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Communication / ICT in Africa

  • China's WeChat takes on WhatsApp in Africa

    CHINA, 2016/07/22 Late to the party, WeChat, China's biggest Internet-based mobile messaging platform, is scrambling to get a piece of the action in the booming African market. The move is leading the South Africa-China joint venture down a fiercely competitive path as Facebook's WhatsApp is by presently part of the social media fabric in most African nations.

  • South Africa to extend ICT reach

    SOUTH AFRICA, 2016/06/19 While the expansion of mobile broadband and fibre-optic networks are driving increase of ICT services in South Africa, additional infrastructure investment will be needed to keep pace with rapidly rising market request. Focus on speed South Africa has a set of ambitious targets laid out in its national broadband policy, South Africa Connect, which includes achieving 50% internet coverage with speeds of 5 Mbps by 2016; roughly 90% coverage at the same speeds by 2020; 50% coverage with speeds of 100 Mbps by 2020; and universal 100-Mbps coverage by 2030.

  • 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).

  • Nigeria’s e-commerce industry shows growth potential

    NIGERIA, 2016/06/18 Recent investments demonstrate sustained investor interest in e-commerce platforms in Nigeria, which boasts the continent’s major people and economy. Ombola Johnson, the former minister of communications technology, predicted Nigeria’s e-commerce industry will reach a valuation of $10bn in the years ahead, with some 300,000 online orders expected each day. This increase would be in line with trends throughout the wider continent, with consultancy McKinsey estimating that the African e-commerce market is on track to reach $75bn in revenues per annum by 2025.

  • The scramble for .africa Lawyers in California are denying Africans their own domain

    AFRICA, 2016/06/17 THE ruler-straight lines and strange squiggles of Africa’s borders are a reminder of how the continent was carved up by European powers around a conference table in Berlin at the end of the 19th century—with scant regard for the wishes of its inhabitants. (Several squiggles represent the shifting of a port or mountain into a different country.) Presently a virtual version of this scramble for Africa is taking place in a court in California, over ownership of the continent’s internet address, or technically its “generic top-level domain” (gTLD).

  • 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.

  • World Economic Forum looks to tech for African growth

    WORLD, 2016/05/12 The 26th World Economic Forum on Africa is happening this week. It’s taking place in Kigali, Rwanda as sub-Saharan Africa faces its lowest increase in 15 years. One way the forum is hoping to spur increase is to shift focus away from dependency on commodities and toward technology. World Economic Forum spokesman Oliver Cann, in Kigali for the conference, said digital technology, particularly though mobile phones, is by presently spurring development. “The risks and opportunities [of technological development] are compounded in Africa,” he said. On the one hand, “you can gain so much from the digital revolution in terms of enabling new jobs; enabling entrepreneurs; enabling new, better, additional cost-effective ways of putting in place the infrastructure the region so badly needs.”

  • South Africa to extend ICT reach

    SOUTH AFRICA, 2016/05/07 While the expansion of mobile broadband and fibre-optic networks are driving increase of ICT services in South Africa, additional infrastructure investment will be needed to keep pace with rapidly rising market request. Focus on speed South Africa has a set of ambitious targets laid out in its national broadband policy, South Africa Connect, which includes achieving 50% internet coverage with speeds of 5 Mbps by 2016; roughly 90% coverage at the same speeds by 2020; 50% coverage with speeds of 100 Mbps by 2020; and universal 100-Mbps coverage by 2030.

  • Tigo Pesa, now the largest Mobile Financial Service eco-system in Tanzania

    TANZANIA, 2016/02/22 Tigo Tanzania (Tigo.co.tz) announced today that customers of its Tigo Pesa mobile money service will presently be able to move funds between any of the country’s mobile money operators, as Vodacom’s M-Pesa joins an interoperable network by presently set up by Tigo, Zantel and Airtel. Tigo becomes the only operator in Tanzania to offer interoperability with Airtel, Vodacom and Zantel. Vodacom’s participation means that additional than 16 million mobile money users in Tanzania will be able to conduct transactions with one-an extra regardless of which mobile operator they use. With Tigo Pesa, customers will presently benefit from faster, cheaper and safer cashless transactions with anyone across the country

  • The next generation A new wave of mobile technology is on its way, and will bring drastic change

    WORLD, 2016/02/21 THE next is by presently arriving, it is just a question of knowing where to look. On Changshou Road in Shanghai, eagle eyes may spot an odd rectangular object on top of an office block: it is a collection of 128 miniature antennae. Pedestrians in Manhattan can catch a glimpse of apparatus that looks like a video camera on a stand, but jerks around and has a strange, hornlike protrusion where the lens should be. It blasts a narrow beam of radio waves at buildings so they can bounce their way to the receiver. The campus of the University of Surrey in Guildford, England, is dotted with 44 antennae, which form virtual wireless cells that follow a device around. These antennae are vanguards of a new generation of wireless technologies. Although the previous batch, collectively called “fourth generation”, or 4G, is still being rolled out in a lot of nations, the telecoms industry has by presently started working on the next, 5G. On February 12th AT&T, America’s second-major mobile operator, said it would begin testing whether prototype 5G circuitry works indoors, following similar news in September from Verizon, the number one. South Korea wants to have a 5G network up and running at the same time as it hosts the Winter Olympics in 2018; Japan wants the same for the summer games in 2020. At the same time as the industry holds its annual jamboree, Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona this month, 5G will top the schedule.
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