Tech
APO Group appointed Official Newswire of The Africa Tech Festival
Published
4 years agoon
In 2022, AfricaCom is celebrating 25 years as the largest live tech event in Africa with more than 300 visionary speakers
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, March 22, 2022/ — APO Group (www.APO-opa.com), the leading Pan-African communications consultancy and press release distribution service, was today appointed the Official Newswire for Africa Tech Festival (https://bit.ly/355VqMo), a series of world-class tech events that includes AfricaCom, AfricaTech, the AHUB, the AFest and the AfricaCom Awards.
Africa Tech Festival runs from 7-11 November 2022 in Cape Town, South Africa.
Watch the video: https://bit.ly/3L4xd8p
As Official Newswire, APO Group will provide distribution and monitoring of all press releases, images, video and soundbite content issued by the Africa Tech Festival.
Over the past 24 years, Africa Tech Festival has become the biggest telecoms and technology event on the continent, connecting business leaders, policy makers and experts across all sectors of the technology industry, including connectivity and communications, enterprise digital transformation, ICT policy, broadcasting and digital media.
The festival is a celebration of Africa’s vibrant, diverse community of technology champions, and is designed to inspire a better, more inclusive digital world.
The anchor event of Africa Tech Festival 2022 is AfricaCom – the meeting place for Africa’s growing community of tech champions. AfricaCom is the largest live tech event in Africa with more than 300 visionary speakers and 16 premium conference tracks, each with razor-sharp focus, exploring the hottest connectivity and enterprise tech trends.
In total, Africa Tech Festival 2022 will host 10.000+ attendees, and 300+ sponsors and exhibitors over a week of strategic events.

APO Group is the obvious choice to distribute and monitor the performance of all news content generated at a festival of this magnitude. With a powerful media network (https://bit.ly/36DUYVN) including more than 450.000 journalists working in Africa or writing about Africa, APO Group is able to reach every corner of the continent, as well as targeting international technology journalists interested in the festival.
News content distributed by APO Group is also automatically published on 320 African news websites, international platforms like Bloomberg Terminal, Thomson Reuters Eikon, Lexis Nexis, and Factiva, hundreds of RSS readers, News Industry Text Format (NITF) readers, Google News, and social media channels.
After news content has been distributed, monitoring is essential for showing evidence of media engagement and coverage. APO Group’s media monitoring reports (https://bit.ly/3JvLrip) are the most comprehensive available in the press release industry, and include unique features such as print monitoring and Google impressions.
The biggest players in the African technology space choose APO Group because it has the network and expertise to help them thrive in Africa’s diverse media landscape.
APO Group works with some of the largest technology organizations in the world, helping them establish and develop their African operations. These include multinational companies such as Facebook, Netflix and Orange – and also the biggest African-owned tech organizations such as Liquid Intelligent Technologies and Phase3 Telecom.
“APO Group’s African media credentials are unparalleled,” said James Williams, Event Director of Africa Tech Festival. “As Official Newswire of Africa Tech Festival 2022, APO Group will be able to bring fantastic visibility to our events, exhibitors, and speakers, helping us to deliver the best technology content to audiences in Africa and internationally.”
“African Tech Festival is the biggest on the continent, and a meeting place for the most influential players in the African tech sector,” said APO Group Founder and Chairman, Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard (www.Pompigne-Mognard.com). “It is a privilege for APO Group to be the Official Newswire for the festival, and a chance for us to show the world that the tech industry in Africa is stronger than ever.”
This is a joint press release by APO Group and Africa Tech Festival.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of APO Group.
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Tech
A City of Innovation and Openness: Hohhot’s Answer to Integrated Development
Published
1 hour agoon
August 31, 2026
HOHHOT, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 28 August 2026 – On 25 August, Hohhot convened a conference on deepening the integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation. At the event, the city officially released its Measures for Advancing Deep Integration of Technological Innovation and Industrial Innovation, together with an overarching implementation plan. The 20 measures share one objective: to place economic and social development firmly on an innovation-driven path and accelerate Hohhot’s emergence as an important growth pole for high-quality development in northern China.
“The less developed a region is, the more it needs to pursue an innovation-driven development strategy.” This message, voiced at the conference, reflects the clear-eyed resolve of a provincial capital city.
That resolve is underpinned by real strengths.
Here, the National Dairy Technology Innovation Centre has shortened dairy-cattle breeding evaluation from four years to just 45 days and cultivated China’s first probiotic strain for infants and young children derived from Chinese breast milk, helping the “Dairy Capital of China” advance towards becoming a global dairy hub. A major scientific facility for aerospace, sky-to-ground, cross-scale metrology, benchmarked against international leaders, is rising in Horinger New District. Inner Mongolia University of Technology has launched the region’s first new-energy industrial large model open to the world. Meanwhile, a domestic enterprise—the only one currently able to produce 4N5 high-purity germanium products consistently—is helping quantum technology and calcium-titanium mineral photovoltaics overcome key raw-material bottlenecks. From a single microbial strain to a beam of light, technological and industrial innovation are converging here and reinforcing one another.
Even more compelling is the city’s tangible commitment.
Municipal fiscal investment in science and technology will double in 2026 and double again in 2027. Newly recognised national-level innovation platforms will receive a one-off research grant of RMB 3 million, while each “Qingcheng Science and Technology Innovation Leading Talent” may receive up to RMB 500,000 in research support. By 2030, Hohhot aims to introduce an additional 10 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, as well as 50 high-level innovation teams. Through a policy approach of “enjoy benefits without application and receive them directly and swiftly”, the city will provide inclusive computing-power vouchers, model vouchers and token vouchers to technology-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises—lowering barriers to innovation and demonstrating the city’s sincerity in supporting innovators.
Openness is a defining feature of Hohhot.
Drawing on the Hohhot Area of the China (Inner Mongolia) Pilot Free Trade Zone, the city is building an international science and technology cooperation base with countries along the Belt and Road. It is also deepening coordination with Beijing’s Haidian District through a “two-hour innovation circle”, exploring a new pathway in which research and development take place elsewhere while results are transformed and applied in Hohhot. Hohhot understands that innovation cannot thrive as an undertaking enclosed behind walls.
Like the Mongolian horse, it is resilient, diligent and determined—never resting until the goal is achieved. This is the character of the city: the breadth and inclusiveness of the grasslands, combined with the courage and pioneering spirit to open northwards, explore new frontiers and put ideas into action.
From the “Dairy Capital of China” to China’s “Cloud Valley”, from the pastures of Chilechuan to the computing-power clusters of Horinger, this green city is becoming a city of innovation.
Hohhot extends an invitation to the world: here there are supportive policies, real-world application scenarios and a genuine commitment to partnership—together with a vast landscape in which to join hands with those who strive and build for the future.
Tech
Hohhot, Inner Mongolia: Converting Prairie Winds into Computing Power
Published
2 hours agoon
August 31, 2026
HOHHOT, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 24 August 2026 – On August 22, 2026, the fourth annual Green Computing Power (Artificial Intelligence) Conference was held on the picturesque Cilechuan Grassland in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. Centered on the theme “Building Synergy between Computing and Electricity, Exploring New Horizons in Token Economy, and Creating the Future of Artificial Intelligence Together,” the conference presented the latest research achievements, including the Green Computing Power Development Research Report (2026), and showcased pilot initiatives such as “millisecond-level urban computing” applications. Prominent companies, including ByteDance and Cambricon, signed a series of significant agreements valued at tens of billions, focusing on green intelligent computing centers and token factories.
Why has the national computing power industry turned its attention here? Part of the answer lies in this vast grassland.
Wind turbine blades turn steadily, each rotation generating 12 kilowatt-hours of green electricity. Instead of feeding into the public grid, this clean energy is transmitted via a dedicated 41-kilometer line directly to data centers located tens of kilometers away.
Inside the machine rooms of these centers, rows of GPU arrays operate around the clock, powered mainly by wind and solar energy.
Training large-scale AI models utilizing tens of thousands of GPUs can consume over 100 million kilowatt-hours annually. For instance, the Hohhot Intelligent Computing Center, operated by China Mobile, incurred electricity costs of approximately 290 million yuan in 2025, accounting for more than 70% of its total operating expenses. In the competition for computing power, electricity costs proved to be a decisive factor. China’s strategic response includes the “East Data West Computing” project, which redirects the high computing demand from eastern regions to resource-rich western areas. The Horinger data center cluster in Hohhot is among the country’s top ten clusters.
The city is endowed with a combination of nearly optimal conditions for the selection of data center locations. With an average annual temperature of only 7°C and over 200 days per year suitable for direct outdoor air cooling, the center achieves more than 20% savings in cooling costs. At an electricity price of about 0.36 yuan per kilowatt-hour, a large-scale GPU cluster can save around 50 million yuan annually on power expenses. Currently, Hohhot’s total computing capacity reaches 150,000 P, with green electricity usage exceeding 80%.
However, the challenge lies in the “green” aspect itself.
Wind and solar power fluctuate with weather, while computing loads require an uninterrupted 24/7 power supply.
The local solution is an innovative “computing-electricity synergy” mechanism. China Huadian Corporation constructs a 360,000-kilowatt integrated wind-solar-storage power station, comprising 300,000 kilowatts of wind, 60,000 kilowatts of photovoltaic power, and energy storage capable of continuous four-hour regulation. A collaborative control platform collects data on wind output, solar irradiance, storage status, and computing load at millisecond intervals to dynamically allocate power: when green energy is abundant, storage systems charge and delay-tolerant computing tasks are prioritized; when green energy is limited, storage discharges, the public grid supplements power, and flexible tasks are deferred. This approach transforms power generation and consumption from a unidirectional supply model to a bidirectional interactive system.
On the consumption side, initiatives to minimize waste are also in progress. The Hohhot data center operated by China Mobile recovers waste heat from nearby power plants to provide cooling for machine rooms. The B02 machine hall has improved its Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) from 1.315 to 1.209, resulting in annual electricity savings of 560,000 kilowatt-hours since commencing operations. Upon full operation of two machine halls, annual savings are projected to reach 10 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 150,000 tons of water.
Today, 62 computing center projects have clustered here, including data centers of China’s three major telecom operators, 16 financial institutions, and computing nodes from Huawei, ByteDance, Kuaishou, and others. Upstream, 45 manufacturing enterprises produce servers, cabinets, and sensors locally. According to the recently published three-year action plan, by 2028, Hohhot aims to establish 10 token factories capable of producing 20 trillion tokens daily. At that time, customers will procure not only cabinets and bandwidth but also directly accessible intelligent services customized to their requirements.
The prairie winds remain constant, as does the city’s commitment to converting every kilowatt-hour of green electricity into stable and reliable computing power.
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
Business
CIT VERICASH Recognized as Best Digital Financial Services Platform of 2026 by Global Business Outlook
Published
7 days agoon
August 24, 2026
The recognition marks the latest in a series of industry acknowledgements for the company, which in 2025 was awarded Best Digital Transformation Platform, Fintech Strategic Partner of the Year, and Best Financial Services Platform Africa
The recognition marks the latest in a series of industry acknowledgements for the company, which in 2025 was awarded Best Digital Transformation Platform, Fintech Strategic Partner of the Year, and Best Financial Services Platform Africa. For CIT VERICASH, the Global Business Outlook award extends the company’s growing international profile at a moment when digital financial services adoption across sub-Saharan Africa is accelerating at institutional scale.
Those numbers are difficult to dispute. A single deployment of the VERICASH platform currently powers the digital banking operations of a pan-African banking group across 22 countries, processing over 500 transactions per second, handling more than 30 million digital services per day, and maintaining more than 7 million active subscribers. In the client’s first five years of full digital platform operations, the results compounded: 5x growth in digital subscribers, 10x growth in monthly transactions, and 30x growth in monthly financial transaction value, translating directly into higher fee income and lower servicing costs.
Building the Backbone of African Digital Finance
CIT VERICASH, a division of CIT GLOBAL, draws on the parent company’s 30-plus years of system integration and software expertise since its founding in Toronto in 1993, delivering award-winning technology to clients across more than 50 countries.
The cornerstone of the company’s performance is the VERICASH Fintech Enablement Platform, a centralized, integrated ecosystem designed to enable financial institutions to launch, operate, optimize, and continuously scale digital financial services through a single platform. Powered by an agile, low-code/no-code service builder, the platform allows commercial banks, digital banks, microfinance institutions, mobile money operators, and fintechs to rapidly deploy and evolve digital banking, agency banking, mobile wallets, payment ecosystems, lending, and other financial services while reducing complexity, accelerating time-to-market, and maximizing the value of existing infrastructure. Currently live in approximately 25 markets across Africa, the platform supports Tier 1 banks, digital banks, neobanks, and fintech operators with the technology, operational capabilities, and strategic enablement required to drive sustainable digital growth.
Global Business Outlook, in selecting CIT VERICASH for the 2026 award, pointed to the platform’s demonstrated ability to operate at institutional scale across fragmented regulatory environments, a challenge that continues to frustrate expansion-minded financial institutions across the continent.
Strategic Partnership That Goes beyond software delivery
To ensure sustainable, long-term client growth, CIT VERICASH anchors every deployment in a Strategic Partnership Model that extends far beyond traditional software delivery. Rather than acting as a technology vendor, CIT VERICASH operates as a long-term strategic partner, aligning technology, operational excellence, and business growth around shared success.
The partnership model combines a scalable fintech platform with dedicated Centres of Excellence, 24/7 operational monitoring, continuous platform optimization, development and customization capabilities, business intelligence and performance analytics, application quality support, and proactive fraud monitoring. Beyond technology operations, CIT VERICASH works alongside clients to evaluate business models, support licensing requirements, build operational teams, develop financial forecasts, and accelerate go-to-market execution for new digital service offerings.
Supported by a collaborative revenue-sharing model that aligns incentives between CIT VERICASH and its partners, this approach enables financial institutions to reduce technology risk, accelerate profitability, continuously evolve their digital capabilities, and unlock sustainable long-term growth.
This enterprise-grade approach has translated into critical long-term alliances. In East Africa, CIT VERICASH has formed a strategic alliance with Bluechip Technologies, combining the VERICASH platform with Bluechip’s localized market expertise to deliver agency banking, digital payments, and mobile wallets to banks, telcos, and fintechs. Further across the continent, a decade-long partnership with CWG PLC in West Africa that powers large-scale financial ecosystems.
A key differentiator shaping CIT VERICASH’s product direction is its approach to artificial intelligence. Rather than positioning machine learning as an optional layer, the company operates under a clear philosophy: “AI is not a feature. It is how the digital channel thinks, decides, and acts.” By embedding 360° AI-powered capabilities across retail, SME, and corporate banking, including personalized customer experiences, automated credit scoring, real-time transaction risk scoring, and proactive fraud prevention, the platform is built for the next generation of digital finance infrastructure, not the last.
A Pattern of Recognition
What distinguishes CIT VERICASH’s recent run of awards from standard industry noise is the consistency. Three industry recognitions in 2025, now followed by an international designation from Global Business Outlook in 2026, suggest a narrative that is beginning to cut through: a company that has spent years building infrastructure continues to be acknowledged because its clients are scaling profitable, inclusive digital services.
The timing is not incidental. Digital financial services adoption across sub-Saharan Africa accelerated sharply following the pandemic, and the institutions that emerged well-positioned were largely those that had invested in scalable ecosystems rather than attempting to build proprietary stacks. CIT VERICASH positioned itself on the right side of that structural shift.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of CIT VERICASH.

