Across Africa, developers and programmers are coming up with new technologies from mobile banking to mapping software and medical tablets to cloud storage. Now the continent is increasingly relying on its own homegrown innovations.

But this technology revolution is not without its challenges. So what are the obstacles facing the industry, and will this new breed of innovators be able to overcome them?

In this episode of The Stream, we speak to Eric Osiakwan, former director of the African Internet Service Providers Association, and Juliana Rotich (@afromusing), co-founder and executive director of Ushahidi.

Source: The Stream on Aljazeera

When we started Balancing Act 12 years ago, Africa’s ICT entrepreneurs were talking about a whole range of services and applications but none of the basics – like bandwidth, a critical mass of users, transaction technologies and finance – were in place. Over the last 12 months, many different things have begun to fall into place under each of these headings. Launches like Eskimi and Spinlet have turned the usual entrepreneurial road map for Africa round a different way.

But what has been as impressive has been the growth of soft networks and hard, physical infrastructure like incubators and the way that these things have created links between Africa’s innovators and the rest of the world.

VC4Africa started in 2007 when Ben White went to a meeting of the African Venture Capital Association in Dakar. It became clear at this meeting that its members were all focused on the “big deals” and that there was a gap in small-scale, start-up finance. As co-founder Ben White of VC4Africa told us:”Micro-finance is very limiting. It’s just too small. So there’s a missing middle between it and the big deals.”

Rather than set out to raise that capital, White sought to create a platform that would create a community that would allow entrepreneurs to describe what they were doing (or wanted to do) and offered investors a place to come and see what was happening:”The investor can connect with a start-up in Accra but also the Ghanaian community in a city like Amsterdam might also help.”

What started as a hobby on the Ning platform went professional as Bill Zimmerman (of ActivSpaces in Cameroon) and white came together to launch the platform. It now has 4,400 members and is still growing:”We put the focus on getting quality. New members are screened and vetted through a registration form that acts as a background check.”

Members can post a description of their project and 2,000 of them have done so from 25 different countries. So where did most of them come from?”The top ‘usual suspects’ are Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon. The latter is because of Bill Zimmerman’s work with ActivSpaces there. There have been some nice surprises like an entrepreneur in Togo and some individuals from Ethiopia.”

What’s bad news for Europe has been good news for the continent:”The European investment community is looking at Africa because of the problems in Europe. But there’s also lots of members from the BRICs and south-south relations.”

The impact of these kind of soft networks are hard to track but White and Zimmerman give several examples:

•    The entrepreneur in Togo teamed up with one in Nigeria after they found they had a shared passion for education and are now developing an Android app together.

•    Members in the community lend their expertise through mentoring. Often there are daily exchanges through e-mail.

•    The site has connected several businesses including etsy-online and Market Fleas with international investors from the USA, France and Holland.

•    An American software company Next2.us was able to find a Kenyan partner through the site and able to pilot and launch services, starting in August 2011.

VC4Africa had a three year budget to be able to build a community, demonstrate how it can work and the ways in which it creates value. Going forward, its business model will be based on a Fremium model where members pay for additional services:”We’ll also be asking members that for any match made via VC4Africa that they make a 3% voluntary contribution.”

The next big development has been the creation of physical spaces for ICT entrepreneurs. BongoHive’s Hubs in Africa identifies 17 of these spaces that are a mix of technology hubs, business incubators, university tech labs and hacker spaces.

Indeed, Zambia’s BongoHive is one of the latest of these spaces on a road pioneered by Nairobi’s iHub. This started last year in Lusaka after a visit to iHub and a meeting of 25 people who wanted Android capacity building. The space is in the Ministry of Education and it has set up training programmes for its members in things like Java.

In September 2011, it got US$17,000 funding from a philanthropist called Brenda Davies for computers, testing devices and training. So the initial work was to build apps for her and VVOB, an NGO that the co-founder Lukonga Lindunda works for. As Lindunda says:”The aim was to give the developers an app to work through and to understand how to meet a deadline for specific projects.” That same month they also worked with Ushahidi on using their software to monitor elections. In December last year, Ushahidi and a Canadian developer ran an Android Boot Camp for members. The aim this year is to run a competition that will get some of the developers some recognition.

To put the cream on the cake, three African developers were shortlisted for the Mobile Premier Awards organized by Apps Circus at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week: Ghanaian App Developer Robert Lamptey of Saya, Ugandan app developer Christine Ampaire of Mafuta Go!, and South African app developer Anne Shongwe of Moraba (see here for more).
The winner of the Ringmasters Award (given by the organisers) was Christine Ampaire of Mafuta Go!, which is an app that helps drivers find the nearest and cheapest petrol station.

App developer Christine Ampaire explains, “Our application was a product of a 48 hour hackathon called Garage 48. We are a group of students who are passionate about our country and the city we live in, and we wanted to address the daily struggle of rising petrol prices in our city.” Garage 48 is an Estonian organization that organizes workshops that allow developers to put a product together in 48 hours.

The Second Open Innovation Africa Summit supported by Nokia and infoDev is taking place in Nairobi from 29-31 May 2012.

To follow the exchanges about this news, you need to be on Twitter. Follow us on @BalancingActAfr

Source: Balancing Act Africa

The price at which people access the Internet now have also dropped considerably on the back of a reduction in the wholesale prices of international bandwidths while at the same time capacity has improved by about 65 times.

About 18 months ago Internet Service Providers (ISPs) bought e1 bandwidth for US$4,500 but now buy the same bandwidth capacity at less than US$1,000, which Internet providers expect to further fall as competition from other carriers such the West Africa Cable System (WACS) is expected to be operational and available for use this year.

The situation has excited Internet providers who have expressed satisfaction at the impact the entry of additional international bandwidth providers have had on the cost of Internet access in the country.

Overseers of two of the country’s biggest Internet service providers, Busy Internet and IS Internet Solutions Ghana, explained in separate interviews to the B&FT on Friday that new entrants Main One Cable and Glo have helped to boost a surge in the capacity requirements and usage of clients due to bandwidth availability and reduced latencies, including an uptake in cloud computing.

“Due to the emergence of these multiple undersea cable systems, we now have the ability to provide multiple redundancies on international links which hitherto was non- existent due to the nation’s reliance on just the SAT-3 capacity,” said Yvette Adounvo Atekpe, Regional Managing Director of IS Internet Solutions Ghana Limited.

“The new bandwidths that have come into the country have created additional capacity and it has given options and redundancy to end-users and service providers,” added Praveen Sadalage, CEO of Busy Internet Ghana.

Some Internet users argue that the drop in the wholesale price at which the ISPs buy international bandwidth has not reflected in the retail price for end-users.

According to the ISPs, though the retail price of Internet access has not gone down in comparison to the percentage decline in wholesale price, Internet users are now having improved experience from Internet usage and more value for their money.

“The reduction in wholesale pricing has affected the retail pricing of Internet services to a considerable extent. Though prices have reduced, it is not as low as previously touted or expected due to the lack of adequate or extensive last-mile infrastructure in-country to link the capacity to the client site.

“Service providers therefore have to incur additional excessive costs to provision last-mile infrastructure via fibre or wireless to enable clients’ access,” explained Mrs. Atekpe.

Mr. Sadalage added: “Yes, prices have dropped and also users are getting increased capacity in the same price category. The important point to note is that while capacity prices have dropped, other costs have gone up significantly. This has a bearing on the final price to customers.

“Internet-user numbers have increased significantly in the last year and are expected to be increasing in the coming years as more and more business and services go online. A lot needs to be done to increase the user numbers further to reach a critical mass for real price drops to be felt at the end user level.

“The biggest hurdle for Internet penetration is end-user devices like PCs and laptops, which even today cost more than GH¢500 in Ghana. If this can be brought down to say GH¢200-250, the demand for connectivity will increase and the end-user connectivity price can come down significantly.”

The National Communications Authority licenced Nigerian-based Main One Cable and Glo as well as West-Africa Cable Systems to bring competition to the international bandwidth market, which has over the years been monopolised by Vodafone’s SAT3.

For ISPs, the coming of the other fibre-optic cable operators is very timely as it falls within the realm of the Ghana Broadband Strategy document which seeks to reduce broadband cost by 80 percent and also help the government to realise its dream of making Internet access available to about 50 percent of the estimated 23 million Ghanaian population over the next five years.

The drop in wholesale prices reflects projections by industry analysts that the price in international bandwidth and broadband cost will keep dropping to a level that will be cheap enough for all Ghanaians to access the Internet at high-speed.

Eric Osiakwan, the Coordinator of Ghana Connect — an advocacy group dedicated to the promotion of affordable broadband Internet access in the country — told the B&FT that competition among the international bandwidth providers will bring the cost of Internet access down to an internationally acceptable level.

“They have generated competition at the beach which has dropped prices significantly to about US$1,000 a month.

“We expect this price to fall further to about US$200 by the end of the year like in East Africa,” he said.

Mr. Osiakwan re-echoed the position of the ISPs that customers are getting more capacity for the same prices in some cases, even though the terrestrial fibre to reach the customer is limited, adding: “Hopefully that should also change this year, and so those prices will also go down.”

By Evans Boah-Mensah

Source: B&FT

Glo Mobile Ghana Limited today launched a number reservation campaign to kick-start activities marking the launch of its commercial services in Ghana.

The campaign dubbed ‘Reserve Your Number’ gives one million minus one (999,999) Ghanaians the chance to reserve their special 023-3 numbers on the Glo Mobile Network by texting their preferred number to the Glo SMS code 0230010100.

Chief Operating Officer of Glo Ghana Mobile Ghana, George Andah told journalists in Accra that the ‘Reserve Your Number Campaign’ marks the first of series of launch activities earmarked for the entry of the Glo Network into the Ghanaian telecoms market.

Mr. Andah urged Ghanaians to take advantage of the excitement and benefits of the number reservation exercise, and join the Glo network which promised superior quality and value offerings at competitive rates.

He said the reservation was free, apart from the normal SMS cost and it would be on first-request-first-served basis.

“In accordance with National Communications Authority (NCA) guidelines on Number Registration, no single individual subscriber shall be permitted to reserve more than five (5) Glo Mobile numbers and the numbers will be activated upon the commencement of commercial operation,”

The Glo COO said people will start experiencing the Glo Mobile Ghana network from today because the number reservation campaign is going to run on the Glo mobile sms platform, adding that the full experience of all the bouquet of exciting services on the network will start once the reserve your number campaign reaches the desired threshold.

Mr. Andah pledged that Glo Mobile Ghana would be the champion of values in their products, pricing and service delivery, saying “that is the social contract we wish to sign with you from today”.

Mr. Andah said to date, Glo had invested over $750 million into deploying and installing the latest broadband technology, Next Generation Networks, over 1,600 state-of-the-art Base Transceiver Stations (BTS), four ultra modern Switches with capacity for up to 10 million lines with congestion-free service, 18 Base Switching Centres (BSC), 800 3G Node Bs, an ultra-modern Call Centre and 25 GloWorld outlets.

Glo is the sixth operator to enter Ghana’s dynamic and challenging telecom market, which watchers and players have not made a secret of the opinion that it is ready to receive a sixth operator.

Glo comes at a time when the market is almost saturated at more than 80% penetration; with the five existing operators commanding more than 21 million subscriptions in a population of 24 million.

Some telecom CEO have said Glo does not have many options in the voice market, and could only survive on the back of data services, but George Andah has said the speed with which Ghanaians are reserving their numbers shows Ghanaians are ready for Glo and that presented great opportunities for growth.

Source: : Ghana Business News

Google CEO Larry Page announced that the company’s social network, Google+, is off to a strong start.

Google’s infant social network experienced a recent growth spurt.

Google+ has more than 90 million registered users, Google CEO Larry Page said during the company’s earnings presentation on Thursday. That more than doubles the 40 million that Google reported in October.

“We’re very excited about the growth we’ve had, and we’ve certainly seen a tremendous number of people added every day,” Page said. “That notion of identity is a deep part of what we’re doing.”

Google launched its social network last June. Since then, it has added toolbars and other buttons on its websites to aggressively promote the service. Google stirred up controversy last week when it began giving prominent placement to Google+ pages in results delivered by its search engine.

On average, Google engineers have introduced a new feature related to Google+ every day since its launch, Page said.

It took Facebook about four years to reach 90 million users, according to Facebook’s public statements. After starting as a students-only service, Facebook now has 800 million people checking their accounts at least once a month, about 10 times that of Google+.

Analysts say Google+ was built specifically to challenge Facebook’s growing dominance on the Web. Google and Facebook generally do not collaborate. Another rival social network, Twitter, complained that the recent changes to Google search favor Google+ and harm Twitter’s ranking on results pages.

“We provide a lot of third-party data in search, and we would love to have more,” Page said in response to an analyst’s question. “Generally, companies have been walling that data off.”

People who register for Google+ tend to be dedicated users of Google’s search engine, e-mail and documents services. More than 60% of them use Google products every day, and 80% visit a Google site at least once a week, Page said.

Page, who posted his comments on his Google+ page, did not say how often or what percentage of users specifically visit its social networking service. “Engagement on Plus is also growing tremendously,” Page said. A Google spokesman declined to comment.

Source : Myjoyonline

Philip Sowah – Managing Director of Airtel Ghana

The fastest growing network with the most innovative products, Airtel Ghana, has officially launched the upgrade of its 3.5G service to 3.75G.

The upgraded service is to offer world class third generation experience to consumers.

In a speech, the Managing Director of Airtel Ghana, Mr Phillip Sowah, said the newly launched 3.75G technology is a platform that will enable communities to expand their social and commercial horizons.

This he said,was part of the company’s plans to develop new and exciting data bundles to address the data needs of its consumers.

He said the first telecommunication company to launch the 3G service in Ghana, Airtel, and currently operating in all ten regions in the country, now has the 3G capability which allows users to make video calls, watch live TV, send and receive emails and download music from internet enabled devices.

Mr Sowah noted that the latest 3.75G technology championed by the company is the latest global HSPA+ technology with 21mbps, also being rolled out in Europe and the USA.

The head of Corporate Communications and External Affairs of Airtel Ghana, Donald Gwira, said the 3.75G platform will enable subscribers to combine the vast potential of the internet with the convenience of other devices including cellular phones.

“For the small and medium business, it will enable the entrepreneur to embrace a highly mobile way of working with high speed access to email and internet, and it will allow large companies to increase productivity through vastly enhanced mobile internet speeds and access to record and allow for communication via video calls on handsets,” he noted, explaining that the availability of the 3.75G has deepened Airtel’s coverage and speed level.

Source : Myjoyonline

According to Glo, the rescheduling has arisen due to logistics constraints.

GLOBACOM had earlier indicated plans to finally launch its operations in Ghana as the sixth mobile phone service provider on November 17, 2011.

This was to follow the commercial launch of its GLO-1 submarine cable officially last August.

However, officials of Glo met with journalists this morning to announce that its launch has been rescheduled.

Checks with developments in the telecom industry also say that Glo’s new move could be a way of outwitting its competitors but Mr. Obesitan, the Events and Promotions director of Glo, downplayed such assertions.

He said “We are confident that with the infrastructure we have deployed and the amount of work we have put in to this, we will meet the expectation of Ghanaians.

“They [Ghanaians] have been waiting and we are doing a great job; it’s not a joke to build one thousand six hundred towers because we don’t intend to be a regional network but a national telecom operator from day one. ”

He added that technically, the company was ready to take off by way of receiving calls on the network, thus could cater for about ten million subscribers.

Meanwhile responding to concerns that the seemingly overstretched heightened expectation of Glo’s launch could work against the company, Mr. Obesitan said the delay was not deliberate and assured that the company was eager to begin operations.

Glo has, on another hand, commissioned an ultra-modern Call-centre at Spintex in Accra.

The fully built-in Call-centre has the capacity to handle close to 10 million customers and is also expandable. The facility operates in 4 languages; English, Twi, Ga and Hausa.

There are already test runs from various regions of the country through the call-centre to ascertain the operators’ readiness for the market.

GLOBACOM was granted the country’s sixth mobile license in June 2008 and has since been working tirelessly to launch its operations.

Source: Citifmonline

Prior to the rebranding of Kasapa to Expresso, the then MD, Bob Palitz resigned and Hisham Ayoub took over as MD. But months afterward, a new MD by name El Amir Ahmed El Amir Yousif has surreptitiously taken over from Hisham Ayoub, who was equally transferred quietly to another Expresso operation outside Ghana to serve in another capacity yet to be confirmed. A reliable source close to this paper said Mr. Yousif was introduced to workers at a special durbar held in his honour at Alisa Hotel at North Ridge, Accra.

He said Mr Ayoub was replaced because of poor performance, characterised by the consistent loss of subscribers from about 400,000 when Bob Palitz left, to the current 200,000 plus.

Mr Ayoub promised to shed of the rather reserved image of the company by being aggressive.

He introduced the Cliq modem for starters, which is currently one of the most competitive on the market in terms of prices, tariff and speed, but that was not enough to keep him in office.

The source also said even though many subscribers were lost under Hisham Ayoub, he also sacked a number of valuable staff from the company, including top management staff, some of whom are now working with Enterprise Insurance Company Limited.

In line with this, the new MD has been compelled to put the substantive Marketing Manager, Fred Quainoo in charge of Operations, and Devices in addition to his duties at Marketing Manager.

Meanwhile the ExpressoCliq modem has been temporarily withdrawn from the market and has been under review for months now, while tens of thousands of customers are said to be on a waiting list for their modems.

The source noted that the Cliq modem is practically the cash cow for the company with each individual sales person sometimes making sales of up to GH¢4,000 per day.

But the company’s current review of the Cliq modem is denying them of all the that potential money.

Prior to Espresso’s launch, its predecessor, Kasapa was at the forefront of the campaign for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), but Expresso under Hisham Ayoub went completely flat on MNP, possibly because they suddenly realised that they would need to give new phones to people who port to their CDMA network.

The company has been losing customers consistently every month since the introduction of MNP.

“As we speak now all the computers at the High Street branch of the Expresso have all broken down for months now and staff there are not able to get into the company’s data system to enter daily transaction so the manager there records all transactions in books and sends them to the Dansoman branch everyday for entry.

“Management is not thinking about how to fix all these challenges to bring us back on track to get customers and make some money but they are quick to write query letters to customer service staff and are rather running quizzes for customer service staff every week as if the customers service staff are the problems,” the source said.

Expresso is the only CDMA operator in Ghana and the smallest operator in terms of subscribers, holding some 204,153 subscribers as at September ending this year, which is less than one per cent of the market share.

“Since the new MD came into office, he made all departmental heads do a presentation of their strategies and he practically damned all the strategies saying they were not competitive strategies,” the source noted.

“It looks like Mr Yousif is going to bring some positive change, but some of the old guys at Expresso have entrenched themselves into their positions through all kinds of means so I am not too sure if he will succeed,” the source said.

El Amir was appointed Chief Executive of Expresso Senegal in July 2009. He is focused on building and growing the business in Senegal by implementing a highly motivated and loyal customer-centric team.

The highlight of his stewardship so far has been the successful launch of 3G services in June 2010.

El Amir, who has over 22 years experience in the telecommunication sector, started his career in 1987 with Sudan’s national carrier, Sudan Telecommunications Public Corporation, now known as Sudatel Telecom.

Along with many project management roles during his career at Sudatel, he was a Planning Manager for more than eight years.

He was also part of the original team that launched Sudatel’s first mobile network, now known as SudaniOne.

In 2007, El Amir was appointed the Chief Technology Officer of Chinguitel in Mauritania where he was responsible for the installation and launch of the CDMA network. Later in the same year he was appointed Chief Executive of Chinguitel. El Amir graduated from the Sudan Telecommunication Institute with a High Diploma in Telecommunication Engineering.

Source : Daily Guide

The world’s most overpriced tech products

When coming up with my list for the most overpriced tech products, I had to set some ground rules. Simply slapping some diamonds and platinum on an iPad wouldn‘t count — anyone could do that. The product had to be designed by the company selling it and the product price needed to far exceed the intrinsic value of the materials. I also selected products where the overpricing is made even more obvious by having much cheaper options available that are just as functional (or in some cases more so).

In the end, I came up with six products that are so outrageously overpriced they just had to make the list. Here they are:

6. Vertu Constellation Quest Smartphone ($8,299)
Vertu, a division of Nokia, has built a brand around super-luxury cell phones for the Hollywood glitterati and Russian oligarchs of the world. The Vertu Constellation Quest is a beautiful phone, with hand-tooled leather, sapphire keys and other luxury features. But at the end of the day, it’s still just a phone, and not a very advanced one, either. Running Nokia’s dated Symbian operating system and with a tiny 2.5-inch display, it’s decidedly behind the times. For $8,299 you should expect more, and you get more with practically any iPhone or Android phone on the market — most of which are under $600, even without a contract.

5. Bang & Olufsen BeoVision 4 —85-inch 3-D TV ($85,000)

Bang & Olufsen has always been a premium-priced brand, but they’ve outdone themselves with the BeoVision 4 85-inch plasma TV. With its whopping $85,000 price tag, the BeoVision 4 clocks in at mind-blowing $1,000 per inch. Sure it has some cool features, like a screen that automatically lowers when you’re not watching it, but who really needs that? Instead, pick up Sharp’s new Aquos 80” LED LCD for a mere $4,500.

4. Leica M9 Titanium Digital Camera ($28,000)
What happens when you take an already pricey $7,000 Leica M9 camera and put it the hands of automobile designer Walter de’Silva from Audi? You get the even more pricey $28,000 M9 Titanium version made from titanium, sapphire crystal and leather typically used on Audi cars. While I appreciate that the “Leica logo has been restyled and is elaborately hand-engraved in pure resin, inlaid with white enamel, sealed with clear varnish and then polished and positioned centrally — directly above the lens“, I think I’ll save 21 grand and go with the base model.

3. AudioQuest Diamond HDMI Cable ($1,495)
There is no shortage of overpriced HDMI cables on the market, but AudioQuest takes the cake with its Diamond line, charging a jaw-dropping $1,495 for a 6-foot cable. What do you get for that price? A lot of marketing hooey, mostly, about solid silver connectors and proprietary insulation. Digital signals aren’t prone to interference over short lengths, and there is scant evidence that higher-quality cables make any difference. Instead, get a 6-foot cable from highly regarded Monoprice.com for $3.50.

2. Goldmund Eidos Reference Blue Blu-ray Player ($170,000)
How can the Eidos Reference Blue Blu-ray player possibly cost as much as a house? According to Goldmund, ”It is because our specialists made absolutely no compromise between the quality and refinement of the finish, the exceptional mechanical construction and the cost.” For those of us that have to make compromises, we will likely be better off with the Samsung BD-D6500 (well under $200 retail), which offers many useful features not available in the Eidos Reference Blue, such as 3-D output, built-in Wi-Fi and hundreds of apps. And don’t worry about compromising the picture; “Avatar” is going to look just as good on the Samsung player, and you’ll have enough money left over to buy a house to watch it in.

1. Text messaging from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon (20 cents a message)

With all the high-priced gizmos out there, how does a 20-cent text message make my #1 spot? Let’s do a little math. AT&T charges 20 cents per text message. A single text message is limited to 160 characters, which is at most 160 bytes in size. So, 1 GB of bandwidth can handle about 6.25 million text messages. Multiply 6.25 million by 20 cents and you find that the cell phone companies are charging $1.25 million per GB of data for text messaging. If you’re a heavy texter, texting plans from the carriers can drive cost per gigabyte down into the tens-of-thousands of dollars. Or use that old standby, email, instead.

Source: Myjoyonline.com

“It is very important that deserving applicants, such as those from emerging economies, be included in the new gTLD program,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer. “It is necessary to encourage diverse participation in this new program and to broaden the scope of our multi-stakeholder model.”

The ICANN Board of Directors also made clear today that it wants to enhance the organization’s policies relating to conflicts of interest, ethics, confidentiality and an overall code of conduct.

“We want to achieve a Gold Standard in terms of conflicts and ethics practices,” said Steve Crocker, Chair of the ICANN Board. “Specifically we are working on a system which will lay out how Directors interested in specific new generic Top Level Domain applications will be restricted from participation in the deliberations and decisions regarding the new gTLD Program.”

In closing ICANN’s 42nd public meeting in Dakar, Senegal, the Board passed a resolution stating that, “ICANN will treat decisions relating to approving any single new gTLD application in an ethical manner and with care to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

ICANN’s next public meeting will occur March 11-16 in San Jose, Costa Rica.

To read the resolutions passed by the ICANN Board, go here

To download high resolution pictures from the Dakar meeting, go here

source: ICANN