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WEEKLY PUBLICATION DEADLINE: 12 pm GMT Sunday.
ISSUE NO 137 SOUTH AFRICA’S TORTUROUS LIBERALISATION: SNO, SNO, QUICK, QUICK, SNO...South Africa’s telecoms liberalisation process took another crab-like step forward last week. The prize will be the first large, liberalized market in Africa. With eventually three international operators, bandwidth prices (that have been kept high by incumbent Telkom) will start to tumble. The process also faced a legal challenge from the trade union grouping Solidarity over share allocations. But this week saw the last stage of the torturous Second National Operator (SNO) bidding process. The successful bidder will get a 51% shareholding that will join Eskom and Transtel (30%) and the Black empowerment group Nexus Connection (19%). The split between Eskom and Transtel will depend upon what each invests. We predict that this complicated "all-inclusive" shareholder structure will consolidate within a year to eighteen months. A number of contenders are in the wings. The bidding attracted no major international telcos, not surprising given the state of the market but disappointing nonetheless. There are two bidders: Goldleaf Communications and Optis. There was a spat last week in which Eskom and Transnet tried to challenge the whole process by saying neither bidder met the Government’s basic criteria and why couldn’t they have the franchise? Both appear to have retracted these statements and stepped back from trying to megaphone their way into a majority position. As Goldleaf’s CEO Peter Archer observed:"Clearly if Government thought Eskom and Transtel could or should run the SNO by themselves, it would have planned accordingly, and there would have been no bidding process for the 51% equity partner." The successful bidder is expected to be announced early next year. Of the two contenders, Optis is widely acknowledged to be the weaker of the two. It has the South African Freedland family behind it and an involvement from Shanghai Telecom. The subsidiary of China Telecom owns only 6% of Optis but is as IT Web commented:"being presented as its public face with a high-level technical delegation currently in SA". Shanghai Telecom was not involved in the preparation of the Optis bid and did not conduct due diligence of the existing Esi-Tel and Transtel networks, but has now promised to throw its weight behind Optis. The rest of its deficiencies, the group says, will be remedied before public hearings due to start on 12 December. It is running hard to make up lost ground, not the least "cutting and pasting" into its bid material that appeared to come from a bid used in Mozambique. Close but maybe not close enough. The current ownership structure of Goldleaf Communications is the Premier Contracts Agency (PCA) (44%), Telecom Africa International Corp (30%) and Gateway Communications (26%). PCA is a team that came out of British Telecom and is according to one of the bid’s partners "a strong resource. BT didn’t want equity but they thought this was an interesting way to be involved." Gateway Communications owns what was FirstNet, one of the largest VAN and professional service operators in the market. The Telecom Africa International Corporation is the brainchild of Dr Joseph Okpaku and "has played a leading role in defining and shaping the strategic priorities for telecommunications in Africa and the means of accomplishing them". Goldleaf has a letter of intent from MTN taking an option on 10% of the shares. Africa Online owner, African Lakes, has also taken a small shareholding. Whoever wins will have a big challenge running a company with such a diverse shareholder base. Nevertheless Gateway’s Managing Director Peter Gbedemah was confident that the new company would "hit the ground running":"Transtel and Eskom have infrastructure in place. International services will start quickly. We can do this by the first half of next year." Alongside the large head office buildings and massive administrative staffing of more conventional telcos, perhaps this is the first outbreak in Africa of what Gbedemah calls "the lite telecom business model". Also despite the involvement of two state entities, the consortium has a refreshing lack of the usual telecoms suspects. Maybe this apparently strange grouping of different interests will produce something that is actually more aggressively competitive than the usual international telco suspects. For those wanting an independent view on Telkom pricing, there is an extremely interesting paper by William H. Melody, the Vodacom Visiting Professor at the LINK Centre, Wits University looking at Telkom pricing available at http://link.wits.ac.za/research/wm20021130.htm.
ZIMBABWE’S SNO APPROVED AFTER A "PAINFUL WAIT"Zimbabwe’s government has broken open its telecoms monopoly by granting a licence to a second fixed line telephone company, TeleAccess. "This comes as a great relief and gives us the opportunity to demonstrate our ability to offer services to subscribers," TeleAccess chief executive Daniel Shumba told BBC News Online. State-owned TelOne has previously been the only supplier of fixed-line services, but has been unable to keep up with demand. More than 1 million people are thought to be on TelOne’s waiting list, with many people waiting for several months to be connected. Only 2-2.5% of Zimbabwe’s population have a connection to a fixed line phone, and Mr Shumba said he hoped to raise this proportion significantly within two years. TeleAccess has been waiting more than a year to gain its licence from the government. The granting of a licence also gives the green light to the creation of a regional broadband network across the Comesa region. TeleAccess won a tender to build the regional network, but had to first prove that it was providing telecoms services within its home market. Daniel Shumba said that, after a painful wait, the regional network should be rolled out by the middle of next year. Shumba is one of Zimbabwe’s most flamboyant businessmen, entering the telecoms market after retiring as an army officer in 1990. STWS OPENS A MAJOR INTERNATIONAL CALL CENTREWith over 1500 call centres already based in South Africa and hopes that the call centre industry can employ up to 50,000 in the years ahead, STWS, the low-cost voice and data service provider for the African market, is playing a central role in positioning South Africa as a leading location for the call-centre industry. Tim Parsonson, director of STWS, commented:"South Africa has always had the right combination of low overheads, service-oriented staff and a technology infrastructure to position itself as a potential player in the call centre industry. With the recent arrival of deregulation and low-cost international communication services, the country is now able to seriously rival the established locations around the world for a slice of the international call-centre market that’s predicted to be worth $17 billion by 2008." A key component of STWS’s service offer is the provision of low-cost toll free numbers in up to 51 countries. One company to take advantage of STWS’s international services is AquaOnline, a leading call centre for the online casino industry. Servicing some of the world’s leading online casinos, AquaOnline has to be able to deliver world-class day-to-day care for a highly demanding client customer-base 24 hours a day 7 days a week globally. Howard Feinberg of AquaOnline, commented:"With the online gambling industry on track to be worth $14.6 billion by 2006, the online casino industry is one of the fastest growth sectors around. However, the market is highly competitive and effective CRM strategies are key to a casino’s success. Through STWS’ International Toll Free Service, AquaOnline has been able to successfully establish customer contact points in a range of overseas markets for our clients. This is an important issue for customers of online casinos who want to be assured that the site they use is genuinely easy to contact and not just hidden in the unknown depths of the internet."Currently AquaOnline handles over 3000 customer enquiries a month from 12 countries via STWS’s voice and data network. UUNET NAMIBIA PEERS WITH TELECOM NAMIBIAUUNet Namibia has signed an agreement with Telecom Namibia to offer a national peering solution to its customers in the local market. "The agreement between UUNet and Telecom Namibia only caters for local traffic inside the country," says Werner Kriessbach, acting MD of UUNet Namibia. Previously, all local traffic had to be routed through SA. "A massive advantage to this direct link is the time efficiency created with regard to the sending and receiving of e-mail in the local market. Corporate and personal e-mails will be exchanged far more rapidly, eradicating the previous time-consuming method," says Kriessbach.The new agreement expands the capacity of the link between the two networks to more than 0.5MBps. NIGERIA’S OPERATORS LAY OUT THEIR FUTURE SERVICE PLANSAll state capitals in Nigeria are to be hooked on to NITEL’S Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) next year.Work on this, according to NITEL’s Territorial Manager in Asaba, Mr Sam Nmegbu, has commenced.He said the project would also include linking other major cities in the country to the scheme. Meanwhile Econet Wireless Nigeria has concluded plans to invest $lOm in Bauchi State, the heartIand of North-eastern Nigeria so as to facilitate the growth of GSM services in the area. (source: This Day via AllAfrica.com ) SONATEL TO OFFER ADSL CONNECTIONSSonatel has announced that it will offer ADSL broadband connections that will be ten times faster than existing Senegalese internet connections. The new service will be branded as ADSL NetHome for individuals and will offer a download speed of 256 kbps and an upload speed of 128 kbps. Its business service will be called ADSL NetPro and will offer a download speed of 1mbps and and upload speed of 128 mbps. Only customers who are thin 4 kms of an ADSL-enabled exchange will be able to get the service. It will be offered first in Grand Dakar, Mdina, Yoff, Ouakam, Hann et Sud Foire and roolled out elsewhere as demand grows. (source: Osiris) SA’S DEPT OF COMMS WANTS ‘ILLEGAL’ TELECOMS EQUIPMENTThe Department of Communications (DOC) has issued a tender for the installation of least-cost routing (LCR) equipment on its telephone system. Yet Telkom, majority owned by the government, has long held that least-cost routing is an illegal circumvention of its network and is undertaking legal action to put the practice to an end. LCR is common practice in SA, with companies ranging from banks to mining houses using it. In its simplest form the equipment consists of what amounts to a cellular phone plugged into a company PABX. The PABX is programmed to split calls, with calls to Telkom numbers routed through a Telkom line and calls to cellphones routed through the cellphone module. (source: http://www.itweb.co.za) NIGERIAN ISPs LOBBY NCC OVER ISM BANDAs the February, 2003 deadline given by the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) for commercial occupants of the Industrial Scientific and Medical Research (ISM) band approaches, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country have appealed to the NCC to allow current occupants of the band to remain for the sake of internet penetration in the country. The operators acting under the aegis of Internet Service Providers Association of Nigeria (ISPAN), said their members were encouraged to embrace the ISM band because it was thought to be an unlicenced frequency band which afforded easy access to interested investors into internet business but had difficulties in obtaining licenced frequency. (source: Media in Nigeria) IN BRIEF- African ICT market research company BMI-TechKnowledge says the Internet non-access services market is expected to grow from 12% of the total IT services market in 2001 to 18% in 2006, opening up a host of opportunities for vendors. - Crystal Clear Software Limited, a Ugandan company making computer software, last week officially launched its micro finance management information system, ŒLoan performer’ version six. - The Uganda Commercial Bank Limited (UCBL) is currently going through a major computerisation exercise in preparation for the installation of new banking services. - Makerere University in Kampala (Uganda) has been chosen as the site of the first women-oriented facility established by the ITU Internet Training Centres Initiative for Developing Countries (ITCI-DC). The ITCI-DC is an initiative between ITU and the private sector in which Cisco Systems Inc. is a key partner. - La Francophonie group starts a Linux initiation campaign in nine African countries. Workshops are being developed in nine countries, known as ‘LABTIC’, in partnership with local free software users association. More at: http://intif.francophonie.org/INTIF/CP/VoirCP.cfm?ID=230 - Senegal’s international internet bandwidth capacity is now 79 mbps, a total reached with the addition of 34 megabits from the underwater fibre optic cable.
BOTCHED US$16M DEAL WITH IFC LED TO AFRICA ONLINE PURGEAccording to Kenya’s Daily Nation the corporate sackings that saw six top managers depart Africa Online last week have been linked to a botched investment deal at its owner, African Lakes Corporation, and fundamental differences over the firm’s strategic direction. Sources told BusinessWeek that the $16 million deal "which was to see the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the AIG Africa Infrastructure Fund take a significant equity stake in the business" collapsed on the table at the eleventh hour, depriving the London firm of a much-needed source of cash to bolster its flagging operations. The collapse of the deal with the World Bank’s private sector lending arm was said to have triggered the desperate retrenchment of Africa Online’s top management, as it became apparent there was urgent need to rationalise its cash-flow in the face of an ever-rising cost base. The lay-offs coincide with a dreary run on the Nairobi Stock Exchange, where the firm has seen some 87.9 per cent of its market capitalisation value wiped off since it debuted, from Sh12.6 billion to just Sh1.5 billion last week. The group communications manager, Gunnar Hillgartner, told BusinessWeek that the unprecedented sackings would save the firm about Sh55 million annually and were necessitated by a depressed technology sector. "There was a need to rationalise and reduce costs without affecting operations. In such a challenging investment climate, it was difficult to maintain a high central cost structure," he said. A statement put out by Africa Lakes on November 8 confirmed the collapse of the IFC talks, and added that the firm was finalising short-term facilities to finance operations. While details of the still-born IFC equity deal are still scanty, sources intimated that the Bretton Woods financiers walked out after their proposal to have the firm’s head office moved from London to Nairobi was flatly rejected by the firm’s board. The IFC logic went something like this: Since all of the firm’s subsidiaries were operating in Africa, it was natural and cheaper to have its head office there than maintain two expensive "bureaucracies" in Nairobi and London. But the immediate cause of the fallout was irreconcilable differences between the Africa Online’s management and the parent firm’s board on the subsidiary’s strategic direction. The former were opposed to a move to deploy what they perceived to be a costly satellite link solution run by one of African Lakes subsidiaries instead of buying bandwidth from existing fibre optic links on the continent. There was also bad blood between Africa Online management and London over what was seen as an ill-conceived expansionist binge into such areas as portals, media e-commerce and marketing that they felt was unnecessary and expensive as it was diverting attention from the core business of providing Internet access. "We felt we were being led to ruin by people who, apart from providing the capital, did not have any institutional memory in running a technology business. And the tragedy is that despite our record of profitability, their obsession with "experiments" was proving to be a drain on the very viability of the business," said one of the affected managers. In a purge that has shocked the Internet industry in Kenya, CEO Kamande Muiruri was shown the door, together withJames Ochola (general manager-Kenya).The two were among the founding members of the celebrated Kenyan ISP start-up, together with former chairman Ayisi Makatiani, who resigned in October to concentrate on Gallium, a private venture capital fund. Mike Ralston (vice president, group business development) and Ben Parker, editor-in-chief of the AfricaOnline.com website, were also reported to have left. Clearly, the development mirrors a discernible shift of power and management responsibility for Africa Online’s operations which seems to have been accelerated by the recent resignation of Mr Makatiani. Hitherto, Africa Online’s satellite offices in other African states reported to the Nairobi office under Mr Muiruri, which was seen as the hub of African Lakes’ ISP and data network division. In the new scheme of things authored by London, it would appear that Mr Muiruri’s former position has been downgraded, re-branded managing director and handed to Fred Murunga. (source: http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNation/Supplements/bw/current/story031= 220025.htm ) IN BRIEF- Zimbabwe’s High Court last week postponed placing mobile telephone service provider Cosmos Cellular (Pvt) Limited under provisional judicial management until the outcome of Cosmos’ Supreme Court appeal. The Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (PTC), last year obtained a provisional order placing Cosmos under judicial management following a two- year wrangle over a $100 000 debt the parastatal says it is owed by the service provider. - Johnnic’s digital media division cut its losses significantly in the six months to end-September. A loss of R1.9 million before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) is an 82% improvement on the R10.7 million loss for the same period last year. Revenue grew 63% to R63.9 million.The division consists of 10 online and multimedia companies held mainly through Johnnic e-Ventures. - Uganda Telecom Limited has won the 2002 Uganda Investor of the Year Award. - Media and technology group Naspers (owners of MWeb) remains deeply in the red, but has managed to halve its headline loss to R143 million in the six months to 30 September on the back of better revenue and improved margins. RESPONSESISSUE 136: GO AHEAD AND FORM ZAMISPA I have been reading your news often and it is very interesting how the same things go around the African countries. I can guarantee the Zambian ISPs that once one of them gathers the courage to start the association it will be done because it is always the case when each one has the mind and plan to do it but no one starts anything. When I arrived in Ghana after being abroad for a while and realized that my company, Tin-Ifa, being an ISP and having had problems from introducing VOIP, we needed to have the ISPs together. After which I was convinced that we had the same problems so we could stand together. Without this, the incumbent and their policies will never favour our world. They need to be united and have one voice, i can suggest a name for them: " ZAMIPSA (Zambia internet service providers association)" Hey what do you think? All they need is a place to meet and minds to think which i believe they have lots of. Nanayaa Owusu-Prempeh
M-WEB PROVIDES FIRST AFRICAN MICRO-BILLING SYSTEMM-Web is launching a new micro-billing service that will allow subscribers to add the cost of their online purchases to their monthly M-Web bill, so paying only one account monthly. M-Web says the service is a first for a South African Internet service provider and is intended to make Internet use and online shopping more convenient for consumers. The new service, Add-to-your-Account (A-2-A), was piloted when M-Web offered members an opportunity to subscribe to magazines and pay for them via their M-Web accounts. M-Web says over 10 000 subscriptions were sold in this way, demonstrating the value of one billing relationship. A-2-A is being launched on the M-Web mobile hub this month, enabling members to purchase credits for personalised SMS messages such as daily weather reports and weekly movie updates. Once the service is established, it will be extended to include other micro-services. Derek Hershaw, GM, M-Web Connect, says the Internet has evolved from a pure information and communication resource to a valuable tool for managing daily affairs. "A-2-A will make online buying easy for people who increasingly rely on the Internet, but don’t want to be constantly inputting their payment details for micro services." Micro-services include personalised SMSs, fax-to-e-mail/e-mail-to-fax and specific information requests. A-2-A is ideally suited to services such as digital downloads and buying SMS credits where the transaction value for any one purchase is relatively small. "There are a number of methods for paying online and this provides an alternative to existing Internet payment options. We have an established and trusted billing relationship with our members and therefore it makes sense for us to enable them to add the cost of certain services to the bills we send them." says Hershaw. (source: http://www.itweb.co.za) IN BRIEF- AfriCam said its appeal for donations in February had brought in $32 000 from the AfriCam community, which had been sufficient to keep the site running until November. However, with operating costs of around $5,000 a month and revenue of only around $1 000 a month, the site is again running out of money and needs support to stay live. - Mbolo.com is offering African perfumes in its online Christmas shop. - Rural women, most of whom are farmers speaking only the local language of their region, are among the most isolated groups in Africa. Anne Walker describes the rationale and methodology used in developing the CD-ROM "Rural Women in Africa: Ideas for Earning Money" designed to meet the needs of rural women in Africa to have access to relevant and appropriate information that will improve their marketing and survival skills. http://www.wougnet.org/Documents/NAWODA/anewtool.html - MTN Business Solutions, a division of MTN South Africa, has joined forces with Primedia to roll out a live audio stream of Radio 702 directly across the MTN network on 083 9000 702. Radio 702 followers can keep up-to-date with the latest news and information on local and international events as they happen, no matter where they are in the world
OPENLINK USES MONO TO ENABLE CROSS PLATFORM INTEGRATION OF .NETXimian, Inc., the leading open source desktop company, today announced that OpenLink Software, Inc., an industry leader in the development and deployment of secure, high-performance Universal Data Access and Web Services middleware, is using Mono as part of the development efforts for Virtuoso 3.0, its latest Universal Server release. Mono enables OpenLink Virtuoso to provide a consistent .NET common language runtime (CLR) and frameworks integration implementation across Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and UNIX. The OpenLink effort demonstrates platform-independent web services creation using any .NET-bound language, web services hosting, ASP.NET application invocation without IIS, and ADO.NET based data access. OpenLink’s adoption represents one of the first commercial uses of the Mono Project, a community initiative launched by Ximian to develop an open source version of the Microsoft .NET development platform for Linux and UNIX. With OpenLink Virtuoso 3.0, companies will be able to create XML web services, user-defined types, stored procedures, functions and triggers using any .NET bound language on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and a variety of UNIX platforms. As a result, customers will be able to cost-effectively exploit the value propositions of web services, XML, and universal data access in general. With the help of Mono, OpenLink’s vision of maximum incorporation of new technologies and paradigms with minimum disruption to existing IS infrastructures remains a reality. "Our goal at OpenLink is to consistently offer our customers freedom of choice in line with adoption and implementation of new paradigms and technologies", said Kingsley Idehen, President and CEO of OpenLink. "Mono has enabled us to add .NET integration to Virtuoso 3.0 without compromising one of its fundamental benefits, which is platform, language, and database independence." OpenLink’s adoption is the latest in a series of milestones for the Mono Project. In July, the O’Reilly Open Source Convention featured demonstrations on Linux of a self-hosting C# (pronounced C-sharp) compiler, CLR, and web applications utilizing Microsoft.NET components, including ASP.NET and ADO.NET. More than 100 developers from around the world currently contribute to the project, and as part of its development efforts, OpenLink is now contributing actively. "While the Mono project is not complete, companies such as OpenLink are already seeing benefit in the technologies and tools developed by the Mono Project," said Miguel de Icaza, CTO of Ximian and leader of the Mono Project. "I am very proud that Mono is well on its way to realizing its two key objectives &SHY; dramatically enhancing developer productivity while enabling a choice of platforms for building and deploying .NET compatible applications." The Mono Project is scheduled for completion next year. For more information about Mono, visit the Ximian web site at www.ximian.com/mono <http://www.ximian.com/mono> or the Mono Project web site at www.go-mono.com <http://www.go-mono.com/> . Developer information, including release notes, software builds, source code and testing status, is available at the Mono Project site.
* Strive Masiyiwa, the founder and group chief executive of Econet Wireless, has been named one of the world’s 15 most influential young business executives in a CNN/Time Magazine poll.Masiyiwa was chosen together with 14 executives from 11 countries out of more than 100 business people nominated by the correspondents of CNN and Time magazine. * East African and other developing countries need to invest more in information and communication technologies to optimise the benefits of global advances in this field says Markhtar Diop, the Country Director for the World Bank in Kenya and in charge of six other countries in the Horn of Africa. Mr Diop made these remarks during the official opening of the East African leg of AITEC’s Finance-IT series, the African Banking and Finance Technology Forum, at the Grand Regency in Nairobi over 26-28 November 2002. Diop said fundamental policy reforms, including greater deregulation of the telecommunications sector, are necessary to create an enabling environment for deepening technology advances in the private and public sectors. * The Computer Society of Kenya (CSK) has announced this year’s winners of its annual Kenya Computing and Communications Awards (KCCA) amidst complaints of favoritism and lack of objectivity in the nominations and selection of the winners. According to Kenya’s Netwatch:"Some members of the society have recently lamented the poor performance of the society in championing the interests of the ICT professionals in this country. Compared to other professional societies like Marketing Society of Kenya (MSK), Public Relations Society of Kenya (PRSK) and the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK), CSK is several miles behind in spearheading interests of its members at the national and international forums". "As far as the KCCA winners are concerned, members have noted that some companies have perennially won the awards though it is public knowledge that their performances have gravely deteriorated. At the same time, some companies that offer quality services to Kenyans have never been recognized. This has made it easy to fault the nomination procedures being implemented by CSK. Many observed that very few deserving companies were rightly awarded". "One very curious fact about this year’s winners is that they were all sponsors of the event. This casts a lot of doubts at the honesty of the CSK in granting them the awards as many believe this to be a gesture of gratitude to the companies on the part of the professional body. It has also been rumored that the society uses the awards as baits to win favors and support from the industry player". "In the same industry, under the best digital leased line provider category, Access Kenya scooped the award for the second consecutive year. This selection has been protested fiercely by cyber cafes who represent the majority of leased line users. These protests have emanated from recent outcries from some of the cyber café operators about the poor service they have been receiving from the company. Whereas it may be true that the services might have improved in the last one or so months, it is hypocritical to assume that it is possible to objectively gauge improved performance in that short time". The individual nominations included: Lucy Njoroge of Openview (IT Entrepreneur of the Year), George Kinyua (Computer engineer of the Year), Paul Rich of the Nation (IT Director of the Year) and Dominic Ndegwa (Computer Manager of the Year). * Martin Vergunst, MD of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) in SA, has been appointed head of the company’s global financial process outsourcing operation which will be based in Cape Town. JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES- The Tanzania Communications Commission is inviting bidders to provide consultancy services to establish a cost-oriented interconnection charge model among telecommunications network operators in the United Republic of Tanzania. Bidding documents with an outline of the scope of work and other details, including conditions will be available from the Commission at Mawasiliano House, Plot 304 Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road, Dar Es Salaam from Wednesday 4/12/2002. Bids have to be in by 20 January 2003. EVENTSAITEC ANNOUNCES EXTENSIVE EVENT PROGRAMME FOR 2003 AITEC has announced an ambitious exhibition and conference programme for next year, including 20 events in nine countries. In addition to the group’s long established national ICT exhibitions and conferences in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, AITEC is extending its programme of specialist events to include: - A Southern African Internet Forum to be held in association with Balancing Act and under the auspices of the Open Society Initiative, to be held in Swaziland in April. - The African Open Source Forum, to be held in Mauritius in July to provide a platform for IT professionals from throughout Africa to share knowledge and experience of Open Source software implementation. - A national conference on IT in education in Uganda In addition, AITEC is extending its highly successful Finance-IT series of Banking and Finance Technology Forums to add a Southern African Forum in Zambia in June and a North African Forum in Cairo in October &SHY; both to be held under the auspices of the Comesa Bankers Association. The group’s annual flagship event, the African Computing & Telecommunications Summit, will be held in Abuja, at the invitation of the Nigerian Government, at the end of August. The theme of the fifth annual ACT Summit will be "Mobilising ICT applications and projects for effective corporate, national and regional development". AITEC has introduced two new national ICT events: - The Ethiopian Computing & Telecommunications Exhibition in Addis Ababa over 30 January &SHY; 2 February, in association with Timeout Addis Ababa. - AITEC Sierra Leone, with the theme "Mobilising IT for national recovery" Following the success of this year’s AITEC Europe event, held in London in November, AITEC is planning a follow-up African-Europe ICT Partnership Forum in 2003, which will aim to develop business partnerships between African and European enterprises. For full details of these events, see the AITEC web site: www.aitecafrica.com To propose conference presentations or request conference or exhibition details, e-mail info@aitecafrica.com or tel +44-1480-831300 AITEC Programme * NIGERIAN YOUTH SUMMIT FOR DECEMBER 12, 2002 Nigerian Youths under the auspices of New Dawn Communications will assemble at The Golden Gate restaurant, Lagos on December 12, 2002 to discuss the future and development of Information Technology. They call it ICT LEADERSHIP and YOUTH SUMMIT. Theme: Internet; The only option.
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