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Brady Corporation unveils i4311 portable printer. (Image source: Brady Corporation)

Commerce

Print everything you need, where you need it! With the first transportable printer to deliver 101.60 mm wide labelling without cords or limits

Automated identification and data capture specialist Brady Corporation launches a new type of hybrid label printer that offers industrial label printing performance in a cordless, portable design.

Larger labels

Brady´s new BradyPrinter i4311 is designed to bridge the gap between stationary benchtop label printer power and mobile flexibility. A well-known limitation for most mobile label printers is the maximum width of the label. Brady´s i4311 marks the new maximum label width at 101.60 mm for connected label printing systems that retain true portability.

The larger print width brings a lot more applications into the mobile label printing range, including perforated work-in-progress tags, common size rating plates and larger cable tags, wraps, sleeves, asset labels, component labels and GHS-compliant chemical labels.

i4311 app img258bCut the cord

No need to look for power outlets with the i4311. The printer is powered by a battery that can handle 5000 large labels on a single charge. Swapping batteries has been made easy and they can be charged in 3.5 hours.

Easy to integrate

The new BradyPrinter i4311 can print labels from phones, tablets and laptops, and even from central company systems using Brady´s software development kit or ZPL support. In addition to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the i4311 also features ethernet and USB-C connections.

The printer´s on-board 7´´ (17.78 cm) touch screen offers both on-device support as well as the capability to print labels directly from the printer. Users can store on average different 85 000 label templates in the printer that can be completed with an on-board ´fill in´ option, fully responsive to your touch.

Industry feedback

Brady also revealed i4311 printer features that were developed with close involvement from the company´s long-standing customers. As a result, the printer´s footprint was limited to 23 x 23 x 33 cm and 5.9 kg and the device´s easy-to-grip handle was optimised.

A battery-saver was also added for when the printer is not in use and battery-swapping was made even easier.

i4311 app img054 sq

Portable benchtop

Right in the middle of Brady´s mobile label printer and industrial benchtop label printer line ups now sits the BradyPrinter i4311: a portable printer with the company´s benchtop industrial printing capabilities.

Compatible with more than 1300 Brady label parts, the i4311 can print on a majority of Brady´s reliable, laboratory-tested label materials. Just like other Brady printers the i4311 includes LabelSense technology to automatically set label material burn, size and pre-print settings as soon as a label roll is loaded.

The company´s newest label printer also works with a host of free Brady Express Labels mobile apps. These enable users to select text in an image file for example, and import it for printing on a label. Or to read barcodes with a phone and send them to the printer. With a commanding voice, labels can even be printed completely hands-free, using BradyVoice, a smartphone microphone and the BradyPrinter i4311. 

Watch the printer in action & learn more >>

BRADY Corporation in Africa

T: +27 11 704 3295

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.brady.eu

MTN Zambia brings 5G smart living home. (Image source: MTN Zambia)

Internet

MTN Zambia has formally announced a strategic partnership with Frontlife Engineering Limited aimed at delivering advanced 5G-powered smart security and home automation solutions across Zambia

This collaboration represents a further step in expanding the role of MTN’s 5G technology beyond connectivity, introducing practical Connected Home solutions designed to enhance security, improve efficiency, and elevate everyday convenience.

By integrating MTN Zambia’s strong 5G infrastructure with Frontlife Engineering’s expertise in IT and security systems, the partnership will offer scalable, secure, and future-ready solutions tailored to the evolving needs of households. As part of the agreement, Frontlife Engineering will also act as a 5G lease agent, supporting wider market reach and faster adoption of MTN’s 5G services.

The initiative marks the beginning of a long-term collaboration focused on driving innovation, supporting growth, and delivering meaningful value to customers, while contributing to the broader development of Zambia’s digital ecosystem.

The Minister of Communication, Digital Economy, and Innovation, Mourana Soumah. (Image source: MCENI)

Commerce

Mourana Soumah, Minister of Communication, Digital Economy and Innovation, chaired a cabinet meeting focused on advancing priority initiatives under the Simandou 2040 Program, alongside updates on national connectivity and recent institutional progress

The programme outlines Guinea’s long-term strategy for structural transformation, with the ministry driving key projects in media infrastructure, connectivity and the digital economy. The meeting reviewed implementation progress and reinforced oversight of ongoing initiatives.

Among the developments highlighted was the start of construction for the SIMANDOU TV thematic channel and a new headquarters integrating FADEM, AGP, HOROYA and Rural Radio. The minister also called for the urgent launch of renovation works on RTG 2, describing it as a priority project.

On connectivity, the ministry confirmed that a memorandum of understanding is set to be signed on May 6 between MCENI and MEDUSA for the deployment of a second submarine cable, in line with national directives. In parallel, SOGEB reported progress on studies aimed at expanding the capacity of the country’s national backbone network.

“We must stay the course. Every project included in Simandou 2040 is a commitment to our citizens. Training, results, and rigor in execution are the only acceptable paths,” the Minister emphasised.

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Internet

MTN Zambia brings 5G smart living home. (Image source: MTN Zambia)

Internet

MTN Zambia has formally announced a strategic partnership with Frontlife Engineering Limited aimed at delivering advanced 5G-powered smart security and home automation solutions across Zambia

This collaboration represents a further step in expanding the role of MTN’s 5G technology beyond connectivity, introducing practical Connected Home solutions designed to enhance security, improve efficiency, and elevate everyday convenience.

By integrating MTN Zambia’s strong 5G infrastructure with Frontlife Engineering’s expertise in IT and security systems, the partnership will offer scalable, secure, and future-ready solutions tailored to the evolving needs of households. As part of the agreement, Frontlife Engineering will also act as a 5G lease agent, supporting wider market reach and faster adoption of MTN’s 5G services.

The initiative marks the beginning of a long-term collaboration focused on driving innovation, supporting growth, and delivering meaningful value to customers, while contributing to the broader development of Zambia’s digital ecosystem.

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Mobile

Bringing direct-to-cell satellite connectivity to 4G smartphones in no coverage areas

Mobile

Airtel Africa and SpaceX have confirmed the successful trial of data and messaging services using Starlink Mobile in Kenya, marking a major step forward in extending satellite to mobile connectivity across Airtel Africa’s 14 operating markets

The demonstration was carried out in remote locations with no existing network coverage, where conventional terrestrial signals were unavailable. In these areas, Starlink Mobile was activated seamlessly, enabling standard 4G smartphones to connect directly to Starlink’s network of more than 650 deployed satellites and maintain communication.

Sunil Taldar, CEO, Airtel Africa, said, “We are thrilled to move from announcement to actionable steps with our partners at SpaceX. This testing phase in Kenya is a testament to our commitment to expanding global access. By integrating Starlink Mobile’s technology, we are ensuring that our customers remain connected even when they travel beyond our terrestrial network.”

Building on the results of the Kenya trial, Airtel Africa and Starlink Mobile intend to use the findings to support a broader rollout across Airtel Africa’s footprint, subject to regulatory approvals in each market. The collaboration also includes plans to introduce voice services and enhanced data capabilities through Starlink Mobile V2 technology, which will deliver broadband connectivity directly to mobile devices.

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Satellite

Boeing to line-fit SES satellite connectivity systems. (Image source: SES)

Satellite

SES has announced a key milestone toward achieving offerability of its multi-orbit antenna system for installation by Boeing

This development will enable airlines to take delivery of new aircraft with onboard connectivity systems already installed, allowing services to be activated immediately following delivery through a Boeing-provided modification.

As part of the collaboration, Boeing will integrate SES’s in-cabin connectivity hardware during the aircraft production process. This marks an important step toward making SES’s multi-orbit system available as a fully line-fit connectivity solution across Boeing’s commercial aircraft portfolio. Boeing will handle installation of the full in-cabin network while also coordinating the integration of external equipment. The initial rollout will focus on the Boeing 737, followed by the 787 programme.

“We are proud of our partnership with Boeing and this outstanding progress,” said Mike DeMarco, president of Mobility at SES. “We are on track for full line-fit offerability, giving airlines a seamless path to select and install the multi-orbit electronically steered array (ESA) antenna solution during aircraft factory production.”

“Our collaboration with SES reflects Boeing’s commitment to delivering advanced, reliable connectivity to our airline customers,” said Destry Lucas, Director Airplane Connectivity, at Boeing. “We are making strong progress bringing multi-orbit connectivity into the production environment, enabling a more streamlined installation approach and supporting scalable, line-fit capable solutions.”

SES’s multi-orbit system is designed to operate across both low Earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary (GEO) satellite constellations, enabling global coverage, built-in redundancy, and low-latency performance. The company’s electronically steered array (ESA) technology has already achieved 500 installations, with a further 1,000 commitments secured, highlighting strong market confidence in its in-flight connectivity solution.

Uganda approves Starlink operations after signing licensing agreement to boost internet access and digital transformation. (Image source: Ministry of ICT & National Guidence)

The partnership aims to expand broadband access nationwide. (Image source: Eutelsat)

Commerce

GSMA Pleias launch African language AI model. (Image source: GSMA)

Commerce

Pleias and the GSMA have introduced CommonLingua, a new open-source language identification model designed to significantly improve the processing of African language data at scale

The model forms part of the GSMA’s 'AI Language Models in Africa, by Africa, for Africa' initiative, which brings together partners working to bridge the persistent gap in African language representation in artificial intelligence systems.

With more than 2,000 living languages spoken across the continent, Africa presents a uniquely diverse linguistic landscape. However, many of these languages remain poorly represented in AI datasets, leading to reduced accuracy in language identification systems, especially when handling closely related languages or mixed-language content. Accurately identifying a language is a critical first step before building models in languages such as Swahili, Yoruba or Wolof, yet this stage has often proven unreliable for African datasets.

A major reason for this challenge lies in the design of existing language identification tools such as fastText, GlotLID and OpenLID, which were primarily trained on high-resource European and Asian languages. As a result, African-language content is frequently misclassified, often labelled incorrectly as English or French. Even advanced models show a notable decline in performance, with accuracy levels dropping by around 30 points when applied to African languages compared to widely used global languages.

CommonLingua is specifically developed to address this foundational limitation. On the CommonLID benchmark, it achieves an accuracy of 83% and a macro F1 score of 0.79, surpassing leading models by more than 10% points under similar testing conditions. Notably, it does so with a significantly smaller footprint, using approximately one three-hundredth of the parameters required by comparable systems. The model contains just 2 million parameters and is distributed as an 8 MB checkpoint, allowing efficient deployment across different environments. It can process around 20 text samples per second on a CPU and up to 3,000 texts per second on a single GPU.

The model supports a total of 334 languages, including 61 African languages spanning eight major language families. These include Bantu, Niger-Congo and West African, Afro-Asiatic and Semitic, Cushitic and Chadic, Berber, Nilo-Saharan, as well as various pidgins and creoles. By operating directly on UTF-8 byte sequences rather than relying on language-specific tokenisation, CommonLingua ensures consistent performance across multiple scripts such as Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic, N’Ko and Tifinagh.

“African languages are not an edge case. They are the working languages of hundreds of millions of people, and they deserve AI infrastructure built with the same care as any other language. CommonLingua is deliberately the first brick we are laying: you cannot curate what you cannot identify” said Pierre-Carl Langlais, co-founder and chief technology officer, Pleias.

The model has been trained entirely on open-licensed and public domain datasets compiled through the Common Corpus project. These sources include Wikipedia, OpenAlex, VOA Africa, WaxalNLP, Cultural Heritage collections and Pralekha, all released under permissive licensing frameworks.

Louis Powell, director of AI Initiatives at GSMA added, “Closing the gap in African-language AI is is fundamental to digital inclusion and unlocking economic opportunity. Progress has long been held back by the lack of foundational infrastructure, beginning with something as essential as language identification. CommonLingua addresses this critical gap, enabling the development of richer datasets and more representative AI systems at scale. Through our initiative, the GSMA is bringing partners together to move beyond fragmented efforts towards shared infrastructure that can power Africa’s digital ecosystem.”

The discussion around advancing African-language AI will continue at MWC26 Kigali, where GSMA and its partners will convene industry stakeholders to accelerate collaboration and innovation in this space.

Brady Corporation unveils i4311 portable printer. (Image source: Brady Corporation)

The Minister of Communication, Digital Economy, and Innovation, Mourana Soumah. (Image source: MCENI)

Power

Mozambique’s energy sector to receive a boost from the African Development Bank following the institution’s participation in Maputo at the Africa50 summit

Power

Mozambique’s energy sector is to receive a boost from the African Development Bank (AfDB) following the institution’s participation in Maputo at the Africa50 shareholders meeting

Africa50 is an investment platform established by African governments with the AfDB, which has now surpassed US$1.4bn in managed assets directed at infrastructure provision.

At the 2025 summit, a memorandum of understanding was signed with Electricidade de Mozambique (EDM) for the development of three transmission lines under an Independent Power Transmission (IPT) framework.

“This will help support the government’s ambition to achieve universal electricity access by 2030 and become a significant exporter of power across the Southern African Development Community,” a statement released by AfDB noted.

Finalisation of the project development agreements is now underway for three lines under an IPT framework, partnering with Power Grid and EDM, it added.

A separate MoU was also signed with the Ministry of Communications and Digital Transformation to build a new data centre facility in Maputo and to modernise the existing one.

Africa50’s Mozambique portfolio already includes equity investment in the 175MW Central Termica de Ressano Garcia (CTRG) gas-fired power plant.

According to Dr Akinwumi Adesina, president of the AfDB Group, investments by Africa50 complement broader support from the bank itself that have delivered some US$1.6bn to Mozambique over the past decade.

This investment includes US$400mn in senior debt financing for the country's flagship US$20bn liquified natural gas (LNG) project in Cabo Delgado, as well as the US$34mn Mozambique Energy for All Project, which has connected more than 45,500 households to electricity.

The bank claims its energy sector investments have helped to double Mozambique's national energy access rate from 30% in 2018 to 60% in 2024.

The AfDB has also supported agricultural transformation through special agro-industrial processing zones, including the Pemba-Lichinga corridor, while financing critical transport infrastructure along the Nacala and Beira corridors that enhance regional trade connectivity for the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Earlier this year, the AfDB approved US$43.6mn in funding for the construction of the Namaacha-Boane transmission line and related electricity infrastructure

EDM will implement the project in partnership with Central Eléctrica da Namaacha (CEN), a private sector-led development group involving Globeleq Africa Limited and Source Energia that is building the 120 MW Namaacha wind farm in the southwestern part of the country. 

The Vertiv PowerDirect 7100 Energy supplies up to 52 kW of scalable 48 V DC power and delivers efficiency levels of up to 98%. (Image source: Vertiv)

International Power Control Systems (IPCS) has been named as a distribution partner in Malawi by Vertiv, a specialist in critical digital infrastructure

Security

ASM strategies to protect digital assets

Security

Attack surface management (ASM) has seen significant growth in recent years, evolving into a recognised market category that provides businesses with the visibility and strategies needed to safeguard their digital assets, reports Kyle Pillay, security as a service manager at Datacentrix

As Forrester’s Attack Surface Management Solutions Landscape, Q2 2024 notes, ASM “delivers insights on assets that ultimately support business objectives, keep the lights on, generate revenue, and delight customers.”

At its essence, ASM involves continuously discovering, identifying, inventorying, and assessing the exposures of an organisation’s IT asset estate, a foundational step in maintaining a strong security posture.

Knowing your environment

Fundamentally, ASM helps organisations ‘know your environment’, highlighting gaps in defenses before attackers can exploit them.

Every threat actor or hacker begins with reconnaissance, mapping out your external-facing assets. This is why External Attack Surface Management (EASM) exists: it concentrates on what attackers can see. Without viewing your environment through this external lens, organisations cannot know which access points are visible or exploitable, leaving them unable to proactively detect or prevent threats before incidents occur.

First steps in protecting your attack surface

The first step in ASM is identifying external-facing touchpoints such as public IPs and domains. For instance, you might recognise your primary domain (e.g., mydomain.co.za), but visibility into similar domains, like mydomain.com, mydomain.net, mydomain.tech, or mydomain.ac.za, is also crucial. These can be targeted for domain squatting or cybersquatting, where attackers exploit similar names to mislead users and enable phishing attacks.

A strong ASM solution not only maps your current footprint but also identifies domains worth securing before malicious actors register them.

If a deceptive domain is registered, like mydomain-tech.co.za, you need an effective takedown process. International domain takedowns can be complex, requiring a partner capable of legally liaising with registrars across jurisdictions. With the right procedures and partnerships, such domains can often be removed within four to eight hours, limiting potential damage.

Keeping pace with today’s infrastructure

One of ASM’s biggest challenges is keeping up with the rapid growth and sprawl of modern IT environments. While multiple tools exist, none fully match the speed of change, even as vendors iterate frequently, often in weekly development sprints, to maintain relevant detection capabilities.

Beyond speed, perspective matters. While an organisation may have visibility from one viewpoint, attackers do not limit themselves to a single angle. To defend effectively against modern threats, you need to view your environment as attackers do and understand vulnerabilities exploitable from within. This is where distinguishing between external and internal ASM becomes crucial.

External ASM (EASM) focuses on publicly exposed digital assets, whereas internal ASM addresses vulnerabilities inside the network. Internal ASM uses network exposure activity tools to simulate real-world attack techniques, often following frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, to identify weaknesses from the inside. These simulations test whether known attack methods bypass security controls, whether sensitive data can be exfiltrated, whether passwords are weak or compromised, and if lateral movement within the network is possible.

Combining internal and external ASM provides a more accurate view of your security posture, allowing organisations to close gaps before exploitation.

Making the business case for ASM

Cost is often a concern with ASM investments, but when weighed against the reputational and financial impact of a breach, or the risk of sensitive data appearing on the dark web, the case for prevention is clear.

The reality is simple. Without a combination of internal and external ASM, organisations remain essentially blind to vulnerabilities. The ability to identify, monitor, and remediate gaps before adversaries exploit them has become a business imperative.

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