Bharti Airtel to invest USD 10 million in Seychelles.

Published on August 16, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Bharti Airtel today announced that it will invest USD 10 million in Seychelles. The move comes after the Board of Directors approved the acquisition of 100% of the leading telecom operator in the country, Telecom Seychelles Limited, for an enterprise value of USD 62 million. During a meeting with the Vice President of Seychelles, Danny Faure, Bharti Airtel Africa Chief Executive Officer Mr. Manoj Kohli, said that the investment will be phased over the next three years.

Bharti Airtel will also participate in the Seychelles East Africa submarine cable (SEAS) project. This is a 2,000 km submarine cable between Seychelles and Dar es Salaam, which will connect Seychelles to the world and the global economy. The USD $34 million project will especially improve the services offered to large enterprises and Corporates and will further augment Telecom Seychelles world-class mobile services, which currently include new generation 3G mobile technology and integrated wireline services.

Mr. Manoj Kohli said, “We will leverage our expertise and infrastructure to offer customized data solutions for our large enterprise and corporate clients, which will help them gain a unique competitive advantage.”

The acquisition of Telecom Seychelles has grown Bharti Airtel’s African footprint to 16 countries and its overall presence to 19 countries.

Bharti Airtel had recently acquired the mobile operations of the Zain group in 15 countries across Africa. Telecom Seychelles started its operations in 1998 by launching mobile services. It has today, established itself with over 57% share of the mobile market.
END

About Bharti Airtel Limited

Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa.  The company offers mobile voice & data services, fixed line, high speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions for enterprises and national & international long distance services to carriers. Bharti Airtel has been ranked among the six best performing technology companies in the world by BusinessWeek.  Bharti Airtel had over 189 million customers across its operations at the end of June 2010. To know more visit www.airtel.in

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BBC feature on ICT growth in Kenya.

Published on August 16, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

This is a feature by Kevin Mwachiro that was aired on the BBC last month covering the growth of IT in Kenya as well as outsourcing. In the feature, Ushahidi’s Ory Okolloh and I had been interviewed for the same on issues such as social media, crowd sourcing and the growth of local (digital) content.

BBC feature on IT in Kenya from Moses Kemibaro on Vimeo.

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Sym4Square – A Symbian S60 V5 App for FourSquare by ThinkChange.

Published on August 11, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I’ve been waiting for this for sometime and finally the Symbian mobile operating system has a native S60 FourSquare app. Sym4square (SymbianFourSquare) is a freeware application developed by ThinkChange, utilising official FourSquare APIs, to make the FourSquare service available for the Symbian S60 V5 smart phones.

This is a good step for markets like Kenya and most of Africa where Symbian is the leading mobile operating system courtesy of Nokia’s market dominance for both feature phones and smart phones. The Symbian devices currently supported by Sym4square the are as follows:

Nokia: 5230, 5233, 5235, 5530, 5800, C6, N97, N97 Mini, X6
Samsung: GT i8910 Omnia
Sony-Ericsson: U1 Satio, U5 Vivaz, U8 Kanna

Its not the most exhaustive list but its a start. Below is a YouTube video of the same:

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Kenya ICT Board’s (Tandaa) Local Content Grants Statistics.

Published on August 11, 2010 in Uncategorized. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

NOTE: The statistics and review results for this blog post have been taken from publicly available information currently being circulated by the Tandaa initiative of the Kenya ICT Board.

As reported on this blog over 2 months ago, The Kenya ICT Board though its local content initiative dubbed “Tandaa” issued a call for proposals from Kenyan firms and software application developers for grants to support local content and software applications.

The proposals submitted for grants are currently being reviewed by the Tandaa team at Kenya ICT Board after applications closed. They recorded a total of 2,154 applications on their online system. Of these, 667 were complete and submitted within the deadline.  With the support of the Tandaa Team at Kenya ICT Board, an independent consultant is now reviewing and grading these 667 proposals.

Given the large number of grants received, the board had had to push the announcement date for successful proposals from the 15th August 2010 to the 31st August 2010. A full report will be submitted to an independent Grants Committee in mid-August 2010. The Committee will then make the final decision and select the successful grantees. Grantees will be announced on the 31st August 2010.

The day after the grants deadline, Kenya ICT Board’s Tandaa Team will send out an evaluation form to get feedback from everyone who had participated in the grant process. Below are some highlights from the evaluation and statistics on the grant process:

  • Total numbers of approved applications we’re split between 103 females and 608 males. Barely 15% of applicants were women.
  • Overall, participants were satisfied with the grant application process with 39.2% indicating they were ‘very satisfied’ and 38.4% ‘satisfied’.
  • Of respondents that did not complete the grant application process, 64% cited ‘lack of supporting documents’ as the leading cause for non-completion, while 7.4% cited ‘lack of internet access’.
  • 20% of respondents have attended a Tandaa Symposium. That comes up to almost 34% of Tandaa participants also participating in the grant application process.
  • And finally… most people submitted their proposals on the very last day! leading to a huge spike in submissions on last day

The full evaluation results can be viewed here>

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E-Marketing for East Africa’s Tourism Sector to be unveiled at Nairobi Conference.

Published on August 11, 2010 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Nairobi… A wave of e-marketing offerings will be unveiled at the upcoming E-Tourism East Africa Conference in Nairobi on the 2nd and 3rd September 2010.

The conference, which is being sponsored by Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), Safaricom and the Crowne Plaza Hotel will feature leading global players such as TripAdvisor, Expedia and WAYN.com – the world’s largest travel focused social media site. The international experts will be giving presentations at the two-day conference, on how East Africa’s tourism sector can harness the potential of the web, especially following the enormous interest generated in Africa from the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

KCB, a lead sponsor of the E-Tourism East Africa Conference, said: “The Tourism sector is hugely important to the growth and development of the region’s economies. The introduction of e-commerce in Kenya is an added opportunity for KCB to develop an innovative online booking solution”, said KCB Divisional Director Treasury, David Thuo.

He went on to say, “The online booking solution allows for online transactions and reservations that are vital ingredients needed for the future of tourism across East Africa. The tourism sector will have a user-friendly and affordable solution that will give access to reservations and management of online payments. With so many products and services being purchased online today, we want to ensure that the tourism sector knows the value and benefits of accepting online payments” said Mr. Thuo.

Safaricom through the Easy Travel portal is also a key sponsor. Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph said “We are a key service provider to the tourism sector and we have the right infrastructure in place to help promote this industry through an integrated service that incorporates both booking and payment functions”.

He went on to say, “We will be improving the online reservation system that will allow for hotels to be included on our Easy Travel portal. We are especially focused on the domestic market, buoyed by growing awareness about how easy it is to book and pay online in real time using M-PESA, our globally-acclaimed mobile money transfer service. Our eventual aim is to increase the utility of the mobile phone to our subscribers and position our data services as a solution to everyday challenges. We hope that the E-Tourism East Africa Conference will help deepen awareness within the sector on the need to conduct business online for greater efficiency and customer satisfaction.”

Damian Cook, CEO, E-Frontiers.

Damian Cook, the CEO of E-Tourism Frontiers, said that alongside the international speakers at this year’s summit, there will also be an impressive number of Africa based companies and projects presenting new and innovative ways of promoting and selling Africa online.

“We have some amazing projects in our line up this year- including some exciting local products and projects from Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. We will be presenting a case study of the Friend a Gorilla project which made Uganda’s gorillas individual members of Facebook and their updates and followers made them a social media success story – with increased bookings and massive global media coverage” said Cook.

The E-Tourism Frontiers CEO summed up,  “African Travel companies have seen the success of tourist produced online viral videos such as the Battle of Kruger, which has been viewed by over 50 million people, and they are now creating platforms for user generated content, reviews and discussions of their products. More companies are also using Twitter and Facebook to develop strong networks of supporters and consumers. The web has really made it easy for small players to use technology, creativity and innovation to make a big connection with global markets.”

The E-Tourism East Africa Conference will be held in Nairobi at the Crowne Plaza Hotel – Upper Hill on the 2nd and 3rd of September 2010. For additional information visit www.e-tourismfrontiers.com

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Samsung’s bada-powered Wave finally hits Kenya.

Published on August 10, 2010 in Uncategorized. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

I’ve been waiting for this news for sometime and its finally here! Samsung today launched the much anticipated and bada-powered Samsung Wave handset (S8500) in conjunction with Safaricom in Kenya. The Samsung Wave is the first mobile handset to be released on Samsung’s new, open mobile platform, bada, which is the cornerstone of Samsung’s bold commitment to provide a smartphone for everyone.

The Samsung Wave has a Super AMOLED 3.3” display that makes its screen visually stunning, a Social Hub to bring you closer to your contacts and connections, and TouchWiz 3.0 for an intuitive and hugely customizable user interface. The Wave’s high-speed CPU ensures swift, smooth application experiences and multi-tasking, making the device an always-on mobile multimedia companion. The Samsung Wave has been built to offer users an unrivalled level of performance, customization and choice in how they connect with their world.


“The Samsung Wave truly demonstrates our commitment to deliver rich, connected and innovative smartphone experiences to everyone,” said  Robert Ngeru, Samsung Electronics Nairobi Office Deputy Managing Director. “Samsung Wave sees our platform vision become a reality. For the first time, developers have the freedom to create applications across multiple platforms, for consumption on a huge range of devices. In the Wave, our developer partners can see the ocean of opportunity that is offered by the bada mobile platform and our device technology,” he said.

“We are very excited to have partnered with Safaricom to make this product nationally available for Kenyans. The Samsung wave will be retailing exclusively at Safaricom outlets countrywide for Ksk  29,999 and will come with 100MB Free data and Kes. 1,000.00 free airtime.” he added.

Super AMOLED – Seeing is believing

With the Samsung Wave, seeing really is believing as it features the world’s first Super AMOLED display; delivering an unrivalled screen experience on a smartphone. The Super AMOLED offers much brighter, clearer, and less reflective AMOLED OnCell display, featuring a high resolution WVGA (800×480 pixels) screen with mDNIe (mobile Digital Natural Image engine) technology. DNIe technology is proven display technology which incorporated to Samsung’s LCD TV and LED TV lineups. With a free viewing angle and super fast response, the Samsung Wave display provides superb image quality for viewing both videos and photos.

Social Hub – my communities at my hand

Social Hub has been designed from the ground up to seamlessly integrate all major portal’s email, IM and SNS services directly into the Samsung Wave. With its TouchWiz 3.0 UI, it provides users easy-flow integrated experience of messaging, managing contacts and viewing calendar events. Social Hub is powered by the amazing push technology to deliver email messages, calendar events and SNS updates in real-time.

TouchWiz 3.0 UI – new and improved

The Samsung Wave provides superior levels of choice to all users via its fully customizable menus and home-page. For those who demand access to their social networking sites at all times, the device allows users to change the layout of the home-page to allow instant access to Twitter, Facebook and a host of other social networking services. For those who love music, the device home-page can be turned into an intuitive media player; while for those who take and share a lot of photos, the home page can be customized to feature favourite images. Users will also benefit from Quick Panel, a way of prioritizing and aggregating applications into one screen for instant access.

With its eye-catchingly brilliant screen, Samsung’s latest TouchWiz 3.0 user interface gives a tactile, intuitive user experience, and includes iconic new features such as motion UI, smart unlock and customizable widget screen.

Speed, performance and beauty

The Samsung Wave benefits from a superb 1GHz processor which offers users the best graphic performance available today. Its speed makes the touch screen user interface incredibly responsive and intuitive and, more importantly, means that the 3D and memory-intensive graphic and video performance is unsurpassed.

The Samsung Wave is also one of the most attractive devices to launch so far this year; its seamless, streamlined body has no parting or harsh lines and features a beautiful curved, tempered glass display which perfectly complements and enhances the vividness of the Super AMOLED display. And with anti-smudge technology, those greasy thumb prints are a thing of the past.

Multimedia Features and Connectivity

Multi-codec support for DivX and Xvid, and support for 5.1 surround sound delivery transforms the device into a personal entertainment system and HD video decoding and recording capabilities make the Samsung Wave an outstanding device for capturing, sharing and viewing video.

For the first time in the world, Samsung Wave is incorporated Bluetooth® 3.0 and WiFi 802.11n standard.

SamsungApps: Unlimited Expandability

Samsung’s bada platform allows mobile users to simply and easily download an abundance of applications from Samsung Apps, an integrated application store accessible from the device and online. Featuring a wealth of games, navigation, social networking, e-book, health and lifestyle applications, SamsungApps gives users instant access to a huge choice of mobile experiences.

Samsung established its mobile application ecosystem through the launch of Samsung Mobile Innovator in 2008 and the Samsung Application Seller Site followed by Samsung Application Store as another key element of this offering. Already launched in the UK, France, Italy, Singapore, Germany, Brazil and China, this will be expanded to more than 50 countries all over the world in 2010.

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Safaricom launches low-cost Huawei VF845 Android Phone.

Published on August 10, 2010 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

This came as something of a surprise to me but Safaricom has launched its second Huawei Android handset this week. The big difference between the latest Huawei Android and the one announced a few weeks ago by Safaricom is the price. The Huawei VF845 will be retailing at only Kes. 16,499.00 which is substantively cheaper than the earlier launched U8220 handset which is supposed to retail for approximately Kes. 30,000.00 when it hits the marketplace.

The information on the Huawei VF845 Andorid was in a full page in yesterday’s edition of the Daily Nation. Some of the key features of the handset are as follows:

  • 60,000 applications (via the Android marketplace).
  • Fully touchscreen.
  • 3G Enabled.
  • Bluetooth.
  • Expandable memory.
  • WIFI enabled.
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Bharti Airtel to boost Eastern Africa connectivity with the launch of EASSy

Published on August 5, 2010 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , .

In a move that is set to hugely boost connectivity of East African countries with rest of the world, Bharti Airtel, one of the leading emerging markets’ telcos together with global telcos today announced the launch of the EASSy cable system. This 10000 Km cable has received investment of around $263 million and has a capacity of 1.4 terabits per second, making it the largest submarine cable system serving the African continent.

EASSy is the first East coast system to connect a direct route to Europe thereby helping to deliver data traffic faster to key internet peering points in Europe and North America. It connects Mtunzini in South Africa to Port Sudan ( in Sudan ) with landing points in nine countries. This cable system is expected to prove a boon in proliferation of broadband connectivity to all parts of Africa, a prerequisite for the successful production of e-commerce, internet, and other broadband applications and projects on the continent.

Speaking on the occasion Mr. Ajay Chitkara, CEO, Global Data Business , Bharti Airtel said, “Our investment of over US $500 million over the last two years are designed to create a global network that offers unmatched resilience and maximum diversity. The commencement of EASSy cable system is a significant step in our journey to create a robust undersea cable infrastructure for our customers. It will also safeguard & ensure all time connectivity of East African countries with the world. This will facilitate proliferation of ICT services thereby ensuring macro economic development of the region. Bharti Airtel is proud to be part of the consortium building this significant undersea cable system.”

“EASSy represents a bridge for Africa’s broadband infrastructure by linking Africa to the global broadband infrastructure network. The presence and partnership of global players such as Bharti Airtel means that EASSy can and will also act as a bridge for South-South cooperation. This link delivers an important direct route for efficient flow of information for trade, economic, social and other cooperation between Asia and Africa.  I trust that the achievement of this economic expansion is a clear indicator that the initial objectives of EASSy go far beyond just the simple delivery of infrastructure” said, Chairman of the EASSy Cable Management Committee.

The consortium comprises of 16 telecom operators including Bharti Airtel and other players like British Telecom, Etisalat, Saudi Telecom, MTN International Group, Telkom South Africa & others. EASSy landing stations include Port Sudan, Djibouti, Mombasa, Dar-easalaam, Moroni in Comoros Islands, Toliary in Madagaskar, Maputo in Mozambique and Mtuzini in South Africa

This cable link synergises with Bharti Airtel’s existing multiple high speed connectivity options for its global wholesale operations and offers a direct route to Europe from India. Bharti Airtel’s investments in EASSy, is part of its plans to expand it global network through its ownership of the i2i submarine cable system and consortium ownership in other global undersea cable systems like Unity, SEA-ME-WE 4, EIG, I-ME-WE and AAG.

About Bharti Airtel Limited.

Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa.  The company offers mobile voice & data services, fixed line, high speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions for enterprises and national & international long distance services to carriers. Bharti Airtel has been ranked among the six best performing technology companies in the world by BusinessWeek.  Bharti Airtel had over 189 million customers across its operations at the end of June 2010. To know more visit www.airtel.in

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Nominations for Safaricom’s Innovation Board.

Published on August 3, 2010 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Every now and then, everyone it seems has a field day “Safaricom Bashing”. This happened not so long ago when Safaricom attempted to launch an innovation forum with Kenya’s technology community. The “terms of engagement” enraged the community with its punitive and misguided approach that led to the whole initiative being put on hold. Basically, it did not work, that is until now.

Last week I was invited for a meeting by Safaricom’s Wadzanai Chiota-Madziva who heads up their value-added services (VAS) business. The meeting was attended by some of Kenya’s leading “digerati” such as Erik Hersman, Jessica Colaco, Al Kags, Karanja Macharia, and Rehema Parmena. To be honest, I had no idea what the meeting was going to be about until I got there and Al Kags briefed us in due course. Basically, Safaricom is looking to set-up an Innovation Board that would oversee the process of engaging Kenya’s technology community and general public in innovating.

In addition, since Safaricom literally receives hundreds of business ideas on a weekly basis the Innovation Board would act as a filter for the same to establish which opportunities are most viable and how to compensate innovators for those that get through. Also, as a part of the meeting, we felt it would be best that Safaricom allows the general public and technology community at large in Kenya to nominate individuals who they felt would make a valued contribution to the Innovation Board. Safaricom is clearly looking to engage so you can make your nominations here at the Safaricom Innovation web site.

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Mobile SMS project to create employment for jobless youth in rural Kenya.

Published on August 3, 2010 in Uncategorized. 6 Comments

Initiative aims to create jobs for over 3000 Kenyan rural youth using mobile phones and SMS.

Announced today is a new and an innovative project aimed at creating job opportunities for Kenyan youth using the mobile phone. Information Convergence Technologies is a Kenyan firm that has launched MwananchiSMS, an SMS-based service that will hopefully see hundreds of young Kenyans employed by using mobile phones to disseminate specific and localized information.

The firm is currently in the process of recruiting youth leaders to spearhead this project in rural Kenya. The youth leaders will be appointed in each rural village and will to collect bio data and mobile phone numbers for between 1000 to 3000 users in their respective village. The youth leader will then run the business as a franchise and will become a self employed micro-journalist. Users of the service will be required to give give their consent to receive the Free MwananchiSMS service.

“The project will provide employment to rural youth in Kenya who could otherwise be engaged in unproductive and disruptive social or political activities. The youth leaders will not be treated as employees but as social entrepreneurs who work on behalf of and for the interest of the community.” said Mr Simon Ndirangu, the Managing Director,  Information Convergence Technologies.

Mr Ndirangu said youth leaders or Micro-journalists will retain 30% of revenue, adding that the concept is a simple, yet unique way of reaching out to thousands of Kenyan citizens using mobile phones and at the same time creating jobs for the youth. At the moment there is no way of getting a timely message to people in a rural setting in Kenya as there is limited Internet access, televisions, and newspapers are relatively expensive.

Today, mobile phones reach a large portion of the Kenyan population, including low income earners and rural folk. From farmers to teachers, street hawkers to businessmen, most citizens are now connected through the mobile phone. A simple SMS facility can provide Kenyan citizens with a channel to receive, share, or broadcast their views on important issues.

Enabling push-down services such as sending alerts, reminders, updates, and vital information via a mobile phone can bridge the digital divide between and within rural and urban areas of Kenya whilst serving as a useful medium for interaction between all stakeholders – from government, to organizations and individuals country-wide.

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