africa

In America, Google is pretty much omnipresent. Elsewhere in the world . . . well, it's getting there. The search engine company has announced plans to enter Portugal in order to access the African market indirectly.

Internet access remains a rare thing in Africa, where high costs and limited availability drive the technology far out of reach for most of the population. In terms of world Internet usage, Africans represent only 2.3 percent of the total, although they make up 14.1 percent of the world's population.

Former US President Bill Clinton offered a light of hope to the impoverished and AIDS-stricken African kingdom of Lesotho by opening up a pediatric AIDS clinic at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital. Around 22,000 children are HIV positive in the tiny country with an HIV rate of around 30 percent.

South African workers are going on a one-day strike today as called by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to demand the protection of textile and mining jobs.

ITWeb in conjunction with Brainier Capital are hosting the IT Confidence 2005 Conference in Johannesburg late next month.

Eleven years ago when I told my friends that I was going to build a business, they doubled up with laughter. Once they had finished wiping their eyes, they gave me their reasons for the scepticism: Since I had no business skills and no money at all, I could as well count my plan as a fat chance.

As diverse and contrasting is the continent of Africa, so too are Africa's capital markets. With 53 countries, the African continent has over 20 active stock exchanges, including one of the only regional stock exchanges in the world, linking eight French-speaking countries in West Africa. With a market capitalisation of over US$ 180 billion in South Africa, Africa hosts one of the largest stock markets in he world. This is in stark contrast to the other African stock markets that have comparatively small market capitalisations.