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South Africa to test new tech that detects outbreaks of respiratory diseases Digital surveillance Digital participatory surveillance is relatively low-cost and easily scalable to any disease of public health significance. Users report on a weekly basis whether they have experienced symptoms related to respiratory illness or not. This allows for real-time estimation of cases without relying on access to medical care or testing capacity. This data can also be used toforecasthow outbreaks might spread in a community....

There’s Silicon Valley on the West Coast, Silicon Alley in New York, Silicon Roundabout in London and now, Silicon Cape in South Africa- Yes the comercial technology industry is growing in South Africa too, but startups are largely focusing on mobile because just like in many developing countries mobile is how people connect not just to each other, but to the Internet as well. And for the majority of the population we are not talking about smart phones we are talking about first and second generation Nokias and the West’s hand-downs from the 90s....

The West Africa Cable System (WACS), a submarine communications cable linking South Africa with the United Kingdom, recently landed in Yserfontein, South Africa.According toSouth African telecommunications provider,Telkom, the $650-million system will increase South Africa’s broadband capacity by more than 500 gigabits per second. The cable system which is about 14,000km in length is the largest (in capacity) to land on the continent and will serve other African countries such as Namibia, Angola, Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Cape Verde among others....

South Korea is set to pass a landmark amendment to a law that could force Apple and Google to give up their grip over collecting commissions from developers. While there has been a lot of discussions around these two companies havingtoo much control over feescollected from in-app purchases in their app stores, this is the first time a country has taken a definitive step to curb that. According to Reuters, aSouth Korean parliamentary committee has already voted in favor of the amendment this morning....

South Korea is blaming Chinese hackers for stealing data from 35 million accounts on popular social networks. As the BBCreports, Hackers are understood to have obtained telephone numbers, names and email addresses, as well as encrypted information relating to around 35m members onCyworldandNate, both of which are operated by SK Communications. Details of the breach were revealed by theKorean Communications Commission, which claims to have tracked the source of the hacks to IP addresses in China....