South Africa's Naspers said it would sell 190mn shares or 2 per cent of its stake in social media giant Tencent Holdings Limited for about US$10.64bn to "reinforce" its balance sheet and boost growth

The Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) and Wits University’s Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct have partnered to launch a security access management hackathon

The World Bank annual forecasts predict a 3.2 per cent growth across Africa south of the Sahara.

Enterprise software company Sage Group has announced it has experienced 13 per cent growth across Africa in the Sage 200 family and 66 per cent growth in Sage One 

The Middle East and Africa have seen 12 per cent growth, while Sage notes Africa continues to embrace a strong relationship with customers, with the highest NPS score of all regions at +53 and retention rates of 87 per cent. Africa’s growth has slowed slightly from H1 17 reflecting challenging market conditions in the region.

According to Sage, the focus for the region in the year now is to drive strong growth through new customer acquisition and services.

“We saw strong double-digit growth across Africa and the Middle East as business builders embraced our cloud accounting, payroll, and financial business management solutions”, says Pieter Bensch, Executive Vice-President, Africa & Middle East at Sage.

Some highlights he revealed included the launch of Sage Live in South Africa, the launches of Sage One Payroll in Kenya and Nigeria, and a more than 10 per cent improvement in our Net Promoter Score showing a rise in customer satisfaction.

"Double-digit growth for both Sage One, our offering for small businesses, and for the Sage X3 enterprise solution reflect our commitment to catering to customers at every stage of their business journey,” says Pieter Bensch, executive vice-president, Africa & Middle East at Sage.

“Sage solutions are available in more than 62 countries across Africa and the Middle East. We have more than 239 000 customers across our product stack and process more than 13 million payslips per year across the region.

Stephen Kelly, chief executive officer at Sage says, "FY17 marks the completion of the transformation of Sage outlined at the June 2015 Capital Markets Day. For each of the past three years we have delivered management’s guidance for at least six per cent organic revenue growth and 27 per cent underlying operating margins, whilst fundamentally transforming Sage."

"We now have the leadership, organisational alignment, brand and comprehensive suite of cloud solutions, to accelerate momentum in our markets. The launch of Sage Business Cloud in October 2017 gives our customers the most comprehensive business management cloud platform in the market and provides the platform for this acceleration. We will continue to drive efficiencies and productivity throughout the organisation and this is now ‘business as usual,” added Kelly.

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