Outlier Surprise Me

2024-08-16

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July rainfall breaks weather records in Western Cape

A series of cold fronts brought severe weather and record-breaking rainfall to the winelands and Cape Town in July, with at least 12 weather stations reporting more than 300mm of rain, according to data from the South African Weather Service.

Most of the rain fell in towns along the mountain ranges of the Boland and the Hottentots Holland. Franschhoek received 619.2mm, making it the town’s wettest month on record.

Kenilworth race course in Cape Town recorded 563.2mm, the second-highest amount in the province. In Newlands, 5km away, Kirstenbosch national botanical gardens recorded its wettest month since 1999 with more than 500mm of rain.

July’s rainfall is the highest recorded in Cape Town for the month in the past 60 years, says Prof Guy Midgley from Stellenbosch University’s School for Climate Studies. This is despite a drier-than-normal start to the winter.

Based on records dating back to 1901, the Western Cape typically receives an average of 41mm of rain in July.

2024-08-09

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Of the 65 Nobel prizes women have won, half were awarded in past 20 years

Since 1901, only 65 prizes have been awarded to women, 6.5% of the 1,000 awarded in total. In 2023, four of the 11 winners were women, making it one of the best years for women in history of the Nobel prize.

The peace prize has been awarded to 19 women, three of them Africans: Kenyan Wangari Maathai in 2004, and Liberians Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee in 2011. South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer is one of 17 female Nobel literature prize winners.

FULL STORY + CHART

2024-07-18

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Mapping Mandela: the father of SA memorialised around the world

Today is Mandela Day, which commemorates the birthday of South Africa’s first democratically elected president, who was born on 18 July 1918. There are at least 40 statues of Madiba around the world, with 19 in South Africa. The world’s tallest figurative sculpture is at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. It is 9m high.

Note: This chart is from the Our World in Charts collection and was first published on 18 July 2023.

2024-07-12

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Mapping chess mastery: South Africa’s Jesse February shines as new African champion

South Africa’s Jesse February is the African women’s chess champion, winning gold at the 2024 African Individual Chess Championship. This is her second title, having first won in 2021.

The 27-year-old from Gqeberha is South Africa’s top-ranking female player and has held the title Woman International Master (WIM) since 2016.

Egyptian Shahenda Wafa, who came third at the African champs, is one of five African Women Grandmasters (WGM), the game’s highest title for female players. Her sister Wafa Shrook earned her title in 2013, while South African Melissa Greeff was just 15 when she received the WGM title in 2009.

South Africa’s only chess grandmaster is Kenny Solomon, who is one of three players from Sub-Saharan Africa to attain the title. The others are Zambian Amon Simutowe and Felix Izeta Txabarri from Senegal.

FULL STORY + CHART

2024-07-01

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Facebook shines its crown as SA’s social media king

Facebook remains the most widely used social media platform in South Africa with 54% highly active users, people who they have accessed the platform in the past 7 days.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not just old people on Facebook. It is used by both young and old across the income spectrum, according to the Social Media Landscape Report 2024. Also, more businesses (78%) are active on Facebook than any of the other social platforms.

FULL STORY

2024-06-25

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Rising news avoidance: SA readers say they feel ‘worn out’

40% of readers say they feel ‘worn out’ by the amount of news available today. This is according to the Reuters Institute Digital Media Report 2024. In South Africa this sense of news overwhelm has increased from 28% to 40% since 2019.

Surveyed respondents frequently mentioned the ‘way that coverage of wars, disasters and politics was squeezing out other things’ as a cause for the feeling of fatigue.

The result is that more people are actively avoiding consuming news products, which is adding to the pressures on major publishers who are seeing subscribers and revenue in rapid decline. In many cases this is resulting in the closure of news titles.

In South Africa, 43% of respondents said they ‘sometime or often’ avoided news. In Kenya, the number was slightly higher at 44%, while in Nigeria 34% said they avoided news.

🔗 Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 and interactive version

2024-06-18

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Poll shows SA’s workforce is surprisingly enthusiastic

Anyone who runs a startup or small business understands the value of highly engaged employees. These individuals drive high performance and innovation, which are essential for business growth. However, Gallup’s latest State of the Workplace report shows that fewer than one in four (23%) employees globally are engaged.

In the Sub-Saharan African countries included in the survey, only 20% of employees are engaged. But South Africa stands out with 29% engagement. The country’s performance has steadily been increasing, another positive trend.

Actively disengaged employees – miserable workers actively looking for a new job – make up 11.7% of South Africa’s workforce, which is below the global (15%) and regional (17%) averages. Gallup says the top-performing ‘best-practice’ organisations achieve average employee engagement of 70%.

2024-06-17

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Internet access still lags in Africa despite massive mobile uptake

African countries have leapfrogged fixed-line technology and gone straight to mobile. There are 89 mobile phones for every 100 people living in sub-Saharan Africa, but fewer than one landline (0.6) per 100 people. Some countries are well over the world average of 108 mobile phones per 100 people. South Africa has about 167 per 100 and Kenya has 122.

Although the number of mobile subscribers may be high, access to the internet remains low. According to a report by GSMA Intelligence, there were 489-million unique mobile subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa in 2022. But only 287-million of them use mobile internet, which is a penetration rate of 25%. The cost of smartphones is a key reason for this.

2024-05-13

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Number of South Africans living in the US surges

About 117,000 people born in South Africa were living in the United States in 2020, up 80% in two decades. The US is also the preferred destination for South African refugees seeking asylum. There was a sharp uptick in the number of South Africans obtaining permanent residence in 2022.

2024-03-04

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Global TV companies battle for dominance in Africa

The French Canal+ is set to be the top satellite TV provider in Africa, while South Africa’s Showmax and US-based Netflix are facing off in the streaming wars.