“Receiving a $6 million unrestricted gift from MacKenzie Scott, and being recognised among many incredible organisations, is an honour and privilege. Scott’s trust-based philanthropy will allow us to leverage our 15 years of experience in scaling and replicating digital health programmes to reach more people at critical moments in their health journey. We will also be able to expand our support to health workers who serve under-resourced communities — ensuring healthier…

Johannesburg, 18 March 2020: Over the weekend South Africa’s National Department of Health (NDoH) announced COVID-19 Connect, a WhatsApp-based helpline to deliver accurate, up-to-date information to South African citizens during the current COVID-19 global pandemic. In just a few days, the service has engaged with over one and a half…

Against the background of an increased focus on the role of technology to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges, today sees the launch of Turn.io, a product that leverages messaging platforms for social impact. Turn.io is a startup incubated by Praekelt.org, an early partner in the WhatsApp Business API…

Praekelt.org and Infobip have announced a partnership to significantly scale the impact of non-profits and social enterprises through digital chat conversations. The partnership will enable organisations focused on meaningful social change to rapidly launch meaningful conversations with people in need over their preferred chat applications and social network –promoting dialogue…

From Django Girls Cape Town to Code Like Her, we finally pulled it off. A lot of what Codie Roelf, my fellow colleague and developer at Praekelt.org, and I talk about is how we can “get comfortable with failure, and fail fast”. We saw this come to life when we…

I’ve been working in content in some form of another for the past seven years. I’ve been a content creator, editor, manager and, now, for the past year, a content designer at Praekelt.org. …

It’s been a year of tech growth, with Africa in the spotlight. Here’s what we’ve been talking about all year: 1. Big Cloud Comes to (South) Africa The big Cloud providers are also opening their first data centers in Africa. Microsoft will be opening Azure regions in Cape Town and Johannesburg “in 2018” — although it’s looking…

I’m a midwife. I’m a midwife at heart, and I’m passionate about what I used to be. …

I knew I was good at physics since I was a teenager. I can recall the first time a simple distance equation from Equations of Motions gave me a wow-moment. When I was 17 years old, I was traveling from Cape Town to Qumbu, and as we were approaching the…