Flossy tales of ICT in Kenya

How Africa Tweets

2012-02-06T15:15:00.001+03:00

Here is another interesting bit of research conducted by Portland and which was launched in Nairobi on February 1, 2012.

Twitter is often thought of as an European and American phenomenon. But how does Africa use the social networking tool?

According to the research, young people Tweeting from mobile devices are driving the growth of Twitter in Africa. In the first ever attempt to comprehensively map the use of Twitter in Africa, Portland and Tweetminster analyzed over 11.5 million geo-located Tweets originating on the continent during the last three months of 2011. This pan-African analysis of Twitter traffic was complemented by a survey of 500 of Africa’s most active Tweeters.

How Africa Tweets found that:

South Africa is the continent’s most active country by volume of geo-located Tweets, with over twice as many Tweets (5,030,226 during Q4 2011) as the next most active Kenya (2,476,800). Nigeria (1,646,212), Egypt (1,214,062) and Morocco (745,620) make up the remainder of the top five most active countries.
57% of Tweets from Africa are sent from mobile devices, with Blackberry, iPhone and Android ranked in that order.
60% of Africa’s most active Tweeters are aged 20-29 while average age of Twitter users globally is 39 years.
Twitter in Africa is widely used for social conversation, with 81% of those polled saying that they mainly used it for communicating with friends, but also an important source of news. 68% of the uses use Twitter to monitor news.
Twitter is becoming an important source of information in Africa. 68% of those polled said that they use Twitter to monitor news. 22% use it to search for employment opportunities. 55% use it to follow politics (no wonder African politicians are rushing to create Twitter accounts and connect with potentially huge voter basket-within the continent and the Diaspora).
African Twitter users are active across a range of social media, including Facebook (94%), YouTube (69%), Google+ (46%),LinkedIn (37%) and Foursquare (23%).

Mark Flanagan, Portland’s Partner for Digital Communications, says: “One of the more surprising findings of this research is that more public figures have not joined Africa’s burgeoning Twittersphere. With some notable exceptions, we found that business and political leaders were largely absent from the debates playing out on Twitter across the continent. As Twitter lifts off in Africa, governments, businesses and development agencies can really no longer afford to stay out of a new space where dialogue will increasingly be taking place.”

In Kenya, for instance you have the public figures such as:

How Africa Tweets found that Twitter is helping to form new links within Africa. The majority of those surveyed said that at least half of the Twitter accounts they follow are based on the continent.

Beatrice Karanja, Associate Director and head of Portland Nairobi, says: “We saw the pivotal role of Twitter in the events in North Africa last year, but it is clear that Africa’s Twitter revolution is really just beginning. Twitter is helping Africa and Africans to connect in new ways and swap information and views. And for Africa – as for the rest of the world – that can only be good.”

Portland hopes that this survey will serve as a benchmark for measuring the evolution of Twitter use in Africa, shedding new light on how Africa communicates nationally, regionally and internationally. We welcome feedback and comments.

More information on How Africa Tweets can be found here.

Interesting tidbits about Android

2011-12-13T13:53:00.001+03:00

It is that time of the year when we folks start taking stock of what has happened in our lives with only a few days to Christmas and to 2012. While browsing through the Talk Android site, a number of interesting facts cropped up.

In one of the articles, the author mentions that during the Google’s announcement of its new Google Music Service in November, one such tidbit of knowledge dropped was the fact that, in regards to Android activations, over 200 million devices have been activated globally, and that’s up 100 million from May. That’s a whopping 550,000 per day!

In another article, Eric Schmidt, Google-CEO in August said that Google believes there are some 200,000 Android devices being activated every day (compared to 160,000 activations a day that we reported in June). That is 1.4 million devices sold every month (and that was 4-months ago) and it’s pretty obvious people are getting the message that Android is clearly the optimum smartphone platform. This month alone, that number has already hit 300,000 devices being activated daily! That is truly a staggering number, and a real milestone for the Android platform. Before we know it, we’ll be seeing half a million devices activated daily.

MPESA surpasses Western Union in transactions globally

2011-10-23T09:36:00.001+03:00

It was interesting to come an article in the Daily Nation reporting Safaricom’s MPESA had more transactions than its global rival, Western Union, across the world.

The International Monetary Fund in its October outlook on the African economy observed that MPESA processes more transactions domestically within Kenya than Western Union does globally, and provides more banking facilities to more than 70 per cent of the country’s adult population.

According to Wikipedia, it was entirely developed by Kenyans and was initially sponsored by the UK-based Department for International Development (DFID) in 2003–2007. The initial concept of M-PESA was to create a service which allowed microfinance borrowers to conveniently receive and repay loans using the network of Safaricom airtime resellers. This would enable microfinance institutions (MFIs) to offer more competitive loan rates to their users, as there is a reduced cost of dealing in cash. The users of the service would gain through being able to track their finances more easily. But when the service was trialled, customers adopted the service for a variety of alternative uses; complications arose with Faulu, the partnering microfinance institution (MFI). M-PESA was re-focused and launched with a different value proposition: sending remittances home across the country and making payments.

Since then, MPESA boasts of over 14 million customers and about 28,000 agent outlets across the country. An online article on MobileMoneyAfrica cites a Central Bank of Kenya which reports that Safaricom’s mobile money service MPESA transacted a massive Kes 727.8 billion (or USD 7.278 billion) last year, which was representative of 305 million transactions carried out in the year, according to 2010 annual bank supervision report. “MPESA was still the most widely used method of mobile money transfer as evidenced by the 305.7 million transactions effected and valued at Kes 727.8 billion in the year,” reads the report in part.

This means that on average, the service moved Kes 2 billion (USD 20 million) daily.

Person-to-Person transactions for March 2011 stood at Kes 47 billion (USD 470 million) , according to figures released during the investor briefing in March.

Since being launched in March 2007, MPESA’s popularity has been growing from strength to strength. For instance, the number of users grew from 6.1 million in 2009 to 9.4 million in 2010 and 13.8 million users as at March 2011. On revenue side, Safaricom made some Kes 11.78 billion (USD 117.8 million) from MPESA last year up from Kes 7.56 billion (USD 75.6 million) the previous year, a 56 per cent growth.

According to Safaricom’s annual report for the year ended 31 March 2011, Cumulative value of transactions from inception is Kes 828 billion (USD 8.28 billion). M-Pesa competes with services such as Airtel Money, Orange Money and Yu-cash. “In only four years of existence of mobile phone money transfer services, four mobile operators have enrolled over 15 million customers,” the CBK report says.

According to Mumo, Orange Money transacted over Kes 50 million (USD 500,000) on the first month of launch late last year but the figure could now be over half a billion. “Orange Money allows bigger transactions and that is why we want to partner with Saccos,” Mumo said.

The popularity of MPESA has seen the service attract international recognition. The service won the Mobile Money for the Unbanked Award at this year’s Global Mobile Awards 2011 in Barcelona, Spain. The service is also being tried in other countries. In Tanzania, where the product was launched by Vodacom, MPESA has 1.6m active and 7 million registered users.

The service has however failed to pick in South Africa where it was launched in August last year in partnership with Vodacom. Last month, Vodacom disclosed that it has only managed to register about 100, 000 MPESA users in SA so far. Vodacom said MPESA has fallen short of its expectations for the product. When it unveiled the product, Vodacom said it expected to sign up 10 million customers within three years.

$15 Laptop and Projector: The best, most effective, and cheapest computer system for schools | ICTWorks

2011-10-10T15:12:00.000+03:00

$15 Laptop and Projector: The best, most effective, and cheapest computer system for schools | ICTWorks

Kenya’s calling rates go up

2011-10-06T07:35:00.001+03:00

Well, as expected Safaricom did increase its calling rates by 33% due to the double digit inflation being experienced, and a free falling shilling that was trading as low as Ksh 104 to the dollar, and which is reportedly the second worst currency in the world as last week.

This was surprisingly the only performing sector that had not made any increases on its services or goods, and the first price increase in airtime in 11 years! The low-cost call strategies that had been adopted by yuMobile and Airtel seems to have not paid fruits, as in fact reports indicate that they actually lost customers in the three months to June 2011. On the other hand, Safaricom and Telkom Kenya, who had opposed this strategy, gained new subscribers.

Airtel lost 5% of its customers, which translates to 202,970 in the last quarter of the year; and losing its market share to 14.3%. yuMobile 1,554 of its customers between March and June this year. In the same period, total number of mobile phone subscribers stood at 25.27 million (including about 4 million using unregistered phones).

In India, a similar trend is being observed where mobile tariffs, raised recently for the first time in years, are set to rise further, a clear signal that the Indian telecom sector's tryst with cut-price tariffs has all but ended.Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, told an industry conference that mobile phone companies had little choice but to raise call charges because they had to offset lower revenues from rural markets.

"This correction is required to compensate companies for their rural operations because cost of operations has gone up exponentially," Mittal said.

Mobile Web in Africa 2011

2011-10-05T12:07:00.001+03:00

The registration for Mobile Web in Africa 2011 has officially opened.

The main conference runs on November 23 and 24, 2011, with a “This is Mobile Marketing” Focus Day on November 22, 2011 and a Post Even Workshop Day on November 25, 2011.

What is it all about? Mobile Web in Africa 2011 is going to be a top, top quality conference and is part of a series of conferences organised by All Amber. Each event is designed to make a significant contribution to the harnessing of the potential of the mobile internet and applications on mobile devices in Africa.

Four hugely successful events have been held already:

the sell-out, highly acclaimed Mobile Web in Africa 2009 was held in Johannesburg in October 2009
A fantastic sister event, Mobile Web East Africa, took place in Nairobi, Kenya in February 2010
Mobile Web in Africa 2010 was again held in Johannesburg and again sold out
Mobile Web West Africa debuted in Lagos, Nigeria in February 2011 and sold out as well

At the events the agendas and speaker faculties are very, very strong, the interaction is fantastic, the environments we create are enormously rich and the outputs are superb.

The event is organized around the belief that the mobile web and apps represents a massive opportunity. Therefore this conference and its sister events in the East and West are what they would term “enablers”. Enablers to the expansion and growth of the mobile ecosystem in Africa.

For more information, visit the site (www.mobilewebafrica.com)

ICANN Approves Historic Change to Internet's Domain Name System

2011-06-20T15:35:00.001+03:00

ICANN's Board of Directors has approved a plan to usher in one of the biggest changes ever to the Internet's Domain Name System.

During a special meeting, the Board approved a plan to dramatically increase the number of Internet domain name endings -- called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) -- from the current 22, which includes such familiar domains as .com, .org and .net.

"ICANN has opened the Internet's naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today's decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind," said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN.

New gTLDs will change the way people find information on the Internet and how businesses plan and structure their online presence. Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word in any language, offering organizations around the world the opportunity to market their brand, products, community or cause in new and innovative ways.

The decision to proceed with the gTLD program follows many years of discussion, debate and deliberation with the Internet community, business groups and governments. The Applicant Guidebook, a rulebook explaining how to apply for a new gTLD, went through seven significant revisions to incorporate more than 1,000 comments from the public. Strong efforts were made to address the concerns of all interested parties, and to ensure that the security, stability and resiliency of the Internet are not compromised.

ICANN will soon begin a global campaign to tell the world about this dramatic change in Internet names and to raise awareness of the opportunities afforded by new gTLDs. Applications for new gTLDs will be accepted from 12 January 2012 to 12 April 2012.

It will cost $185,000 to apply for the suffixes, and companies would need to show they have a legitimate claim to the name they are buying.

Analysts say it is a price that global giants might be willing to pay - in order to maximise their internet presence.

The money will be used to cover costs incurred by Icann in developing the new gTLDs and employing experts to scrutinise the many thousands of expected applications.

A portion will be set-aside to deal with potential legal actions, raised by parties who fail to get the domains they want.

Vodacom South Africa low uptake of MPESA

2011-06-03T10:16:00.001+03:00

I was quite surprised to read elsewhere that Vodacom SA has had such a poor uptake of MPESA unlike its sister companies in East Africa.

So far it had only registered about 100,000 MPESA users since August 2010, whereas it had expected to registered 10 million MPESA users within the next three years. Compare this with 8.6 million registered users in Tanzania and 12 million registered users in Kenya.

Guess that is due to the level of economic development and sophistication of the banking sector in SA compared to what we have in Eastern and Central Africa, where a majority of the populace was unbanked till the other day when banking responded to the needs of the mass and low income segment, which supported by Safaricom’s MPESA, has seen it moving close to Ksh 600 million monthly.

Mobile phones and the link to cancer

2011-06-03T10:13:00.001+03:00

Though at this stage a WHO study says that mobile phones are possibly carcinogenic, it just confirms what has been fears of the estimated five billion mobile phone users globally.

The link seems to point at a type of brain tumour especially for the mobile phone addicts who cannot help put down their phones from their ears. Advise now is text more and text less especially in this era where talking over the mobile phone is far cheaper than texting.

So next time you want to chase after those free calls all night long, think twice, you never know!

Is it worth it, mobile number portability in Kenya?

2011-04-15T10:46:00.001+03:00

Barely two weeks after CCK launched the mobile number portability, latest statistics released by the regulator indicates that only 8,000 subscribers have migrated their numbers as of April 13, 2o11.

This amidst the claims from the mobile phone companies accusing each other of sabotaging the process and frustrating outbound subscribers in a bid to lock them in within their network, and which CCK has gone public to deny that this is not the case.

The reasons for the low uptake in porting requests have been attributed to two major aspects that define the unique Kenyan calling habits.

Firstly, quite a number of the subscribers have at least two SIM cards, enabling them enjoy services of two or more networks (I have to admit I am one of them, and frankly, not bothered at all with migrating when I can still enjoy the benefits of the two networks subscribed to).

Secondly, the issue of long delays before porting and the porting fee which locally has been capped at KES 200 is also another factor. The cost is way above that of purchasing a new SIM card that can cost anywhere from KES 10 to KES 50, and besides providing more than two hours of talk time in this era of KES 1 per minute call.

Porting Access Kenya Co Ltd targets at least 300,000 ports a year, for it to break even. To meet this (impossible), the firm must process over 25,000 ports a month (so far they might get 16,000 porting requests in April if the momentum is sustained). This casts doubts whether Porting Access Kenya Co Ltd might return any profits.

The firm’s local partner has spent € 2.5 million (KES 300 million) on the MNP platform and operations. The firm currently has 15 employees on its payroll.

Mobile phone firms have introduced a number of offers to tempt subscribers to port.

Safaricom says it invested KES 800 million (USD $10 million) in new equipment and service awareness.

Telkom Kenya's Orange says it has spent KES 360 million (USD $ 4.5 million) .

Analysts say the service came four to five years late into the Kenyan market.

And this was confirmed by a study conducted by TNS RMS, which indicated that in Kenya, multi-SIM holding is a common practice with 40% of the mobile phone subscribers holding more than one SIM. The results of the study by TNS Mobile Life study is quite interesting and looks at other aspects of mobile telephony across the world. You can access at www.discovermobilelife.com.

April 1 it is for the number portability

2011-03-23T15:44:00.001+03:00

Further to my earlier post on the forthcoming number portability that is due to start starts in 10 days, it is now official that subscribers will have to pay to switch operators at a one-off fee of KES. 173 (USD 2.03).

The four mobile phone operators in the country — Safaricom, Airtel Kenya, Telkom Kenya and Essar Telecom Kenya Ltd, trading as yu — started technical trials on Friday last week.

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) said the operators were ready for the launch.

Porting Access Kenya Ltd, the firm carrying out the project, is targeting 300,000 ports (number of subscribers switching operators) a year.

The first step is to inform your current and new operator of the intention to switch. The next move would be to surrender your SIM card to the current provider and acquire another SIM card from the new network.

The service will be activated within two working days after paying the porting fee to the provider facilitating the transfer. However, it would take at least 60 days before switching networks again.

For instance, those leaving Safaricom would lose the value added services subscribed for earlier such as M-Pesa. However, they would tap into the services in the new network.

Already Safaricom is on the warpath in a bid to retain its customers, and is offering the cheapest post paid options such as PostPay100 where a subscriber paying KES 1,000 (approx. USD 11.83) is entitles to 900 minutes in-network calls, 100 minutes out-of-network calls, 100 smses in-network and 100 MB data bundle; to the PostPay2500 that entitles you to 2,200 minutes in-network calls, 300 minutes out-of-network calls, 250 smses in-network and 100 MB data.

Do not forget too that Safaricom now is charging Blackberry subscribers only KES. 999 for usage per month!

Over to you Airtel and others for your better options!

Mobile number portability ON in Kenya

2011-03-18T11:21:00.001+03:00

Come April 1, 2011 Kenyan mobile subscribers will start changing their mobile phone service providers without having to surrender their numbers as early as next year at a charge of Ksh. 200 (USD $ 2.35).

Telecoms market regulator, the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), initiated the process in 2010 through newspaper advertisements asking the public to submit their views on the number portability service.

Though CCK had given the mobile phone service providers a deadline of December 31, 2010, this passed as they failed to start implementing the service. CCK had identified number portability as one of the necessary interventions required to further enhance a competitive environment. Benchmark studies carried out by CCK indicates that Service Provider Number Portability (SPNP) offers effective intervention in markets that are dominated by single players.

In Africa, number portability has been implemented by three countries so far: South Africa in 2006, Nigeria in 2007 and Egypt in 2008. The process of switching will not be automatic for first users—it will take a maximum of three days from the time of request for the service to be able to use the feature. Compare with other countries already on number portability, prior to March 2008 it took a minimum of 5 working days to port a number in the UK compared to 2 hours only in USA, as low as 20 minutes in the Republic of Ireland, 3 minutes in Australia and even a matter of seconds in New Zealand. By end of 2009, UK had reduced the period to not more than 2 hours through the recipient led porting implemented on 1 September 2009.

Airtel Kenya has taken to aggressive advertising of the number portability and is hoping to persuade more subscribers, especially from Safaricom migrate to Airtel due to its low cost calls and service support. However, it seems that mobile money transfer services such as MPESA are excluded from the portability service, ensuring that Safaricom retains its army of 18 million users, ensuring that its major revenue line is still intact.

Time will tell us if the recent price wars will bring rewards to the telecoms that have been viciously involved in the fight to attract new subscribers.

Kenya’s mobile telephony and Internet review for 2010-2011

2011-02-22T09:20:00.001+03:00

In brief

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) recent quarterly report for 2010/2011 confirms what we have known so far, that the recent price wars between Safaricom and Airtel have led to increased mobile line subscribers and reduced revenues for the telcos. Click here to access the report.

Overall teledensity rose to 56.9 per cent from 53.3 per cent in June 2010, with mobile services accounting for 55.9 per cent.

Mobile traffic and usage patterns

A total of 6.63 billion minutes of local calls were made on the mobile networks against 6.05 billion in the previous quarter, representing 9.6 per cent increase. Similarly, the number of voice minutes received on all mobile networks was 6.63 billion minutes, representing 97.5 per cent increase from the same period of the previous year. The number of SMS recorded during the quarter was 740 million text messages compared to 769.6 million text messages sent the previous quarter. This is attributed to the recent price wars between Safaricom and Airtel Networks, and which have featured recently in the Kenyan parliament where the government was concerned at the projected drop in tax revenues from the telcos amounting to KES. 5 billion (USD $ 62,500,000).

Internet traffic and usage patterns

The total number of internet subscriptions registered 4.3 per cent growth from 3.09 million in the previous quarter, Jun 2010, to 3.2 million in the quarter under review. The number of internet users was estimated at 8.69 million from 7.8 million users in the previous quarter. Broadband subscriptions increased from 18,626 subscribers in the previous quarter to 84,726 representing 0.97 per cent of the total internet subscriptions in the country, and is the primary driver towards the internet subscriptions.

Mobile operators continue to dominate the internet market with more than 98 per cent of the Internet market share being through mobile services

The international internet connectivity bandwidth recorded marginal decline from 20,384.12Mbps in the previous quarter to 20,209.56Mbps during the quarter under review. This was as a result of decline in VSAT connectivity.

Mobile tariffs

Mobile tariffs reduced significantly over the quarter registering an average of KES 2.65 (USD $ 0.033) for on-net calls per minute from KES 4.78 (USD $ 0.059) per minute in the previous period and KES 2.5 (USD $ 0.03) for post-paid subscribers at the end of the quarter under review.

This represents 33.4 per cent reduction on pre-paid tariffs and 55.5 per cent on post-paid tariffs from the previous period.

The tariff decline is attributed to an interconnection determination by the Commission during the period that saw mobile termination rates reduced to KES 2.21 (USD $ 0.028) from KES 4.42 (USD $ 0.055).

Mobile and fixed line subscriptions

The quarter under review recorded 9.5 per cent mobile subscriptions growth from 20.1 million in the last quarter to 22 million subscribers. This is the highest growth that has been recorded over the last three quarters and the significant growth could be attributed to the availability of bundled package that promotes cheaper handsets preloaded with airtime and SIM cards coupled with the reduction of tariffs.

On the other hand, the fixed lines declined by 2.7 per cent from 234,522 to 228,391 lines. Similarly the fixed wireless recorded a 37.2 per cent decline from 225,592 in the previous period to 141,580 during the period under review. This will still keep declining bearing in mind that the telcos offering these telephony mode are unable to provide acceptable customer support services and are plagued with rampant fibre optic cable vandalism and theft, rumoured to be self-inflicted in the highly competitive sector. The total number of main fixed lines (fixed lines plus fixed wireless) stood at 369,971 representing a penetration of 0.96 main lines per 100 inhabitants. This is against 1.7 and 17.1 main lines per 100 inhabitants in Africa and the world respectively (ITU world telecommunication/ICT indicators database, 2010) and is a trend unlikely to be reversed.

This is confirmed by the fact that during the quarter, Airtel Networks and Telkom Orange gained 4.4 and 1.3 percentage points respectively of market share while Safaricom and Essar Telecom dropped by 4.8 and 0.7 percentage points respectively. In terms of absolute net additions Airtel Networks registered the highest number during the quarter under review with 1,143,353 new subscriptions followed by Safaricom with 473,979. Essar Telecom lost 26,266 subscriptions.

The prepaid option continued to dominate the mobile market accounting for 99 per cent of the total mobile subscriptions against 1% of post paid lines.

Conclusion

The telcos continued to demonstrate strong and consistent growth as demonstrated by increased subscriptions in the mobile market while the fixed line continue on a declining trend.

The number of mobile subscriptions has tripled in the last five years from 7.3 in 2006 to the current 22 million subscriptions. With competitive pressure likely to remain intense among the four service providers, growth in subscriptions is expected to continue. The mobile/data subscriptions have continued to experience significant growth, driven by consumer demand as well as the need by operators to diversify services as a result of intense competition in the voice market.

Growth in internet subscription resulted in increased internet usage from 19.9 per cent in the previous quarter to 22.1 per cent.

People Power! Internet Power and African Revolutions

2011-02-04T15:52:00.001+03:00

The events in the last few weeks in Tunisia and Egypt have been very interesting to follow. Who would have thought that one day an African government would be overthrown in a revolution (Dignity Revolution) largely attributed to an Internet savvy generation.

Looking more closely at the events unfolding, one would not have failed to have noticed that this youthful chunk of the population has been exposed to modern cultures – hip hop, Facebook, YouTube, urbanization, technology etc. Now try and compare them against the old generation of leaders that are deeply steeped towards spiritualism, corruption and short sighted policies that can be considered ultra conservative, and what you have is a time bomb waiting to explore. In this case modernity is viewed as as a self-liberating process, with technology that provides an opportunity to other cultures and worlds not previously accessible to them. To them the old generation is a major stumbling block to all that they aspire for, wish for and dream of attaining in their lifetime. At stake was a dictatorship so typical of Africa countries that had an overdue date stamp and had lost touch with its citizenry in the 21st century.

According to the 2010 CIA World Factbook, Tunisia’s estimated population in July 2010 was 10,589,025, with an age structure as shown below:

0-14 years: 22.7% (male 1,227,238/female 1,149,796)
15-64 years: 70.1% (male 3,701,661/female 3,652,322)
65 years and over: 7.2% (male 352,003/female 403,319) (2010 est.)

the total total median age is 29.7 years, representative of a country with a large population of its citizenry in the below 35 years that is evidently been Internet fed.

This is supported by statistics provided by Internet World Stats site that shows that there are were 3,600,000 Internet users as of June 10, a 34.0% of the population penetration rate that places among the top African countries with the largest proportion of its citizenry on the net.

Further analysis of its social networking behaviourism of this youth by Socialbakers, a marketing consulting firm that specializes on Facebook usage, shows that there were a total of 2,066,340 Facebook users this month, which is 57.40% penetration of its Internet users! Interesting aspects of the age structure is revealed by analysis of the Socialbakers site as illustrated below:

As can be seen, 80% of these users are between 16-34 years, and you can begin now to understand what the so called “Generation Y” is capable of doing!

It will be even more interesting to watch the cascading effect of Tunisia’s revolution in Jordan and Kuwait, and any other Arab countries in the Middle East. Egyptians, under 30-years rule of Mubarak is undergoing cataclysmic changes in political spheres, and will perhaps make one day a fine reading on history of how modern or contemporary technologies revolutionize the world we live in.

facecrook

2011-01-20T19:23:00.001+03:00

Whilst still on Malaysia, the crooks here are going to the book, Facebook, that is. A common story all over the world with the new social networking era.

Most of the cases are identity thefts, with telephone numbers, even photographs being lifted off for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to blackmail and sexual harassment.

In Malaysia alone, some 400 crimes involving Facebook were reported to a cyber security group. According to an international survey of 2010, Malaysians are at the top with the most number of friends on social networking websites like Facebook with an average of 233, and spending up to nine hours each week logged on! Malaysia is ranked 15 with 9 899 460Facebook users (37.75% of its population), with US at the top of the list with 146 591 880users, according to the Socialbakers site. Kenya surprisingly has 999 700 users, Uganda 253 620 users and Tanzania 220 560 users.

Facebook users the world over have been posting on many occasions personal details such as birth dates, addresses and telephone numbers on the website and which has been a boon for identity fraudsters.

Hackers operating on social networks can easily create fake profiles and send friendship requests to unsuspecting users within their target groups.

Many users have become victims of identity frauds, harassment, blackmail and lost money through various scams operated via the website.

Kenyan TV commercials

2010-11-15T20:03:00.001+03:00

One of those things I could wish for is access to a site or sites that would have this great collection of TV commercials ever aired on Kenyan TV. In mind this would have commercials aired in the 1980s when Kenya had the only TV station that was State owned-the Voice of Kenya (VoK). Growing up in the 1970s I still recall with nostalgia the black-and-white commercials while growing up in the suburbs of Nairobi such advertisements such as Blueband, Kimbo, Omo, Cowboy, Lifebuoy, Rexona, Lady Gay among others.

The 1970s were the days TV station came on at 6 p.m. and closed 3 hours later on at 9 p.m. with the mandatory national anthem playing.

The 1980s saw the shift to more interesting advertisements and programmes such as the “The Six Million Dollar Man”, “The Little House on the Prairie”, “Dallas”, “Bionic Woman”, “Hart and Hart”, “Kojak” and “Dempsey”.

Anyone out there who can take the challenge of sourcing some of these commercials from 1970s to 2010 and having them all in one website where they can be downloaded for the walk down the memory lane?

Africa Internet Facebook Usage

2010-10-26T15:23:00.001+03:00

Africa, the second largest continent on earth after Asia, with an estimated human population of 1,013,779,050 in 2010; has a total of 110,948,420 Internet users in as at 31/10, a 10.9% penetration rate. Interestingly, 17,607,440 of these approximately 111 million African Internet users are Facebook users as at August 31/10, a 1.7% penetration rate.

As can be seen from the table below, statistics can be quite revealing, depending on how you want to look at the data.

Country	Population (2010 est.)	Internet Users (Dec/2000)	Internet Users (Aug/2010)	Penetration (% of Population)	User Growth (2000-2010)	% Users in Africa
Western Sahara	491,519	---	---	---	---	0.00%
Mayotte (FR)	231,139	---	---	---	---	0.00%
Seychelles	88,340	6,000	33,900	38.40%	465.00%	0.00%
Reunion (FR)	822,986	130,000	300,000	36.50%	130.80%	0.30%
Tunisia	10,589,025	100,000	3,600,000	34.00%	3500.00%	3.20%
Morocco	31,627,428	100,000	10,442,500	33.00%	10342.50%	9.40%
Cape Verde	508,659	8,000	150,000	29.50%	1775.00%	0.10%
Nigeria	152,217,341	200,000	43,982,200	28.90%	21891.10%	39.60%
Mauritius	1,294,104	87,000	290,000	22.40%	233.30%	0.30%
Egypt	80,471,869	450,000	17,060,000	21.20%	3691.10%	15.40%
Sao Tome & Principe	175,808	6,500	26,700	15.20%	310.80%	0.00%
Algeria	34,586,184	50,000	4,700,000	13.60%	9300.00%	4.30%
Zimbabwe	11,651,858	50,000	1,422,000	12.20%	2744.00%	1.30%
South Africa	49,109,107	2,400,000	5,300,000	10.80%	120.80%	4.80%
Saint Helena (UK)	7,670	n/a	800	10.40%	n/a	0.00%
Kenya	40,046,566	200,000	3,995,500	10.00%	1897.80%	3.60%
Sudan	41,980,182	30,000	4,200,000	10.00%	13900.00%	3.80%
Uganda	33,398,682	40,000	3,200,000	9.60%	7900.00%	2.90%
Gambia	1,824,158	4,000	130,100	7.10%	3152.50%	0.10%
Zambia	12,056,923	20,000	816,700	6.80%	3983.50%	0.70%
Senegal	14,086,103	40,000	923,000	6.60%	2207.50%	0.80%
Swaziland	1,354,051	10,000	90,000	6.60%	800.00%	0.10%
Gabon	1,545,255	15,000	98,800	6.40%	558.70%	0.10%
Namibia	2,128,471	30,000	127,500	6.00%	325.00%	0.10%
Botswana	2,029,307	15,000	120,000	5.90%	700.00%	0.10%
Congo	4,125,916	500	245,200	5.90%	48940.00%	0.20%
Togo	6,199,841	100,000	356,300	5.70%	256.30%	0.30%
Libya	6,461,454	10,000	353,900	5.50%	3439.00%	0.30%
Ghana	24,339,838	30,000	1,297,000	5.30%	4223.30%	1.20%
Angola	13,068,161	30,000	607,400	4.60%	1924.70%	0.50%
Cote d'Ivoire	21,058,798	40,000	968,000	4.60%	2320.00%	0.90%
Malawi	15,447,500	15,000	716,400	4.60%	4676.00%	0.60%
Eritrea	5,792,984	5,000	250,000	4.30%	4900.00%	0.20%
Rwanda	11,055,976	5,000	450,000	4.10%	8900.00%	0.40%
Lesotho	1,919,552	4,000	76,800	4.00%	1820.00%	0.10%
Cameroon	19,294,149	20,000	750,000	3.90%	3650.00%	0.70%
Djibouti	740,528	1,400	25,900	3.50%	1750.00%	0.00%
Comoros	773,407	1,500	24,300	3.10%	1520.00%	0.00%
Mozambique	22,061,451	30,000	612,500	2.80%	1941.70%	0.60%
Guinea-Bissau	1,565,126	1,500	37,100	2.40%	2373.30%	0.00%
Mauritania	3,205,060	5,000	75,000	2.30%	1400.00%	0.10%
Benin	9,056,010	15,000	200,000	2.20%	1233.30%	0.20%
Equatorial Guinea	650,702	500	14,400	2.20%	2780.00%	0.00%
Chad	10,543,464	1,000	187,800	1.80%	18680.00%	0.20%
Mali	13,796,354	18,800	250,000	1.80%	1229.80%	0.20%
Tanzania	41,892,895	115,000	676,000	1.60%	487.80%	0.60%
Madagascar	21,281,844	30,000	320,000	1.50%	966.70%	0.30%
Burkina Faso	16,241,811	10,000	178,200	1.10%	1682.00%	0.20%
Somalia	10,112,453	200	106,000	1.00%	52900.00%	0.10%
Guinea	10,324,025	8,000	95,000	0.90%	1087.50%	0.10%
Burundi	9,863,117	3,000	65,000	0.70%	2066.70%	0.10%
Niger	15,878,271	5,000	115,900	0.70%	2218.00%	0.10%
Central African Rep.	4,844,927	1,500	22,600	0.50%	1406.70%	0.00%
Congo, Dem. Rep.	70,916,439	500	365,000	0.50%	72900.00%	0.30%
Ethiopia	88,013,491	10,000	445,400	0.50%	4354.00%	0.40%
Liberia	3,685,076	500	20,000	0.50%	3900.00%	0.00%
Sierra Leone	5,245,695	5,000	14,900	0.30%	198.00%	0.00%
TOTAL AFRICA	1,013,779,050	4,514,400	110,931,700	10.90%	2357.30%	100.00%

As can be seen from the table above, the top 3 countries in Africa in terms of Internet penetration are Seychelles (38.40%), Reunion (36.50%) and Tunisia (34.50%). The African countries with the least Internet penetration are Ethiopia (0.50%), Liberia (o.50%) and Siera Leone (0.30%); countries that have just emerged from a history of long civil war. Looking at member countries that comprise the East African Community in terms of Facebook usage are Kenya-864,760 Facebook users (2.2% penetration rate), Tanzania -141,580 Facebook users (0.3% penetration rate), Uganda-196,000 Facebook users ( 0.6% penetration rate), Rwanda-52,520 Facebook users (0.5% penetration rate) and Burundi-6,740 Facebook users (0.1% penetration rate).

Global and African Internet Usage

2010-09-21T15:08:00.001+03:00

According to the latest statistics as as 30 June 2010 by IWS the number of Internet users globally is almost hitting the 2 billion level! To be exact, there were 1,966,514,816 Internet users, representing 28.7% penetration rate of the world’s estimated 6,845,609,960 human beings.

Africa had 110,931,700 Internet users, a 5.6% penetration rate of its estimated 1,013,779,050 total population as at 2010. But worth noting, was the fact that when compared to 2000, when there were only 4,514,400 Internet users, the Internet usage uptake can be described as a phenomenal 2,357.3 % growth rate over the last decade!

But this will likely change even further with the liberalization of the ICT sector especially in a continent where states have always preferred to exert control on the information flow among its citizenry. And as the democratic space widens and African states open up to the global knowledge society, it is hoped that the cost of accessing the Internet bandwidth will come down, allowing for healthy inter-sectoral competition has witnessed in recent weeks in Kenya. Here, the price wars between the major mobile phone service providers such as Safaricom, Zain (now Bhatel), Yu and Orange has seen voice calling rates as low as zero at off-peak to Ksh.1 (USD 0.012) per minute; and broadband access charges at Ksh. 3 (USd 0.036) per MB using 3G platforms. Safaricom is now even testing on the 4G that promises faster access rates and supporting even more applications over the wire than was previously envisaged.

East Africa’s fibre link outage, in comes satellite

2010-05-05T16:05:00.001+03:00

The past few days were a frustrating experience for users of the Internet in East Africa, particularly in Kenya due to intermittent outages in the fibre optic cable operated by Seacom and The East Africa Marine System (Teams) occasioned by repairs on the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable along the Mediterranean Sea.

This led to major ISPs reverting back to satellite services, recently abandoned in favour of the fibre optic cable, so as to cushion customers against total loss of communication. The satellite connection was the main link for East Africans as attempts were made to repair the fibre cables. This proves that despite its technological inefficiencies, satellite connectivity should and must be retained as a back up system in any economy, particularly for any developing economy at its nascent stages of information technology growth.

And as is becoming the norm in Kenya, cable vandalism has been increasing to such an extent, especially among the major players in the sector.

This has not gone well with the end users who had high expectations that costs of bandwidth would go down considerably, and in turn stimulate growth in other sectors.

The repair work on the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable was completed successfully on 29 April 2010, with the major regional and continentals ISPs, including SEACOM, being migrated .

SEACOM was the first cable to provide broadband to countries in East Africa. Within Africa, South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya are inter-connected via a protected ring structure. Additionally, a second express fibre pair is provided from South Africa to Kenya. The two fibre pairs have a combined capacity of 1.28Tbs. Express fibre pairs are also provided from Kenya to France into a PoP in Marseilles, and from Tanzania to India into the PoP in Mumbai. SEACOM has procured fibre capacity from Marseilles to London as part the SEACOM network.

Kenya Institute of Education: Coming of age

2010-04-20T08:31:00.001+03:00

During the recently held inaugural Regional Education Conference on eLearning (RECE 2010) from 28-30 March 2010, the role that the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE) plays in the education sector came to light.

In many ways, KIE has transformed in such tremendous ways that most of us would not begin to understand the modernization and degree of metamorphosis in place.

For starters, KIE has truly embraced ICT and is fast changing the education landscape in the region. This is towards the realization of the Vision 2030, and during the Conference there were ample demonstrations of these new developments in the well equipped and manned labs, with digitalization of primary and secondary school curriculum. The quality of the DVDs that are quite interactive, and rich in multimedia that are locally produced are simply put, quite innovative. They have covered subjects such as the languages (English and Swahili), sciences and arts that if put to good use, would help transform the way we teach and learn in the education system. The media are very good support tools, not meant to replace the teacher, but rather support the traditional classroom teaching and learning. The only challenges that I foresaw, were inadequate ICT facilities and lack of power in the rural schools. But conversations with other researchers and CSO indicates that contrary to the norm, rural-based schools appear to have put good investment in ICT infrastructure. KIE is now selling the DVDs to schools and teachers at Ksh. 3,000 (USD 40) that are being planned to be updateable online in the not so near future, but with revisions to content planned on annual basis. This is bound to be cheaper and faster compared to traditional book print, which as we know from lessons in developing countries, can be costly for such economies.

Of notable interest is the fact that KIE has acquired the terrestrial digital transmission technology, and is actually testing and transmitting its signal within a 100 kilometer, providing the only education content to a potential 1/3 of Kenya’s population. This was only possible with the national fiber optic project, and is modeled along DSTV’s Mindset and BBC’s Knowledge pure educational channels. From what was said by the KIE, it is the only institution in the region that has this kind of technology in place, with NTV and KTN in the process of purchasing similar studio equipment. Worth noting, is that KIE is now in position to use the fiber optic to transit rich multimedia on the Internet as here lies idle capacity for such.

KIE are also trying to be innovative in generating additional income channels, considering the dwindling budget allocation to them. I was very impressed that KIE has a fully equipped mobile out broadcasting van, which Multichoice among other media houses occasionally outsource!

This is to me is a fine good example of taxpayers funds being used effectively.

Safaricom now on 4G experimental stage.

2010-04-07T14:22:00.001+03:00

Kenya’s biggest mobile phone service provider, Safaricom is now testing 4G under the radar. With Zain now being sold for the 4th (or is it 3rd) time to the Indian mobile phone giants, focus seems to be on Safaricom to lead the market in terms of innovative products and services.

So what is this 4G fuss all about? 4G refers to the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. It is a successor to 3G and 2G standards. The nomenclature of the generations generally refers to a change in the fundamental nature of the service. The first was the move from analogue (1G) to digital (2G) transmission. This was followed by multi-media support, spread spectrum transmission and at least 200 kbit/s (3G) and now 4G, which refers to all IP packet switched networks, mobile ultra-broadband (gigabit speed) access and multi-carrier transmission. A 4G system is expected to provide a comprehensive and secure all-IP based solution where facilities such as IP telephony, ultra-broadband Internet access, gaming services and streamed multimedia may be provided to users. Now you can guess why government ministers are all of a sudden knowledgeable about BPOs, eLearning, eGovernment etc! A 4G cellular system must have target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility such as mobile access and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility such as nomadic/local wireless access, according to the ITU requirements. Scalable bandwidths up to at least 40 MHz should be provided (that is more than we will ever ask from the fibre optic operators, if Safaricom maintains the Ksh. 8 per megabit cost rate).

The world's first publicly available 4G service was opened in the two Scandinavian capitals Stockholm and Oslo on the 14 December 2009. Associated with this, the Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005) mobile wireless broadband access (MWBA) standard is sometimes branded 4G, and offers peak data rates of 128 Mbit/s downlink and 56 Mbit/s uplink over 20 MHz wide channels.

Source: Wikipedia

Testing ‘Digital Pens’ in Hospitals in Tanzania: Lessons for Kenya

2010-02-02T13:34:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.elearning-africa.com/newsportal/english/news213.php

In many hospitals throughout the world, it is still standard practice for doctors and nurses to keep handwritten patient files; this is also the case in Africa. However, these files can easily get lost, and if patient data have to be transferred from one medical institution to another, the files can take a long time to arrive. Digital documents that can be shared and stored easily could go a long way to combating such problems. To help remedy this situation, at the beginning of January 2010, the IT managers of several hospitals in Tanzania began gearing themselves up to test a new ‘digital pen’; one that can convert doctor’s handwriting into a compact, easy-to-archive digital file.

So why a digital pen and not a computer? “Using a computer and a keyboard to enter data could be a solution”, confirms Israel Pascal, technical project officer in Arusha. “Doctors are currently using normal keyboards for data input. But in many cases, doctors are reluctant to use a keyboard because they lack required skills: they type slowly and make frequent errors. It would be much more convenient if their handwriting could just be converted automatically into a digital file. The pen that we will experiment with can do that.”

First Results: End of January 2010

The digital pens are currently being tested at a number of hospitals in Arusha and Mwanza that are owned and managed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church Tanzania (ELCT), a body that manages around fifteen per cent of Tanzania’s national health services. After the first results have arrived from Arusha at the end of January 2010, the pen will be tested at various medical facilities in and around Mwanza. If successful, the hospitals will order more pens.

The Health Management Information System (HMIS) Project

The ‘digital pen test’ is only one aspect of a much wider health initiative in Tanzania called the Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) project, which is run by ELCT and supported by the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). In fact, the ELCT hospitals and those in Mwanza that are taking part in the digital pen test are also part of the HMIS project.

Under this project, an automated HMIS has now been installed in four hospitals. Part of the project also involves developing a generic Tanzanian version of Care2X, an open source HMIS. ELCT programmers are, therefore, cooperating with the University Computer Centre (UCC) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital, to adapt the software to Mfumo wa Taarifa za Uendeshaji wa Huduma za Afya (the Swahili name for HMIS) – the government health registration system. Through the HMIS project, hospitals can quickly and easily collect, store and analyse data on patient registration, billing, laboratory tests, pharmaceutical issues, stock-taking, x-rays, and ward management by using digital tools. In addition, the effort also focuses on a wide range of other ICT issues, such as telemedicine.

The Benefits of a Well-Functioning HMIS

Health facility management often suffers from inefficient management practices due to chronic staff shortages, high staff turnover rates and a sub-optimal use of health data. The quality of information from many health facilities, particularly in Tanzania’s rural areas, does not meet the required standards and takes a lot of time for the staff to collect. Fortunately, the country’s ICT structure has now developed to a level where it is realistic to computerise some of the routine processes in hospital management. Through the HMIS project, there has been a marked benefit during the last four years for both hospital staff and patients as a result of digitising hospital data. First of all, the new system provides timely and accurate information, which in turn leads to better healthcare planning and improved hospital diagnoses. Furthermore, an increasing number of patients gain access to better healthcare services. It also boosts hospital finances through better revenue collection, better patient flows and a more efficient use of capacity.

For more information about the IICD-supported eHealth programme in Tanzania, which consists of seven eHealth projects and reaches over 6,000 health workers and hospital managers, contact: Nic Moens, Country Programme Manager for Tanzania at: nmoens@iicd.org or visit http://www.iicd.org/countries/tanzania.

Morgan Stanley predicts rosy future for Safaricom

2010-01-21T15:29:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000001135&catid=4&a=1

A global financial services firm is forecasting a rosy future for mobile services provider Safaricom over the next two years.

It has also ranked Safaricom stock as "overweight", a rating equivalent to a recommendation to investors to buy the share at this time, because of its value in relation to other stocks.

Morgan Stanley’s analysis is based on several planks, including the easing of price competition in the voice market, and the huge, and growing, demand for money transfer and Internet services in Kenya.

Based on these alone, Morgan Stanley forecast group revenue growth of 22 per cent for Safaricom this year, and a further 16 per cent in 2011, up from its previous estimate of 12 per cent, and 10 per cent, respectively.

“We forecast Safaricom will surpass one million mobile broadband subscribers by 2012," says the report.

The analysis, dated January 13, was not commissioned by Safaricom, but was part of Morgan Stanley’s latest outlook on leading telecommunication firms worldwide.

According to the analysis, Safaricom shares are likely to trade within a band of Sh4.80 to Sh6.40 as new revenue streams initiated by the company begin to have an impact.

While the higher share price of Sh6.40 is only likely during a bull run at the stock market, Safaricom accounts for at least 70 per cent of daily turnover at the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE).

As such, other equity counters tend to view any appreciation of its share price positively, as happened last week, when the share shot past Sh5, sparking recoveries in other key stocks.

The NSE is expected to recover significantly this year, buoyed by the influx foreign investors, a fall in interest rates, and optimism about an economic upturn.

"We could witness a sustained price rally in equities across all counters until May, when companies begin to release their half year results," Mr Fred Mweni, Managing Director of Tsavo Securities, told the Standard, on Sunday.

"Safaricom remains one of the top picks this year, and most global clients are being advised to buy it," he added.

Of particular interest, Morgan Stanley says, M-Pesa could account for up to 12 per cent of revenue for Safaricom by 2011.

"We also think it is interesting that Safaricom is looking at developing a full mobile banking solution, implying more revenue upside to our forecasts," notes Morgan Stanley.

But the investment firm has also drawn up alternative scenarios that could change its forecasts. Among them is Safaricom retaining its dominance, but losing some ground to the competition, with revenues staying flat over the next five years.

In the case of a renewed and extended bear run at the stock market, inflation would mean that lower tariffs would not be offset by sufficiently higher usage, once food prices rise.

In such a scenario, average revenues per user (ARPU) would drop by six per cent this year, and rise by just two per cent in 2011.

Included in the potential risks, are the uncertain political climate created by the divided coalition Government, and the search for a new constitution.

Others are higher selling and marketing costs, due to increased competition in the mobile phone services industry.

Last year, Safaricom paid its first dividend since its listing at the NSE. The report notes that as the firm’s dividend policy becomes clearer, its shares will be more attractive.

Morgan Stanley research estimates that Safaricom can pay a higher dividend in future, even if it has to raise capex (capital expenditure) to support further revenue growth.

The assumptions in this ratings assume that Safaricom retains its 80 per cent market share, and raises its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) above 50 per cent. This is as new competition proves ineffective.

But the game changer for Safaricom is M-Pesa, the money transfer service, with a fast-growing base, that the report notes "is gaining critical base".

The forecast is for 70 per cent of the firm’s subscribers to be registered M-Pesa users by 2013, an enviable base should the firm opt for full mobile banking.

On average, M-Pesa users send, or receive, money three times a month, with transactions hitting Sh23 billion in September last year, says the report.

Average transaction per user would increase to at least four times a month by 2011, which will in term boost ARPU.

And with the number of M-Pesa subscribers fast approaching a figure equivalent to the total bank accounts in the country, Safaricom is now in prime position to offer a full banking product.

The strengths of M-Pesa — it allows users to deposit, withdraw and transfer cash, pay remittances and bills, and is a safe haven for their money — makes it a strong brand that would give established banks a run for their money, notes the report.

Mobile phone market set for greater heights

2010-01-21T15:17:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000001228&catid=457&a=1

East African mobile communication markets are poised for more growth driven by cheaper handsets and network investments, a new study says.

An analysis from Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company says Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda markets earned revenues of Sh197 billion ($2.62 billion) in 2008, and estimates this to reach Sh679 billion ($9.03 billion) in 2015.

Kenya enjoyed the highest number of active subscribers and revenues among the four countries. Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda are, however, likely to witness significant growth over the next seven years due to increasing network investments, continuing product innovation and reduced handset costs, according to the US firm.

Technologies covered in the just released markets study are code division multiple access (CDMA), global system for mobile communications (GSM), general packet radio service (GPRS), high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) and wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA).

"The key drivers in these markets include strong gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates, increasing demand for mobile money transfer services and declining handset costs," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Jiaqi Sun.

East African consumers, he adds, are spending more on mobile communications due to the low fixed-line network coverage, underdeveloped banking systems and limited availability of inexpensive handsets. Sun says there are 37.6 million mobile subscribers in East Africa, at a penetration rate of 30.8 per cent. The number of subscribers, according to the analysis, is expected to reach 99.5 million in 2015, at a compound annual growth rate of 14.9 per cent.

"The undersea cables are anticipated to reduce the cost of telecommunications by 60 per cent over the next seven years. This will boost demand for mobile Internet access," Sun says in the Analysis.

However, there are challenges faced by the market participants such as high tax rates on mobile services, lack of network rollout in rural areas and low demand for data services.

Cheating in Kenyan national exams goes high tech

2009-11-08T19:04:00.003+03:00

The Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations kicked off nationally last week. Like in the past few years, the public was treated to media reports of examinations cheating by candidates and their proxies, despite feeble attempts by the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC), the government body in charge of these matriculation exams.

The truth came out last week, with arrests of teachers allegedly with access to the exams, to cartels transmitting and selling the exams and to students who had proxies sitting the examinations on their behalf. In one of these cases, an individual arrested turned out to be an “informer” working for KNEC, and who over the past few years has been working undercover and busting some of these cartels.

But the bit that was interesting were reports that corrupt individuals with access to the examination papers, were actually using high tech devices in the cheating. The individuals with access actually scan the pages with blue tooth enabled portable scanners, send the scanned pages to their smart phones, and through an elaborate scheme send via blue tooth, MMS and even emails the scanned examination pages to their agents, then pass on the same to the students who need who purchase them for ‘preview’ for between USD 5o and USD 100. This in a third world country, where 60% of its population lives below the poverty line! According to the media, the government is now working closely with the mobile phone providers to track down the crooks messing up its education system and values.

That’s how competitive and cut throat the education system is in Kenya>

Power outage, now Internet outage!

2009-11-08T19:04:00.001+03:00

Last week, in typical Kenyan style, we had a nationwide power outage that lasted from 2-7 hours depending on which part of the country. reportedly the government machinery went into a spin as it developed into a security issue. The cause was apparently a malfunction in the monopolized power utility firm, Kenya Power & Lighting Co. Ltd due to the large amount of diesel powered generators that we are using as a stop gap measure to avoid us being in perpetual darkness.

This was shortly followed by Safaricom’s cellular and Internet outage on Friday last week, due to 4 or 5 cuts on their main fibre optic ring network, either due to other Internet firms laying their fibre optic, and what was attributed to as sabotage at 2 of those points.

This was followed by Seacom’s claims that its main fibre optic line at Voi was sabotaged, resulting in downtime for its subscribers in the Coast area and Nairobi.

Now its sabotage of the country’s communication infrastructure due to the competitors’ hunger for domination of the market. This is extremely worrying and should be treated by the government as a threat to its nation security.

Is the national fibre optic project paying off in Kenya?

2009-10-25T16:08:00.001+03:00

It appears that the national fibre optic national project might be paying off if statistics for the April-June 2009 from CCK are anything to go by. As at end of June 2009, the number of Internet subscribers in Kenya grew to 1.82 million, from 1.52 million as at end of March 2009. This is a 20 per cent growth rate in the Internet subscriber base!

Looking closely at the data collected by CCK, most of these growth is attributed to mobile data/Internet subscribers, due to the aggressive roll out of data services by the major mobile operators.

This can be explained by the table where I have extracted what is interesting.

Indicator	Dec-08	March-09	June-09
Number of leased line customers	1,809	2,002	2,789
Number of dial up customers	7,846	6,902	7,231
Number of mobile data/Internet subscribers	392,964	1,674,948	1,801,876
Number of Internet subscribers	407,845	1,713,852	1,824,203

Source: CCK Database

This perhaps explain results of an earlier study undertaken early this year to investigate factors that determine Internet utilization among teachers and their students in selected schools that had Internet connectivity in Kenya.

The study showed the extent to which the Internet is utilized and identified the factors that enhanced or impeded its utilization at this level of education, and which can be used to explain the integration of Internet into the teaching and learning.

The findings of the study shows use of Internet and its integration in the teaching and learning in secondary education is getting more widespread; and its use more pervasive among students and teachers as a means of communication and for information searching being common; and the least use in some instances for course content delivery, assignments and continuous assessments.

Access rates for teachers and students were observed to be much higher in educational institutions that have made effective ICT investments in education.

The study also found that most of the schools are actually expending a substantial part of their annual budget on maintaining Internet connectivity, and this explains why it is estimated by the Ministry of Education that only 3% of the 6,566 secondary schools in Kenya have any form of Internet connectivity. But this could change with the enhancement of the competition regulatory framework as well as operationalization of the National Fibre Optic cable to boost Internet penetration and bring the cost of Internet connectivity down in the third quarter of 2009 (a very far fetched idea now that data operators are not changing their pricing of data bundles till they recoup their initial investments).

There was a positive correlation between proportions of students and teachers accessing the schools’ computers, and this was evident in girls only schools where it appeared that investments in ICT was low and resulting in gender disparity disadvantaging the girl child. This does not portend good news for the girls in the secondary schools, considering that there are 635,698 girls enrolled, constituting 46% of the country’s 1,382,211 total student enrolment in secondary schools. Though the study focussed on schools with Internet connectivity, the proportion of teachers with access to computers and internet at schools and homes was respectively 98% and 53% of the teachers sampled, implying that the affordable bundle rates and increased access to the mobile wireless broadband services is having an impact. According to the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) there were 392,964 mobile broadband users as at 31 December 2008 . Some of the schools sampled were addressing the issue of accessibility to computers by its teachers and students through use of Wi-Fi in the school localities. This is also reflected at the proportion of teachers and students with email addresses which are at 92% and 64% respectively, with 72% of the students owning mobile phones.

Zain to roll out 3G in mid-2010

2009-10-23T16:03:00.001+03:00

Zain looks determined to venture into the 3G technological platform in an industry long held by Safaricom. Should Zain afford to pay the Kes. 2 billion (USD 25 million) for the licensing cost of the spectrum to CCK, it will become the second mobile phone operator in Kenya to roll out 3G.

The cost of setting up of 3G network infrastructure has been prohibitive for new entrants into the Kenyan market, with current statistics from CCK’s April-June 2009 report indicating that as at 30 June 2009 there were 17.4 million mobile subscribers. With this sort of growth being witnessed in the country, it is quite disappointing to note that even despite registering a growth in Internet users subscriber base, from 1.52 million in March 2009 to 1.82 million in June 2009, we are still a long way from achieving affordable Internet access as the fibre optic national infrastructure nears completion.

Most of this growth in Internet subscribers can be attributed to the new purchases of Safaricom’s broadband modem that run on 3G network. This accounted for nearly 60% of the growth, with Internet access via leased lines contributing 39% in the same period. Only one of the major data operators has dropped the price of the international bandwidth, and even offering 4 megabytes of bandwidth at the current price it is charging 1 megabyte. The other operators, in the true Kenyan capitalist spirit said they require at least 2 years to recoup the billions sank into the project.

But in my opinion, Zain (Celtel or whatever) has been always extremely slow in responding to the market trends, and mid next 2010 will be too late for them, as Safaricom keeps on getting “better”.

Seacom fibre optic landing heralds in new era of Internet connectivity

2009-07-29T09:05:00.001+03:00

There has been a lot of excitement since last week over the Seacom fibre optic cable that went live this past Saturday at the Swahili Cultural Centre, Mombasa.

The undersea cable was commissioned simultaneously in Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa in Africa; and in India. Though from initial reports from the sponsors it is still a little bit premature to celebrate as the effects of fibre optic connectivity will not be felt till September (6 months late due to piracy activities off the coast of Somalia where the cable had to pass by).

There has been an expectation among end users that this will result in immediate downward trend of Internet costs, but I do not think this is likely to happen sooner as the investors need to recoup some of their initial investments. From media reports, Seacom will offer wholesale prices at around Ksh. 7,700 (USD $ 100)/mb, and at very subsidized prices of Ksh. 770 (USD $ 10)-1,925 (USD $ 25)/mb to educational, research and health institutions. Bandwidth currently cost Ksh. 42,350 (USD $ 5,000)/mb. The subsidized rates are of tremendous interest to stakeholders in the education sector, especially when we consider that it is estimated that about 3% of the 6,566 secondary schools (as at 31 December 2009) are connected to the Internet. Recent research indicates that a majority of these schools rely on tuition fees to sustain these connectivity, and spend up to 5% of their annual expenditure for such. Therefore, such subsidized costs will be a welcome relief to such schools, not only at the secondary level but also the primary schools. This calls for concerted efforts from the government and other stakeholders that concurrent efforts are undertaken to ensure wider penetration of Internet through provision of adequate power supply so as to provide ICT access to all schools, especially in rural areas so as to reduce the “rural urban digital divide” among other measures.

Already there have some noticeable difference in access speeds, and personally have noted that most domains on .ke (whether .ac, .co or .or) load much faster than previously experienced. Even NTV, incidentally the same agency as AKF which is the a major shareholder in Seacom, has moved to upped its digital media service by offering TV content online through streaming video or downloadable by partnering with Safaricom.

But this is bound to come with its own challenges, one of which has been argued by some players that the bandwidth is just too huge to be consumed and will result to redundancies. Consider this fact:- it is estimated that an average user in Kenya utilizes about a gigabyte of data/month, and Seacom will provide 160 gigabytes/second! The other issue has always been availability of locally relevant content, though there seems to be a lot of effort out there to rectify this anomaly by encouraging use and creation of local content by the KICTB and even Google Kenya. With high Internet speeds, we are also likely to attract the attention of hackers who have never bothered looking at this side of the world due to the trivial data transfer speeds in existence.

Let’s wait and see what happens in the next few weeks, as there is no information on what exactly happened of the government led EASSY fibre optic project.

For youngest mobile phone firm, the war has just begun

2009-05-22T21:27:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.eastandard.net/InsidePage.php?id=1144013286&catid=457&a=1

ix months after its entry into the local market, Yu, Kenya’s youngest mobile phone services company, feels it has grown enough muscles to take on its older rivals in the business.

In a span of about two months, the holding company has changed its name from Econet Wireless Kenya to Essar Communications and the seams seem to be busting with a number of sweetheart offers, tailored to woo new customers.

About a fortnight ago, the company launched free Short Message Service (SMS) for intra network messages. The free SMS model is a first in Kenya and could significantly drive up the uptake of its services.

"At Sh7.50 for cross network calls and fifty cents for intra-network charges, we are offering the cheapest calling rates in the country. Our idea is to offer services at the cheapest rates and grow our market share," says Yu's MD Srinivasa Iyengar.

It could be a tall order for the company given the general slowdown of the economy. Companies seeking to expand have been experiencing setbacks in sales projections as job cuts, and inflation, eat into consumer purses, slowing down new spending.

Entering the country’s mobile telephone market is a capital-intensive venture, given the nature of the market, customer loyalties and a myriad other factors. It also involves fighting vicious publicity wars against established market players, which also entails massive expenditures.

But, Iyengar, is confident that Yu will pull it off because the company’s current business model has been working well in India, where mobile companies charge minimal rates for services then rely on the mass market to drive up their profits.

The Indian way

Last year, Econet Wireless International sold a 49 per cent stake in the company to India’s Essar Communications Holdings in a move that was expected to significantly benefit the company, which is 70 per cent owned by EWI, in its a rollout and enhance its products.

So far, the company seems to be going the Indian way and the latest offer of free SMS could be geared to shepherd the mobile market in the direction of what is popularly referred to as bundle SMS offers in the Indian market.

Under the bundle regime, mobile users are given opportunity to determine and buy the number of SMS they would like to send in a bundle, say 40, 70 or more in a month and then pay heavily discounted prices for the services, depending on the chosen bundles.

Although he is not shy to admit that his company could be operating at a loss because of its chosen model of business, Iyengar is confident that it will pay off in the long run.

"The mobile market is growing and we hope to shore up our subscriber base to three million in the next two years. We are offering the best services. This is not something to advertise because the information is out there. It is time for people to begin asking the hard questions, especially about mobile charges and subscribe to the best offers," says Iyengar.

In the latest sector statistics report, the market regulator, Communication Commissions of Kenya (CCK) says that with the addition of new players like Yu, competition is expected to intensify leading to a range of benefits such as reduction in cost and choice for consumers, which will ultimately increase mobile penetration in the country.

So far Safaricom is the market leader with a market share estimated at about 80 per cent, followed by Zain. The latest entrants into the mobile market, Orange and Yu have also been gaining slices and are expected to grow with the market.

new subscribers

But Iyengar says some mobile companies are charging too high for services and feels this is immoral, especially in a country where people are still struggling to buy bread.

"It makes such companies look bad. In fact you can see the anxiety in people’s faces whenever they are making calls. They have to hurry and talk fast to save on costs, which I think is also destroying interpersonal relationships. We have to find a way of lowering call costs to remedy the situation," says Iyengar.

Recent entrants to the mobile market like Yu have been for the adoption of mobile number portability, which has traditionally benefited new entrants into markets.

But established market players have not been receptive of the idea that allows subscribers to migrate to new operators with their old numbers.

To circumvent the bottlenecks, Yu launched a similar service, which allows its customers to retain their old numbers while operating under the company’s prefixes.

Another new service in its stable, imoved allows new subscribers on the network to inform their contacts about their new mobile numbers free of charge.

Financing to redraw battle lines in mobile industry

2009-05-22T21:23:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.nation.co.ke/magazines/smartcompany/-/1226/594008/-/soc057z/-/index.html

The global financial crisis is set to change the face of competition in the mobile phone industry as players’ finances are squeezed and China moves in for the kill. At the continent level, a number of changes are expected as big mobile operators seek to consolidate their dominance as they cut back on spending.

“There could be a lot of change this year,” says Thomas Sonesson, the managing director of Ericsson East Africa, one of the largest network building companies globally. Locally, Ericsson controls about 51 per cent of the market with Zain, Orange and Yu networks operating on its infrastructure.

Credit squeeze

In Kenya, the financial crisis has slowed down competition with two of the four cellular companies said to be in dire need of funds — and lots of it — to make any meaningful impact in the market. Safaricom dominates the market, controlling about three quarters of mobile subscriptions and dwarfs all in profitability.

International lending is not forthcoming, not just for the cellular phone operators but for most corporates, given the credit squeeze in the global market that has forced lenders to tighten their purses. This trend is slowly catching on in Kenya’s banking industry with a marked slowdown in lending, especially in the last quarter of 2008.

Most banks have recorded reduced uptake of loans and this is set to tighten further as the effects of the global credit crunch begins to hit home. Globally, the credit squeeze has seen even governments postpone borrowing, with Ghana and Kenya delaying issuance of sovereign bonds worth more than $800 million (about Sh64 billion).

It is worse for corporates as the expected economic slowdown means reduced consumption of their products and services. Banks, ever more risk-averse, have read this as increased credit risk, and are reluctant to lend as they seek to balance growth and risk exposure.

And in all this confusion, the Chinese government has seen an opportunity to deepen its interests in Africa. “The Chinese government is giving financial backing to its corporates who in turn are offering to do network set-ups for mobile companies that are in short of funding,” says Mr Sonesson.

“For companies like ours that is not an option as we do not have similar backing. This will definitely change competition with Chinese companies becoming a preference.” Another factor determining financial backing for local operators is the internal competition within the company portfolios. With a squeeze in the amount of funds available, cellular phone operators have been forced to review their policies on allocating funds.

Licensing of G3

“Companies will migrate their capital to the country within the region with the best returns,” says Nicholas William, Ericsson regulatory affairs director for sub-Sahara Africa. “Kenya will need to improve its environment to make it more competitive if it is to attract investment.”

Ericsson managers say Kenya needs to cut down on taxes levied on mobile industry, ranging from excises duty on airtime, Value Added Tax, to duties on importation of machines and equipment. And to level competition in the current fluid environment, they suggest the government should rethink its policy on licensing of the more robust technology network: 3G.

Currently, it is only Safaricom that operates 3G, a superior network to the 2G that’s being used by the other three operators. The problem has been the $25 million fee (about Sh2 billion) for a 3G licence. Safaricom paid for it in 2007. Ericsson proposes that to ease the pain for the other three operators and level competition, the government should consider spreading $25 million over the lifetime of the licence.

“The amount should be ‘lend’ to the users at interest rate equal to a Treasury bond of similar tenure to the intended repayment period,” Mr Williams says. Electricity distribution should also be addressed. Lack of power especially in the rural areas has been the greatest challenge to mobile phone operators’ expansion.

The alternative has been to use generators to power substations, which takes up operation costs by 25 per cent. MTN Nigeria is said to the largest single buyer of oil in Nigeria to fuel its over 10,000 generator-backed base stations. “The country that will be ahead on that and will have a head start in attracting investment and also in addressing problem of rural connectivity,” says Mr Sonesson.

Electronic pick-pockets on the loose

2009-05-22T21:22:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.nation.co.ke/magazines/artandculture/-/1222/592352/-/83qljdz/-/index.html

Despite of all the good things brought about by the Internet technology, this sophisticated communication tool has developed a ‘long hand’, and is literally stealing billions of shillings from pockets and bank accounts of its users.

Studies shows that thousands of criminals, mostly from the western and southern parts of Africa, America and even Britain are using attractive and seductive email massages to lure innocent victims into divulging their personal bank account details without knowing that they are being conned.

The conmen sometimes send email messages to millions of addresses (but targeting account holders of particular banks) insinuating that a problem has been detected with their online account information, which needs to be rectified immediately.

The message therefore prompts users to log in their confidential banking details as a matter of agency. The global address or URL provided on the email comes with a well crafted logo and finer details to mimic that of the bank in question, thus deceiving the victims.

Account

In a different system, the fraudsters hack into their victims’ email accounts, and send a distress mail to all addresses found in the inbox seeking desperate help from innocent friends and relatives. They usually change the original password, thus denying the original user access to the email account.

Most common are mails indicating that the legitimate owner of the address is currently stranded in a foreign country. Such a message claims that all his or her money including personal effects and documents have been stolen. The message therefore requests the recipients to help out by sending money through any appropriate money transfer mechanism.

This means that if one falls a victim, then the money has to be sent to an alternative recipient’s name, since it is clear that the ‘intended’ recipient has allegedly lost the necessary documents needed to withdraw cash. In case the recipient replies by email, then the message is received by the con man, who later offers directives on how the money can be sent.

This kind of theft mostly targets hard cash ranging from Sh 100,000 to Sh 500,000. According to information technology experts, the hackers use software called Spyware, which is secretly installed on one’s computer sometimes using the internet, and copies information without the permission or knowledge of the user.

“Spyware may take personal information, business information, and bandwidth from the computer or processing capacity and secretly gives it to someone else,” said Samuel Scooby, a Nairobi based computer expert.

Through this, conmen can access the victim’s entire confidential information, thus keep track of all email correspondence allowing them to monitor movements of their target ‘customer’.

Sometimes when an air ticket is issued through the same mail, it gives the thugs a great opportunity to con the victim’s friends and relatives because they know exactly where their ‘customer’ is.

Legitimate

Another sophisticated method used in internet frauds is what experts refer to as Phishing. Through this, the criminals can target electronic banking identification information of legitimate online customers of a particular bank, then use the information to transfer monies from the victim’s account to a different one.

“The term ‘phishing’ refers to the use of spam emails purporting to be from a particular bank. In this way criminals ‘fish’ for legitimate bank customer’s logon information with an intention of transferring their savings to a different account,” said Scooby.

Spam is a generic term used to describe electronic ‘junk mail’ or unwanted messages sent to your email account or mobile phone. These messages vary, but are essentially commercial and often annoying in their sheer volume.

They may try to persuade you to buy a product or service, or visit a website where you can make purchases; or they may attempt to trick you into divulging your bank account or credit card details.

A study done by Nirph Digital Ltd, a US based banking security solution provider shows that in the year 2008 alone, 10 million individuals in the US were victims of internet fraud. As a result, $ 48 billion (Sh 3.8 trillion) reportedly found way to the fraudsters’ pockets by the end of the year.

Zain raises call tariff charges

2009-05-22T21:18:00.001+03:00

The price war in the mobile phone market has forced Zain to review its tariff plan upwards.

Now, the cost of calling from Zain to other networks is Sh12 a minute, up from Sh8 under its prepaid ‘vuka’ tariff, which was designed to net new subscribers.

Unlike other instances when such downward revision of tariffs is widely publicised, the upward revision was silently launched with only media adverts to warn the users.

The new tariff took effect on Saturday and according to Zain Kenya Managing Director, there is no other hidden cost or call set up fee.

The cost of Zain to Zain calls remain at Sh8 a minute, with special offer of calling 10 numbers (friends and family) at Sh3 a minute.

Last year, Zain Kenya registered a loss, largely attributed to its low cross-network tariff campaign, Vuka.

The campaign pulled its average revenue per user (ARPU) to record lows and the lowest in Zain’s Group of 22 countries at $6 (Sh462) down from $7 (Sh539) in 2007.

This is despite the company’s growing market share and subscriber numbers.

Its net losses increased to Sh6.9 billion at current exchange rate of Sh77 from Sh1.67 billion in 2007 on lower revenues and increased administrative costs mainly due to costs related to network expansion.

Attract new subscribers

The company lowered its tariff in October in an effort to attract new subscribers, but the move hurt its revenues despite growing its customer numbers and probably the reason for the current upward review.

For the past few months, mobile operators have been engaged in a price war, which has significantly reduced the mobile tariffs.

Until Saturday, Zain Kenya’s Vuka tariff was the third cheapest at Sh8 a minute to all networks. Calling Orange mobile (Telkom Kenya’s brand), costs Sh7 a minute within the network and Sh10 across network.

Yu, the most recent entrant, charges Sh7.50 a minute to other networks, but one shilling within network.

Calling within the Safaricom network using the Ongea tariff (the most popular prepaid tariff) stands at Sh8 a minute, but Sh15 when calling other networks.

Mobile phone subscribers grew by 1.7 million to stand at more than 16.2 million in the quarter ending December last year, according to a report by the Communication Commission of Kenya. The battle for supremacy and subscribers is not only in the tariff platform, but also on Internet and smart phone technology. Zain-Kenya recently launched a new version of Black Berry smart phone, an upgrade of the phone in the market.

3G phone

The launch came just weeks after Orange introduced iPhone 3G, smart phone.

Safaricom, too, has its own version of Blackberry but has extended tentacles to the masses by introducing cheaper phones.

Its latest entry, Kabambe, has, however, received bitter criticism from users as it breaks down often.

"My Kabambe loses network and no longer has Mpesa and Safaricom functionalities. Worse, I give out my phone to Safaricom for eight days for repair," decried one of the ‘Kabambe’ users at a Safaricom Customer Care point in Nairobi.

Safaricom Internet Modem, Bambanet, now sells at Sh4,000 down from Sh6,000.

Source: http://www.eastandard.net/InsidePage.php?id=1144014459&catid=14&a=1

Survey shows Internet users rose despite economic downturn

2009-05-22T21:12:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.eastandard.net/InsidePage.php?id=1144014863&catid=14&a=1

The number of Internet users increased from 2.9 million in 2007 to 3.4 million last year, despite an economic slump, the Economic Survey 2009 reveals.

However, Internet penetration has been among the least accessible telecommunication service due to lack of infrastructure and relevant local content.

The much-anticipated undersea Fibre Optic cable (TEAMS) next month, and improved competition regulatory framework would boost Internet penetration.

"Introduction of broadband services by mobile operators is expected to further boost Internet penetration and use which has remained low in the past," reads the survey in part.

The Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) issued 127 licenses to Internet service providers {ISPs} out of which 56 were operational compared to 50 in 2007.

Cell phone subscribers

According to the survey, the number of mobile phone subscribers stood at 12.9 million last year up from 9.3 million in 2007. This is against mobile telephone capacity of 25 million subscribers.

The broadcasting sector experienced increased demand for frequencies. CCK assigned a total of 30 new FM frequencies out of 295 applications for FM broadcasting.

The number of applicants awaiting allocation for TV frequencies increased from 143 in 2007 to 192 in 2008.

The year under review (2008) also saw the launch of the first digital mobile television broadcast network in the country.

The CCK assigned nine TV broadcast channels to Digital; Video Broadcasting-handheld (DVB-H) but a number of assigned frequencies were recalled due to non-utilisation.

This resulted to the total number of frequencies in operation dropping from 127 in 2007 to 81 in 2008.

Radio Frequencies in use dropped from 368 in 2007 to 268 last year.

Digital technology

"CCK continued to spearhead the preparatory process of the transition from analogue to digital TV broadcasting. It is anticipated that the transition would help in reducing the number of applicants and those on waiting list due to spectral efficiency of digital technology," reads the report.

Kenya has set 2012 as the year of transition ahead of the 2015 global deadline.

"In order to improve access to ICT services, the CCK implemented 16 school-based ICT centres spread across the eight provinces and funded establishment of four ICT community access points," reveals the survey.

Circulation of daily newspapers rose to 99.3 million copies last year up from 98.4million copies in 2007 which is a 4.6 per cent increase.

Funding hitches hit digital villages project Account Flossy tales of ICT in Kenya

2009-05-22T21:08:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/-/1006/600218/-/ijmrtyz/-/index.html

Plans to decentralise information and communication technology services to villages is behind schedule due to funding hitches by the main financier, the World Bank.

Stringent conditions and high interest rates have barred the government from accessing the funds according to Information and Communication permanent secretary Bitange Ndemo.

The World Bank had approved $114.4 million loan to facilitate connectivity for Kenya’s emerging business process outsourcing industry, support the creation of digital villages in rural and urban areas and upgrade the regulatory environment.

Speaking at a Nairobi hotel on Tuesday during a media briefing organised by Kenya Data Networks, the PS said that the government has been forced to resort to Treasury and other private investors to finance the digital villages projects after it became difficult to access the World Bank funds.

As a private initiative, the Kenya Data Networks is at the moment spearheading the setting up of the digital centres. KDN chief executive Kai Wulff says they have set-up eight centres against a target of more than 100 and blames lack of funds for being unable to complete the project.

Safaricom profit down 23 p.c.

2009-05-22T21:07:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/-/1006/601622/-/ijm0d9z/-/index.html

Kenya mobile phone service provider, Safaricom, registered a 23 per cent fall in profitability, showing vulnerability to low tariff pricing and high cost of goods.

And for shareholders, a Sh4 billion dividend payout failed to translate to good news, as the large number of shares (40 billion) mean they will each get 10 cents per share. That means that shareholders who were allocated the minimum 420 shares will receive Sh42 only.

In the year ending March 31, 2009, Safaricom’s pre-tax profit shrank Sh5 billion to settle at Sh15 billion down from about Sh20 billion recorded in 2008.

The profit decline was however not too heavy to dislodge Safaricom’s regional ranking as the most profitable (listed) company in the East Africa.

“These results were delivered despite the difficult economic conditions encountered during the year,” Safaricom’s chief executive, Michael Joseph said Thursday, during announcement of the firm’s financial results.

While the company managed to drive up its revenue by 15 per cent, management says irrational tariff pricing by its competition — which saw some operators cut their tariffs to one shilling per minute — negatively impacted on its bottom line.

Competition

To keep up with its competition, Safaricom readjusted its pricing by about 70 per cent to Sh3 per minute under the Jibambie promotion.

Before reviewing its tariffs, Safaricom was charging Sh10 per minute for within network calls and Sh15 per minute for across network calls.

“Irrational pricing made it very challenging for us, but not as much as it did to our competition. Overall, however, the biggest impact on our profitability came from inflation which impacted heavily on our core customers,” Mr Joseph noted.
With over 13.4 million subscribers, Safaricom’s customers are mainly in the lower end of the consumption bracket, highly vulnerable to change in prices.

Largely driven by effects of the post-election violence and drought, food prices remained high over 2008 to average above 30 per cent.

Overall inflation has also remained high, oscillating between 25 per cent and 31.1 per cent, meaning that each month Kenyan consumers’ purchasing power reduces by at least a quarter, pushing the poor to survival mode where food becomes a priority.

High oil prices and volatile foreign exchange have also played a part in cutting on the growth pace, as they added to operational costs which went up by about 22 per cent.

Going forward, the company could get reprieve as tariff pricing is set to normalise with some of its competition calling off the price war. Last week, Zain announced a tariff price increase saying the time for price wars was over.

Safaricom has also registered marked growth in alternative revenue sources as it seeks to reduce its reliance in call revenue (currently at 83 per cent of total revenue) with data business registering 83 per cent growth to account for 13 per cent of total revenue.

M-Pesa has also registered notable growth with over 6 million subscribers against 2 million users last year.

Status of Mobile Telephony in Kenya for 2008/2009

2009-04-14T20:51:00.001+03:00

The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has a very interesting report for the second quarter of 2008/2009.

It is during this period that Telkom Kenya (read Orange) and Econet Wireless (read Yu) started rolling out their services in September and November 2008 respectively, bringing to four the number of licensed mobile operators in Kenya. This has led to expectations that the completion will lead to reduced costs, which it has and this is a story for another day.

There was increased mobile phone subscription of 11.9% between October and December 2008, and this is attributed to the entrance of the two mobile operators.

Indicator	Dec-07	Dec-08	Change (%)
Number of mobile subscribers	11,349,412	16,233,833	43.04
Mobile Penetration (%)	28.97	43.64	50.64

Source: CCK database

Again, the increase in mobile penetration was attributed to the increase in the number of mobile operators, increased mobile coverage and availability of low denomination calling cards, as low as Ksh. 20 (USD 0.25) introduced by both Safaricom and Zain.

In terms of mobile traffic there are quite a number of facts interesting to look at:

Indicator	Jul-Sep 07	Sep-Dec 08	Change (%)
Mobile to fixed traffic (Minutes)	5,799,400	9,778,341	68.6
Local mobile traffic	680,792,168	2,606, 590,177	282.88
Local SMSes sent	670,192,766	361,862,632	-46.01
Approximate number of data users (GPRS/EDGE, HSPDA, EVDO)	388,199	392,964	1.23

What is interesting to note was the effect Safaricom had on the statistics simply by offering free call promotion during September to December 2008 period. This saw an increase of 68.6% in mobile to fixed traffic and similarly a 282.88%in local mobile traffic, hence the reduction in the number of local smses sent. The interesting point to note is that the mobile telephony sector has spawned mobile Internet users to stand at 392,964 as at December 2008. It would be again be interesting to see how the numbers change towards the end of 2009, with Orange and Zain having promotions of the Internet modems from zero cost to Ksh. 5,000 (USD 62.50) on prepaid basis, with per minutes rates at USD 0.0125 to USD 0.0375 per KB downloaded.

Source: CCK database

The report can be downloaded from the CCK using this link.

Safaricom’s Okoa Jahazi

2009-04-13T11:12:00.001+03:00

Safaricom is 12 years old and the largest mobile company in terms of subscriber base that stands at 12 million (or 32 % of Kenya's population) and has just launched a service product that is surely spinning heads among its competitors.

The service Okoa Jahazi (English translation might mean Save my Day) that offers Ksh 50 (USD 0.625) airtime credit to its prepaid customers in situations when they cannot afford or access airtime. The credit is repayable within 72 hours on next purchase of airtime and is available to customers who have demonstrated use of their SIM for at least a year. But what makes it unique is the top up charge of Ksh 5 (USD 0.0625) which is 10% above what is "borrowed". With that sort of "interest" charged and looking at it 12 million subscriber base, it is being estimated that Safaricom will be making an additional profit of Ksh. 1.83 billion (USD 23 million) at the minimum in a year alone from this offer.

Let us wait and see how the balance sheet looks like at this time next year.

Source: http://www.eastandard.net/InsidePage.php?id=1144010907&catid=457&a=1

Mobile telephony in Kenya

2009-04-12T19:12:00.001+03:00

Growth of the ICT and telecommunication sectors in the emerging and developing economies has been cited as a major factor in the economic development of African countries. In Kenya ICT has been singled out as one of the cornerstones of Vision 2003 and the perceived benefits of telecommunication has led to the belief that mobile telephony has positive and quantifiable economic benefits in terms of GDP growth, poverty reduction and bridging of the digital divide. However the real benefits of the mobile phone to the poor in the society is still a debatable argument in the ICT industry.

In the last 10 years the sector has seen an unprecedented growth in mobile phone ownership and usage. The once priced gadget (used to cost initially USD 3,000 and now costs an average of USD 250) that was a preserve of the politicians and business men is now accessible and owned by the majority of Kenyans. The Kenyan telecommunication sector was liberalized in 1998, which before then the state monopoly was through Telkom Kenya (now Orange).With the liberalization saw the entry of Safaricom (then a subsidiary of Telkom) and Celtel (now Zain ) in 1999 and recently Yu (2008).

The licensees were to initially roll out services in major towns and roads (under their license conditions); and the sector has witnessed growth both in terms of operators, geographical coverage and subscriber base. Currently there are four mobile operators i.e. Zain, Safaricom, Telkom and Yu. The subscriber base has also increased from fewer than 6,000 subscribers in 2000 to over 12 million Kenyans in December 2008 with 77% of the Kenyan population covered. This growth has not been without drivers, among them competition, availability of cheap phones, low tariffs and regulatory intervention at times.

Kenya had an economic growth rate of 6.1% in 2006 and the transport and communication sector was credited with being one of the key drivers of the growth. These statistics give credence to the general consensus that the mobile phone sector adds economic value but the question is what value can be attributed to improvement of domestic income among the poor if any. Kenya currently has an estimated population of 38 million people and it is estimated half of population (17million) lives below the poverty line. Some 70% of the income poverty is used on food related needs and there is need to establish percentage that is used to power the mobile phone companies profits given most of the subscribers are prepaid.

Delloite and GSMA released a study at the end of 2008 and found that mobile telephony accounted for 5.1% of the GDP (Ksh 182,832 million) in the same year. Kenya currently is experiencing unprecedented famine and lack of food, this leads to the question of whether the populace are foregoing some essential expenditure in order to own a mobile phone. Although some people use mobile phones for "beeping", it is surprising that over 50 per cent of Kenyans live on less than a dollar per day yet many are able to purchase and use mobile phones.

Windows XP SP3 does NOT Support High Definition Audio on your PC!

2008-09-11T13:56:00.001+03:00

After so many weeks of trying to figure out why there was no sound from my laptop, I came across a website that mentioned upgrading of SP2 to SP3 messing up your audio.

What we require to do in Windows XP, is to add support for High Definition Audio by installing the Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) High Definition Audio class driver. This is the KB888111 (for SP1 or SP2). The downside is that when attempting to install the KB888111 (which seems to work ONLY for SP1 and SP2) it will not work for SP3, at least for the current SP3 RC v3264 and you will be prompted with a message saying that the current service pack installed is newer than the fix you are trying to apply.

Luckily, there is a fix for going round the problem that works for SP3. Just download the fix for KB888111 , extract it and then right-click at the ? mark at the device manager that you think might be the Audio device, reinstall the driver by pointing to the folder you extracted the files to. After that's done, install the audio driver for your motherboard.

That's it!

M-banking taken a notch higher by Equity Bank

2008-09-05T16:42:00.001+03:00

Source: http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/-/1006/466964/-/jiyof1z/-/index.html

http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/-/1006/466608/-/jiyqwlz/-/index.html

Safaricom, signed an agreement with ATM service provider PesaPoint this week, enabling us M-Pesa customers to withdraw money through PesaPoint ATMs. This service does not require a card to access money in the 110 PesaPoint ATMs spread across the country. Safaricom launched M-Pesa in March 2007 as a mobile phone payment service to enable customers make financial transactions including money transfer.

Now it seems like the next battle frontier for banks will be fought on the mobile phone, signalling a widely anticipated drop in banking transaction costs by customers. It also means that bank customers will enjoy convenience, easy access to their money and more secure services thanks to technology. Already, Equity Banks' 2.6 million customers can enjoy such benefits after the bank on Wednesday officially launched a mobile phone banking service, Eazzy 24/7, taking its branches to the mobile handset devices and increasing its customer base.

Cost effective and adaptable, the service is expected to bring in more people into the formal banking system that currently has 4.5 million accounts countrywide.

Most banks charge an average of between Sh150 and Sh200 and EAZZY 24/7 will charge Sh50 to transact within its bank.

While such a transaction will only take minutes, transferring funds to another bank will follow the normal interbank process and duration.

Two Equity account holders with Safaricom lines can now credit and transfer cash into each other's account using their mobile phones in real time, subject to the availability of funds. Equity bank clients will also be able to pay their utility bills, purchase airtime, request their bank statements and perform 13 other crucial banking enquiries.

EAZZY 24/7 was widely expected to run in January though it has been on a test run since last year and will initially rely solely on Safaricom's network with the possibility of roping in other mobile service providers later.

Equity mobile banking technology is similar to Safaricom's popular money transfer service, M-Pesa which has had a successful launch transferring about Sh36 billion since its launch in March last year. This has caused unease in the banking fraternity due to the huge amounts moved by Safaricom in the absence of a law governing mobile money transfer in a clear case of technology overtaking regulation.

Review of the WSIS final declaration and the potential it holds for the African Society and the impediments that will need to be overcome.

2008-09-01T15:25:00.001+03:00

Introduction

During the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held between 10-12 December, 2003 in Geneva the participants made a Declaration of the Principles based on the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was followed up with a second summit in Tunis, 16-18 November 2005.

Among the many principles adopted and created from various statements of the governments and other actors such as civil society – one can note that areas like development and poverty reduction have been taken into consideration (WSIS). The final declaration states that the WSIS should be development-oriented, aim at fair, balanced and harmonious development of all the people of the world, and help to reduce the disparity between developed and developing countries.

What emerges from the preparatory committees and other committees of Geneva summit is the attempt to define Information Society- as an economic and social system where knowledge and information constitute the fundamental sources of well-being and progress and represent an opportunity for our countries and societies. The development of that society should take place within a global and local context of fundamental principles such as those of respect for human rights, democracy, environmental protection, the advancement of peace, the right to development, fundamental freedoms, economic progress and social equity (WSIS, 2003). In this respect, the key principle envisages where governments, as well as private sector, civil society and the United Nations and other international organizations have an important role and responsibility in the development of the Information Society and, as appropriate, in decision-making processes. Building a people-centred Information Society is a joint effort which requires cooperation and partnership among all stakeholders (WSIS, 2004).

Core Principles and Potentials

Perusing the declaration of the principles, it is evident that the benefits of the Information Society should be extended to all, and most importantly be development oriented. It seeks to address the interests of the developing countries, in a fair, balanced and harmonious development. There should be facilitation of information so as to bring about sharing of social and economic benefits by all, while preserving cultural heritage and diversity.

In order to realize all of these, we should be cognizant of gender issues, where disparities in gender based on unequal power, economic status; social and cultural issues have been constraints in enabling women to benefit equally from ICT developments.

Going through all the documents ever released on declaration of principles, we can be able to debate on the potential benefits of what these hold for developing nations like Africa, and the potential challenges in achieving some of the stated goals and objectives among the following identified key principles.

2.1 Information Society for all

Role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development
It is recognized that governments, as well as private sector, civil society and international organizations have an important role and responsibility in the development of the Information Society and in decision making. Building a people centred Information Society is therefore a joint effort that requires cooperation and partnership among all stakeholders.
In Africa, governments and private sector are forging new forms of partnership based on complementary efforts. Examples abound such the ComputersForSchools project where refurbished computers which would otherwise end up being dumped in the Western countries, are shipped to schools in collaboration with ministries of education. There is apparent establishing and strengthening at the local, national, regional and international levels, institutions that create coherence in developing Information Society. Such examples are New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
Information and communication infrastructure: an essential foundation for an inclusive information society
Connectivity is the key in building an Information Society: universal, equitable and affordable access to ICT infrastructure and services is one of challenges of the Information Society. It involves access to energy and postal services.
A well developed information and communication network infrastructure and applications, making greater use of broadband and other innovative technologies will accelerate the social and economic progress of countries, and well being if all individuals, communities and peoples.
Policies that create a favourable climate stability, predictability and fair competition at all levels should be developed and implemented so as to attract more private investments for ICT infrastructure development. In disadvantaged areas, the establishment of ICT public access points in places such as post offices, schools, libraries and archives which can provide effective means of ensuring universal access to infrastructure and services of the Information Society.
These principles had earlier been adopted by representatives of African governments, civil society and the private sector during the Africa Regional Conference for WSIS, Bamako, 28-30 May 2002. To date, attempts at technology supply have been made by diversifying through:

Removal of regulatory, political and financial obstacles to the development of communication facilities;
Promotion of open source software packages such as Ubuntu;
Promotion of regional and global initiatives in bridging the digital divide from ECA, ATU, ITU, UN ICT Taskforce, UNDP and civil society organizations;
Adopting policies to stimulate the building of ICT infrastructure and providing universal access particularly in rural areas. The Digital Village Projects (DVPs) by the Kenya government has been realized through such formulation of policies;
Removal of duties levied on ICT hardware and software;

2.2 Access to information and knowledge

Access to information and for that matter knowledge for all could as well be said to have been at the centre of the discussions at Geneva and Tunis both for 2003 and 2005 respectively. The topic was well espoused under the key guiding principles. It can be said that information is made a reality when equitable access to users is made possible which goes a long way in building an Information Society in the context of information and knowledge creation and which grows in tandem with the consumers of the information.

For information exclusivity it was noted and indeed agreed that access to contribution of information, ideas and knowledge was quite essential. The digital divide as shall be seen in another section of this report has created barriers to equitable access. Several efforts have been made in the developed world to address the salient issues and reconcile with the existing laws, however it was noted that the developing world faces challenges in addressing issues such as lack of access to requisite infrastructure, differential education in the society and copy right issues. Some countries in the developing countries are addressing a number of the issues through creation of digital villages such as in Kenya, infrastructure rollout, and universal service fund to address disparities in both the rural and marginalized areas. Kenya is making a concerted effort to this end the enactment of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) Bill, Women Fund and the Youth Fund where the concerned groups are playing a vital role in the establishment of rural enterprises that have prompted these groups to gain access to ICT services and hence bridge the digital divide.

Using Kenya as an example within the African context, access to information and knowledge relies on infrastructural investment and development in the energy sector and other related sectors. Kenya has recently established a rural electrification programme, through the Rural Electrification Board (REB) for supply of electricity to the rural areas, which is expected to spur access to information and knowledge; and creation of Information Societies. Both the two conferences noted that use of assistive technology and equitable access is important, and as mentioned earlier initiatives are being made in this direction with the view of improving access to information and knowledge and as well contribute to the pool of existing knowledge without discrimination.

All initiatives towards improving equitable distribution of information and access was noted as the key that could lead to having rich public domains, education, new jobs and innovative business opportunities as mentioned in the Kenyan example. With the new development it was noted that the new Information Society will come with the responsibility of protecting information and knowledge, and this could come in the form of protection of public institutions such as museums, cultural collection and community document preservation. Access to this information could eventually be promoted by increasing awareness among all stakeholders through initiatives like making software licences affordable, though this is debatable depending on the economy in question; putting a check on proprietary issues on software; development of open source software and in some instances radical decision which make provision of free software; and fostering competition among software firms.

Having mentioned all the above, it was agreed that users should be involved in development of solutions and be given diversity of choice. This would ensure users have solutions which best fit their specific requirements and this would ensure affordable access to information and knowledge that is truly inclusive of the emerging Information Society. For the truly marginalized groups a concerted effort has to be put in place by all stakeholders to promote universal access with equal opportunities not only on the basis of Information Society, but also access to scientific knowledge, its creation and dissemination. Finally, several initiatives have to be developed with the aim of equitable access by all to technical information including open access initiatives for scientific publishing; and being cognizant of the challenges based on gender, culture, political, social and health issues that are a constant concern for the developing world with special emphasis on the African continent.

2.3 Capacity building

In order to realize the vision of the Information Society, capacity building for today and future workforce is vital. The young generation and society at large must therefore be empowered as learners, developers, contributors, entrepreneurs and decision-makers. The focus must be especially on young people who have not yet been able to benefit fully from the opportunities provided by ICTs. Policies must be also be committed to ensuring that the development of ICT applications and operation of services respects the rights of children as well as their protection and well-being.

The African world such as Kenya has challenges to ensuring that everyone has the necessary skills to benefit fully from the Information Society. The countries literacy level is still low according to research. ICT literacy is even lower. There is a need to initiate computer education and ICT awareness such as networking schools together and encouraging e-learning ventures. Much is needed from the government and the Ministry of Communications and Information to establish a set of government standard competence criteria which establishes the levels of competence needed from civil servants and which may be used to set standards for ICT competence in other sectors of the economy. Standards are also needed to safeguard quality of education in the wake of mushrooming mediocre colleges. While being seen as entrepreneurial ventures and digital literacy education, these mushrooming colleges can not be guaranteed to offer the much professional expertise needed.

Education and research in the African society is still not well developed and for the future generations to understand the real basis of our digital age, freedom has to be preserved for the knowledge of humankind. Free software, open courseware and free educational software as well as scientific resources empower people to take their life into their own hands. If not, they will become only users and consumers of information technologies, instead of active participants and well informed citizens in the Information Society. This is evident by the upsurge of application systems coming from Asia to Africa (Consumers).

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held during 10-12 December, 2003 in Geneva, made the Declaration of the Principles that states capacity building should focus on the following

Each person should have the opportunity to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge in order to understand, participate actively in, and benefit fully from, the Information Society and the knowledge economy. Literacy and universal primary education are key factors for building a fully inclusive information society, paying particular attention to the special needs of girls and women. Given the wide range of ICT and information specialists required at all levels, building institutional capacity deserve special attention.
The use of ICTs in all stages of education, training and human resource development should be promoted, taking into account the special needs of persons with disabilities and disadvantaged and vulnerable groups.
Continuous and adult education, re-training, life-long learning, distance-learning and other special services, such as telemedicine, can make an essential contribution to employability and help people benefit from the new opportunities offered by ICTs for traditional jobs, self-employment and new professions. Awareness and literacy in ICTs are an essential foundation in this regard.
Content creators, publishers, and producers, as well as teachers, trainers, archivists, librarians and learners, should play an active role in promoting the Information Society, particularly in the Least Developed Countries.
To achieve a sustainable development of the Information Society, national capability in ICT research and development should be enhanced. Furthermore, partnerships, in particular between and among developed and African countries, including countries with economies in transition, in research and development, technology transfer, manufacturing and utilization of ICT products and services are crucial for promoting capacity building and global participation in the Information Society. The manufacture of ICTs presents a significant opportunity for creation of wealth.
The attainment of our shared aspirations, in particular for African countries and countries with economies in transition, to become fully-fledged members of the Information Society, and their positive integration into the knowledge economy, depends largely on increased capacity building in the areas of education, technology know-how and access to information, which are major factors in determining development and competitiveness.

African states are grappling with the influx of technology, no control and lack of content for the illiterate masses. Initiatives such as tele-computing are beginning to crop up while in the education sector, we talk of distance learning initiatives like the African Virtual University. The governments are putting in place measures for infrastructure establishment of infrastructure for high-speed research networks, and interconnecting schools. There is minimal ICT professionals and experts growth through scholarships.

Thus special attention must be paid to supporting sustainable capacity building with a specific focus on research and skills development. In order to tackle development issues, training should have a sociological focus too and not be entirely technologically framed.

Similarly, educators at all levels should be empowered to develop curricula that provide or contribute to training for people not only as workers and consumers using ICT, but also in the basic science and engineering of ICT, in the participatory design of ICT by communities with computing professionals, the critical assessment of ICT, the institutional and social contexts of their development and implementation, as well as their creative uses for active citizenship. Young people - given their large numbers, particularly in African countries, and enthusiasm and expertise in the use of ICTs - remain an untapped resource as initiators of peer-to-peer learning projects at the community and school levels. These issues have largely been ignored by WSIS.

Study shows that, majority of ICT practitioners in African counties are men. There is therefore a need to empower women to influence and benefit from the ICT sector through building their technical and soft skills by providing them with cutting-edge IT network training along with market-required soft skills. Equal and active participation of women is essential, especially in decision-making. There is a need for real effort and commitment to transforming the masculinity culture embedded within existing structures and discourses of the Information Society which serves to reinforce gender disparity and inequality. Without full, material and engaged commitment to the principle of gender equality, women's empowerment and nondiscrimination, the vision of a just and equitable Information Society cannot be achieved.

African countries therefore need to formulate national ICT capacity building programme that address development of human resource, building institutional and technological capacity. Given the amount of resources needed to meet these challenges, it is imperative that the countries forge strong partnership with the private sector and international donor agencies. This will provide emphasis to selected focus areas to promote development-oriented applications
in education, health, governance, trade and commerce, and public administration and service delivery.

2.4 Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs

The WSIS Declaration of Principles recognized that "strengthening the trust framework, including information security and network security, authentication, privacy and consumer protection, is a prerequisite for the development of the Information Society and for building confidence among users of ICTs." It is pertinent to note, in the African context, that ICTs approach represent a big departure from the traditional way of doing business. Building confidence and security is therefore critical for successful implementation of ICTs.

Building confidence and security will give the African people confidence in their privacy, whilst taking advantage of ICT developments. However, the greatest hurdle in implementing security is the lack of infrastructure e.g. use of Public Key Infrastructures (PKI), which is yet to be established for most governments.

ICTs will also make it possible to establish a basis for large-scale introduction of electronic signatures which in turn will facilitate the introduction of electronic transactions in public administration. Use of signatures will enhance security of government-owned data. The biggest challenge however, is in building capacity to use the systems. For example, establishing an authority to support the use of electronic signatures in public administrative bodies holding sensitive information; training users and having or developing personnel with the necessary experience.

ICTs may also be used to strengthen countermeasures against cyber crime, which has increased in line with the number of Internet users. African governments can set up departments to handle "Cyber crime", to promote the investigation and prevention of cyber crime. The departments can coordinate investigations by local police forces and strengthen cooperation with industry and foreign countries. It should be noted that cyber crime is becoming more complex, and therefore one major challenge will be to develop systems that are capable of evolving to ensure sophisticated technical support throughout the country in the investigation of cyber crime. According to survey published in Madar Research Journal (2005), widespread growth and increasing reliance on ICTs services places all establishments at risk. The matter is complicated further by secrecy and absence of popular demand for transparency in reporting cyber crimes hence a serious lack in legal frameworks and necessary resources to charge people who commit cybercrimes

With the collaboration of public agencies and professional associations, it should also be possible to develop e-commerce applications that can be used for large scale transactions i.e. e-commerce amongst both small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the consumers. In order to encourage the development, this will require comprehensive legal framework necessary to conduct e-commerce and e-transactions (digital signature and proof, data privacy, on-line contracts, consumer protection, e-payments, related international issues, etc.). Most African governments are yet to formalize legislation or policies i.e. there is limited legislation related to e-commerce. There will be need for cooperation with other governments and also sensitizing consumers about their rights to avoid misuse of ICTs. This may include introduction of consumer protection bodies.

With regard to incident response, which is critical for availability, integrity, and accountability of systems, countries will have to launch Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), aimed at creating awareness of cyber security, assist the management of risks and ensure the integrity of data.

According to UNESCO plan of Action (2005), confidence and security are among the main pillars of the Information Society that:

Promote cooperation among the governments at the United Nations and with all stakeholders at other appropriate fora to enhance user confidence, build trust, and protect both data and network integrity; consider existing and potential threats to ICTs; and address other information security and network security issues.
Governments, in cooperation with the private sector, should prevent, detect and respond to cyber-crime and misuse of ICTs by: developing guidelines that take into account ongoing efforts in these areas; considering legislation that allows for effective investigation and prosecution of misuse; promoting effective mutual assistance efforts; strengthening institutional support at the international level for preventing, detecting and recovering from such incidents; and encouraging education and raising awareness.
Governments, and other stakeholders, should actively promote user education and awareness about online privacy and the means of protecting privacy.
Take appropriate action on spam at national and international levels.
Encourage the domestic assessment of national law with a view to overcoming any obstacles to the effective use of electronic documents and transactions including electronic means of authentication.
Further strengthen the trust and security framework with complementary and mutually reinforcing initiatives in the fields of security in the use of ICTs, with initiatives or guidelines with respect to rights to privacy, data and consumer protection.
Share good practices in the field of information security and network security and encourage their use by all parties concerned.
Invite interested countries to set up focal points for real-time incident handling and response, and develop a cooperative network between these focal points for sharing information and technologies on incident response.
Encourage further development of secure and reliable applications to facilitate online transactions.
Encourage interested countries to contribute actively to the ongoing United Nations activities to build confidence and security in the use of ICTs.

2.5 Enabling environment

The main challenge was of reconciling the flow of information and the need to preserve cultural and linguistic diversity in a digital world. Based on this the following issues are necessary:

2.5.1 Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

Maintaining cultural heritage and local languages was essential to the development of an Information Society. "Universalizing" access, open access to public domain information, freedom of expression and specific policies to foster distribution of information and knowledge were seen as critical to promoting cultural diversity. The significant role of the family in implementing a digital culture was also noted.

Content that is relevant to the cultures and languages of individuals in the Information Society needed to be provided through access to both traditional and digital media services.

Support by governments, the private sector and civil society in assisting developing and use ICTs for the preservation - both digitization and dissemination - of cultural and natural heritage.

The role of universities and NGOs was seen as important in helping develop local content and preventing focus essentially driven by commercial considerations. It was recommended to make bicultural and multicultural heritage and resources available to schools via the Internet.

Emphasis on the exchange of knowledge, experiences and best practices on policies and tools was important to promote cultural and linguistic diversity at regional and sub regional levels.

2.5.2 Freedom of Expression and Media Ownership

Freedom of expression was recognized as the pre-requisite for diversity. It was widely agreed that governments had a critical role in removing the obstacles to freedom of expression. Strong commitment by democratic and politically legitimate governments was needed to defend that principle.

To ensure democracy and content diversification, major media conglomerates should be prevented from controlling access to information.

The development of domestic legislation that guaranteed media independence, pluralism and freedom of expression should be encouraged. The constitutionalization of freedom of expression had to be accompanied by political will and legal frameworks needed to be enforced in courts.

Governments and the courts are required to ensure ethical media conduct.

Legal frameworks were also needed for community media and private broadcasters to allow them to operate independently. It was stressed that public and private broadcasters needed to work together.

Families and educational institutions were recognized as the building block for a culture of freedom of expression.

The media had a special role to make greater efforts to help the poor and vulnerable exercise their freedom of expression.

2.5.3 Law and Ethics on the Internet

The use of ICTs and content creation should respect human rights and fundamental freedoms of others.

The ethics for the Information Society should foster justice, and the dignity of the human person. Social controls were needed to prevent abusive uses of ICTs, such as hatred, extremism, fundamentalism, violence, racial discrimination and xenophobia.

Specific proposals and recommendations

Sensitize search engines such as Google to the necessity of providing local languages and of enhancing their search capabilities in such languages.
Launch an initiative to promote the development and use of translation engines.
Elaborate an international convention for protection against spam.
Consider developing international conventions to enable users to build on existing content without breaching existing copyright laws.

2.6 ICT application: benefits in all aspects of life

The WSIS Plan of Action identifies eight sectors as examples of those where the application of ICTs can bring wider social and economic benefits especially in African countries. Some of such sectors with examples related to African countries have been outlined as follows

2.6.1 E-government

In Africa a number of different initiatives have been launched in the field of e-government, for instance, in the Republic of Congo Under the supervision of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, a dedicated network has been set up for permanent real-time audiovisual communications between the main governmental institutions and parliament. The extension of the network and further applications are planned.

In addition, some organization such as Development Gateway Foundation
created the Aid Management Platform that is a web-based e-government tool that increases transparency in aid processes between developing country governments and their donors, and reduces the transaction costs of aid tracking, reporting and coordination. The first modules have been deployed in May 2005 by the Government of Ethiopia, which also helped define what the system should address. Additional modules are in the pipeline. This has been an international, cooperative effort and the system can now be made available and tailored to the needs of other governments.

The European Community
in collaboration with ITU
is implementing a Global E-Government Project: "Enhancing Government Services through the use of Secure and Trusted Internet Infrastructures and Applications". This project is aimed at assisting and increasing government efficiency in developing countries by providing Internet-based services and applications to citizens and government officials in Cameroon, Kyrgyz Republic and in Rwanda.

2.6.2 E-business

In this sector, developed countries have played a major role in improving the market for the developing countries. For example Switzerland is helping small and medium-sized companies in emerging countries and economies in transition to improve their market access to Switzerland and the European Union, thereby helping Swiss importers to find new products and sourcing markets. In the ICT sector, the Swiss Import Promotion Programme (SIPPO) organizes selling missions, trade fair stands and the online B2B Platform (Trado)
to offer IT companies in developing countries and Swiss importers the opportunity to network and interact in real time to develop business activities and create mutual opportunities.

Amongst other e-business initiatives: The Regional e-Business forums
of ITC (UNCTAD/WTO) concentrate on exploiting emerging e-business opportunities and applying new technologies to promote trade. E-Business Forums establish dialogue between export managers and strategy-makers with responsibilities of promoting international e-business and combining learning, expertise sharing, interactive dialogue, networking and business matching. In Tunisia, WebManagerCentre
is a portal for economic information, finance and management. It is designed to address the needs of industry, SMEs and the wide public in these fields. Bringing the benefits of ICTs to professionals as well as to all citizens, the portal aims to enhance the effective communication among all stakeholders and provide tools for efficient business solutions.

UNCTAD
helps countries to formulate their own e-business policies through technical assistance programmes, the promotion of international debate and by carrying out analytical work. UNCTAD's e-business programme addresses issues such as cyber crime, free and open source software, e-tourism, business process outsourcing, e-finance and e-services, and computerised customs management.

2.6.3 E-learning

This kind of learning is getting roots in Africa. Through e-Education project, the Ministry of Education and Sports (MES) of Uganda
intends to encourage the provision of education to all schools and adults (continuous education) throughout Uganda. It also aims to promote the use of the Internet to provide education to all. In Cameroon, Ethiopia, ICTs are also being used to ensure that the correct data is collected during the registration of students in schools.

Using the Development Gateway Foundation's
interactive web portal, the Hewlett Foundation is funding a new Open Educational Resources (OER) website to equalize access to high-quality educational materials at low or zero cost to learners and practitioners throughout the developing world. The main focus will be on facilitating access to OERs and the creation of OERs, but the project will also enable the formation of online communities for teaching and learning and provide opportunities for professional networking and collaboration.

The ITU e-Learning Centre
has been established as a global platform aimed at strengthening human capacities in the areas of telecommunications and human resource development. Since 2003, more than 100 online courses have been offered annually in the areas of Telecom Policy, Technology Awareness, Regulatory Issues, Strategic Management, e-Services, Spectrum Management and Network Engineering. Each year, more than 1'000 people are trained through the ITU e-Learning Centre.

2.6.4 E-health

For instance, in Tunisia, a regional health portal, Maghrebmed, was created through a public-private partnership. The multi-level website targets a wide public, including health professionals, patients and people interested in health issues in general. The activity provides access to a wealth of digital resources and is intended to stimulate the exchange and the dissemination of information and knowledge through the establishment of virtual communities.

The African Medical & Research Foundation (AMREF) has embarked on the use of ICTs in telemedicine to improve quality and access, and lower the costs of its clinical outreach programme, which currently covers 75 government and mission hospitals. The regional telemedicine pilot project has initially targeted four hospitals in Kenya and Tanzania, with a view to expanding to cover all of them.

Child Helpline International currently has 79 child help lines in 69 countries and is working in a further 14 countries to establish new services. The networks are available to marginalized children through text messaging, email, confidential and open chat rooms, with the aim of ensuring their voices are heard. In the near future, it is planned to extend child help lines to the district level, enabling more children in need of care and protection to gain access to Child Helpline's services.

In collaboration with Cisco Systems, the WHO's "Health Academy" is a novel approach to improving health through information technology. It will provide the general public with the necessary health information and knowledge to help prevent diseases and to follow a healthier lifestyle. The Health Academy's mission is to demystify medical and public health practices and to make the knowledge of health specialists available to all citizens of the world through Internet-based technology. It will promote good health by explaining essential public health functions in a language that users can understand, taking into consideration their individual cultural sensitivities.

ITU is contributing to the development of innovative solutions and options for providing health services to underserved areas and the development of institutional partnerships. ITU's e-health activities include the implementation of telemedicine projects in several countries including Bhutan, Georgia, Malta, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Senegal, Uganda and Ukraine.

2.6.5 E-employment

In this field of e-employment, ITU, and other partners, has started an e-employment project for women and youth in Cameroon
(with possible extension to Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Rwanda and Tunisia). The objective is to provide women with the knowledge and skills that are needed to support the transition to e-competence and capabilities in the region.

2.6.6 E-environment

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) is promoting the provision and rapid exchange of information on weather, water and climate between scientific and research centres. In E-environment, WMO is promoting the provision of timely weather, water and climate information, including warnings for mitigating natural disasters, dangerous weather-related phenomena and environmental emergencies.

2.6.7 E-agriculture

The US Agency for International Development runs the Southern Africa Sustainable Tree Crops Programme that uses a portal, consisting of a website and Intranet, to coordinate field activities among partners in coffee, cocoa and other tree crops.

The Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture initiative provides public institutions in developing countries with free or low-cost access to over 400 major scientific journals in agriculture and related sciences. AGORA aims to increase the quality and effectiveness of agricultural research, education and training in low-income countries and, in turn, to improve food security. Researchers, policy-makers, educators, students, technical workers and extension specialists will have access to high quality, relevant and timely agricultural information over the Internet.

The Farmer Information Network (FarmNet) is a conceptual model for using ICTs for agricultural and rural development. It aims to create a network of rural people supported by intermediary organizations through extension services, using ICTs and conventional media to facilitate the gathering and exchange of knowledge and information. Farmnet projects are currently ongoing in Bolivia and Namibia, with others planned for East Africa and Latin America.

2.6.8 E-science

In connection to e-science, a number of initiatives have been launched, for example, Bioline International
(BI). BI is an electronic publishing service committed to providing open access to quality scientific research and literature generated in developing countries. The primary goal of BI is to improve the accessibility, visibility and research impact of research published in developing countries. Using peer-reviewed journals from several developing countries, Bioline provides a unique free service by making bioscience information generated in these countries available to the international research community.

2.7 Ethical dimensions of the Information Society

The WSIS Plan of Action recognises that the Information Society should be subject to universally held values and promote the common good and to prevent abusive uses of ICTs. The following section summarises some of the relevant activities in this area.

2.7.1 Promoting respect for peace and fundamental shared values of freedom, equality and solidarity

For example in Uganda they embraced the idea for ICT4peace by organizing some forums. They are aware that by acquiring the ICT skills, students are in a position to share information pertaining to peace with colleagues.

They have embraced a challenge to talk peace using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Information and Communication Technologies are broad themes which range from having and sharing information to how we share this information with others.

They believe that the use of ICTs and media tools by the youth would make them more informed, more instrumental, productive, and useful to their societies. So the youth use knowledge gained to share their experiences, inform their friends and societies on peace issues, be good agents for peace, create peace awareness generally in places they live and elsewhere.

In some organized forums, one person said that information is needed to beat the current development challenges underscoring the need to share information about causes and management of conflict.

The ICT4Peace was conceived after a civil society workshop in 2006 which unearthed a finding that there existed a wide information and communication gap in the communities especially with regards to peace.

It is believed that youths can be empowered through ICT. They do organize for some peace camp through which the participants acquired skills to use ICT tools like email and use such to keep in touch with others to spread peace messages. In some schools they have started some peace clubs. Members of the clubs open up email accounts to communicate with other people about peace building.

2.7.2 Increasing awareness of the ethical dimensions of ICT use

For instance in Kenya, Digital Village Network kicks off in Nyeri town, an initiative to take Internet technology to the rural areas. It happened on 26th June, 2008. For the first time a team of ICT providers, Government officials and politicians came together to sensitize populations outside Nairobi on the importance of ICTs.

The Digital Village Network (DVN) is a mega-community initiative coordinated by ICTvillage.com that brings together individuals and organizations in the Government, public, private and civil society sector under one umbrella to radically transform Kenya's economy, society and politics using ICT.

The Directorate of e-Government (DeG) will soon shift focus to ICT applications now that substantial progress has been made in the provision of infrastructure, especially at the headquarters of all Government ministries and departments. DeG will in June this year launch the Government Common Core Network (GCCN) project which connects all government offices in Nairobi with high speed fibre optic cabling.

The e-Government Strategy outlines the objectives and processes for the modernization of Government, as a means towards: enhancement of transparency, accountability and good governance; making the Government more result oriented, efficient and citizen centred.

2.7.3 Protecting privacy and personal data and taking preventive measures against abusive uses of ICTs

This is the most important one is stated here in its entirety:

All actors in the Information Society should take appropriate actions and preventive measures, as determined by law, against abusive uses of ICTs, such as illegal and other acts motivated by racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance, hatred, violence, all forms of child abuse, including paedophilia and child pornography, and trafficking in, and exploitation of, human beings.

The policies that respect this criterion or principle need to have provision for promoting ethical behaviour among all the stakeholders in ICT. This is achieved through legal provisions in the policies or through laws enacted on the basis of the policy contents.

Cameroon's policy indicates the creation of a legal and regulatory framework to guide activity in ICT. This will surely cause all the actors concerned to behave ethically. The same goes for Ethiopia, Benin, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Tanzania, Namibia, Rwanda, Zambia, Uganda and Botswana. CAR, Congo, Morocco, Mali and Burkina Faso will create copy right and other laws to ensure ethical behaviour in the new information society. In the Comoros, it is planned to strengthen the ethical behaviour of ICT professionals and the laws to be put in place will further guarantee such behaviour from all stakeholders.

How do the rest of the countries treat this issue? The Gambia and Guinea are silent on it.

Ghana on the other hand intends to develop standards, best practices and guidelines to serve as benchmarks in the deployment, exploitation and development of ICTs to the stakeholders. Such benchmarks will generate the right ethical behaviour. Kenya plans to "Address issues of privacy, e-security, ICT legislation, cyber crimes, ethical and moral conduct, copyrights, intellectual property rights and piracy". This is the first policy to actually group these issues together with the intention of addressing them by setting up an e-security structure. These steps will ensure ethical behaviour in the ICTs.

Mozambique and Nigeria are working in the same light. Malawi plans to promote international standards and best practices in the use of ICTs to aid the development, provision and delivery of goods and services. Such a policy will ensure ethical behaviour in the use of ICTs.

International and regional cooperation
Many of the projects targeting infrastructure development and modernization involve international and regional cooperation. Africa can learn from what has already been achieved in other countries (e.g. in Europe and Asia), towards increasing the use of online technologies in business.
For example establishing telecentres around the globe – African governments can borrow from Brazil which has significant experience in promoting the establishment of telecentres, with the purpose of improving the competitiveness of African enterprises, employment and income. Programmes that encourage NGOs and other non-profit civil society stakeholders to set up telecentres in areas with low IT penetration may also be introduced. Under this programme, interested institutions and organisations fulfilling the necessary criteria may receive a donation of computers. Governments may also encourage the private sector to donate hardware in exchange for becoming partner institution in poverty eradication programmes, thus gaining tax-exempt status and contributing to social mobilization within the business and industrial sectors.
Promoting the creation of telecentres is also an effective way of enlarging the country's Information Society, as the urban and rural population gain access to information. Currently, in Kenya, for example, according to Sammy Burachara, chairman of the Telecommunications Service Providers Association of Kenya (August 2007), a relatively small population (10%) of users have access to ICTs. More conservative estimates by the Internet World Statistics Organization (2007) indicate 3.2% of the total population in Kenya have internet access. The challenge is that governments in Africa have made limited investment towards setting up the required infrastructure, although they recognise the great importance of telecentres in bringing electronic communication services to rural areas.
Examples of individual country experiences, accomplishments and ongoing international, regional cooperation and integration projects that have a bearing on Africa are as follows:

Kenya's ministry of Information and Communications is undertaking the East Africa Marine System (Teams), Kenya. The project involves the construction of a 4 887-km submarine telecoms cable linking the Kenyan coast with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at an estimated cost of $110-million. The Kenyan government will own a 45% stake in the project. Etisalat, the leading telecommunications company in the UAE, committed to financing 15% of the project while the remaining 45% was likely to be taken up by private-sector operators and interested governments in the region. So far Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Southern Sudan are participating in the project.
Kenya can borrow from Sudan's experiences on telecentre initiatives that has demonstrated that this can also be driven from the private sector. SUDATEL, Sudan's incumbent telecom company has developed telecentres to provide access to ICTs, particularly in remote and rural areas, in cooperation with many public and private institutions, international donors, and community organisations. Telephony is the main service, but other services are also offered, including fax, Internet, telemedicine, tele-education and photocopying.
Switzerland's SDC, in the framework of a new programme, established the portal telecentre.org in order to catalyze and strengthen telecentre networks around the world. These networks help the people who make telecentres flourish – trainers, managers, volunteers, facilitators, information brokers, and technicians – to solve problems, share resources and support each other.
The International Telecommunications Satellite Organisation (ITSO) has launched a Global Broadband Satellite Infrastructure Initiative (GBSI Initiative). The GBSI Initiative was launched to define a concrete action plan to transform the "digital divide" into "Digital Opportunities". It aims to redress the unequal distribution of telecommunication infrastructure between regions and countries, and between urban and rural areas: this will be achieved through an innovative public-private sector partnership, which will prepare a GBSI that will provide high-speed Internet services. Most of the above initiatives were a direct response to WSIS.
Industry Canada and ITU are currently supporting a series of actions implemented by the International Institute for Telecommunications (IIT), Montreal, Canada, for the benefit of the African and Arab Centres of Excellence and related communities of technical managers and executives. These actions have been taking place since 2004 in the framework of the ITU's Tap-on-Telecom Project, providing access to the remote IIT technical platform through a broadband IP-based link.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) is developing a Future WMO Information System (FWIS) with the objective of establishing a single, coordinated infrastructure for the collection and sharing of weather, water and climate information, using cost-effective telecommunication services, e.g. Internet and satellite systems. The main achievements thus far include the development of WMO metadata standards and the improvement of the Global Telecommunication System of the World Weather Watch, through the use of managed data communication services, Internet and satellite systems.
Study Group 3 of the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Sector is in charge of developing recommendations on tariff and accounting principles. This Study Group has developed a set of recommendations and guidelines on "International Internet Connectivity" to facilitate negotiation and bilateral commercial arrangements enabling direct international Internet connections. The high cost of the international circuit for Internet connectivity between least developed countries and the Internet backbone networks remains a serious problem for these countries and there is a need to build out regional network access points and support the initiatives of small networks.

There are several other initiatives involving partnerships between stakeholders, helping to make ICT training available to the public. For instance:

In 2000, Cisco Systems Inc., the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and United Nations Volunteers (UNV) formed a strategic partnership to help train students through the Least Developed Countries Initiative to prepare them for jobs in the Internet economy. The Initiative has expanded to 39 of the world's 50 least developing countries (LDCs), plus ten non-LDC participating countries in Africa.
In 2003, the partners moved into Phase II, to build a "pipeline" down to the secondary school level, out to secondary cities and beyond, providing access to more people and contributing to national development and to the success of individuals. One hundred new academies are being established in refugee camps, girls' secondary schools and universities in cities throughout Africa.
The African Virtual University was established in 1997 with original funding from the World Bank. It is intended to provide access to high-quality tertiary education across Africa, fully utilising ICTs (e.g., satellite television, Internet, videoconferencing etc). Following a proof-of-concept phase in 1997-1999, some 33 AVU learning centres were established across the continent in 2000-2001. Since 2002, AVU has been operational in 18 countries, with over 3'000 students enrolled. In addition to the World Bank, other partners include the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the UK Department for International Development, private sector organisations (including Microsoft, H-P and Netsat) and overseas partners universities, such as MIT (USA), Carleton University (Canada) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia).
The ITU's Centre of Excellence Project has organised over a hundred training opportunities per year, and has reinforced the competencies of over 12'000 managers and executive staff from all Telecom entities, in developing countries all over the world. ITU has also been working with France to develop the SIMOBIZ project, aiming at the implementation of a business-oriented simulation tool in four Centres of Excellence of the Africa, Americas and Arab regions.

The WSIS Plan of Action recognises that international cooperation among all stakeholders is vital in its implementation. Examples of international cooperation are The Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (MAE) of France, which supports the development of information and communication systems for the establishment of higher education and research in Africa. This project aims at promoting durable scientific and technological exchanges of information among twelve countries: Algeria, Benin, Burkina-Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia.

Aid in the ICT sector used to focus mainly on programmes for the improvement of telecommunications infrastructure, but most efforts nowadays follow a cross sectoral approach and seek to foster ICTs as an enabler of development, such as the Approach to ICT Policy of Germany (Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development). There is a special emphasis on rural areas, where market failures may impede rapid improvements in connectivity. For instance, the KfW Development Bank provides loans and grants to developing countries in all focal areas of Economic co-operation. GTZ (German Technical Co-operation) is conducting a number of ICT programmes in different sectors such as education, health and economic development.

Works Cited

WSIS. (2004). Declaration of Principles-Building the Information Society: a global challenge in the new Millennium. Geneva: WSIS.

WSIS. (2003, February 25). Draft Declaration based on the discussion in the working group of Sub-Committee 2 . Retrieved July 3, 2008, from International Telecommunication Union:

http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/03/wsispc2/td/030217/S03-WSISPC2-030217-TD-GEN-0002!!MSW-E.doc

WSIS. (n.d.). Summit Outcome. Retrieved July 3, 2008, from World Summit on the Information Society: http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc_multi.asp?lang=en&id=1161|0

Survey published in Madar Research Journal, Volume II, Issue 6, February 2005.

The Kenya Ministry of Information and Communication: infocomm@information.go.ke.

Website: www.unesco.org/wsisdirectory[2005]

The potential of electronic and mobile commerce in a developing country in Kenya

2008-09-01T15:13:00.001+03:00

Introduction

E-commerce is a method of trading that replaces paper-based documentation by a mutually binding electronic protocol between buyers and sellers. On the other hand, m-commerce is a new form of e-commerce brought about the rapid growth of wireless communication. It is the buying and selling of goods and services using wireless handheld devices such as mobile phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Simply put, it is 'mobile' business.

The main types of e-commerce are: B2B, B2C, B2G and P2P. In developing countries mobile business applications, especially when used by small and medium sized enterprises in rural areas, will become the key method of reaching potential customers, and expected to become an important feature of the m-commerce .

In the last ten years, the growth in the number of mobile telephone users worldwide has exceeded the growth in the number of fixed lines. It is well documented by the ITU that mobile telephony is growing faster than in anywhere else in the world. This is supported by World Bank reports that "the African mobile market has been the fastest growing market of all regions, expanding at twice the rate of global market". Closer home, as of June 2008, the two players in the mobile telephony sector, Safaricom and Zain (formerly Celtel) reportedly had between them 14 million subscribers, covering roughly 35% part of the Kenya's landscape, and reaching 80% of the country's population.

Current Status in Kenya

Studying the e-commerce scene, it is observed very little is transacted online. Typical scene is where when you wish to buy or sell a good or service, an enquiry is sent and in return an email is received from the business. Compare this with m-commerce, and the contrast is evident. The m-commerce is robust and growing at a phenomenal rate, with the efforts being directed at m-banking services which as of June 2008 saw some Ksh. 12 billion (USD 185 million) move through the system. Presently there is experimentation for purchase of goods and services through the m-commerce platform, and this is expected to be much more promising as it is seen to be a more secure and reliable way of payment. No money is transacted online.

There are a number of factors that act as impediments, and when considering these factors, the potential of both e-commerce and m-commerce can be easily discerned.

Outlets using Credit Cards

E-commerce is likely to pick up if there is an uptake in numbers of credit card holders. Kenyans have traditionally been averse to the "plastic money", but estimates indicate that more and more Kenyans are acquiring credit card and subsequently becoming users. This is more to the fact that the commercial banks are aggressively promoting use of credit cards, and increasing the number of outlets which has been a stumbling block in the past.

After South Africa, Kenya is the next fastest growing credit card market in Africa. According to the Credit and Debit Card Association, there are just over 4,000 across the country with the majority clustered in the capital. Sixty per cent of the merchant network is located in Nairobi, while 30 per cent are in Mombasa and the remaining 10 per cent are scattered across the country .

But with available figures still placing the number of Kenyan credit cards at just under 1.5 million, a new solution that will drive more consumers to use credit facilities being offered by banks is needed. With the mobile phone, new solutions are raising hopes that card use will pick up. MasterCard is employing Near Field Communication (NFC) and Over-The-Air (OTA) technology, working closely with industry players to add its PayPass capability to an NFC-capable phone in order for it to carry the same payment functionality and services that payment cards provide. The technology enables mobile phones to securely transmit and receive information over a short range, maximum range of a few inches, when customers make payment. Industry pundits are excited about the new technology, pegging it as a perfect solution for the Kenyan market, which has already demonstrated its openness to merging using a mobile phone with making financial transactions with mobile money transfer services such as Zain's Sokotele and Safaricom M-Pesa.

Therefore both e-commerce and m-commerce can be seen to be supplementing each other.

Absence of enabling legislation

There is the perceived government's failure or slowness in addressing ICT policy and strategy in a cohesive and comprehensive manner, which would have provisions for e-transaction (and also m-transaction). The current ICT and Electronic Transaction draft bills are still lacking in many areas and the stakeholders agree that certain provisions need to be included if there is to be support for e-transactions and m-transactions.

According to the Kenya ICT Federation (KIF) report of 19 June 2008, e-commerce will add at least one percent growth to Kenya's overall economic growth within five years. This will be dependent upon adoption of legislation that supports e-transactions. Legislation is needed to legalize e-commerce transactions by recognizing electronic signatures; manage and control e-commerce risks; and remove e-commerce barriers. KIF has studied both drafts of the bills, the ICT Bill (2008) and Electronic Transactions Bill (2007) and suggested improvements such as: provisions on who can prosecute, eliminating of ambiguities on admissibility of electronic evidence and the need for data protection and privacy provisions.

Industry sectors, such as tourism are expressing the need for e-commerce to be covered by law. Those countries with tourist destinations that do have legal support for online booking will likely lose their market. This argument is based on the fact that online bookings in countries such as USA and in Europe account for over 80 percent and 50 per cent respectively of their total bookings. Already most airlines locally, regionally and globally are today registering a large proportion of their flight bookings and reservations online. E-commerce and m-commerce in agriculture will improve small scale farmers living standards. Looking at the health sector, there is room for improvement in health care efficiency and affordability through online health data management systems.

Financial transaction capabilities

There is lack of financial transaction capabilities, unlike in Egypt and South Africa where e-commerce has turnover that runs into billions of dollars. This is as a result of financial capabilities brought about by the commercial banks that are still yet to introduce online payment gateways. Without the commercial banks support for such gateways, such as issuance of online merchant accounts that allow businesses to receive payment for their goods and services through credit cards, e-commerce will not take off fully. Some of the two most successfully run and locally established e-business ventures, MamaMike.com and Biashara.biz, use international (and offshore) online merchant accounts such as PayPal, Checkout and Paymate to facilitate their transactions.

This is forcing most of the start ups to look outside the boundaries for offshore online accounts so as to solve problems related to payment. Most of these third party online merchants, such as PayPal will not issue accounts to a Kenyan address directly, and for those who do, they do so at exorbitant charges. This is due to the fact that Kenya is not in the geographical jurisdiction of most these merchants.

As mentioned elsewhere, m-transactions such as mobile banking are therefore still hampered by these requirements for online systems and standardized payment cards. In the few developing countries that have implemented m-commerce, there is evidence of success with securities trading where investors buy and sell shares using mobile phones. Saving time, simplicity and speed of payments are the main advantages of mobile settlements that have been noted.

An example of where both commerce technologies are being used together to improve transactions, is the partnership between Standard Chartered Kenya and Cellulant, who are developing a software that would among others allow their customers to: check their bank balances; pay for electricity, water and other utilities; and even shuffle funds between their accounts. The software-Commerce 360-will link banks, utility services and other companies with mobile phone owners. The service can be used to make transfers from one bank account to another, unlike Safaricom's M-Pesa and Zain's Sokotele that that is used to transfer funds from one individual mobile phone to another. If successful, the initiative will accelerate the modernization of the national payment system and most importantly help the banking system access a wider distribution system, cheaply and more efficiently by leveraging on technology in targeting Kenya's unbanked population, which is estimated at 10 million. Commerce 360 will complement money transfer and e-commerce offering .

Regulatory Issues

In developing countries, mobile communication services ate new and operators are being licensed to compete with incumbent carriers, who in most cases are publicly owned and grossly inefficient. Interconnection between landline operators and competing mobile operators has been a major difficulty constraining mobile development.

Security

Concerns about e-commerce and m-commerce security are heighted especially in the m-commerce domain. Landline Internet and PC-based browser technology provides a media richness (though user perceived) and interactivity that can be used to implement technological security and assure commercial partners that transactions are under way safely and surely. In contrast, the present day mobile interface, be it SMS or WAP, is fairly poor and does not inspire confidence. Though this is changing with the mobile platform technological shift from 2G to 3G that support greater bandwidth and Internet services. Mobile handsets are more prone to theft and consequential misuse, particularly since they contain passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs) used to provide the authentication and data integrity required for verifying financial transactions.

Most of these issues can be addressed through adoption of a fully comprehensive legislative act such as the ICT bill. Some of them are related to the confidence of the businesses and users to the concerns of security and fraud of credit (and debit) cards.

Conclusions

Both forms of commerce are eliminating the need for middle men, and making purchases of goods and services cheaper. Kenya needs to strategically position herself so as to determine the emerging opportunities and make best use of the available human resource that is technologically experienced and available technology that is ready make use of e-commerce.

The growth of wireless technology in the last ten years has created new voice and data communications that can support widespread consumer and business m-commerce applications. It will not parallel e-commerce. B2C transactions will remain more extensive than B2B due to the already established landline channels of e-commerce among companies. Individuals are already finding it increasingly attractive to initiate B2C contacts with companies to order purchase products and services. The conduct of m-commerce is limited by difficulties in making electronic payments and concerns about security and privacy of transactions. Technology also plays an important role because mobile terminals must be Internet enabled if they are to provide full m-commerce possibilities.

Safaricom goes Mobile TV

2008-05-11T12:46:00.001+03:00

Safaricom subscribers will now be able to watch television through their mobile phones following the introduction of mobile TV services by the firm in conjunction with broadcasters KBC and DSTV.

The deal allows subscribers to access a range of satellite television provider DSTV stations on a mobile phone, and marks the beginning of a convergence that will see mobile companies merge services with players across industries. The
new service is made possible through DVB-H technology, which is regarded as the world’s leading mobile broadcast technology.

The technology allows for the digital terrestrial broadcast of live television channels to a mobile phone.

TV channels can be viewed on Mobile TV enabled handsets, which will be
available from DStv dealers and Nairobi based Safaricom outlets at a
retail price of Sh25,000. Subscription to the service will be free
until June 30. From to July 1 customers will pay a subscription fee of
Sh1,000, which is payable through the purchase of scratch cards from
mobile service provider Safaricom.

But with an impossible to reach customer care and network congestion, I wonder what the QoS will be like.

Related links:

http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7309&Itemid=5822

http://www.kahenya.com/tag/tv/

http://www.kbc.co.ke/story.asp?ID=49762

Kenya’s ICT Village Concept

2008-04-23T15:32:00.001+03:00

One of the projects that will most likely change the way we perceive the ICT sector is the development of the so called Digital Villages Project (DVP) that is being implemented by the Kenya ICT Board through the Kenya Transparency Communications Infrastructure Project (KTCIP). The key objective is to establish a network of information facilities especially in the rural areas of Kenya by making ICT more accessible and cheaper to the folks living in the bundus. This is also expected to create economic activities and in the process hopefully reverse the rural-to-urban migration.

Digital villages are e-centres that will provide a suite of services to the public through computers connected to the Internet, digital cameras, printers, fax machines and other communication infrastructure in rural or peri-urban areas. These services include, but are not limited to: e-mail and Internet access; e-banking (e.g. money transfer services such as Posta Pay); e-government (e.g., police abstract forms, tax returns, P3 forms, and driving license applications); e-business (e.g., franchised postal and courier services); e-learning; e-health; e-markets (e.g., agricultural commodity pricing and exchange); and e-monitoring (e.g., real-time local level monitoring of development funds and projects). There are three types of digital village facilities:

Digital centres – development hubs with 10 to 20 PCs
Digital schools – educational facilities with 5 to 10 PCs.
Digital kiosks – commercial facilities with 1 to 5 PCs.

Each digital centre is expected to support a minimum of two digital schools and four digital kiosks. To assist the owners to set-up, expand, and sustain their operations, funding will be obtained from the following sources:

Commercial banks,
Youth Fund,
Women's Fund,
Investment Groups,
Constituency Development Funds,
Other sources.

The biggest worry among some of us who have been following the developments was the low penetration rate by the state power distribution that is estimated at only 3%! With the swearing in of the coalition government, Minister Kiraitu in charge of power (I think so) promised power distribution to all hospitals, schools and trading centres in the rural areas in the next 2 years.

As part of these efforts, the Kenya ICT Board put out an advert invite all stake holders on the DVP implementation that will be focus on four main activity areas:

Training for the entrepreneurs who will start and manage the digital villages
Technical support – including direct IT support services such as computer servicing and the like at no cost to the entrepreneur
A bandwidth subsidy to enable the digital villages to charge the lowest possible rates for internet services – therefore allowing more people access to the services
A revolving fund of US$ 4 Million to provide soft loans for the entrepreneurs who want to start or expand their digital villages.

Designated Digital Village Managers will undergo an intensive 3weeks training programme designed to stimulate, motivate and prepare them to manage (as businesses) Digital Villages. A special training programme will be developed by consultants to equip potential entrepreneurs to start and successfully manage their own business.

The programme is designed for:

The entrepreneurial youth
Retrenched / retired employees who want to start their own businesses and require training in business creation, management end growth
Practicing businesspeople who want to expand into a new field.

The aim of this programme is to prepare unemployed, practicing and potential entrepreneurs to take charge of their lives and their future.

After training, the participants:

Will be capable to start and manage Digital Villages
Will be capable of preparing business plans, sourcing for funds using such business plans, implementing their business plans and successfully managing their businesses.

More information can be obtained the ICTVillage site

Internet Explorer 7 and 8 causing C:\$MFT Error

2008-04-23T14:10:00.001+03:00

On two occasions now I have been encountering problems with my lap top after allowing Windows Update to install critical updates in the form of IE 7. Both IE versions have great interface and options to use for any frequent web surfer, but it was the second time after trying the new IE 8 that the same problem cropped up again which led to question the stability of the web browsers.

What happens is that after rebooting the system you end up getting this annoying message that 'C:\$MFT is corrupt', and any attempts to use the System Restore becomes a futile exercise as it does not work. The error message keeps suggesting that you carry out the maintenance using CHKDSK, an option that is not a good one for me as I have a dual-boot OSes of OpenSuse 10.3 and Windows XP.

Initially the thought was that I had corrupted my boot sector, or even worse, about to crash my hard drive. Searching the Microsoft site did not provide me with any solutions, nor other forums elsewhere.

But I did discover the best solution to the problem – simply remove the IE versions using their uninstaller programme through the 'Add and Remove Programs' feature, and migrate to Mozilla Firefox or Opera which have equally and more better features. Or get stuck with IE 6 that is still dependable but a dinosaur in the arena of web browsers.

Project Management Software

2008-04-21T17:04:00.001+03:00

For most of us involved in any project managements, whether ICT or non-ICT related, we will most frequently want to use a project management software that is easy to understand and use, and produces great reports for inclusion into the final submission.

This can be very frustrating when trying to source for a proprietary app such as Microsoft Project that will likely cost you an arm in process. I discovered long ago the joy of free open source software (FOSS) when it comes to searching and determining what apps are best suited to the kind of project we are managing. And it is a gold mine out there in the world of FOSS, which hundreds of apps that can provide a rich source of such apps.

Project management software fall under three major categories: desktop applications, web-based services and web-based systems. For now I will focus on the desktop applications that are installed on your PC and among the best that I can recommend for its simplicity and export capability is Gantt Project. It has good features and accessories for a free product which is distributed under a GNU General Public License, which means you can download it for free.

The major features that come with this software are the creation of task hierarchy and dependencies and generation of PERT chart. You can put in a percentage complete bar, inside that timeline of that particular stage making it easy to see the progress of the project. You can add as many tasks as you need, as well as assign personnel and resources to each task.

It enables addition of team members for a project and assigning them to tasks when you set them up, capture their e-mail addresses as well as phone numbers for each person, and assign them a role in the group. It also includes a Milestone feature which is very useful, giving an end goal to aim for with a fixed time.

Looking at the export document format types, it will not disappoint. It allows you to export your work either as a PNG or JPEG image file; CSV file; HTML file with theme support; PDF report with theme support or even better as an Ms Project (.MPX extension) file.

You can download Gantt Project here.

Another FREE app is the TIMIOS Gantt Chart Designer. It is easy to use, with a wide range of bar types and colours and shades, linked tasks, easy printing options and a copy and paste of chart into Ms Office documents or web pages. It is absolutely free and the current version is which you can download here.

Safaricom to roll out faster data access

2007-10-19T08:44:00.001+03:00

Safaricom on Thursday received a licence to roll out third generation (3G) mobile systems and services.

This will enable subscribers access to high speed data communications, which include faster access to internet, video conferencing and video phone, among others.

Safaricom, which has consistently posted huge profits in recent years, is running ahead of the competition. However, competition is expected to intensify with the anticipated entry of other players, among them the third mobile operator, Econet Wireless, which will roll out early next year.

Last Wednesday, Safaricom CEO, Michael Joseph, said the company's profits will come under pressure for the next five years as more players emerge. The roll out is hence, among the firm's strategies to beat off competition.

Last year, Safaricom posted Sh17.2 billion, the highest in the East African region.

Communications Commission of Kenya, director general, John Waweru said 3G enabled services will facilitate e-applications in medical, education and business.

He said although the 3G systems were used more in developed countries, they would assist developing countries to 'leapflog and close technology gaps with the developed countries.'

He added that CCK had requested Safaricom and Celtel to undertake trials on the third generation service in Nairobi and Mombasa, and the services have proved to be of quality.

Mr Waweru said Safaricom should introduce innovative services the like introduced in Singapore last week, where parents were enabled to monitor their children, residence and streets.

"It is my hope that Safaricom will roll out many innovative services in 3G whose uptake would be targeted across the board to meet the needs of all consumers of mobile telephone services," he said.

The licence cost $25 million (Sh1.7 billion). Mr Joseph said the firm will use an equal amount to build the infrastructure for the 3G services.

Mr Waweru said the licence fee will be used to expand Information Communication Technology (ICT)

Vodacom Tanzania: The better choice too!

2007-09-12T09:57:00.000+03:00

The beauty of travelling is that you do get exposed to different aspects of life other than what you would consider the norm back at home. Here I am in Dar es Salaam, using my Safaricom pre-paid line on Tanzania's Vodacom platform.

What suprised on Monday when I landed here, was that pleasant suprise that the Safaricom 200 postpaid customer care line is actually accessible to us prepaid users! Now that was a shocker for me!

Anyway aside from that, the only dissapointment was that I could not surf on my Samsung E250 as the Safaricom GPRS settings here are not valid. Upon calling Safaricom customer care, they did actually inform me that they were working on that technicaility. It was good to call and sms home at the same rate as though we were back home. The only downside, Safaricom scratch cards are hard to come by here, and if you do get them, watch out for the extra service charge. Maybe one day they might operate like Celtel, where you can use the local scratch cards to top up your line.

The pleasant experience was the 3G service offered by Vodacom here. Here they offer anything from a 500 MB internet bundle per month at Ksh. 3,500 to an astonishingly 2 GIG bundle per month at Ksh. 9,600! Now that is what we have been talking about for so long. They also offer 3G HSDPA Data Card (Huawei E620) and the USB Modem (Huawei E220) to both postpaid and prepaid users, though still yet to confirm what the actual download and upload speed rates are. Apart from the traditional services they also offer support for video calls.

But not too worry Safaricom has just unveiled plans to roll out the 3G mobile platform in Kenya by December! After all, they are both subsidiaries of the UK Vodafone company, or aren't they?

Kenyan Presidential Elections War taken to the Cyberspace!

2007-08-21T16:54:00.001+03:00

It is annoying when you try to follow the Kenya political landscape. But even more annoying is when the meaningless political squabbles as to who is the best presidential candidate is taken to the new frontiers - the cyberspace!

I am sure by now most Kenyans who use PCs either at their offices and homes and have some Internet connectivity might have heard of the Kibaki Tosha and Raila Tosha viruses that are very frustrating when it infects your computer.

First on the scene was the Raila Tosha virus, then the Kibaki Tosha virus which all copy themselves to your hard disk and display campaign messages for both presidential campaigns every 20 minutes. This seems to be the work of a few programmers, and very smart at that, compiling and distributing the virus with their installers and programs. It appears that IMs such as Yahoo! and MSN with their security vulnerabilities are the entry points into the network.

And it seems the standard anti virus programs like Norton do not detect the virus.

For tips on how to remove them, see the links below from some other bloggers who have had a similar experience and succeeded to remove it.

Seems the new age cyberspace wars are here to stay, remember the Raila and Musyoka websites?

http://www.advance-africa-forum.com/showthread.php?t=3046

And for the satirical commentary on the Raila and Kibaki viruses, visit the Diary of the Black Man blog below.

http://mweusi.blogspot.com/2007/07/raila-virus.html

GSM Nobile Car Alarms: A cheaper alternative for guaranteed security against car theft?

2007-08-20T16:27:00.001+03:00

We have had interesting arguments on the merits and demerits of installing a GSM car alarm. For those in the dark, this is a relatively new (though not so new globally) anti-theft car alarm system based on mobile phone technology.

And all you need is a SIM card for your car and a mobile phone to "call" the car, sending instructions to the alarm and receiving signals from the alarm. This gives the car owner control of the car, literally anywhere on earth and anytime! The possibilities of such application are wide when compared to other conventional car alarms.

With such a system installed in the vehicle, the alarm will call you on any intrusion, and after receiving such "calls" or signals, then speak and warn the intruders in the car through your mobile phone anywhere via the speaker that comes with the alarm! Imagine telling the car thieves pumbavu! I would love to see their reaction when the car speaks to them. Anyway, the system allows you cut the engine power or fuel supply so that the car is undrivable. You can close the car windows and doors through the mobile phone.

And where emergency hot lines such as the police work, even make calls to the cop station to alert them of the event.

Our argument which never came to it conclusion, was, if given a choice between GSM mobile car alarm systems and TrackIt! Car services for lack of money, where would you place your bet?

Safaricom against prepaid subscribers?

2007-08-13T14:50:00.001+03:00

If you were to ask me to vote the company with the worst customer care service, I would not hesitate in selecting Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile phone provider and the most profitable business in East Africa.

For the whole of the weekend, it has been an exercise in futility trying to reach their customer care desk through the designated 100 support line for prepaid subscribers. And today, trying to call their landline on 020-427 3272 is equally more frustrating, with the service provided by their staff leaving a lot to be desired of such a company.

What I have been trying to request for was activation of my line so as to enable me use GPRS to access the Internet. For reasons given to me, and which I found to be unacceptable, was their system seems to have 'decided' to lose my settings, whatever that was. Try and call their line and mention that you are prepaid, you get patched through to their customer care department that behaves like the 100 call line. No service plenty of lip service.

After my 10th attempt today, I have resigned to the fact that there is no assistance forthcoming from them.

What a better option! Wish they had that good and reliable customer care of Celtel, who unfortunately seem to always get their tariffs wrong with hidden charges.

Where is the third option for us Kenyans with our peculiar calling habits?

Kenyan Farmers using Mobile Information Exchange(MIX)

2007-08-07T14:55:00.001+03:00

I was googling the Net, interested more in the benefits of Safaricom’s M-Pesa service, when googled search item was on DrumNet.

It is a project of the NGO Pride Africa and was launched in late 2002 with the objective of delivering a set of critical business support services directly to the African smallholder
farmers.
It is designed as marketing, financial and information services for mainstreaming resource-poorfarmers and combines information,commodity transaction services and financial linkages into a single business service model that provides access to markets, market information and credit for the rural poor to support sustainable agriculture and rural development.
What is interesting apart from the traditional approach of providing the poor farmer access to credit lines,market intelligence, buyers and farm inputs is the use of mobile phones. They have set up support centres equipped with a PC and a GSM-phone to link up with the central hub in Nairobi which is the main server/database and provides an access centre for the storage and retrieval of information. Each support centre is managed by an Agent, who collects and disseminates information, assists in forming farmer groups, and arranges buy and sell deals. By combining sophisticated information technology with an on-the-ground presence in rural communities, DrumNet hopes to fill the current void in the provision of critical business information and financial services for small-scale agricultural producers in East Africa.
For more information, check this link to the White African’s blog on how the technology works

Update: Banking on a mobile phone Part 2

2007-03-08T11:38:00.000+03:00

Looks like Safaricom's new service M-PESA is causing sleepness nights to stock investors in certain financial markets, visit the link below to go to the StockKenya website:

http://www.stockskenya.com/stkForumTopic.aspx?stk=0&top=1288

And it is equally causing excitement for those waiting and hoping that the Government offloads their shares in Safaricom soon as in yesterday. Visit the link below to go to Reuters website:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=PR&symbol=VOD.L&storyID=53511+12-Feb-2007+RNS&type=qcna

Update: Banking on a mobile phone

2007-03-07T09:29:00.000+03:00

Source: http://www.safaricom.co.ke/m-pesa/

The M-Pesa was officially launched on 6 March 2007 and it promises to re-define the meaning of money transfer as we know it in Kenya today.

According to Safaricom’s website M-PESA is a new service that allows one to transfer money using a mobile phone. And Kenya is the first country in the world to use this service, which is offered in partnership between Safaricom and Vodafone.

M-PESA is available to all members of the public, even if they do not have a bank account which to me is the answer to the prayers of rural Kenyans that the mainstream banks have been ignoring for decades.
The charges to be levied are low as promised, as there is no charges for deposits between Kes. 100 and Kes. 35,000. sending money to a registered M-PESA user will cost you Kes 30 for amounts between Kes. 100 and Kes. 35,0000; non-registered M-PESA users will range from Kes. 30 to Kes. 400 for the same amounts.

Withdrawal charges for M-PESA users range from Kes. 25 to Kes. 170 for Kes. 100 to Kes. 35,000 withdrawals and absolutely free for non M-PESA users (as the sender is already billed for that). I can bet a dime no bank in Kenya can match Safaricom’s charges!

The M-PESA service can also be used to buy airtime too.

And Safaricom seems to have done its homework and gone ahead to license agents (though they are still looking for some more in all parts of the country too!).

So folks, go exchange your old SIM cards for the new, or even better, buy a Safaricom line to start sambazing folks in shags the loot!

Banking on a mobile phone

2007-02-23T08:33:00.000+03:00

It has been long since I wrote anything new on this blog, but after coming across some interesting information on banking on mobile phone, decided to put this up.

First, I would like to acknowledge the sources of the information that am about to blog;

Christine Bowers, 'How banking on the mobile phone can help the poor'
Kenneth Kwama, East Standard, 'The next big thing'

The interest in this came about when I had to go for a SIM replacement from Safaricom. What struck me most, was the unsual green color of the SIM card. For some of us perenial mobile phone losers, we had gotten accustomed to the trademark black SIM card. Upon enquiry from the customer care rep at the dealer shop, I was informed this was the new generation SIM card from the 'better option'.

The menu embedded on the SIM card is more extensive, with some new features that are not yet supported by Safaricom - of which M-Pesa was of interest.

Apparently M-Pesa is an acronym for Mteja-Pesa, a low-cost money transfer that transforms your traditional phone into a banking instrumet (think of it like PostaPay!). The idea behind it is so simple! It will allow the mteja to borrow, transfer and pay money using SMS texting, and also access virtual loan accounts!

That is M-Banking or Mobile Banking, which has come of age in Kenya!

What I had not known, is that Safaricom had been running a pilot project in Thika with 400 wateja. And another 600 have tried the system in 8 dealerships in Mathare and Nairobi CBD last year.

It is expected to be launched nxt month, and what stands between Safaricom and the M-Pesa service is CBK's approval as the digital money service is financial in nature.

The possibilities of the service are staggering. Imagine what would the banks fare in the heat of the competition that is bound to be generated. For those poor Kenyans who cannot afford to open (let alone maintain) an account with the banks, this would be the most fastest ad secure means of sending money.

Reminds of the newly launched PostaPay money transfer of Posta that has taken the breathe out of the domestic money transfer service providers like MoloLine and Securicor (I know they are not meant for financial transfer ). All the customer has to do, is approach the dealer, pay the amount that you want sent to the Safaricom account, get issued with a secret code then SMS the code to the recipient, who withdraws the money from any dealer in Kenya using the secret code.

It is anticipaed that this will be low cost (rumoured at Ksh. 18 per transaction).

Life will definitely not be good for Posta and PostBank.

At the moment, enthusiasm for m-banking has outrun its implementation. For one thing, regulators break out in a cold sweat at the thought of all the overlapping issues involved. But there are success stories in other parts of Africa. Leading the way is the South Africa , with MTN Mobile Banking and Wizzit both entering their second year of operations.

These telecom companies aren't offering m-banking out of the kindness of their hearts. They like m-banking because it's a way for them to attract new customers by doing what they already do well—processing millions of tiny transactions. Banks aren't as interested, because they don't expect to profit from poor clients who won't be taking out a mortgage anytime soon. But the telecoms could start siphoning away bank customers who don't need all the bells and whistles.

The State of FOSS in this Kenya

2006-05-23T08:44:00.000+03:00

Did you know that according to the Ministry of Education, the more than 4,000 secondary schools in the country require a total of 80,000 computers? And out of these that more than 100 secondary schools, mostly in the rural areas, have already benefited from donations of some 2,200 computers to help boost their computer literacy.

In addition, there were 17,594 primary schools as at 2003, with unspecified number that have benefited from any computerization programmes. Try http://www.education.go.ke/Resources.htm

With such lack of coordinated information on what the progress is on the ground.

There are quite a number of CBOs that seem to be actively participating, such as the I Wanna Be There I Wanna Lend A Hand under the Computers for Schools Programme in Narok that seems to be advocating for use of the Bill Gate's OS rather than FOSS. Whatever the sucess or outcome of what they have done is not documented and will be hard to judge their success at this stage.

Yet from the look of things, with the NEPAD e-schools initiative being rolled across Africa, there will be the need to have all the disparate initiatives being undertaken, either with the motive of profitting or community betterment, to see that we have the proper structures to implement and meet the objective of accruing a body of knowledge, based on real-life experiences of implementing ICTs across schools in Afirca.

With the launch of the NEPAD e-school initiative in Kenya on 27 September 2005, as Isiolo Girsls School, it will be a matter of time before we can determine its viability.

Perhaps there will be other such charitable organizations like Computers for Charity that might look at the issue from an entirely perspective.

Flossy tales of ICT in Kenya

How Africa Tweets

Interesting tidbits about Android

MPESA surpasses Western Union in transactions globally

$15 Laptop and Projector: The best, most effective, and cheapest computer system for schools | ICTWorks

Kenya’s calling rates go up

Mobile Web in Africa 2011

ICANN Approves Historic Change to Internet's Domain Name System

Vodacom South Africa low uptake of MPESA

Mobile phones and the link to cancer

Is it worth it, mobile number portability in Kenya?

April 1 it is for the number portability

Mobile number portability ON in Kenya

Kenya’s mobile telephony and Internet review for 2010-2011

People Power! Internet Power and African Revolutions

facecrook

Kenyan TV commercials

Africa Internet Facebook Usage

Global and African Internet Usage

East Africa’s fibre link outage, in comes satellite

Kenya Institute of Education: Coming of age

Safaricom now on 4G experimental stage.

Testing ‘Digital Pens’ in Hospitals in Tanzania: Lessons for Kenya

First Results: End of January 2010

The Health Management Information System (HMIS) Project

The Benefits of a Well-Functioning HMIS

Morgan Stanley predicts rosy future for Safaricom

Mobile phone market set for greater heights

Cheating in Kenyan national exams goes high tech

Power outage, now Internet outage!

Is the national fibre optic project paying off in Kenya?

Zain to roll out 3G in mid-2010

Seacom fibre optic landing heralds in new era of Internet connectivity

For youngest mobile phone firm, the war has just begun

Financing to redraw battle lines in mobile industry

Electronic pick-pockets on the loose

Zain raises call tariff charges

Survey shows Internet users rose despite economic downturn

Funding hitches hit digital villages project Account Flossy tales of ICT in Kenya

Safaricom profit down 23 p.c.

Status of Mobile Telephony in Kenya for 2008/2009

Safaricom’s Okoa Jahazi

Mobile telephony in Kenya

Windows XP SP3 does NOT Support High Definition Audio on your PC!

M-banking taken a notch higher by Equity Bank

Review of the WSIS final declaration and the potential it holds for the African Society and the impediments that will need to be overcome.

Introduction

Core Principles and Potentials

2.1 Information Society for all

2.2 Access to information and knowledge

2.3 Capacity building

2.4 Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs

2.5 Enabling environment

2.6 ICT application: benefits in all aspects of life

2.7 Ethical dimensions of the Information Society

International and regional cooperation

Works Cited

The potential of electronic and mobile commerce in a developing country in Kenya

Safaricom goes Mobile TV

Kenya’s ICT Village Concept

Internet Explorer 7 and 8 causing C:\$MFT Error

Project Management Software

Safaricom to roll out faster data access

Vodacom Tanzania: The better choice too!

Kenyan Presidential Elections War taken to the Cyberspace!

GSM Nobile Car Alarms: A cheaper alternative for guaranteed security against car theft?

Safaricom against prepaid subscribers?

Kenyan Farmers using Mobile Information Exchange(MIX)

Update: Banking on a mobile phone Part 2

Update: Banking on a mobile phone

Banking on a mobile phone

The State of FOSS in this Kenya