The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on December 14,2015 announced the formation of the U.S.-Africa Business Center (USABC), launching efforts to lead the U.S. business community in a new period of unprecedented engagement with Africa’s regional economic communities, the established African private sector, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). “Since embarking on our initial Africa program…
Editor’s note:This article contributed by Alix Murphy of WorldRemit gives insight into opportunities around Mobile money,FinTech and financial inclusion for 2016 The Top 3 Predictions for FinTech, Mobile Money and Financial Inclusion in 2016 are: 1. Financial inclusion will mean big business. Making serious money and reaching the unbanked have not always gone hand-in-hand. We’re…
As the year 2015 gradually comes to an end we bring you the top 10 articles on our blog.These are the most read articles of the year and interestingly they also form the major opportunities for 2016 especially for Africa. -When Big Data, Cloud and Internet of Things Technologies can enable African Startups become Disruptive….
Its easy to know where the next big thing in technology is by what people are devoting their time and money on.Just recently Elon Musk,Peter Thiel,Amazon Web services are among the notable entrepreneurs that has donated $1 billion towards research on Artificial Intelligence through a non-profit called OpenAI. OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company…
Nigerian Team of cyber security professionals “TeamNaija” has been crowned African champions at the just concluded Global Cyberlympics held in Washington DC, USA. The news about Nigeria is not only that of bribery,corruption,extremism.Nigeria is a great country with great minds making things happen all over the world, in Medicine,Education,Science and Tech,Sports you name them..am always…
Information Technology spending in Nigeria-the largest economy in Africa- will top $5.3 billion in 2016 as organizations increasingly embrace digital transformation initiatives in a bid to streamline their costs and bolster their flexibility. This is according to global technology research and consulting services firm International Data Corporation (IDC), which last week hosted an event at Victoria Crown…
African research and education network associations WACREN, the UbuntuNet Alliance and ASREN have partnered with their European counterpart GÉANT in a €26.6m EU co-funded project to provide dedicated high-speed internet all over Africa. This follows the success of the AfricaConnect project which contributed to the creation of a high-speed R&E network in Eastern and Southern…
Top experts in Innovation and Transformation around the world gathered today in Lagos,Nigeria at the 2015 Access Conference.The theme of the conference was Leading in a Transformational World – The Imperative of Innovation. Some of the speakers at the conference include:Steve Wozniak-Co founder Apple,Alec Ross- Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the…
West Africa Com is the annual forum for the region’s digital and ICT sector organised by Informa.The event will return to Dakar, Senegal on 8-9 June 2016 and now is the time to get involved. ”As the West Africa region is getting more connected and digital evolution is transforming the telecoms & media landscape, we…
Facebook is launching the Internet.org Innovation Challenge in Africa, with the aim of recognising developers and entrepreneurs who are using the internet to improve the standard of education and economic health in their communities. Developers across Africa are invited to enter the challenge. Facebook will present an Innovation Challenge Award of US $150,000 to the…
My guest this week is the gentle and brilliant Deepanker Rustagi, Cofounder of Vconnect.com, the No. local search engine who just made the big switch to become one of Nigeria’s largest ecommerce platform. If you frequently search for local businesses in Nigeria, you must have been redirected to vconnect from google or by word of…
The British High Commission in Nigeria hosted winners and nominees of The Future Awards Africa 2015 to a reception at his residence on Monday 7 December, 2015. The reception was anchored at the residence of the British Deputy High Commission, Ray Kyles.The winners reception was a follow up to the awards event which held on…
Image from FitBit A recent report from International Data Corporation (IDC ) has shown that China has quickly emerged as the fastest-growing wearables market, attracting companies eager to compete on price and feature sets .A quarter after Apple debuted as the number two wearables vendor worldwide, Chinese vendor Xiaomi finished the third quarter of 2015…
According to Nigeria Communications Week,Sasware, the Technology investment subsidiary of Signal Alliance today announced an investment in Medismarts, a health technology company based in Lagos. In a statement by Ifeoma Udo, Sasware Chief Operating Officer, the company explained that it had invested an undisclosed amount in Medismart to take a significant minority share in the…
We got this news from Nigeria Communications Commission that the Nigerian Senate yesterday confirmed Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta as Executive Vice Chairman (EVC and Chief Executive of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). He was appointed in Acting capacity by President Muhammadu Buhari on August 4, 2015 following the expiration of the tenure of Dr. Eugene…
CradleCount App by Kesandu Nwokolo is an innovative Health care app for pregnant women in Africa,the app is set to reduce infant and maternal mortality. It’s no longer news that Africa is faced with great challenges, what is interesting is that many young Africans with technology and innovation, are beginning to provide the needed solution…
The need to connect the next 1 billion people to the internet is growing as many organisations like Facebook and now Microsoft are developing initiatives and strategies to connect under served and developing countries around the world. Recently,Microsoft launched a fund to improve access to affordable Internet in under-served markets as a part of the company’s Affordable…
Orange announced the winners of the 2015 Orange African Social Venture Prize during the AfricaCom Awards ceremony held in Cape Town last night. For the fifth year in a row, the Orange Group is recognizing three innovative projects that are set to stimulate development in Africa. The prize aims to encourage entrepreneurs as they launch initiatives…
The Anzisha Prize is thrilled to announce this year’s winner of the $25,000 Grand Prize in the 5th year of Africa’s premier award for youth entrepreneurship. Chris Kwekowe (22), founder of Slatecube which offers a job-relevant skills learning platform and job placement services,impressed the judges. Slatecube has had significant success to date with potential for scale…
The role technology plays in every facet of life cannot be over emphasized,for the organizers of Mamalette live, technology has become a great enabler,providing a platform for mothers and would be mothers in Nigeria to connect and share ideas and relevant information to reduce for example incidence of child and neonatal related mortality. Mamalette Live!…
The new global economy is one that ranks nations top of the other based on their Science and Technology Development.For Africa,one of the continents in the world,there is little or nothing in the global arena that shows any African country progressing in the area of Technology and Innovation.And sometimes I wonder how long it…
President of Nigeria,Muhammadu Buhari today swore in Ministers to help him oversee the affairs of the country.Interestingly the President himself is the Minister of Petroleum Resources. Here is the list of Nigeria’s new Ministers and their appointments: 1. Chris Ngige – (Anambra) – Minister of labour & Employment 2. Kayode Fayemi- (Ekiti) – Minister…
The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders which begun in 2014, is the flagship program of President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) that empowers young people through academic coursework, leadership training, and networking. In 2016, the Fellowship will provide 1,000 outstanding young leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa with the opportunity to hone their skills…
A solar-powered high-tech greenhouse, systems to stop electricity theft, and food supplements made from caterpillars are among twelve innovations shortlisted for the 2015/2016 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Also selected are mobile technologies which guide parents through pregnancy and connect heart patients to cardiologists, and a three-wheeled mini-tractor which…
The new technologies making waves now revolve around Big Data, Cloud and Internet of Things. We are really getting so familiar with these words these days. Am sure this is a very exciting times for anyone, no matter where in the world you live in, you don’t even have to be a techie to start…
Image illustration from Bangkokpost Opportunities around digital economy is increasingly growing in most regions of Africa especially in Nigeria.For West African enterprises that want to keep pace with a changing consumer, employee and business landscape need to invest in the right business management solutions that will enable them to digitise their business processes. That’s the word…
As the Oracle Open World 2015 enters into its second day, Oracle has announced several products across the three layers of the Cloud: Software as a service(Saas),Platform as a service(Paas) and Infrastructure as a service. Further enhancing its digital business platform for the enterprise and the cloud, Oracle outlined new innovations across the Oracle Fusion…
The whole idea of new technologies and trends like Big Data, Cloud and also internet of things is to help enterprises focus more on fast, innovative ways to satisfy their customers, increase their performance, income and become more innovation making the enterprise a leader in their niche. All of these can only be achieved…
The Tecno WinPad 10 is the newest from Tecno to offer all the comfort you desire from your smart device. It easily transitions from a tablet to a PC whenever you require, giving you the best functionality a tablet can give.The…
Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh was the courageous doctor who identified and contained the first case of Ebola in Nigeria. Her heroic efforts prevented an outbreak in the most populous African country.In honour of this,The Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh (DRASA) Health Trust a non-profit focused on Nigeria’s health sector has been created. DRASA was created…