Kommunication Ultimate Limited, the publishers of CIO East Africa and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC Kenya) have today launched the East African edition of the CIO100 Survey 2014, an annual survey that seeks to identify leading companies in the use technology and adoption of technology.

Now in its fourth year, CIO100 has become an acknowledged mark of excellence honoring senior IT executives who have created value for their companies through the use of IT.

“This is the only demand side survey done not just in the region but globally that looks at the use of IT in organizations and honors the people behind the successful implementations,” said Harry Hare, the Editorial Director, CIO East Africa.

Recipients of the CIO 100 Award are selected through a three-step process.

• First, companies fill out an online application form detailing their innovative IT and business initiatives.
• Next, a panel of external judges, led and supported by PwC Kenya (many of them former CIOs) review the applications in depth, looking for leading-edge IT practices and measurable results.
• Finally, CIO editors and PwC Kenya review the judges’ recommendations and select the final 100 entries.

“We are very excited to be part of this process and add value to what CIO East Africa has started doing,” said Muchemi Wambugu, Partner, PwC Kenya. “We bring in an additional layer of professionalism, quality and experience in the process moving this year’s CIO100 a notch higher, where we can build from and add value to the sector.”

Winners of this year’s CIO100 will be announced in October 2014, and the symposium and award ceremony is planned for 13-14 November 2014, in Nairobi. Last year the event was held for the first time in Kigali, Rwanda and attracted more than 300 senior IT and business executives. In last year’s edition, Eng Wainaina emerged the CIO of the year, while Royal Media Services (RMS) scooped the top award.

Digital music continues to be a hotbed of discussion around its potential to be a viable long-term business. Access to broadband and cheap data rates continues to drive the discussion and restrict the roll out, other self-limiting factors are also influencing the growth of a theoretically lucrative economic sector.

For this reason and more, AfricaCom’s 2014’s Digital Music conference will be taking place in Cape Town from 10-13 November this year. It will be tackling questions like: Are Network operators now music labels? Are digital music service providers the new record companies of old or are the artists themselves taking charge of their distribution and revenue earnings? Who actually controls the pie and is there enough of it to go around? And much more.

A key topic discussing ‘The role of mobile music for operators: how to increase data revenues from music?’ is certain to attract debate. Currently, operators are taking as much as 60 percent of the digital download revenue which is then still to be split between the digital music service and the artist. What’s leftover doesn’t speak to a sustainable business model. Yet, streaming and downloading is a growing phenomenon the world over.

Africa, as the hub for digital innovation, has some existing examples of how popular digital has become. In Nigeria, one digital music company has in excess of one million unique registered subscribers including the wider Diaspora looking to stay in touch with their roots, however, convincing them to buy regularly and persuading the music artists themselves of the benefits of being part of a formalized sector, remain obstacles to overcome.

With all eyes on Africa as a growing economic powerhouse, and with one the world’s largest and most established digital music offerings, Spotify, on track to enter the market before the end of 2014, is Africa finally getting its groove on?

To find out, register for AfricaCom 2014 or  comment as to who you think should ‘control’ the industry and how you see the industry shaping up.   visit: www.africa.comworldseries.com

The children of Dago in the Eastern Region of Ghana now have access to the internet, thanks to the newly launched Solar Powered Internet Schools.

The project, which is a result of a joint-venture between Samsung electronics and the government of Ghana through the Ministry of Education, has been made by outfitting a 40FT mobile shipping container with desks, a 65-inch electronic board, Internet-enabled solar-powered notebooks, Samsung Galaxy tablet computers and Wi-Fi cameras, children can receive a technology-rich education without travelling far. A

All these devices are optimized for use in a solar powered environment. It also has a central server, which stores the curriculum up to grade 12 for teachers and students to access and discuss. The e-board allows for cross-group collaboration across geographical boundaries. Its can concurrently run video conferencing, access the internet, and connect to the tablet computers in the container.

Managing Director in charge of Samsung West Africa, Harry Park, stated that the project is replicated in some other African countries by Samsung to help promote education in deprived communities.

The Minister in charge of education in Ghana, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang, expressed her heartfelt appreciation to the government of the Republic of Korea and to Samsung Electronics for donating the Solar-Powered Internet School.

She noted that the government of Ghana has committed itself to transforming the Ghanaian economy into an information rich and knowledge based economy and society using the tools of ICT.

“In this regard, a comprehensive program of rapid deployment and utilisation of ICT was introduced into the educational and other sectors, with the aim of improving lives through finding answers to the many questions relating to health care, education, infrastructure, and social amenities etc which confront us as a people,” she added.

 Tisu.com.gh, in partnership with Lufthansa Airlines is announcing to the general public that from the 11th of August, 2014, they can purchase a coupon for GHS 50 which entitles them to a GHS 500 discount on any ticket with Lufthansa booked until 31.12.2014.

All you have to do is visit tisu.com.gh online, add the deal to your shopping cart and proceed to the online check out where you can pay online with your credit card, mobile money, bank transfer or cash on delivery.

Print and present the coupon at any Lufthansa office within Ghana or book online through lufthansa.com.gh and apply the provided coupon code.

Tisu.com.gh is Ghana’s leading e-commerce and online retail site whit a reach of 400,000 Ghanaians per week and is run but Swiss Media house Ringier Africa, which has branches in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Senegal.”

Experts at Pamoja say that channel collaboration around cloud services is an early indication that there is development within the broader cloud cycle.

Albie Bester, CEO of Pamoja, said: “Many IT service providers have yet to embrace the Cloud services model to the same extent as larger telecommunication companies and IT services businesses.

“The issue is exacerbated by the fact that value added resellers and system integrators are projecting the Cloud as a competitor or a necessary nuisance. As the adoption of Cloud services grow in the market, these organizations will come to realize that the Cloud computing paradigm offers new business opportunities.”

Pamoja is focused on driving increased adoption of Cloud services, addressing traditional challenges and successfully replicating the Cloud services model for the benefit of operators throughout Africa.

The CEO believes that there are several components to successful Cloud service delivery and collaboration between partners is necessary in order to acquire these components.

“Some of these are quality services, quality access to the service, solutions that work for the specific market, clear business value proposition, easy provisioning and simple billing models.

“It is very seldom that one organization can manage all of these at the same time. Partnerships between ISP’s/Telco’s and Cloud providers coupled with good sales capabilities and access to customers have to be part of the mix in order to deliver a successful Cloud business,” Bester continued.

As an increasingly competitive market segment complicated by a lack of technical skills sets in Africa, those wishing to set their mark on the Cloud Services area are advised to look seriously at alliances.

Bester added: “The common factor linking these ventures is limited IT experience, and, essentially, people trying to build their own Cloud businesses from base zero. From the outside a Cloud business looks relatively simple, once inside, people realize that they need skills and experience which is not in abundance on the continent.”

While it is generally accepted that the ICT sector is driven by the quality of service delivery and competence of service providers, this is particularly true of the Cloud Services space. It is important to remember that partners will stake their reputation on services that they will be provided with – over promising and under-delivery will result in elimination in what is effectively a confined market.

“The fact is that a partnership is really the only safeguard to ensuring collaboration between role players including support, sales, provisioning and billing. Operations requires solid experience and security of skills, while market ownership or relationship paves the way for the sales engine to deliver good returns and not wheel-spin for extended periods of time,” he concluded.

South Africa’s Intelsat and MSTelcom have collaborated to give the people of Angola high quality, reliable and cost-efficient broadband service to consumers and corporations operating in the oil and gas and banking sectors within Angola.

In this agreement, Intelsat will deliver a fully managed broadband service that provides Internet access into and out of Angola. The network will leverage C- band capacity on Intelsat 14 at 315º East and on Intelsat 22 at 72º East, as well as the company’s IntelsatOne terrestrial network.

As for MSTelcom, it will provide point-to-point Internet broadband service, and the design of the Intelsat network will enable the transition to a point-to-multipoint service that allows MSTelcom to share bandwidth among multiple sites to best serve customer needs.

Intelsat’s satellite solutions will facilitate network services such as the termination of IP traffic and connectivity between remote sites and corporate headquarters.

“Intelsat has been an important partner for MSTelcom in providing communications throughout Angola,” said Oldemiro Diogo Cundo Napoleão, Head of Marketing for MSTelcom.

“Intelsat’s satellite capacity combined with its technical support helps ensure that our employees continue to provide high quality, reliable and responsive services to our customers. We renewed our agreement with Intelsat as we believe that they are the best satellite operator to support our goal of satisfying the growing broadband demands of the Angolan business sector and the country as a whole.”

Grant Marais, Intelsat’s Regional Vice President, Africa Sales said: “We look forward to providing MSTelecom with a broadband network that incorporates our satellite and terrestrial solutions, as well as operational support that will help MSTelcom deliver and expand both its geographic reach and the services provided to corporate enterprises and communities within Angola.”

Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) will be creating an industry-driven regulatory framework that will ensure the sanitization the country’s Value Added Service sector (VAS), which could be worth $200 million.

VAS   is a popular telecommunications industry term for non-core services, or in short, all services beyond standard voice calls and faxes transmissions and is expected to grow to $500 million in just a few years.

It can also be used in any service industry at little or no cost to promote their primary business. In the telecommunication industry, value-added services add value to the standard service offering, spurring the subscriber to use their phone more and allowing the operator to drive up their Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

For mobile phones, technologies like SMS, MMS and data access were historically usually considered value-added services, but in recent years SMS, MMS and data access have more and more become core services, and VAS therefore has begun to exclude those services.

Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, said that the potential in the country’s VAS market during an interactive session with operators and mobile network operators (MNOs), on the regulatory framework for the VAS segment of the industry in Lagos.

“The exponential growth in the Nigerian telecom industry, in the last 12 years, has given rise to the evolution of the mobile phone from a device just to support communications requirement to a smart phone with the capacity to provide a plethora of services,” he said. “According industry experts, mobile VAS is currently worth over $200 million annually with huge potential to accelerate to $500 million in the next few years.”

Juwah also noted that the industry has witnessed some practices and behaviors in the VAS segment, which as individuals subscribers and as industry regulator have given us lot of concern.

“The commission has received avalanche of complaints from Nigerian subscribers regarding forceful activation of various value added services by service providers without explicit consent. Worse still, these services are auto-renewed resulting to perpetual look-in of subscribers by the VAS providers,” said the Vice Chairman.

Simon Aderinlola, the National Coordinating Consultant, Wireless Application Service Providers of Nigeria, WASPAN, empasized that the NCC should look into the area of revenue sharing among MNOs and VAS providers in its proposed regulation.

He also noted that there is a need for increased collaboration among NCC and operators to set up a central database centre where unsolicited VAS messages can be screened and monitored, adding that the regulator should protect the indigenous VAS players