News

Qatar Airways Acquires 25% Stake In South Africa’s Airlink

The investment will improve Qatar Airways’ position as a regional player in the African market and boost its economic potential.

Published

8 months ago

August 22, 2024

Nour Nasir

qatar airways acquires 25% stake in south africa's airlink

The Qatar Airways Group has acquired a 25% share of Southern Africa’s top independent regional carrier, Airlink. The announcement signals ambitious plans for the multi-award-winning airline to further expand operations across the African continent. In addition, the investment in Airlink (which already flies to over 45 African destinations) will enhance the code-sharing alliance between the two carriers.

qatar airways and airlink partnership

After the announcement, Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive Officer Engr. Badr Mohammed Al-Meer stated: “Our investment in Airlink further demonstrates how integral we see Africa being to our business’ future. This partnership not only demonstrates our confidence in Airlink, as a company that is resilient, agile, financially robust, and governed on sound principles, but also in Africa as a whole, showing huge potential that I am delighted we are able to help start realizing”.

Airlink Chief Executive Rodger Foster added: “Having Qatar Airways as an equity partner is a powerful endorsement of Airlink and echoes our faith in the markets we currently serve and plan to add to our network. This transaction will unlock growth by providing efficiencies of scale, increasing our capacity, and expanding our marketing reach. By bolstering Airlink and its business, this investment will strengthen all of the existing airline partnerships Airlink has nurtured over the years”.

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The Qatar Airways and Airlink partnership will soon align both carriers’ loyalty programs — Qatar Airways Privilege Club and Airlink Skybucks — and eventually lead to further cooperation and market growth for both airlines.

Qatar Airways already flies to 29 African destinations, with a handful of new cities added since December 2020, including Abidjan, Abuja, Accra, Harare, Kano, Luanda, Lusaka, and Port Harcourt. Meanwhile, Cairo and Alexandria have also resumed regular scheduled flights.

News

Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users

The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

Nour Nasir

Google

Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.

Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.

Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.

Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.

Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide

To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.

While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.

Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.