Telecom companies in Madagascar just agreed to drop internet prices after the Ministry of Digital Development leaned on them about accessibility. Minister Mahefa Andriamampiadana said the cuts will vary based on what each operator can handle financially, and he wants fixed internet plans to stop charging purely by data caps because that setup screws over casual users who barely use anything.
The ministry pushed operators to switch pricing models toward connection quality and speed instead of gigabyte buckets, which lines up better with how the rest of the world does it. Carriers also asked to ditch excise taxes, and the government said maybe if it does not wreck the budget, but any savings need to flow back into better infrastructure...
Airtel Nigeria grabbed a tech development trophy at the SERAS awards in Lagos, and the win highlights what their foundation has been doing with digital access projects across the country. The group backed a federal training scheme that got 25,000 young people through tech courses in 46 different areas, and they worked with UNICEF on an education program that hooked up nearly a million kids in over 1,200 public schools to online learning tools.
The foundation also runs scholarship funding for 100 university students and has other community programs scattered around Nigeria. The recognition basically underlines how Airtel is pushing technology as a way to give people skills for the digital economy.
Media City Qatar just locked in a deal with AlRayan Bank to give its 300-plus licensed companies easier access to banking services. The agreement sets up a dedicated contact person who will help businesses and their employees get accounts sorted without the usual hassle, and both sides are planning to team up on ESG projects and innovation stuff down the line.
The partnership fits into Qatar National Vision 2030 goals by strengthening the infrastructure for media and tech firms operating in the free zone. Media City Qatar wants to make sure companies have financial tools that actually match what they need operationally, and the bank collaboration is part of building out a more supportive ecosystem for creative industries in the region.
Schneider Electric showed up at the Saudi Industrial Transformation expo in Riyadh and flexed its automation gear aimed at factories trying to hit Vision 2030 targets. The company rolled out its AVEVA Unified Operations Center for real-time process monitoring, EcoStruxure Automation Expert for flexible factory setups, and EcoStruxure Machine tech that boosts equipment reliability through connected systems. They also pushed their Resource Advisor platform, which helps industrial clients track energy use and sustainability metrics through data analytics.
Mohamed Shaheen from Schneider Electric mentioned the company has been working with Saudi Arabia for over 44 years and wants to help local manufacturers cut emissions while staying...
S&P Global just bumped Telkom's credit rating up a notch to BB+ from BB, and the move tracks with South Africa's own sovereign upgrade that dropped a bit earlier. The telecom company sits close enough to the government that its rating basically follows whatever happens with the national fiscal picture, but Telkom also has solid standalone fundamentals that let it edge out one level above the country's foreign currency score.
The company sold off its tower business, Swiftnet, earlier this year and dumped most of that cash into paying down debt, which crushed its debt-to-EBITDA ratio from 2.0x down to 0.9x. S&P thinks that metric will hang around 0.8x to 1.0x going forward, and the rating agency confirmed Telkom passed its liquidity...
AWS rolled out a preview of Interconnect multicloud, which lets companies hook their Amazon VPCs directly to other cloud providers without the usual DIY networking headache. Google Cloud is the first partner on board, and Microsoft Azure will join sometime in 2026. The whole point is giving customers dedicated bandwidth and built-in redundancy when they need to run workloads across multiple clouds instead of wrestling with janky multilayered network setups that take weeks or months to configure.
The service works with AWS Transit Gateway, AWS Cloud WAN, and Amazon VPC, and it launched in five AWS regions. Cloud providers can plug in using an open API package that AWS dumped on GitHub, so adoption should be pretty straightforward for...
Integrity360 just bought Redshift, a cybersecurity firm based in Johannesburg, and the deal stacks on top of their earlier pickups of Grove Group and Nclose. The acquisition pushes their South African headcount past 230 people spread across Johannesburg and Cape Town, and those offices double as hubs for their global Security Operations Centre that handles endpoint detection, extended detection, and managed detection services.
Redshift launched back in 2015 and built a solid rep doing penetration testing, cybercrime investigations, fraud consulting, and takedowns of scammer networks. They bring around 50 clients from finance, banking, and telecom sectors, plus a team of roughly 40 employees. Integrity360 plans to turn them into a...
Varmilo just dropped foot pedals for gaming, and preorders are live at 39 bucks per unit. The lineup has three configs: a single-pedal version with three keys, another single-pedal model packing four keys, and a multi-pedal setup with four separate pedals. All of them use Cherry silent black switches with 60 gf actuation and 85 gf bottom-out, plus they hit 1000 Hz polling and can connect to three devices at once over Bluetooth.
The cases are 3D-printed PLA with a PC base plate and ABS caps, and Varmilo says they work for fighting games, shooters, and racing sims. Players could offload stuff like crouch, melee, or throttle controls to their feet, but whether anyone actually wants to game with foot pedals long-term is a different...
Asus just teased a white-themed Mini-ITX motherboard under its ROG line, and the preview shot shows that signature 45-degree angled heatsink on the lower-left side. That same design element appears on the STRIX B850-I GAMING WIFI, which runs a 10+2+1 power phase setup and comes with two M.2 slots. The new snow-colored variant will probably pack similar specs but dressed up for people who want compact builds with a clean white look.
Right now, there are zero official details on memory support, rear ports, or whether it has extra storage connectors beyond those two M.2 slots. Asus has not confirmed if this thing is aimed at budget builders or high-end small-form-factor enthusiasts, so anyone hyped for serious CPU power delivery or memory...
