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.

 

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.

 

Tecno Plans To Start Manufacturing Mobile Devices In Nigeria

This week’s African Tech Round-up episode is jam-packed. Digital video content creator, streaming evangelist and co-founder of Pockitttv, Julian von Plato joins me to chat about VOD trends and the adoption of streaming technology on the continent, then TechCabal.com’s Editor-in-chief, Bankole Oluwafemi aka Lord Banks factors in on MTN’s ongoing run-ins with the Nigerian Communications Commission.

The past week saw internet access being blocked in Ethiopia in an effort to quell violent anti-government protests and MTN Nigeria rethinking its planned acquisition of Visafone, so Tecno’sannouncement of its plans to start manufacturing mobile devices in Nigeria provided some respite. The company is looking to consolidate the rather impressive 25.3% market-share it has so far managed to carve out for itself in one of Africa’s most competitive mobile device markets while demonstrating its commitment to Nigeria’s growing mobile ecosystem.

Finally, the team at the African Tech Round-up would like to express our heartfelt condolences to all those who have lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods in the recent storms that have swept through Haiti and are continuing to devastate parts of the US. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by the tragedy.

First published on 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.

 

Barclays Africa’s Blockchain Transaction A World First

It’s been a busy week for the continent’s fintech scene.

The past week saw MTN South Africa announce that it would be discontinuing its mobile money service due to “a lack of commercial viability”. This revelation comes just months after Vodacom South Africa ended its catastrophic attempt at copying and pasting Kenya’s M-Pesa magic.

Meanwhile, Madagascar became only the second African country after Tanzania to to roll out mobile money interoperability across the country’s mobile networks.

But easily one of the catchiest headline stories of the past week was about Barclays Africa’s involvement in what’s being celebrated as the very first blockchain verified financial transaction in the world by a major banking institution. The pilot deal between The Seychelles Trading Company Ltd. and Ornua saw the two companies harness a blockchain platform developed by Wave to trade a letter of credit. This transaction has to be Barclays’ most overt show of confidence in the potential of blockchain technology to deliver improved efficiencies in international trade.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up is a discussion I had with the Kenyan journalist, Eric Mugendi. Eric is Editor-at-large at iAfrikan.com, and also writes for his Tumbler called Kenyan Longreads. Eric joined me on the show to discuss the controversy that unfolded on Twitter around the African Tech Summit happening in London on September 29th. The event’s conspicuously mostly male, non-black/non-African speaker list included folks many people in the Twitterverse did not feel were representative of Africa’s tech ecosystem, and also managed to leave out many worthy participants. Eric and I went about unpacking the issues at play.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

MTN Group Reports Losses In Mid-Year Results For 2016

MTN Group’s warning that their interim financial results for the period ending June 30th 2016 would be unpleasant did a lot to absorb the shock when reality struck last Friday— the day the report eventually dropped.

Despite revenue for the interim period improving by ±$5.7 billion, MTN reported an after tax loss attributable to equity holders of just over $401 thousand. That translates to a headline loss per share of nearly $0.20. Compare that with 2015’s headline earnings of just under $0.48 per share, and it’s sobering to see how humbling this must be Africa’s largest mobile service provider.

As expected, the mobile telco has put forward a long list of explanations for what went wrong. One of the more interesting items on that list is what they are calling “short-term losses” they’ve sustained thanks to their significant investments in Middle East Internet Holdings and of course, the recently rebranded Africa Internet Group— which now goes by Jumia.

I wonder what’s going through the mind of MTN Group’s President and CEO-in-waiting, Rob Shuter, who will no doubt have his work cut out for him when he takes up the reins from Phuthuma Nhleko come July 2017.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up, I share a chat I had with the Cape Town-based Zimbabwean digital all-rounder, Babusi Nyoni. Babusi is the Digital Creative Group Head at South Africa’s #1 ranked through-the-line agency, M&C SAATCHI Abel.

I caught up with Babusi to discuss an AI-enabled campaign he recently masterminded and executed for a global FMCG brand, and to chat about the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence in general. Tune in to hear him factor in on what the world might look and feel like when those technologies become common-place.

Uber Domination

Despite the considerable push-back Uber has experienced in certain African markets, the firm’s march towards utter and complete world domination continued last week as they launched in Tanzania’s capital city, Dar es Salaam.

Dar es Salaam is the 3rd African city Uber has taken to in as many weeks (following Luanda, Uganda and Accra, Ghana) and their 475th location worldwide. Since launching in Johannesburg in 2012, Uber has quietly gone about silencing many of the doubts that sceptics have had about the viability of their business model in African markets that typically show little regard to hype-driven startups that roll in from the West expecting an easy ride. (No pun intended.)

Basically, what might have appeared to some as being a casual African safari is gradually developing into a case study on lean, mean execution. Only time will tell if a home-grown platform like Little Cabs— the ride-hailing service Safaricom is set to launch, will be able to rain on Uber’s parade.

Be sure to listen into this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up to hear my chat with Matthew Lee— a plumber turned corporate executive who now heads up African operations at the German open source software firm, Suse.

Matthew shares insights on how well Africa is keeping up with the rest of the world in terms of producing world-class software applications, and points out key growth areas that could benefit from the increased roll-out of OSS solutions.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.

Is MTN Nigeria’s Nightmare Truly Over? feat. Charles Murray

I celebrated my birthday last Friday, on the same day MTN’s stock price on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange jumped by 20%. This happened in the wake of the news that the firm’s nine-month Nigerian nightmare might finally be coming to an end.

MTN has reportedly struck a deal with the Nigerian government, and is set to pay the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) $1.7 billion over three years— significantly less than the $5.2 billion they were initially fined for flouting SIM card registration regulations months ago.

While MTN’s shareholders are no doubt breathing a sigh of relief, the company is not out of the woods yet, as according to the NCC, one of the conditions linked to the monetary settlement is the requirement that MTN list its Nigerian subsidiary on the Nigerian Stock Exchange “as soon as is commercially and legally possible”.

The jury’s still out on whether this is the last we’ll hear of this story, given Nigeria’s National Assembly coming out strongly against the NCC’s reduction of MTN’s penalty. One thing is certain though, this case sets one heck of a precedent, and that can only bode well for corporate Africa.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up, we feature part of a conversation I had with Charles Murray— who is a director of the messaging and internet calling app, ttrumpet.

Listen in to hear Charles talking about why he reckons ttrumpet isn’t just another mobile app, and sharing some of the pressures and perks of growing a startup that is a subsidiary of relatively successful tech group (Fastcomm) backed by one of the continent’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, Patrice Motsepe.

First published in African Tech Round-up.

A Year Of Great African Tech Conversations

And so the African Tech Round-up’s First Birthday Celebration continues…

Over the past year, our sister podcast, African Tech Conversations, has featured relaxed in-depth chats with leading entrepreneurs, innovators and thought-leaders from Africa’s tech scene. In place of this week’s discussion on the African Tech Round-up, we’re sharing memorable moments from the series.

In this episode, you can look forward to hearing candid bits and insights courtesy of Mteto Nyathi, Alan Knott-Craig Jr, Matsi Modise, Ashley Veasey, Justin Spratt and Trevor Wolfe. We obviously couldn’t share snippets from every conversation we had, but you’re welcome to listen to every single one of them in their entirety at conversations.africantechroundup.com

By the way, Happy Birthday to my homeland— Zimbabwe!

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com

Celebrating The African Tech Round-Up’s First Birthday!

The African Tech Round-up turns one today, and it’s difficult not be sentimental.

It’s been an incredibly rewarding year! We set out to provide some much-needed coverage of the biggest digital, tech and innovation news stories from the African continent— minus all the PR-soaked click-bait and consumer-driven tech chatter one tends to find all over the web. We’ve certainly done our best to deliver on that mandate.

In producing the show over the last 52 weeks, we hope that like us, you’ve come to better understand the intricacies of Africa’s emerging tech and innovation scene, and that you’ve found the discussions and debates we’ve engaged in as interesting and enlightening as we did.

To celebrate our anniversary, on this week’s episode, Tefo Mohapi and I will be sharing audio highlights from the past year. Do join us in revisiting great chats we’ve had with some of the more memorable guests we’ve had on the show– folks like Rebecca Enonchong, Emeka Okoye, Dominique Collett-Antolik, Mbwana Alliy, and others.

We’d like to thank you for supporting this podcast by listening in every week, sharing it with other people, and engaging with us on social media, via email and by sending us audio voice notes that we shared on past episodes of the show. We’re excited to witness the community that is forming around this platform. Let’s keep talking!

Finally, we dedicate everything we’ve so far achieved, and everything we purpose to do going forward to you, and all the other incredible people of the Motherland who continue to work tirelessly in trenches of leading firms and emerging startups alike, to make Africa great.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.