Commerce

Brady Corporation unveils i4311 portable printer. (Image source: Brady Corporation)

Print everything you need, where you need it! With the first transportable printer to deliver 101.60 mm wide labelling without cords or limits

Automated identification and data capture specialist Brady Corporation launches a new type of hybrid label printer that offers industrial label printing performance in a cordless, portable design.

Larger labels

Brady´s new BradyPrinter i4311 is designed to bridge the gap between stationary benchtop label printer power and mobile flexibility. A well-known limitation for most mobile label printers is the maximum width of the label. Brady´s i4311 marks the new maximum label width at 101.60 mm for connected label printing systems that retain true portability.

The larger print width brings a lot more applications into the mobile label printing range, including perforated work-in-progress tags, common size rating plates and larger cable tags, wraps, sleeves, asset labels, component labels and GHS-compliant chemical labels.

Cut the cord

No need to look for power outlets with the i4311. The printer is powered by a battery that can handle 5000 large labels on a single charge. Swapping batteries has been made easy and they can be charged in 3.5 hours.

Easy to integrate

The new BradyPrinter i4311 can print labels from phones, tablets and laptops, and even from central company systems using Brady´s software development kit or ZPL support. In addition to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the i4311 also features ethernet and USB-C connections.

The printer´s on-board 7´´ (17.78 cm) touch screen offers both on-device support as well as the capability to print labels directly from the printer. Users can store on average different 85 000 label templates in the printer that can be completed with an on-board ´fill in´ option, fully responsive to your touch.

Industry feedback

Brady also revealed i4311 printer features that were developed with close involvement from the company´s long-standing customers. As a result, the printer´s footprint was limited to 23 x 23 x 33 cm and 5.9 kg and the device´s easy-to-grip handle was optimised.

A battery-saver was also added for when the printer is not in use and battery-swapping was made even easier.

Portable benchtop

Right in the middle of Brady´s mobile label printer and industrial benchtop label printer line ups now sits the BradyPrinter i4311: a portable printer with the company´s benchtop industrial printing capabilities.

Compatible with more than 1300 Brady label parts, the i4311 can print on a majority of Brady´s reliable, laboratory-tested label materials. Just like other Brady printers the i4311 includes LabelSense technology to automatically set label material burn, size and pre-print settings as soon as a label roll is loaded.

The company´s newest label printer also works with a host of free Brady Express Labels mobile apps. These enable users to select text in an image file for example, and import it for printing on a label. Or to read barcodes with a phone and send them to the printer. With a commanding voice, labels can even be printed completely hands-free, using BradyVoice, a smartphone microphone and the BradyPrinter i4311. 

Watch the printer in action & learn more >>

BRADY Corporation in Africa

T: +27 11 704 3295

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www.brady.eu

The Minister of Communication, Digital Economy, and Innovation, Mourana Soumah. (Image source: MCENI)

Mourana Soumah, Minister of Communication, Digital Economy and Innovation, chaired a cabinet meeting focused on advancing priority initiatives under the Simandou 2040 Program, alongside updates on national connectivity and recent institutional progress

The programme outlines Guinea’s long-term strategy for structural transformation, with the ministry driving key projects in media infrastructure, connectivity and the digital economy. The meeting reviewed implementation progress and reinforced oversight of ongoing initiatives.

Among the developments highlighted was the start of construction for the SIMANDOU TV thematic channel and a new headquarters integrating FADEM, AGP, HOROYA and Rural Radio. The minister also called for the urgent launch of renovation works on RTG 2, describing it as a priority project.

On connectivity, the ministry confirmed that a memorandum of understanding is set to be signed on May 6 between MCENI and MEDUSA for the deployment of a second submarine cable, in line with national directives. In parallel, SOGEB reported progress on studies aimed at expanding the capacity of the country’s national backbone network.

“We must stay the course. Every project included in Simandou 2040 is a commitment to our citizens. Training, results, and rigor in execution are the only acceptable paths,” the Minister emphasised.

GSMA Pleias launch African language AI model. (Image source: GSMA)

Pleias and the GSMA have introduced CommonLingua, a new open-source language identification model designed to significantly improve the processing of African language data at scale

The model forms part of the GSMA’s 'AI Language Models in Africa, by Africa, for Africa' initiative, which brings together partners working to bridge the persistent gap in African language representation in artificial intelligence systems.

With more than 2,000 living languages spoken across the continent, Africa presents a uniquely diverse linguistic landscape. However, many of these languages remain poorly represented in AI datasets, leading to reduced accuracy in language identification systems, especially when handling closely related languages or mixed-language content. Accurately identifying a language is a critical first step before building models in languages such as Swahili, Yoruba or Wolof, yet this stage has often proven unreliable for African datasets.

A major reason for this challenge lies in the design of existing language identification tools such as fastText, GlotLID and OpenLID, which were primarily trained on high-resource European and Asian languages. As a result, African-language content is frequently misclassified, often labelled incorrectly as English or French. Even advanced models show a notable decline in performance, with accuracy levels dropping by around 30 points when applied to African languages compared to widely used global languages.

CommonLingua is specifically developed to address this foundational limitation. On the CommonLID benchmark, it achieves an accuracy of 83% and a macro F1 score of 0.79, surpassing leading models by more than 10% points under similar testing conditions. Notably, it does so with a significantly smaller footprint, using approximately one three-hundredth of the parameters required by comparable systems. The model contains just 2 million parameters and is distributed as an 8 MB checkpoint, allowing efficient deployment across different environments. It can process around 20 text samples per second on a CPU and up to 3,000 texts per second on a single GPU.

The model supports a total of 334 languages, including 61 African languages spanning eight major language families. These include Bantu, Niger-Congo and West African, Afro-Asiatic and Semitic, Cushitic and Chadic, Berber, Nilo-Saharan, as well as various pidgins and creoles. By operating directly on UTF-8 byte sequences rather than relying on language-specific tokenisation, CommonLingua ensures consistent performance across multiple scripts such as Latin, Arabic, Ethiopic, N’Ko and Tifinagh.

“African languages are not an edge case. They are the working languages of hundreds of millions of people, and they deserve AI infrastructure built with the same care as any other language. CommonLingua is deliberately the first brick we are laying: you cannot curate what you cannot identify” said Pierre-Carl Langlais, co-founder and chief technology officer, Pleias.

The model has been trained entirely on open-licensed and public domain datasets compiled through the Common Corpus project. These sources include Wikipedia, OpenAlex, VOA Africa, WaxalNLP, Cultural Heritage collections and Pralekha, all released under permissive licensing frameworks.

Louis Powell, director of AI Initiatives at GSMA added, “Closing the gap in African-language AI is is fundamental to digital inclusion and unlocking economic opportunity. Progress has long been held back by the lack of foundational infrastructure, beginning with something as essential as language identification. CommonLingua addresses this critical gap, enabling the development of richer datasets and more representative AI systems at scale. Through our initiative, the GSMA is bringing partners together to move beyond fragmented efforts towards shared infrastructure that can power Africa’s digital ecosystem.”

The discussion around advancing African-language AI will continue at MWC26 Kigali, where GSMA and its partners will convene industry stakeholders to accelerate collaboration and innovation in this space.

Terra Industries expands into Ghana with Pax-2. (Image source: Terra Industries)

Terra Industries, a company focused on autonomous security systems designed to protect Africa and its critical infrastructure, has announced the construction of Pax-2, its second manufacturing facility

The new 34,000-square-foot drone production site in Accra will become Terra Industries’ main regional defense manufacturing hub for drone and counter-drone systems.

The announcement comes after the company secured US$34mn in funding to expand manufacturing capacity, speed up deployments, and strengthen engineering teams in Nigeria and allied African nations.

Pax-2 will be Terra’s second Pax Factory, following the 15,000-square-foot Pax-1 flagship site in Abuja. Once fully operational, Pax-2 is expected to become the largest drone factory in Africa, exceeding the scale of Pax-1. By 2028, the facility is projected to reach annual production capacity of 50,000 units across Terra’s aerial systems portfolio.

The Ghana operation is expected to create 120 engineering jobs and run on a continuous production schedule to meet increasing regional demand. Systems to be manufactured there include the Archer VTOL, a long-range surveillance and strike platform; the Iroko UAV, built for rapid tactical deployment; and Terra’s latest platform, Kama, a high-speed interceptor drone developed for counter-drone defense.

Kama is capable of speeds up to 300 km per hour and has been designed for large-scale production to meet growing demand for kinetic interception capabilities.

The expansion into Ghana supports Terra’s broader objective of developing Africa’s sovereign defense-industrial base. It also comes at a time when conflict dynamics are shifting across the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, where non-state actors are increasingly using modified commercial and fibre-optic drones as attack systems. Similar tactics seen in recent conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe are driving demand for integrated defense solutions combining surveillance, electronic warfare and kinetic response.

“ The only way Africa can have lasting peace is by uniting to build sovereign defense, not by relying on foreign security architecture. We need to control our own destiny by building the tools and systems needed to protect ourselves. That's how this continent defeats terrorism. This is the beginning of that vision playing out more concretely, and we chose Ghana for Pax-2 because of its talent, strategic position, and political will to become a serious defense exporter and prove that this can be done at scale,” commented Nathan Nwachuku, co-founder and CEO of Terra Industries.

Construction of Pax-2 is currently in its final phase, with the facility expected to become fully operational by the end of June 2026.

Terra Industries said the Pax Factories network is central to its long-term Pax Africana vision, centred on achieving lasting peace through African security sovereignty and a future where the continent builds, deploys and controls its own defense technologies.