Biztech Africa

Ethiopia’s tourism authorities have launched a new website to showcase sustainable community tourism opportunities in the country.

The new site, aims to inform tourists and highlight business opportunities for Ethiopian communities. Community Based Tourism is a form of sustainable tourism that allows visitors to connect closely with the communities they visit.

The government of Botswana says it is geared towards enacting reforms that would see the operations of both government departments and ministries go online in order to expedite services that it conducts. This follows the country’s plummeting rankings in the World Bank’s Doing Business report.

According to the Minister of Trade and Industry, Dorcas Makgato-Malesu, among the most problematic areas are starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property, getting credit, legislation and enforcing contracts.

The Angolan government says it is working on a strategic infrastructure plan to support telecoms growth.

The Angolan Minister of Telecommunications and Information Technology, João Carvalho da Rocha, said Angola’s existing infrastructure would be connected across national borders to link up to backbones across Africa.

He said a fibre optic network would also be built across the country, connecting all 18 provinces.

Four years ago, when Daniel Chiwinga and Kondwani Chimatiro met in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) lecture room at Mzuzu University, in the northern part of Malawi, they had no idea that they would be starting a journey that could turn into their life's work.

The two young men, one from Kasungu and another from Lilongwe in the central districts of Malawi, have now developed a search engine they are calling ‘C-Finder’, spurred by the knowledge they have gained over the years that they have been studying.

Congo’s VMK Tech has unveiled its answer to tablet computing – the Way-C device.
The tablet, which was launched this week, was designed locally but is assembled in China.

It retails for around USD299 and will be available initially in Brazzaville and Ponte-Noire. VMK expects to take the product to market in several West African countries later this year.

The Android tablet has a 7 inch screen, 1.2GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal memory and supports WiFi, with a battery life of 6 hours. Plans are underway to integrate 3G.

Zambia’s electricity parastatal, Zesco, is installing an advanced fibre optic infrastructure in the Western Province. The new network, being rolled out by China’s ZTE at a cost of around USD80 million, will deliver high speed broadband to government agencies, schools and businesses in the region.

ZTE said in a statement that the network would not only largely accelerate Zesco’s bandwidth lease service and profit growth, but would also promote the development of optical network in the whole country of Zambia.

Malawi has started new water-monitoring technology using mobile phones, which has been pioneered by an international NGO based in Blantyre called Water for People. The new form of monitoring technology is called Field Level Operation Watch (FLOW).

FLOW utilises cutting edge technology including Android cell phone technology and Google Earth software, to collect and share information about water supply points.

Rwanda and Uruguay will be among the first countries to get the latest One Laptop Per Child device. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a project taking rugged, affordable laptops to children in developing nations. Its latest device, the OLPC XO 3.0, is more advanced and delivers a range of charging options for regions with erratic power supplies.

The device can be solar powered or charged by a hand crank, or even a bicycle.
The XO tablet can run Android or its own Sugar OS on a 1024x768 PixelQi display for both indoor and outdoor reading, or a 1024x768 LCD.

The Minister of Communication Harruna Iddrisu has defended the withdrawal of the Data Protection Bill from the House of Parliament.

The Minister explained that during a meeting with the joint committee, the Attorney General and Minister for Justice and other stakeholders over the Bill, specific challenges had arisen.

New player Brodacom has launched Zimbabwe’s first 4G internet service, promising to bring the Southern African nation’s economy into the digital age.

The company, one of Zimbabwe’s 15 licensed IAPs, launched its product by running adverts boldly asking customers the question: What do you expect from your 4G network?