Researchers at Ford and Heinz are collaborating to develop a bioplastic using … tomatoes. They’re investigating the use of tomato fibres in developing sustainable, composite materials for use in vehicle manufacturing. Specifically, dried tomato skins could become the wiring brackets
As a fourth-generation clan chief of a village in rural Cameroon, Gaston Donnat Bappa’s daily life is steeped in tradition.The 200 residents of the village have little if any access to electric power, phones, TV or radio – but the IT engineer, consultant and specialist has been immersed in the world of technology
Online video behemoth YouTube, owned by Google, is said to have reached a deal to buy Twitch, a company that streams video of people playing videogames, for more than US$1bn. But why? According to a report by Variety, in which it quotes unnamed sources close to the deal, the purchase will be an “all-cash offer” and will be announced
MTN plans to spend US$3bn (about R31bn) on its network in Nigeria over the next three years to improve quality of service. The company has previously had quality problems with its network in the West African country. According to website BDlive, the Nigerian Communications Commission banned MTN and two other mobile operators
Apple could be about to splash as much as US$3,2bn on Beats Electronics, the maker of a range of popular headphones. According to a report in the Financial Times, a deal could be announced as early as next week. But it may be less the headphones than Beats’s new music streaming service that has attracted the interest of Apple
Nigeria plans to double investment in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector from US$25bn to $50bn in the next few years, according to the West African nation’s communication technology minister, Omobola Johnson. Johnson said that her ministry and the Nigerian Communications Commission
Cameroon has offered mobile operator Viettel a year’s monopoly on the operation of the country’s first 3G network. But Viettel is no ordinary operator. It’s owned by the Vietnamese government and operated by its ministry of defence. Readers will recall I wrote about the wholesale network and landing station monopoly enjoyed
Independent mobile infrastructure provider IHS has completed its acquisition of more than 1 200 network towers from MTN. It has bought all of the mobile group’s towers in Zambia and Rwanda. The value of the transaction has not been disclosed. IHS subsidiaries in Zambia and Rwanda acquired ownership and
United Arab Emirates telecommunications firm Etisalat said on Monday that it has raised €3,15bn to fund the acquisition of French media giant Vivendi’s 53% stake in Morocco’s main provider, Maroc Telecom. The funds were raised with a group of 17 international, regional and local banks in the UAE. “Financing consists of
On the streets of Lagos and across God-fearing southern Nigeria, it’s not uncommon to see people with a leather-bound Bible in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. But the Good Book’s days could be numbered – in printed form at least – if 25-year-old Kayode Sowole’s idea takes off. The computer science student
