Author: Cyrus

A new livestock insurance scheme has been launched in northern Kenya which offers herdsmen a chance to protect their livestock against drought. The initiative uses satellite technology to check the pasture available for the herders. Arid northern Kenya suffered a severe drought last year and hundreds of thousands of animals died. Until now insuring herds of livestock in rural Africa has been all but impossible. Livestock insurance is still a new concept in the country. Partly because it has simply been too expensive for insurers to go and count the number of dead animals which might be spread over a…

Home Boyz Entertainment has produced a children animation series, Tinga Tinga for BBC and Disney world. Through their production arm, Tiger Aspect, they hired 200 local designers, animators, musicians and writers to work on the show, which will be shown on the Disney Channel and, in the UK, CBeebies. Fifty per cent of the show’s profits will be put back into developing an educational trust for children in East Africa. The Tinga Tinga Tales story is just one snippet of evidence of an upcoming animation industry in Nairobi. BBC’s Digital planet gave the development a good publicity on digital planet…

Zain customers in Tanzania can now pay for fuel with their mobile phones at Oilcom petrol stations via Zap without necessarily having to carry cash, thanks to a partnership between Zain and Oilcom. According to a press statement issued on Tuesday, the new service will take effect from today. The Zain Tanzania Chief Commercial Officer, Chiruyi Walingo, said in Dar es Salaam that the companies’ newly launched fuel payment service will allow Zain customers to pay for fuel at Oilcom fuel stations with their mobile phones and reduce the necessity of walking with cash. Oil Com operates one of the…

Enterprise and mobile software company Sybase 365 is currently driving a project aimed at the formation of a single Pan-African mobile-commerce (mCommerce) portal through partnerships that will join up to seven different regional projects, together using a common Sybase technical platform and financial product bouquet. Sybase 365 director of mCommerce business development in sub-Saharan Africa Shaun Campbell says that the company 
is assisting the regional portal projects to build footprints and roll out to new countries. 
This is carried out by supplying the transaction process 
engines and technologies for the different types of interfaces with mobile handsets, point-of-sale terminals, automatic…

Global young innovators stand to win $ 1 million as part of Nokia’s “Growth Economy Venture Challenge’’ . Nokia’s global Calling All Innovators 2010 competition targeting innovators, with  participants expected to create a mobile product or service that raises the standard of living or enhances the lives of the local people . The global challenge is not limited to hardware or software and will reward innovations geared towards enhancing the standards of living and return on the million bucks investments. The submissions can also expand beyond the mobile phone.

Avatar: Its the most expensive movie now and also the first 3-D movie. But it has side effects which are lethal. A 42-year-old man in Taiwan has died of a stroke likely caused by over-excitement from watching the 3-D blockbuster epic Avatar. The man, identified only by his last name Kuo, is said to have had a history of high blood pressure. During the screening, in the Taiwanese city of Hsinch, Kuo reportedly began to feel unwell; by the time he reached the hospital he was unconscious. A scan showed that his brain was hemorrhaging. Kuo died 11 days later.…

Dating in Kenya is now going fully online. This is s phenomenon which was only limited to Kenyans visiting a few foreign dating sites like Afroromance, Afrointroductions and Match.com. You know facebook brought with it some kind of over the table dating not that kimya kimya type. People would go to facebook, make acquintances and end up dating though with real IDs. But ow there is a Kenyan dating site by Kenyans for Kenyans. The Lovefindme site comes at a time when Kenyans spend alot of time in social sites like facebook and tagged looking for love. SOme also have…

As we reported earlier, Nation Media Group has now corrected the errors on their new Beta website called Africa Review. The website runs on the same script Daily Nation, The East African and Business Daily is running on. The website domain was created in February 2009 so its something which Nation planned for a long time. Apparently Nation owns also 20 other domains which they might be using to launch other products. The website seems to be hosted at Network Solutions as opposed to Daily Nation which is hosted at UUNET and 365 Digital Primedia servers in South Africa have…

East and Central Africa Media power house, Nation Media Group has launched a new website called Africa Review. I have not even seen what is in the website since after the alert, I have been getting a 503 error. Anybody send us a snapshot on tech@techmtaa.com

The Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) in partnership with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and corporate organisations, have launched the Haiti Disaster Fund to raise funds towards a humanitarian appeal to assist millions of people affected by an earthquake that hit Haiti, claiming more than 50,000 lives and living millions of others homeless.

In what might be considered to be a milestone in South Africa, Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx says that South African internet users reached the 5 million mark in 2009. He also projects the number to reach 6 million by December 2010. In a research conducted by South African analyst house World Wide Worx, in conjunction with Cisco, shows that local Internet penetration has increased to 10%. Speaking to ITWeb this morning, research lead and World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck said this figure is a significant milestone in SA’s Internet space.

Huawei, a leader in providing next-generation telecommunications network solutions for operators around the world, has announced that its UMTS900 solution has been successfully deployed in the MTN Ghana network. This represents the first time in Africa continent that UMTS has been successfully conducted for voice, video and data in the 900 MHz frequency band. The network are based on Huawei’s 4th-generation 3900-Series Node B, which combines advanced technology with high efficiency to boost operators’ productivity. The system supports a bandwidth of just 4.2 MHz to provide UMTS service while working seamlessly with the existing GSM network. Together with HUAWEI, MTN…

Zuku seems to be the lesser evil in a POLL we carried between Zuku Broadband and Orange Broadband Nyumbani. Majority, more than 70% of our readers think that Zuku offers better service and delivers better customer care. Thats a big wake up call to Orange which has been there long enough and has bigger financial muscle to compete effectively in the market.

Netbooks are gaining ground in the IT consumer market in Kenya. When HP East Africa introduced a few laptops including the Vivienne Tam and Acer followed later with others, we didn’t take it seriously. Infact we thought that the laptop will fade out the way the PDAs went down. We were wrong, The Netbooks are here to stay and are increasing in variety. Most of them are running the Atom processor (1.6Ghz) and most boast of 10.2″ screen size apart from the few with 13″ and 8.9″. Kenya Data Networks just unveiled another brand, MSi U100 which they advertise as…

Finally the USA Consumer Electronics show 2010 is over. I can now say what I read. Remember I am in Nairobi and the event occured thousands of miles away. But it seems I was there. What with the greap photos from Engadget, Gizmodo and PCMag. What with the blog posts from Techcrunch and Mashable. I got all the breaking news thanks to Snaptu for the wonderful application in my so old Nokia E50 (I cant just let the phone go). But for East Africa, I think we can draw many lessons from the event. Do we even have a Consumer…

Watching her makes you be wowed with simple expertise she does it and the way she is defying old age is simply out of this world. Thats the story of the Granny who won the Spanish Talents show. She has been nicknamed the Salsa Granny and the video is gaining popularity in youtube and the internet.