African Mining Week, billed as the continent’s most influential mining forum, is scheduled to run at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 14 to 16 October 2026 under the theme “Mining the Future: Critical Resources, Sustainability and Community Development.” The 2026 programme includes a dedicated panel, Leveraging Advanced Technologies and AI to Transform Mining Practices for Sustainable Growth, that will bring together technology providers, investors, project developers, and regulators.

DRC leads on AI exploration

The DRC, one of Africa’s most resource-rich jurisdictions, has positioned AI at the centre of its exploration strategy. Speaking at last year’s AMW, Louis Watum Kabamba, the country’s Minister of Mines, said AI-enabled exploration has the potential to reduce resource-discovery timelines to under three years, and that the government is working to unlock 90 per cent of DRC’s geology and more than US$24 trillion in untapped mineral value.

Recent deployments back the rhetoric. In February 2026, the DRC partnered with Xcalibur Smart Mapping to use advanced geospatial solutions for mapping critical minerals and lowering exploration risk. The country is also working with US-based startup KoBold Metals to apply AI-driven techniques at the Mingomba Lithium Mine.

Zambia, Ghana, Botswana, and Burundi

The trend extends beyond DRC. KoBold Metals is also applying AI at Zambia’s Mingomba Copper Project to identify high-grade deposits, backing the government’s push to lift annual copper output to three million tonnes by 2031. Burundi has partnered with KoBold and Lifezone Metals to digitise its geological database and assess the 140-million-tonne Musongati Nickel Project.

In Ghana, the Ghana Gold Board and the Ghana Geological Survey Authority are using AI-assisted mineral prospectivity modelling across the Funsi, Atuna, and Bensere East concessions, aligning with a national drive to expand gold reserves and production.

Botswana is using the same tool-set to diversify away from diamonds. Botswana Minerals has identified eight new copper deposits through AI-powered exploration, accelerating the country’s move into critical minerals.

The capital pitch

The underlying economic pitch is large. Organisers estimate Africa sits on $8.5 trillion in untapped mineral resources, and point to the continent’s 30 per cent share of global critical minerals at a moment when demand is projected to triple by 2030. AI’s role, AMW’s 2026 programming suggests, is to compress exploration cycles, reduce the cost of de-risking ground, and tighten operational efficiency once mines are producing.

African Mining Week 2026 is organised by Energy Capital & Power. Registration and the latest programme updates are available via the event’s website.

The change addresses a long-running friction in the African cloud market. Cloud infrastructure pricing has historically been quoted in dollars or euros and settled by international card. African buyers without a Visa or Mastercard with sufficient international limits, or facing foreign exchange controls on outbound recurring USD charges, have either turned to cryptocurrency or asked a colleague abroad to cover the bill.

A continent-sized rail

Mobile money is the dominant non-cash payment system across much of the continent. According to the GSMA’s State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money 2024, sub-Saharan Africa processed USD 1.1 trillion in mobile money transactions last year, equivalent to 65% of global mobile money value. 74% of all global mobile money activity by transaction count occurred on the continent, and roughly 40% of adults in the region now hold a mobile money account, a 13 percentage-point increase since 2021.

For cloud buyers, mobile money sits inside the customer’s local financial system. It bypasses FX controls, card limits, and bank refusals on recurring foreign-currency charges, which have slowed African business adoption of pay-as-you-go infrastructure. Cryptocurrency rails have served the same function for some buyers: a December 2025 analysis noted that crypto already represents a meaningful share of cloud orders settled out of Africa. Mobile money extends that payment-flexibility principle to customers without crypto exposure.

Where the rail is live

The country-by-country wallet inventory at launch:

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, customers can choose to settle in US dollars or Congolese francs. In every other market, wallet payments are processed in local currency and converted at the day’s rate to the customer’s chosen billing currency on the AFRICLOUD account, which can be USD, EUR, GBP, ZAR, or NGN.

How a top-up works

The flow follows a sequence familiar to anyone who has paid a utility bill from a mobile wallet:

1. The customer signs into the AFRICLOUD billing platform at my.africloud.com.
2. They choose “Top up account” and select their country.
3. They pick a wallet, for example, MTN MoMo, and enter the mobile money phone number associated with it.
4. They approve the charge on their handset, typically via a USSD prompt or a push notification from the wallet app.
5. Once funds clear, the balance is credited to the customer’s AFRICLOUD account in their chosen billing currency at the day’s exchange rate.
6. The account balance can then be used to pay for any AFRICLOUD service: cloud servers, object storage, block storage, virtual private cloud, floating IPs, managed DNS, or dedicated servers.

The markets not yet covered

The launch covers 11 of Africa’s 54 countries, and the company has been explicit about which markets are excluded and why.

Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa are currently geo-restricted on the AFRICLOUD platform until July 2026 for unrelated contractual reasons. Mobile money rails in those markets are technically ready, particularly for Kenya’s M-Pesa and Ghana’s MTN MoMo, and would follow once the platform unblock takes effect.

Two markets, Burkina Faso and Malawi, are deferred. The mobile money providers in those countries require local entity registration that AFRICLOUD has not undertaken. In North Africa (Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya) and in Ethiopia, the company does not currently offer a mobile money rail; customers there continue to use card or cryptocurrency.

AFRICLOUD’s payment mix

AFRICLOUD is a Wyoming-registered cloud infrastructure company with offices in Miami Beach, Florida. Its network runs as autonomous system AS209179, with two infrastructure sites. The Lisbon presence is located within MEO Altice’s Linda-a-Velha campus, which also houses DE-CIX Lisbon. The Johannesburg presence sits within Teraco’s Isando campus, overlooking NAPAfrica, the continent’s largest internet exchange. The Johannesburg site is hosted within a Teraco facility certified to ISO/IEC 27001, PCI DSS, ISAE 3402 Type 2, ISO 14001, and ISO 50001.

Mobile money joins an unusually wide range of payment options. AFRICLOUD already accepts cards through Stripe, PayPal, and more than 300 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, Litecoin, and Monero. The company says roughly a quarter of completed orders in the trailing 180 days settle in cryptocurrency, an indicator of demand for non-card options that mobile money is expected to extend.

The mobile money rollout follows a platform expansion in March 2026 that added object storage, block storage, virtual private cloud, and managed DNS to the existing virtual server line.

A test for B2B payment localisation

Mobile money in cloud checkout sits within a small but growing category of business-to-business pricing localisation. Most international software and infrastructure providers continue to quote in USD or EUR and accept only cards. The few that have added local payment rails, typically through partnerships with regional payment service providers, have generally seen conversion rates lift in markets with structurally low card penetration.

For AFRICLOUD, the immediate test will play out in the lower-card-penetration countries on its launch list, particularly the CFA franc zone and Sierra Leone, where cryptocurrency adoption among small and medium enterprises is also lowest. Whether mobile money becomes a meaningful share of cloud sales or settles in as a convenience option for a minority of customers will be visible in subsequent quarterly figures.

The event is organised by Informa Festivals, a division of Informa, and is structured around six programme pillars: telecoms and connectivity, data centres, AI, cybersecurity, startups, and digital transformation. Sessions will run across eight stages, with expo and content programming from 17 to 19 November and a VIP and partner programme beginning on 16 November.

A first wave of speakers

The 2026 line-up so far spans blue-chip South African corporates, pan-African banking, state enterprises, and multinational consumer brands. Among those confirmed are:

• Nomsa Chabeli, Group Chief Executive of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)
• Nollie Maoto, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at FirstRand’s Compliance Office
• Lazola Ndamase, Group Executive Head of Big Data and AI/ML Technology at Vodacom
• Nirvani Dhevcharran, Chief Technology Officer for Platforms and Operations at The Foschini Group
• Bunmi Cynthia Adeleye, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Retail Supermarkets Nigeria (Shoprite Nigeria)
• Senthil Kumar Velayutham, Chief Technology and Digital Officer at the African Development Bank
• Dido wa Kalonji, Chief Information Officer at FNB Eswatini
• Nina Triantis, Head of Global Sponsor Coverage and Vice Chair/TMT at Standard Bank Group
• Faith Burn, Chief Technology and Operations Officer at the Land and Agricultural Development Bank (Land Bank)
• Joost Pielage, Chief Technology Officer at Quro Medical
• Richard Cazalet, Executive: Strategy and Transformation at Telkom SA
• Seaparo Phala, Chief Information Officer at the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture
• Mary Mahuma, Chief Information Officer for Sub-Saharan Africa at Philip Morris South Africa

Organiser framing

Africa’s digital economy is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, and Africa Tech Festival 2026 is designed to be at the centre of that momentum. Whether you are a decision-maker looking to shape strategy, an innovator seeking investment, or an organisation ready to put your brand in front of the continent’s most influential technology leaders, this is the event for you.

David Monaghan, Vice President, Africa Tech Festival

A crowded Cape Town tech calendar

The confirmation positions Africa Tech Festival alongside a busy sequence of enterprise technology gatherings landing in the city through 2026. Converge Africa, the digital commerce conference, runs at the same venue from 4 to 6 May, with the City of Cape Town recently backing that event. The AI Summit Cape Town, a co-located event within Africa Tech Festival, sits within the AI pillar.

Sponsors and exhibitors confirmed so far include MTN, Cassava Technologies (top AfricaCom sponsor), Odoo, Zoho, ManageEngine, and a number of telecoms infrastructure providers. Registration is open via the official Africa Tech Festival website.

In The Benefits of Quantum Forecasting, published this month, PwC argues that the mathematical principles underpinning quantum computing offer a useful framework for modelling complex, high-dimensional systems that are increasingly stretching the limits of classical computing.

The uncertainty context

The paper opens with a wider frame. The World Uncertainty Index, an IMF-backed measure of geopolitical and macroeconomic volatility, sits at its highest level since records began. For South African organisations, that translates into climate-related risks, energy and infrastructure constraints, fluctuating commodity prices, and growing pressure on financial services and insurers.

Uncertainty is no longer an occasional disruption; it is the context in which all major business decisions are now made. The organisations that will succeed are not those that try to eliminate uncertainty, but those that build stronger capabilities to understand it, quantify it, and act on it with confidence.

Nico Vlok, Tech Strategy and Architecture Leader, PwC South Africa

Where classical methods are running out of room

Industries such as banking, insurance, energy, mining, agriculture, and manufacturing rely heavily on probability modelling and scenario forecasting. Techniques like Monte Carlo simulations underpin routine risk metrics such as Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR). However, PwC argues that as economies and financial systems become more interconnected and more correlated, classical computing faces diminishing returns for rare but high-impact events, the “tails” of a distribution where the biggest losses sit.

The scale of that tail exposure is sizeable. Natural catastrophe events alone produced an estimated $318 billion in economic losses globally in 2024, with only 43 per cent insured. That leaves a $181 billion protection gap that re-insurers and sovereign risk pools are trying to close.

What hybrid quantum actually means

The paper is explicit that full-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing is not here yet. Instead, PwC highlights hybrid quantum-classical approaches, in which a small part of a computation, typically the hardest to run on classical machines, is offloaded to a quantum processor, while data handling, governance, and validation remain on classical systems.

One concrete example is Quantum Amplitude Estimation (QAE), a technique that can, in theory, reduce the sampling effort required to achieve high statistical confidence in a rare-event probability estimate. For insurers and pension funds, that kind of efficiency could compress the cost of running VaR or CVaR models against increasingly complex climate and credit scenarios.

We are still in the early stages of quantum computing, and significant technical challenges remain. However, hybrid approaches allow organisations to start exploring where incremental value might emerge, without waiting for fully fault-tolerant quantum hardware.

Nico Vlok

A readiness question, not a hardware one

PwC frames quantum readiness as primarily a people, processes, and problem-selection question rather than an imminent hardware purchase. The firm’s position is that the window for careful early exploration, including quantum literacy programmes, controlled experimentation, and governance design, is now, well before the hardware is deployable at scale. Organisations that wait, the paper suggests, risk being caught flat-footed by competitors that have already done the groundwork by the time the technology is production-ready.

The backing was announced on Tuesday by VUKA Group, the event’s organiser, alongside supporting partner Invest Cape Town, the city’s investment promotion brand.

A city anchoring a regional play

Cape Town has increasingly positioned itself as a hub for e-commerce, fintech, and payments infrastructure businesses. The support for Converge Africa is part of that broader pitch.

The City eagerly welcomes the return of Converge Africa to Cape Town. Communities all across the continent are exceptionally active in the e-commerce space, whether as businesses or consumers. Cape Town is the ideal place for this gathering and its engagements between tech entrepreneurs and thought-leaders in the public and private sector.

Alderman James Vos, Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth, City of Cape Town

Converge Africa is expecting more than 1,400 attendees from 700-plus organisations, with a theme centred on frictionless and cross-border digital commerce. The programme is built around five pillars: payments and fintech, eCommerce, digital marketing, fulfilment and logistics, and digital security.

Speaker line-up

Confirmed speakers include Ajay Moti, head of global card networks at Booking.com; Hannes Wessels, general manager for South Africa at Binance; Kerissa Varma, chief security advisor for Africa at Microsoft; Joshua Suckerman, digital product manager for API marketplace and payments at Absa; Zain Naidoo, head of digital marketing at Dis-Chem Pharmacies; and Grant Paul Roy, chief customer experience officer at Superbalist.

Additional contributions are expected from leaders at Pick n Pay, Nedbank, Vodacom, Spur Group, and Kimberly-Clark.

Corporate and public-sector buildup

The City’s endorsement follows a series of corporate announcements around the event. Amazon South Africa signed on as a Diamond partner, and the Small Enterprise Development Finance Agency (SEDFA), the state-owned MSME financier, previously confirmed backing for the event’s MSME Pavilion as part of a drive to connect small businesses with payments, logistics, and digital commerce providers.

The conference format combines an exhibition floor, content stages, workshops, and networking on a single site, which organisers say is designed to facilitate deal-making across the payments, logistics, and retail value chains that make up the continent’s estimated $75 billion digital economy.

Registration is open through the Converge Africa website.

The two devices go on sale through Samsung Experience Stores, Incredible Connection, and Takealot. Samsung is marketing a bundle that pairs either phone with a Galaxy Fit3 for a R699 discount or a Galaxy Buds Core for a R799 discount.

What’s new on the Galaxy A57 5G

The A57 is the higher-specced of the two devices. It runs a 5,000mAh battery that Samsung says supports up to two days of typical use, with Super-Fast Charging 2.0 reaching 60 per cent in around 30 minutes. The internal vapour chamber has been enlarged by 13 per cent compared with last year’s Galaxy A56 5G to sustain performance during gaming and video recording.

The camera system is led by a 50MP main sensor with an upgraded image signal processor, paired with an ultrawide lens and a 5MP macro camera. The A57 adds a faster shutter speed and improved noise reduction over the A37, and includes an Auto Trim video editing tool not present on the smaller handset.

The A57 5G launches in Awesome Navy and Awesome Gray.

The Galaxy A37 5G positioning

The A37 shares the 50MP main camera, 5,000mAh battery, IP68 water and dust resistance rating, and Super AMOLED display with Vision Booster found on the A57, but steps back on the image signal processor and video editing features to hit its lower price point. It ships in Awesome Lavender, Awesome Gray, and Awesome Dark Green.

Both devices ship with Knox Vault hardware-based security, the Security and Privacy Dashboard, Auto Blocker, Theft Protection, Private Album for locked gallery content, and Privacy Alerts that warn users of location or monitoring requests. Samsung has committed to up to six generations of Android OS upgrades and six years of security updates on both models.

AI features trickle down from flagships

The A-series marks Samsung’s latest push to bring AI features, which the company brands as Awesome Intelligence, to mid-range buyers. Supported features include Voice Transcription in the Voice Recorder app, which can transcribe and translate calls and voicemails; AI Select on the Edge Panel for extracting text and creating content; Object Eraser in the gallery editor; and Best Face on the A57, which picks a preferred expression from a motion photo. Circle to Search with Google is also included. Bixby handles natural-language device control, while Gemini powers Google-based task automation.

Separately this week, Samsung announced an expansion of Audio Eraser, the real-time noise-separation feature first introduced on the Galaxy S25, into a live sound-control tool on the Galaxy S26 series, with users able to adjust background noise on video streamed across over-the-top and social platforms via the Quick Panel. Audio Eraser is not supported on the A57 or A37.

The Galaxy A series has historically been Samsung’s highest-volume line in emerging markets. Pricing the A57 below R12,000 and the A37 below R9,000 keeps both models within price bands that Samsung’s flagships, which start above R20,000, cannot reach.

Heidi says its platform now supports roughly 1.5 million consultations a month in South Africa, with weekly active use growing 500 per cent year on year. The formal launch crystallises what has largely been clinician-led uptake, with doctors introducing the platform into their own practices before it spread into larger healthcare organisations.

Integrations with local practice systems

Intercare Group, a South African primary healthcare provider, is piloting Heidi across its network, and Fourways Veterinary Hospital has deployed it within its clinical teams. Heidi has also integrated with Practice Perfect and HealthFocus, two commonly used South African practice management systems, lowering the onboarding friction that typically slows software adoption in primary care.

The platform sits inside a clinician’s existing workflow and automates documentation, including SOAP notes produced from recorded consultations. It supports multiple languages and a limited offline mode for low-connectivity environments, both of which matter for rural South African clinics.

A workforce gap driving demand

The rollout arrives as South Africa faces a projected shortfall of about 97,000 health workers by 2030, according to national workforce modelling cited by the company. Administrative overhead is a well-documented contributor to clinician burnout in public hospitals, emergency departments, and rural clinics, where staffing pressures are most acute.

Adoption in South Africa has been almost entirely clinician-led. Doctors are using it in real clinical settings, seeing the impact, and recommending it to peers.

Dr Tom Kelly, chief executive and co-founder, Heidi

Heidi has appointed Dr Calvin Howard to lead its South African operations, with Dr Michelle Yuan heading local customer success. Both are medical doctors by training.

Global footprint

Heidi was founded in Melbourne in 2019 by Dr Tom Kelly, Waleed Mussa, and Yu Liu, and has raised approximately US$96.6 million from investors including Point72 Private Investments, Blackbird, Headline, Latitude (Phoenix Court’s growth fund), Possible Ventures, and Archangel. The platform now supports more than 2.5 million consultations a week in 110 languages across 190 countries, according to the company.

Alongside its scribe product, Heidi operates Evidence, a medical research lookup tool aimed at point-of-care clinical decisions, and Comms, a call-handling feature for coordinating patient communications across a practice.

The company says it complies with the UK National Health Service’s data security standards, HIPAA, the EU GDPR, Australia’s Privacy Principles, and South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act, and holds SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications.

Heidi’s expansion follows rising AI investment across African digital infrastructure, including the recent launch of Africa’s first AI experience centre by Liquid C2 and Google Cloud in Johannesburg.

ISPA, founded in 1996, is hosting the 21st edition of iWeek, in partnership with the South African Network Operators Group (ZANOG), from 21 to 23 April 2026 at Irene Country Lodge in Pretoria, South Africa. The three-day gathering is free to attend and is expected to draw engineers, network operators, regulators, policymakers, and academics from across the country’s internet and communications sectors.

Minister Malatsi to address the conference

Solly Malatsi, the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, is scheduled to present on the industry landscape on Wednesday. Veteran ICT executive Andile Ngcaba is billed to speak on technology disruption and innovation.

Opening sessions on Tuesday include contributions from Professor Adewale Adedokun of the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC), Mahen Naidu and Seshni Moodaly of Telcables, Portia Rabonda of Flexoptix, Donald Jolley of ZANOG, and Sasha Booth-Beharilal, the chair of ISPA.

Programme focus

This year’s theme, “Towards universal and meaningful connectivity”, reflects persistent gaps in internet coverage, cost, and performance for underserved South African communities. The agenda covers IPv6 deployment and migration, DNS, internet governance, regulatory updates, fibre infrastructure, and 30 years of peering at INX-ZA, the country’s longest-running internet exchange.

Pre-conference technical training, fibre network operator workshops, and updates from AFRINIC and event sponsors round out the programme. The format spans full talks, lightning talks, panel discussions, and experience reports aimed at internet service providers, small and medium enterprises, content networks, and infrastructure operators.

Three decades of ISPA

Founded in 1996 as the industry body for South African internet service providers, ISPA has operated through the liberalisation of the country’s telecommunications market, the build-out of national fibre backbones, and successive regulatory reforms at the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA). The association has more recently engaged on continental internet governance matters, including the AFRINIC legal dispute and the 2025 AFRINIC board election, as well as the ongoing modernisation of South Africa’s internet exchanges.

iWeek 2026 runs through Thursday, 23 April at Irene Country Lodge. Registration and the full programme are available at iweek.org.za.

The bond, issued under Rule 144A and Regulation S, formed the centrepiece of a broader debt paydown and refinancing completed by Liquid, the pan-African fibre and technology business owned by Cassava Technologies. The transaction retires the company’s prior debt obligations, extends its debt maturity profile, and resets its balance sheet with the stated aim of giving management headroom to accelerate growth across connectivity, cloud, and cybersecurity.

Deal structure

Alongside the $300 million Eurobond, Liquid closed two syndicated term-loan facilities and received fresh equity from Cassava. The composite package looks as follows:

• $300 million Eurobond, Euronext Dublin listing, 144A/Reg S, 2.5x oversubscribed.
• $210 million ZAR-denominated syndicated term loan from Nedbank, Rand Merchant Bank, Standard Bank, and the International Finance Corporation. The rand-denominated structure provides a natural currency hedge against Liquid’s substantial South African revenues.
• $150 million USD syndicated term loan from Ninety One (via its own funds and the Emerging Africa and Asia Infrastructure Fund) and The Mauritius Commercial Bank.
• $195 million equity injection from parent Cassava Technologies.

Anchor orders in the Eurobond were placed by development finance institutions including DEG, the German DFI. J.P. Morgan, Rand Merchant Bank, and Standard Bank acted as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners.

Ratings action ahead of launch

Fitch Ratings upgraded Liquid Intelligent Technologies ahead of the bond launch. Moody’s placed the issuer on Review for Upgrade. The two agency actions converged with strong institutional demand in a risk-selective market for emerging-market credit, pointing to investor appetite for African issuers that can demonstrate hard infrastructure assets, multi-country revenue diversification, and hedged currency exposure.

Liquid’s asset base

Liquid operates a 115,000-kilometre fibre broadband network spanning more than 25 African countries, alongside satellite connectivity and growing cloud and cybersecurity revenues delivered through its Liquid C2 unit, which recently opened Africa’s first AI experience centre in Johannesburg with Google Cloud. The company has also expanded fibre capacity between Kenya and Uganda and, separately through sibling Cassava unit Africa Data Centres, recently partnered with Oni-Tel on fibre connectivity in Gauteng.

This refinancing is a significant milestone, not just financially, but strategically. A stronger, more sustainable balance sheet gives Liquid the platform it needs to pursue the full scope of digital transformation opportunities across Africa, from fibre and cloud to cyber security and AI-enabled infrastructure. The quality of the institutions that participated in this transaction is a statement of confidence in Liquid’s fundamentals and in Africa’s digital growth story.

Hardy Pemhiwa, Group CEO, Liquid Intelligent Technologies

Cassava Technologies, headquartered in London and present in more than 40 markets across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States, holds Liquid alongside Cassava AI, Liquid C2, Africa Data Centres, and Sasai Fintech in its vertically integrated portfolio. The scale of institutional participation in this transaction, including DFI anchor orders, places the oversubscribed bond among the larger African corporate debt placements completed in the first half of 2026.

Under the sponsorship, SEDFA will enable 10 high-potential small and medium enterprises to exhibit within the MSME Pavilion, providing each with dedicated exhibition space, access to more than 1,400 attendees from 700-plus organisations, and sponsored delegate participation in conference sessions and workshops. The agency said the initiative is designed to connect emerging businesses directly with corporate buyers, partners, and investors across the digital commerce ecosystem.

Micro, small, and medium enterprises contribute over 60% of employment in South Africa, and a significant share of GDP, yet many still face barriers to market access, funding, and digital integration. SEDFA’s programmes provide financial assistance, business mentoring, and technical training, alongside support for formalisation and targeted initiatives including Empretec, Manufacturing Supplier Programmes, and township and rural enterprise development.

An ecosystem across five digital commerce pillars

Converge Africa is structured around five core pillars: payments and fintech, e-commerce, digital marketing, fulfilment and logistics, and digital security. The event, organised by VUKA Group, is positioned as a platform for collaboration across African digital commerce, with a stated theme of “frictionless digital commerce — transacting seamlessly, without borders”.

For smaller businesses, SEDFA argues, access to that ecosystem is the critical factor in whether they can scale. Integrating payment processing, optimising digital marketing, navigating logistics, and building trusted customer experiences determines commercial viability in competitive digital markets.

Facilitating sustainable international market access is a core pillar of SEDFA’s business development mandate. Enabling meaningful market linkages for small enterprises is critical to boosting exports and, in turn, driving inclusive economic growth.

Sipho Ngcai, Group Executive: Business Development Support, SEDFA

The SEDFA announcement follows Converge Africa 2026’s earlier confirmation of Intent HQ, Absa, and BEES as headline sponsors, positioning the event as one of the larger digital commerce gatherings on the continent’s 2026 calendar. Related coverage on tech.africa includes Sendy and Google’s MSME partnership in Nigeria and AfriLabs Academy’s capacity-building programme for African startups.

Converge Africa 2026 runs at the CTICC from 4 to 6 May 2026. Registration details, the full programme, and ticket options are available on the event website.