Author: Charissa Swanepoel
Kigali: TECHz Magazine – News Desk Smart Africa has emphasized the urgent need for enhanced public-private collaboration to forge a trusted, inclusive, and sustainable digital ecosystem globally and across the continent. Speaking at the second annual Global Digital Collaboration (GDC26) Conference in Geneva, Dr. Ralph Oyini Mbouna, Smart Africa’s Director of Digital Transformation and Services, advocated for a fundamental shift in how governments and technology enterprises partner with one another. A central theme of the organization’s current strategy is the transition from mere advisory relationships to substantive partnerships that result in genuine co-creation. To achieve this, governments and private enterprises…
Lilongwe: TECHz Magazine – News Desk The Government of Malawi has officially activated a new telecommunications tower in Kalira Village, Lilongwe Nyanja, marking its 36th operational site in an ongoing effort to bridge the digital divide. The launch falls under the Last Mile Rural Connectivity Project, a government initiative designed to bring critical mobile and internet access to underserved communities. Minister of Information and Digitalization, Shadric Namalomba, inaugurated the tower, framing the infrastructure as a driver for inclusion where distance and geography no longer restrict access to the modern economy. This expanded connectivity allows rural students to access the same…
Oman: TECHz Magazine – News Desk Omani startup DeepAstra has been designated as the exclusive sovereign AI partner for Z.ai in the Sultanate, securing the rights to distribute and operate Z.ai’s advanced GLM models locally. This strategic alliance bridges global AI capabilities with strict data sovereignty, addressing a critical market gap for Omani enterprises and government institutions. Through the Z Sovereign Partner program, Z.ai delegates its GLM models to trusted regional operators who deploy, certify, and distribute the technology within their native markets. As the exclusive operator for Oman, DeepAstra will manage this delivery, guaranteeing that all AI inference, data…
Riyadh: TECHz Magazine – News Desk Huawei has unveiled its strategy for accelerating artificial intelligence adoption across Saudi Arabia, emphasizing a full-stack approach that spans connectivity, cloud infrastructure, and computing at LEAP 2026. The technology giant noted that Saudi Arabia’s ICT market has grown significantly to $53 billion, representing an 89.5% increase since 2017. With the digital economy now contributing 16% of the national GDP and 5G network coverage reaching 86% of the Kingdom, Huawei states that a robust digital foundation is already in place. The company stressed that the next phase of digital transformation must move beyond simple AI…
Amsterdam: TECHz Magazine – News Desk Cloud-native banking platform provider Mambu has officially launched Intelligent Core, an open architecture designed to natively integrate agentic AI into core banking and payment systems. Moving away from the traditional approach of “bolting on” AI to legacy infrastructure, the platform allows AI agents to perform autonomous, real-time actions directly on the banking ledger. The architecture combines 15 years of composable banking evolution into a unified system connecting the foundational Mambu Core ledger, Mambu Payments for streamlined operations, and a new Mambu Agentic native intelligence layer. This intelligence layer powers automated banking workflows by utilizing…
Clearwater: TECHz Magazine – News Desk KnowBe4 has officially expanded its email and collaboration security portfolio with the launch of Defend for Google Workspace. Targeting phishing, business email compromise, and AI-driven threats, the new product brings advanced threat detection and real-time employee coaching to organizations utilizing Gmail and related workspace tools. At its core, the platform utilizes a behavioral AI model trained on KnowBe4’s proprietary telemetry of over 1.15 billion daily event signals. The system evaluates incoming messages across multiple intent signals simultaneously to intercept zero-payload phishing, credential harvesting, and prompt injection attacks that native controls often miss. Rather than…
Riyadh: TECHz Magazine – News Desk ServiceNow and Aramco Digital have officially signed a collaboration agreement to drive AI-powered enterprise transformation across Aramco’s network of affiliates, subsidiaries, and joint ventures spanning over 50 countries. Leveraging a platform that currently processes more than 100 billion workflows annually, Aramco Digital aims to unify fragmented operations and establish a consistent, scalable digital ecosystem. The partnership will streamline global operations by integrating intelligent AI workflows to reduce manual processes, deploying unified customer experience solutions, standardizing group shared services, and modernizing legacy ERP systems to lower technical debt. Operating as a Saudi-based industrial AI subsidiary,…
Riyadh: TECHz Magazine – News Desk stc group and Ericsson have signed a multi-year agreement at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh to significantly expand the 5G network across Saudi Arabia. The partnership focuses on upgrading existing infrastructure, deploying new network sites, and extending the reach of 5G Standalone networks to support the nation’s digital transformation. This agreement marks the world’s first commercial deployment of the Ericsson Radio 4496, a quad-band Frequency Division Duplexing unit that aggregates four low-frequency bands into a single high-power 400-watt system. The rollout activates stc group’s recently acquired 600 MHz spectrum, which, when combined with mid-band deployments,…
Oman: TECHz Magazine – News Desk On August 29, 2026, the Sultanate of Oman officially launched the National Cyber Security Strategy 2026 – 2030, a comprehensive five-year framework designed to secure the nation’s rapidly expanding digital infrastructure. Authored by the Cyber Defence Centre in collaboration with public and private sector partners, the strategy safeguards national data assets, digital identity systems, and essential services in direct alignment with the digital economy goals of Oman Vision 2040. The multi-year strategy establishes unified national defense standards based on five foundational pillars. It focuses on cybersecurity governance to update legislation and enforce accountability across…
Riyadh: TECHz Magazine – News Desk At the LEAP 2026 technology event in Riyadh, Ericsson and Mobily officially signed Memorandums of Understanding to accelerate the deployment of AI-driven Radio Access Networks and elevate autonomous network operations in Saudi Arabia. Under the agreement, Mobily will leverage Artificial Intelligence within its infrastructure by utilizing rApps on the Ericsson Intelligent Automation Platform. The collaboration focuses on integrating AI software functionalities across RAN Compute, radio, and Active Antenna Systems alongside centralized AI use cases. Mobily is also set to join the automation ecosystem, gaining access to over 100 available rApps and a broader community…