Innovation Village: November 2012

Friday, November 30, 2012

Eskimi celebrates 10 million members. Congrats

In a press release sent out today by email and on its Facebook page, Vytas Paukstys, the CEO of Eskimi, is celebrating the 10 millionth member mark.

I'm really glad to announce that today Eskimi mobile social network reached a great milestone - 10 million members. Largest market in Eskimi customer base remains Nigeria with more than 5 million members from this country alone.

Eskimi team has been working hard all 2012 to develop the best possible MOBILE experience for African customers to spend time, have fun, meet new people online and socialize with them.

I got an email yesterday from Apple that iTunes 11 was now available for download.

I wondered out loud, Hmm... What is new about this iTunes 11? Then I downloaded it. I wanted to know if I would notice the difference.

After downloading the iTunes 11 and rebooting my MacBook, I clicked on iTunes icon and hmmm....

Where is the sidebar that contained items like Music, Movies, TV Shows and the iTunes Store? It seems it is no longer there by default. You now have more screen real estate, but it does mean that switching between content types is that little bit slower. But if you really want the old menu back, you can still access it by navigating to View > Show Sidebar.

Nigeria: This week Tuesday, TECNO announced it has partnered with leading Telecommunications Services Provider, Airtel Nigeria and Qualcomm, to introduce its latest range of Dual SIM 3G Android smartphone known as N3 in Lagos. The device, which is specially designed to excite and engage Nigerian youth will be retailing at an estimated price of N13, 500 in the market.

The trendy Dual SIM 3G Android Smartphone is bundled with an Airtel SIM and Consumers who purchase the device will enjoy six months complimentary data from the leading telecoms operator. As part of the partnership, consumers will also have an opportunity to get an Airtel branded N3 and an Arsenal branded limited edition N3. Customers will start enjoying these benefits from Sunday, December 9th, 2012.

Street View on Google Maps now live in Botswana

Earlier this year we announced that Street View on Google Maps was coming to Botswana. Now anyone can travel virtually to Botswana via Street View on Google Maps and explore the country’s unique scenery and world-renowned game reserves. Following the launch of Street View in South Africa just before the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Botswana will become only the second African country to be on Street View. For a demo on how Street View works, start here.

Street View Car in Gaborone

Lagos is set to introduce a Lagos edition of Monopoly on the 11th of December 2012 at the City hall, Onikan Lagos at 11.00a.m. Monopoly is an American board game published by Parker Brothers. The game is named after the economic concept of monopoly, the domination of a market by a single entity.

The Launch will be done by Bestman Games with the support of the Lagos State Government, First Bank of Nigeria Plc and Guaranty Trust Bank Plc and other esteemed partners.

According to the organisers, “Millions of Nigerians grew up playing the iconic board game. The images of Mr. Monopoly, Advance to Go and the ‘Free Parking’ spaces are etched permanently in the hearts and minds of people across the country. “Several memorable family moments have been defined by the playing of the game. It is such moments that this special edition aims to revive amongst the youth and other segments of our population.”

Microsoft has launched a new programme "Keep You Business Moving" to support Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) in the Middle East and Africa (MEA)

"Keep Your Business Moving" is an online programme designed to assist young entrepreneurs as well as provide advice to SMBs already in operation. The programme will help SMB owners take actions needed to grow their businesses, increase profitability and expand their reach into new markets.

Speaking about the programme, Hennie Loubser, Microsoft’s General Manager for West, East, Central Africa and Indian-Ocean Islands said “Studies indicate that SMBs in the Middle East and Africa are boosting regional GDP – in Sub-Saharan Africa, they contribute to over 50% of African employment and add 20% to the continent’s gross domestic product. With industry experts also forecasting rapid growth in IT spending in MEA in the next few years, we want to provide this innovative community with the tools and support they need to grow”,

Shanduka Group Acquires A Stake In MTN Nigeria

Shanduka Group recently announced that it has acquired a minority stake in MTN Nigeria. The stake was purchased through Shanduka Telecommunication (Mauritius), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the group. Shanduka acquired its stake from three private investors.

The transaction, which is worth US$335 million, is the largest investment Shanduka has made outside South Africa. It forms part of the group’s strategy to invest in key sectors in growing African markets. It is an indication of Shanduka’s confidence in Nigeria as an important investment destination.

MTN Nigeria is currently the largest mobile operator in Nigeria with 45.64 million active subscribers at the end of September 2012, and an estimated market share of approximately 48%. The company is an indirectly held subsidiary of MTN Group, which holds an effective 78.83% stake.

Dr Bashir Gwandu

Earlier this year, the Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, Nigerian Communications Commission, Dr Bashir Gwandu, emerged as the chairman of the Commonwealth International Telecommunications Union Group.

However, just recently, the Nigerian Federal Government fired him for alleged gross insurbodination following heated controversies over frequency spectrum at the Nigerian Communications Commission

The sack took effect from November 9, 2012, according to a statement by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim.

Anyim, in the letter titled, ‘Removal from office,’ said Gwandu’s allegations against the management of NCC were unfounded.

He said the allegations had been duly investigated by the board of NCC and the Ministry of Communication Technology, and were found to be false and unfounded.

NCC had for several months been in internal crisis occasioned by allegations of frequency racketeering made by Gwandu.

2012 Tablet Comparison Guide by Will Shanklin (gizmag)

This piece, from Will Shanklin (Gizmag), is insightful. Please read.

Tablets are everywhere. No matter where you turn this holiday shopping season, you'll see them. Apple's iPad is still in the driver's seat, but its field of competitors is rapidly growing. How do you sort through all the noise, and make the best purchase?

Look no further than our 2012 Tablet Comparison Guide from Gizmag.

Specs aren't everything, but they can suggest a device's capabilities. Our comparison highlights the most important measurable categories, as well as those hard-to-define intangibles.

We condensed our list to the most popular tablets of the season. They are:

Apple iPad (4th generation)
Apple iPad mini
Google/Samsung Nexus 10
Google/Asus Nexus 7
Amazon Kindle Fire HD (7")
Microsoft Surface RT
Barnes & Noble Nook HD

There are omissions. Digging deeper would yield devices like the Transformer Pad Infinity and Galaxy Note 10.1. There are also variations on the included tablets, like the iPad 2, Nook HD+, and Kindle Fire HD 8.9". Perhaps we'll tackle these devices later. For now, we narrowed it down to an elite seven.

Without further ado, let's compare the best tablets of 2012.

Please click here to continue reading.....

Safaricom Kenya launches a new micro savings/loans product - Mswhari

Five years after the launch of MPesa with over 19 million subscribers, Safaricom, in partnership with the Commercial Bank of Africa, has launched M-Shwari, a product which allows customers registered on M-Pesa to save and borrow money.

Through M-Shwari, customers will be able to borrow between Ksh100 and Ksh20,000 while at the same time saving money through the account. One will be charged 7.5% on the money they borrow as a one-off fee, while savings will attract between 2 and 5% per annum depending on the amount one has saved.

M-Shwari provides you the ability to move money in and out of your M-Shwari savings account to your M-PESA account at no charge. No forms to fill in, no branches to visit. Just one click on your phone and you have a savings account!

Click here for more information about M-shwari and you can get the terms and conditions here too...

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Konflicted? Konga's Obsession With It's Visual Design

Konga launched in July 2012. We're just a few days shy of December, and Konga has already undergone at least 6 visual design overhauls. I'm getting giddy just from watching Konga change colours every month or so.

First, they looked like this.

88mph, an early stage startup fund and 3 month accelerator program has launched in Cape Town. The program assists startups by giving them investment, access to business networks and the know how to quickly grow their businesses. 88mph’s strategy in Africa is to fund strong teams with web-mobile ideas that have the ability to scale across English speaking Africa.

“The startups we look at are often small teams who lack experience and the network necessary to quickly grow their businesses. They often struggle to focus on their product and customers due to the multitude of other things that need time and attention, like admin tasks, office related issues and finding follow-on investment,” says 88mph founder Kresten Buch.

One of the things I’ve learned working on the global effort to eradicate polio is that it’s a complex war fought with lots of people on the ground and very detailed plans by vaccination teams to ensure that no children are overlooked. Now, public health officials have another tool in their arsenal: digital mapping technology to help identify remote hamlets and monitor the progress of vaccination teams.

One of the challenges getting from 99% to 100% on global polio eradication is making sure that all children are getting the multiple doses of the polio vaccine necessary to build up immunity.

To stop polio from circulating, you need to ensure that most children under the age of five receive several doses of the vaccine to build up their immunity. This is very difficult when there are hundreds of remote villages and hamlets that vaccinators don’t know about, nomadic tribes, and people in a castes or religious sects that don’t mix with the rest of the population.

Koos Bekker of Naspers

In a report released this morning, Media and e-commerce Giant Naspers posted an expected 15% rise in first-half earnings and this was boosted by its internet businesses.

It had flagged this month that underlying profit would rise by between 10% to 20%. Core headline profit, which Naspers says is its main earnings measure, excludes one-time items.

The South African company revealed that total revenue climbed 22% to R23bn after internet revenue rose 70% to R14.1bn.

The Company said core headline earnings came in at 1062 cents per share in the six months to end-September, from 921c a year earlier.

One-time items included a R1.5bn profit from the sale of some Facebook shares by Russian affiliate Mail.ru. Naspers owns 29% in Mail.ru.

Studying an undergraduate degree at an Ivy league school like Stanford or MIT could set you back some hundreds of dollars, and that is if you are good enough to pass through the rigorous selection exercise. A number of MOOC-like projects have recently sprung up to avail people the same quality of education free of charge.

MOOC, an acronym for Massive Open Online Course, is a type of online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the web. It is a recent development in the area of distance education, and a progression of the kind of open education ideals suggested by open educational resources. These virtual courses are taught by accredited professors from around the world to disseminate content, inspire collaboration and assess students' work. This is a recent phenomenon and it is all about making Ivy league education available to all for free, or so it seems.

Black Girls Hack holds first non-profit hackathon targeting African-Americans in tech - Lawrence Watkins

Amanda Spann and Kat Calvin are two of the leaders behind Black Girls Hack. Here in Atlanta, they celebrate and participate in the first non-profit African-American hackathon, which they co-organized. (Photo: Lisa M. Zunzanyika, Simply Zee Imagery)

When Kat Calvin called Amanda Spann and Janelle Jolley about her idea of starting a black girls’ hackathon series, they both had the same reaction: “Are you crazy!?” It turns out that Calvin was crazy — crazy motivated to change the demographics of the technology sector. With fervor, she quickly built a team to help her. Black Girls Hack blossomed when this group brought Calvin’s seed dream into reality.

“Currently, African-Americans make up less than one percent of tech founders,” Spann told theGrio about the group’s enterprise, “but we can do something about that.”

Black Girls Hack is the first non-profit hackathon series specifically targeting the African-American tech community. The idea can be traced back to the moment these three friends met in New York City at the Focus 100 Symposium, which connects thought leaders and tech startups founded by black women. “We were all experiencing the same problem of not being able to find a technical co-founder for [our] startups. Having a technical co-founder is important because you need it to get into incubation programs for startups and it makes it easier to build out tech products,” Spann explained.

Rocket Internet launched the online food ordering business, hellofood, first in Nigeria and Morocco in October 2012. It has now introduced the same business in Kenya.

hellofood Kenya officially launched in Nairobi, Kenya in November 2012. According to Bryan Kariuki, the Managing Director in his official press release, "Our belief is that ordering food online should be fuss-free, fast and fun". Customers enter their area, find their favorite restaurant near them and with just a few effortless clicks, hellofood helps them to easily order food over the internet.

The Kilimanjaro Cervical Screening Project - Courtesy of CNN

According to World Health Organization estimates, more than 50,000 women die each year of cervical cancer in Africa and this is because, more than 80% of the cases are detected in late stages.

In countries such as Tanzania, where nearly 4,500 women die annually from the disease, the problem is exacerbated by an acute shortage of medical experts and a lack of quality screening services, especially in rural areas.

To help detect this cancer in its early stages, a group of Canadian and Tanzanian health innovators have joined forces to apply simple and safe mobile technologies to improve cervical cancer screening and thus potentially reduce mortality rates in the East African country.

Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM) today announced that more than 50 carriers have now implemented integrated carrier billing on the BlackBerry App World™ storefront for their customers. The announcement marks a great milestone for RIM, and a big benefit for carriers, developers, content providers, and customers.

Integrated carrier billing enables a customer to purchase apps or digital goods on their BlackBerry smartphone, and simply and conveniently have the purchases put directly on their regular monthly bill from their carrier. Integrated carrier billing is also integrated with the BlackBerry Payment Service, which enables developers and content providers to offer in-app purchases (such as additional levels in a game), as well as supporting one-off and recurring (subscription-based) purchases, without interrupting the customer's app experience.

Unique Ultrasonic Technology Eliminates More Than 80 Percent of Malaria-Transmitting Mosquitoes

LG Electronics, a global leader in heating, ventilation and air conditioning, unveiled its newest advanced residential air conditioner (RAC) which utilizes ultrasonic wave technology to repel mosquitoes. LG’s “Anti-Mosquito” air conditioner has been shown in tests conducted in a Peet Grady chamber to deter on average 64 percent of malaria-transmitting female Anopheles mosquitoes within 24 hours and 82 percent overall. Aside from offering greater peace of mind, the Anti-Mosquito air conditioner also comes with all the advantages of LG’s AC technologies, delivering powerful cooling and superb reliability even under extreme operating temperatures.

National Engineering Services Pakistan Limited (Nespak) in joint venture with H. P. Gauff Ingenieure GMBH & Co. Germany has won engineering supervision of Obudu Dam Rehabilitation work in Nigeria.

According to the spokesperson of Nespak, Obudu dam is in Cross River State in the south east of Nigeria. It is an Earth-fill structure with a height of 18m, total crest length of 425m and storage capacity of 4.2 million cubic meters. It is a multipurpose dam and was commissioned in 1999 for use in farm irrigation, fishing, potable water supply and also for recreational and tourism purposes. Nespak which is the largest Architectural and Engineering Consultancy firm of Pakistan operates nationally and internationally. It has office in six countries and has worked in more than 36 countries.

Avaya opens office in Nigeria

Avaya is a leading global provider of next-generation business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, real-time video collaboration, contact center, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world.

As part of its continued regional expansion plans, Avaya has opened its Nigeria office, targeted at providing solutions and offering support to local customers. The office will focus on expanding Avaya’s presence in the West African market.

“The distinct office will help Avaya support local customers, cater to the needs of its nearby partners, and effectively manage business in the city and surrounding areas,” according to Managing Director, North, West, East, and Central Africa, for Avaya, Mr. Hatem Hariri.

If you haven’t heard yet, MTN and Afrihost have announced the ground-breaking news that they will be partnering to bring you and I the internet, not only on our cellphones but in our homes too. MTN will now be the second biggest internet service provider, offering us better capacity as well as more online access points. What does this mean for Afrihost, well; they will be able to provide us with more flexible products and services as well as better priced ADSL contracts.

Zunaid Bulbulia, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Acting Chief Enterprise Business Officer for MTN SA has said, “We are confident that this collaboration will change the telecoms landscape as two leaders in their respective markets have come together to fundamentally change the way in which DSL is offered. MTN Business is now able to provide a wholesale service and has put the power in Afrihost’s hands to be able to define their own product offering and service parameters. We are proud to be associated with a company that has proven over the years to be client-focused and innovative in their approach, not to mention having been voted best ISP for the second year in a row by consumers.”

The evolution of Abuja through architecture (Part I): landmarks and legacies by Ene Ijegwa-Adaji

“Architecture cannot evolve if it doesn’t answer any questions.”

The opportunity to write on the evolution of Abuja through Architecture comes at a (good) time when one wonders about the growth of the city through its architecture.

Created in 1976 from parts of the Benue-Plateau, North-Central, and North-Western states and built in the 80s, Abuja was ‘specifically planned’ and ‘purpose built’ to fill the gap as the then new Federal Capital Territory.

At night, the Federal Capital Territory is mostly lit, and the many glimmering lights of the mansions of Ministers Hill in Maitama make you resolve to work hard or pray hard to make the 7 million dollars required to own a house so high up the Abuja hills.

During the day, it is easier to see even more clearly. Driving through the City in day light gives you a chance to see the magnificent dome of the Central Mosque (built in the mid 80s) glistening like a gold coin in the sun.

National Mosque Abuja. [Photo: sultanheightsphotography.com]

Close by, within hugging distance, the National Ecumenical Centre spreads (neo) gothic arches and stakes a claim on the city. The Ecumenical Centre (fancy name for church), was commenced in the late 80s and spanned several years before its completion and dedication in 2005. In the same vicinity are the NNPC towers, a cornucopia of reinforced concrete and glass which catch the light at sun down; and right there, just at the corner of your eye, is the ‘new’ CBN building: a massive four towers of curtain walling awarded in 2000.

Looks Like The Telco Wars Price Wars Have Begun - But Will Customers Win?

Image Courtesy - Inmobi blog

The NCC might have dropped the hammer on the crass publicity stunts that our dear Telcos like to call "promos", but the drama is far from over. Data is still killing voice. ARPUs are still hurtling down the hole. There are millions of subscribers waiting to be monetised with mobile advertising. The mobile money land grab is on. And the "spectre" of number portability looms ominously over the horizon. If anything, the stakes are getting higher, and now that rules of the game explicitly exclude giving out airplanes, telcos will simply have to find another way to keep poaching each other's subscribers.

Welcome to the telco price wars.

In fact, it's already begun, each has begun to launch salvo after salvo of price gimickry and data shenanigans. You know, all those convoluted price structures and "bundles" that are supposed to give you great value for your money? That's right. Etisalat just launched some EasyFlex plan, and my eyes are practically swimming from all the codes I'll have to memorise, if I want to take advantage. MTN's got some new Smooth Talk package, plus a booster plan that comes in weekly and monthly variants. Glo just increased the caps on their data bundles. So did MTN. Only a matter of time before Airtel and Etisalat come rushing up with new voice and data plans.

Tanzania, Gates Foundation & partners launch three new initiatives to tackle deadly cassava diseases

Tanzania’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives (MAFC) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have launched three new projects today to support efforts to develop cassava varieties with resistance to Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) and to establish more sustainable seed systems to enable smallholder farmers better access to such varieties.

The projects were officially announced during a Cassava Value Chain event organized in Dar es Salaam that brought together representatives from the government, donor community, private sector and development partners. Also present was International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Director General, Dr Nteranya Sanginga.

Hon. Engineer Christopher Chiza, Minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, noted that the projects came at an opportune time when farmers needed access to planting materials of new improved varieties released in the country.

ICT innovation is a key element to spur growth in the economic crisis. ICT innovation will be a game-changer in enabling emerging economies to sustain their economic growth in the future. The ICT Innovation Application challenge is part of ITU’s efforts to tap the power and interoperability of ICTs in promoting sustainable prosperity and businesses in emerging economies by developing solutions to provide accessibility to the underserved and the unreached.

Goal.com, the world's largest football website owned by sports media group PERFORM, has today announced that Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry® smartphones and BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets, will be promoting the company's products across the Goal.com web and mobile sites in the Middle East and Africa (MEA).

The Goal.com sites reach over 14 million football fans across the MEA region, including specific local editions for the Nigerian, Ghanaian and Kenyan markets, as well as an Arabic edition for the Middle East and North Africa. The deal will cover the Nigerian, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Egyptian, South African, Qatar, UAE and Jordanian markets, in the first pan-regional marketing partnership for Goal.com in these territories.

TYME is an acronym for Take Your Money Everything. It is also the new mobile banking system being launched today as a collaborative effort between MTN (a telecommunications company) and Pick n Pay (a major retail outfit), both based in South Africa.

Customers will create bank accounts on the fly from their cellphones using a USSD system which means that anyone with even the most basic cell phone can register for an account and use the service.

I listen to the radio every morning on my way to work and I have always been intrigued when I hear the telecoms radio ads advising listeners to dial a string of numbers (USSD codes) to change to a new plan or participate in a new promo. I have always wondered how many people really do this.

I personally have not subscribed to any promo or new plan. (Maybe I am not part of the target market). The first reason is that there are too many numbers and these plans change too often. You change to one plan today and before you know it, there is a new plan out in 2 weeks. Sometimes you feel the telecoms operators just change to gain market share instead of actually spending time to understand, profile and launch products relevant to particular market segments.

I guess there will be a reduction in churning these promos or products because of the recent NCC ban but I wonder if there is any other way of communicating these new plans other than these USSD strings. What about using the Sim Tool Kit (STK) menu?

Am I the only one that thinks there should be a better way of communicating these new promos and products other than the USSD strings? What do you think?

The Journey of a teen inventor from Sierra Leone to MIT in USA

Kelvin Doe Picture courtesy of CNN

Inspiring story of an African teen inventor and how his MIT mentor is trying to start a global movement in innovation.

Kelvin Doe is a 15-year-old innovator from Sierra Leone who was invited to the US in 2012 to engage with other makers, present his inventions, and learn how to translate those ideas and products into solutions for his community. Kelvin was selected to travel to the US based on his participation in one of 8 winning teams in an innovation challenge in Sierra Leone organized by Global Minimum.

Gulf of Guinea Oil Exploration Limited (GGOEX) has announced the establishment of a $700 million (N109.02 billion) methanol plant in Nigeria in 2015. The plant, with a capacity of 850,000 metric tonnes of Methanol productions annually will be the largest in West Africa.

The company said it has selected the Mitsubishi Methanol Process (MMP) as process technology for the establishment of the plant.

The “Delta Methanol Plant” has a nameplate capacity of 2,500 metric tons of Federal Grade AA Methanol per day which is a key product for the chemical and petrochemical industry in the production of Acetic Acid (solvents), MTBE (octane enhancer), Formaldehyde (resins, adhesives) and others. The new plant is expected to come online in 2015.

Nigeria: Nokia Lumia Series debuts in Nigerian Market

Courtesy: Valuewalk

Leading mobile phone maker, Nokia, Tuesday in Lagos introduced the latest series, the Windows Phone 8 devices, the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Lumia 820 respectively.

The innovative devices were unveiled in partnership with leading Software maker, Microsoft and telecommunications giant, MTN.

According to the mobile phone manufacturer, those who buy the devices unveiled simultaneously globally would enjoy 6 months free internet on the widest network in Nigeria, MTN.

At the launch, the Vice President, Nokia West Africa, James Rutherfoord told the gathering that Nokia Lumia 820 and Nokia Lumia 920 were ready for business with a full business suite right out of the box, comprising of Microsoft Office suite, Sky Drive and Microsoft Lync.

He explained that Nokia hoped to satisfy the needs of business and non-business smart phone owners with its current and future range of Lumia devices.

MTN Nigeria is out with another value added service called MTN Magic Voice. This service allows you change your voice to sound like the voice of a popular or funny character while making a mobile call to your friends on your MTN line. You can change your voice during calls to sound like a male, a female, a child, or even a bug bunny.

The University of Nigeria Nsukka has introduced online portal for transcripts that enables her alumni to access their transcripts from anywhere in the world.

This was disclosed on its alumni portal recently.....

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka launches their Alumni portal, equipped with an automated transcript processing system. Ex-students of the university can now request and pay for their transcripts online from the comfort of their homes within or outside the country, and have it delivered to any address of their choice.

With iTranscript, users will experience faster, flexible and efficient transcript processing services. Conforming to the country's new cashless policy standards, payments are to be made only with the use of ATM cards enabled on the portal.

Multi-purpose Badagry Port to include Free Trade Zone;
Development consortium planning for 2016 opening.

APM Terminals and its consortium partners have announced plans to develop a new greenfield mega-port project and Free Trade Zone at Badagry in Nigeria’s Lagos State, 55 km (34 miles) west of Apapa and the Port of Lagos on the Benin-Lagos Expressway.

At full build-out, the deep-water full-service port will be one of the largest in Africa with 7 km of quay and 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) of dedicated yard, and will include state-of the art facilities for container, bulk, liquid bulk, Ro/Ro and general cargo as well as oil and gas operations support and a barge terminal. Plans for the adjoining Badagry Free Trade Zone will include a power plant, oil refinery, industrial park and warehousing and Inland Container Deport functions.

The first phase of the project is scheduled to open in 2016.

Kenya: Internet capacity to double soon after fifth fibre optic cable lands

A fifth undersea fibre optic cable is set to land in Kenya, doubling the country’s Internet capacity. Information and Communication Permanent Secretary, Bitange Ndemo on Monday said that a Middle Eastern company was currently contracting suppliers to lay the undersea cable.

Once the fifth cable is laid, Kenya’s bandwidth capacity will double to more than 15 terabytes per second (TBps).

Currently, Kenya’s four undersea cables cumulatively provide the country with a capacity of about 8.56 TBps.

According to the PS, the increased network capacity will be in line with rising local demands for high speed data.

“The capacity we have will be used up in the next five years. We will have high demand as we move to digitise schools and hospitals,” he told journalists.

However, it is not yet clear whether increased data capacity will translate to lower consumer prices. Expectations that Internet prices would fall by at least 90 per cent following the 2009 landing of The East African Marine Cable System (TEAMS) are yet to be met.

Industry players have blamed the high prices on competition by inland cable providers that has been accompanied by heavy infrastructure investments. Further, Kenya’s usage of the capacity is yet to reach the critical mass that would directly precipitate lower prices — currently, the country only uses 6 per cent of its bandwidth capacity.

Source: Daily Nation

Monday, November 19, 2012

Total Sells Stake in Nigerian Project to China's Sinopec for $2.5 Billion

(Reuters) - Total is selling a 20 percent stake in a Nigerian offshore oil field to China's Sinopec in a $2.5 billion deal which will help the French oil group fund its ambitious exploration plans.

Total said on Monday it had signed a deal to sell the stake in the OML 138 block, which currently produces 130,000 barrels per day of oil equivalent and contains the Usan field, which started production in February.

The French group said in September it planned to sell assets worth between $15 billion and $20 billion in the period up to 2014 as part of a bolder approach to managing its business, which has seen it buy and sell assets more frequently.

Total, which is also selling its French gas network business, is ramping up spending on exploration to take advantage of the historically high price of oil, which averaged $113.6 a barrel in the first half of 2012.

Wale Babalakin

Today, the Federal Government revoked the concession granted Wale Babalakin's Bi-Courtney Highway Services, to reconstruct and maintain the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

The revocation was confirmed by the Minister of Works, Mr. Mike Onolememen, to State House correspondents at the State House, Abuja. He said it was due to “serial breaches” committed by the firm.

The minister said the road had been handed over to Julius Berger, to handle Section 1 from Lagos to Sagamu Interchange, and Reynolds Construction Company (RCC), to handle Section 2 from Sagamu Interchange to Ibadan.

Bharti Airtel Partners Ericsson for comprehensive upgrade of network to deliver superior service.

Bharti Airtel ("Airtel"), a leading telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, today said that it has undertaken an end-to-end network transformation program across its mobile operations in 16 African countries. The program, which is the largest of its kind on the African continent, in partnership with Ericsson involved a comprehensive upgrade and expansion of network elements on all of Airtel’s African operations, including switching, radio, network management, data, charging, and consumer-services platforms and systems.

This network transformation program, under which Ericsson has deployed latest wireless technologies, will enhance Airtel’s network capacity and robustness and help deliver best-in-class services to customers at affordable rates. This also makes Airtel’s networks fully ready for next generation services that include high speed data and value added services.

Courtesy: Foz News

It all went down at the American Music Awards yesterday and it was a beautiful collaboration of "East meets West"; two different cultures of different times merging into a wonderful musical rendition.

PSY collaborated with MC Hammer of the "Too Legit to quit" fame...And if you don't know PSY, where have you been?

As of November 19, 2012, PSY's music video "Gangnam Style" has been viewed over 760 million times on YouTube within 4 months of being uploaded.

Customers of Nigeria’s Leading Information and Communications Technology (ICT) company, MTN, will soon be able to watch live TV on their data-enabled handsets, as the company rolls out its new Mobile TV service.

MTN Mobile TV service offers live streaming of TV content and ‘made for mobile’ video to data-enabled handsets such as Blackberry, iPhone and Samsung Galaxy range of phones, as well as tablets, such as iPad and Galaxy Tab, among others.

Although a type of mobile TV service was pioneered by MTN in 2007, it was on the Digital Video Broadcasting for Handheld (DVB-H) platform, which requires customers to purchase special handsets to enjoy the service.

However, for the first time in Nigeria, any data-enabled phone or device can watch television programmes and related content from up to twenty TV channels on his phone via MTN Mobile TV service.

Nigeria: Launch of the Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Improvement Project in Oyo and Taraba States

The Governor of Taraba State, Danbaba Suntai, on October 24, and the Deputy Governor of Oyo State, Chief Moses Alake Adeyemo, on November 1, launched the Urban Water and Sanitation Improvement Project – with an African Development Bank loan of approximately US $100 million for the rehabilitation, expansion and construction of water and sanitation facilities in Jalingo, Taraba State, and Ibadan, a city located in Oyo State, Nigeria. The project will improve access to clean water and sanitation for an estimated 1.5 million people.

Taraba Water Supply Agency and Oyo State Water Corporation, the water utilities managing water supplies in the two cities, along with other small-scale service providers will benefit from capacity-building activities to improve their performance. Women and girls are to gain from the projects’ various gender-specific benefits promoted throughout the project.

Some 300 CEOs from all over Africa, together with 100 bankers and investors, and numerous decision-makers from Africa’s public sector will be gathering in Geneva for two days of dialogue and debate.

After more than a decade of uninterrupted growth, Africa now stands as one of the most promising economic zones of the world, set against the background of general crisis in Europe and the United States. Success stories are happening all the time, and new entrepreneurs emerging just as frequently motivated by a desire to conquer new markets beyond their borders and the continent.

The AFRICA CEO FORUM is the first international conference for leaders of top African companies, high-level executives of large African, surpassing sectoral conferences and staying off the beaten track of academic events. It brings together for two days, entrepreneurs, investors, financial decision-makers, and policy-makers to promote the success of the African private sector, providing a platform for public-private dialogue and high-level strategic solutions to support the development of company and its African markets.

Orange announces winners of the 2012 African Social Venture Prize

Orange announced the three winners of the African Social Venture Prize during the AfricaCom Awards ceremony held in Cape Town. This is the second edition the Orange African Social Venture Prize has been awarded. The prize aims to support the development of entrepreneurs and start-ups offering solutions that use information and communication technologies (ICT) to meet the needs of people living in Africa. The three winners will receive financial assistance along with management and technical support from Orange specialists

Almost 450 candidates responded to the call for projects, which ran from May to September 2012, clearly demonstrating the underlying entrepreneurial vitality that exists on the African continent. Proposed projects spanned a variety of fields such as healthcare, agriculture, education, energy, industry and commerce illustrating the high potential of telecommunications for development in Africa.

The winners of the Google Apps Developer Challenge has been announced. The announcement was made 4 days ago by Nelson Marcus, the VP for Google, Product Engineering EMEA during the g|South Africa Event in Cape Town via Google+ Hangout broadcast. These winners were selected after two rounds of scoring by the official panel of judges. This brings to a close the competition that started on the 5th of June this year.

As mentioned in a blog post written mid year heralding the competition, developers in 6 regions across the world stood to win prizes that included Chromebooks and up to $20,000 USD with other special prizes for students and female developers! All one had to do was to build and submit an amazing application in one of these categories:

Enterprise / Small Business Solutions
Social / Personal Productivity / Games / Fun
Not-for-Profit: Education / Water / Food & Hunger / Health.

The biggest secret in Nigerian payments for a long time had been the stored value/prepaid card licenses issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Not many people were aware of it and It was a secret way to beat the four horsemen of the Nigerian payments apocalypse (Interwitch, NIBSS, CBN and Banks). I had encouraged a lot of players to take advantage of it but it seems the horsemen recently got wise, saw this weakness in their flank and closed it.

CBN circular BPS/DIR/GEN/CIR/0I/11 - REVISED GUIDELINES ON STORED VALUE/PREPAID CARD ISSUANCE AND OPERATIONS, issued on 10th October 2012 changed the rules again. They closed a loophole and killed many dreams of disruption. The frustration is of epic proportions. My friend Edmund Olotu the founder of G-Pay is thinking of starting www.icantkeepup.com.ng..... a site to track change in laws and policies in Nigeria. Personally, I have asked our Nigerian office to send me major newspapers weekly and I am thinking of hiring an executive assistant who will do nothing but monitor the CBN. Keeping up is a big challenge in Nigeria as the rules keep changing and the field gets crowded daily.

Up till yesterday, I had never used a POS terminal to pay for anything. I've heard enough horror stories about to have evolved some sort of subliminal block that prevents me from noticing the option, even when it's in plain sight. That I've finally used it yesterday at a mini-mart in UNILAG was totally a chance occurrence.

Here's how it happened. I knew I was going to pick up some stuff at the store, and I'd made a mental note to withdraw some money at the nearby ATM. I was in a bus, scrolling through Twitter at the time. I got taken past my stop because I wasn't paying attention, and had to walk back. The store was closer to where I got off than the ATM, so I went there directly, and rather absent-mindedly. It wasn't until I was done shopping and was about to proceed to checkout that I realised that I didn't have enough cash, having omitted to visit the ATM like I'd planned to.

Fundamo Reports Accelerated Mobile Financial Services Growth in Africa

In Africa, Fundamo now powers 27 deployments in 19 countries.

Cape Town, South Africa, November 13th, 2012: Fundamo, a Visa Inc. company and a leading specialist mobile financial service provider, today reported accelerated growth of mobile financial services in Africa. In 2012, Fundamo has launched three new services – FirstMonie with First Bank Nigeria in Nigeria and Celpay with Celpay International in Uganda and Zimbabwe. Fundamo now supports a total of 27 deployments in 19 countries across Africa. Fundamo’s success is testimony to the demand for mobile financial services driven by the needs of 647 million consumers in Africa that do not have a formal bank account (World Bank, 2012).

"Earlier this year the industry celebrated a decade of banking the unbanked. The market has transformed since we launched the world’s first mobile financial service in a developing economy with Celpay in Zambia. Mobile money providers are rapidly diversifying and consumers are demanding access to more sophisticated services," said Hannes van Rensburg, CEO, Fundamo, a Visa company. "One thing hasn’t changed – Africa, the cradle of mobile financial services, continues to lead the world with a swath of new deployments in 2012."

Evernote has come out with with 100 new features, more or less a major design overhaul.

According to the Evernote company blog, "The Evernote desktop experience has evolved significantly over the years. We’ve changed things in response to new features, new device capabilities and to meet the expanding needs of our users. But no previous update has matched the scope of what we’re launching today."

"We’ve spent the past year identifying the needs of new and advanced users to craft an environment that beautifully caters to both. We re-imagined the look of the app to make everything more accessible. We explored the changing role of sharing and collaboration within Evernote and the opportunities we have to make them more useful. We considered search and the ways that we could make it feel like it was one step ahead of your thoughts. In short, it’s the Evernote we’ve always wanted."

Evernote 5 for Mac is free in the Mac App Store.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Vodacom introduces M2M solutions to serve financial institutions, retailers

Vodacom Business Nigeria, a leading pan-African provider of total communication solutions, has launched its Machine-to-Machine (M2M) solutions suitable for the financial and the retail sector. The new Vodacom M2M solutions are dual-SIM enabled, providing reliable, secure and a cost-effective solutions for ATM, Point of Sales (POS) connectivity and Back-Up applications.

The solution which includes ATMLink, POSLink and 3G Back-Up represents a milestone in scalable M2M technology in Nigeria.

These next-generation solutions utilize the GSM data network to connect retailer’s POS to the central servers or to the Nigerian Interbank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) network and the ATM to the bank’s central servers. It enables seamless network failover to a secondary GSM network in the event of failure on the primary network and vice versa, in which case, the user is oblivious to the network changeover.

The key concern among financial institutions and other retailers is data security, to which Vodacom has assured the market of the in-built security of its new M2M solutions. “Our solutions are built on a secure network and all transactions are encrypted over the Vodacom MPLS network. We have put in place IPSEC tunneling, private APNs, SIM authentication and a host of security measures to provide much needed peace of mind,” said Abu Etu, Product Manager Vodacom Business Nigeria.

Source: BusinessDayonline

EA appoints Nazara Technologies for Exclusive Distribution of Mobile Games in Africa

Nazara Technologies, a leading mobile games developer and publisher, and Electronic Arts Inc. announced they have entered into an exclusive business alliance to distribute EA’s collection of world class mobile games to over 770 million mobile phone consumers across Africa.

The agreement entitles Nazara to exclusive distribution rights of EA mobile games to all telecom
operators across the African continent in 49 countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana. EA’s portfolio of products includes top quality games such as Need For Speed™ The Run and EA SPORTS™ FIFA 13, which will be made available to consumers on JAVA and Android platforms through “N Play”, one of Nazara’s high traffic mobile gaming platforms.

Courtesy: The Verge

In an apparent bid to improve its market share especially in developing countries, Research In Motion (RIM) makers of Blackberry, is actively concentrating on rolling out products that would endear it to its customers.

On Monday, it announced that it would be introducing Blackberry 10 smartphones on the 30th of January 2013. Just yesterday, it introduced another new product feature that would capture the numerous lovers of BBM in developing countries, especially in Nigeria. It is BBM Voice. This exciting new feature is made available on BBM version 7 and it will allow customers make free voice calls to ther BBM customers around the world over a Wi-Fi connection

According to the press release, "BBM is a fast, convenient and inexpensive service for BlackBerry customers that gives them the ability to instantly chat with a friend, family member or colleague, and know when their message has been delivered, and read. With the new version of BBM, customers have a new option – they can talk with their BBM contact across the globe for free over a Wi-Fi connection. In an instant, customers can switch between texting and talking, or talk and text at the same time. For consumers, especially in developing markets, the BBM Voice feature offers an attractive way to talk with friends and family near and far, and staying in contact will be easier than ever as the holiday season approaches. For business customers, BBM Voice allows for enriched collaboration."

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