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Huawei Code4Mzansi Highlights Developers Building for South Africa’s Real Economy

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Code4Mzansi

Code4Mzansi highlights the growing strength of South Africa’s developer ecosystem and the role of youth-led innovation in shaping the country’s digital future
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Media OutReach Newswire – 26 May 2026 – South Africa’s emerging developers are building close to the ground, with many of the strongest solutions at the inaugural Huawei Code4Mzansi finals focused on systems people use every day: township retail, healthcare, energy, agriculture, payments and the creative economy.

The competition was held in partnership with the Department of Small Business Development. “The Code4Mzansi competition is not just a celebration of achievement, it is a launchpad for the future,” said Minister Stella Ndabeni, whose department co-hosted the event and delivered the closing address.

The finals revealed a clear shift from building abstract digital products to practical tools that help small businesses trade better, communities access services more easily, and local industries solve problems faster.

Four finalist teams focused directly on the township economy, with solutions covering food safety verification for spaza shops, offline point-of-sale systems built for load-shedding, WhatsApp-native marketplaces for informal retailers, and community credit systems for SASSA grant recipients.

Others addressed AI-driven healthcare access, electricity theft detection, smart agriculture, financial infrastructure for the creator economy, and AI-generated African music.

Held at Huawei Office Park in Woodmead, the finals brought together more than 100 attendees, including government representatives, academic partners, industry leaders and media.

“The quality of the finalist solutions demonstrated the potential of local innovation to respond to real market needs,” said Steven Chen, Cloud CEO of Huawei Technologies South Africa.

Academic partners included the University of Pretoria, the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town.

“Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, and technology is their greatest accelerator. The participants here today are future entrepreneurs who will drive South Africa’s digital economy forward,” said Professor Thokozani Shongwe, Vice Dean of Postgraduate Studies, Research and Internationalisation at the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment.

Industry partner rain also attended. Leon Nortje, Principal and Senior Architect at rain, said the competition offered a strong view of the country’s emerging technology pipeline.

“It is always good to see new projects and new teams working on solutions that are valuable and industry-related. We will be looking out for potential new employees,” said Nortje.

The winners

The finalists competed for a prize pool of R800,000. MAAT by SIMVAK was named the overall grand winner and received the Business Value Award, taking home R300,000. The platform addresses food safety and regulatory compliance in South Africa’s informal retail sector through AI agents, real-time product recall alerts, and counterfeit detection for the spaza shop ecosystem.

“The spaza network is the supply chain for most South African households,” said SIMVAK founder Shingirayi Mandebvu.

HealthHive by FTCK received second prize in the Business Value Award category, taking home R200,000, for its AI telemedicine platform that matches patients with the right medical practitioners based on their symptoms.

Auraa received the Grand Innovation Award for its AI music engine built to generate authentic African sound. The platform has been associated with an album that has crossed one million streams.

The Future Star Award went to e-Khadi, a community credit and stokvel platform giving SASSA grant recipients access to essentials at their local spaza shops, supported by AI-assisted credit scoring and fraud detection.

The People’s Choice Award, voted by the public on Huawei’s social media channels, went to DevRift, a semi-finalist in the competition, who took home R100,000.

Minister Ndabeni delivered the closing address, positioning Code4Mzansi within the government’s agenda for youth entrepreneurship, small business development and digital inclusion.

“Our task is to ensure that innovation does not remain a moment of applause, but becomes a pathway to enterprise creation, digital inclusion, and sustainable growth,” she said.

“Thank you to Huawei for being a perfect partner on the journey that we are travelling, and of course, those that matter most, the developers who dared to compete,” she said.

Code4Mzansi forms part of the global Huawei Cloud Developer Competition. In its inaugural edition, South Africa attracted more participants than any other country: 1,041 across 353 teams, including 176 enterprise teams, resulting in the highest enterprise participation rate among all competing markets. Twenty semi-finalists were selected before the top nine advanced to the final.

For the finalists, the work is just beginning. As Minister Ndabeni said, “Go home today proud. But tomorrow, wake up, build again.”

About Huawei
Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With 213,000 employees operating in over 170 countries, we serve more than three billion people worldwide.

Huawei is committed to bringing digital to every person, home, and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world. In 2025, Huawei generated CNY880.9 billion in revenue, reinvesting 21.8% (CNY192.3 billion) into R&D, with about 53.7% of its employees working in R&D. As a private company fully owned by its employees, Huawei focuses on customer-centric innovation and open collaboration to create lasting value and drive technological breakthroughs globally.

 

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Every thing leaves a trace: eDNA technology empowers environmental protection in China

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2 days ago

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June 16, 2026

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eDNA

BEIJING, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 16 June 2026 – Since 2021, the China Zhi Gong Party has been carrying out a Yangtze River eco-environmental protection project in partnership with east China’s Anhui Province.

Faced with the complex challenge of river basin management, the party’s central committee has leveraged its intellectual resources, bringing together a think tank of leading experts to launch a five-year “science and technology empowerment” initiative across the Jianghuai region, the area around the lower reaches of the Huaihe River and the Yangtze River.

Among them is Zhang Wei, a member of the China Zhi Gong Party and a professor at Peking University. She has led her team in monitoring biodiversity in Chaohu Lake and the main and branch tributaries of the Wanjiang River in Anhui Province through eDNA technology, which can precisely identify minute traces of life in water and even detect invasive species that are difficult to spot with bare eyes.

“We capture or collect these minute traces of environmental information and then amplify them,” said Zhang.

Without the need to fish or disturb aquatic life, this technology allows scientists to assess the biodiversity of a water body simply by analyzing genetic information from water samples. This approach has opened up new pathways for evaluating the effectiveness of the fishing ban on the Yangtze River and conducting biodiversity monitoring.

Over the past five years, Zhang’s team has worked closely with Anhui University and local environmental protection authorities to establish multiple sampling sites in Chaohu Lake and the Wanjiang River. She hopes that through targeted oversight, eDNA monitoring technology will be promoted and applied on a more comprehensive scale.

“We hope to set an example so that everyone can do their part to support environmental protection and monitoring in this way,” Zhang said.

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Tech

Kora Joins International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Payment Network to Power Airline Payments Across Africa

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3 days ago

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June 15, 2026

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Africa

Through this integration, airlines and travel agencies using IFG can now accept payments across Africa via Kora, including cards, bank transfers, mobile money, and local alternative payment methods

LAGOS, Nigeria, June 12, 2026/APO Group/ –Kora (www.KoraHQ.com), the payment infrastructure platform, has joined the International Air Transport Association’s IATA Financial Gateway (IFG) (https://apo-opa.co/4ovs4va), connecting global airlines to Africa’s payment ecosystem through a single, reliable infrastructure layer.

 

IATA Financial Gateway is the airline industry’s dedicated payment orchestration and management platform. IFG brings together global, regional and local payment partners to provide airlines with the right mix of payment options to maximize acceptance, reduce cost, and better serve customers in every market. Through this integration, airlines and travel agencies using IFG can now accept payments across Africa via Kora, including cards, bank transfers, mobile money, and local alternative payment methods, without building or managing multiple complex integrations independently.

Global airlines no longer have to choose between expanding into Africa and managing payment complexity

Africa is one of the fastest-growing aviation markets in the world. The continent is expected to add more than 300 million new passengers by 2050. Yet global airlines have long faced a fundamental operational challenge when entering African markets: fragmented local payment rails, FX complexity, disconnected settlement systems, and the burden of managing multiple payment service provider relationships across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt and South Africa. This partnership removes that friction. One connection through IFG gives airlines access to Kora’s full African payment infrastructure, with the settlement reliability and local compliance that enterprise operations require.

Dickson Nsofor, CEO of Kora, said: “Africa is not a market to figure out later. It is a growth opportunity that demands serious infrastructure today. Our partnership with IATA signals that the rails are ready. Global airlines no longer have to choose between expanding into Africa and managing payment complexity. With Kora inside IFG, they get both.”

IATA currently represents over 370 international airlines globally. With Kora now part of IFG, those airlines gain direct access to Africa’s payment stack across every market Kora operates in.

IATA Financial Gateway (IFG) enables increased travel payment processing flexibility for the world’s airlines and travel suppliers to build a cost-effective travel payment strategy. Kora’s participation strengthens our ability to serve airlines operating in or expanding across African markets,” said Kamil Al-Awadhi, Regional Vice President, Africa and Middle East.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Kora.

 

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Energy

Dietsmann Brings its Energy Maintenance and Robotics Expertise to African Energy Week (AEW) 2026

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6 days ago

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June 12, 2026

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African Energy Chamber

After decades keeping Africa’s oil, gas and power plants running, Dietsmann is bringing robotics and AI to the center of its work

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, June 12, 2026/APO Group/ –Dietsmann, the independent specialist in operation and maintenance (O&M) services for energy production facilities, will participate as a Bronze Sponsor at African Energy Week (AEW) 2026 – taking place from October 12-16 in Cape Town. The sponsorship deepens a presence in African energy that stretches back decades and reflects the company’s growing role in the policy conversation after it joined the African Energy Chamber (https://EnergyChamber.org) earlier this year.

 

Dietsmann’s participation at AEW 2026 reflects the growing role of specialist maintenance contractors in Africa’s energy industry. With much of the continent’s production now coming from mature fields, the contractors that keep those facilities running reliably and at lower cost have become more important than ever. Dietsmann has built its position over more than four decades, maintaining oil, gas and power plants across Angola, Nigeria, Gabon, Libya, Uganda and South Sudan, often in demanding offshore and remote environments.

The company’s expertise is also on display in the Republic of Congo, where industrial maintenance is its core business. There it maintains TotalEnergies’ offshore production facilities and services the 484 MW gas-fired Centrale Électrique du Congo, one of the country’s main power plants. In Angola, it has operated since 2000 through Sonadiets, a joint venture with Sonangol that was among the first of its kind between an African national oil company and a maintenance specialist.

Dietsmann knows that reliable operations are the foundation of energy security

Dietsmann also prioritizes workforce development in parallel to its technical work. The firm has organized local training programs in all its African host countries since the early 2000s, building maintenance skills among national employees through dedicated training centers and on-the-job campaigns. Its approach aligns closely with the local-content priorities that are defining this moment in African energy policy.

Maintenance itself is being reshaped by technology, and Dietsmann is among the contractors leading the shift across Africa. In partnership with the robotics firm Taurob, the company has deployed autonomous inspection robots, including ATEX-certified units built for hazardous environments, and is integrating drones and AI-based analytics to move maintenance from reactive repairs toward predictive monitoring.

The company’s CEO Cesare Canevese has carried a consistent message into African energy circles: reliable maintenance, digitalization and local skills are non-negotiables for continental energy security. He also notes that Dietsmann’s expertise travels across the energy transition, as the fundamentals of maintaining a facility change little whether it produces oil, gas or power – readying the company for work on Africa’s growing gas-to-power and LNG projects.

“Dietsmann knows that reliable operations are the foundation of energy security,” said NJ Ayuk, Executive Chairman of the African Energy Chamber. “Pairing decades of field experience with new technology and local skills development is how Africa keeps its existing assets producing for longer.”

As a Bronze Sponsor at AEW 2026, Dietsmann is expected to feature in discussions on operational reliability, local content and the digital technologies reshaping how Africa maintains its energy infrastructure.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Energy Chamber.

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