In a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus and improve the screening rate of suspected individuals with the disease, MTN Business has announced the donation of 5,000 smartphones to the Limpopo Provincial Department of Health.

Each device will be pre-loaded with 3GB of data and will be distributed to field workers for the screening of citizens, conducting tests and tracing people that may have come in contact with patients of the coronavirus.

In addition to this kind gesture, the telecommunication company has also promised to carry out free repairs, servicing, account management, and on-site device support on all devices.

Limpopo recorded 54 cases of the coronavirus, 28 recoveries, and 3 deaths as of May 11. The number of documented cases has increased to more than 10,000, with a total of 194 lives lost.

Matthew Kumalo, the General Manager of Regional Operations at MTN says one of the vital equipment required by health and field workers to fight the spread of the virus is the smartphone.

‘’We believe that the provision of these devices will provide the relief workers the tools needed to carry out their duties seamlessly,’’ he added.

MTN has been expanding its footprints and infrastructure to contribute to the national effort to prevent the transmission of the virus.

The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), has ridiculed news making waves on different social media platforms claiming that 5G is live and operational in Nigeria. The commission urged Nigerians to pay no attention to reports stating that the Nigerian Telecommunications Industry is going to activate the operation of 5G in Lagos sometime this week.

Back in November, a trial test for the 5G network technology was approved by the NCC for three months after which all installations were decommissioned. Amongst other reasons, the test was carried out to study and observe any security or health threats the presence of the network might pose when it goes live.

“Relevant stakeholders and major security agencies were invited to participate while the trial test was being conducted,” said Professor Umar Garba Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman, NCC.

5G is an improvement on the 4G technology we have today, and the commission is clearly stating that it has not issued any license for 5G in the country so the telephone network companies cannot activate such technology.

The commission also made it known that the laying of fibre optics cable in Lagos and some other parts of the country is to strengthen the already existing 3G and 4G technology we have in place to improve network performance.

“As network regulators, we plead with Nigerians to seek legit information from us rather relying on rumours peddled on various social media platforms,” Danbatta added.

According to reports from TechEconomy.ng, a leading investor of private capital into global markets, Actis, has successfully acquired a majority stake in Rack Center. Rack Centre is a leading provider of cloud services and data center colocation services in Nigeria.

After a detailed assessment of the key players in the African market, the decision to go ahead with the purchase of the majority stake in Rack Center was finalized- the company has the most significant potential to expand and flourish in Africa.

Jagal, a highly regarded conglomerate institute that operates energy business established and owns Rack Centre. Since the start of operations in 2013, Rack Center has set a high-quality bar in the African Industry. Having a global reputation of excellence, Rack Centre was the first in Africa to be Tire III constructed facility certified in April 2017.

In a recent virtual press briefing, Dr. Ayotunde Coker, The Managing Director of Rack Center, said the deal with Actis was struck at the right time as Rack Center is also improving its facilities.

“Actis has been a wonderful partner, they are introducing new ideas to complement what we already have, and it’s great to have them on board before the COVID-19 epidemic became a global issue,” said Dr. Coker.

“We are proud of the deal, and with Actis in the picture, we are incredibly building our client base,” he added.

This morning, the acquisition of Keybase, a startup with encryption expertise, was announced by Zoom-although the purchase price is not known yet.

For several years now, Keybase has been developing encryption products, including collaboration and secure file sharing tools-with these, Zoom is banking on being able to boast of some security credibility as it goes through the demand growing pains of this pandemic period.

In the last couple of months, the company has faced numerous security threats. The increase in demand made some of the security deficits in the platform visible. To help build a more secure product, having a team of encryption experts on staff will help achieve that goal, hence the purchase of Keybase.

Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, said Keybase was acquired to give a higher level of security to customers as more operations are relying on the company’s services, especially for those working from home during this pandemic period.

“This acquisition marks a major step for Zoom. We attempt to develop a truly private platform for video communication-one that can scale to hundreds of millions of participants and also flexible enough to support Zoom’s wide variety of uses,” Yuan said.

The company made it known that as soon as Keybase is incorporated into the product, tools will be made available for all paying customers. “Zoom will offer an end-to-end encrypted meeting mode to all paid accounts,” Yuan added.

According to the terms of the deal, Keybase will become a subsidiary of Zoom, and Keybase co-founder and Max Krohn will lead the Zoom security engineering team.

As of now, the fate of Keybase’s products is unknown, but the company did say they will figure something out.

StoreEx, a leading supplier of Third-Party Maintenance (TMP) for enterprise-sized organizations, which was recently acquired by Evernex, is expanding its operations and services to other African countries.

As they continue to drive TMP awareness and adoption across Africa, Jan Beukes, CEO, and founder of StoreEx, says the company will retain its local branding, level 1 B-BBEE status, and South-African based team.

StoreEx is set to expand its services and industry-leading solutions throughout Southern and Eastern Africa with offices in Kenya, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, and Nigeria. As an Evernex company, StoreEx remains steadfast and focused on the provision of the same level of service her local clients expect.

With over ten years of TMP experience, Beukes says there has been an increase in the company’s ability to provide exceptional services to multi-nationals. Third-Party Maintenance providers can give the best solutions when it comes to combining optimal results with cost savings.

The increase in software maintenance costs is steering the focus of procurement and vendor management leaders to explore the independent third-party maintenance market.

StoreEx has more than ten global call centers, provides support in over 160 companies, online experts, and access to more than 330 stocking locations globally.

As a joint force with Evernex, the group has over 200 highly specialized engineers and services more than 220,000 IT infrastructures.

“I am excited about the future growth prospects of StoreEx. Joining our businesses will strengthen our position in Africa and enable us to grow our portfolio of blue-chip clients,” says Beukes.