In the summer of 2008, IBM announced the opening of new “cloud computing” centers in South Africa and China. Cloud computing enables the delivery of personal and business services from remote, centralized servers (the “cloud”) that share computing resources and bandwidth — to any device, anywhere.
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M-PESA (M for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money) is the product name of a mobile-phone based money transfer service that was developed by Sagentia (later transferring to IBM in September 2009) for Vodafone. Safaricom, the leading mobile communications provider in Kenya, is pleased to announce the launch of M-PESA, an innovative new mobile payment solution that...
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BBC Kenyan farmer Zack Matere pulls his mobile out of his pocket holds it up and takes a couple of photos. “It seems they have come back and are digging here again.” He is referring to a group of people who have encroached on a water catchment area and are endangering the whole...
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Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The website was used to map incidents of violence...
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The private sector has driven the expansion of information and communications technology in recent years. Figure 1 shows the rapid growth in investment with private participation in African telecommunications from 2000 to 2007. Resource scarce landlocked countries in Sub-Saharan Africa attract the lowest volume of investment. These countries have much lower levels of income,...
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Microsoft Research, TWAS and AAS reward computer scientists showing potential to accelerate economic development in Africa Nairobi, Kenya. Three African scientists have been awarded the inaugural TWAS-AAS-Microsoft Award for Young Scientists, by TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world and the African Academy of Sciences (AAS). The award, funded by Microsoft...
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Mobile Money Africa is the continent’s leading portal for Mobile Financial Inclusion with News, contributions, events and interviews from leading players across Africa and beyond. The Mobile channel is the next frontier for all inclusive financial systems for Africans in coming years. More Quills full movie The Faculty dvd
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The World Economic Forum today released ICT for Economic Growth: A Dynamic Ecosystem Driving the Global Recovery, an analysis of how information and communication technologies (ICT) can serve as fundamental enablers for the global economic recovery. Demonstrating the importance of ICT as a catalyst for growth, the report highlights the industry’s complex and...
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Access to mobiles phones has transformed the lives of rural women farmers boosting income and expanding knowledge, a pilot study in Lesotho has found. Three years ago, Evodia Matobo, then 62, a small-scale poultry farmer in Lesotho’s rural lowlands, was stacking plastic containers to feed her chickens. Now she talks about “feeders, agricultural...
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  By Mary Kimani, for United Nations Africa Renewal magazine Kigali The small, dusty village of Mayange lies 20 kilometres from Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. Its health centre has fewer than 40 beds but serves an estimated 35,000 people. In most ways, the Mayange centre is like thousands of other health facilities across the continent which...
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