Over half a million travellers were processed in and out of South Africa, without any glitches, at all national ports of entry, by the Home Affairs Department’s Immigration services during the Easter Weekend, beginning from Thursday 28 March to 01 April 2013. This comes within the context of the recent directives of Minister of Home Affairs, Naledi Pandor for the department to deploy extra personnel and increase working hours at all national ports of entry-land, sea and air- ports to deal with expected high traveller volumes during Easter weekend. These efforts were complimented by the visits of Minister Pandor and…
Author: Editor
3rd April, 2013 – Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), a leading telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, a global leader in technology today announced a partnership to support the largest under 17 grassroots tournament on the African continent. Under the multi-million dollar agreement, Samsung will also become the Official Device Partner of the Airtel Rising Stars (ARS) tournament. Working with various educational institutions in 17 English and French speaking countries, the youth soccer initiative involves 0ver 18,000 teams and more than 400,000 young boys and girls across the continent. The initiative…
In a city where restaurants come and go at a fairly rapid pace, Long Street Café has firmly established itself as a much-loved Cape Town institution. For the last 16 years this restaurant and bar has been providing Capetonians and visitors with delicious eats, chilled drinks and good times The timeless style and design of Long Street Café, formerly one of the oldest book stockists on Long Street continues to draw masses of tourists and locals on a daily basis. With its open setting and relaxed décor that still has the feel of a book store allows for one to…
Braai or Shisanyama’s (a term used to describe an informal barbecue at a butchery) are the ‘it thing’ to do on a Sunday afternoon, both locally and in South Africa. In true Kasi style, car washes and butcheries become packed on Sunday afternoon, with patrons looking to have a chilled yet fun close to the weekend. Recently, the first ever Braai Festival was held at the Botanical Gardens in Gaborone. The experience was described by many as nothing less than amazing. With that in mind, more and more Batswana look for that familiar yet exciting experience even beyond the local…
The BlackBerry Jam Tour Africa, an unparalleled opportunity for mobile apps developers to learn about the future of BlackBerry, will take place on 25 April 213 at the Fairgrounds Holdings in Gaborone, Botswana. The Jam is organised by the BlackBerry Developer Group Botswana through Intellegere Holdings and supported by BlackBerry. During the Jam, developers will get the most in depth content on developing mobile applications for the game-changing BlackBerry 10 platform.This is a forum where local developers and the BlackBerry Developer Group Botswana can share experience and knowledge and aims to encourage tighter bonds, open knowledge and information flow and…
Standard Chartered Bank Botswana has been named as one of the World’s Best Emerging Banks 2013 in Africa in an exclusive survey to be published in the May 2013 issue of Global Finance magazine. Global Finance editors, along with industry analysts, corporate executives and banking consultants selected the best emerging markets bank in the region and in 29 countries. Standard Chartered Bank was critiqued on growth in assets, profitability, strategic relationships, customer service, competitive pricing, and innovative products. The awards ceremony will be held in October of this year in Washington DC. This is the twentieth year that the magazine…
Whilst going green is a challenge for both public and private sector, it is a necessity. Businesses in developed countries have long adopted a paperless approach because going green has cost benefits and, through the reduction of environmental damage, a positive social impact. Botswana Insurance Company Limited (BIC) has taken technology and innovation to a new level and after a yearlong process has reorganised and transformed its business units to work towards a paperless environment. The organisation is working on creating a green e-environment for all its processes with the client in mind, maintaining the notion that it is…
Stanbic Bank parent, Standard Bank Group, has signed a R20 billion Funding Support Agreement for Renewable Energy Projects in South Africa with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). ICBC is Standard Bank’s single largest shareholder with which it has a 20% shareholding. The deal is innovatively structured to provide the funding out of rand money accruing to ICBC by virtue of that shareholding. The agreement was signed by ICBC Chairman Jiang Jianqing and Standard Bank Group Joint Chief Executive Ben Kruger. “This is an extremely significant transaction. It highlights Standard Bank’s commitment to the renewable…
Lucara Diamond Corp, the Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) listed company has appointed Paul Day as Chief Operating Officer of the company effective as of April 15, 2013. Day will be based in Gaborone, Botswana to be close to the Karowe Mine allowing for quick and efficient interaction with the operations and project teams. Day is a mining engineer with over 22 years of operations experience in Namibia, Mali, Ghana and South Africa. He has held senior mine and operations management positions with Areva, Anglogold and JCI over his career. Responsibilities have included management of several large-scale open pit operations as…
African Energy says its recently received analytical data for its Sinazongwe coal project has confirmed the potential for medium to hard coking coal fractions in the coal seams at Sinazongwe in southern Zambia. The company revealed in an update that results for 19 samples collected from the first 4 holes (holes SNZ001, SNZ002, SNZ004, and SNZ005) have been received to date. It added that 17 of the samples were determined to have a Free Swelling Index (FSI) above 4.5 and maximum FSI was 8.5, with a mean FSI of 6.1, indicating some potential for medium to hard coking…