Rwanda Launches World’s First Drone Delivery Service

Rwanda has helped Africa beat the rest of the world to rolling out a commercial drone delivery service.

The land of a thousand hills has partnered with the UPS Foundation, Gavi, and the Californian drone startup, Zipline, to start using drones to deliver life-saving medical supplies to hard-to-reach places in the country.

Zipline’s autonomous drones will now fly blood and plasma to places where poor road conditions often result in delays to time-critical deliveries of medical supplies for hours or even days. With drones, delivery time is reduced to minutes, even in bad weather. Take that, Amazon!

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up is high-profile tech investment news involving Naspers, MTN, as well as William Kirsh-led Triptech Media’s 20% acquisition of the social transit application GoMetro— a startup which seems to be generating a fair amount of investor interest at the moment.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

 

Tax Free Mobile Devices vs. Drone Delivered HIV Testing Kits

There is so much hype around the potential of technological innovation to lift Africa out of poverty and usher the continent into an era of peace and progress.

I get a little annoyed when such rhetoric is bandied about by corporate marketers who know better than to think that free WiFi and cheap mobile devices will solve the massive structural socio-economic problems plaguing the continent.

Providing the backdrop for this week’s discussion on the African Tech Round-up is the news that the Malawian government is experimenting with the use of drones to deliver HIV testing kits to mothers who have recently given birth in rural areas. Meanwhile, Zambian lawmakers are bidding to make mobile device imports exempt from Value Added Tax (VAT) to try and improve internet penetration in that country.

Tefo Mohapi and I will unpack the question of which technological innovation might most benefit Africa, and conversely, which innovation trend might be over-rated.

First published in African Tech Round-up.

Safaricom Becomes The Latest Mobile Service Provider To Be Sued

I’m still buzzing from the great time we had at The Annual Round-up 2015, that Tefo Mohapi and I hosted at The Wanderers Club in Johannesburg last week.

Many thanks to those of you who made it out on Thursday morning, and a big thank you to our incredibly generous and insightful guest panelists and speakers. Also, big up to our event partners, Opera Africa, Stuff magazine, and iAfrikan.com.

It was a chilled morning of intelligent, retrospective conversations – which took stock of the state of Africa’s tech scene. The programme featured three keynote talks and three lively interactive panel discussions covering Enterprise, Startups and, Gadgets & Apps.

Seriously, though, the good news is that we’ll be sharing the conversations we had at the Annual Round-up in place of the African Tech Round-up podcast starting on Monday, December 14th, 2015 — to hold you down till the show returns in mid-January 2016. There’ll also be plenty of cool extras we’ll be sharing exclusively on our Soundcloud account and via Facebook, Twitterand Instagram, so do follow us, do.

In the meantime, enjoy Episode 33 of the African Tech Round-up. Listen in to find out why two Kenyan mobile money service providers are suing Safaricom. This is definitely on trend. The last quarter of 2015 is proving to be quite trying time for Africa’s mobile operators.

“Cashflow Rules Everything Around Me” Alludes iROKOtv’s Jason Njoku

Launching a start-up in Africa is not for the faint-hearted. Very few promising ventures– even those that achieve solid traction, can expect to land Silicon Valley-type investment offers that might allow a founder the liberty to concentrate solely on growth, versus say, survival.

This week’s discussion is inspired in part by a recent blog post by iROKOtv Founder and MD, Jason Njoku, written in response to a question posted on a popular Nigerian tech message board by someone who was curious to know how many Nigerian startups are in fact profitable.

Tefo Mohapi and I weren’t sure of what to make of both the question and and Jason’s subsequent response to it, so we decided to bounce some ideas around to try and determine which of these three: 1) growth, 2) profitability, or 3) being cashflow positive, African startup founders should focus on in order to succeed. Consider this just the start of a very long conversation that we plan to keep applying our minds to.

A definite highlight this week was having Jovago.com Founder and MD, Marek Zmyslowski aka Chinedu join us on this week’s African Tech Round-up while he was in Johannesburg on business. It was very kind of him to let us hijack him for a couple of hours, and include his two cents on this week’s news and discussion topic.

Be sure to catch all the week’s biggest digital, tech and innovation news:

• Kenya and South Sudan are set to start work on a multi-million dollar high-speed fibre optic cable within the next two years,
• The Consumer Federation of Kenya is leading a boycott of DSTV over high cable subscription rates,
• Nigerian e-commerce platform Yudala is keen to pull an ‘Amazon’ as it plans to roll out a traffic-beating drone-delivery service,
• South Africa’s largest online news platform, News24, has finally opted to disable public comments to articles posted on their website,
• Facebook 2nd Quarter African User numbers reveal some fascinating trends,
• Singtel, Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica are joining forces to launch a VC initiative spanning Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, and 
• A quick reminder to anyone living in South Africa that public comments on the proposed new Cybercrimes and Cybersecurity Bill are to be submitted to the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development on or before November 30th.

Evolution Of Mobile Phones, What’s Next?

You probably remember how popular Nokia’s 3310 device was when it launched back in 2000. Affectionately known as “Die Hard” by ardent fans, it was for many the possession that would make them truly feel a part of 21st Century civilisation.

It’s pretty incredible how far mobile telephony has come in the 15 years since Nokia launched the record-breaking 3310 handset.

Who could have guessed that in 2015, Nokia would be a faltering giant, Africa would be at the forefront of the world’s mobile-first/mobile-only revolution, and that much of the continent’s “connected” population would be almost exclusively reliant on mobile devices to access the world-wide-web?

In this week’s discussion, Tefo Mohapi and I chat about some of what’s changed (or hasn’t) in the mobile phone technology space over the last decade and a half, and ponder what innovations we should expect to see emerge as we sail into a future which promises ever more technological advancement.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-Up, all the week’s biggest digital tech and innovation news:

• Suspects nabbed in illegal South African government order scam,
• A University of Pretoria post-graduate student wins a prize for a clever asthma attack predictor, and
• Nigeria plans to deploy aerial drones in effort to combat oil theft at its ports.