Mahindra Comviva and Ovum Consulting say there is great potential for digital commerce and payments.

According to Srinivas Nidugondi, Senior Vice President and Head, Mobile Financial Solutions, Mahindra Comviva,”Digital wallets have the potential to generate an unprecedented amount of customer transactional data. Service providers can harness this information to design engaging, contextual experiences for each stage of the customer’s interaction on the path to purchase.

In a whitepaper, the firms says as the customer progresses through a transaction, service providers for instance, can leverage customer location and transaction data to “listen and respond” to customer’s needs in real-time– e.g. deliver personalized offers.

Tracing the growth and uptake of digital wallet services across developed and developing regions over the last 18 months, the whitepaper examines why these services are becoming increasingly important, along with the benefits offered to customers and the overall ecosystem of operators, banks and merchants. It further highlights the growing trend amongst operators of inking partnerships and deploying white label platforms to enable merchant acquisition, transaction processing and functions pertaining to the role of trusted service manager.

To Nidugondi, realizing the benefits of a customer centric payments strategy requires an open platform that can seamlessly integrate with multiple systems. The underlying wallet delivery architecture must support an open services framework to integrate with payment networks, payment terminals, loyalty and personalization platforms. This drives acceptance at merchant locations, as well as allows consumers greater accessibility to more third-party services, such as price comparisons, offers and deals, accelerating consumer adoption.

Service providers need to capitalize and further accelerate the uptake of digital services by addressing critical issues like security, possible misuse of personal data and lack of information pertaining to the same. To overcome this, the whitepaper recommends that security credentials be made visible to customers by adopting a simple approach. Moreover, customers require adequate information pertaining to the benefits of using this service, particularly vis a vis other payment mechanisms.

Magic Software Enterprises Ltd. , an enterprise mobility, cloud applications, and business integration firm has announced the Magic xpa 2.5, along with a new Mobile Accelerator Framework.

The code-free, metadata-based Magic xpa Application Platform provides a development and deployment environment that lets organizations and ISVs quickly create multi-channel mobile and desktop business apps.

According to Ami Ries, Vice President, Research and Development at Magic Software Enterprises Ltd, “Magic has drawn on our mobile experience to add new capabilities that enhance the user interface and increase developer efficiency. This new release demonstrates Magic’s continuing commitment to providing our customers with the ability to easily create multiple modern business applications with minimum effort, meeting the needs and expectations of end users as well as their business.”

Mobile enhancements in the Magic xpa 2.5 release include an enriched User Experience, greater Platform Extensibility, Improved Developer Productivity and Push Notifications as well as support of Additional Databases and Technologies.

Magic is also introducing its Mobile Accelerator Framework that includes pre-built component-based development modules and best practices. The reusable components speed development and reduce resources required to create multi-platform mobile applications.

24 Online, a wireless hotspot Management solution allowing customers to monetize their wireless infrastructure and a product of India’s Elitecore Technologies has signed a deal with FVC, a Value Added Distributor (VAD) in the Middle East & Africa (MEA) to allow customers to monetize their wireless infrastructure.

Together, FVC and Elitecore will sign up ISPs, Hospitality & Hotspot service providers  in Africa, do sales, pre sales and marketing, do brand awareness and introduce and conduct partner certification programmes.

Ronald Hajj, Chief Innovation Officer at FVC, said: “As a VAD committed to providing cutting edge technology to our customers in the region, the addition of 24 Online will further help our integration partners offer a monetization option to enterprises in the field of hospitality, health care, airports, shopping malls and educational institutions in Africa. We will be investing in local pre-sales teams to help our partners maximize opportunities.”

24online chose FVC as its partner in Africa due to itss extensive reach across Africa through regional partner base in the continent.

Samiksh Aggarwal, AVP Sales for Data Networks at Elitecore said: “The partnership will help drive 24 Online’s expansion in the fast growing Internet Access management market. “

The agreement enhances FVC’s networking portfolio and strengthen its mobility offering to the enterprise sector in the African continent (except South Africa).

Elitecore’s 24 online is fully operational in Africa with satisfied customers across several sectors including ISPs, hospitality and hotspot segments like shopping malls, airports, educational institutions etc.

Aggarwal added, “We have a 100 % channel centric go-to-market strategy and we will appoint regional channel partners, with a view to becoming one of the top brands in Africa.”

Alcatel- Lucent has joined the Senegalese government, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to support the “Be Healthy, Be Mobile” initiative.

The mDiabetes project aims at combating diabetes with an ambitious and innovative campaign based on mobile technology, designed to improve prevention by raising awareness among diabetic patients as well as training health professionals. SMS messages as well as applications will be used as tools in the campaign.

Alcatel-Lucent will provide the Ministry of Health and their partners in Senegal with the MNC technological platform mBox as in-kind contribution to the project and will be responsible for coordinating the SaaS platform (software services) and SAP mobile services for the pilot application of “mDiabetes”.

“Senegal is ready for this mDiabetes project which is in a way a natural extension of the eDiabetes program developed by UNFM. Since 2009, it has helped to establish strong ties of cooperation between France and Senegal around diabetes and new technologies,” said Dr Kleinebreil, Vice-President of the UNFM (Université Numérique Francophone Mondiale – a NGO specialized in using ICTs for education in Africa).

Other partners in the project include the ITU, WHO, ASSAD (Senegalese  Association  for the Assistance and Support of Diabetes Patients), the African branch of the International Diabetes Federation, the NGO UNFM, the Marc Sankalé Diabetes Center, Alcatel-Lucent, Sonatel/Orange, BUPA (global international health insurance and services company), and Sanofi.

“We are convinced of the value of this project for improving the conditions for diabetes patients in Senegal and are genuinely delighted to be involved as a technological partner in contributing to the success of the mDiabetes project, which aims to improve prevention, raise awareness and combat diabetes and non-transmissible diseases in Senegal. This is an ambitious initiative which could ultimately be replicated in other countries in the fight against diabetes or any other disease,” said Alpin Verlet, Managing Director of Alcatel-Lucent for West and Central Africa.

Airtel Kenya in partnership with Apple Inc., makers of the iPhone range of smartphones, has today launched the iPhone 5s on the Airtel network set to officially stock the iPhone 5s handset in its outlets, giving mobile phone customers across the country an opportunity to purchase the smartphone in Airtel outlets.

Speaking during an event to unveil the iPhone 5s this morning, Airtel Kenya CEO Adil El Youssefi described the company’s partnership with Apple as the coming together of two great brands, saying the partnership is a demonstration of Apple’s trust in Airtel. Mr. Youssefi added that the collaboration ensures that customers can easily get the smartphone in Airtel’s shops as they also experience Airtel services.

According to Youssefi, iPhone 5s is believed to be one of the highest quality smartphones in the world, best used on a network that offers high speed internet services, out 3.75G network which is fast and available in major cities and towns in Kenya.

“Customers can enjoy all the multimedia services on the iPhone 5s on Airtel network: make clearer calls, access high speed internet and enjoy live streaming at high speeds,” he said, “At Airtel, we believe that the future of mobile telephony is mobile Internet and so we are repositioning to revolutionize this landscape with innovative value offerings and strategic partnerships.”

He added that the partnership with Apple is a testimony to Airtel’s desire to lead with Internet of which, would provide a leverage to empower our customers to enjoy high-speed Internet services on their devices and mobile phones on our network.

Mr. Youssefi reiterated that Airtel believes in offering the best products and services to its customers and will continue to go to great lengths to partner with world class service and product leaders such as Apple to ensure highest levels of service and latest generation technology.

Customers who buy the iPhone 5s which goes for Ksh. 86,500 from Airtel get 10GB internet bundle for 3 months period after purchase. This is in addition to a 1 year Apple warranty supported by the official apple distributor in Kenya, EMS.

Orange has rolled out West Africa’s first very large-capacity IP Point of Presence (PoP), located in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, set to enhance Internet connectivity in the sub-region by offering faster connection speeds and improved reliability for wholesale customers.

While Abidjan also hosts a landing point for the ACE submarine cable, a 17,000km-long cable which runs down the west coast of Africa from Europe, this makes it a suitable location for the IP PoP facility and allows for optimal connectivity with networks across the entire region.

An IP Point of Presence is part of the technical infrastructure equipment necessary to enable local networks to access the Internet through an interconnection point with long-distance carrier networks.

As a fully redundant IP PoP, the new facility opens up the region and allows Orange to offer high quality, secure connections over the wholesale market to West African countries. Over the medium and long term, the Abidjan IP PoP will facilitate the expansion of the African IP Market, which is an area of rapidly growing economic activity that sees Internet traffic rising at a rate of 41 per cent per year says a report.

By connecting to this very large-capacity PoP, wholesale customers, regional operators and Internet Service Providers will benefit from cost-effective connections to a Tier 1 operator. Additionally, the customer experience will be improved due to this connection point which will bring content providers closer to Internet users.

Present in 30 countries, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with sales of 41 billion euros in 2013 and has 164,000 employees worldwide at 31 March 2014, including 101,000 employees in France, Orange is a major Internet connectivity enabler and already has a strong position in Africa, where capacity is constantly increasing. Its objective is to adapt to changes in the industry and become the leading operator in the Internet era

A new survey entitled “Fresh Graduates in the Middle East and North Africa” by jobs website Bayt.com and market research agency YouGov has revealed that 73 per cent of graduates in UAE consider entrepreneurship as a valuable option, with the believe that finding a job is a challenge.

“It’s interesting that most graduates feel that the biggest challenge is that employers are looking for candidates with previous experience, when in fact, our research constantly proves that many employers in the MENA are heavily hiring fresh graduates,” Suhail Masri, VP of Sales, Bayt.com informed Emirates.

Graduates were surveyed online since May 26-June 26, 2014, with 1,586 respondents from UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. Despite the quality of the teaching methods, quality of infrastructure, sufficient technology usage for teaching, value for money paid, curriculum and qualification of teachers considered to be ‘good’ by UAE graduates, four fifths (81 per cent) claimed that jobs were hard to find, they found.

According to one fifth of UAE graduates, the most appealing industries from a career point of view are banking and finance, business consultancy, business management or management consulting, and advertising and marketing. A third of respondents said that their education prepared them to target the industry of their choice to ‘a large extent’.

Some 74 per cent of respondents noted that their college or university did not help them to identify job opportunities. For those whose colleges assisted them,60 per cent were assisted by job announcements  and career fairs helped them. Almost seven in 10 respondents acquired work experience either before or during their time at university, with 36 per cent having spent 1-6 months in a work placement.

Three quarters (70 per cent) graduates felt that the biggest challenge they face in finding a job is that employers are looking for candidates with previous experience, though knowing where to find relevant jobs is also considered to be a challenge by 37 per cent.

“To feel more comfortable, we advise fresh graduates to work on their transferable skills as well as to take as many relevant courses as possibly, mainly on leadership. Adding transferable skills and coursework to their CVs will certainly make an impact with hiring managers.” said Masri.