Issue no 721 29th August 2014
Top Story
Ghana’s Mobile Number Portability scheme outstrips South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria
Mobile Number Portability (MNP) schemes have been slow to take off in Sub-Saharan Africa and their performance has not been outstanding. Ghana is the exception and has good reason to be bragging about its success. Russell Southwood spoke to Bob Palitz, a telecom consultant who has been involved in the MNP process from its policy and planning stages through to implementation and launch.Ghana’s MNP scheme was launched on 7 July 2011 and this week the Ghanaian regulator NCA issued its 3-year report on how it has worked. The stats provided are fairly compelling:* Over the three-year life of the scheme,…
Telecoms
World Panel Zambia launches solar mobile chargers
World Panel Zambia launched solar panels that charge mobile phones as fast as a wall plug. Held at Lusaka’s Taj Pamodzi Hotel, the launch was attended by senior Zambian government…
Telecoms
Egypt’s unified licence regime expected to go live in early September
Egypt’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) is said to have dated the long-awaited unified licensing regime, with it now expected to become valid from the start of September…
Telecoms
Rwanda to launch an open-access LTE network
Olleh Rwanda Networks (ORN), a joint-venture between Rwandan government and KT Corporation Korea are set to deploy an open-access 4G LTE wireless broadband network on 1 September 2014 in the…
Telecoms
Door-to-door sales help Movitel win Mozambican mobile subscribers
Mozambican mobile network Movitel says door-to-door sales have helped it secure “80%” market share in the southern African country’s rural areas.Movitel, a joint venture between the Vietnamese military owned telecoms…
Telecoms
Telecoms - In Brief
- Safaricom is formally seeking the approval of its shareholders to acquire various assets of Essar Telecom Kenya (yu) for KES6.9 billion (USD76.76 million). As such, the shareholder vote is…
Internet
Vox Telecom and Vumatel partner to connect Parkhurst
Vox Telecom has confirmed its partnership with Vumatel, the company that won the project to deploy fibre-to-the-home broadband in Parkhurst, as part of its continued commitment to providing high-speed, reliable…
Internet
Going Where the Money Isn’t: Wi-Fi for South African Townships
Spending time in Africa, one is always awestruck. The continent has so much to offer, from sands to rain forests, from apes to zebras, from Afrikaans to Zulu. More than…
Internet
Uganda to benefit from new iWayAfrica managed service solution
Pan African telecoms operator, Gondwana International Networks (GIN) has announced that its iWayAfrica business has launched a managed infrastructure and services solution for the SME market in Uganda. The new…
Internet
Ghana: Surfline Brings 1st 4G LTE Service to Ghana
In line with its commitment to bring latest cutting edge technologies to Ghana, Surfline has raised the bar with the introduction of 1st 4G LTE service to Ghanian ICT market.With…
Internet
Nigeria: Airtel Takes ICT to Rural Communities
AS part of a strategic effort to empower more Nigerians in line with its key objective of becoming Nigeria's number one mobile Internet operator, Airtel Nigeria, has announced an empowerment…
Internet
MyDigitalBridge, Microsoft and partners successfully trial largest TV Whites Spaces project in the world
Windhoek, Namibia 27 August 2014 – MyDigitalBridge Foundation in partnership with Microsoft and Adaptrum, with support from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)-Namibia, has successfully trialed…
Internet
Video on demand is the rising African star, says Teraco
While studies have shown that TV is still the main channel for entertainment across all age groups, Africa’s largest population group (15-24s), regard the Internet as a provider of entertainment,…
Internet
Internet - In Brief
- Standard Chartered Bank has been declared the Best Consumer Internet Bank in Tanzania by the Global Finance magazine. In addition to being named the country winner in Tanzania, Standard…
Computing
Avaya & HP Enterprise Service to jointly Offer African Enterprises cloud services
Avaya and HP Enterprise Services (ES) have signed an agreement stating that the two will offer cloud-based unified communications and contact centre technology, and management solutions for enterprises.The two companies…
Computing
Kenya National Library Services Launches E-Resource Centre for accessing information offline dice design
The Kenya National Library Services (KNLS) has unveiled an e-granary server referred to as “the Internet in a Box” at its Nakuru branch. The facility offers instant access to over…
Telecoms, Rates, Offers and Coverage
MTN Nigeria celebrates 13th anniversary with free data
Nigerian mobile operator MTN is celebrating 13 years of operations in Nigeria, offering users of its data services 100 per cent extra data.Under the offer, a subscriber that buys a…
Money Transfer
Paypal: FNB deal nets 1 million accounts
Paypal had opened 1 million accounts in South Africa through a deal with FNB signed four years ago, Malvina Goldfeld, the head of African business development at the global payments…
Money Transfer
Nigeria launches national electronic ID cards
Nigeria's president has formally launched a national electronic identity card, which all Nigerians will have to have by 2019 if they want to vote. Goodluck Jonathan received the first biometric…
Money Transfer
Nigeria conducts $600m transactions via mobile money in two years
Between 2012 and now, about $600 million transactions have been carried out through the mobile money platform in Nigeria. This figure, according to the Minister of Communications Technology, Dr. Omobola…
Mergers, Acquisitions and Financial Results
Holtzbrinck Ventures Gets 2.5% Direct Stake in Rocket Internet dice design
An early investor in Rocket Internet‘s seven e-commerce startups Holtzbrinck Ventures (“HV”) has exchanged its entire stakes in seven of Rocket’s most developed e-commerce businesses directly into Rocket, in exchange…
Mergers, Acquisitions and Financial Results
Sale of 51% in Djezzy approved by GTH shareholders
Yesterday an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) of Vimpelcom subsidiary Global Telecom Holding (GTH) approved the sale of 51% of Algerian cellco Djezzy (Orascom Telecom Algerie) to the Algerian National Investment…
Digital Content
Africa: Ta Telecom Launches Nafsi, a Big Data Analysis Project in Egypt, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa
Egypt's TA Telecom has announced that the beta trials for Nafsi, Africa's most ambitious big data analysis project, are now underway in Egypt, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa.The Nafsi anthropological…
Digital Content
Kenya: Sanofi's Mommy's APP to Help Mothers' Track Their Babies' Health As They Grow
Sanofi has partnered with Kenya Paediatric association (KPA) to launch an app for mothers to help them keep track their babies' health as they grow.The app dubbed Mommy's App will…
Digital Content
Can A Mobile Phone Help Stop Ebola?
Mobile phones have been essential for spreading important information about the Ebola virus outbreak that has devastated Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, but they could do much more to halt…
Digital Content
Dead floppy drive: Kenyan company recycles global e-waste; lawmakers debate new e-waste law
MACHAKOS, Kenya (AP) — In an industrial area outside Kenya's capital city, workers in hard hats and white masks take shiny new power drills to computer parts. This assembly line…
Digital Content
Tunisia's first video games boss's global ambition
For someone who started playing computer games as a three-year old, and launched his first business when he was 12, Walid Sultan Midani was perhaps destined to set up Tunisia's…
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Events
The 7th edition of DCD Converged Johannesburg Monday, 13th October 2014Join us for this engaging learning opportunity and the chance to network with over 250 data center professionals.- IT &…
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People
Kenya: Peter Koinange Moves From Jamii Telecom to Head Accesskenya's Mombasa OfficeAccessKenya Group has announced the appointment of Peter Koinange as the new Regional Manager for the Mombasa office.The appointment…
