TECH NEWS

BEIJING | Xinhua |  China’s new energy vehicle (NEV) manufacturers closed 2023 with better-than-expected performances and optimism for the year ahead, industry insiders have said. A report from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) published on Wednesday has estimated that the country’s wholesale NEV sales totaled 8.88 million units in …

BEIJING | Xinhua | Chinese public security departments have cracked 391,000 cases of telecom and online fraud from January to November 2023, the country’s Ministry of Public Security announced Friday. To deliver a heavy blow to relevant criminal activities, the ministry in 2023 launched several law enforcement campaigns targeting telecom …

In an era of AI and blockchain, the simple text message seems distinctly old-fashioned. But text messaging’s USSD technology remains a key feature for African businesses. Here’s how a crackdown on customer information sharing suddenly makes USSD even more attractive. SPECIAL REPORT | BIRD AGENCY | African businesses are continuing …

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Lubaga Catholic Diocese Chancellor, Fr Pius Male, has asked parents to protect children from technology that distracts them from the realities of life. “Be careful with technology. Do not let your children use technology devices without your guidance. Technology might be a disaster for …

Lagos, Nigeria | THE INDEPENDENT | Airtel Africa plc has today announced the retirement of the Chief Executive Officer, Olusegun “Segun” Ogunsanya, with effect from 1 July, 2024. Ogunsanya, who joined Airtel in 2012, ran the Nigeria Operations of the Telecommunications and mobile money company for nine years before his appointment …

COMMENT | ROBERT SKIDELSKY |   A little over a year ago, the San Francisco-based OpenAI released its chatbot, ChatGPT, triggering an artificial-intelligence gold rush and reigniting the age-old debate about the effects of automation on human welfare. The fear of displacement by machines can be traced back to the nineteenth-century Industrial …

JIUQUAN | Xinhua | China successfully launched SQX-1 commercial carrier rocket into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Sunday. The rocket blasted off at 3 p.m. (Beijing Time) from the launch site, sending the Di’er-1 satellite into the planned orbit. It was the sixth flight …

Dubai, UAE | THE INDEPENDENT |  Uganda’s Michael Okao, Darius Ogwang and Joshua Elem have won this year’s Commonwealth Sustainable Energy Transition Award for the best technical solution for their solar concentrator that harnesses renewable energy for clean cooking. They are students of Comboni College in Lira. The Commonwealth Secretariat announced …

It reflects growing concerns over the ability of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deceive and dehumanise COMMENT | ROGER J. KREUZ |  When Merriam-Webster announced that its word of the year for 2023 was “authentic,” it did so with over a month to go in the calendar year. Even then, the …

BEIJING | Xinhua | The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has launched a campaign to address the growing concerns surrounding the content of short videos. The month-long campaign focuses on three prominent issues, namely, the dissemination of false information, improper behaviors in short videos, and the spread of erroneous concepts, …