Technological innovation for companies in Africa

 

By the end of the last decade, and  Begin  of the new one we owe,the ICT companies have been largely increasing in number in other parts of the globe and specifically in Africa.Even though as the number increasing,the problems are not going to stop as we always facing daily challanges especially in innovation of the new technology which is the mother of development.

It is said that most employers underutilize the creativity of their employee hence fail to capture their fertile ideas into their companies.The major reason for these can be;lack of time,absence of effective processes to manage all the ideas and the fear to demotivate the employees when ideas rejected.

Encouraging ideas is the core management task,as the curreant existing business demand great attention;stimulating the ideas is the core task in leadership,this also fascinate and endorse the organizational creativity unwillingly.

With fast changing market challanges,demand customers and smart competitors,we need new ways to innovate and raise the new challanges.Being more creative is our only way to become resilient in time of Change and   Crissie will secure our sustainable success,therefore stimulating and harvesting creativity shall be our strategic priority.

‘ICT policy review coming’

Dar es Salaam. A review of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Policy is in the pipeline to help address cybercrime, deputy minister for Communication, Science and Technology January Makamba has said.
The ICT policy of 2003 is outdated and doesn’t augur well for the current technological advancement, according to Mr Makamba.
Winding up a two-day training workshop aimed at curbing cybercrime as well as launching a website that addresses cybercrime at www.esucurity.co.tz in the city at the weekend, Mr Makamba said there was a need for protecting online transactions.
“We have rushed on online transactions without putting in place a workable mechanism to keep hackers at bay,” he said.
According to Mr Makamba, since ICT business is growing considerably, it is important to contain hackers.
On policy reviewing, Mr Makamba said such a move would help the government move abreast with the fast changing trends in ICT.
“We are reviewing the policy to help our officials acquaint with ICT and you need to know that at the moment many of our websites are never updated,” he said.
For his part, the director of Twiga Hostings Limited, Mr Jacob Urassa, the host of the two-day training programme, said they were determined to make Tanzania a hub of online security that would allow players to enjoy surfing without fear.
“Nowadays we come across a number of cases related to hacking, but with such training we want to see foreigners coming to the country to purchase such software,” he noted.
According to Mr Urassa, 80 per cent of internet users in the world are prone to hackers.
The two-day training workshop brought together webmasters and online editors from a number of government and private institutions.

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Tigo SmartCards are Special SIM card for smartphones with Android, Blackberry and iphone operating systems (Blackberry Card, Android and iPhone SIM Cards) user with this SIM card will be entitled to subscribe to a Package (smart Package) and get unlimited internet services and Tigo will give them airtime for SMS and Calls (On-net, ex-net and international calls). Customers can get Tigo Smartcard at our Tigo Shop country wide or through our sales force. To enjoy benefit of using Smartcard customer should subscribe to smart package via USSD or SMS.

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Tanzania: Dar es Salaam to Build Undersea Cable to Uganda

Dar es Salaam — Tanzania has entered into a contract with Uganda to build an alternative route for the undersea cable via Mutukula to overcome the inconveniences caused by businesses persistent internet cable breakdown.
The move comes after Uganda government invited an international firm for the construction of an alternative internet cable in the country to end the ongoing connectivity blues in the landlocked country.
Mr. Nicodemus Mnungu the Tanzania Telecommunication Company Limited (TTCL), Commercial Executive, said the alternative broadband backbone will enable Uganda widen the internet transmission through and ensure internet reliability.
"Uganda is connected to Kenya cables but it also wants to have an alternative route in case of inconveniences or breakdown," Mnungu said.
Mnungu added that Uganda would be leasing the circuits to transfer their internet contents from Dar es Salaam to Mtukula border and into Uganda to boost the connectivity. The tariffs for the connectivity will depend on connection and on how much bandwidth Uganda would be using through the circuit.
"So far TTCL is also negotiating with Burundi, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique to be connected with TTCL Broadband which is the custodian of National Information and Communication Technology Back Bone (NICTBB) that would in turn get the countries connected to world," he said.
The government said the countries were still in dialogue with TTCL and by next year if the talks go on well the connectivity procedures will start immediately.
The Director for Technical Services at National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITA-U) Mr. Peter Kahiigi, said his government will embark on the project starting in November this year.
Kahiigi stressed every time the fibre cables are damaged in Kenya they get affected, the Mutukula- Tanzania route will ensure that they have an alternative route to tackle this challenge. The alternative route will be a welcome move by the players in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector that have for long suffered internet breakdown affecting their businesses.

Dar es Salaam Leads in Submissions to ICT Competition

AFTER the launch of the international competition of ICT (App Star Challenge) earlier this month, Tanzania has recorded the highest registrations and submission of programmes as preparations for the competition get underway.
Sponsored by the Vodacom Group of Companies, the competition has been designed to motivate and reward contestants who develop innovative, creative, functional and original mobile applications. The competition also presents participants with an opportunity to technological solutions that can be used in emerging countries to solve common problems and challenges facing the public.
According to Vodacom Tanzania Head of Brand Communication and Marketing, Kelvin Twissa, 141 registrations and two submissions have already been reached. "South Africa has registered 89 and five submissions, Lesotho has registered 18 with no submission and Egypt has registered eight people with two submissions,"

Precision Air join forces with Vodacom Tanzania on e-ticketing project…..

Precision air customers will be enjoying the new service whereby they will be purchasing their tickets via their mobile phone using Vodacom M-PESA. Using the highly distributed Vodacom network the customer will be able to make these transactions at any place in any time and they will be provided 20 percent discount if they purchase the tickets through Vodacom M-PESA accounts. 

The service will enable the customer to save time and resources as the purchase of the e-ticket would simply be done using their mobile phones. Precision Air commercial director Mr. Patric Ndekana when making the announcement in Dar es Salaam yesterday he said “Previously customers could either pay online using credit cards or physically visit Precision Air offices or agents, but with M-PESA things would be much easier”. 

On the mechanism on the service he said the customers would have to book for a ticket through the airline’s call centre to obtain a booking reference number needed to effect the transfer. To make payments customers would follow the normal procedures of paying for a service via M-PESA, whereby Precision Air company number 333777, would be followed by the reference number provided earlier. The customer would then be notified of their ticket number, currently in Tanzania there over 20,000 M-PESA agents.

Tanzania the first E.A broadband covered country.....

The race for the East African regional ICT hub is on for Dar es Salaam has the government of the United Republic of Tanzania is completing the installation of the massive broadband cable throughout the local towns and cities. One the greatest achievement of the President Kikwete’s Government is the installation of the wide sophisticated and efficiency broadband network in Tanzania. The broadband network will be used to supply network connection even to the neighboring countries. The government has done a lot of effort to make sure the underground sea cable reaches the border cities ready to connect the countries which would be interested to the service and some of the countries including Rwanda have shown their interest in the project.

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania has completed construction of Phase II of the countrywide broadband backbone linking all major urban centres, a move that would bring down internet connection costs, according to the Broadband management entity.

The National ICT Broadband Backbone (NICTBB) the government board that have been given the responsibility to handle the broadband connection management  issued a statement which was  released yesterday, showed that the Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) tariff structure would see a reduction of 33 per cent effective from September 1, this year.

IRU is the effective long-term lease (temporary ownership) of a portion of the capacity -- to other service providers -- of an international cable, that is, an agreement between operators of a communications cable, such as a submarine communication cable or a fiber optic network and a client. The revised tariffs would include those for ten years, 15 and 20 years lease contracts. 

Under phase II, the completed and commissioned routes are Dar es Salaam – Lindi – Mtwara – Songea – Makambako – Mbeya – Tunduma – Sumbawanga –Mpanda – Kigoma – Manyovu –Biharamulo – Bukoba –Mutukula – Nzega – Tabora.  

   

“This development has come following the adjustment of tariff for an annual lease structure that was done in April this year,” said the statement made available to the media yesterday. 

The development is the country’s major breakthrough in the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT), whereby the backbone would link with similar backbones in all the neighboring countries and enhance connection.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is it really going to work……

I saw it on the East African news headlines about the initiative One Child Per Laptop plan ready working in Rwanda, oh not again I meant One Laptop Per Child, actually the first slogan is what the critic sees about the program they say is just “getting laptops to the poor kids”  . The project is aiming at educating the young generation aged between (6-12) years old through computer believing that, the teaching would become more efficiency, speed their mind and the way they reason and prepare them for the fast growing tech world.  The harsh reality is that most of the kids are using for playing more than the targeted goal which was for them to learn through the computers.

Fact, “More than 2.5 million laptops have been distributed in 46 countries since 2007 under the innovative initiative”. The effort is just great, but the issue is that are the people to whom the digital devices “the laptops” provided to them  prepared for the big changes? On the study made on Peru alone, Peru distributed more than 800,000 low cost computers to the children across the country, is among the most committed country to the cause. On the study done there on 319 schools in a small rural communities which were supplied the laptops the proof of their success is very low.  The critics believed that the government was not yet prepared when they dwell into the program.  “In essence what we did was deliver the computers without prepare the teachers,” said Sandro Marcone, the Peruvian educational officer who now runs the program. The study has found that no increase in math or language skills, no improve in classroom instruction quality, no boost on time spent on homework, no improvement on reading habit.

In Africa the Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana and Sierra Leone are the countries which are involved in the program. The program seems to be promising in Ethiopia the reports said. Dutch researchers from the University of Groningen, published last year in the journal computer and education that the OLPC laptops have improved abstract learning. Ethiopia received 5000 laptops from G1G1 program, Ghana ordered 10,000 laptops, Rwanda received 20,000 laptops from G1G1 program while Sierra Leone ordered 5,000 laptops. Some industry stakeholders have been given they are thought about the program  some are suggesting the program would at least be more efficient in a country like Rwanda whereby the population  is small and recent they have been working intensively to combat corruption. But the questions that remain is, would the laptops survive the bureaucracy and hard Africa corrupted systems?

Practically for some African countries, where the teachers are on strike day in day out due to the harsh working conditions, low salary and no bonuses, it is very difficult for this kind of project to see through it purposes.

Origin of tech giant companies names…..it’s time to think for yours

The name COMPAQ was formed by using COMP for computer and PAQ to denote small integral object. Recently COMPAQ has joined forces with HP in the digital gadgets world. The name HP was formed from the two tech guys Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard when they had to toss a coin to decide whether to call the company  Hewlett Packard or Packard Hewlett am sure you know who won the honor definitely Hewlett that is why we have Hewlett Packard (HP) today.

The legendary Google started its name as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search engine would be able to search. It was originally named Googol a world for the number represented by one followed by 100 zeros. After founders   Stanford graduates students Sergey Bin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they receive a cheque made out to ‘Google’.

Recently there have been tremendous changes in the internet tariffs for Blackberry users. While many people in the Tanzanian communities especially in urban areas have been addicted with the use of BBM the mobile company want to exploit this chance. The current Airtel tariffs for Blackberry includes the monthly Blackberry bundles of Tsh.30,000/-,17,500/ -, 12,000/-, depending on the user requirement weekly Blackberry  bundles of Tsh.5,000/-,3,500/- and Daily Blackberry bundles of Tsh.1,000/- and 700/-, the user has to dial *148*77# to select the bundle of their own choice.

Vodacom has also released their bundles for the Blackberry service to compete with Tigo and Airtel. You will have to spend Tsh 6000 per week to receive the BlackBerry services on your phone and 17,500 per month. While Tigo provides gives people the offer of Tsh. 17, 500 per month and Tsh 7000 per week all you have to do is to send the text SMS BB30 to 15518 for a 30 day subscription. 

Dar Fashion Festival looking for tech ladies!

After a few Girls’ Night Out events we seem to have a Fashion Festival looking for ladies in tech!
I met Tina from Dar Fashion Festival by coincidence in a coffee shop, and we agreed to meet up after their event. Click the picture to find out more about the festival!
They also do entrepreneurship events and training for women, and are interested in exploring how ICT can help the female entrepreneurs in fashion industry. So watch this space, and in the mean time go check out what the Dar Fashion Festival has to offer!

Monitoring & Evaluation Essentials for Practitioners on August 30th

Here is information on another community-organized training workshop at the Innovation Space: Guido (CEO, Blackmark Corporation Ltd) and Nathan (Business Development Manager, DTBi) are organizing a Monitoring & Evaluation Essentials workshop for sharing basic elements of projects and projects designing, mostly for practitioners. This workshop will take place on 30th August 2012 from 9am-12noon at COSTECH in the Innovation Space. Please note the timing will be concurrent with the Innovation Summit.
Audience involves mostly public officials heading monitoring and evaluation units, agencies and departments, but Guido and Nathan also welcome other participants excluding welfare amenities that are planned for the invited guests.
The workshop aims to shade some light on;
1. M&E Fundamentals.
2. Result-Based M&E
3. Basic of M&E Plan.
4. Policy-based-planning using M&E Systems.
5. M&E and Strategic management – Tanzanian Experience.
If you would like to participate, please sign up by sending an email to Guido at blackmarkcorp@gmail.com, so we can ensure seats for all participants.

5th South African Innovation Summit taking place in Dar!

What is Africa’s competitive edge? The Innovation Summit invites all Africans to collaborate: share your lessons learnt, ask questions and participate on the topic of innovation! The African Stream of the Innovation summit will include themes such as:

• Explosive new trends, making Africa a world of possibilities.
• Design with Africa – advancing inclusive innovation in majority world contexts
• Exploring BIG DATA
• Creating an ecosystem for technology innovation and commercialisation
• The truth about innovation
• Systems thinking in innovation
• Stimulating dynamic entrepreneurial environments
• Can teen entrepreneurship be a catalyst for innovation, social and economic development in SA & Africa?
• Case studies on innovation leadership skills in Africa.

This is already the 5th year the Innovation Summit event is organized in South Africa, but the first year it has jumped the country borders and will be co-hosted concurrently via video streams and local facilitation also in Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Windhoek!
In Dar es Salaam the event will be hosted at the KINU Hub together with TANZICT. We will the follow renowned speakers presenting in Johannesburg via video stream, and carry out some sessions and discussions locally with Tanzanian themes and insights. Check out details from the Dar es Salaam event programme.
Event schedule:
Wednesday August 29th 09.30-18.00
Thursday August 30th 09.00-17.00

CRDB Green Banking initiative

 

Whenever there is something creative and useful in the technology industry of Tanzania i usually like to share with my blog visitors. Going green is inevitable for all of us, if we want to save our planet .

Recently in some mails i receive from companies which are conscious about green initiatives, they always encourage you not to print the document unless it is very necessary to do so believing that this will help cutting down of trees. CRDB green banking initiative is one of those services which are conscious to the environment. CRDB are sending you e-statements to your email ID instead of reviving hard copies of your financial statements. All you have to do sign up for statement on email service then you will have the flexibility of receiving your Bank account statement to your email ID.
You are required to fill the KYC form and then your current information including your email address and your mobile phone number will be entitled entitled for the service, just make sure your current information are well updated.
For more information on Internet Banking and how to renew your expired card you can send email to customer-hotline@crdbbank.com.

Dar es Salaam leads in submissions to ICT competition

AFTER the launch of the international competition of ICT (App Star Challenge) earlier this month, Tanzania has recorded the highest registrations and submission of programmes as preparations for the competition get underway.

Sponsored by the Vodacom Group of Companies, the competition has been designed to motivate and reward contestants who develop innovative, creative, functional and original mobile applications. The competition also presents participants with an opportunity to technological solutions that can be used in emerging countries to solve common problems and challenges facing the public.

According to Vodacom Tanzania Head of Brand Communication and Marketing, Kelvin Twissa, 141 registrations and two submissions have already been reached. “South Africa has registered 89 and five submissions, Lesotho has registered 18 with no submission and Egypt has registered eight people with two submissions,” said Twissa.

Winners of the contest that allows multiple entries will be awarded locally and guaranteed entry into the international contest where the top five winners from all participating countries will be sponsored to an elaborate award event in South Africa later in November this year.

Countries participating in the contest include; Egypt, Lesotho, Tanzania, South Africa and Qatar. In the local contest, participants are encouraged to develop applications in various categories which include games, social health, entertainment and mobile for good, leading to prize money of USD 2,000 for winners in each category.

Thereafter, the contestant presenting the best application of all the winners will be granted an opportunity to join the international contest.

 The port also serves the neighboring landlocked countries of Zambia, Malawi, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo/FILE

Nairobi, Kenya, July4 -IBM has signed a collaboration agreement with the Tanzania Ministry of Communication, Science and Technology to held accelerate the adoption of technology as party of Tanzania's ongoing development and strategy to increase its competitiveness in East Africa.

IBM will work with the Tanzanian Government to help achieve its vision of becoming a hub for trade in the wider East Africa region and to enhance sustainable economic development as outlined in the Tanzania National ICT Policy, which among other things, was initiated to ensure that the country was not left behind in technology.

TANZANIA will soon be home to an Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) park comprising the first ever 'Smart Village' of its kind in East Africa's geographic cluster, a national forum heard on Thursday.

The Minister for Communication, Science and Technology, Prof Makame Mnyaa, said the park, to be established in Dar es Salaam, would be powered by an international high speed broadband access and global calibre end-to-end ICT infrstructure.

Prof Mnyaa said that a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) agreement is being prepared to develop the village to host ICT small and medium enterprises (SMEs), established multinationals and IT Services.

He was speaking during a presentation of ground breaking research findings by Canada's International Centre for Development Research (IDRC) and the Commission (COSTECH).

The minister informed Legislators and private sector stakeholders who were present that the Park would also have Business Process Outsourcing call (BPO) call centres, online education, community public space and an ICT incubation centre for creativity and innovation.

The announcement follows a two-year research in Iringa region that showed access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has cut poverty levels in some areas by over 20 per cent in the last two years.

Chief Investigator Prof Ophelia Mascarena said the research has found out that gaining one unit of access to ICT was associated with a 2.4 per cent improvement in per capita expenditure between 2007 and 2010.

Over a 10 year period, gains resulting from ICT access for the most poor are twice that for the non-poor.

The Forum also heard from the findings that there was an overall decrease in the financial poverty of the matched sample across the two waves falling from 60.2 per cent in 2007 to 58.5 per cent in 2010 using the international poverty line of PPP$2.5 per capita.

Minister Mnyaa said the government would use the findings to the current process of reviewing the National ICT Policy of 2003,adding that it would help to show impact of current high government spending into the area,currently at 30bn/- per year -and expected to increase.

However,the minister said that despite evidence attesting to the important role that ICTs can play in facilitating rapid socio-economic development,roll out and exploitation of ICTs, the country remains with the least capability in ICTs and least served by telecommunication and other communications facilities.

"Poor ICT infrastructure,combined with weak and disparate policy and regulatory frameworks and limited human resources, has led to inadequate access to affordable telephones,broadband connectivity, rural connectivity, broadcasting services, computers and the internent in a number of rural areas," he said

He said using ICT is the linchpin of the government's plan to transform the country from a low income agricultural economy to a middle income knowledge based economy by 2025.

He said that to support the ICT policy,the government had adopted an e-government strategy with a dual focus to modernise government processes and make service delivery more efficient.

COSTECH Managing Director Dr Hassan Mshanda said such findings were imperative for evidence informed decisions at policy level and that it was important for ICT to reach the rural people. A book, by Dr Adam Mambi, 'ICT and Cyber Law' was also launched.

Tanzania: Mobile Phone Firm to Invest 120 Billion/-

Dodoma — VODACOM Tanzania plans to invest over 120bn/- this year in upgrading its network, the firm's Managing Director, Mr Rene Meza, announced here on Wednesday.
Mr Meza told a news conference that since Vodacom began operating in Tanzania in 2001, it has so far invested over 1.13trn/- in its network.
"We have just finalised a network upgrade in March, this year. We are planning a further 120bn/- investment in upgrading the network later this year," he said.
The Vodacom chief said that the company was meeting its obligations to the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) and the Tanzania Communications Regulatory (TCRA).
He announced that the company has paid 700bn/- in taxes since 2001, and anticipates to contribute 139bn/- to the Treasury during this financial year.
Mr Meza said the firm has created 450 direct employment and thousands were indirectly employed including agents, MPesa and voucher vendors. He added that over the past five years, through Vodacom Foundation the company invested over 5bn/- in corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects in various fields including education, health and water.

Tanzania: Teachers, Students Attend ICT Training

Bukoba — A TOTA of 36 teachers and 45 students from nine schools in Bukoba Municipality are currently attending a four-day workshop to improve their skills in Information, Communication and Technology (ICT).
Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Project Co-ordinator, Mr George Rubayuga, said the workshop was part of the Connecting Classroom Project, being supported by the British Council.He named the primary schools taking part in the project as Mugeza Viziwi, Rwemishasha, Tumaini, Zamzam, and Amani English Medium. Secondary benefiting from the proeject include Kibeta, Kahororo, and Rutunga.