IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

Kunbi Oguneye, chief executive of Nigerian Internet solutions provider Suburban Telecom, spoke to Sowetan at the Infrastructure Projects Summit organised by African investor at Melrose Arch in Johannesburg.

The summit aimed to create a platform which would enable project sponsors and promoters to engage with infrastructure investors and development institutions.

Several African governments have tried to curb internet availability for political reasons.

When the undersea fiber optic cables landed on Kenya’s coastal town of Mombasa in June 2009 from the United Arab Emirates, John Thuo, 35, never imagined it meant doom to his cybercafé business.

Thuo, a computer science graduate from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, operated an internet café at an apartment on Jogoo Road on the outskirts of Nairobi.

The Internet Society will call for the adoption of policies and frameworks that expand access and create greater demand for the Internet during the 4th annual Africa Internet Summit (AIS) now underway in Gaborone, Botswana.

Urging policymakers to grasp the opportunity offered by the expansion and growth of the Internet across the continent, the Internet Society will advocate for greater collaboration by all Internet decision-makers in creating an accessible, trusted Internet that benefits all Africans.

A few years ago, I was in Lagos to see Alphabet’s digital skills programs at work. There was excitement for the future of technology in Africa and all the jobs and opportunities it could bring. From jobseekers learning new skills to entrepreneurs building promising new apps and businesses, the people I met were deeply inspiring.

These people were on my mind again when I addressed regional leaders at the African Union’s annual Business Forum this week.

Africa faces many challenges on its path to becoming a global economic competitor. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Africa's development can either be a massive barrier to advancement - or, the spark that lights the fire of innovation and investment across the continent.

There’s no denying that for most of the world, the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed digital adoption forward in vast leaps in a very short space of time. What the pandemic has also made apparent is the disparities of infrastructure across Africa, as well as gaps in adoption and policy.

Clive Shepherd, an expert in human resource development, says the ICT sector in Africa is in a unique position. “The biggest obstacle,” he says, “is no longer technology, but the willingness to take advantage of new pportunities and technologies. And it’s a very exciting position to be in.”

The African eHealth Economics Forum, Cape Town, which forms part of The Global Health Economics Series, was held recently at the One & Only Hotel. The forum focused on three major elements of eHealth projects; assessment of eHealth projects, financial aspects of project implementation and economics of mobile health.

One of the biggest challenges of eHealth project implementation is the complexity of tracking success of pilot projects and presenting benefits to key stakeholders and key healthcare providers. Healthcare delivery is a complex process and eHealth interventions have been cited to have been lost in this complexity.

Many African countries have made significant progress toward creating an Internet sector, with broad sector reforms and focus on increasing broadband availability. However, there is still much work to be done to strengthen the Internet sector and to create an Internet economy in Africa.

This is according to a report by Internet Society titled “Promoting the African Internet Economy” which looks at Internet adoption and usage by companies and governments throughout Africa.

Increasing broadband services should improve Africa's telecom sector as more African countries move to implement e-governance, e-learning and e-health programs, which have been hindered by the region's insufficient broadband infrastructure and capacity.

Africa’s progress and economic growth is being realised in part due to the role that information and communication technologies are playing, President Paul Kagame said.

He was addressing participants attending the Viva Technology Conference, known as “VivaTech” in Paris, France.

Mwale Medical and Technology City (MMTC) is finalizing the shipment of new construction equipment for new smart cities in Congo, Botswana and Sierra Leone that will begin in January 2024.

The construction will follow MMTC's inaugural Marathon scheduled to take place on December 16th, 2023, at MMTC in Butere Sub County Kakamega County.

The survey by the research firm CPS international, sponsored by the Pan African Education Trust, found East African universities to be increasingly embracing ICT in teaching and learning and comparing favourably with international universities in the use of technology.

Recently, there was a lot of excitement stirred up when Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile operator, released the Application Program Interface (API) for its mobile money service M-PESA to local and international developers.

The value in this release lies in the opportunities for integration to mobile money which developers of applications and solutions now possess. In its announcement, Safaricom took the time to spell out some of the opportunities that this move was introducing to the app development space and it pledged to organise workshops where issues around the integration would be explored.

Nic Rudnick, CEO of The Liquid Telecom Group, has outlined the company’s expansion of its fibre network in South Africa and announced that CrashPlan, its backup and restore service, is now available to businesses across Africa.

Liquid Telecom will be investing around R250 million (US$ 17.5 million) in laying new fibre in South Africa’s northern provinces, providing connectivity to the major cities and towns. Wholesale capacity will be available to mobile and fixed-line operators, other service providers and businesses of all sizes.

This technological and indeed digital revolution is increasingly leaving no area uninfluenced by its radical transformation.

"From health to education, mobile technology is changing the way all sectors of society do business," Pule said at the Second e-Skills Summit 2012 and Global ICT Forum on Human Capital Development in Cape Town this week.

Pule said a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey indicated that South Africa and Kenya were leading in mobile health deployments on the continent.

Having built an ecosystem to provide voice calls, cellular networks are ideally suited to provide the next wave of digital services and financial inclusion. "Mobile will be at the center of driving digital inclusion and connectivity," says Rob Shuter, Group CEO of MTN, the largest mobile operator in Africa.

It seems like a logical thing for the chief executive of a network to say but his point is well made that the vast ecosystem created by mobile operators is arguably better suited to financial inclusion than any other service provider.