The south African branch of Oxford University Press has launched  the first series of videos that will make sure undergraduate students learn more effectively.

The series is aiming at bridging the gap between traditional textbook learning and the reality that many students find it difficult to learn.

These videos are hosted by YouTube and run for five minutes. They explain the principles of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The video is created in association with Stellenbosch University’s Language Centre. It is fresh and innovative and explains well on conveying concepts about learning. It also incorporates students’ active social media usage. The video adds to existing free learning materials which are available on Oxford’s Student Zone platform.

This is just one of the four videos which will be focusing on Bloom’s Taxonomy principles. The four-part video series taps into student life engaging with assignment writing, referencing and note-taking.

US President Obama, along with 500 young African leaders, has announced the expansion of his Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) that was launched earlier in 2010.

This programme will provide a platform for the United States t oinvest in the next generation of African leaders. Already, the US has committed significant resources to enhance leadership skills, bolster entrepreneurship, and connect young African leaders, the United States, and the American people.

The aspects targeted include:

• The creation of four Regional Leadership Centers in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa.
• The Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders will be renamed as the “MandelaWashington Fellowship for Young African Leaders” and will be doubled in size to reach 1,000 participants each year by 2016.
• New virtual resources and vibrant physical spaces for the YALI Network.
• Hundreds of new entrepreneurship grants and mobile incubators, and the Global

Entrepreneurship Summit will be held in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015.

President Obama also announced the creation of four Regional Leadership Centers in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa in 2015. These centers will improve the availability and quality of leadership training programs and professional development opportunities for young African leaders. Each will be run as a public-private partnership, capitalizing on the energy and dynamism of the private sector, the knowledge of African and American institutions, and the programmatic and educational resources of the U.S. Government

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide $38 million for the creation of and programs in the Regional Leadership Centers. American and African companies and foundations have more than matched these funds, providing principal capital for the startup costs, equipment, and technology for the Centers.

The MasterCard Foundation will provide financial support over five years to develop the Centers. With financial and in-kind contributions from Microsoft, Dow Chemical Company, Intel Corporation, and Cisco Systems, the U.S. Government will be able to establish and maintain the Centers, and provide business software and hardware, mentoring, and information technology training through them. With in-kind support from Proctor & Gamble, General

Electric, Atlas Mara, and McKinsey & Company, the U.S. and its partners will be able to provide leadership training, technical support, and access to capital for young entrepreneurs.

The U.S. government has joined with the following partners to establish and deliver high quality training, support, and networking through the Centers. In collaboration with USAID, host institutions in Africa will provide instruction and collaboration space, expert training, and

coursework for the Centers.

• The Center in Ghana will be supported by a consortium of civil and private sector
• Organizations including Africa 2.0, Africa Capacity Building Foundation, Ghana Private Enterprise Federation, and the Center for Policy Analysis, led by the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration.
• The Center in Kenya will have a robust training curriculum with direction from apartnership that brings together Deloitte’s global management and strategy skills, the established curriculum and capacity of Kenyatta University, the public administration training of the Kenya School of Government, and Africa Nazarene University’s youth engagement and outreach.
• The Center in South Africa will benefit from an education alliance led by the University of South Africa, with support from the University of Pretoria, which brings expertise in governance training, and Innovation Hub, which provides entrepreneurship support.
• The Center in Senegal will assist young entrepreneurs through the African Center for

Advanced Studies in Management’s experience in professional management studies, the West African Research Center’s youth leadership training experience, and the Synapse Center’s support to young leaders.

Another programme being launched include the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, which will reach 1,000 participants each year by 2016. The Fellowship currently brings 500 of Africa’s most dynamic young leaders to the United States each year for six weeks of leadership training, networking, and mentoring at top U.S. universities.

Training and mentorship are focused on three areas: business and entrepreneurship, civic engagement, and public administration. Upon returning home, the Fellows will have access to professional development opportunities, mentoring, networking, training, and seed funding to support their ideas, businesses, and organizations.

Providing the Tools, Training, and Technology to Promote Leadership: The YALI Network .The YALI Network provides virtual resources and vibrant physical spaces to equip young African leaders with the skills and connections they need to improve their communities and their countries. Established by President Obama in April 2014, the Network already includes more than 68,000 members.

Through the Yali.state.gov and social media, the United States provides online courses and materials, and connects members with global leaders in their field. Over the next year, President Obama will continue to engage the YALI Network.

Creation of state-of-the-art YALI Spaces. Over the next year, American Corners in Cote d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe, and South Africa will be outfitted to provide YALI Network members opportunities to meet, learn, and incubate their ideas; spaces in seven additional countries will be
renovated over the next two years. YALI staff will facilitate online courses and provide advice on everything from business start-ups to opportunities for study abroad.

Meeting rooms, collaboration spaces, and business tools will allow YALI Network members to work together to create social ventures, community service projects, and new business start-ups.

Currently, 43 embassies have youth councils that provide input into U.S. policies and contribute to the design and execution of U.S. Government programs. Since 2010, the State Department has held 15 exchanges specifically for young African leaders and brought more than 1,600 sub-
Saharan young leaders to the United States, through its educational and cultural affairs programs, including Fulbright.

In addition to the announcements made by President Obama today, the U.S. Government is expanding support to entrepreneurs by connecting them to investors, advisors, and distribution networks.

In 2015, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) will be hosted in sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. Morocco is hosting this year. YALI Network members will have the opportunity to present at and participate in both summits.

Over the next year, the State Department will lead three partnership opportunity delegations of entrepreneurs and investors to Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Ghana. In addition, the State Department and the U.S. Africa Development Foundation (USADF) will support selected YALI entrepreneurs to attend and participate in the DEMO Africa 2014 conference, to be held in Lagos, Nigeria, on September 25 – 26. DEMO Africa is a platform for top African companies to launch their products and announce to Africa and the world what they have developed.

The United States will continue providing young Africans access to resources they can use to put their skills to work in service of their communities. They will do this by providing entrepreneurship grants as well as mobile incubators.

Seems Facebook missed its own name and should have been called Forcebook. The 30 year-old dude is emailing all users of his social network, pushing them to get the Messenger App for greater mobile messaging.

“We wanted to let you know that messages are moving out of the Facebook app to our Messenger app, a free app that’s faster and more reliable for everyday messaging. Messenger also includes: new ways to send photos and videos, voice calls, stickers, group conversations and more,” Facebook said in an email update.

Guys get Messenger, Facebook says it will show you around on how to use Messenger and just in case you forget to shift, they will send you a reminder notice in the Facebook app to be fast and be careful you don’t break anything. Facebook wants you to install its Messenger App or go to the Facebook website to view and send messages and relax, you’ll still see new message notifications in the Facebook app, and it’ll be easy to switch between Facebook and Messenger, the company says.

Removing in-app chat will help Facebook build Messenger as an independent business with own features and revenue. Facebook earlier this year had announced plans to have standalone apps as independent products than this in app-services. Messenger is a direct competitors to Whatsapp which the company bought for $19 billion.

Users will take long to get used to Messenger  app plus the many apps they have. Messengers disadvantage is it only helps Facebook expand but it only reaches Facebook users unlike other apps which are cross-platform.

Partnerships among upcoming TV channels and Cable TV companies are increasingly fuelling the Kenyan film industry. One such partnership between Kijiji and Zuku has delivered a world class Kenyan production called Groove Theory, which earned 4 nominations in this year’s Kalasha Film and TV Awards. The nominations came after its first series, which premiered in November 2013.

“The show was a co-production, Kijiji Entertainment provided content, while Zuku distributed and marketed the show,” said Kanjii Mbugua, the CEO of Kijiji Entertainment and producer of Groove Theory, which is the first musical series in Kenya.

The decision to now shoot a second series of Groove Theory was triggered by the show’s immediate success, and the assertion that both parties shared the same production qualities and standards.

A 2013 report by the Kenya Film Commission indicates that of the 44 million people in Kenya, 30.8 million can access to basic media, representing 70 percent. Out of this, 51.2 percent are active viewers. However, local programming reaches just a quarter of the population, Afro Cinema and telanovelas reach 35 percent, while Hollywood movies dominate with a 40 percent market share.

This means local producers are yet to understand what appeals to local audiences, and are still struggling to market the films to their targeted markets.

A recent report released during the AITEC Broadcast, Film and Music Africa 2014 states that the biggest challenge in filmmaking in Africa is distribution and marketing. The report further suggests the need for filmmakers to work together with sponsors to gain an advantage in such kind of markets.

The emerging trend of partnerships with pay TVs or local channels is now making this challenge easy for producers. The producer does his research and makes the right programme for a targeted station. This means he gives up the rights to exclusivity to broadcasters, but in return gets major sponsorship, international sales and exposure.

However, African filmmakers have assumed all roles in production, which has taken a toll on the success of their productions. According to research done on the perspectives of the Nigerian film audience, many African filmmakers, in order to be able to write and film, become many things in one or make videos and films on commission where no specific person does a specific task. This makes it difficult for the producer to handle content creation, marketing and distribution, leading to major losses to the film.

 The research also points to the need for African film producers to improve on their creativity and acquire more theoretical and technical knowledge in order to enhance their expertise and produce quality films that measure up to internationally acceptable standards.

“African film producers must strive to produce films of high production quality; films with different and distinct, rather than similar themes; films featuring different artists or talents rather than repeated, similar faces; and films with different, rather than similar, titles and story lines released at close intervals. They can only do this professionally through partnerships” said Kanjii.

There was a fiery exchange in an audio recording believed to have been between Ethics & Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) Chairman Mr Mumo Matemu with another party believed to have been Standard Group CEO Sam Shollei.

@SamShollei threatening to ‘bring down Matemu’ of #EACC if shollei’s wife is charged with corruption http://t.co/cwoAVKpwW4 @RobertAlai

— James Kunania (@JKunania) July 28, 2014

Ticket solutions provider Tickets Kenya has partnered with Safaricom to create a mobile platform for easy sale of tickets during sports, travel and entertainment events.

The new platform provides event organizers with a platform to sell tickets via M-Pesa. In return, buyers receive the tickets via SMS.

Tickets Kenya has over the recent past proven to be a responsible partner in events management. Established in June 2009, it has served over one million event goers.

The company becomes Safaricom’s main partner in mobile ticketing, a service that has made mobile phones point of sale for tickets.

Ticket Kenya designs and prints tickets with security features. It also makes customized wristbands, offers advanced sale solution, online point of sale, online event management system, Box Office management and events entry management services.

To place an order, customers can call 1511 to ask for tickets for an event of interest.

The customer care representative will reserve a ticket and send payment details via M-PESA through SMS.

The customer can then proceed to pay for the ticket after which he will receive a confirmation of purchase and a ticket through SMS that has a unique Ticket Number to be presented to a ticket agent at the event along with the SMS and ID details.

Last week, Global Micro Solutions and Microsoft partnered to boost South Africa’s cloud reseller market by providing practical advice on how to become a cloud provider and the benefits of using a local cloud partner.

The companies said opportunity exists for resellers to add cloud services to their offering and how and why they need to partner with a local provider.

Nick Keene, Cloud Sales Manager at Microsoft SA said,“The Hosting Service Provider Market is part of the Microsoft Cloud Strategy and as such Microsoft will continue to invest and support our HSP partners. Our hosting partners have many years of cloud experience as they have been providing cloud services since 2000. Recently Microsoft announced further integration between the hosting providers and the Microsoft public cloud that will allow our customers to obtain Public and Hosted Cloud from a one stop shop. Global Micro Solutions has been a long standing strategic hosting partner for Microsoft.”

Microsoft, through its Azure platform provides a cloud space for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacentres, like the one with Global Micro. The firm has long been promoting cloud solutions as a way to cut costs, save hardware space and bandwidth and use software as and when it is needed.

“People see one of the benefits of the cloud as being the opportunity to buy into a global framework anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world, but this isn’t strictly a benefit,” says JJ Milner, founder and chief cloud architect at Global Micro. “In truth, you want your data in the same country as you, bound by the same laws as you,  who will support you in your own language in a familiar accent. This is why you should have a local cloud partner.”

Partnerships with local partners ensure;

1. Data sovereignty: Simply put, your data is in the same country as you and governed by the same laws as you and your business, which are understood by any local legal advisors and technology consultants you may engage.
2. Local contacts: When and if something goes wrong, you can be confident that there is a viable, real, local contact that you can get in touch with who can, if necessary, come and see you to resolve the issue.
3. Efficient functionality: You will be able to easily and quickly control the uploading or downloading of your data whenever it is needed.

The Global Micro reseller programme has been created to allow consultants, web hosting companies or service providers to leverage the company’s enterprise infrastructure and expertise, and offer value-added services that are locally relevant and robust to their customers. Global Micro provides hosting infrastructure, the administrative control panel, and the 24/7 technical support and that all exist within South Africa’s borders, ensuring all the benefits of local cloud provisioning.

“We work with two independent datacentres and two independent ISPs. We provide our channel partners with the ability to get to market faster with automated management platforms.”

According to Milner, Global Micro offers Hybrid transitioning services, Messaging and collaboration, backup and data recovery, McAfee, Flowgear Ground-to-cloud integration, a defined roadmap of services that are integrated into the cloud, which partners can choose when to bring to market, the opportunity to earn up to 30% reselling white label cloud services, sales collateral – brochures, cheat sheets and FAQs, technical training so that they can hit the ground running and the ability to leverage the Global Micro sales and marketing team.