Kenya ICT Board has sent out an invite and update on various events happening this month. One of the most notable event is where Professor Randal Bryant, Dean, Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science, is expected to be the key note speaker. The event is named Chipuka loosely translated to mean “emerge”.

Prof. Bryant has been among the Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University who have been working with the Kenya ICT Board to create a certification that will help employers identify software developers with the required skills necessary to tackle modern day challenges.

According to a release on CMU website,

“the Software Developer Certification will be what’s known as an authentic exam, in that it will require people taking it to perform the kind of tasks encountered in an actual work environment. Exam takers will add software features, correct errors or otherwise make modifications on a model software system.”

The exam will initially be implemented in Kenya, but CMU intends to push that it become “an international benchmark for use by employers worldwide.”

The unveiling of the certification by the Kenyan government will be on Tuesday 7th February at Strathmore University.  Kenya has been sponsoring development of the certification through the Kenya Transparency and Communications Infrastructure Project (KTCIP), which is funded by the World Bank and headed by Victor Kyalo.

A project scientist who has been leading the project, Philip Miller, said that a pilot exam will be ready by March 2013, and the main certification should be fully operational in Kenya by October 2013. It is not clear when the certification will be available worldwide.

Kenyan techies might not jump at this opportunity now considering that there were previous attempts by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KeBS) and Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) to come up with standards for local IT products including software. The effort became a cropper and have not been heard of ever since.

Apart from Bryant and Miller, the other CMU researchers involved in the project include Roger Dannenberg, associate research professor of computer science; Robert Seacord, secure coding team lead at Carnegie Mellon’s well-known Software Engineering Institute (SEI), and SEI certification experts Jefferson Welch, Marsha Pomeroy-Huff and Mary Ellen Rich.

The Kenyan seconded from the ICT Board to work with the researchers is Andrew Lewela Mwanyota. Andrew is an alumni of Deakin University and University of Nairobi.

Carnegie Mellon University recently announced that it will be opening a campus in Rwanda to offer graduate degrees in Engineering.

Three app developers, one each from Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, have been selected to to pitch live for Best App of the Year at the 6^th Annual Mobile Premier Awards on February 27^th, in Barcelona -  coinciding with the Mobile World Congress. Two Kenyans, Christine Ampaire and Anne Githuku-Shongwe are among the 3 app developers selected to pitch at the premier event.

All the 3 are among the top 20 global apps submitted for the AppCircus 2011 World Tour.

Each finalist was selected by an international jury of mobile industry heavyweights, including experts from Facebook, Twitter and Mozilla out of 47 other AppCircus World Tour winners from 26 countries world-wide

The 3 top African Apps which will also be given a chance ti pitch at the Mobile Premier Awards are:

• Mafuto Go! by Christine Ampaire, Project Manager ( Kampala, Uganda) – The app was created by a team of five university students. It helps users find the cheapest and nearest petrol station in Uganda.
• MsemaKweli by Isaac Osiemo (Nairobi, Kenya) – The app who name translates to “truth teller” is a tool which allows anyone to find information about the operations of NGOs, Global Giving, Constituency Development Fund, World Bank initiatives, and other  community based projects in Kenya.
• Moraba by Anne Githuku-Shongwe (Cape Town, South Africa) – This is a free mobile quiz adaptation of a hugely popular Southern African board game called Moraba-Raba. The app targets mostly the South African youths. The game adds a quiz element, engaging its users to answer questions regarding gender based violence.

The three AppCircus World Tour 2011 finalists will be competing for the Best App of the Year Award in February 27^th, at the prestigious Sala Apolo Theatre in Barcelona, Spain. The three were winners of their respective countries categories during the AppCircus world tour in 2011.

Ding Dong! We have won the first round and it is a battle which we must keep pushing on. Orange has apparently adjusted its speed caps on unlimited bundles to 256kbps. The move has been prompted by this blog post. We still don’t find it encouraging or pleasing that Orange should cap its data speeds at 256kbps.

They are not even going to be that competitive considering that Safaricom caps at 512 kbps and Airtel does not cap there yet to be announced 3G services.

A Kenyan has created an alarm system which locks burglars or intruders into the house and screams for help. The idea which is not new but is unique because Peter Miano has used locally available materials to make his simple home alarm system. Peter lives in a low income neigbourhood called Kayole in Nairobi.

To make the alarm, Peter has used electronic wastes like magnetic coils, wires and transistors to create a working alarm system. The story was first highlighted by Zainab Wandati of NTV in December. It cannot be said that Peter invented this kind of alarm because the screaming alarms are all over. The ingenuity is on how he made it and the material used.

Check the NTV Story on Peter Miano;

Click here to view the embedded video.

Peter calls his idea, Shika Mwizi Red Handed which is Swahili for Catch a Thief red Handed.

Arfa Karim Randhawa who achieved the status of being the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional at 9 years old, has passed away. She was 16, according to reports out of Pakistan.

Arfa has been in hospital for almost a month after reportedly suffering an epileptic seizure and heart attack. She however managed to improve two weeks ago. Microsoft recently stepped in to cover the medical expenses.

Arfa was extremely proud of her accomplishment as the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional, even including the phrase “Youngest MCP in the World” in her email signature line.

Speaking to Pakistan’s The Express Tribune, Major Ahsan Randhawa, Arfa’s uncle, articulated the family’s grief as best as he could.  “We are grieving her loss but she was a strong child”, he said – adding “she was God’s gift to us and now she has returned to Him”.

As you’ll hear at the end, Arfa at 10 years old had also settled on her philosophy of life, and committed it to memory. She told me about it after our interview, when she was having her picture taken outside, so I turned my recorder back on and asked her to repeat it for me on tape.

“If you want to do something big in your life, you must remember that shyness is only the mind,” she said. “If you think shy, you act shy. If you think confident you act confident. Therefore never let shyness conquer your mind.”

Arfa was on life support at the Intensive Care Unit while close relatives and friends watched with bated breath. She suffered some complication on Saturday evening which saw her being shifted to the emergency room. She died while being shifted to the operating theatre.

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK)  has released its ICT sector statistics report for the first quarter of the 2011/2012 financial year (i.e. the period up to 30^th September 2011). According to the report, the country had 26.4 million subscribers as at September 30, 2011 which represents a mobile penetration rate of 67.2%.

Prepaid subscription is still the preferred service representing 99% of the total subscribers according to the CCK report. prepaid subscriptions grew by 4.8% while postpaid subscription grew by 1% while in the same period last year there was a 20.4% growth in prepaid subscription and 9.1% growth in postpaid subscription.

Safaricom continues to control 88.27% of voice traffic in Kenya up from 87.57%  the previous quarter. Airtel’s voice traffic is reported to have declined by 2.17% to stand at 6.55% while Essar telecom increased its market share by 1.62% to 4.58%. Telkom Kenya’s voice market share declined from 0.75% to 0.6%.

It is surprising that SMS per subscriber per month grew by 124.4% from 8.5 SMS as at June 30 , 2011 to 18.99 SMs as at September 30 last year.

Internet Subscribers also grew from 4.2 Million in June to 5.42 million in September while internet users grew from 12.5 million in June to  14.3million as at September 30, 2011.  Of the 5.42 million internet subscribers, 5.3 million are subscribed to mobile data meaning that 99% of internet subscribers in Kenya are on mobile data. Subscription of mobile data grew by 28.3%.

The report puts mobile money subscribers at 18.4 million with over Ksh 56 billion deposit (US $640 million) as at September 30. The figure indicates that 69.5% of Kenya’s mobile phone subscribers are using mobile money services. This is the highest percentage anywhere in the world.

Fixed line subscriptions reduced from 374,942 to 355,493 representing a 5.91% decline. Fixed line voice traffic reduced by 28.36% to stand at 67 million minutes from 103 million minutes.

Satellite subscriptions now stood at 774 as at September 30 down from 960 in June.

Read the whole report from here http://www.cck.go.ke/resc/downloads/SECTOR_STATISTICS_REPORT_Q1_2011-2012.pdf

Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) has released a report showing that 11% of Tanzania’s 42 Million population are on the internet.  As of October 2011 there were around 4.8 million accessing the internet from Tanzania up from 1.6 million users in 2005. 2,663,200 were institutional users while 1,932,816 were households or individual users and 260,280 Internet café users.

In the report, TCRA puts the number of mobile phone subscribers in Tanzania at 19Million.

“Mobile wireless is leading by 45 per cent, followed by fixed wireless. The Internet usage is now becoming a popular means of communication option next to voice telephone for many people in Tanzania,” reads part of the report.

According to  TCRA , Tanzania has;

• 2,206,480 mobile wireless internet users,
• 1,514,580 users of fixed wireless
• 471,524 users of VSAT,
• 388,176 users of other broadband
• 269,536 cable internet users

The TCRA report also indicates that out of 68 application services licencees only 46 (67%) were found operating, 20 of them (30%) could not be traced while 2-3% were not operating. Of the 46 operational, 38 (83%)  are ISPs while the rest provide services like voice network design, data (SMS and MMS), web hosting and web design.

2011 is gone and 2012 is here. We need to look back, not with regrets, but learn from the negative and positive experiences as we initiate and involve ourselves in challenges coming with the new year. As a techie, you are not suppose to be sitting and waiting for others to initiate new ideas while you chorus on the sidelines. You must have what you drive whether you are employed in a traditional company setting or simply self employed.

If your ideas are big enough to blow the roof and commotion at your employers premises, look for a yard and rope in some friends to cause a fracas. Such ideas must be good enough to either sustain you or if they cant sustain you then sustain a community. There is no need of starting ideas which sustain no one in particular but the idea itself.

Before I put my best foot forward for 2012, these are my predictions on what to expect as we dive into this Sea of nyangumis, Hippos, Papas, Catfish amid other very friendly animals.

Social Media with Be King

2012 is the year of general elections in Kenya. Politicians have been fighting for a piece of the social media community with all key players now having a good following online. Corporates are joining the bandwagon though some believe just like our politicians that they should come and sales pitch and not engage with users like peers.

One lesson anyone joining social media should learn is that gloves are off. You behave stupidly, in social media we will tell you. In other media they might try to baptise it in a way to make it sound nice.

Social Media will grow in a big way as we head for the general elections and as more and more corporates, self-prolaimed celebs and other influential parties join the networks. If Caroline Mutoko who thought that social media is for idlers and busy bodies can join and desperately look for audience on Social media, who are you to ignore it?

Smartphones, Tablets and Ultrabooks Will Grow Marketshare

Smartphone penetration in Kenya is still very low. The main obstacle to the growth of such devices has been initial investment required. Already, the Huawei IDEOS U8150 smartphone has sold more than 130, 000 units in Kenya. This is because the smartphone was priced so low and offered such unique experience you could not compare it to anything else. Nokia tried to use the strategy of pricing to market the C3 handset which did not work. The phone does not have a smartphone experience though it is suppose to be smarter. The experience in trying to locate cool apps to better the productivity, social media or just an experience on the phone is so hard.

The IDEOS had the advantage because of the Android OS touch interface which made most of the first-time smartphone owners get different experience from what they are used to. The IDEOS phone is famously referred to as IDIOT on Kenya’s social media circle. While travelling from Kisumu on 20th December, I asked 3 guys who were travelling with me in the same vehicle why they loved that phone. They say the experience is from out of this world. All of them could point to 5 apps which were making an impact into their lives.

Apart from the smartphones, we will see tablets become more common. Walking around Nairobi today, you will see Dell, Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, HP, Meccer and Apple’s iPads. The distribution is still concentrated in Nairobi with only Safaricom having a good stock of devices in its upcountry shops. Safaricom and other operators have great value proposition on tablets, smartphones and laptops. You can now purchase a tablet or laptop from Safaricom as an employee of such-and-such company or as a teacher or policeman. This specific bundling make it sure that we have more buyers understand the benefit of technology ownership as opposed to just buying because of need to own technology.

African Application Developers, Content Creators and Techies Will Shine

We have had few worthy mentions in 2011. I look at 2012 as the year when real techies will be separated from the joy riders. You are either someone who can survive the tide or you will continue to ride on the wave that your friends give you alms so that you can defend their misdeeds online.

In 2012, content creators and real application developers will break the bank. I see Kenyans making millions from selling apps and not winning contests which add no value to their endeavors apart from massage their egos. This is the year of Kenyan and African techies. Lets make an impact.

More Tech Giants Will Take Africa Seriously

Google, HP, Oracle and CISCO have been here while the likes of  Twitter and Facebook are showing interests. Oracle is boosting its local operations even as the likes of Nokia are focusing on mature markets in Africa and Middle East as their fortunes dwindle locally. We will see other Asian, European and American tech giants enter the East African market.

Cloud Services Will Get More Traction

Safaricom has entered the managed services businesses. The company partnered with Seven Seas, CISCO and EMC² as it entered the cloud services business. Safaricom is investing over Ksh 3.5 Billion in the business over a period of two years. That is so big money. Cloud services might be new in the enterprise level but at personal IT solutions, we have been using cloud services for as long as we can remember.

Already I have seen File IT Africa and IonaCloud enter the business to provide personal cloud solutions. More firms will enter this service in the coming days.

I will be updating this blog post as we move into the new year. What are your predictions? Leave them in the comments below.

Related Post http://bit.ly/uqSmAL

He is currently the highest paid footballer in the world and he is African. Cameroon’s Samuel Etoo is reported to have launched a mobile network called Set’Mobile in his home country. “Set” stands for Samuel Etoo and the mobile network becomes the third in the country with a mobile penetration still under 20% (estimated at around 14.8%).

Samuel Etoo has launched the network with a capital base of Cameroon’s CFA franc 100 Million (US $195,000), a general manager and an associate partner – Charles Gueret. Etoo hopes that the network with help lower the cost of calls, while offering services such as calls, sms and internet.

Etoo was formerly the ambassador of Orange network in Cameroon. Set’Mobile might become popular with the youth considering the influence Etoo has on the generation.

IMG: mboa.info

CCK seems not to be in safe hands now. The information and communication regulator has chickened out in almost every directive they initially issued in the recent past. First it was the issue of the Mobile termination rates then the digital signal distributions and broadcast licenses, followed by the number portability and now counterfeit phones.

All arguments fronted by CCK Director General, Francis Wamukota Wangusi, looks both foolish and trivial in all the cases.

On mobile termination rates and under pressure from Safaricom and Orange, CCK had no excuse at all but to act on orders from baba (President Kibaki) and not dare carry out the agreed mobile termination rates reduction. Kibaki was probably protecting the vested interests on his henchmen in the intervention and as a semi-autonomous state agency, CCK could have easily gone against the president’s directive. That was not to happen as everyone at CCK was scared stiff of crossing the path of baba.

On digital signal distribution and broadcast licenses, I understand CCK but I still believe that laws were bent to please media owners. Media in Kenya is majorly owned and controlled by Kibaki, Kenyatta family, Moi, Agha Khan and SK Macharia. These are the same people who are ruling Kenya now. There was no way they were not going to get their way around the signal distribution and broadcast licenses with such a weak Director General at CCK.

On digital broadcast signal distribution, CCK bent the procurement rules of the country just to make sure that the powerful media owners listed above got a cut of the pie yet controlling digital signals should not have been an interesting undertaking for any media owner who is interested in optimising earnings from media business.

On broadcast licenses, the judiciary is being used to subvert justice in the same way it is being used on the mobile number portability. How can a judge issue a temporary order on a case and then consistently refuse to fix a hearing date on any of the cases? So this means that the order remains in effect indefinitely. Travesty of justice!!

With the fake phones switch off, CCK intimated that they were ready to switch off the fake phones from their networks. This was in August. CCK was supposed to effect the move on 1st September. Before the September date, CCK postponed the directive again till 31st December 2011 claiming that most of the operators does not have the capacity to switch off fake phones. Now the December date is almost here and CCK has again postponed switching-off of counterfeit phones to April 30th 2012 claiming;

the extension was necessitated by the need to first undertake a consumer awareness campaign and also for the industry to establish a mechanism through which consumers could confirm the status of their mobile devices. 

I doubt if come May 2012, CCK will switch off the fake handsets as it has promised. Apart from the mobile termination rates, all these other flip-flops occurs under the supervision of Francis Wangusi. A regulator should not please the political class but must check on the interest of the consumer. CCK might think that it is a great thing not to switch off fake mobile handsets but the truth is that the counterfeit handsets are more dangerous to the users than what they will lose when the handsets are switched off.

It is painful that CCK under Francis Wangusi has not seen it best to stop operators from putting profits before lives.

So painful!!

Industry statistics puts counterfeit handsets in Kenya at close to 2.4 million, representing 9.39 % of the active mobile devices in the country.

The US White House has begun releasing the codes of data.gov to other governments. Through the Data.gov-in-a-box as the open data platform is called, the US government want to see to it that other governments intending to open up their data do not struggle with complicated development of the sites and apps. The White House plans to open source Data.gov platform fully by early next year.

On Wednesday last week, Data.gov developer and General Services Administration software architect Chris Musialek  posted some early test code to open source development site Github. The test code seems to be DB management system and Web app.

The US government announced in September that it would open source its Data.Gov as part of a multilateral government transparency effort including other countries.

Data.gov-in-a-box will be co-developed by the United States and the government of India.  US and Indian technical teams have been working on the project since August. The Obama administration also pledged $1 million to sharing open government best practices between the countries.

The Kenyan government launched its open data portal with the help of WorldBank while also in East Africa, the Tanzanian government recently ratified the open government protocol.

IMG

This is a view which I have held for the longest time and nothing happening in Kenya will convince me otherwise. I strongly see no sense in the never ending but utterly useless events Kenya ICT Board is holding to stir up content generation in Kenya. Many have differed with me on this but I still strongly believe that the opposition is coming from a group benefiting from the mis-action of Kenya ICT Board.

The Tandaa branded events have been held all over Nairobi but never beyond that. The reach of the so called Tandaa events have been limited to few well connected individuals within the circle of individuals at PS Infomation and Communication as well as Kenya ICT Board. Apart from the comradeship and the facts that they are being held in Nairobi, the other undoing of the event organisers is the way they have been marketed. The events have been marketed through the KICTANET mailing list which contain no one but a few leeches whose only sane aspect is that they so consistently swallow every bait thrown to them by Ndemo and Kenya ICT Board no matter the condition of the same.

But I believe that Ndemo (PS Ministry of Information) and Kukubo (Kenya ICT Board CEO) are honest because they surely never want an empowered Kenyan. That would challenge the status quo which favours only the two and their bunch of cohorts. The two would not take Kenyans for a ride were Kenyans so empowered that they could effectively air their disapproval. That is not set to change. If the two were serious, we would have well run digital villages throughout the country because there is funding for that and Kenyans are able to deploy them. The only problem is that the two would consistently sabotage the digital villages project as long as it will empower the bottom of the pyramid.

I so believe that if Ndemo and Kukubo were serious about getting the local content online, we would have to work out few modalities of enabling the population to get that and none of my strategies has conferences and talk shops as a priority. First we should address the issue of rural connectivity beyond the few towns which now have basic connectivity. We want connectivity which can support computing which is superior to the not so effective feature phone computing.

We have a good number of those in the rural or peri-urban areas who can afford a desktop, netbook, used laptop or even to put up. This group of people have not been able to buy a reliable internet connection because none exists. I must commend the Kenyan  government for a strong effort in ensuring supply of electricity to rural areas through the Rural Electrification Program. Through this program, a home or establishment in rural areas needs on Ksh 35,000 (US $385) to get power supplied to their home/establishment as long as they are not more than 600 metres from a Kenya Power step-down transformer.

Those who can afford to buy data connection but are not able to do so because there is no supply should be provided with supply. We cannot talk of mobile data availability because it is almost non-existent. As much as we would want to talk of the availability of Safaricom’s 3G, many of the urban and peri-urban centres cannot enjoy this because the network quality is very very poor immediately you are out of any major town. This must be sorted out. Every time I travel through Kedowa, Kericho, Chemelil, Kapsabet, Kakamega, Mumias, Kisumu, Homa-Bay, Migori, Kisii, Sotik, Narok and Limuru, I get the feeling that the much talked about data penetration is such a farce. It is EMPTY TALK.

The peri-urban and rural areas have perfect condition to stir up innovation. I believe that the government is sabotaging this group of people when we don’t strategise our national investment by rewarding rural investment. We must give incentives to energy and telecommunication firms which come to set up in rural/marginalised areas. We must strive to spread the investment so that we even have other telecomm operators have Eldoret, Nyeri, Marsabit, Lodwar, Wajir, Machakos and Busia as their headquarters. We have enough idle bodies in Nairobi, they would be very much happy working from their rural homes. Having more than 34% of Kenyans stay in Nairobi is simply sick.

Just like China reward for birth control and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi’s reward for family union, we should adopt a policy to reward urban-to-rural migration.

With proper data connection available, we will never have to rely on “local content” workshops to get something few people believe is local content. Kenya produces the highest amount of local content, our more than 1.3 Million population is rivaled by a handful of countries in Africa. That population only produces enough content to make any content dedicated portal jealous. Which other local content are you looking for? Local content or local platforms? How local should a platform be?

UK’s Captive Media has today launched the world’s first urine powered video game. The game allows bar patrons in south London to compete for high scores every time they spend a penny. The gaming consoles are installed above urinals at the Exhibit bar in Balham. The two brains behind this idea is Gordon MacSween and Mark Melford, the owners Captive Media (a gamed development company).

Speaking to thinq_, Gordon and Mark say that the idea was inspired by an “apocryphal story they’d heard about cleaning costs being reduced at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport after owners etched a tiny image of a fly in the bottom of the urinals – causing customers to improve their aim and reaping, it’s said, an 80 per cent reduction in ‘spillage’.”

So an eye-level video screen is mounted above the urinals and fitted with infra-red sensors to detect urine. The infra-red is installed at the base of the urinals so that it would respond to the heat of pee.

Watch the video of the Demo;

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mark and Gordon told UK tech blog Thinq_ that “they investigated a number of technologies, including ultrasound and even fluorescence – which they dismissed, they said, when they realised users would need to eat a lot of spinach for their urine to contain the requisite levels of Vitamin B.”

The gaming console operation is completely hands-free ensuring utmost hygiene while the interface is also crafted in a way that users would not think that they need to use their hands to operate the console.

The console has an internet connection to allow gamers to log in via their cell phones and compete on score tables with other gamers. Users would soon be able to share and compare their scores with other patrons in bars across the UK as the idea is being rolled out far and wide.

“It has taken three years of research and development to get to this point,” says Mark Melford told thinq. “The reaction to the units so far has been incredible – it’s just much fun.”

The developers also discovered that women sneaked to try and catch a glimpse of how the men were doing so the company is developing a hand-operated version to entertain customers queueing for the ladies’ with a pub quiz called,  ’Clever Dick‘.

Africa seems to be getting all the right attention from the ICT infrastructure developers. Another undersea fiber-optic cable is set to connect Africa with South America, North America and Europe. The WASACE cable will be one of the few cable systems to use the next-generation “100G” technology bringing in ten times the capacity of the previous systems.

The cable is to be funded by a consortium including the international private equity firm VIP Must, the African Development Bank and a host of Brazilian and other investors.

The project lead is WASACE Cable Company Worldwide Holding, a multinational development company represented by CEO Ramon Gil-Roldan of Spain. Project development will be managed by the David Ross Group, represented by CEO David Ross of the US.

The project will be divided into four sections: WASACE North connecting Europe to North America, WASACE South connecting South America to Africa, WASACE America connecting South America to North America, and WASACE Africa connecting Nigeria, Angola, and South Africa.

More

It is time for consumer internet to rise.

2000 – 2010 was the decade of enterprise tech and cellphone providers (e.g Safaricom, Access Kenya, Craft Silicon and Seven Seas)

2010 – 2020 is the decade of the consumer internet. The time has come for websites and web apps which face the common mwananchi. Critical mass is approaching, and the competition for infrastructure means that pricing of phones and net subscriptions can only go down.

I have a strong conviction that by 2020, there will be at least 4 leading consumer internet companies, the so-called ‘Big Four’ as it were.

I look at trends in 2nd world countries such as Brazil and China, in order to get a feel of where our industry is headed. I borrowed this habit from Michael Joseph, who was known to look towards market behaviour in the ’2nd world’ in order to predict the future of the Kenyan market. Thus, areas of the internet that I’m bullish on locally are:

 1. Media Portals

Here I’m talking a Kenyan media giant, similar to sina.com.cn from China, or vagalume.com.br from Brazil. Admittedly, this idea is not innovative, but the lucrativeness of media portals stems from how easy they are to understand and adopt, both on the users’ side, and on the advertisers’ side.

 2. Digital downloads & Virtual goods

I believe that Kenya being a net importing country means that e-commerce concerning tangible goods is going to be very hard to execute. Kalahari.co.ke has proved this point recently. The low-hanging fruit in e-commerce in Kenya, I believe, lies in digital commodities. I think it will be easier to set up solid digital download stores that offer way better convenience, selection, pricing and customer service than your typical pirate shop in town.

 3. Auctions

Think Dealfish, but go one step further and imagine you were able to actually bid on the item and complete the transaction there and then. A Kenyan auction site would not suffer from the inventory problems of a typical e-commerce store (esp. when it comes to importing inventory).

 4. Betting

I find it sad that no techie has been able to sufficiently monetize the football, rugby and athletics craze in Kenya. The proof of Kenyans’ willingness to bet on mobile has been proved during the recent wave of SMS lotteries that took us all by storm. Billions were made in only a few months, till the government had to put a stop to it! The fatal mistake of the SMS lotteries was that it was not a sustainable model. A media house can only run a promo for so long until they are forced to bring it to an end. The onus is on you bright young technocrats to create a sustainable model that doesn’t rely on some big media house promotion. I know about the government regulation surrounding this issue, but I think whoever is willing to make this idea happen is not going to let some rules written on a piece of paper separate him from his billions!

The High Court has stopped CCK from terminating the licenses of radio and TV stations which would not have made applications for their licenses to be renewed. See that stupidity from the Kenyan media owners. On 10th November, CCK threatened to switch off radio and TV stations which would not have applied for the new licenses by 15th November (today).

The new regime licenses were announced one year ago and all the media owners in Kenya were informed of the need to acquired the new licenses. They were then reminded on August 5th of the need to renew the licenses before the November 15th date. Now the media owners are actually exposing their kind of stupidity by, instead of applying for the new licenses, going to court to beg for more time.

The new licenses are divided as follows;

• Public Broadcasting
• Commercial Broadcasting
• Community Broadcasting
• Subscription Broadcasting
• Signal distribution.

The media owners tried to rope CIC into the issue and even made CIC declare the CCK Public notice as a “violation of the constitution”. The funny bit is that 75% of the more than 105 media entities in Kenya have already submitted the application as of 10th November. The Media owners going to court are not making sense unless the owners of the 75% of the media entities which have applied for the new licenses are not members of the MOA.

The same group of media, now Nation Media Group and Royal Media, launched a string of campaigns against CCK, Dr Ndemo and Ministry of Information and Communication regarding the award of the digital signal distribution license to a company with Chinese shareholding. After that CCK saw it best even to modify the procurement rules to allow the media groups get a third license. The condition was that they form a company which they were to present to CCK for the same. Three months later, they are not being heard and CCK does not even know whether they formed the company or not.

I asked CCK Director general, Francis Wangusi, why they had to bend procurement rules and if the rules can be so easily bended. His response was that the government created the rules and its is the same which can bend them. I asked who is “the government here” since the procurement rules were created through an act of parliament. It needs parliament again to bend the rules I guess.

It is true that the new constitution calls for the formation of an independent body to regulate media in Kenya but a media consultant argues “you can not suspend the laws of a country when such body has not come into place”.

“This is tyranny of the Kenyan media. Even the issue of signal distribution can be successfully challenged in court. The Kenyan media scene is so uneven and the anarchy used to run it is wrong. They get away with so many illegalities” , the consultant adds.

I am just ashamed of the Kenyan media.
Nkt!!

Tanzania  has joined 37 other UN affiliated countries in the world in ratifying the Open Government Partnership Programme. This effectively makes Tanzania the fifth African county to do so after South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Liberia.

After the signing yesterday, the country’s Minister in the President’s Office (Good Governance), Mr Mathias Chikawe said that the government would soon make public the action plan to implement the programme.

The action plan is not yet ready but the minister promises that it “will be prepared transparently and will involve few priorities. Preliminary priorities will be strengthening transparency, integrity and accountability in health, education and water sectors.”

The Open Government Partnership programme was launched at the United Nation General Assembly in New York in September 2010. It aims strengthening accountability and transparency in governments enabling the public access to correct information for use in planning development, fighting corruption and stimulating the use of technology and innovation.

In preparing the action plan, the minister announced that “there will be public hearing involving media, private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations and the public at large.”

The Tanzanian open government action plan will then tabled for discussion during the ministerial meeting of the programme members to be held on December 7-8, 2011 in Brasilia, Brazil.

Bharti Airtel today announced a contract with Ericsson to upgrade an initial batch of 250 diesel powered base stations in Nigeria with E-site, a new “green” energy solution.

The ‘green’ mobile initiative will improve operations and minimize baase stations’ environmental impact.

The E-site solution will enable Airtel harness solar energy to power mobile base stations across Nigeria. E-site has been developed and manufactured by Flexenclosure, a specialist provider of intelligent site power management solutions for off-grid base station sites. The solution has been tested by Airtel in Kenya for close to two years and has proven to substantially reduce diesel consumption and CO2 emissions when compared to a 24/7 diesel powered site.

The E-site is mainly powered by renewable energy sources (sun and wind) and uses a battery bank for storage of energy. The wind turbines have been modified and perfected for this particular purpose. E-site’s sophisticated control system ensures that maximum power is captured from the renewable energy sources and that the use of the battery bank is highly efficient. Under the agreement, Ericsson will be responsible for implementation and maintenance services for all the sites.

CCK has warned that around 26 broadcasters risk losing their licenses if they don’t apply for the new regime licenses in time. CCK Director General, Francis Wangusi, indicated that out of the 100 or so broadcasters, only 74 have managed to submit applications for the new licenses and so those who will not have applied by 15th November (4 days) risk losing the authority to operate radio of broadcast stations.

These changes have come about as a result of the regulatory reforms that have created various broadcastingmarket segments.  Kenyan broadcasting sector has been segmented into five service areas;

• Public Broadcasting
• Commercial Broadcasting
• Community Broadcasting
• Subscription Broadcasting
• Signal distribution.

Through the Kenya Information and Communications Act, Cap 411A the government gave all broadcasters one year to apply for the new licenses after the amendment of the Kenya Communications Act 2008 to usher in the Kenya Communications (Broadcasting) Regulations in 2009.  These amendment vested CCK with with additional mandate key being, to license and regulate broadcasting services in Kenya. Media owners challenged the new Communications Act in court hence the delay in implementation.

CCK say that it notified all broadcasters on 15th August 2011, providing a window of three months for submission of applications for licences as provided for in the Kenya Information and Communications Act, Cap 411A. CCK has also indicated that it “shall also take action against any broadcaster in possession of illegal frequency resources after the lapse of the 15th November 2011 deadline.”

CCK has also indicated that it will not be oblidged to renew any license of existing broadcaster who will not have reapplied for the new license in July 2012.

CCK has further indicated that it will launch a major consumer awareness campaign over the migration from analogue to digital broadcasting. The communications services regulator also informed journalist that the local broadcasters have not formed a consortium to bid for the opportunity of being the third digital signal distributor.

CCK recently released its QoS assesment report for the period 2010. According to the report Telkom Kenya (Orange) managed to achieve targets only in 4 out of 8 key performance indicators (KPI). Orange is not taking the assertions kindly. The firms CEO, Mikhael Ghossein, has disputed the figures from CCK revealing that Orange’s in-house assessment has found the contrary.

Orange is querying the “scope and methodology on which the report is based, with a view to coorelating it to our own and independent evaluation of our network based on the same parameters”.

Orange is surprised at the reports finding considering that it is in 2011 that Orange tested and launched its 3G network.

CCK QoS Measurement Configuration;

Orange’s in – house assessment of its network conducted between 9th and 29th June 2011 results of which are contained below:

It its however very funny that Orange is questioning the scope and methodology but the most skewed of assessment  in the quarterly report was not questioned by the same.

All other networks scored above the set targets in 6 out of 8 key performance indicators as indicated below;

CCK is mandated by law to charge networks which continues to perform below the set targets Ksh 500,000. Read the full report here http://bit.ly/s6UsPm

ITU has listed Kenya internet services as the most expensive in the region in its annual study titled “Measuring the Information Society”. Each year ITU list the ICT Development Index (IDI) and ICT Price basket (IPB) in the study. According to ITU, “IDI captures progress made in regard to ICT infrastructure, use and skills while IPB monitors the affordability of ICT services and in explaining why some  countries have moved faster than others in their ICT development”.

The report shows that there is a relation between income levels and ICT use in developed and developing economies. It further shows that even though some economies charges higher on ICT services, national penetration of internet services has continued to grow while those charging lower in some instances experience stagnant growth.

ITU recommends that future policy action needs to address issues that are related not only to access, but also to:

• price;
• bandwidth;
• speed and quality of service;
• skills;
• content and language; and
• applications targeted to low-end users.

Some key highlights in the report include:

• Fixed telephony continues to decline, as it has done since 2005, especially in developed countries, where the fixed-line market has been overtaken by mobile-cellular telephony .
• Mobile-cellular penetration in developed countries has reached saturation levels, recording penetration rates of over 100 per cent and a growth of only one per cent during the past year; in developing countries, by contrast, growth in mobile subscriptions is still buoyant, at 20 per cent, with no sign of a slowdown .
• Fixed-broadband penetration in developed countries had climbed to almost 24 per cent by end 2010, and growth is slowing, suggesting that saturation levels are being reached, while it stands at only 4.2 per cent in developing countries
  .
• Wireless-broadband Internet access remains the strongest growth sector and mobile broadband is mushrooming in developing countries, growing by 160 per cent between 2009 and 2010 (although starting from low levels).
• Internet users have doubled over the past five years, and there are now more than two billion Internet users worldwide. Growth rates in developing countries are high (14 per cent between 2009 and 2010), and absolute numbers are driven by large countries such as Brazil, China, India, Nigeria and the Russian Federation.  By end 2010, around 30 per cent of the world’s population was online – up from around 12 per cent in 2003 and six per cent in 2000 .
• The proportion of households with access to the Internet is growing steadily, especially in developing countries , where around 16 per cent of households had access to the Internet at end 2010, as compared with 66 per cent in developed countries.

Kenya has been listed among the “dynamic” economies by ITU having proved the their IDI considerable over the last year. Other dynamic economies are (in alphabetical order) Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cyprus, Finland, Georgia, Iceland, Macao (China), Moldova, Morocco, Oman, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Viet Nam and the Russian Federation.

Kenya was ranked 115 in the IDI in 2010 up from 116 in 2008.

Top 5 in IDI in each region;

Compared to the Gross National income, Kenya ranks as one of the most expensive with Kenyans spending an average of 33.1% of their incomes on the internet while Ugandans spends 30.2% and Tanzanians 31.4% of their GNIs. Kenya looks to be more expensive than even Namibia (11.9%) and Nigeria (27.2%). Algerians (3.0% )spends the least of their incomes on ICT services in Africa. Egyptians spends 3.5% while South Africans spends 5.3%. Rwandans spend 56.9% of their GNI on ICT services.

So Kenyans have to either increase their national income or simple reduce the use of ICT services the latter will be suicidal.

Read the whole report here

Two Rwandan young innovators participated in this year’s ICT Telecom World 2011 held Geneva, Switzerland, according to Rwanda’s New Times.

Joseph Gatete presented Quicksms in Secondary School Projects while Robert Katabarwa presented his Igisekuru innovation emerging among the 45 out-of 160 entrants selected to participate in the young innovators competition.

The competition targeted young innovators with fresh ideas that take advantage of ICT with the aim of making the world a better place.

The four -day summit that marked its 40th anniversary celebrations and was marked in tandem with the Broadband Leadership Summit which entailed highest level meetings on the implementation of broadband worldwide, exhibitions, competitions and networking sessions.

Check this video about QuickSMS Project;

Click here to view the embedded video.

Robert Katabarwa with his Igisekuru innovation;

Click here to view the embedded video.

The summit also looked at core issues shaping the future of networks and services; technical symposiums which provided debate and information exchange on cutting edge technological development, Digital Cities ’11.

Rwanda was represented by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), a selection of private sector companies dealing in mobile application development that included Broadband Systems Corporation, United Kingdom Telecommunications Academy (UKTA), Hehe Ltd, M-Ahwii and Pivot Access.

Safaricom is reported by Business Daily of planning to acquire Kenya’s premier IT Solutions company, Seven Seas Technologies (SST). We know that Seven Seas and Safaricom are to launch a Cloud Services partnership on Tuesday called Safaricom Cloud.

BD Africa is reporting that “the two firms had agreed to a buyout plan that was scuttled by the board of the mobile telephony firm which raised concerns over the viability of the business, paving way for the two-year partnership.”

It is not out of the ordinary since Safaricom has always indicated that it will acquire or partner with firms which will make them have a strong business footing in the market. The buyout plan is reported to have been blocked by Safaricom’s blog in the meantime with the latter raising questions over its viability. SST is a leading IT’s data, network, software, storage and cloud solutions developer or provider. It currently has presence in almost half a dozen countries in East, South and Central Africa.

The two firms will launched managed cloud solutions with the revenue share ratio not being clear. It is not clear how receptive clients of the cloud services but it is an almost not exploited market. SST will build the virtual or software solutions and manage them will Safaricom will provide the internet connection, market the business, provide customer care and support the network according to BD.

“We have been tasked to demonstrate that’ there is a market for managed services in the next 24 months,” Silvia Mulinge, Safaricom’s General Manager for Enterprise Business is quoted to have said.

“The board felt that we should take a moderate approach and that’s why we are entering into a partnership before we can pursue an acquisition of a majority stake in the firm,” she is quoted further.

SST is owned and Managed by Mike Macharia (founder) the late James Gachui and a which reportedly owns a 21.5 per cent stake.

Safaricom had in the past two years acquired three other companies; One Communications (a Wimax services provider in August 2008, Packet Stream Data Networks (a wireless Internet provider) IGO Wireless and Instaconnect.

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Hard drive storage continues to at a very fast pace. The question is how much data can we squeeze into the current space and how can we increase capacity without increasing the size of the storage devices. We hate bulky stuff. TDM reported to use laser to double HD capacity. Now this is new. Would you have trusted that anyone would increase the capacity of a 3TB HD six times , to 18TB, using table salt? A Dr Joel Yang at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) has just done that.

The maximum storage you get for existing Hard Drives is around 3TB. The TD HAMR technology takes the capacity to 6TB. Dr Yang now increases the 6TB times 3 to 18 or the 3TB times 6 to 18TB.  Dr Joel Yang’s IMRE research team, working with peers  from  A*STAR’s  DSI and  NUS,  has used nanopatterning to create uniform arrays of magnetic bits that can potentially store up to 3.3 Terabit/in 2 of  information, six times the recording density  of current  devices.

Dr Yang used table salt, or more specifically, sodium chloride to achieve this fete.

Image of magnetic bits at the IMRE achieved densities

Normally, data is stored on a hard disk through the use of nanoscopic magnetic grains. Several of these grains (called a cluster), each measuring around 7nm, are used to store one bit of information. It means that if you can pack up more density on the volume, you will increase storage.

Using table salt (sodium chloride) 10nm grain can now be used to store one bit. This means that one 10nm grain will be used to replace the several 7nm grains used to achieve the same and so increased capacity in the same volume.

Furthermore, sodium chloride can be added to the existing lithography processes, meaning that this technology can be used to produce commercial drives sooner rather than later. Dr Yang’s team has showcased a 1.9 Terabit/inch² storage  working, but they hope to display the 3.3 Terabit/inch² soon. Their aim is to  achieve a 10 Terabit/inch² in the future.

This technology might satisfy the thirst of data centre providers for more storage if implemented. Read the  press release here http://bit.ly/r9HjX2

What do you think about this technology?