10 African startups that rocked 2014

2014 has been another amazing year for startups in Africa.

More and more entrepreneurs turned their attention to building businesses that can solve the continent's problems and provide services it has long awaited.

Enterprises emerged to fix problems in payments, traffic and talent, while more entrepreneurs raised more money from investors than ever before.

Here, in no particular order are 10 of the most exciting young companies of the year.

The list includes the startups I consider to have the most potential, to be the most viable -- not necessarily the most popular or hyped.

Sendy
Where: Kenya

In a nutshell: Uber-style motorbike delivery service.

What's unique: Africa has delivery services and courier services but never before Uber-style so you can track exactly where the deliver rider is via your phone app.

Sending packages is usually expensive and difficult in big, congested African cities like Nairobi and Lagos. Many people use motorbikes to get to work to avoid getting stuck in traffic, so using motorbikes for deliveries is a smart, cheap, local solution.

Future moves: Sendy is in a very strong position because e-commerce is growing and at some point those kinds of sites could integrate with companies like Sendy. It could also potentially be acquired by a foreign company, perhaps Amazon, if they decide to expand to Kenya or South Africa and want to invest in a delivery service that understands the terrain.

Angani
Where: Kenya, East Africa region

In a nutshell: Pay-as-you-go cloud computing

What's unique: This is nothing new internationally, but the cloud computing space in Kenya is nascent. Angani are coming into the market trying to make prices affordable.

What makes it cool is that you pay for what you use. You choose a plan and go.

Future moves: It may be difficult for Angani to scale in a short time, given that all of their competitors in this new and growing market are established players. It remains to be seen whether their tactic of driving competition with low prices will attract enough customers.

Irofit
Where: Nigeria

In a nutshell: Mobile payments without internet

What's unique: Their offering -- mobile payments over mobile networks -- is unique. It's something that hasn't been done before. Making mobile payments over the internet can often be an issue in Africa, so Irofit are leveraging more widespread mobile networks.
Future moves: They launched very recently, and no one has used the app yet. But Irofit raised $600,000 in just six months earlier this year, showing that there are big players who think the startup has real potential.

Wyzetalk
Where: South Africa

In a nutshell: Invite-only social platform for business

What's unique: A business platform for companies to help their employees to more effectively communicate. Staff can use the platform to collaborate on projects, set up meetings, instant message, share files and more.

Future moves: Wyzetalk has been around since 2011, but they have built the company steadily, winning round after round of funding, which shows they must be doing something right. It is currently used by companies from a variety of industries including travel and tourism, tech and food and drink. They have a very solid model and are likely to keep growing.

Gamsole
Where: Nigeria, Global

In a nutshell: Gaming company

What's unique: Celebrated as the biggest success story of any African game developers, this startup has been developing games in the Windows phone market for a couple of years. Gamsole was incubated in the 88mph accelerator and since then their games have seen 9 million downloads globally.

Future moves: Gamsole recently received an innovation grant from Microsoft and are looking for new talent with a recently launched competition for illustrators and designers that offers $4,000 to the winner. They are also yet to launch a global smash hit game.

Snapscan
Where: South Africa

In a nutshell: Make payments via your mobile phone

What's unique: A service, not dissimilar to Apple Pay, which allows people to make payments with their mobile phone by simply taking a photo of a QR code and punching in the amount they want to pay.

Future moves: Less than a year after launch, the system was being used by 12,000 small businesses. There is huge potential for this service: There is an appetite for convenience in payments and there is an opportunity to leverage on Africa being mobile first. They have the potential to expand into other markets and maybe even compete with Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

Delivery Science
Where: Nigeria

In a nutshell: Delivering smarter using big data

What's unique: This startup is all about using big data and analytics to help companies in Africa's emerging e-commerce sector manage inventory and deliver more efficiently. Delivery Science offer to completely manage a company's logistics from what's in the warehouse to innovative ideas like verification codes for deliveries to ensure the right person gets a package.

Future moves: The company was started this year by a team who have successfully launched other startups and who are knowledgeable in delivery and logistics. They have the right idea and the knowledge to serve the market in Nigeria.

Paysail
Where: Ghana

In a nutshell: Out-of-the-box payroll management application.

What's unique: Right now, many companies in Ghana still use spreadsheets to organize employee pay. Paysail offers an all-in-one service that comes with Ghanian tax codes programmed in to make company accountants' jobs easier.

Future moves: It's a new idea. It's different. Most of the companies -- like this one -- that are incubated in the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology in Ghana try to reach other markets. Right now, no one is doing anything like this in next-door Nigeria, which means the Paysail application has opportunity to offer an incredible change.

Andela
Where: Nigeria, pan-Africa

In a nutshell: Training graduates as developers, matching them with employers

What's unique: Andela is focused on helping employers from all over the world find talent from Africa. They take it a step further by identifying raw talent and paying them to learn to become developers, then matching them with global employers looking for talent. The company currently has a local office in Nigeria and a company in the United States.

Future moves: This company's approach is very smart. In Africa there is a desperate need for talent -- we don't have enough developers, let alone quality developers, because universities don't qualify graduates in technologies for the future. There is also a huge market globally, so this company has a massive opportunity.

BRCK
Where: Kenya, all of Africa.

In a nutshell: A self-powered, mobile WiFi device.

What's unique: BRCK is a blackbox described by its makers as "a backup generator for the internet," with the aim of solving Africa's connectivity issues. In Africa, there are power outages on a daily basis so getting online and staying online anywhere and anytime in these parts as well as other parts of the world requires a device that can seamlessly switch between multiple networks to provide access, even in remote areas. That's where BRCK comes in.

Future moves: This product is quite ingenious. The potential impact and scale of this company is the reason it closed a $1.2 million seed funding round, after initially raising $172,000 in a Kickstarter campaign last year. BRCK has the potential to provide internet connectivity to rural areas across the world, where Internet access can be unstable.

By Loy Okezie, Special to CNN

Announcing Certiport's 2015 Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship from August 9-12 in Dallas, Texas!

Certiport, a Pearson VUE business, the leading test delivery solution provider for the global workforce and academic markets, today announces the 2014 Microsoft Office Specialist World Champions in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint, culminating the most popular technology skills competition on Microsoft Office since its inception in 2002.

In its 13th year, the 2014 Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship attracted more than 400,000 unique candidates from 130 countries who competed to demonstrate their mastery of Microsoft Office products. 123 student finalists participated in the final round of competition.

Certiport recognized the top six student competitors at the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship Student Awards Ceremony at Disney’s Grand Californian Resort, and presented each with a $5,000 scholarship.

“Microsoft Office Specialist certification gives students a way to become tangibly prepared for college or a career,” said Margo Day, vice president of US education at Microsoft. “Today’s job market requires computer proficiency and all individuals who earn certification have a valuable credential proving their skills. We congratulate the top winners for their extra efforts and look forward to seeing how they put their superior Microsoft Office skills to use in their future endeavors.”

In the concluding round, competitors participated in unique project-based tests to demonstrate their ability to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations for the information presented in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

“More than 740,000 exams were uploaded as part of this competition, and the MOS World Champions are tops in an elite group of individuals who know how to use Microsoft Office tools effectively,” said Bob Whelan, president and chief executive officer for Pearson VUE. “Microsoft Office Specialist certification continues to grow in popularity all over the world, allowing more students to prove they have the academic and workforce skills to succeed.”

Next year, Certiport will host the 2015 Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship in Dallas, Texas.

First African Computer anti-virus software developed in Baringo,Kenya

The first African antivirus has been developed in Kenya at a remote village in Baringo County. Bunifu Technologies is an industry innovation firm founded in the 2011 and since inception has developed software products ranging from mobile, desktop, web and engineering solutions and tools.

Bunifu Sniper, the antivirus software was developed locally by that clearly indicates the exponential potential that Africa has. The anti-virus has an in-built console panel that will help users recover infected files safely. The Sniper anti-virus, which took the group more than a year and a half to develop, also features a wireless and Local Area Network (LAN) scanner that can scan devices within your WiFi range or over your LAN, a document, file and folder repair and restore, file and folder unlock sensor, wireless and LAN sensor as well as piracy protection. The anti-virus is a software too tough for even hackers to crack, and better than others available in the market according to the firm. There will be continuous online upgrades of the antivirus software although the company is also working on ways to enable offline upgrades. The Sniper antivirus product has dominant features such as fast engine, over 17 million virus database definitions, heuristic engine, shared protection, directory navigation guard (watchdog) and proactive real-time surveillance.

Bunifu Technologies has also provided technology-based services and products that range from Android mobile apps, desktop applications, web applications and engineering solutions. Other products that have been developed by the firm include accounting software that provides real-time analyses and record keeping of day to day transactions and Light Bolt SMS – a mass message sending utility that has the ability to send customized personalized messages to many from a single message. Bunifu’s other product is an exam management system that provides an easy interface for exams processing and analysis as well as the Bunifu mini-commander, a handy automated software that can process and respond to SMS commands and also process more than one command at a time.

The firm also runs the only innovation hub in Kenya outside Nairobi.

Read more at: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/lifestyle/article/2000122666/it-brains-develop-first-african-anti-virus-software 

Top IT skills and certifications revealed

The latest ActiveTechPros IT salary & skills report for South Africa reveals the top IT skills and top IT certifications in the country.

ActiveTechPros released their latest IT Salary and Skills Report recently, allowing IT professionals to compare their salary and skills against fellow IT professionals globally.

The ActiveTechPros report which is published annually and is based on aggregated data from their users for the period of January 1 – December 31 2011.

According to the report the most popular IT skills in South Africa are Operating Systems, Desktops/Software and Servers/Networking.

It is telling that the top skills (hence the skills which most IT professionals possess) corresponds with the lowest salaries in the market.

When it comes to the top certifications the ever popular A+ reigns supreme, followed by Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and Network +.

Read more here.

Investment potential of Kenya's education sector

The first thing a visitor to the Fanisi Capital boardroom in Nairobi notices when he walks in is a big black television and, below the television, a picture. It is an interesting one to look at: the people in it – students and teachers, presumably – are of every race, skin and hair colour, all smiling. The lawn in the foreground is lush and well manicured. Palm trees rise above the smiling faces, flanking seven thatched roof peaks. It could be a picture of a “Young United Nations” conference on a tropical island. The only thing that shows it is not the UN is a school crest. Hillcrest Investments Limited (HIL) currently owns the school in the photo, as well as its sister schools on the same campus.

HIL was established in 2011. Its principal shareholders are Kenya-based Fanisi Capital, a US$50-million venture capital fund represented byAyisi Makatiani; and Anthony Wahome, an investor whose principal ventures include the Linksoft Group of companies and the Rose of Sharon Academy. Hillcrest is a source of great pride for Makatiani. His office nametag and keys hang on a Hillcrest-branded lanyard. So how did Makatiani, who built Africa Online, one of Africa’s first Internet service providers, end up owning a school? “It was an opportunistic move for Fanisi,” he says. “The school was put up for sale and we bought it at the cost of land.”

Read more: Investment potential of Kenya's education sector

Harnessing ICT for development in Kenya

In the decade since the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (MoICT) was established, the ICT sector has grown from virtually non-existent into an important component of the economy. According to the latest government statistics, for the quarter ended September 2013, mobile and internet penetration rates have reached 76.9% and 47.1%, respectively.

Insufficient infrastructure has been the biggest constraint to continued expansion. To this end, in July 2013 the government launched the National Broadband Strategy (NBS), a joint product of the MoICT and the Communications Commission of Kenya, the sector’s regulator, with an overall objective of providing broadband access to 100% of the population. More than half of its $2.8bn budget is allocated to building infrastructure, with the balance directed towards capacity building and content development.

The proposed funding sources include a broadband infrastructure bond and venture capital fund, in addition to an increasing ICT’s share of the government budget from 0.5% to 5%.

Fred Matiang’i, the cabinet secretary for the MoICT, told OBG the support of the private sector will be necessary to realise the goals of the NBS. “We need to come up with a framework that will facilitate the role of the private sector in the development of digital infrastructure. Given the demand on our labour and financial sources, we will not be able to do this alone,” he said.

Harnessing ICT for development in Kenya

Microsoft Office Specialist: Helping Students Develop Workforce Skills

Will your students be ready for the workforce when they clear high school and college? An achievement they could place on their college portfolio and career resume? Will they have practical Office computing skills that will help them get started in their careers?

Now is your opportunity to enrich the substance and value of your course curriculum with Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) credentials. With certification, students get the opportunity to develop foundational expertise in cutting-edge computing skills as part of their chosen course of study, to help them knock down the academic obstacles and barriers that typically disenchant students and lead to increased drop-out rates. Regardless of the course topic, teachers can provide more to their students by personally achieving demonstrated skills in Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Specialist certification features a simple framework for skill assessment and validation. And certification verifies a wide variety of computing skills; not only in programmes, but also for specific job functions such as managing budgets and presentations.

MOS certification is the leading IT certification in the world with more than 1 million MOS exams are taken every year in over 140 countries.

Provide Your Students with a Valuable Resource

For years now, the Computer Studies course, which helps students master skills in areas such as word processing, spreadsheets, desktop publishing, and presentation applications has been based on general principles and does not always teach industry leading technologies used in the business world. The course does not include a certification to help students validate to potential employers that they have the necessary skills to perform on the job.

Using MOS certification as a ready-made module for the school’s business and technology curricula offers students the opportunity to master real-world desktop computing skills that businesses require. With Microsoft and Certiport, the certification exam administrator, schools and colleges can replace an outdated curriculum and give their students a curriculum that would remain current with materials from Microsoft and certification exams.

The certification allows students to prove to employers they have a specific skill that is in demand. The MOS program is one way to close the skills gap – it’s one way for employers to find someone to fill exactly what they need in an open position.

Available certifications

With three certification levels (Microsoft Office Specialist, Microsoft Office Specialist Expert and Microsoft Office Specialist Master), the Microsoft Office Specialist credential allows individuals to validate their skills and progress toward their career goals in the following office applications:

• Word - Transform ideas into professional documents
• Excel® - Achieve valuable insights with powerful analysis tools
• PowerPoint - Turn your ideas into impactful presentations
• Access - Track and report important information with ease
• Outlook - Stay connected with up-to-date email and calendar tools
• SharePoint - Stay productive with the freedom to take shared content with you while on the go
• OneNote - Capture, store and share information in digital notebooks
• Office365 - Secure, anywhere access to email, calendars, Office Web Apps, instant messaging, conferencing, and file sharing

Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship

The Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship presented by Certiport, Inc. is a global competition that tests students' skills on Microsoft Office Word, Excel® and PowerPoint. Top students are invited to represent their respective countries at the World Championship. At the World Championship, each student competes for World Champion in his or her category (Microsoft Word 2007, Microsoft Word 2010, Microsoft Excel® 2007, Microsoft Excel® 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft PowerPoint 2007). The MOS World Championship is an inspiring event, motivating more students from all over the world to get certified and validate their technology skills.

To participate, students aged 13 to 22 must submit a passing score on the MOS Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Word 2010, Excel 2010, or PowerPoint 2010 exams and attend an approved, accredited learning institution.

Participants who outperform their peers to make the final round of the World Championship generally have perfect or near-perfect exam scores and completion times well below the allotted examination time. The top three winners in each category receive scholarship prizes for $5,000, $2,500 and $1,000 respectively.

Proposal by Kenya Government to tax mobile money transfers

Following the recent pay hike for the striking teachers, doctors and nurses, and now the Kenyan member of parliaments who have allocated themselves a send off package of Ksh 9.7 (approximately USD 150,000), taxes on financial transactions are set to be introduced.

The government argument is that it is in no position to get the money to pay the new salaries that were backdated to the July this year, short of asking donors to assist or increase the income tax, hence the decision to introduce a new raft of taxes to meet the now 60 per cent recurrent expenditure (read salaries for civil servants) of the Ksh 1 trillion national budget (USD 11.8 billion).

Kenyans are therefore bracing themselves for the speculated 10 per cent in transaction fee. It is expected that taxes will be implemented per transaction, meaning customers will pay additional costs when using mobile money for money transfers.  The new tax is expected to bring Sh4.5 billion (USD 55 million) to the government's coffers, from mobile money transactions alone.

The new move by the government is not good news to Airtel and Yu mobile networks, especially as they started recently aggressively promoting their new money transfer service, where its subscribers were to enjoy free money transfer services to other networks. Safaricom on the other hand will be hit hardest, considering its more than 14 million customers and more than 2 million MPESA transactions daily.

Mobile Number Portability a Year Later

In a bid to promote effective competition in the mobile market segment, the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) introduced the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in April 2011, a service that allows the consumers the flexibility and the convenience to retain subscribers’ numbers upon switching service providers.

According to CCK’s recent quarterly sector statistics report for the period covering January to March 2012, the uptake of this service has continued to show mixed signals in the mobile market segment since its inception. During the quarter under review, there were a total of 6,646 in-ports up from 2,407 in-ports recorded during the previous quarter, representing an increase of 176.1 per cent. The number of in-ports recorded since the establishment of the MNP service in April 2011 is shown in the table below.

Period	Jan-Mar 12	Oct-Dec 11	Jul-Sep 11	Apr-Jun 11
Number of in-ports	6,646	2,407	1,929	36,224
Variation	176.1	24.8	-94.7	-

This means that there have been a total of 47,206 in-ports, compared to a total number of 29,211,649 mobile phone subscribers during the period under review. Access to mobile telephony services continued to be realized as the quarter posted a mobile penetration of 74.0 per 100 inhabitants up from 71.3 per 100 inhabitants recorded during the previous quarter.

Source: CCK Quarterly Sector Statistics Report for January-March 2012

Fines for traffic offences to be paid through Faini Chap Chap

The Judiciary will this week on Thursday, September 20, 2012, officially launch a new system for paying traffic fines through M-Pesa, the mobile money transfer system run by Safaricom. The system dubbed Faini Chap Chap has been available at Milimani and Kibera Law Courts on a pilot phase basis and will be officially launched by the Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga. After the launch, the system will be official rolled out in all traffic courts and may be extended to other courts.

This will save traffic offenders the trouble of having to stand in long queues to pay their fines. The users will simply follow seven simple steps on their phones to pay their fine as outlined above in the above poster that Judiciary has posted on their website.

This system is aimed at improving the delivery of justice as part of the on-going reforms in the judiciary plus increase speed of handling traffic cases.

Source: Kenya Judiciary; Pesatalk

Barclays Pingit comes to Kenya

 

Barclays Bank account holders in Kenya will now be able to receive money from their family and friends residing in the United Kingdom via their mobile phone.

This follows the launch of a mobile money transfer service dubbed 'Pingit' in February 2012 by the bank which will allow UK residents to send money from various bank accounts.

Speaking during the launch Barclays Bank Managing Director Adan Mohamed said all that is required from the sender is to download the Barclays PINGIT application on their smart phone and make the money transfers to anyone with a Barclays account in Kenya.

According to Adan, customers in Kenya on the other hand do not need to download anything. All they need to do is to have and account with Barclays, have their mobile handsets and mobile number from any service providers in the country. Therefore, a lot of conditions are in the UK side at the moment.

The maximum amount a UK customer can send to Kenya should not exceed £750 per day.

However, Kenyans cannot use the money transfer service to send money to UK.

The bank plans to rollout the service across 11 African countries and the UAE by the end of the year alongside further expansion into Europe in early 2013. This will include Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Uganda, UAE, Seychelles and Mauritius.

For UK Barclays Bank customers, the Pingit app is free to download and use on Android, Apple and Blackberry smart phones. For those without smartphones, they can register online to receive payments. 

Source: Allafrica.com, The Guardian

Orange 3G Internet Everywhere settings

After the nasty experience with Airtel last week, where I bough a weekly unlimited bundle for Ksh 750 and never got to enjoy Internet due to a technical hitch, I decided to purchase the Orange 3G Internet Everywhere modem.

It can be pretty frustrating when you start experiencing EDGE speeds, especially when the signal strength is pretty good where I reside. This almost led me to dialling up the Customer Care to ask the reason for the low speeds that never exceeded 100 kbps, till when I decided to do a Google search.

A very helpful hint came from Wazua.co.ke, and it is interesting to note that Orange is selling modems with a key parameter that affects adversely the Internet speeds experienced by its uses. Apparently its dial up parameter reads by default as *99#, which if changed to *99***1# automatically connects you on HSPA+, and enjoy speeds in the range of 1-2 mbps. Its better than being on EDGE, and am pragmatic enough I can never enjoy anything beyond 7.2 mbps, leave alone 21 mbps or the newly announced new speeds of up to 42 mbps.

The key setting are as below:

APN:bew.orange.co.ke
Access number *99***1#

Bill seeks to stop hate speech on the Internet

A Bill to give the Information ministry powers to monitor all Internet messages will soon be tabled in Parliament to curb hate speech.

It means that those who do not moderate their language on the Internet face prosecution.

National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) chairman Mzalendo Kibunjia said at the weekend that the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), Safaricom and NCIC would regulate language use on the Internet.

Dr Kibunjia, said phone messages and Internet messages, especially those sent in bulk, would be monitored.

Kenyans are being urged not to use hate speech in social media, as NCIC, CID officers and computer experts are watching out for any possible use of hate speech in cyber cafes countrywide. According to Nyanza police boss Joseph ole Tito, several cases against individuals found to be engaging in hate speech are under investigations for prosecution by the DPP and if there is satisfactory evidence, more people might be prosecuted.

This comes hot on the heels after last week’s arrest of the prolific Kenyan tech blogger, Robert Alai, for abuse of the Kenya Information and Communication Act. Alai appeared in court on Wednesday last week to face charges of abusing the Act. The Nairobi Provincial CID office had received a complaint from government spokesman and Communication Commission of Kenya that Alai has been abusing sections of the Act hence the summons.

Critics opine that arrest of Kenyan tech blogger has shone a spotlight on the East African nation’s online civil liberties, with experts saying it has illustrated the possible vagueness of the country’s communications law.

Sources: The Daily Nation / Standard Digital News / ITWebAfrica

Twitter changes the rules, provokes anger from developers

Developers and users of Twitter have reacted angrily to changes made by the social network to restrict creation of third-party applications.

Twitter unveiled some of the upcoming changes to its API that could have a drastic impact on the service’s third-party ecosystem.

Twitter is squeezing the knot around the neck of third-party Twitter apps that mimic Twitter.com and developers and users have reacted angrily to the restrictions.

An API allows different parts of a program to communicate together, as well as letting one application share content with another.

In Twitter's case, its API has allowed for the development of extremely popular third-party services like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Twitpic.

Any new app that wants to serve more than 100,000 users must now seek the company's explicit permission.

Apps which already have more than 100,000 users are allowed to double their user base before having to get Twitter's go-ahead to grow any further.

Source: BBC News Technology / theInformationDaily

Airtel Kenya Bundle down

For the past three days, having activated my Weekly Unlimited bundle to try out the 3.75G internet speeds touted by Airtel Kenya has been rather disappointing and frustrating. Airtel Kenya has been experiencing technical problems with the bundles, and internet connectivity has been erratic, if not dismal.

Despite several calls to their 111 customer care line and tweets, Airtel Kenya is still trying to resolve the problem. And we are informed to be patient and wait for their advise on the next step. I wonder what will happen when the week is over and still having the same problem. Considering that my requests for a refund cannot be entertained as I have already used the bundle whenever the connectivity has been available, which is rather rare in the past three days.

I was about to go for their 21mbps broadband modem, but now that is rather a distant thought.

Fifth mobile phone firm to set up operations in Kenya?

As reported recently in the media, Viettel, a Vietnamese mobile operator has announced plans to set up operations in Kenya just weeks after it launched in Mozambique.

Viettel Group is a Vietnamese major mobile network operator headquartered in Hanoi, Vietnam. It is a state-owned enterprise wholly owned and operated by the Ministry of Defence. Operated in 2004 as a GSM launcher, Viettel Mobile is the fourth network in Vietnam (after Mobifone, Vinaphone and S-Fone) and currently the biggest telecommunications provider, contributing 40.37% to the total mobile communication market ( followed by MobiFone (27.95%) and Vinaphone (22.98%)and 3% of S-Fone).

Viettel is targeting the African market because the continent has exceptionally huge potential, Viettel Global’s General Director Mr Nguyen Duy Tho says.

In an interview, Mr Nguyen Duy Tho  told ‘Daily News’ that  the average broadband density in the Sub-Saharan Africa is very low, accounting for 2 per cent  in urban areas and nearly 1 per cent  in rural areas. “The mobile coverage area only reaches 60 per cent  of the African population on average and mainly the urban areas. Only 20 per cent of the African people living in rural areas have access to the mobile signal coverage. Africa is a huge potential market,” he said.

He noted that apart from South Africa owning 80 per cent  of the fibre optical cable system, the Sub-Saharan countries have the average density of 140km of fibre optical cable per one million people, which is one seventh of the global density level. Viettel, he said, has invested in six nations including Cambodia and Laos in Asia, Haiti and Peru in America, and Mozambique in Africa.

He said that in the countries that Viettel has started its operations for more than two years, their  companies have ranked first in telecommunications, contributing 1 per cent  to 2 per cent to the local country’s total GDP; building 50 per cent  to 80 per cent of the telecommunications infrastructure of the countries that they have invested in, helping raise the infrastructural density by 3 to 3.5 times higher than the average telecommunications level in the world.

He said that most of the countries that Viettel is perusing investment opportunities are developing markets, in terms of their economies and telecommunications. “This is the advantage of Viettel when we enter the market. Viettel has been the smallest investor among international telecommunications investors, but we have grown up from a developing market, so we have had many business experiences in these markets and we know this type of market very well,” he said.

Latest data from the industry regulator, the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), shows that Kenya’s mobile penetration was 74.0 per cent up as at March 2012.

The CCK data shows that mobile subscriptions rose 15.8 per cent to 29.2 million as at March 31, 2012, from the 25.2 million recorded in a similar period last year.

The company, which made about Sh500 billion in revenues in 2011 in May, launched operations in Mozambique — its first mobile network in Africa — under Movitel.

Viettel has been making major investments in data in the markets it operates in.

It is counting on this to penetrate the Kenyan market at a time when voice is losing its shine as the biggest driver of revenues for mobile companies.

For instance, in just over a year since being licensed on January 10, 2011, Viettel has built 12,600km of fibre optic cable and 1,800 mobile stations in Mozambique, representing 70 per cent of Mozambique’s total fibber optic cable network and 50 per cent of the country’s mobile stations.

The operator says it is pursuing investment opportunities mainly in developing markets.

Source: Tanzania Daily News, Daily Nation

Technorati Tags: Viettel,data,mobile,telecommunication,Kenya,Mozambique

Google Launches SMS Gmail In Africa

Search engine and mail host Google has launched a text-based version of their Gmail email service, which is specifically aimed at users in Africa who do not necessarily have access to a constant or stable connection to the Internet.

Gmail SMS can run on so-called "dumb phones" which only have very basic features and no access to the internet. The new service is aimed at users who do not have smartphones and make use of feature phones – mobile devices that cannot connect to the Internet and have no ability to feature apps and especially those that support only voice and SMS.

Geva Rechav, Google's product manager for emerging markets,explained in a blog post how Gmail SMS was adapted to work by using simple text commands.

"Gmail SMS works on any phone, even the most basic ones which only support voice and SMS," he wrote.
"Gmail SMS automatically forwards your emails as SMS text messages to your phone and you can respond by replying directly to the SMS.

"You can control the emails received by replying with commands such as MORE, PAUSE and RESUME.
"Additionally, compose a new email as an SMS and send to any email address recipient - who will find your message in the right email conversation thread!"

While Google is conducting educational programmes in the African region, the SMS addition extends Google’s product range which is specifically aimed at enhancing the lives of Africans. Google previously said that computer science training in African is “an important goal for Google in 2012″.

Often the lack of resources to buy hardware in order to connect to the Internet is a major stumbling block, which the SMS services aim to overcome.

Gmail SMS is currently available in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya and is offered as a free service, while any command sent texts will be subject to standard network rates.

So, how do you set yourself up with Gmail SMS?

First of all, you’ll need to log-in to your Gmail account, and click on your profile at the top of the page and then hit Account.





 








Click Open SMS settings in the "Phone and SMS" section.


Add your phone number to receive Gmail to that number.



Verify your phone number by entering the verification code that we sent as SMS to your phone.



Check the box for email forwarding to your phone.



Last but not least, receiving Gmail SMS is free of charge.  Standard SMS rates apply when replying to messages, creating new messages and sending Gmail SMS commands from your phone. 

Source: ITNewsAfrica.Com, BBC News Technology

Technorati Tags: Google,Gmail,SMS,Email,Kenya,Ghana,Nigeria

Emerging Markets Are Driving Adoption Of Mobile Internet

According to Forrester research, the global penetration of mobile Internet users will exceed that of PC-based Internet users in 2016.

This situation is already the norm in many African countries, where the low penetration of landline phone connections has led to the exponential increase in the adoption of mobile phones, and where subsequently many consumers who had not been able to go online are using these devices to access the Internet.

For instance, according to the Communications Commission of Kenya July statistics, in the Internet/data market segment, the number of subscriptions increased by 5.5 per cent, from 6.1 million recorded in the previous period to 6.4 million during the quarter under review. Mobile data/internet subscriptions continued to dominate  the internet market with 98.8 per cent of the total Internet/data subscriptions being from the mobile Internet/data  sub-market.  Number of  Internet users  rose  by 4.7 per cent,  from 11.3 million users posted the previous period to 11.8 million users during the quarter under
review. Broadband subscriptions increased significantly by more than three-fold, from 131,829 subscriptions posted the previous quarter to  651,738 subscriptions  during the quarter.  Broadband subscriptions represented 10.0 per cent of the total  Internet/data subscriptions.

“Emerging markets are driving the adoption levels of not only mobile telephony, but also Internet access through these mobile devices,” says Gerald Naidoo, CEO of Logikal Consulting.

“Access to the Internet through a mobile handset is predominantly incremental in emerging markets, whereas it is supplementary in developed markets. For companies looking to reach global customers, the mobile Internet is just an additional channel in mature markets but is the chief point of entry in many emerging markets.”

This understanding has formed the basis of the company’s approach in its African territories, particularly in Nigeria, one of the continent’s biggest growth markets. Working with its partner company, Interlogikal West Africa, Logikal Consulting is using its expertise in mobile application development to help Nigerian businesses access this rapidly expanding market.

 

Technorati Tags: emerging markets,subscribers,Internet,CCK,broadband

Twitter cuts off service to LinkedIn

Twitter, the micro-blogging site, has cut off tweets on the professional social network LinkedIn, ending a two-year partnership.


Twitter is a website that lets users broadcast 140-character status updates, or tweets, in real time. The micro-blogging service has had a partnership with LinkedIn since 2009. 


"If you had previously synced your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, and selected the option to share Tweets on LinkedIn, those Tweets generated from Twitter will no longer appear on LinkedIn. There will be no other changes to your LinkedIn experience," Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn head of content, said in an email sent to its users.

LinkedIn users will still be able to post updates to Twitter from LinkedIn, but not the other way around.
Cutting off tweets to LinkedIn users is part of a greater initiative at Twitter to create stricter requirements for developers who use the company's application programming interface (API). An API is a set of tools that lets third-party developers write custom programs for a service.

The new requirements are meant to encourage developers to build apps on Twitter's website. The company said it would "more thoroughly enforce" its Developer Rules of the Road. Twitter wants to ensure its branding is consistent across the Internet, whether tweets are read on the site or a third-party client.
While the company is cracking down on inconsistency, developers are struggling with the narrowing constraints of integrating with Twitter.

In a March 2011 note to developers, Twitter platform team member, Ryan Sarver said, "developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no."

The challenges of building a program that doesn't mimic Twitter while ensuring consistency across all platforms has raised the ire of developers - some feeling jilted by the company. Their concern is that they have invested time and resources into developing apps for Twitter, only to have the company change the rules of the game.

"We're building tools for publishers and investing more and more in our own apps to ensure that you have a great experience everywhere you experience Twitter, no matter what device you're using," Twitter product manager Michael Sippy said in a blog post, where he emphasized upgrades, like Twitter Cards. The new addition to Twitter lets users add a few lines of code, or "card," to a tweet that will add an expanded view of content on Twitter.

Twitter faces its own challenges. Much of the company's content is viewed on third-party sites or programs. The micro-blogging service must find the right balance of running a profitable business and maintaining a robust developers' community.

Source: CBS News

Technorati Tags: LinkedIn,Twitter

Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims

Requests to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) include .porn, .ninja, and .ferrari.

Currently there are 280 ccTLDs but only 22 "generics" in the domain name system right now, but that is all about to change. The new gTLD application window opened on 12 January 2012 and closed on 30 May 2012.

(Icann) said it had received 884 requests for new suffixes from the US, out of a total of 1,930.

By contrast there have been 40 such applications from the UK, 303 from the Asia-Pacific region and 17 from Africa.

Several top-level domains have been applied for by more than one party, including .sex, .home and .diy.

Both the US drug maker Merck & Co and its German rival Merck KGaA appear to have applied for the .merck ending, which may trigger an auction process.

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and its affiliated agencies applied for the .akdn and.agakhan endings.

Bharti Airtel Limited from India applied for the .airtel ending, while UniForum SA (NPC) trading as Registry.Africa applied for .africa ending. Electronic Media Network Limited (M-Net) from South Africa applied for .africamagic apparently for its Africa Magic channels on DSTV offerings.

Samsung - which had objected to the process - has taken part, applying for both .samsung and its equivalent in the Korean alphabet.

However, Coca-Cola and the cereal manufacturer Kellogg's, which also signed a petition in protest, have abstained.

By contrast Google has applied for dozens of the generic top-level domain (gTLD) name strings.

Obvious choices included .google and .youtube, but there were also unexpected inclusions such as .and, .boo, .dad and .new.

The search giant has also requested .music, which has been claimed by seven other organisations including the online retailer Amazon.

Other gTLDs attracting multiple requests include .art, .book, .news, .play, .shop and .vip.

The most contested name is .app which received 13 applications.

Icann said that it had received a total of 1,930 requests for its first round of new net names - 166 of them were in alternatives to the Latin alphabet.

It has now invited anyone with an objection to any of the claims to lodge their complaint within the next seven months.

Icann then aims to make the new domains live in batches of about 500, with the first set going live some time after March 2013.

"The plan we have delivered is solid and fair," said Icann's chief executive, Rod Beckstrom. "It is our fundamental obligation to increase innovation and consumer choice."

However, critics have attacked the plan, noting the costs involved and the fact that bodies in the first batch to be processed may gain an unfair advantage.

Nations including Brazil, China and Russia have also suggested Icann's functions be passed to the UN or another body more under governments' control.

Applicants had to pay a $185,000 (£118,800) fee to take part in the application process. They also face a minimum $25,000 annual renewal charge to keep their suffix once it has been granted.

The BBC made one of 40 applications for a new top-level domain name from the UK

The big names of the internet have either invested massively or not at all. Amazon for example has applied for 76 names, Google for 101 and Microsoft 11. But there's no applications from Facebook or Twitter.

And neither did I see any applications from any of major players in Kenya, such as Safaricom or East African Breweries Limited.

Source: BBC and ICANN