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Nigerian ICT looks to mobile money

Nigeria’s $25 billion mobile money market is set to top the agenda at the 66^thTelecom Consumer Parliament (TCP) meeting on Friday. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and telecom operators hope the conference will address challenges facing the industry.

Eugene Juwah is gearing up for Friday’s event. (image: file)

The monthly event, held in Lagos, brings together government and operators to discuss issues in Nigerian telecoms industry.

Eugene Juwah, the NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman, said the topic of the next event will be “Mobile Payment: The Consumer Perspective”.

Total mobile money transactions in emerging markets is expected to grow at an annual compound rate (CAGR) of 54%. From $25 billion in 2010, to $215 billion in 2015.

“There is also a forecast that mobile money subscribers will grow from 133 million users in 2010 at a CAGR of 40% to reach 709 million users in 2015,” his office said.

February 16, 2012/by actualize

New news

3 Essential Environmental Education Apps

With a wealth of options available to educators and practitioners alike, here are some of the best inexpensive mobile apps for young professionals and civic groups responsible for moderating the local environment and climate change.

Easy

SPARKvue – Winner of Tech & Learning Magazine’s 2010 Award of Excellence, SPARKvue brings real-time measurement, data visualization, and analysis to science education everywhere . Using Bluetooth interface, the application can connect to over 70 PASCO sensors for measuring pH, temperature, force, carbon dioxide levels, and many more. The app can be used by students to inquire, explore, and display data.

Moderate

Environmental Formulator – Environmental Formulator was created for environmental engineers and contains conversion formulas and 40-area calculations. Major areas covered in the program include: Air Quality, CFC, Cogeneration, Cost Benefit, Beach Pollution, Lake Pollution, River Pollution, Soil Pollution and Waste Conversions.

Difficult

eChartBook- Environmental Correction Chart Calculator – Designed to replace paper, the eChartBook Mobile offers access to Halliburton’s environmental correction algorithms wherever you are for a complex array of sensors. The application also includes a number of useful general charts and tools for determining water saturation, borehole salinity, formation dip calculations, and cross plots.

February 15, 2012/by actualize

New news

Orange Tunisia introduces uncapped internet

The youngest telecom operator in Tunisia, Orange Tunisia, rolled out uncapped mobile internet access for all their ‘Internet Everywhere’ customers.

Orange Tunisia increasing their market share. (image credit: Alamy)

Currently users receive a monthly 7.5GB cap on their 3G network.

Now once the limit is reached, internet speed will slow down to 128kb/s, sufficient for internet browsing.

Customers will be alerted once their bandwidth limit is reached the company said in a statement.

Orange Tunisia was launched in 2010 by the local Mabrouk group and France Telecom.

Ahmed al-Hilali

February 15, 2012/by actualize

New news

Where is the Sahel crisis in social media?

Photo Credit: Fathom.com

United Nations aid chiefs meeting in Rome on Wednesday said the situation at the drought-stricken Sahel region of West Africa is “URGENT” and needed $725 million (552 million euros) this year for action.

“Around 725 million dollars is what is assessed to be needed this year,” Helen Clark, head of the aid agency UNDP, said after the meeting, which also included the EU’s Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Kristalina Georgieva.

In a joint statement, the UN and EU aid chiefs said there should be “an urgent scale-up” in relief efforts because of the combined effect of drought, high food prices, displacement and conflict in the region. “The time for humanitarian action in the Sahel is now,” he said.

Photo Credit: Altcomputersrepair

With the announcement of the European Commission that it was donating 30 million euros to support feeding programs for one million children under the age of two and half a million pregnant women and breast-feeding mothers, I think it is the right time to engage the social media folks.

We have seen the impact of social media on “urgent issues” in recent years such as the FWD campaign of the USAID; the use of twitter and facebook for Haiti earthquake; social media for the Horn of Africa, among others. So far, little has been done for the drought in West Africa apart from the efforts by Africans Act 4 Africa where African artists and activists are calling for social media action to end the continent’s famines.

Let’s use the social media to create the awareness of the looming famine and to raise support for the drought victims.

Read the full news update from Rome here.

February 15, 2012/by actualize

New news

One Tablet Per Child: Walter Bender Discusses Future of OLPC

While listening to Walter Bender, founder and executive director of Sugar Labs, speak last week at USAID’s Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Monthly Seminar Series in Washington, DC, it was difficult to decide if he was more interested in discussing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)program’s new XO 3.0 tablet, or the educational philosophy that has spurred its development.

By the end of his presentation, however, it was clear that both are inherent to launching an effective and sustainable program utilizing the new technology. As former co-founder of OLPC, Mr. Bender now focuses his time and energy on developing and improving Sugar, an open source desktop environment which promotes learning through connectivity, collaboration, and what Mr. Bender calls “off the grid accessibility”, the ability to take the computers into virtually any learning environment.

And the new tablet promises to do just that. Upon first look, the tablet doesn’t seem much different from the original laptop besides being thinner since there’s no keyboard. The lack of keyboard is a feature that Mr. Bender seemed torn about saying that keyboards are needed for developing writing skills but that the device should evolve with the introduction of new technologies, tablets being the big new innovation in mobile computers.

The easily recognizable bright green and white rugged exterior is still present but now the 8-inch screen is protected by a green silicone cover. The child-friendly tablet was designed with the same consideration for durability, cost, and conservation of power that has made the OLPC program so well known, but now it features solar panels on the inside of the cover to power it in addition to the power adapter and hand-crank powered battery from the previous laptop.

Of course, the education-specific user interface of Sugar still remains and can be baffling to anyone not already familiar with it’s icons, a wide array of small visual representations of each activity that doesn’t resemble Microsoft’s or Apple’s familiar icons. But in Sugar’s design lies Mr. Bender’s philosophy and aim: a simplicity so intuitive that children can understand it as well as modify it and create new programs for their own use.

As exciting as the introduction of the new tablet was for the small group of attendees at the seminar, Sugar was the focus of the discussion and one that Mr. Bender talked passionately about. Designed on OLPC’s principle of “Low floor, no ceiling”, it’s designed for inexperienced users, providing a platform, or low floor, on which to explore, create, and collaborate without any limits to its possibilities.

Exploration is key to Mr. Bender’s philosophy. Designing Sugar and the computers from a “constructivist” perspective, he referred to Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Paiget, and his learning theory of “learning by doing” when discussing the intuitiveness of the system. “We want to raise a generation of independent thinkers and problem solvers, “ he said after displaying a picture of students taking apart and fixing one of OLPC’s laptops. “Every deployment has students who repair computers and they are designed so that students can fix them themselves.”

Already deployed in over 30 countries, the largest and most well known example is Uruguay with the largest saturation of one laptop per each of 395,000 children in primary school from grades 1-6. Now in its third year, Mr. Bender highlighted a few examples of how kids are becoming empowered through the technology and developing their own programs. Kids like 12 year old Augustine who created his own program called Simple Graph, one that creates just that. Mr. Bender said that innovations like this are examples of how students are becoming self-sufficient. “These are key indicators that something different is happening, something good.”

Walter Bender giving an example of how to create your own program

Photo Credit: Chrissy Kulenguski

But this portfolio assessment, one that emphasizes qualitative over quantitative results and what Mr. Bender calls a powerful and primary assessment tool, is one of several points for criticism of the OLPC program. Others include not providing enough, or any, teacher training and support when introducing the laptops and not being able to meet the original goal price of $100 per laptop that was set when the program first started.

More recently, a new low-cost competitor, the Aakash tablet, has entered this developing market. The Android-based computer has gained a lot of attention since it was first developed by the Indian government as part of the country’s aim to connect 25,000 colleges and 400 universities in an e-learning program and made available at subsidized prices. In accordance with OLPC’s open source philosophy, chairman Nicholas Negroponte already offered full access to OLPC technology at no cost to the Indian team of developers.

Sharing ideas and new innovations is also one of Mr. Bender’s learning goals for the OLPC program: to have students learn through “doing, reflecting, and collaboration”. He believes that the new XO 3.0 tablet has a prominent role in the emerging market of mobile computers for education. Though what that role will be exactly in the coming years of new innovations and innovators, has yet to be seen.

February 15, 2012/by actualize

New news

FNB’s mobile money shows significant growth

screen shot of FNB mobile money platform

A view of the mobile account screen shot on the FNB app (image source: file photo)

FNB recorded a 150% growth in the number of cellphone banking transactions and 1384% eWallet growth comparing December 2010 and December 2011.

A view of the mobile account screen shot on the FNB app (image source: file photo)

2.4 million transactions were conducted on cellphones during December 2011 in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Swaziland and Lesotho. In total R214 million was transferred. In December 2010 it was only R986 000.

Botswana, the bank’s leading cellphone banking subsidiary outside South Africa, saw just over 1.3 million transactions, a 126% increase year-on-year.

International Telecommunications User (ITU) research indicated Botswana has 2.3 million cellphone users. Namibia recorded year-on-year growth of 155%, Zambia 308% and Swaziland 227%.

Ravesh Ramlakan, FNB Cellphone Banking Solutions CEO, says service growth reflect consumers’ increasing confidence in mobile handsets in the African market.

“Innovation has played a key role in growing cellphone banking across Africa. Our ability to adapt the service for use on any cellphone has been an important driver of this growth,” says Ramlakan.

Since inception, FNB eWallet has generated 407 110 original sends in its four African operations (Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and Zambia) at the end of December 2011. In Botswana, FNB eWallet original sends increased by 1236% year-on-year from December 2010 to December 2011.

eWallet allows FNB customers to send money to anyone within their borders. Recipients do not need a bank account as money is transferred instantly. With a pin code sent to their cellphones, recipients access cash by entering the code at FNB ATMs.

Yolande van Wyk, FNB eWallet Solutions CEO, says despite eWallet’s recent introduction to markets outside of South Africa, the service demonstrated continued potential future growth.

“A country like Zambia for example has 5.4 million mobile phone users and a large informal sector, making a solution such as eWallet ideal in helping bridge the financial services gap between the banked and the unbanked,” says Van Wyk.

Staff writer

February 15, 2012/by actualize

New news

Data Basin: A Mapping Tool for All

Data Basin, an online system, is quickly growing in popularity among practicing educators and community groups that wish to tell compelling stories with graphics. Data Basin connects users with spatial datasets, tools, and expertise through a user-friendly platform where “individuals and organizations can explore and download a vast library of datasets, upload their own data, create and publish analysis, utilize working groups, and produce customized maps that can be easily shared.”

In a presentation on its potential, Jame Strittholt, Data Basin’s founder and Conservation Biology Institute‘s Executive Director called it Google Earth on steroids meets Facebook, allowing groups to communicate with each other by integrating conservation data, mapping, and people. The site contains groups for specific topics and issues and centers for targeted geographies. The core functions of Data Basin are free and a fee-based consulting service is available for those who wish to take full advantage of its features or store significant amounts of data. Currently a great variety of biological, physical, and socioeconomic data is available. Maps can be kept private, within groups, or open to the public.

Data Basin was created out of the need for a central access point for environmental conservation related datasets that people can explore. The tools are easy to understand and use, making it an excellent resource for nonprofessionals or those unfamiliar with ArcGIS. Data Basin was implemented by the Conservation Biology Institute in partnership with ESRI.

February 14, 2012/by actualize

New news

Senegalese web experts weigh-in on 2012 presidential election

Photo credit: WorldNomads.com

Seven Senegalese experts recently weighed in on how social media is being used to promote and discuss the upcoming 2012 elections.

The whitepaper, “PRÉSIDENTIELLE 2.0: Facebook, Twitter et autres réseaux sociaux pour les élections 2012″ headed by Aboubacar Sadikh Ndiaye, addresses the use of the Internet for stakeholders in the 2012 Senegalese presidential elections. More specifically, networks and social media, Web 2.0 and the 2012 elections, social networks for candidates, social networks for Internet activists, the Community management policy, and opinions from the experts.

The first section of the paper discusses how social networks are a subset of social media. The author then discusses Barack Obama’s successful 2008 social media campaign and what it means to be an online community manager. The good stuff starts at page 59 when he interviews seven Senegalese Web experts on their views of what the Internet means to Senegal, how politicians can use the Internet, and their vision of the web for the upcoming presidential election. This last question is perhaps the most intriguing.

The general consensus is that the Internet is a powerful tool and will be useful in disseminating information about Senegal’s election. However, relatively few Senegalese access the Internet, and information can be unreliable. Still, many experts feel that the Internet is creating a new type of “e-citizen” in Senegal – one who is empowered to create constructive dialogue that will move Senegal forward as a society.

Below are summaries of the experts’ responses, translated from French.

Hamadou Tidiane Sy, veteran journalist

the web will be present but its impact will be marginal
illiteracy prevents many from using social networks
the Internet is not yet sufficiently democratized to become a tool of mass communication

Mamadou Ndiaye, professor at ITSEF

the web will be a major player in this campaign
everything will depend on the ability of candidates or their advisers to use this technological support
it will be useful to reach voters in the Diaspora
the internet is a tool of the elite
according to official figures, the number of internet users (About 1 million) and the rate of Internet penetration (7.3%) are still low

Cheikh Fall, project manager and web developer

the Web is already at the heart of this presidential in February 2012
today with the Sunu2012.sn platform, each Senegalese has the opportunity to know the different protagonists who are vying to challenge for the votes of the electors

Annick Diop, group coordinator

the Web is the ultimate space to acquire information
the contents of the Web are not always reliable
the Web is the propaganda tool of the political parties and it allows everyone to be aware of everything that happens out there, and in real-time

Mountaga Cisse, IT professional & co-founder ITMag.sn

the web allows the initial time to provide instantaneous information on the process, then give access national and international Internet users a detailed description of campaign proposals
the web is also a tool for dialogue between candidates and voters
the web allows for better supervision of conduct of the vote by centralized feedback and after the elections, promotes wider dissemination of results

Basile Niane, journalist

Web 2.0 will be the heart of this presidential 2012
the elections have contributed to a new type of online citizen, or E-citizen.

Mohamded Ben Pape Diouf Alcaly, political consultant

the Internet tools, when used properly, can help empower groups of individuals previously deprived of an ability to act politically

The entire 156-page white paper is available as a free download from the following link: https://www.itmag.sn/docs/livreblanc-presidentielle-20

February 14, 2012/by actualize

New news

Made in Cameroon: Touch Screen for mHealth

Arthur Zang – Photo Credit: https://www.rnw.nl/africa

A 24 year-old Cameroonian has invented a touch screen medical tablet that enables heart examinations such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) to be performed at remote, rural locations while the results of the test are transferred remotely to specialists for interpretation.

The touch screen tablet – Cardiopad was invented by Arthur Zang, a young computer engineer born and trained in Cameroon at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Polytechnique (ENSP) in Yaounde.

According to Zang, the Cardiopad is “the first fully touch screen medical tablet made in Cameroon and in Africa.” He believes it is an invention that could save numerous human lives, and says the reliability of the pad device is as high as 97.5%. Zang says he invented the device in order to facilitate the treatment of patients with heart disease across Cameroon and the rest of Africa. So far, several medical tests have been carried out with the Cardiopad which have been validated by the Cameroonian scientific community.

“The tablet is used as a classical electrocardiograph device: electrodes are placed on the patient and connected to a module that, in turn, connects to the tablet. When a medical examination is performed on a patient in a remote village, for example, the results are transmitted from the nurse’s tablet to that of the doctor who then interprets them, says Radio Netherlands.”

While doing his academic internship at the General Hospital of Yaounde, in 2010, Arthur Zang became aware of the difficulties faced by Cameroonians in accessing care related to the heart. The Central African country has an approximately 40 cardiologists for about 20 million population with almost all these cardiologists located in the two large cities of Yaounde and Douala.

Access to cardiologist by patients especially those living in remote cities is therefore a huge challenge. This severe deficit of medical personnel means that patients with heart ailments usually have to travel long distances to undergo heart examinations and consult with doctors. Even at that, it is still not easy. On some occasions, patients must make appointments months in advance, and some even die in the process of waiting for their appointment.

Photo Credit: Cardiopad

This is how the technology works. Both the cardiologist (in the city) and the nurse (in the remote community) need to have the Cardiopad. A patient in the remote community is connected to electrodes placed on his heart. These electrodes are connected to a module called Cardiopad Acquisition Mobile (CAM) via a Bluetooth interface, which transmits the heart signal to the Cardiopad after the signal has been digitized. The nurse can then read the heart beats, heart rate, and the intervals between each beat displayed on the Cardiopad, etc. All these data are then stored in a file and sent to the cardiologist’s Cardiopad via a mobile telecommunication network.

The Cardiopad is already generating a lot of interest in African tech and medical circles. Zang believes his invention will cut down the cost of heart examinations and he is currently looking for venture capital to commercially produce the device. Visit here for detailed information on the Cardiopad and its inventor.

February 14, 2012/by actualize

New news

Zimbabwe’s Telecel set to invest US$70 million

Zimbabwe’s Telecel has announced a US$70 million investment in network expansion. John Swain, Telecel Zimbabwe Managing Director, also said its recent rebranding aligned them with Telecel affiliates such as Orascom Telecom Holdings.

Telecel Managing Director John Swain (image: TechZim)

“We are planning, with the assistance of our strategic partners, to invest more than US$70 million in the geographic expansion of our network and improving our core network systems. We are also investing in human capital and in management and technical training to ensure efficiency and improved service delivery,” Swain said.

“We have just introduced an emergency credit service, in response to requests from our customers. This allows active customers, who have been active on our network for at least three months, to access emergency credit,” he added.

Telecel Zimbabwe recently became the first mobile operator in Zimbabwe to offer its subscribers a credit facility.

Charlie Fripp – Online editor

February 14, 2012/by actualize