The Citizen

The American Carnegie Mellon University which has just established a regional centre in Rwanda, will largely aim to spearhead the development of science and technology in East Africa.

When Mpasua Msonobari mingled with foreign students mainly from the US who came to Kenya to study African languages, little did he know he was sowing the seed for his future source of bread and butter.

Attracted by his coastal accent and mastery of the language, the foreigners asked Msonobari — then a Kiswahili language student at Kenyatta University — to teach them the language.

With customers of mobile phone operators having to endure a torrid experience due to poor quality of telephony communication, the government now wants service providers to connect to the national ICT backbone. According to the minister for Communication, Science and Technology, Prof Makame Mbarawa, the move along with upgrading infrastructure by the service providers would help reduce the shortcomings.

Dar es Salaam. Vodacom Tanzania managing director Rene Meza has said his firm plans to invest more in building mobile data business, network operations, and financial distributions to boost and strengthen its mobile money transfer (M-pesa) services.

“The company’s growth is based on the fast expanding subscriber list, mobile financial services arena and voice services, and these are appropriate for an emerging economy like Tanzania,” he said in an interview. 

Dar es Salaam. A financial consultancy firm has said East African organisations lag behind peers in the continent in information security breach preparedness due to lack of awareness creation and training to employees on security matters. The 2011 East Africa Security Study Report compiled by Deloitte East Africa revealed organisations in the region responded to problems as they happened rather than working to prevent them from happening.

Vodacom Tanzania plans to spend about Sh150 billion in the next year in expanding and upgrading its network infrastructure in the country.

The additional capital investment is expected to consolidate network services through introducing new technologies to address customers’ need for voice and internet services. Vodacom’s new managing director Rene Meza told a group of editors last week that the firm also plans to improve its data services in order to make its Internet services more affordable.

The Minister of Telecommunication and Postal Service Madut Biar Yel said most operators now use their own gateways, but a government is planning to assign a company to operate Government-owned international gateway, he said. However the Minister did not reveal to the media the name of the company that is to be assigned. The Government is aware of the fact that the software and hardware industry are two sides of the gold coin that would enable Southern Sudan to emerge as a regional IT hub.

Ecobank Tanzania customers should anticipate improved services as the bank changes bank management software.

The shift from Globus to Flexcube, to become effective on Monday next week, will affect all of the bank's operations in the 22 African countries, according to the bank's managing director, James Cantamantu-Koomson.

The government has set aside some $700,000 (about Sh1 billion) to assist small entrepreneurs that can develop software and services for the country's Information and Communication Technology (ICT) market.

Under the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (Costech) a programme called Dar Teknohama Business Incubator, has been established with the aim to stimulate growth of technology-based start-up companies in the country.