Author: Cyrus

In February, we reported that Konza Technology City’s funding was approved by the Kenyan government. Now Tanzanians don’t want to be left behind. The Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), SEACOM and a group of local and international investors are formalizing a public-private partnership (PPP) agreement to jointly develop an ICT park in Dar es Salaam. The park will be named Raphta City will help in facilitating innovation while creating quality jobs and modernizing the region’s ICT landscape. COSTECH Director General, Dr Hassan Mshinda, claims that the park will be the first ‘smart village’ geographic cluster of its kind in East…

The Monitor Daily is reporting that the Uganda Communications Commission secretly asked Internet service providers to block access to Facebook and Twitter messaging platforms for 24 hours during the Walk-to-Work campaign on Thursday last week. Most of the ISPs didn’t comply save for one ISP which disrupted the service for sometime before later allowing access. The Monitor go access to an April 14 letter signed by Mr Quinto Ojok who is the Director of Finance at UCC and signed an acting capacity for the Executive Director, Godfrey Mutabazi. The letter called for the social networking sites, Tweeter and Facebook, be…

The interests in the re-appointment of CCK Director General have upped their game. The regulatory authority has had a controversy surrounding the renewal of the Director General’s contract. Now according to an article appearing in today’s Business Daily, a Mr Ibrahim Mwangi Athumani who has interests in the sector, wants the Court of Appeal sitting as the Supreme Court, to determine the principles which should be applied in the appointment of public officers in State organs. Mr Athumani wants the the court to give advisory opinion regarding appointments for State jobs under Article 163 (6)  and article 232(2) of the new Constitution. Mr…

As Safaricom and Airtel are locked in a bitter fight over MNP, yu, the mobile phone brand of Essar Telecom Kenya Limited, has today launched Voice SMS in collaboration with Kirusa. Kirusa is a leading global developer of Mobile Value Added Services. This becomes the first ever Voice SMS service in Kenya. The Kirusa Voice SMS service has been implemented by Vodafone in various markets including Ghana and India. This might be the first product of Vodafone’s acquisition of Essar India. The Voice SMS service is available to all yu subscribers, on all mobile handsets, and allows them to send…

Safaricom is locked into a serious war with Airtel over the apparent lack of commitment by Safaricom in deactivating numbers ported from Safaricom to Airtel. In communications which have been forwarded to newsrooms, Airtel CEO Rene Meza is listing all the complaints attaching a long trail of emails sent between Safaricom and Airtel. Reading through the emails gives you the picture of frustrated Airtel personnel with lack of action on the part of Safaricom. Read Rene Meza’s email to CCK From: Rene Meza Mr. Charles Njoroge Director General Communications Commission of Kenya Waiyaki Way Nairobi 16th April 2011 …

Research in Motion (RIM), the manufacturers of BlackBerry smartphones and the PlayBook tablet, is hosting a contest to find the best App developers in South Africa. The winner of the contest will be called the “App Master of South Africa.” There are very cool prizes some of them being the definite one like a BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet and a suprise one a visit to BlackBerry Developer Conference (DEVCON) which will happen in San Francisco from 18 October to 20 October. If you think you are good enough to create some cool applications to run on BlackBerry Tablets , try it out.…

World Bank was last night awarding winners for Apps for Development competition. And there was one entry from Kenya which got an “Honorable Mention”. A CAPTCHA is always some challenge used online or on computer systems to make sure that the response to the challenge is not generated by non human. And since other computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human. According to Google, 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. And in in each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually,…

Safaricom is warning its subscribers to be wary of the activities of some unauthorized agents claiming to carry out promotions on behalf of the company. The company has unearthed a syndicate where some operators, one linked to a competitor, has been extorting money from the public claiming that they have been contracted to do promotions on behalf of Safaricom. Two employees of a company called Bambua Limited, which has been retained to carry out promotions on behalf of one operator, were arrested on Wednesday in Westlands . They claimed they were carrying out a some promotion called “Bambua” on behalf of…

Google has just announced the Android Developer Challenge for Sub-Saharan Africa. In a blog post, Google claims that it has met with over 10,000 developers in Africa. The company also claims that 300,000 Android mobiles are being activated everyday. Google is inviting the talented and creative developers to get on board and create those apps. Winners will each receive an Android phone and US$25,000. There is growing apprehension in the Android developer community who have even threatened to ditch Android. Among the the complaints raised by the Android Developers , who have even formed a union, is the percentage cut…

Rush before they sell them all. PC World Kenya has just informed us that they have limited units of the 64GB 3G + WiFi version of iPad 2. The price is abit steep at Ksh 135,000 (approximately $1,600) but if you are a real maniac of Apple products, you can try to get your hands on this one. Alternatively, you can try to get the iPad from USA. We will be telling you how you can get your iPad from USA without much hassle. You as well order the iPad from PC World Kenya’s website. Quote this article from Techmtaa…

The Commission yesterday 12th April 2011 convened a meeting of the Technical, Process and Legal Working Groups of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) to review the progress of the exercise that begun about two weeks ago. The meeting also came in the wake of receipt of complaints from some porting subscribers who had failed to switch over to their preferred network smoothly. The main objective of the meeting was to resolve the disputes with a view to ensuring that mobile subscribers enjoy seamless service as they exercise their right of choice. All mobile operators including M/s Porting Access Kenya (i.e. the…

Safaricom has signed a partnership agreement with the Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) that will see it provide data services to banks to support Checque Truncation in Kenya.  The service wwill be offered through Safaricom’s enterprise Business Unit. The company will provide connectivity solutions for the truncation service in all banks that are members of the Kenya Bankers Association. The truncation service will is expected to be fully implemented by all banks and will see the physical cheque converted into electronic form and further transmission to the paying bank which will result in not more than 24 hours turn-around in processing.

From Estonia to Africa. That’s such a journey but if it is for a cause, why not. An Estonian group is bringing their hackathon events to Africa. Ragnar Sass helped Danish IT-entrepreneur and investor Kresten Buch to organise the IPO48 event to Kenya last year. He is planning two events in Africa this year, Nigeria and Ghana. But it is him Priit Salumaa and Martin Villig who started the Garage 48 idea one year ago in Estonia. The success of the idea has inspired Sass to think beyond Estonia and has hosted similar hackathon events in Latvia and Finland. Garage48 has…

Today Nokia was on unleashing spree. The Finnish phone giant unleashed two phones, Nokia E6 and X7, and a new PR2 OS aka Symbian Anna. The new browser has improved text input, fresh and new icons and the latest version of Ovi Maps. Symbian Anna will also be available for owners of the Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and E7 in future. Symbian Anna is one of the upgrades which has happened to the OS before Nokia starts to release Windows Phones. Nokia also launched the X7 phone which is purposely built for entertainment. The phone boasts a 4-inch Corning Gorilla…

Through a blog post, Nokia is announcing a more compact business phone, Nokia E6. The phone boasts QWERTY Keyboard and touch experience with more navigation feel and operation than either a pure touch or keyboard-only system. Nokia is offering you both touch and QWERTY world because even the most experienced users get problems with touch typing but launching apps is fairly easy on touch interface. Nokia E6 Specifications; Corning Gorilla Glass 2.46-inch LCD capacitive touch display with 16mn colours a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. 8GB of internal memory, support for MicroSD cards up to 32GB. Removable Nokia BP-4L 1500mAH…