It's almost that time again when thousands of the brightest talents from across various creative industries descend on Cape Town, South Africa, for the annual Design Indaba Conference and Expo. The conference takes place in two weeks time - from Wednesday 27 February until Friday 1 March 2013, while the expo takes place from 1-3 March - at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. To find out what's going down, check out our Design Indaba special section and follow live updates on our Twitterfall.

This week: Marcela Ospina interprets mobile and digital trends in 5 African countries. She intersects between technology and culture while doing fieldwork in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia;
Music students wishing to further their studies are invited to apply for SAMRO music bursaries;
Microsoft Corporation introduced the Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative. This initiative is an effort by Microsoft to actively engage in Africa's economic development to improve its global competitiveness. Microsoft have also partnered with Huawei to launch Huawei 4Afrika - a full functionality Windows Phone 8 which will come pre-loaded with select applications designed specifically for the continent;
Yusuf Begg shares some insight into how mobile technology can enrich the lives of the less fortunate and briefly describes the projects the Preakelt Foundation are involved in; and this year marks the 10th anniversary of the Diageo Africa Business Reporting Awards, and online entries are now open. The closing date for entry is Friday, 15 March.

Just a short reminder, Bizcommunity.com's editor-at-large, Simone Puterman, will be featured on the repeat show of SABC1's Media Career Guide Show tonight, Monday, 11 February 2013, from 11pm-11.30pm. She provides insightful career guidance for the marketing, advertising, media and retail industries.

Lastly, we are currently compiling a PDF in which all the 2013 Trends have been combined and it will be ready for you to download during the course of this week.

Have a splendid week!
Evan-Lee Courie @evan1985

PS Responses to this column welcomed in our ed's column archive. Send all your Africa marketing news to africanews@bizcommunity.com, exclusive opinion pieces to contributors-africa@bizcommunity.com and international news to internationalnews@bizcommunity.com; also take a look at our guide "How to contribute to Bizcommunity, from op-ed pieces to news". Don't forget to follow @Biz_Africa on Twitter and join us on Facebook!