YaLLa Esports, one of the leading esports organizations in the MENA region, has completed and secured a seed funding round from a group of strategic investors, led by super angel investor Kushal Shah.

Finnish-born, Dubai-based esports trailblazer, Klaus Kajetski founded YaLLa Esports in 2016, having been heavily involved in building the regional esports ecosystem. With 20 years of esports and gaming experience, Klaus has grown YaLLa Esports to a globally recognised team with players and staff from multiple nationalities including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Tunisia, having success in international and regional esports tournaments.

YaLLa Esports will use the funding to search and develop the best talent in the region; to build great team facilities and to help with travel costs to compete on a global scale, as well as for expansion across the MENA region. The startup aims to nurture regional talent through an organised personal growth structure, championing the gaming culture and building an environment for aspiring professional gamers to flourish and make esports a viable career.

While the Middle East region continues to assess the positive impact of the announced US$3.1 billion acquisition of UAE-based ride-hailing company Careem by global rival Uber, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider the implications of such a deal from a cyber security perspective.

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Trust is not necessarily synonymous with cyber security, and this has been reiterated through the plethora of cyber breaches and data leakages that have been publicised in recent years. The lack of trust as it relates to allegations that organisations have wantonly sold, misappropriated or misdirected customers’ data without their knowledge or consent only exacerbates an already chronic issue.

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It has been almost two years now since the world was gripped by a string of pervasive and damaging ransomware attacks, which fuelled mass paranoia and concern over the cost of technological advancement. Such levels of panic and speculation hadn’t been seen since the turn of the millennium and the Y2K system failure predictions and panic. From Petya to WannaCry and the creatively named NotPetya ransomware attacks, individuals, organisations, and nation states were awed and rightly fearful of the pace of dissemination and destructive capabilities wrought by the attacks.

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5G is expected to reach 30 million subscriptions for enhanced mobile broadband in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) by the end of 2024, representing 2% of total mobile subscriptions. This will make 5G the fastest generation of cellular technology to be rolled out on a global scale, according to the recently published MEA edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report. Read the full Ericsson Mobility Report

Key drivers for 5G deployment include increased network capacity, lower cost per gigabyte and new use case requirements. The majority of the 5G subscriptions in the MEA are expected to come from advanced ICT markets such as the GCC countries Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar while in Africa, considerable momentum is building up in South Africa.