Mobile World Congress 2016 (feat. Craig Wilson, Talib Graves-Manns & Brien Jordan-Jack)

So, Vodacom’s plans to acquire Neotel have come to naught due to “regulatory complexities and certain conditions not being fulfilled”.  Vodacom’s CEO Shameel Joosub has admitted that he’s very disappointed by his firm’s inability to make the deal happen. While I do expect for Vodacom to bounce back fairly quickly from this let-down, the jury’s still out on whether Neotel will recover from the scandals that continue to plague it.

Meanwhile, aspirational mobile trends like virtual reality are all well and good, but as Africans we must still grapple with the practical implications of having a massive percentage of mobile users on the continent continuing to rely on feature phones.

In this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up, Stuff Magazine South Africa Editor and good friend of the show, Craig Wilson will join me to unpack some of the highlights of Mobile World Congress 2016— which wrapped in Barcelona just over a week ago.

Also, be sure to listen into this week’s show to catch snippets of a conversation I had with Talib Graves-Manns (Start-up Founder & Entrepreneur in Residence with Google for Entrepreneurs and Code 2040) and Brien Jordan-Jack (Aerospace Engineer, Commercial Pilot & Founder of Axiom Group).

Find out what Talib reckons sets Code 2040 apart from other “diversity in tech” initiatives aimed at creating access, awareness, and opportunities for top Black and Latino/a engineering talent in the US. And learn what Brien makes of the crazy valuations of Silicon Valley tech startups, many of which are yet to demonstrate any substantial revenue potential, never mind profitability.

Check out my full conversation with Talib Graves-Manns and Brien Jordan-Jack below:

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.

Hackathon Hype Or Help?

You know it’s a slow news week when the week’s biggest news involves the CEO and the CFO of South African telecoms firm, Neotel, going on leave. Granted, it’s “special leave”.

Be that as it may, broadly speaking I’m totally digging the prevailing positive sentiment I’m sensing in Africa’s tech scene. Following the “let’s launch an incubator” trend that we’ve observed on the continent in recent months, the “let’s host a hackathon” craze is increasing momentum— fueled by a number of companies and organisations looking to harness the growing public interest in all things nerdy, particularly coding.

In this week’s discussion iAfrikan Executive Editor, Tefo Mohapi and I ask whether coding competitions, such as one hosted by Hotels.ng this past week, actually contribute to improving the standard of professional coding skills in our eco-system.

Also in the news this week is the fact that Kenya is reportedly set to be the first African territory where Uber will test an innovation that will allow drivers who are either deaf or hard of hearing to make a living as taxi drivers.