The GSMA Association, which represents most of the world’s mobile operators, has opened a permanent office in Nairobi in Kenya. The office, housed at the city’s iHub, will allow the association to work more closely with its members throughout the continent. The move shows a
Nigeria’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) will issue 13m MasterCard-branded and payment-enabled national ID smart cards as part of a pilot programme. This programme is the largest ever roll-out of a formal electronic payment solution in Nigeria. In the first phase
A new Kickstarter project from a team of Kenyans wanting to build a piece of communications hardware called BRCK has attracted more than 160 backers in its first two days, with funders contributing more than US$22 000 towards a goal of $125 000. BRCK is the brainchild
While the number of fixed lines in service in South Africa continues to fall, the opposite is happening in Kenya, where Telkom Kenya has grown the number of fixed lines in service from 248 300 to 251 567, or by 1,3%, year on year
Two gigabits per second! That’s more than 50 times faster than the very fastest digital subscriber line service available from Telkom, which tops out at 40Mbit/s. Yet a Sony-backed Internet service provider in Japan, So-net Entertainment, is offering 2Gbit/s access in around Tokyo. Upload speeds
Turn-by-turn navigation from Google has come to more African markets. Android and iPhone users in Kenya, Ghana, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire can now get the service through the Google Maps application. Users can search for popular locations by name rather than
France’s Orange has signed a deal to allow tower operator IHS to oversee more than 2 000 of its towers in the West African markets of Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon. Though Orange will continue to own the towers, IHS will manage them for the next 15 years Surplus space on
The Nigerian Communications Commission has cut interconnection rates, the fees operators charge one another to carry calls between their networks, in an effort to reduce the cost of voice calls for consumers. The commission has announced new rates for incumbents, smaller players and newcomers that will decline
Brian Chesky doesn’t have a home. He has spent the last three years sleeping on strangers’ couches, in spare rooms and in vacant holiday homes. In 2010, he decided that the best way to improve Airbnb’s service was a tried and trusted method called “eating your own dogfood” – in other words
Social media and the Internet played a key role in Kenya’s largely peaceful elections this month by affording Kenyans the chance to quiz candidates and allowing them to share messages of peace and tolerance with one another. Technology was also employed to
