech/">other Chinese tech giants</a>&nbsp;to lower their AI model prices to remain competitive. In an&nbsp;<a href="https://thechinaacademy.org/interview-with-deepseek-founder-were-done-following-its-time-to-lead/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">interview</a>&nbsp;last year, Wenfeng said the company doesn&#8217;t aim to make excessive profit and prices its products only slightly above their costs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-is-deepseek-really-that-cheap">Is Deepseek Really That Cheap?</h2>



Not everyone is buying the claims that DeepSeek made R1 on a shoestring budget and without the help of American-made AI chips. Scale AI CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/what-is-deepseek-why-is-it-disrupting-ai-sector-2025-01-27/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Alexandr Wang</a>&nbsp;told CNBC on Thursday (without evidence) DeepSeek built its product using roughly 50,000 Nvidia H100 chips it can’t mention because it would violate U.S. export controls that ban the sale of such chips to Chinese companies. Billionaire Elon Musk supported the theory and said it was &#8220;<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1883761141647901083" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">obviously</a>&#8221; true in a post on X. Rasgon expressed similar thoughts in a note Monday, writing that DeepSeek did not quantify the resources it used to develop the R1 model in its reports and that while &#8220;the models look fantastic&#8230; we don&#8217;t think they are miracles.&#8221; He also said the $5 million cost estimate may accurately represent what DeepSeek paid to rent certain infrastructure for training its models, but excludes the prior research, experiments, algorithms, data and costs associated with building out its products.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">What To Watch For</h2>



How big of a hit Nvidia, the maker of highly sought-after artificial intelligence chips, takes Monday. The company is tracking toward an 11%, or $400 billion, loss, which would be the biggest single-day value loss ever for any company. That record is already held by Nvidia, which dropped almost 10%&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/09/04/nvidia-slide-wipes-10-billion-from-ceo-jensen-huangs-fortune-as-selloff-continues-after-hours/#:~:text=On%20Tuesday%2C%20Nvidia's%20share%20price,part%20of%20an%20antitrust%20probe.">in September</a>&nbsp;to lose $280 billion in market value.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



China and the U.S. are the major players in the artificial intelligence arms race that seemed to be led primarily by American firms OpenAI (backed by Microsoft), Meta and Alphabet. Last week, President Donald Trump backed OpenAI’s $500 billion <a href="http://openai.com/index/announcing-the-stargate-project/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stargate</a> infrastructure plan to outpace its peers and, in announcing his support, specifically <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-announces-private-sector-ai-infrastructure-investment/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">spoke</a> to the importance of U.S. dominance over China in the AI space. Artificial intelligence is largely powered by high-tech and high-dollar semiconductor chips that provide the processing power needed to perform complex calculations and handle large amounts of data efficiently. And while not all of the biggest semiconductor chip makers are American, many—including Nvidia, Intel and Broadcom—are designed in the United States. In 2022, the U.S. <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/updated-october-7-semiconductor-export-controls" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">began limiting</a> semiconductor exports to China in an attempt to stymie the country’s ability to advance AI for military applications or other national security threats.

DeepSeek Shakes Up Stocks as Traders Question US Tech Valuations

What Is DeepSeek? New Chinese AI Startup Rivals OpenAI—And Claims It’s Far Cheaper

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



Meta will rapidly ramp up its spending in 2025 as part of its artificial intelligence push, according to its centibillionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday, as the battle between Meta and its generative AI competitors including OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI comes to the forefront this week with President Donald Trump’s announcement of the $500 billion&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/22/musk-is-bashing-trumps-new-stargate-ai-initiative-with-openai-and-oracle-heres-why/">“Stargate”</a>&nbsp;joint venture with OpenAI.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



“This will be a defining year for AI,” Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.threads.net/@zuck/post/DFNf73PJxOQ" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;on the company’s Threads social media site, continuing with updates and predictions for Meta’s AI push in 2025.



Perhaps Zuckerberg’s biggest revelation Friday was his guidance for $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditures for Meta in 2025.



That’s well above consensus analyst forecasts of $51 billion in capital expenditures this year, according to FactSet, and Zuckerberg’s median projected capex of $62.5 billion would be 63% above Meta’s $38.4 billion in projected 2024 capex and 129% above its $27.3 billion in 2023 capex.



Meta will expand its “AI teams significantly” as part of its increased spending, declared Zuckerberg.



The billionaire also predicted Meta’s Llama 4 large-language model “will become the leading state of the art” AI model and it will end 2025 with more than 1.3 million graphics processing units, the highly coveted Nvidia-designed processors powering generative AI programs including Meta AI, xAI’s Grok and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-meta-stock-rises">Meta Stock Rises</h2>



After initially declining about 1% premarket following Zuckerberg’s announcement, shares of Meta rallied Friday, advancing as much as 1.6% shortly after market open before settling into a 0.9% gain by midmorning. Meta stock scored a record intraday share price of $646.90 and all-time high market value of more than $1.6 trillion. Meta shares are up more than 8% year-to-date.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Zuckerberg’s 2025 outlook comes during a whirlwind week for generative AI after Trump capped his first full day in office announcing a $500 billion joint venture designed to build out the data center infrastructure to power OpenAI’s technology. Stargate was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/22/musk-is-bashing-trumps-new-stargate-ai-initiative-with-openai-and-oracle-heres-why/">considered</a>&nbsp;a win for OpenAI in its battle against the likes of xAI, Meta and Amazon-backed Anthropic to build out the best artificial general intelligence model, and the project highlighted a very public feud between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as Trump’s close ally Musk apparently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/23/tech/elon-musk-trump-ai-sam-altman/index.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">undercut</a>&nbsp;the president. Meta’s push beyond social media dates back to its 2021 name change from Facebook to Meta. Wall Street initially revolted at the company’s billions of dollars in advanced tech research, as Meta stock crashed 64% in 2022, before improving financial performance and a broader investor rush into all things AI bolstered the stock’s turnaround. Since Trump won a second term in November, Zuckerberg has overseen a major culture shift at his company, ending its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/01/07/meta-ditches-fact-checks-for-x-style-community-notes-zuckerberg-says-it-will-restore-free-expression/">fact checking</a>&nbsp;and diversity, equity and exclusion&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/10/tech/meta-ends-dei-programs/index.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">(DEI)</a>&nbsp;programs as Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/gemmaallen/2025/01/19/mark-zuckerbergs-masculine-energy-is-techs-power-play-laid-bare/">decried</a>&nbsp;the company’s culture as losing its “masculine energy.” Meta remains an advertising company on paper, with 98% of revenue in its most recent quarter coming from social media ads.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forbes-valuations">Forbes Valuations</h2>



Zuckerberg is the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#3c20abab3d78">fourth-richest</a>&nbsp;person in the world with a $222 billion net worth, trailing only fellow American technology moguls in Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison. Zuckerberg owns about 13% of Meta, a stake worth about $200 billion.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">What To Watch For</h2>



Meta will report financial results from 2024’s fourth quarter Wednesday afternoon. Consensus estimates call for $6.75 earnings per share and $47 billion in revenue, which would both be quarterly records.

Key Speakers At The Meta Connect Event

Meta Will Spend Record $60 Billion On AI This Year, Zuckerberg Says—After Trump Announces Stargate Deal With OpenAI

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



OpenAI unveiled its latest artificial intelligence tool Thursday, announcing the release of “Operator,” an assistant designed to carry out a wide variety of web tasks that will first be made available for ChatGPT Pro users.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">Key Facts</h2>



OpenAI&nbsp;<a href="https://openai.com/index/computer-using-agent/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">described</a>&nbsp;Operator as “an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you,” saying it is capable of navigating web pages and interacting with the buttons and menus people see on the websites they visit.



The AI tool can complete a range of tasks including online grocery orders, ticket purchases, refund calculations, lecture downloads and combining PDFs.



OpenAI noted Operator may make mistakes with some queries and is not fully autonomous, as users may need to input information manually in some cases (e.g. logging in with usernames and passwords).



Operator also asks users for confirmation before completing tasks like sending an email or completing an order.



OpenAI said Operator cannot carry out harmful or illegal tasks, and is barred from accessing “preemptively blocked” websites like gambling, adult entertainment and drug and gun retailers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-can-use-openai-s-operator">Who Can Use Openai’s Operator?</h2>



As of Thursday, Operator is only available to users on the ChatGPT Pro plan, which costs $200 a month, though OpenAI said it plans to expand the tool to other subscription plans including ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Team and ChatGPT Enterprise.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-does-operator-collect-user-data">Does Operator Collect User Data?</h2>



Yes, like ChatGPT, OpenAI uses conversations to train its AI models. However, users can&nbsp;<a href="https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-faq" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">opt out</a>&nbsp;of the training data gathered by Operator by turning off ChatGPT’s “improve the model for everyone” setting, which will stop new conversations from being used for AI model training.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">Key Background</h2>



Operator is one of OpenAI’s steps toward artificial general intelligence, which is defined as the “hypothetical intelligence of a machine that possesses the ability to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can,” according to Google, one of OpenAI’s largest competitors in the AI market. The AI race between OpenAI and other players like the Google-funded Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI heated up quickly this year, as OpenAI—which partners with Microsoft—announced its involvement in Stargate, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/21/oracle-stock-surges-ahead-of-500-billion-stargate-openai-trump-deal/">$500 billion AI infrastructure deal</a>&nbsp;with Nvidia. Musk criticized the partnership this week, questioning its practicality and its ability to raise enough money to carry out its goals of creating American jobs and building large data centers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">Further Reading</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/23/microsofts-satya-nadella-swipes-at-stargate-ai-venture-alongside-musk-despite-openai-backing/">Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Swipes At ‘Stargate’ AI Venture Alongside Musk—Despite OpenAI Backing</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/22/musk-is-bashing-trumps-new-stargate-ai-initiative-with-openai-and-oracle-heres-why/">Musk Bashes Trump’s New Stargate AI Initiative With OpenAI And Oracle As ‘Fake’—Here’s Why</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/21/oracle-stock-surges-ahead-of-500-billion-stargate-openai-trump-deal/">Oracle Stock Surges On $500 Billion ‘Stargate’ OpenAI-Trump Deal</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)

In this photo illustration a Open AI logo is displayed on a

OpenAI’s ‘Operator’: What We Know About New AI Assistant Capable Of Ordering Groceries, Making Reservations

Africa’s next wave of innovation will likely emerge not from Lagos or Nairobi but from Kigali, Dakar, or Tunis — offering global investors the chance to discover untapped potential in the continent’s diverse and rapidly-evolving markets.



Late last year, Penelope Terranova posted a call to action on LinkedIn. Her post wasn’t just another entry in the digital ether; it was a rallying cry to experts. She sought professionals skilled in accounting, legal, and business growth to help transform Africa’s overlooked startup ecosystems. The post, which listed 18 priority countries — excluding the continent&#8217;s ‘Big 4’ of Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa — sparked a reaction.



One comment from a Nigerian LinkedIn user encapsulated a common sentiment: &#8220;Coming to Africa and leaving out Africa’s most populous nation and biggest economy, which is Nigeria, is very strange.&#8221;



Terranova responded with a measured explanation. &#8220;The Big 4 capture over 80% of all investment on the continent,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;That is why they are not in our priority of countries to invest in.&#8221;



Her reasoning was clear: Africa’s startup landscape is evolving, but much of the attention — and funding — remains concentrated in a handful of countries.



Initiatives are now on the rise with a mission to bridge that gap, focusing on regions often ignored by mainstream investors.



The Shift To Emerging Markets



This new approach reflects a broader trend. In 2024, startup funding across Africa dropped by 25%, down to $2.2 billion. However, beneath the surface of this contraction, new markets were emerging as hotbeds of innovation.



Ghana and Tanzania led the charge outside the Big 4, securing 26 deals each and raising $67 million and $53 million, respectively.



Senegal and the Ivory Coast, bolstered by regional trade integration and supportive policies, competed for leadership in Francophone West Africa.



In North Africa, the Tunisian Startup Act continued to bear fruit, making the country a leader in deep tech, spanning AI, biotech, and cloud computing, which show promise for global adoption.



<div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-64421 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Emmanuel-Adegboye-Image-supplied-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
 &#8220;These regions have an abundance of technical talent, a low cost of living, and proximity to major markets,&#8221;- Emmanuel Adegboye. 
</blockquote>
</div></div>



Emmanuel Adegboye, Head of Madica, a structured investment program for African pre-seed stage companies, highlights the unique advantages of North African markets like Tunisia. &#8220;These regions have an abundance of technical talent, a low cost of living, and proximity to major markets,&#8221; Adegboye notes to FORBES AFRICA.



Morocco, with its robust research and development (R&amp;D) infrastructure and proximity to European markets, remained a magnet for deal activity.



Meanwhile, in East Africa, Rwanda’s innovation-friendly policies and Uganda’s steady investment attraction turned them into rising stars.



Terranova shares with FORBES AFRICA: “Sectorally, fintech remains the clear leader and is likely to remain so, even in untapped markets, as we see the rapid expansion of digital payments, lending platforms, and financial inclusion initiatives. However, other sectors such as agritech, healthtech and edtech are advancing quickly, addressing Africa’s pressing challenges of affordable and scalable solutions in those industries, with AI as a common thread driving innovation across these sectors.’’



Untapped Potential In Underserved Regions



Terranova’s team at Digital Africa focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage startups, the most vulnerable phases in a company’s journey. Their model combines funding with robust support systems: mentorship, tools, and networking opportunities tailored to the unique challenges of operating in underserved markets. In 2024, their investment in media startup Makifaa reportedly marked the only recorded startup deal in Togo.



The impact of this strategy is two-fold. It fosters localized growth, reducing dependency on the Big 4, while also presenting new opportunities for global investors.



“Several countries shine as bright spots for investment,’’ Terranova tells FORBES AFRICA. “Countries possess varying levels of the essential ‘ingredients’ for success, which can enhance or limit the chances of local startups to thrive – such as the quality of the infrastructure, the ease of doing business, the availability of capital, the market depth, or the level of education and availability of talent.’’



Catalyzing Inclusive Innovation



For Adegboye, the approach goes beyond financial investment. “It requires building the ecosystem—strengthening local leaders, providing patient capital, and offering guidance on governance and scalability. This model ensures the long-term sustainability of startups, even in the most challenging markets.’’



Inclusivity is at the heart of Digital Africa’s mission. Gender diversity is a key metric; 50% of its portfolio consists of gender-diverse teams. The Talent4Startups initiative has trained tech professionals, bridging the talent gap for startups. “As a subsidiary of Proparco within the AFD Group and in collaboration with 60+ Startup Support Organizations across the continent, we amplify our reach, including co-investment opportunities, aligning with both financial sustainability and our mission to propel African startups,’’ Terranova explains.



The future of African startups lies not in a few dominant markets but in the collective rise of many. Channeling resources to underserved regions, promoting inclusivity, and investing in early-stage ventures, initiatives are reshaping the narrative.

Businessman working analysis business information.

The Rising Stars In Africa’s Evolving Startup Landscape

AI on smartphones is redefining how we interact with technology, from quicker search with voice to smarter photo edits and predicting daily needs before we realize them. Plus, with AI’s pattern-learning, a more personalized user experience.



Samsung first introduced AI to the smartphone with the S24 line-up early in 2024, followed by its Z Foldable range mid-year. Subsequently, brands like Apple, Honor, Oppo and Xiaomi have all introduced some level of AI on its devices.



Androids share similar features, powered by Google AI, such as Gemini – a rival to ChatGPT; Circle to Search; Magic Eraser; Photomojis; and protection against spam and scam calls.



Other features per manufacturer include the ability to summarize notes, create bullet points, transcribe audio and turn it into notes, translate text into multiple languages, summarize web articles to bullet points, etc.



Some devices can compose emails, messages, and social media posts using generative AI, all natively. You just explain the message you want to convey and select different tones, such as professional, casual, friendly, and so on, to get the desired results.



A feature worth noting is Circle to Search, an intuitive way to search for anything you see online, even by pausing a video. You simply long-press the home button, circle what’s on your screen, and receive immediate Google results, with follow-up queries.



Apple also offers AI features, but was late to the party when Apple Intelligence rolled out to more English-speaking markets in December 2024, including South Africa, after its U.S. launch at the end of October.



It helps you write; generate images by description with Image Playground or custom emojis; clean up photos by removing unwanted objects; and search intuitively with Siri, which uses ChatGPT when it can’t answer, but asks first if you want ChatGPT to fulfil the request.



You can already use the ChatGPT standalone app, but Apple gives you another layer of privacy when using it through Private Cloud Compute, which deletes your data after the request, whereas ChatGPT uses all your inputs to further train its AI.



AI’s global growth, but Africa’s smartphone decline



AI is revolutionizing industries, with companies and investors pouring billions into research and development across industries like healthcare, finance, entertainment, and consumer technology.



According to a TechCrunch article, the generative AI bubble did not burst in 2024. It reports that investments in generative AI worldwide raised $56 billion from VCs in 2024, from 885 deals. The data was compiled by financial tracker PitchBook for TechCrunch.



That figure is a new record for the segment, when compared to 2023’s total investment of $29.1 billion from 691 deals, it says.



According to the International Data Corporation (IDC)’s five-year forecast for GenAI-capable smartphones, it predicted shipments to reach 234.2 million for 2024, up 363.6% from 50.5 million in 2023, and projects 912 million in 2028.



The IDC predicted total smartphone shipments to grow 5.8% to 1.23 billion units in 2024, up from its previous forecast of 4% growth to 1.21 billion units.



While total and GenAI shipments for the year 2024 is yet to be released, data from research firm Canalys reveals that Africa’s smartphone market grew by 3% year-on-year in Q3 for 2024, reaching 18.4 million units, which it says reflects resilience amid a complex economic landscape.



“South Africa, after six quarters of double-digit growth, saw a sharp 10% decline in shipments as economic uncertainties dampened consumer spending, despite easing inflation and interest rate cuts,” it said.



In the same quarter, Kenya’s shipments also dropped by 10%, whereas Nigeria experienced a 1% growth. North African countries like Egypt saw a 34% growth, but Morocco experienced a 24% decline.



Manish Pravinkumar, Senior Analyst at Canalys for the Middle East and Africa, says the future of Africa’s smartphone market holds immense potential, but significant hurdles remain.



“Feature phones maintained a 55% share of total shipments as of Q3 2024, limiting smartphone expansion. High device taxes continue to hinder growth, posing a dilemma for policymakers between immediate revenue needs and the long-term benefits of broader smartphone adoption,” says Pravinkumar.



“Enhanced smartphone accessibility could drive the development of a robust digital economy, generating sustainable tax revenues over time. Despite these barriers, growing demand for affordable devices, expanding 4G network coverage and innovative financing models, are expected to sustain growth.”



Canalys forecasts a 1% compound annual growth rate for Africa from 2024 to 2028, with 4G remaining the primary driver of new mobile subscriptions over the next five years.



The global race for AI may have started, but Africa is lagging behind.

AI Boosts Smartphones Globally, But Why Africa Faces Challenges

Generative AI has revolutionized content creation, from narratives to images. Central to many of these models is maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), which allows systems to learn from large datasets by finding patterns that maximize the probability of producing outputs that resemble the data. While effective in generating realistic content, MLE struggles when tasked with rare or underrepresented information.



This limitation became clear in a recent interaction I had with ChatGPT. When asked, “Who is Tshianeo Marwala?” the AI responded, “Tshianeo Marwala is the wife of Professor Tshilidzi Marwala.” However, Tshianeo Marwala is my grandmother, not my spouse. This mistake occurred because MLE- based systems prioritize statistically common relationships — in this case, public figures are more frequently associated with spouses rather than grandparents.



MLE’s reliance on frequent patterns introduces significant challenges when dealing with uncommon data, and this issue is compounded by AI systems’ dependence on centralized sources like Wikipedia. While a valuable resource, Wikipedia’s gaps in coverage, particularly around marginalized groups and global perspectives, restrict the diversity of information AI systems can learn from. This reliance on concentrated sources exacerbates biases, limiting AI’s ability to represent underrepresented voices accurately.



MLE works by selecting parameters that maximize the likelihood of observed data. It is highly effective when dealing with frequent data patterns but less so when dealing with rare or complex relationships. For example, generative AI trained on datasets that frequently discuss public figures and their spouses will naturally associate these roles more often than other family connections. Our 2000 paper on Detection and Classification of Faults Using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian Approaches showed that while MLE works effectively with frequent, well-defined data, it faces challenges in rare cases. Similarly, in generative AI, MLE handles common information well but tends to make errors with rare or less frequent data.



MLE can also stifle innovation by focusing on the most common patterns, sidelining rare ideas that could lead to breakthroughs. In fields where creativity and uniqueness are essential — such as product design and content creation — this narrowing effect could lead to homogenization rather than diversity. When AI systems converge too much on common patterns, they fail to explore the fringes of probability distributions where novel ideas often reside.



When AI systems rely on data from centralized platforms like Wikipedia or mainstream news outlets, they reflect the biases of these sources. Generative AI will excel at reproducing dominant perspectives but struggle to represent underrepresented or niche knowledge, such as indigenous cultures or less-documented traditions.



This systemic bias limits the AI’s ability to reflect the full spectrum of human experience accurately.



In my grandmother’s case, ChatGPT’s error highlights a broader challenge in AI’s ability to handle complex, less-represented relationships. If a system is trained predominantly on data that overrepresents certain groups or patterns, it will likely misinterpret rare information, perpetuating existing biases.



Beyond limiting diversity, MLE can amplify societal biases present in training data. AI models will reinforce these patterns if a dataset disproportionately represents certain genders, ethnicities, or regions.



To overcome these limitations, we must develop generative AI systems that synthesize information from diverse sources rather than rely on a few centralized platforms. This would enable AI to capture inclusive insights better and improve the accuracy of underrepresented data.



Generative AI must also continually adapt to new information, ensuring its output reflects the latest knowledge. As data generation accelerates, AI systems must effectively filter, assess, and integrate new information. By doing so, AI models can remain relevant, nuanced, and reflective of evolving contexts.



Researchers are exploring alternatives to MLE to address these challenges. One promising approach is reinforcement learning, which allows AI to learn through feedback and adjust based on incentives, improving accuracy and diversity. This method, though not without challenges, can help ensure that rare data is better represented. Another solution is data augmentation, where the training data is enriched with synthetic or curated examples of underrepresented information. This technique helps AI systems learn from a more diverse set of inputs, resulting in more accurate outputs.



Collaboration between AI developers and experts in underrepresented fields is also critical. Such interdisciplinary partnerships ensure that AI systems are not solely reliant on statistical likelihood but incorporate a broader range of knowledge and experiences. In conclusion, while MLE has played a vital role in generative AI, it has notable limitations. Addressing them is essential for ensuring AI systems are fair, inclusive, and accurate. Moving beyond MLE requires both technical innovation and a commitment to diversity. By designing AI systems that synthesize knowledge from distributed sources and continuously update with new information, we can create more adaptive models that are representative of the full breadth of human knowledge and experience.

Business people and engineers studying artificial intelligence brain

Expert-Speak: Not All Perfect (Yet)/The Limitations Of Representing Rare Information In Generative AI

Ads for apps that use AI to create fake videos of people kissing anyone they want are flooding social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.



Meta and TikTok&nbsp;have run thousands of ads for apps that use AI to generate fake kissing videos of people, allowing users to upload photos of any two people and let AI convert them into a video of them kissing. The apps are being marketed as tools that would allow you to instantly “kiss anyone you want”— no consent required.



Similar in concept to “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2024/04/17/google-hosted-over-100-youtube-videos-promoting-ai-deepfake-porn/">AI nudifier</a>” apps that produce nonconsensual deepfake pornography, these AI kissing apps create believable videos of people doing something they didn’t do. And the ease at which they do it is a concerning habitualization of deepfake imagery.



While the ads are not sexually explicit like the deluge of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2023/05/11/reddit-ai-generated-porn/">AI-generated pornographic content</a>&nbsp;that has engulfed social media platforms like Instagram, Reddit and YouTube, they can be equally dangerous, Haley McNamara, an executive at the National Center for Sexual Exploitation told&nbsp;Forbes.



“It does not have to be explicit to be exploitative,” McNamara said. “If it&#8217;s crossing boundaries to do something offline to someone without their consent, kissing, undressing, et cetera, then it&#8217;s also crossing boundaries to do that online.”



Meta has displayed over 2,500 ads for “AI kissing” apps across Instagram and Facebook, a&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;review found. About 1,000 are currently active. TikTok has shown about 1,000 ads to millions of users in European countries, according to its ad library. (TikTok’s ad library doesn&#8217;t include ads shown to its U.S.-based users) Most of these ads depict celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Emma Watson and Gal Gadot kissing one another. Others show videos of random people kissing, touting that AI could let you “kiss your ex” and “kiss your crush.&#8221; It’s unclear whether the people in videos are real or generated by AI. Johansson, Watson and Gadot did not respond to requests for comment.



Meta is also promoting “AI hugging” apps, ads for which show AI-generated videos of children hugging cartoon characters like Dora the Explorer, Mickey Mouse and Tom and Jerry. Some, like a video showing a young girl hugging an older man, promise parents that AI-powered apps could allow their children to “hug grandparents they never met.” The social media giant has run about 1,200 AI hugging app ads, a&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;search found. Over 300 are still live.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“This trend is normalizing exploitative deepfakes and taking nonconsensual participation in intimate or sexualized images as a joke.”Haley McNamara, executive at the National Center On Sexual Exploitation.
</blockquote>



AI-generated videos of people kissing and hugging are already circulating across social media. A video depicting Taylor Swift hugging Kim Jong Un has about 30 million views on Instagram. In late December, a deepfake video of Elon Musk and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni kissing went viral on X.



Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that these “AI kissing” ads do not violate the company’s policies. While nudity, sexually explicit and sexually suggestive content are against Meta’s&nbsp;<a href="https://transparency.meta.com/policies/ad-standards/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">advertising&nbsp;</a>standards and Meta does not permit ads that “display, advocate for, or coordinate sexual acts with non-consenting parties,” videos of kissing and hugging are permitted.



After being contacted by&nbsp;Forbes,&nbsp;TikTok removed the ads for violating its policies. The video sharing platform requires advertisers to get consent from public or private figures represented in their ads, even if the ads are AI-generated, TikTok spokesperson Ariane de Selliers told&nbsp;Forbes.



The companies behind these video generators appear to be based outside the United States in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Italy and China, according to their websites. The apps are available for free on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store and already have millions of downloads. The “AI kissing” feature is a part of a broader suite of AI-based photo editing capabilities across the apps, like touching up old photos, turning still images into videos and predicting what two people’s future babies would look like. Apple and Google did not respond to comment requests.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“It was incredibly creepy to encounter.”Alice Siregar, AI analyst and social media user.
</blockquote>



The spread of AI kissing apps, boosted by social media’s virality, illustrate a troubling mainstreaming of deepfakes in the age of generative AI. Use of these seemingly harmless apps could open the door to tools that could create more graphic imagery like deepfake porn and other types of image-based sexual abuse, McNamara said. “It&#8217;s just an absolute Pandora&#8217;s box,” she said.



“This trend is normalizing exploitative deepfakes and taking nonconsensual participation in intimate or sexualized images as a joke,” she said. “It&#8217;s the kind of thing that is easy to trivialize when you think about other people, but again, if you think about someone in your own sphere making images like this of yourself, someone who you wouldn&#8217;t want having images, I think everyone can recognize that that is a violation.”



That’s especially concerning when illegal AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is on an unprecedented&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2024/04/15/ai-is-creating-an-influx-of-child-sex-abuse-images-ncmec-data/">rise</a>. Over the last two years, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (<a href="https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2024/the-growing-concerns-of-generative-ai-and-child-sexual-exploitation" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">NCMEC</a>) has received over 7,000 reports of generative AI-related child exploitation material. In one&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2024/08/30/pedophile-filmed-kids-at-disney-world-to-make-ai-child-abuse-images-cops-say/">case</a>, a pedophile allegedly filmed children at Disneyland and used popular AI tool Stable Diffusion to produce thousands of illegal images of them. And with unrestricted access to AI image generators, teenage high school students in multiple&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2024/03/13/teen-boys-deepfaked-her-daughter-then-the-school-made-it-worse-one-mom-says/">instances</a>&nbsp;have created deepfake nude imagery of their underage classmates, some resulting in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2024/12/11/almost-half-the-girls-at-this-school-were-targets-of-ai-porn-their-ex-classmates-have-now-been-indicted/">criminal charges</a>. Meta has also struggled to police ads for such AI “nudifying” sites, one of which has seen 90 percent of its traffic coming from Instagram and Facebook, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://fakedup.substack.com/p/ai-nudifiers-make-a-mockery-of-metas-moderation?ref=404media.co" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Faked Up</a>&nbsp;newsletter.



People who have encountered the AI kissing ads while scrolling through social media say they find them&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1fejz9m/this_ad_i_saw_today_may_be_one_of_the_creepiest/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">disturbing</a>. In December, Alice Siregar started seeing an uptick in ads for AI kissing apps on TikTok. An AI analyst at a tech consulting firm herself, she was dismayed to see the technology being used in a “deeply unethical” way.



“It was incredibly creepy to encounter,” she said.

Man and robot love

AI Kissing Apps Are Taking Deepfakes Mainstream

Cyber security is what nations and organizations need to be very wary of in 2025.



According to the recent World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Cybersecurity Outlook, the intricacies of cyberspace are complex and challenging, owing to rapid technological advancements, the growing sophistication of cybercriminals and deeply-interconnected supply chains.



“Collaboration between public and private sector stakeholders is paramount to secure the benefits of digitalization for all,” Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director, WEF, said in a statement.



According to the report, 54% of large organizations identify supply chain interdependencies as the greatest barrier to achieving cyber resilience. Furthermore, the “prevailing turmoil” has affected the perception of risks. One in three CEOs cited in the report cyber espionage and loss of sensitive information and intellectual property theft as their main concerns.



“45% of cyber leaders are concerned about disruption of operations and business processes,” the report reads.



As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to be at the forefront of innovation, the report revealed that to ensure cyber resilience, there needs to be rapid implementation of the necessary security safeguards.



“While 66% of organizations expect AI to have a major impact on cybersecurity in 2025, only 37% report having processes in place to assess the security of AI tools before deployment.”



Skills development needs to be at the forefront of organizations, according to the report, as the cyber skills gap in 2024 was only at 8%. According to WEF, two in three organizations lack the essential talent and skills to meet their security requirements; only 14% of organizations are confident that they have the people and skills they need today.



Paolo Dal Cin, Global Lead, Accenture Security, said in the statement that cybersecurity threats are more complex and unpredictable than ever and can directly impact an organization’s financial stability.



“The disruptive force of AI, coupled with supply chain vulnerabilities and geopolitical tensions, calls for a more proactive and collaborative approach to ensure a strong cyber resilient posture across all industries. C-suite leaders must adopt a security-first mindset from the outset to confidently navigate these challenges with cybersecurity as an enabler that keeps our businesses and organizations resilient,” Dal Cin said.

Businesspeople in futuristic virtual reality environment

New Report Reveals The Landscape Of Cybersecurity In 2025

In August 2024, the United States (U.S.) hiked tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) to 100% while the European Union (E.U.) increased tariffs by up to 45.3% in October 2024. The EU’s tariffs differ by manufacturer between 7.8% to 35.3%, over its standard 10% import duty.



Futurist and business strategist Dr Craig Wing tells FORBES AFRICA that the decision by the U.S. and E.U. to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs is a complex issue with far-reaching implications, driven by protectionist policies and the desire to protect domestic markets from competition from Chinese EV manufacturers.



“While this may seem like a simple strategy to protect local economies, this move also creates new pathways and opportunities, and has several important implications for emerging markets like those in Africa,” says Wing.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="731" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-731x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-64344" style="width:545px;height:auto" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-731x1024.png 731w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-214x300.png 214w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-768x1075.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied-1097x1536.png 1097w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Dr-Craig-Wing-Image-Supplied.png 1280w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 731px) 100vw, 731px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Dr Craig Wing; Image Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>


A new legislation in South Africa that introduces a 150% tax incentive for the production of electric and hydrogen vehicles was signed into law on January 3 2025.



The 150% tax deduction, effective March 2026, is for qualifying investments capped at R500 million ($26.6 million) for the 2026/27 tax year.



In the same month, Mikel Mabasa, CEO of Naamsa, the Automotive Business Council, said in an interview that at least three Chinese EVs have signed NDAs with them, adding, “With good government policies, we will attract new investment, we will increase and retain investment.”



Wing says this shift is critical: “It represents an opportunity to diversify the availability of EV models in South Africa, which will undoubtedly drive down the prices and make EVs more accessible, but also create a new ecosystem of jobs in both the automotive and associated industries.



“There is also a real risk of creating a dependency on a single source market for technology (China), and this should be balanced by fostering local innovation and skills development within the local workforce, and by focusing on building strong trade relationships with various other global players.”



South Africa’s EV landscape in 2025 and beyond will be shaped by multiple factors, not just technology, but social, cultural, ethical and political factors, says Wing.



It’s important to address the influence of Elon Musk, who is South African-born and the CEO of Tesla, as his political views in the U.S. are well documented, and can shape public perceptions of EVs, he says.



“It is extremely likely he will be acting as a key advisor on technology and business and should be closely watched, as it has the potential to further shape U.S. trade policy, and also the future of the EV market in Africa, as well as other emerging economies.”



“It is a clear reality that what happens in the U.S. has a ripple effect on the rest of the world, and so the role of Elon Musk cannot be ignored,” concludes Wing.

101st Brussels Motor Show 2025

‘Opportunity To Diversify’: A Futurist On The Implications Of The U.S.’s Tariffs On Chinese EVs In Emerging Markets Such As South Africa

Our tech writer got to experience the new electric Mini Cooper SE that’s coming your way.



The highly-anticipated next-generation electric Mini Cooper SE arrived in South Africa six months later than originally planned, and quietly went on sale without a national media launch.



As it stands, Mini will produce both internal combustion engine (ICE) models and three EVs: the Cooper, Countryman and Aceman.



I’ve been driving the Cooper SE for an extended period since November. The base model comes in at R802,000 ($42,350), however my press unit has been kitted out with extras to the value of R924,500 ($48,827).



It is powered by a 160kW motor with 330Nm of torque, equipped with a 49.2kWh nett battery that promises 400km of range (WLTP figures), and has a 95kW maximum DC charging speed. It goes from 0-100km/h in 6.7 seconds while top speed is capped at 170km/h.



The look of new SE is pared down, juxtaposed by modern LED head- and tail-lights that are customizable.



Despite a retro exterior, modern finishes include 12 ultrasonic sensors and four surround cameras; a 9.4-inch round OLED screen that supports apps and games through Mini Operating System 9; a digital voice assistant called Spike; and augmented reality navigation.



Previous models supported Digital Key with NFC, but the new SE has Digital Key Plus ultrawide-band (UWB) support, so I use my compatible iPhone and Apple Watch as fully functional keys; i.e. I don’t carry the physical key anymore.



It also has the Connected Package for navigation with additional info, games and video streaming when the vehicle is stationary, wireless charging, eSIM, etc; and Driving Assistant Plus for maintaining speed, keeping a distance from vehicles ahead, detecting road signs, etc.



The Mini app offers additional functionality that is convenient for the owner, like basic vehicle info, remote 3D view, trip statistics, monitoring charge status, efficiency stats, finding charging stations and more.



The ability to monitor my charge remotely has helped me several times where I could see the vehicle prematurely stopped charging.



While getting from 10%-80% takes about half an hour, its 95kW charging speed cap slows things down between 80%-100%, however the app estimate tends to be accurate, which helps with planning.



As a freelance writer working from home, the ~337km range I yield on a full charge is suited to my lifestyle. I don’t do long distance driving and can easily toggle between driving modes.



Based on access to mall and dealership chargers within my vicinity, it is the ideal runaround city EV. I find it a comfortable, pleasant drive.



I find it a premium overall experience when compared to the GWM Ora, which shares the same platform as the SE as it is currently exclusively built in the same factory in China by Great Wall Motor.



Incidentally, the launch of the Cooper and Aceman models in the United States have been pushed out indefinitely due to high tariffs on Chinese imports.



Mini says production of the two models will begin in Oxford, England in 2026.

OLED screen

A Mini Look At The Electric Ambitions On Course In South Africa

In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at how too much reliance on AI assistants could make it harder to think, a company building bioengineered arteries, the role viruses play in Alzheimer’s and more. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/newsletter/the-prototype">You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here</a>.



<abbr>N</abbr>ew AI tools&nbsp;are slowly becoming ubiquitous, being added to the software and hardware we use every day (sometimes whether we like it or not). But if we’re using artificial intelligence to perform tasks, search for information and solve problems, what does that mean for the intelligence we’re born with?



To figure this out, a team of researchers conducted a study involving 666 individuals ages 17 and up, representing a diverse population. It first evaluated the extent to which each of them made use of AI tools, then tested their critical thinking skills. The results of the study,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">which were published</a>&nbsp;in the journal&nbsp;Societies, found that those who used AI tools a lot showed worse critical thinking abilities than those who didn’t use them often or at all. Whether someone used AI tools was a bigger predictor of a person’s thinking skills than any other factor, including educational attainment.



The reason for this is a phenomenon called “cognitive offloading” – where people’s thinking and problem-solving are essentially delegated. Frequent cognitive offloading reduces a person’s ability to independently think and solve problems. “This relationship underscores the dual-edged nature of AI technology,” the study authors wrote. “While it enhances efficiency and convenience, it inadvertently fosters dependence, which can compromise critical thinking skills over time.”



These findings are consistent with other studies that have shown a similar negative impact from AI tools on critical thinking skills. The authors note, however, that other studies show AI tools can be beneficial when they complement critical thinking, rather than offloading it. “Future research should explore strategies to integrate AI tools in ways that enhance rather than hinder cognitive engagement,” they wrote. “Ensuring that the next generation is equipped with the skills necessary to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape.”



Stay tuned.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-bioengineering-off-the-shelf-arteries-for-trauma-patients">Bioengineering Off-The-Shelf Arteries For Trauma Patients</h2>



<abbr>E</abbr>very year, thousands of Americans receive traumatic injuries that damage the arteries that crucially carry blood to their limbs. When these occur, patients basically have three options, Laura Niklason, CEO of regenerative medicine startup Humacyte, told me: they can have a vein grafted from another part of their body, which takes extra time and causes additional trauma; the surgeon can replace the artery with a synthetic plastic one, which creates a high risk of infection; or the limb can be amputated.



Niklason has a fourth option: her company has developed a bioengineered artery called Symvess which can be surgically implanted in a patient’s body, helping to both preserve the limb and reduce risk of infection. Symvess is derived from human donor cells that are grown in a lab on a degradable scaffold, in batches of 200 at a time. Over time, the cells recreate the physical structure of a blood vessel. Once that’s complete, the living cells are then processed away, leaving the artery structure behind, which can then be implanted in a new patient without risk of rejection. Cells in the patient&#8217;s body then occupy the implant, essentially regenerating a new artery.



Last month, Symvess was&nbsp;<a href="https://investors.humacyte.com/news-releases/news-release-details/humacyte-announces-fda-approval-symvesstm-acellular-tissue" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">approved by the FDA</a>&nbsp;for use in patients with traumatic injuries. That approval was based on studies that showed that the product, which has been implanted in over 600 patients so far, is significantly less likely to cause infection or lead to limb amputation compared to conventional synthetic arteries made from plastic.



For its next steps, the company will be working with Medicare and private insurers to ensure that they will pay for transplant procedures using Symvess. It’s also conducting studies to use Symvess with patients who have kidney dialysis and patients who have pulmonary arterial hypertension. It’s also developing a new, smaller version of its product that could potentially be used for heart bypass patients.



“This is truly a first-of-its-kind technology, and the FDA had to see a lot of data before they could get comfortable and say yes,” said Niklason. “So I’m very glad to be here.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: INACTIVE VIRUSES MAY CAUSE NEURODEGENERATION</h2>



It’s long been known that repeated head injuries can lead to&nbsp;neurodegenerative diseases&nbsp;like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and CTE. But it wasn’t clear exactly how that happened. New research suggests the answer may be&nbsp;dormant viruses, particularly&nbsp;herpes simplex 1, which is found in the brains of over 80% of the population. These findings were reached by growing&nbsp;small tissue models&nbsp;of the brain, some with the herpes virus and some without, which were then struck repeatedly with a piston to mimic concussion.



The study, which was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.ado6430" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">published in&nbsp;Science Signalling</a>, found that the brain tissues with the virus developed signs of&nbsp;Alzheimer’s disease, while those without did not, and that the damage was markedly increased with repeated blows. The researchers plan to conduct future studies that explore whether exposure to&nbsp;antiviral or anti-inflammatory drugs&nbsp;shortly after an injury could help prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FINAL FRONTIER: WATER-BASED PROPULSION TEST</h2>



Japanese startup&nbsp;Pale Blue&nbsp;<a href="https://pale-blue.co.jp/news/543/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">announced</a>&nbsp;it has signed a deal with Italy-based company&nbsp;D-Orbit&nbsp;to conduct two demonstrations in-orbit of its&nbsp;new ion thruster, which allows satellites both to maneuver and to take themselves out of orbit at the end of their life. Pale Blue’s thruster uses&nbsp;water&nbsp;as a propellant, which potentially offers a cleaner and more sustainable fuel for small satellites.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT ELSE I WROTE THIS WEEK</h2>



In my other newsletter,&nbsp;InnovationRx, my colleague&nbsp;Amy Feldman&nbsp;and I&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovationrx/2025/01/08/innovationrx-medical-debts-will-be-erased-from-credit-histories/">covered a number of healthcare stories</a>, including a drug that significantly improves survival for&nbsp;lung cancer&nbsp;patients, the controversy over&nbsp;pulse oximetry&nbsp;technology and a new study that finds that while&nbsp;LLMs&nbsp;are good at answering medical exam questions, they’re much less proficient at making diagnoses from patient conversations.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">SCIENCE AND TECH TIDBITS</h2>



My colleague Jeremy Bogaisky&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2025/01/09/amazon-alibaba-fiber-optic-drone-ukraine/">reports</a>&nbsp;that online retailers like Amazon and Alibaba are selling technology that&nbsp;protects drones&nbsp;from having their signals jammed or being remotely taken over.



Ai startup Anthropic’s new funding round will make all seven of its founders&nbsp;billionaires,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2025/01/08/anthropic-60-billion-valuation-will-make-all-seven-cofounders-billionaires/">write my colleagues</a>&nbsp;Alex Konrad and Phoebe Liu.



Researchers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2025/01/novel-quantum-refrigerator-great-erasing-quantum-computers-chalkboard" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">developed a technique</a>&nbsp;for&nbsp;refrigerating quantum computers&nbsp;in a way that reduces errors and could potentially make them more reliable.



Eating&nbsp;grapefruit&nbsp;can interfere with the action of several kinds of medications, including anti-anxiety drugs and statins. But new research suggests it may be possible to&nbsp;<a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nph.20322" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">grow a variety of the fruit</a>&nbsp;that doesn’t interfere with prescription drugs.



Biologists successfully transplanted&nbsp;chloroplasts–the cells that power photosynthesis– from algae into&nbsp;hamsters, where they&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/100/9/100_pjab.100.035/_article" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">successfully functioned</a>&nbsp;for about three days.



Scientists at Northwestern University&nbsp;<a href="https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/01/trash-to-treasure-industrial-waste-battery/?fj=1" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">built a battery</a>&nbsp;that uses triphenylphosphine oxide, a common&nbsp;industrial waste product, to store energy instead of metals.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">PRO SCIENCE TIP: ADD WATER TO YOUR COFFEE BEANS</h2>



Here’s an easy tip to enhance the flavor of your morning cup of&nbsp;coffee: add a little&nbsp;water&nbsp;to the beans before you grind them. This isn’t a new idea–among coffee professionals this is known as the “Ross Droplet Technique”–but new research gives scientific backing to the idea. When beans are ground, they build up a&nbsp;static electric charge, which causes clumping and inconsistent extraction during the brewing process. In new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(23)00568-4" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">research published</a>&nbsp;in the journal&nbsp;Matter, scientists found that the Ross Droplet Technique reduced the static charge during grinding, producing a&nbsp;better-tasting coffee.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT’S ENTERTAINING ME THIS WEEK</h2>



I’ve been listening to the concept album&nbsp;Epic&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.epicthemusical.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Jorge Rivera-Herrans</a>. It’s a musical-style adaptation of&nbsp;The Odyssey, telling the tale of&nbsp;Odysseus&nbsp;from the end of the&nbsp;Trojan War&nbsp;until his return home to&nbsp;Ithaca. The album is divided into nine sagas of a few songs each, serving as chapters in the story. It’s an amazing version of one of humanity’s oldest stories, and it’s appropriate for it to be sung–that is, after all, how it was originally presented in the time of Homer. It’s streaming on most of the major music services.

Category: Technology