-
Jul 14, 2024 | 
acumenmagazine.co.za | Stephen Smith |Jacques Marais |Eugene Yiga |Keith Fairhurst
With the South African economy in its current state, and with unemployment in the region of 32.6%, it’s always encouraging when an industry is booming, especially an industry with the potential to create not only revenue, but thousands of jobs as well.
-
Jul 7, 2024 | 
acumenmagazine.co.za | Jacques Marais |Eugene Yiga |Keith Fairhurst |Cara Bouwer
The threat of climate change and global warming affects not only the world’s landmasses, but also the vast oceans covering 70% of planet Earth. There are ramifications for South Africa's kelp forests and the ocean-based industries that are dependent on this last wilderness. Satellites have mapped 100% of the surface of Mars, a planet situated 225 million kilometres, on average, from Earth.
-
Mar 31, 2024 | 
medium.com | Jacques Marais
If you’re like me, you like having full control over what your React components look like. And sometimes this can be hard. Imagine, for example, that you have a search field component with an input, an icon indicating that results are loading, and a popup container under the input that shows you the list of results and allows you to select a result. Now let’s say you use this component in two places. First, you use it on your home page where you allow users to search for accommodation.
-
Dec 17, 2023 | 
acumenmagazine.co.za | Eugene Yiga |Larry Claasen |Jacques Marais |Colleen Magner
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year you’ll know that everyone’s been talking about ChatGPT. And for good reason. Even though chatbots aren’t new, ChatGPT is much more than what’s come before. “Standard chatbots are usually designed to return a predetermined response to a limited number of questions,” says tech writer Deepak Kumar.
-
Nov 15, 2023 | 
acumenmagazine.co.za | Larry Claasen |Jacques Marais |Colleen Magner |Denise Mhlanga
If Eskom’s inability to provide a constant supply of electricity is not convincing businesses to seriously consider investing in solar power, their diesel bills certainly are. The cost of loadshedding has been enormous. Retailer group Spar says it spent R700 million on diesel for the six months to end-March 2023. There is a similar story with rival Pick n Pay, which has seen its diesel bills reach R500 million for the year to end-February 2023.
-
Nov 8, 2023 | 
acumenmagazine.co.za | Jacques Marais |Colleen Magner |Denise Mhlanga |Frank Magwegwe
I’ll bet you fifty bucks you missed World Bicycle Day (again!) this year? Don’t worry, though, most people do, even those who love their bikes dearly. (For future reference, it’s every year on 3 June, so now you have no excuse come 2024 ...)It is a day that celebrates everything that is good about the “velo life”, recognising the bicycle as one of the world’s most sustainable and effective modes of travel.
-
Oct 11, 2023 | 
acumenmagazine.co.za | Thomas Kgokolo |Mpho Majoro |Dion Chang |Jacques Marais
South African Airways has a long and proud history as South Africa’s national carrier, and is considered a global ambassador for South African tourism. But South Africa’s national carrier SAA is no stranger to turbulence. In the past 20-odd years it has faced numerous financial challenges, had more than 11 CEOs, been grounded due to Covid-19 and placed in business rescue. Since June 2021, the Takatso Consortium has been in negotiations to purchase a majority stake in the airline.
-
Oct 8, 2023 | 
acumenmagazine.co.za | Mpho Majoro |Dion Chang |Jacques Marais |Denise Mhlanga
In Courageous Invitations: How to Be Your Best and Succeed through Self-Disruption, Dr. Jefferson Yu-Jen Chen and Anne Duggan invite leaders to be courageous, take risks and ensure that their teams make what they call “a reciprocal contribution” to the organisation. Leaders who empower their teams are likely to achieve better results because all stakeholders are cognisant of the benefit for themselves as well.
-
Aug 9, 2023 | 
acumenmagazine.co.za | Dion Chang |Jacques Marais |Denise Mhlanga |Mpho Majoro
But that war is still ongoing and new challenges like energy supply and extreme weather are adding to the headache of reconfigured, and still unreliable, supply chains. When retailers can no longer pass on increased costs to their customer, they need to come up with ingenious ways to charge more, without the customer noticing.
-
Jul 19, 2023 | 
acumenmagazine.co.za | Jacques Marais |Denise Mhlanga |Mpho Majoro
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It's that easy, and that hard.” — Neil Gaiman, authorThe author Let’s start this story with a story …Once upon a time, there was a girl called Erica Terblanche. Erica grew up in a place known as the “Big Smoke” (some people call it Johannesburg) and did all the normal things that normal girls do. Well, sort of, because she wasn’t just another girl. The thing about Erica is that she had a dream.
