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Communication / ICT in North Africa

  • Tunisia augments ICT exports and connectivity

    TUNISIA, 2016/06/19 A strategic five-year plan targeting Tunisia’s ICT sector, Tunisie Digitale 2020, looks to dramatically increase the industry’s contribution to employment and revenues. First launched in 2014 as Tunisie Digitale 2018, the plan was revised last year to harmonise its timelines and objectives with the government’s new five-year general economic development plan for the 2016-20 period. The plan aims to create 100,000 jobs and double the GDP of the country’s digital economy to TD9bn (€4.1bn) by 2020. Sector exports, meanwhile, are expected to increase four-fold between 2014 and 2020 to TD4bn (€1.7bn).
  • African press review 21 May 2016

    AFRICA, 2016/05/22 Nigerians opt for bicycles as new fuel price increases come into force. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe says he is "staying in power because the West continues to meddle in African politics". And panic has reportedly gripped officials at Kenya's examinaions board as government orders a revetting of its staff. We start in Nigeria where workers, hit by recent fuel price hikes, are reportedly changing their lifestles. The Federal Government this week set 145 Naira per litre as the maximum price of fuel at pumping station (up from 86 Naira per litre) next its decision to end the subsidization of petrol products.
  • Africa,Protect Refugees With Mobile Banking

    BOTSWANA, 2016/02/08 "Mean spirited", "inhumane" and desecrating the spirit of the Refugee Convention are some of the milder criticisms levelled at Denmark's harsh new asylum laws, passed last week. Part new measures is a decision to strip new arrivals of any cash and valuables worth additional than 10,000 kroner (US$1,450), purportedly to pay for their upkeep. Switzerland and some southern German states have introduced similar policies. It's a move that reflects the fragmenting world of European migration policy, lacking in solidarity, empathy and basic human decency. But what of the financial implications for asylum seekers?
  • Facebook's Free Basics service suspended in Egypt

    EGYPT, 2016/01/02 A Facebook-sponsored service that offers limited free Internet access was suspended in Egypt on Wednesday next a permit required from the government was not renewed, an official from the Telecommunications Ministry told Reuters. Facebook's Free Basics service, which aims to provide free access to Facebook and some partner websites in developing nations, was launched in Egypt two months ago by the mobile carrier Etisalat.
  • Algeria eyes telecoms reform

    ALGIERS, 2015/12/27 After the relatively late launch of 3G services in 2013, Algeria is presently looking to accelerate its rollout of 4G LTE, with a successful speed test conducted before this year and a series of base stations being constructed across the country. The new minister for the post office and ICT, Houda Imane Feraoun, confirmed to local media in late August that the government hopes to see mobile 4G launched in the coming months, with the final draft of the request for tender being evaluated by the sector regulator, the Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications and Postal Services, and a call for tenders expected early next year. “Algeria has succeeded in improving its internet network to a significant degree, despite its late entry and lack of a clear ICT strategy,” she told media in late July, emphasising the crucial role played by the deployment of fibre-optic cables throughout the country, which has helped to modernise ICT infrastructure.
  • Africa: How to Avoid Getting Hooked By a Festive Season Phishing Scam

    AFRICA, 2015/12/15 Email phishing attacks are particularly popular over the festive season, half because there's an increase in email marketing and appropriate offers linked to the holidays. During the fourth quarter of 2014, for instance, the number of incomparable phishing attacks globally went up by 18% compared with the third quarter that year, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group. A total of 437 brands were targeted and 46,824 incomparable phishing websites were reported, the majority of them hosted in the US. The majority-targeted industries for phishing attacks are retail/service, financial services and payment services.
  • How to Secure Africa's Data Revolution

    AFRICA, 2015/12/08 Africa needs to embrace the data revolution — the exponential increase in the volume and types of data available, which is creating unprecedented opportunities to inform and transform societies. To take one small example of the potential price: telecom companies can track people's movements using data that identify the mobile phone towers through which their calls are routed. Tracking where people went next leaving a disease hotspot helped epidemiologists working on the West Africa Ebola epidemic to predict where new outbreaks may occur. The same data — but anonymised, so people can't be identified — can be used to track the movement of goods to markets, allowing economists to capture data on informal economies.
  • How to Secure Africa's Data Revolution

    AFRICA, 2015/12/08 Africa needs to embrace the data revolution — the exponential increase in the volume and types of data available, which is creating unprecedented opportunities to inform and transform societies. To take one small example of the potential price: telecom companies can track people's movements using data that identify the mobile phone towers through which their calls are routed. Tracking where people went next leaving a disease hotspot helped epidemiologists working on the West Africa Ebola epidemic to predict where new outbreaks may occur. The same data — but anonymised, so people can't be identified — can be used to track the movement of goods to markets, allowing economists to capture data on informal economies.
  • Turkey, Saudi Arabia suffered most cyberattacks in MENA this year

    KUWAIT, 2015/11/25 The Middle East, Turkey and Africa region has seen cyber criminal activities nearly double in the initial half of this year, according to a new statement published by FireEye. The statement revealed that in the region, Saudi Arabia and Turkey witnessed the majority number of targeted attacks at 11 % and 6 % respectively. Although most attacks have targeted the energy and telecom sectors, criminal attackers are presently adopting a country-national style digital attack, FireEye’s international government affairs director Adam Palmer told Gulf Business in an exclusive interview. “And since cyber criminals work across borders and across industries, we see everything from aviation to telecom to infrastructure to be targets,” he said.
  • The initiative provides scholarships to 2000 Egyptian students.

    EGYPT, 2015/11/24 Google’s initiative to train young people to develop mobile applications aims to help 2,000 graduates by October 2016, Google regional chairman in the Middle East and North Africa Mohamed Mourad said. The initial phase began with the graduation of 250 youths last week, Mourad said, noting that trainees are provided with online training courses through a specialised platform in Arabic. This helps it spread part a wider range of youths and helps develop the Arabic content, which represents only 1% of total online content. Offering the training through an online platform makes it additional available to youths, particularly with the spread of smartphones in the Egyptian market, with almost 50m devices, he said. About 75% of beneficiaries of the programme so far are university students, with 100 graduates provided the luck to study economy and business government to be able to start their own businesses.