Internet Blackout Persists In Anglophone Cameroon

The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon are probably still celebrating their win against The Pharaohs of Egypt in the AFCON final.

How ironic that roughly 20% of the Central African country’s population was unable to celebrate their national team’s win on social media thanks to the government’s ongoing broadband blackout following anti-government protests in the north-west and south-west regions of that country. No doubt some Cameroonians– particularly the tech heads who make up the nation’s “Silicon Mountain” community, might even now gladly give up the country’s recently won AFCON trophy if it meant getting their internet back.

Increasingly, many African governments cannot be trusted not to tamper with public access to the web. With disturbing frequency, citizens across the continent are cut off without notice whenever their governments’ interests are threatened. The unfortunate truth is that for the average African, the concept of internet access as a human right is a myth. As for the concept of net neutrality, a moment of silence, please…

This week’s African Tech Round-up features a chat with Lionel Chmilewsky. Lionel is the CEO of Cambridge Broadband Networks (CBNL), a UK-based privately-held multipoint microwave tech firm which has an impressive client list that includes seven of the world’s top ten mobile operators– among them, African biggies like MTN and Vodacom. Lionel shares insights on the state of play on the continent’s wireless network scene, and explains why recent advances in multipoint microwave tech are potentially game-changing.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.

 

Senegal Launches A New Electronic Currency

Senegal is now the second African country after Tunisia to adopt an electronic currency. eCFA is equivalent in value to the country’s physical tender and will be available on all mobile money and e-wallet platforms. This development has led to e-money proponents speculating which African country might be next to adopt electronic money. Zimbabwe, perhaps?

It’s popularly been argued that given the persistent economic troubles that have dogged the country, Zimbabwe might very well be the continent’s best use case for the adoption of virtual currency. But for the time being, Zimbabweans will have to be content with the country’s newest currency– bond notes, which the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe started rolling out on Monday, December 28th, 2016.

This week’s African Tech Round-up features a lively chat Andile Masuku had with Dr Vukosi Marivate, a Data Scientist and Senior Researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). They speak about the trend towards countries around the world passing laws that require the personal information of their citizens to be hosted on servers within their borders. We reached out to Vukosi after having some insightful engagement with him on Twitter last week; following our coverage of Russia blocking LinkedIn for flouting data security regulations.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.

 

Kenyan Agritech Startup WeFarm Secures $1.6 Million In Funding

How much of an over-achiever is Elon Musk fixing to become, though? In the last week, he’s added providing global internet coverage via a massive satellite network to his audacious To-do List. In this week’s African Tech Round-up, I reflect on how Musk’s latest ambition might upset net neutrality watchdogs around the world who might not trust SpaceX to responsibly execute on something they don’t trust the likes of Google and Facebook to do.

Also on this week’s show is more about perhaps the most publicised tech investment news of the past week, the $1.6 million investment haul made by the Kenyan agritech startup WeFarm. It’s exciting to see agritech startups start to excite the global VC community. It’s absurd how millions of people on the continent go hungry every year despite how well-endowed Africa is in terms of natural resources. It’s about time we harness tech to work smarter, improve our yields, and get food to hungry people not just on the continent, but wherever it’s needed around the world.

Finally, listen in to hear my conversation with Milena Taieb, Head of Video for France, Africa and the Middle East at Believe Digital Studios— the world’s leading multi-channel network (MCN) specialising in multi-platform distribution, audience development and content monetisation. Milena reveals how Believe has upended the traditional music and video production business, and how despite the plethora of self-publication platforms available to creators today, success is predicated on executing a killer digital strategy.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com

The Kenya Revenue Authority Says Uber Will Not Be Subject To Value-Added Tax

In this week’s African Tech Round-up, we ask the question, “Should Uber’s wings be clipped before they change the world as we know it?”

Lawmakers on the continent appear torn between adopting the pragmatic approach of embracing technological innovation and actively resisting the very real threat of change bringing with it the decimation of the traditional livelihoods of thousands of people who are simply not prepared or willing to adapt.

In the past week, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has declared that for tax purposes, it will treat Uber as a technology company, rather than a transport company (meaning Uber needn’t pay Value-added Tax), while in South Africa, the Competition Commission has dismissed complaints brought against Uber by the SA Meter Taxi Association who accused the ride-hailing service of anti-competitive behaviour. But in Nigeria on the other hand, Lagos State politicians are reportedly putting pressure on Uber to operate based on the old taxi franchise system in a bid to protect incumbents within the existing taxi business from disruption. Who’s got it right, do you think?

Also in this week’s podcast, Nick Saunders of email security firm, Mimecast, joins Andile Masuku to discuss the recent hacking allegations at Kenya Commercial Bank that we covered in last week’s show, as well as to unpack the diabolical DDoS attack that ground Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, Netflix and others to a halt in the US last week.

 

Kenya Commercial Bank Gets Hacked?

So, Episode 80 of the African Tech Round-up, aka the episode that nearly never happened, is finally out.

In an interview I just taped for the upcoming season of the African Tech Conversations series, Co-founder and Chief Credit Officer of M-KOPA Solar, Chad Larson, shared words he lives by that epitomise why I’m glad the team and I didn’t give up on publishing the podcast this week— despite the ridiculousness that made it nearly impossible to do so. “Done is always better than perfect,” he said. So, here it is.

There’s no doubt that this has so far been a bumper year for the world’s hacking community. Last week, one of Kenya’s biggest banks, the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), spent a fair amount of energy trying to convince its customers that their personal data remains uncompromised– this, following claims by a certain programmer who goes by @IrakChris on Twitter claiming to have accessed KCB’s client data through vulnerabilities found in the bank’s mobile app.

Meanwhile, Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, Reddit, Yelp, Netflix, and The New York Times suffered easily one of the world’s biggest coordinated distributed denial of service (aka DDoS) attacks last Friday which led to the sites either slowing to a snail’s pace or being knocked out altogether.

For all the details on these stories and more, tuck into this week’s show, and be sure to tell us what you make of the week’s headlines on Twitter, or via email.

 

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.

 

MTN Group Accused Of Sneaking Nearly $14 Billion Out Of Nigeria

There’s blood in the water. Nigerian lawmakers are flexing their might with a confidence rarely seen in decades past— at least as far as taking large corporates to task for flouting regulations.

According to some media reports the Nigerian Senate has received a motion from one of its members to investigate MTN Nigeria’s potential collusion with leading commercial banks to facilitate the illegal repatriation the funds over the last ten years. The MTN Group is being accused of sneaking just under $14 billion out of the Nigerian market, and despite MTN’s official declarations of innocence, lawmakers have vowed to investigate the matter thoroughly. And so MTN’s extended season of reckoning continues.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up, net neutrality activists around the world are celebrating the USA handing over internet control to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) over the weekend. This happened in the wake of a US federal judge denying a last-ditch request made by Republican Senator Ted Cruz and other politicians for an injunction to try and prevent the scheduled handoff taking place over the weekend. Tune in for more on that story as well as all the week’s leading headlines from across Africa and beyond.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.