The DataLaws Nigeria Limited, a new breed Data Protection and Privacy consultancy firm has set camp in Nigeria to ensure the country  protect its citizens’ data as well as assisting in providing advice on how the country can achieve new revenue streams by establishing frameworks for participating in the lucrative outsourcing industry.

DataLaws, led by 16 year experienced F.Franklin Akinsuyi,  has been recognised in Nigeria provides consultancy advice, training and capacity building in the areas of Data Protection and Privacy.

Franklin said that is was really necessary for the Nigerians to understand the impact of outsourcing Nigerian citizens’ data outside of the country.

He added that Tools such as Big Data, Outsourcing and Cloud Computing can have serious and devastating negative effects that can compromise Nigeria’s National Security if not managed correctly, he says.

It is not only Nigeria that should have this, but also Africa at large. Now that we are advancing more in the technology, data security should not be compromised anywhere in Africa.

Liquid Telecom today launched East Africa’s largest and most sophisticated data centre in Nairobi for secure and reliable space for dedicated hosting, interconnect services, colocation, disaster recovery, network-based services, applications and cloud services to carriers, network providers and enterprises in Africa.

The International Criminal Court at the Hague Netherlands, has given local journalists and bloggers a stern warning over witness exposure.

The presiding Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji warned that the court has the power to investigate and charge anyone involved in witness tampering which he termed as contempt of court.

This comes hours after a local news journalist allegedly revealed the identity of the first witness, Witness 536 in a case pitting the office of the prosecutor and Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto and former radio presenter Joshua Sang. The two are accused of having masterminded the 2007 post election violence in Kenya.

Willis Raburu a reporter from Citizen Television,has been on the receiving end of accusation when a tweet from his account revealed the name of the witness in the Kenyan case at the ICC. He has since denied the allegations and said that his Twitter account was hacked.

The prosecutor’s office has been sounding its alarm on witness intimidation since instituting the cases against Kenyan leaders.

This is not the first time local bloggers and journalists have been embroiled with the cases. Early this year, blogger, Dennis Itumbi was accused by the police for allegedly hacking into ICC emails and exposing witnesses. One wonders if in this day and age if total privacy is a myth.

The Koreans are here. South Korea’s Korea Telecom (KT) has said it is set to buy a stake in Tunisia’s Tunisie Telecom, a firm that was established in 1995 and has around six million subscribers.

The report found in a stock market filing, showed that the firm is set to buy a stake in Tunisia based firm after dropping its bid to buy a controlling stake in Morocco’s Maroc Telecom.

The education sector in Kenya is about to receive a boost with the launch of a new initiative that will assist teachers and learners access material through ICT.

Dubbed “Badiliko” (“change” in Swahili) digital hubs, the programme aims to change the way over 100,000 students across Kenya access learning. The programme will also aid over 20,000 teachers. Training of teachers has begun across the country on how to use the digital hubs.

Across Africa, a total of 127 digital hubs will be launched bringing the technology to over half a million teachers and learners.

Concurrently with the Kenyan launch, the British Council has digital hubs in Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Ghana and Nigeria.

Airtel has also joined in the project by providing internet connectivity to the hubs for the next three years.

“This latest partnership initiative with Bharti Airtel demonstrates our commitment to improving access to high-quality teaching and learning in Africa,” Tony Reilly, Country Director of British Council said.

“Our digital ambassadors are now implementing ICT and innovation teaching practice in classrooms across the continent,” Reilly added.

British Council over the last three years, has been involved in a programme called, Connecting Classrooms where over 300 schools have benefited from the programme. Some of the resource for this programme are available online.

Such initiatives add the momentum on the current governments plan to digitize school learning in Kenya. But with these developments, it seems that there is duplication of effort with lack of one streamline programme that would incorporate the private sector and the government.

The Kenyan government in 4 months time will be rolling out the laptop use in primary school. There has been little on a way forward in terms of the digital material that will be used in all of these elearning efforts. Could this be another unresolved huddle waiting for the school laptop projects?

Students from all over the world have yet another chance to compete for prizes for their best innovations using Microsoft products and technology on the Microsoft Imagine Cup.

The concluded finals in July that was held in Russia, now the company is already gearing up for the next year’s competition.

John Scott Tyne from Imagine Cup, on their blog, wrote that the company has been working on plans for this season since the beginning of this year and have great new contestants as well as a lot of ‘cool stuff’ to share.

Microsoft detailed the continued format that spans three different categories: Games, Innovation, and World Citizenship, and added that there will be a prize of $50 000 for each winner in the respective categories.

The company however noted that there will be a lot of chances in next year’s competition as they plan to add the world-wide semi-final round.

“We will spotlight every one of those World Semi-finalist teams here on our website as each National Final concludes and then, starting in May, all 200+ World Semi-finalist teams will enter an online round here at our website. In that round our judges will determine the teams who win a trip to Seattle to compete in person at the 2014 World Finals in late July.”

Microsoft added that they are retiring the three technology-based challenges from 2013 and are instead starting three new ones, the first of which has now started.

The company also noted that these challenges require do not any programming at all as they are to help student get started with the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

Some of the new challenges include

Pitch Video Challenge (September-October) – involves recording a three to five minute video with your team pitching your project

Project Blueprint Challenge (November-December) –involves providing a written project proposal covering your users, requirements, scenarios, and business model.

User Experience Challenge (January-February)- How will people actually use your software? A great user experience transforms any solution so show us your user flow, wireframes, and a visual target for how your software will look on screen.

In all the years you have run this competition it is quite compelling to ask they motivating factor of this event recurring and what happens to the winners after winning the competition and not forgetting the criteria they use in selecting the winners.

What factor affects the decision of the final location because Africa too has good locations to handle the occasion, and also do the competitors take care of themselves in terms of accommodation and the like.

This questions could disturb anyone’s mind; if only we could get Microsoft to respond.