Author: Cyrus

There will be 40 start-up companies that will launch at the inaugural DEMO Africa conference next week (October 24th – 26th) a The Start-ups will use the event as a launch pad for futuristic technologies. They will be looking to raise over $ 60m in capital to grow their ideas. Kenya will be the first host of DEMO in Africa 21 years after its inception in USA. The event is a platform which brings together the most innovative companies from across the world and DEMO Africa will be targeting such small companies in the continent. The platform also attracts a good attention from leading…

Looks like a very unlikely weapon is becoming a great tool in fighting Malaria, the cellphone. According to Harvard researchers, scientists can track the spread of malaria in Kenya using phone calls and text messages. Quoting study author Caroline Buckee, the report reads; “Before mobile phones, we had proxies for human travel, like road networks, census data and small-scale GPS studies. But now that mobile phones have spread throughout the world, we can start using these massive amounts of data to quantify human movements on a larger scale and couple this data with knowledge of infection risk.” The researchers used mobile…

yuMobile has today its BlackBerry services targeting the entry level users. The service which the operator bills as the “cheapest in the country” is going live for the first time to the subscribers on the network. BlackBerry services is an integrated solution which combines various services like email and messaging, social networking, phone, organizer, web, multimedia and other mobile business and lifestyle applications on to the smartphone. All the services can be accessed on the go through the BlackBerry smartphones. The services also allow individual subscribers or company workers to access e-mail, phone, text messaging, Internet, organizer and corporate data…

Airtel Kenya has donated over 200 phones to the police officers in the Rift Valley Province. The phones are bundled with golden numbers (a special number with digits that are easy to recall from memory in times of need and emergencies). The partnership will cover all police stations, police posts and patrol bases in the Rift Valley Province. Airtel Kenya managing director Mr. Shivan Bhargava said “Airtel’s association with the police in the Coast and Rift Valley provinces is a way of creating positive impact in our communities and ensuring that security is enhanced through a fast, reliable and affordable…

Last week, you read about the Altech’s move to solve problems at KDN. The top management at Altech led by Tim Ellis who oversees the East African arm decided that the management will not renew the contracts of the expatriates who are bringing a negative perception of KDN with their presence. Immediately after that blog post, Shahab Meshki wrote a strongly worded letter to all the employees asking them to ignore the reports as no expat will go home as reported by the media. Shahab wrote; “Just to put records straight: Altech has no plans whatsoever to replace myself or…

CCK Stats are out. The country has seen the increase in the usage of internet and mobile phones. According to the stats which have just been released, the number of mobile subscribers in Kenya grew by 1.7 percent between March 30 and June 30 this year. Now the total number of mobile subscribers in Kenya stand at 29.7million, increasing the penetration of mobile telephony services to 75.4%. Compared to the same period last year, the annual mobile subscriptions registered a significant growth of 17.5 percent from 25.2million recorded in the 2010/2011 financial year. According to the Quarterly sector statistics report…

Orange Kenya has today unveiled an advance airtime top-up benefit, PEWA that will enable its customers to receive emergency credit. The company CEO Mickael Ghossein said that the service will provide advance credit to subscribers, payable within 24 hours with no interest charged. PEWA credit will be valid for 90 days and can be accessed by customers who have less than KSh5 on their mobile phones. The lending category will allow Orange customers to borrow KSh15. To access the benefit, Orange subscribers will need to dial *133#. PEWA can be used for both on-net and off-net calls; SMSs, Data, as…

StarTimes is expanding its market in East Africa. The company has recently launched a DVB-T2 capable decoder in Uganda. The decoder which retails at Ush 90,000 is targeted at snatching more viewers from South African pay-TV giant, DSTV, with their GOTV offering. With the decoder, StartTimes offer Basic subscription package of 35 channels costs Ush15,000 /month, Classic package of 45 channels at Ush30,000 and theUnique package of 52 channels at Ush45,000. South African pay-TV giant Multichoice with its GOtv decoders target the same lower and middle income segment targeted by StarTimes by offering  18 channels for Ush139,000 and 23 channels for Ush154,000.…

Leading mobile services operator, Safaricom, has made key changes as the restructuring named Safaricom 2.0 continues. After the problems with the head of marketing who was rendered jobless after all her key functions were withdrawn, the lady (Wangari Murugu) decided to resign from the company. She tendered her resignation almost two weeks ago. Now Safaricom CEO, Bob Collymore, has made Rita Okuthe who was formerly the head of Consumer Propositions, the new Head of Marketing division. The email to Safaricom staff announcing the changed reads; It is with great pleasure that I announce the appointment of Rita Okuthe as Head of Marketing Division with…

Altech Group majority owned Kenya Data Network (KDN) top executives finally spoke about the problems bedeviling the regional data company. At a press briefing attended by KDN CEO Shahab Meshki and Altech Group Executive for Converged Services, the top executives responded to the issues affecting the company. Altech Group owns over 60.8% of KDN. First there has been rumours that the Altech Group is planning to exit the region. Tim Ellis was categorical that the group is not planning to exit the region but is looking for equity, technical or services partners. Tim revealed that the company is talking to…

Airtel Kenya has just announced a new tariff charge that will see its Airtel Money customers send money free of charge to any network in Kenya. Through a statement , Airtel Kenya managing Director Shivan Bhargava said that the zero transaction charge applied to any amount sent to recipients on any network in Kenya. Airtel has a current countrywide Airtel Money agent base of more than 6,000 agents which is expected to grow to 8,000 by the end of the year. There are also corporate agents like Posta, Uchumi Supermarkets, Pep Intermedius (Nakumatt), Tuskys, Muramati Sacco, Housing Finance, Cooperative Bank…

Airtel Kenya is not very happy about the current situation at the CCK where regulatory policies are not being honoured. The company’s CEO, Shirvan Bhargava, has issued a strong statement citing many actions and in-actions from CCK which are affecting the operators. Read statement below; We wish to express our disappointment at the recent events which have led to disruption and serious delay in implementing the formally announced MTR Glide Path and urge for a full review of the major factors contributing to the delay in the implementation of policy matters by the industry regulator, the Communications Commission of Kenya…

Tanzania’s mobile phone services operator, Vodacom , through its M-Pesa service has today made it possible for M-Pesa users to buy insurance plans and pay for their premiums through the M-Pesa service electronically. The operator has partnered with the country’s leading insurance services provider, Heritage Insurance, to launch Faraja Insurance, a funeral benefit policy that pays a cash amount to the nominated beneficiary of the insured M-pesa user  to assist with funeral expenses. Faraja has various cover options to suit the needs and the budget  of all M-pesa users. Vodacom Tanzania’s Managing Director Rene Meza says monthly premiums for Faraja range from as little as…

Kenya’s online restaurant and hotels guide, EatOut Kenya,  and Wazi WiFi want to enable you to stay in touch and up to date with friends, family and your business contacts. Through the partnership with Wazi WiFi, EatOut Kenya looks to offer cheap WiFi to selected restaurants in Nairobi.  Wazi WiFi will enable clients to stay connected while in restaurants by offering high-speed, accessible WiFi access points to businesses. According to Mikul Shah, CEO an Co-Founder EatOut Kenya, “there are over 400 registered on the platform.” Riyaz Bachani, Group CTO at Wananchi Group which is in charge of Wazi WiFi stated, “For 10 minutes…

The Communications Commissions of Kenya (CCK) issued a deadline requiring all mobile services operators to switch off all unidentified mobile devices on their networks. The deadline ended on Sunday 30th September. Now the regulator has released the switch-off figures. Through a statement, CCK say that Airtel has switched off 140,000 handsets, Safaricom 680,000, Orange 75,000 and yuMobile around 45,000. The figure makes it to around 1 million (640,000) to be exact. The switch-off happened in phases to enable the operators to handle glitches on the networks during the exercise. But it has been very hard to find the people whose…