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.

 

Vodacom South Africa To Launch An SVOD Platform Called Vodacom On Demand

Trace TV is fixing to launch arguably the most anticipated SVOD offering of the year, Trace Play. Their ambitious roll-out will involve making Trace Play available in English and French in 100 countries around the world. Trace’s Co-founder and CEO Olivier Laouchez is clearly serious about making sure that Trace TV remains the #1 urban network outside of the US.

This past week, Vodacom South Africa announced the planned launch of an SVOD of their own called Vodacom On Demand. They plan to go live in 2017 with DSTV’s ShowMax onboard in a very cosy arrangement that’s left us wondering if their partnership could grow into something more substantial, like a deal to rival AT&T’s recent acquisition of Time Warner, for instance. Vodacom has said that they’re happy to partner with as many serious content players as might want to play with them, revealing that a future partnership with Netflix will happen in due course.

We’re fairly certain that a deal of AT&T-Time Warner proportions between a telco and big content player is inevitable as the continent’s VOD market matures. Some commentators have suggested that the AT&T-Time Warner deal was driven by the notion that distribution rather than sheer size, or even access to quality content is vital for success in executing big media plays in the digital age.

There’s no doubt that on some level the deal represents a lifeboat for Time Warner, given how all of its cable channels are losing subscribers at an alarming rate. AT&T’s extensive wireless footprint and a significant share of America’s direct video businesses, DirecTV and U-verse could help turn that around. Traditional media players on the continent could very well see similar saviour potential in a mobile network like Vodacom, and be hoping that the mobile telco comes knocking to propose acquisition.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com

 

Kenyan Solar Company D.Light Lands $22.5 Million To Fund Growth

In a week which saw Yahoo announce that it had suffered the worst cyber-breach in history, and all three of Egypt’s incumbent mobile telcos opting not to bid for the 4G licenses being floated by the Egyptian government, Kenyan solar company, D.Light, shone brightly by announcing that they had raised $22.5 million in funding from leading VC’s, debt financiers and non-profit organisations. The money will be used to grow D.Light’s PayGo business globally— a pay-as-you-go offering which enables low-income customers to buy solar products on credit.

D.Light has already made its mark by delivering affordable solar-powered solutions in Africa, China, South Asia and the United States. The company has so far sold more than twelve million solar light and power products in 62 countries, and aims to light up the lives of 100 million people by 2020.

In this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up, Nicholus, one of our US-based listeners, shares insights he gleaned at Intercommunity— the Internet Society’s annual global membership meeting which took place across various live locations around the world last week. Nicholus attended one of the sessions held in Washington DC, and emailed us a report via audio note which touched on why some US lawmakers are continuing to challenge the merits of allowing internet governance to shift from the United States to the international body, ICANN.

Also in this week’s show is a conversation I had with the four co-founders of a promising South African start-up called Airbuy— a business which plans to help people convert airtime into “airbucks” that they can use to purchase goods and services online. The chaps are still celebrating their recent win at an MIT Global Startup Labs competition hosted at Wits University, and they let me take a peek under the hood of their passionate entrepreneurial hustle.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

 

Vodacom Admits That M-Pesa Roll-out In South Africa Flopped (feat. Dominique Collett)

So, Vodacom is finally pulling the plug on their disastrous six-year attempt to roll out M-Pesa in South Africa. (The service will be shut down on June 30th 2016.)

Funny thing is, Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub has blamed his company’s diabolical failure to meet their target of enlisting at least 10 million active users on South Africa’s relatively well-established banking industry. (By the end of 2015 they had only managed to onboard a paltry 76,000 active users.)

However, Joosub’s assertion does not sit well with our guest on this week’s episode of the African Tech Round-up— the brilliant and insightful, Dominique Collett.

Dominique knows a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t in terms of mobile money innovation on the continent. Following a successful exit at the incredibly successful fintech startup she co-founded– Tyme (acquired by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia for a rumoured ±USD30 million), Dominique has gone on to become a financial services investor and innovation architect who is now a Senior Investment Executive at Rand Merchant Insurance Holdings (RMI), as well as the Head of Alpha Code, RMI’s nippy financial services incubator/accelerator.

Listen in to this week’s discussion to hear Tefo Mohapi, Dominique and I ponder what lies ahead for Africa’s mobile money scene.

What’s The Big Deal With WiFi? (feat. Riaan Graham)

Following last week’s media coverage of the partnership between VAST Networks and Ruckus Wireless to deliver on Africa’s largest single deployment of WiFi infrastructure at the recently opened Mall of Africa in Midrand, South Africa— we thought it might be a good idea to invite a certified WiFi-freak to help us understand why WiFi may indeed be “the next big thing” in terms of ushering in seamless connectedness on the continent.

Joining me on the African Tech Round-up this week is Riaan Graham, Ruckus Wireless’ Director for Sub-Saharan Africa. In this week’s discussion, Riaan argues that the perfect wireless ecosystem requires the harmonious interplay between fixed line telecoms operators and mobile telcos, with WiFi playing a complimentary role. However, as fixed line operators and mobile telcos continue to grapple with diminishing voice revenues, and opt to back technologies like LTE and LTE-U over WiFi, that idyllic scenario is undoubtedly a long way off.

Meanwhile, the growing demand for free internet access delivered via open public WiFi infrastructure (hat-tip to the likes of Project Isizwe) further complicates matters for legacy commercial interests who are desperately trying to work out sustainable business models to ensure they thrive in a data-driven future.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.

Vodacom Eats Humble Pie Over Please-Call-Me Idea

There’s no doubt Kenneth Nkosana Makate celebrated Workers’ Day in style following a South African Constitutional Court judge ruling stating that Vodacom now owes him a big fat cheque for profiting from his Please-Call-Me idea for well over a decade. This brings to a close Nkosana’s 15-year legal battle with the mobile network. Or does it?

In this episode of the African Tech Round-up, Tefo Mohapi and I unpack this landmark case and speculate over just how much Nkosana’s legal team might gun for in terms of compensation.

We also try and determine whether the case is a good example of how “the little guy” can in fact triumph over a mighty giant, or whether Nkosana’s investor-backed victory is proof that justice might still be reserved for Africa’s well-heeled elite.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com

Taking On Giants With Alpesh Patel

Alpesh Patel is the outspoken Founder and CEO of Africa’s first home-grown mobile device brand, Mi-Fone. He is also formerly the Director of Sales at Motorola Mobile Devices for Africa, as well a seasoned entrepreneur who’s seen his fair share of ups and downs.

Alpesh is famous for standing his ground whenever the odds are stacked against him, and especially when faced with bullying tactics by the likes of global mobile device producer, Xiaomi. And in a week that’s seen Kenneth Nkosana Makate win his 15-year legal battle against Vodacom in South Africa, there’s no doubt that this Workers’ Day is all about celebrating the grit and determination of “The Little Guy”.

In this relaxed conversation, I was privileged to discover  the secret behind Mi-Fone’s growth from a modest mobile device brand to having a footprint in over 15 countries throughout Africa. His name is Alpesh Patel.

Vodacom Accused Of Stealing An Idea, Again!

Vodacom is reportedly fielding a lawsuit filed by a South African company called Ndabenhle Business Enterprises CC. Word is, Ndabenhle is alleging that Vodacom stole the “Airtime Advance” idea from them and ran with it, leaving them in the cold. Vodacom’s Airtime Advance innovation allows prepaid subscribers who run out of airtime to get R5 or R10 in prepaid minutes on credit and only pay it back when they recharge, with a little interest of course.

In this episode of the African Tech Round-up, Tefo Mohapi and I debate what constitutes a protectable idea and whether the plaintiff in this particular matter may have approached their interaction with Vodacom with naiveté. It’s worth remembering that former Vodacom employee Kenneth Nkosana Makate’s court case against Vodacom, in which he alleges that Vodacom stole his ‘Please Call Me’ idea, is still pending.

The one thing these two cases have in common aside from alleging that the folks at Vodacom are a bunch thieving rascals, is the busload of cash the plaintiffs stand to rake in if they win their respective legal bids. It’s the type of money that no doubt makes the incredibly difficult legal confrontation with a well-heeled corporate giant seem worth the slog.

Originally published in AfricanTechRoundup.com

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:

SEACOM Experiences Second Major Outage In As Many Weeks

The soul-destroying Twitter outages and more recent SEACOM broadband disruptions notwithstanding, the team at the AfricanTechRoundup.com has been extremely busy since we properly got 2016 on the go. So busy in fact, that my co-host, Tefo Mohapi, was unable to join me on the show this week due to an important work-related commitment. (Heads up… This week’s episode will be uncharacteristically short.)

Tefo was invited to be the keynote speaker at the inaugural Who Are We? (Africa) event to share some of the important learnings he and the team at iAfrikan are gleaning from the data they have so far collected through the Report Xenophobia initiative.

Following the depressing discussion we had last week around the on-going exploitation of children working in cobalt mines in the DRC— by leading tech producers like Apple, Sony and Samsung, it’s encouraging to see how technology, diligently harnessed, can truly help improve the quality of human life on the continent.

On a lighter note, I was interviewed by SABC Network’s Siphumelele Zondi and asked to talk about the simple steps we all can take to protect our social media accounts from malicious attacks. This followed the embarrassing posting of semi-nude pics via South African Minister of Sport and Recreation Fikile Mbalula’s Twitter account this past week— an event the minister wrote off to his account being hacked.

Do check out that interview below (start watching at 11:40mins):