TechCentral

AI Diagnostics, a Cape Town-based med-tech company that has built an AI-powered stethoscope designed to detect tuberculosis, recently raised R85-million in a pre-series-A funding round.

In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), Nkosinathi Ndlovu speaks to the company’s CEO, Braden van Breda, about the funding round and its mission to transform TB screening across Africa and Asia.

The round, led by the Steele Foundation for Hope, will fund the deployment of the Ostium – an AI-powered digital stethoscope that works in tandem with the company’s proprietary AI.TB model.

The device is designed to detect signals associated with tuberculosis in lung sounds in real time, putting point-of-care diagnostic capabilities into the hands of the nurses, pharmacists and community health workers who often serve as the first contact in resource-constrained health systems.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Van Breda explains why AI Diagnostics chose to tackle one of the world’s most underfunded diseases, and how an AI model can pick up TB signals that escape even trained clinicians. He also unpacks the painstaking work of building a TB-positive lung-sound dataset from scratch.

Van Breda also delves into:

• What the Ostium compares to a traditional stethoscope;

• How the company handles real-world recording conditions, from noisy clinics to paediatric patients and HIV co-infection;

• How AI Diagnostics stops the model from silently degrading as the device moves from a Khayelitsha clinic to rural Zambia or Vietnam;

• The company’s goal of securing World Health Organisation certification and the path towards that;

• How the Ostium is positioned against – or alongside – AI-assisted chest X-ray tools such as CAD4TB and Qure.ai's qXR; and

• What it would realistically take to put an Ostium in every primary healthcare clinic on the continent by 2030.

Don't miss the discussion!

Vox, a well-established retail internet service provider is expanding its services to the wholesale market through aggregation.

In this episode of TechCentral’s podcast series TCS+, Andre Eksteen, senior product manager for fibre to the business at Vox, discusses the rationale behind this strategy and the services Vox is offering as “the ISP for ISPs”.

Eksteen delves into:

• The thinking behind Vox’s move into the wholesale space;

• The detail regarding Vox’s operating model as an aggregator with no physical infrastructure of its own;

• The financial benefits ISPs derive from engage via an aggregator against connecting to a wholesaler themselves;

• How aggregation services lower the operational burden on retail ISPs;

• Vox’s white-labelling service and how wholesalers benefit from it;

• The tooling Vox providers to help ISPs run their businesses more efficiently;

• How Vox balances the potential internal conflict of interest arising from it being a retail competitor to the same ISPs to which it supplies wholesale services; and

• The impact the existence of a wholesale aggregator like Vox will have on the retail ISP market.

Don’t miss it! TechCentral

Vox, a well-established retail internet service provider is expanding its services to the wholesale market through aggregation.

In this episode of TechCentral’s podcast series TCS+, Andre Eksteen, senior product manager for fibre to the business at Vox, discusses the rationale behind this strategy and the services Vox is offering as “the ISP for ISPs”.

Eksteen delves into:

• The thinking behind Vox’s move into the wholesale space;

• The detail regarding Vox’s operating model as an aggregator with no physical infrastructure of its own;

• The financial benefits ISPs derive from engage via an aggregator against connecting to a wholesaler themselves;

• How aggregation services lower the operational burden on retail ISPs;

• Vox’s white-labelling service and how wholesalers benefit from it;

• The tooling Vox providers to help ISPs run their businesses more efficiently;

• How Vox balances the potential internal conflict of interest arising from it being a retail competitor to the same ISPs to which it supplies wholesale services; and

• The impact the existence of a wholesale aggregator like Vox will have on the retail ISP market.

Don’t miss it!

The pace at which artificial intelligence is reshaping the threat landscape is outstripping the ability of most organisations to defend themselves, with shadow AI, synthetic identity attacks and a looming quantum computing disruption all converging at once.

That’s the view of DataGroupIT CEO Werner Lindemann, who joined Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show to unpack what business leaders should be doing about AI and information security.

Lindemann, who spent more than 30 years in senior roles at BCX and Clickatell before joining the security solutions distributor, says the African threat environment is no longer a watered-down version of what is happening elsewhere. Attackers are deploying the same AI-powered tools globally, and AI-enabled phishing campaigns now achieve click-through rates that traditional defences were never designed to withstand.

A bigger blind spot, he argues, is shadow AI – employees pasting sensitive data into unapproved AI tools without oversight. Lindemann says this is fast eclipsing the shadow IT problem of the past decade because the tools are free, frictionless and often invisible to security teams.

The conversation also tackles the credibility crisis facing identity verification. With AI now able to clone a CEO’s voice in real time or generate synthetic profiles that pass biometric checks, Lindemann believes traditional verification methods are fundamentally flawed. A big challenge is helping boards understand the issue in business rather than technical terms.

Lindemann also weighs in on the rise of the chief AI officer role, following Sanlam’s recent appointment, and on whether African organisations are equipped to adopt AI at the pace global peers are setting given the continent’s acute skills shortage.

The discussion closes on quantum computing. Lindemann challenges the conventional view that the quantum threat is a decade away, and outlines what business leaders should be doing now to prepare for the post-quantum cryptography world – even if the risk still feels distant. TechCentral

The pace at which artificial intelligence is reshaping the threat landscape is outstripping the ability of most organisations to defend themselves, with shadow AI, synthetic identity attacks and a looming quantum computing disruption all converging at once.

That’s the view of DataGroupIT CEO Werner Lindemann, who joined Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show to unpack what business leaders should be doing about AI and information security.

Lindemann, who spent more than 30 years in senior roles at BCX and Clickatell before joining the security solutions distributor, says the African threat environment is no longer a watered-down version of what is happening elsewhere. Attackers are deploying the same AI-powered tools globally, and AI-enabled phishing campaigns now achieve click-through rates that traditional defences were never designed to withstand.

A bigger blind spot, he argues, is shadow AI – employees pasting sensitive data into unapproved AI tools without oversight. Lindemann says this is fast eclipsing the shadow IT problem of the past decade because the tools are free, frictionless and often invisible to security teams.

The conversation also tackles the credibility crisis facing identity verification. With AI now able to clone a CEO’s voice in real time or generate synthetic profiles that pass biometric checks, Lindemann believes traditional verification methods are fundamentally flawed. A big challenge is helping boards understand the issue in business rather than technical terms.

Lindemann also weighs in on the rise of the chief AI officer role, following Sanlam’s recent appointment, and on whether African organisations are equipped to adopt AI at the pace global peers are setting given the continent’s acute skills shortage.

The discussion closes on quantum computing. Lindemann challenges the conventional view that the quantum threat is a decade away, and outlines what business leaders should be doing now to prepare for the post-quantum cryptography world – even if the risk still feels distant.

Award-winning South African film director Donovan Marsh has pivoted to artificial intelligence filmmaking and believes generative AI tools could fundamentally reshape how movies are made – and who gets to make them.

Marsh, whose 30-year career includes directing the Hollywood submarine thriller Hunter Killer starring Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman, the Spud films and iNumber Number, is the latest guest on the TechCentral Show.

The economics, he tells TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod, are extraordinary: a single complex scene in a traditional production requires crews, equipment, locations and days of scheduling, while AI tools collapse much of that overhead into work that can be done at a desk.

But Marsh is clear that the creative work has not disappeared. He still directs shot by shot, much as he would on a conventional set, and uses a patchwork of different AI tools – no single product yet does everything. He has found that simpler prompts produce better results, saying over-prescription tends to degrade output quality.

Marsh acknowledges the disruption this implies for camera operators, lighting crews, set designers and extras. But he argues that AI filmmaking could prove liberating for smaller filmmaking markets like South Africa, where the budgets to make ambitious local movies have dwindled.

He has co-founded Dragon Studios AI with Ronnie Apteker and Stephen Cholerton, and is developing what he believes will be among the first AI-generated feature films. The tools are not quite there yet for a full 90-minute production, he says, but the gap is closing fast.

Marsh also weighs in on where the so-called “uncanny valley” still trips up generative video, the future of the acting profession and what AI filmmaking could look like by 2029. TechCentral

Award-winning South African film director Donovan Marsh has pivoted to artificial intelligence filmmaking and believes generative AI tools could fundamentally reshape how movies are made – and who gets to make them.

Marsh, whose 30-year career includes directing the Hollywood submarine thriller Hunter Killer starring Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman, the Spud films and iNumber Number, is the latest guest on the TechCentral Show.

The economics, he tells TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod, are extraordinary: a single complex scene in a traditional production requires crews, equipment, locations and days of scheduling, while AI tools collapse much of that overhead into work that can be done at a desk.

But Marsh is clear that the creative work has not disappeared. He still directs shot by shot, much as he would on a conventional set, and uses a patchwork of different AI tools – no single product yet does everything. He has found that simpler prompts produce better results, saying over-prescription tends to degrade output quality.

Marsh acknowledges the disruption this implies for camera operators, lighting crews, set designers and extras. But he argues that AI filmmaking could prove liberating for smaller filmmaking markets like South Africa, where the budgets to make ambitious local movies have dwindled.

He has co-founded Dragon Studios AI with Ronnie Apteker and Stephen Cholerton, and is developing what he believes will be among the first AI-generated feature films. The tools are not quite there yet for a full 90-minute production, he says, but the gap is closing fast.

Marsh also weighs in on where the so-called “uncanny valley” still trips up generative video, the future of the acting profession and what AI filmmaking could look like by 2029.

Everyone agrees that small and medium enterprises are the backbone of the South African economy. But the reality on the ground tells a different story – too many small businesses are still running on spreadsheets and WhatsApp, locked out of the tools that could help them compete.

In this episode of TCS+, TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod is joined in-studio by two members of the recently established Vodacom Business advisory board: Sannesh Beharie, managing executive of SME and mobile products at Vodacom Business, and Andrew Fulton, co-founder of data analytics firm Eighty20, a Vodacom Business partner.

Vodacom Business set up its advisory board last year to bridge the gap between enterprise-grade technology and the small businesses that need it most, bringing together tech leaders and external specialists to help companies – as well as SMEs – navigate digital transformation.

In the conversation, McLeod, Beharie and Fulton dig into what’s actually stopping small businesses from going digital, whether bundled connectivity and cloud offerings are genuinely good for SMEs or just a polite way of locking them in, and where AI fits into the picture for a 20-person business in South Africa.

They also tackle how Vodacom Business positions itself against the likes of AWS, Google and Microsoft in the SME market, where a small business owner should spend their first R10 000 a month on tech, and the most common mistakes SMEs make when they do invest in technology.

Don't miss the discussion on what a genuinely SME-first solution looks like – and whether the tech industry is guilty of designing for corporates and simply shrinking solutions down for smaller businesses.

* TCS+ episodes are sponsored by the party concerned TechCentral

Everyone agrees that small and medium enterprises are the backbone of the South African economy. But the reality on the ground tells a different story – too many small businesses are still running on spreadsheets and WhatsApp, locked out of the tools that could help them compete.

In this episode of TCS+, TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod is joined in-studio by two members of the recently established Vodacom Business advisory board: Sannesh Beharie, managing executive of SME and mobile products at Vodacom Business, and Andrew Fulton, co-founder of data analytics firm Eighty20, a Vodacom Business partner.

Vodacom Business set up its advisory board last year to bridge the gap between enterprise-grade technology and the small businesses that need it most, bringing together tech leaders and external specialists to help companies – as well as SMEs – navigate digital transformation.

In the conversation, McLeod, Beharie and Fulton dig into what’s actually stopping small businesses from going digital, whether bundled connectivity and cloud offerings are genuinely good for SMEs or just a polite way of locking them in, and where AI fits into the picture for a 20-person business in South Africa.

They also tackle how Vodacom Business positions itself against the likes of AWS, Google and Microsoft in the SME market, where a small business owner should spend their first R10 000 a month on tech, and the most common mistakes SMEs make when they do invest in technology.

Don't miss the discussion on what a genuinely SME-first solution looks like – and whether the tech industry is guilty of designing for corporates and simply shrinking solutions down for smaller businesses.

* TCS+ episodes are sponsored by the party concerned

MTN South Africa has launched Pi, a digital-only mobile operator that runs on MTN’s network but operates as a standalone brand, offering contract-free mobile and home 5G connectivity through a single app, with no call centres, no credit checks and no lock-in.

In this episode of the TechCentral Show, TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod talks to Divyesh Joshi, chief commercial officer at MTN South Africa, about the thinking behind the launch and what it signals about the direction of the local telecommunications market.

Pi’s pricing is aggressive: R79/month for 500 voice minutes and R199/month for 20GB of mobile data, for example, alongside home fixed-wireless broadband plans.

McLeod asks whether Pi is essentially MTN’s fightback against Telkom, which has been quietly gaining prepaid market share with competitive data pricing – and whether the launch is also a response to mobile virtual network operators like Melon Mobile.

The conversation explores what Pi means for MTN’s margins, particularly on voice, and whether the aggressive pricing on calls is an admission that voice has become a commodity in a market where many consumers have shifted to WhatsApp for calls.

McLeod also asks whether Pi represents MTN’s attempt to get ahead of a structural shift in how people consume telecoms services – drawing a parallel with MultiChoice’s failure to adapt quickly enough to changing market demands in the video entertainment space.

A key question is what happens to MTN’s existing SuperFlex product, which targets a similar customer base. Is Pi going to cannibalise MTN’s own subscribers?

Finally, McLeod and Joshi discuss MTN’s new eSim-based roaming deals, which offer data at R12/GB in markets like China and France – though curiously, roaming in eSwatini, where MTN has a subsidiary, costs R85/GB.

Don’t miss the conversation! TechCentral