Tuesday 4 October 2016

News24


30 SEPTEMBER 2016

South Africa: News24 Scoops Two Major Awards


News24 took home two major awards at the inaugural edition of the Digital Media Africa Awards on Thursday.
The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers' Digital Media Awards are the most prestigious recognition of best practice innovation in digital publishing worldwide.
News24 shared top honours for Best News Website with Kenya's Nation Media Group and the News24 Elections app for the 2016 local government elections won the Best News Mobile Service category. The News24 app got second place in the Best Tablet Publishing category.
"I am incredibly proud of the News24 team for scooping the two major awards: Best News Website and Best News Mobile Service," editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson said.
"It's an honour and privilege to be working with the best digital team in Africa. The local government elections showed us how the combination of in-depth on-the-ground reporting and big data applications complement each other to bring the ultimate breaking news experience for readers."
Many other Media24 titles won their categories
The rest of the winners are:
- Best Entertainment & Lifestyle Website: Kickoff (Media24)
- Best Use of Online Video: IOL: What would you take a bullet for? (Independent Newspapers Ltd)
- Best Data Visualisation Project: TMG Election App (Times Media Ltd)
- Best Entertainment & Lifestyle Mobile Service: Men's Health - Belly Off (Media24)
- Best Tablet Publishing: M&G iPad Edition: 5 August 2016 (Mail & Guardian)
- Best Reader Engagement: Women's Health - Next Fitness Star (Media24)
- Best Digital Advertising Campaign: Landbou.co.za (Media24)
- Best New Product: Wanted Online (Times Media Ltd.)
The awards are presented in major regions around the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and South Asia.
The winners from each region subsequently compete for the World Digital Media Awards. This year's winners in that competition will be announced during WAN-IFRA's World Publishing Expo in Vienna in October.
Source: News24

SA News

AMANDA KOTZE-NHLAPO SCOOPS GLOBAL AWARDS

Posted on August 1, 2016

Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo, the Chief Convention Bureau Officer of the South Africa National Convention Bureau, has been recognised as a ‘trailblazer’ by the international business events industry.

South Africa has over the last few years made huge efforts to promote the country as a premier business events destination – and in mid-July, Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo, the SANCB’s Chief Convention Officer, received yet another nod of approval from the international industry.
She has been recognised as a ‘trailblazer’ and was named amongst the 25 most influential people in the meetings industry for 2016 by global business events magazine, Successful Meetings. According to the publication, all the people chosen have either “contributed to the business of meetings, made it easier for meeting professionals to do their job, helped raise awareness of the industry, or, through their actions, have had a significant impact on meeting professionals.”

This is one of the many awards Ms Kotze-Nhlapo has received, including the IMEX Academy Award for Africa and the Middle East in April this year. According to IMEX Group Chairman Ray Bloom and Managing Director Paul Flackett, she was presented with the award for her role in developing the status of South Africa as a world class destination within the meetings industry.
“These awards are confirmation that Amanda’s extensive experience and solid grasp of the business events industry have not gone unacknowledged,” says Sthembiso Dlamini Acting Chief Executive Officer at South African Tourism. “This industry is a great driver of economic development and South Africa’s business events strategy is focused on building its knowledge economy and accelerating its macro-economic benefits. We are therefore truly proud of her and her team’s efforts in ensuring that our work of marketing South Africa as a premier business events industry is paying off.”
“I am thrilled at the recognition that we are receiving from the global business events industry. This is all thanks to the SANCB team effort,” says Kotze-Nhlapo. “Such accolades and awards certainly assist in drawing attention to our continent.”
Amanda has long championed not just South Africa, but also the wider continent and she aims in as many ways as possible to help “realise the potential and opportunities that the meetings industry presents to our objectives in development, the knowledge economy, growth and education.” This Pan-African view has brought Kotze-Nhlapo to play a leading role in the creation of the African Society of Association Executives (AfSAE), launched last year at Meetings Africa in February. “The launch of AfSAE is one of the many ground-breaking and innovative developments,” she says, adding that in order to encourage meetings to be held and rotate around the continent, we need to have “collaborative partnerships that serve to benefit our African economy.”

SA People


South Africa Scoops Five Wins at Global Pageant in Turkey

South Africans were the biggest winners at the 2016 global World League of Beauty & Fashion pageant in Bodrum, Turkey on Saturday night, walking away with an unprecedented five titles!

South African Teen World Winners
In a message to SAPeople, SA pageant organiser Carolyn Baldwin Botha said: “I am more than SUPER PROUD of #TeamPageantsSA #PageantsSA.”
Zenande Mncwabe (7) from Richard’s Bay won Little Miss Universe 2016 title, Deanté Swart (9) from Greytown was crowned Little Miss World, Chante Green (11) from Mossel Bay won Little Miss Globe, Mpho Botha (15) from Welkom won Mr Teen World and Andrea Abrahams (20) from Mpumulanga won Miss 7 Continents.
Carolyn said: “This is an achievement above all that my heart could have wished for. Well done to all my contestants and also to their amazing parents. Wow my heart is overflowing with pride…”
Zenande and Mpho also received Best of the Best & Best Talent; Chante received Miss Sympathy; Deanté was awarded Photo Model of the World and Overall Winner of the competition and received an Honorary Membership to the WLBF (World League of Beauty & Fashion); and Andrea won Face of Beauty & Face of the Elizabeth Friedrich.
Carolyn attributed South Africa’s incredible success – winning each age category – to a fantastic selection of those to represent the country, as well as the fact that they entered several competitions beforehand to get lots of practice.

Deanté’s proud Wembley College headmaster, Dederick Swart, said: “this is the first time in 25 years that a child as young as 9 years old has ever received this award!
“She is not only the first South African child to ever receive it, she was also selected as the overall winner of this prestigious international competition in which she competed against participants who were between 5 and 26 years of age!”

He said “Deante also has a heart of gold and is extremely dedicated to community outreach and charity work.  She even intoduced Takkie Tax internationally this year! I can’t wait to see the impact she will do with these international titles. Love to see such talent, success and acts of kindness from such a young age! She truly lives her motto “BE THE CHANGE”!” 

Meanwhile in Welkom, the proud folks there are planning an official dinner to celebrate Mpho’s Mr Teen World win!

Forbes

 2,635 VIEWS

South African Billionaire Stephen Saad Scoops Entrepreneur Of The Year Award

I chronicle Africa's success stories and track its richest people  
South African pharma billionaire Stephen Saad has been announced as the winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the annual All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA) gala banquet in Johannesburg on Friday.
At the awards, which was hosted in partnership with CNBC Africa and Forbes Africa, Stephen Saad said, “You work at something and you build something together with the team and seldom have time to look back. To be recognized for it in this way is wonderful and particularly so for Aspen. We are a company with roots in South Africa and manufacturing in South Africa. We’ve grown our local talent to become a world player and Aspen is just a wonderful South African story.”
Saad, who is the founder of Aspen Pharmacare, Africa’s largest pharmaceuticals company, said that one of the biggest challenges he has faced recently was breaking into the generics market.
“Aspen competes with multinationals – we started a domestic company and have gone offshore to become a global company manufacturing in South Africa for domestic and export markets,” Saad said.
“Going forward we will continue to look for strategic partners. We have completed a number of significant transactions and Aspen has built a really strong foundation now. Our aspiration in the short term is to build on that base and to double our size.”
Traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Aspen Pharmacare markets generic medicines in 150 countries. Saad famously became a millionaire at age 29 after he sold his share in the drug business Covan Zurich for $3 million. He now has a net worth FORBES estimates at $1.27 billion.
Follow me on Twitter @MfonobongNsehe.

News24

SA voted top dream destination

2013-05-09 14:56

London - South Africa has beaten six other sought after world destinations to take the coveted top spot in travel-related social network, Wayn's recent dream destination competition.
Up against six other sought after destinations - Brazil, India, Dubai, Fiji, Turkey and Indonesia - South Africa managed to garner more than 15 300 votes from all over the world. 
Brazil scooped up the second position, while Dubai came in at a very close third. 
Jerome Touze, co-founder and CRO of WAYN said: "All seven countries and cities nominated were extremely worthy contenders and dream destinations in their own right. The immense popularity of South Africa as a tourist destination has been reinforced by this competition, and interestingly the activity we are seeing correlates with the recent announcement by President Jaco Zuma that the amount of foreign visitors to South Africa has grown by 300% to 13.5 million visitors, 9.2 million of which were tourists.
It is also fascinating to note the strong interest coming from Asia, and particular India, which is one of South Africa's BRICS partners. Out of the 408,000 fans of South Africa on WAYN, there are now over 108,000 fans from India alone"
In total 78 000 votes were counted for all seven of the destinations. The nominated destinations, both cities and countries, were selected through a combination of market research data and tracking user engagement on WAYN.com. WAYN built an exclusive microsite for the competition and offered members who voted the chance to win an iPad.
Touze added "We are delighted by the phenomenal response from our members, the total number of people who voted exceeded our expectations and offers invaluable intel on where our members want to go. We are planning to build on the success of this campaign over the next year by offering more leading award recognitions for the travel and tourism industry"
Thulani Nzima, Chief Executive Officer, South African Tourism said: "We are privileged to live in an incredible country, a land of spectacular wildlife, awe-inspiring adventure and unique heritage and culture. It is home to warm, welcoming people, eager to share it with travellers from around the world. We are already touched by the hundreds of thousands of friends our destination has made on the WAYN.com platform and we are delighted with this accolade, which we hope will make more people's dreams of visiting South Africa a reality."