Sony Mobile today said the its Xperia M will be available in South Africa and across the continent from September 2013 in black and white at a recommended retail price of R 3499.00 (about $350).

The Xperia M has NFC connectivity for one-touch functions, stunning design and a range of technologies including: a high quality screen for sharp viewing; smart camera functionality for impressive pictures and videos. The Xperia M also features colour-changing illuminations that can be personalised to visually alert you to incoming calls, text messages and alarms.

Its media applications promise entertainment experiences across mobile, tablet, desktop and PlayStation and the “WALKMAN”, Album and Movies apps, provide content through a single access point with new ways to enjoy and share the content.

Key features Xperia M

OS    Android OS, v4.1 (Jelly Bean)
Chip    Qualcomm Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8227
CPU    Dual-core 1 GHz Krait

RAM    4 GB, 1 GB
Network- 2G ,3G
SIM    Optional Dual SIM
Dimensions    124 x 62 x 9.3 mm
Weight    115 g
Display    TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size    480 x 854 pixels, 4.0 inches (~245 ppi pixel density)
Memory    Card slot    microSD, up to 32 GB
Camera    Primary    5 MP, 2592х1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality
Battery life      Li-Ion 1750 mAh battery with stand-by time of up to 552 hrs on 2G or up to 454 h  on 3G while talk time  is up to 10 h 18 min on 2G and up to 9 h (3G) and up to 39 h 24 min on music.
Colour:  Black, Purple, White and Yellow colour variations

The Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) has today announced that it will invest over Ksh150 million in various social projects mainly targeting marginalized communities.

In a ceremony to award 19 secondary schools and 20 university scholarships to bright but needy students from communities near its installations around the country; KenGen acting MD& CEO Eng. Simon Ngure said that the projects will cover education, health and environment among others and will concentrate on communities in areas where the company has power generation installations.

“We are revamping our social and community interventions and currently transitioning our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities to a fully-fledged Foundation,” said Mr. Ngure. 

This brings to 284 the number of students who have so far benefited from the programme since it was launched in 2005. KenGen has so far awarded scholarships worth Ksh34.6 million.

The KenGen Education programme is part of KenGen’s wider Corporate Social Investment which has been running for seven years, now being implemented under a newly registered foundation, the KenGen Foundation.

Cabinet Secretary for Energy Hon. Davis Chirchir recognized that KenGen has continued to play a major role in the economy and lauded the scholarship initiative saying it contributes to the country’s human resource development.

“The scholarship programme sponsored by KenGen has had a major impact on marginalized communities particularly in Turkwell and Garissa. Already, the programme has borne fruit considering that some of the beneficiaries have already joined the labor market,” said Mr. Chirchir in a speech read on his behalf by a senior ministry official Mr. Jon Omenge.

The initiative has brought on board students from different parts of the country, including marginalized areas like the conflict-prone north western Kenya.

Google Country Director for Kenya and Sub-Saharan Africa Joe Mucheru, who was the key speaker at the ceremony, challenged the students to work hard and should view the globe as their job market.

During the event, Eng. Ngure also revealed that the national power generator will play a lead role in meeting the 5000MW new capacity that the government has set to attain over the next 40 months.

The South African Police Service has released a tender to the market for biometric technology equipment, which has bore a lot of controversy for the domestic biometric technology market.

Well, at least that is what executive management at Ideco thinks. Ideco is an established leader in the application of biometric technology and Southern Africa’s primary distributor of Morpho fingerprint biometric solutions.

The managing Director for Ideco,Marius Coetzee, believes that the level of instruction and direction within the tender is on equivalence with anything that would be released at global law enforcement agencies such as Scotland Yard or the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation).

He specified the fact that the tender would ensure a chain of evidence that could be used as indisputable proof of an identity.

“The SA industry needs to realize that few biometric solutions operate totally in isolation. At some point it needs to interface to SAPS for criminal record checks or to the DHA for online fingerprint verification or to other legacy systems for identity clearing. If industry solutions do not comply with these minimum standards the civil systems would simply reject it,” said the MD.

The tender defines that biometric solutions must comply with various elements, including quality of fingerprint images as specified by the FBI and endorsed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), biometric information management as specified by FIPS 201 and South Africa’s SABS under SANS 19785, as well as biometric information interoperability as specified by SABS under SANS 19794.

“It is important to note that the local industry seldom considers any standards. Procurements are based on features or functionality and looks, only to realize in court that the evidence render useless. In many cases the industry is also mislead about standards because suppliers simply do not understand the relevance of certain standards,” Coetzee adds.

As the primary distributor of Morpho biometric readers and exclusive support and repair centre for Morpho in South Africa, Ideco is using its leadership position in the market to back its partners in their response to the tender.

The government of Ghana launched a tele-presence conferencing facility for the judiciary, to improve the work at Judicial Service at the Supreme Court building in Accra.

This was one of the phases in the e-government project phase one, being implemented by the Ministry of Communications and implemented by the National Information Technology Agency (NITA).

The facility would be used in training members of the judiciary and staff of other organizations overseas, without necessarily flying them out for the same programme. It would also be used as a facility for meetings among different sections of the staff across the country, which would reduce cost of transportation and risk of travelling among others.

The project that is also meant to be spread to Tamale, Kumasi and Takoradi will enable judges receive testimony and evidence from people living abroad. It would also increase the number of sitting days of judges from four days to five days and expedite cases.

“This will improve case management and to expedite justice delivery, especially at the Appeal Division, since management has set up additional courts of Appeal in Kumasi, Cape Coast, Koforidua and Tamale. Currently, these courts work four days in the week, that is Mondays to Thursdays and deliver judgments on Fridays,” Chief Justice Her Ladyship Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood said during the opening.

These new developments in the judiciary are being spearheaded by Chinese technology firm, Huawei Technologies.

Global telecoms solutions provider, Ericsson is advocating for the adoption of the open access model. This comes in time as Kenya’s IT sector is preparing to benefit from faster connectivity and Internet speeds arising from the deployment of 4G or Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks.

In a media workshop on LTE held today, David Ochanda, Ericsson Kenya business development director, said that the open access model would ensure that all parts of the country are covered by the technology, resulting to enhanced broadband penetration in the country.

With open access infrastructure will be made available to clients other than the owners for a fee. Open access being telecoms and in this case the LTE.

“The Open Access model – if adopted by the Kenya government and by extension the IT industry – will see the network being deployed countrywide. When left to deploy the LTE network as proposed in the consortium model, the MNOs will only focus on high potential areas where they can get maximum revenues thereby further minimizing access to broadband services by under-served regions,” said Ochanda.

He added that Kenya was meant to be the pioneer in Open Access before other countries in the region can learn from it. However, this is not the case,he thought, as this has been realized by Rwanda and is expected to lead the region by deploying its LTE through the Open Access.

Ericsson’s workshop came at a time when various models have been proposed for the LTE deployment in the country, through the state regulator Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) forming a 9-member association to lead the deployment.

The 9-member LTE association includes the Kenya government (through Treasury) as well as Safaricom, Telkom Kenya-Orange, Airtel, Essar Telecom’s yuKenya, KDN, MTN, Alcatel-Lucent and Epesi Communications. It was set up to implement the initial phase of the country’s LTE project at cost of Kshs 8.4 billion.

The mobile network operators in the association – Safaricom, Telkom Kenya, Airtel and yuKenya – were expected to provide their masts and BTS under a shared-infrastructure model while the equipment makers reach a formula on how to roll out the network.

Notably, Ericsson proposed to build a country-wide 4G/LTE network for free and recover the costs after a 15-year period.  

Industry statistics indicate that by 2020, it is projected that the ICT industry will have moved to 5G technology, with much of the data traffic expected to come from smart devices like home appliances rather than phones and tablets.

Already, Ericsson has deployed LTE/4G networks in several African countries – among these being Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Angola and Botswana.   

The Municipality of Johannesburg reassured the city residence that their personal information was not compromised by the hacking of the City’s billing systems.

“The City of Jo’burg has experienced an unfortunate breach of its information technology system, which has been widely reported in the media,” said spokesman Gabu Tugwana. “The city would like to assure its residents that this is an isolated incident; the necessary legal and technical steps are being taken to prevent similar incidents in future.”

Eyewitness News reported that the municipality’s online services system was temporarily shut down on Tuesday, the 20 August, after it became possible for anyone with an Internet connection to view municipal invoices.

Tugwana said at no stage was any resident’s personal information, such as banking details or ID numbers, compromised.

“The information that was accessed was not from the transactional engine of the billing system of the City of Jo’burg and the perpetrators were not able to transact on any of the information they accessed. The city is busy with its own forensic investigation with its IT partner to assist the police with the criminal case that will be opened at as a result of this incident,” said the spokesman.

Any future breach aimed at stealing personal or municipal information would be regarded as a crime. The municipality promised to keep residents informed about any development on the security rupture and the actions taken to insure it was dealt with effectively.

Residents who needed a copy of their accounts were advised to visit their their nearest customer service centre or call the municipality’s call centre.

The border post of South Africa has now gone digital as the SA Revenue Service (SARS) has introduced a new digital customs management systems.

“This is a very important milestone,” Gordhan told media at Megawatt Park in Sunninghill, Johannesburg. “We will be one of the few countries in the world that has completely digitized customs processes,” said the Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

The new system centralizes the clearing of all import and export declarations and uses a single processing engine. This helps to reduce red tape. The system was effective on 17th August after running at the same time with the old one for six months during a testing phase.

“This digitized customs process helps legal trade to happen and happen faster,” Gordhan explained.

“There has been a huge reduction in time for those that are legitimate traders. What the system does is to make it [trade] fully electronic, get many middle people out of the way and allows businesses to get their goods quickly,” he added.

The minister said that last year more than 4.3 million containers worth R2.5 trillion moved across the country’s borders, adding that SARS customs officials used about 16 million pieces of paper to process 5.5 million declarations received at the time

“The customs management system now eliminates virtually 99 percent if not all of that paper,” he said.

Gordhan said the new system would improve competitiveness and reduce crime by detecting unlawful goods more promptly. It had better security and risk detection elements meaning that people “can’t play around with the numbers”.

Renewable energy sources seem will be the answer to Africa’s lighting problem, as a new report by IFC and World Bank indicate that more people in the continent will have access to clean energy by 2015.

The report, Lighting Africa Market Trends Report 2012 – Overview of an the Off-Grid Lighting Market in Africa  indicates that 600 million Africans still use the expensive and unreliable sources of lighting such as kerosene.

With this hindsight, the IFC and World Bank launched a programme titled, Lighting Africa to spread the use of solar devices for lighting African homes.

In the last three years this sector for solar lighting gadgets has seen a rise of 300 per cent. This is also fuelled by the fact that bigger corporation such as TOTAL, Panasonic and Energizer are getting into the space.

“IFC and the World Bank are committed to ensuring consumers gain better access to products that meet basic needs. With the price declines in raw materials and solar panels, off-grid lamps are becoming increasingly affordable and within reach for rural households that lack electricity. Lighting Africa on track to reach 250 million people without electricity by 2030,” Itotia Njagi, Lighting Africa’s Program Manager, said.

Current product offerings have benefited from a decline in manufacturing costs while quality has improved with longer battery life, increased brightness and new features such as mobile phone charging and pay-as-you-go options from the current product offering becoming more common, the report denoted.