Brief (381)
The PAYAIG (Pan-African Youth Ambassador for Internet Governance) initiative developed by Cyber Czar and supported by the British government announced, Tuesday (May 2), the opening of applications for its Internet governance program in Africa.
Applicants must be between 18 and 30 years old, reside in any African country, be able to communicate effectively in one of five languages: English, Arabic, French, Portuguese, or Swahili, and be motivated by Internet governance. The deadline for applications is May 19.
Nigerian fintech company Storspay announced on Monday (May 1st), the successful completion of a $320,000 funding round. The deal allows the startup to join the New York-based accelerator Techstars for a 13-week fundraising and mentoring program. The funds raised will allow the fintech to develop its technology and improve the financial well-being of entrepreneurs through its decentralized Internet lending infrastructure.
Last Saturday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced an order requiring Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, CEO of South African company Mirror Trading, to pay $3.4 billion over bitcoin fraud. Specifically, Steynberg will have to restitute in excess of $1.7 billion to defrauded victims and pay over $1.7 billion in civil penalties.
Non-profit organization Tech4Dev recently announced the launch of its Women Techsters initiative, aimed at providing scholarships for a virtual learning program to girls and women in Africa.
The program will equip participants with skills in blockchain, cybersecurity, data science, and artificial intelligence engineering, mixed reality/3D animation, mobile app development, product design (UI/UX), product management, and software development.
African women between the ages of 16 and 40 interested in the program are invited to apply by May 27.
Last week, the Beninese IT development agency ASIN organized a workshop to review and update the national cybersecurity strategy.
This mid-term review gave digital actors the opportunity to lay the foundations for the coming update, which aims to respond to the new challenges arising from the evolution of digital uses and related threats, three years after the strategy was launched.
The Cameroonian Union of hospitality employers SPIHT launched, Tuesday (April 25), a digital platform for the promotion of the local hotel and tourism industry.
The platform, called Waka Waka 237, allows visitors to find and book hotel rooms, apartments, restaurants, tourist sites, and travel agencies throughout Cameroon.
The Pan African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) and the African Securities Exchange Association (ASEA), on Friday April, 14, signed a memorandum of understanding to improve cross-border payment systems and promote the development of financial markets in Africa.
According to the release announcing the memorandum, the partnership will, among other things, create a reliable and efficient payment system that will allow investors to easily carry out transactions on various transactions on the continent.
Waves of layoffs are multiplying in major American tech companies. In November, Meta set the tone by cutting 11,000 jobs, and others have followed. Since the beginning of 2023, over 210 tech companies have laid off 68,000 people, mainly in the United States."
The National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS) has filed a lawsuit against the federal government regarding the proposed imposition of a 5% excise duty on telecommunications services. According to the organization, this decision is unjust in view of the multiple taxes already paid by telecom consumers. In September 2022, the Nigerian government abandoned its plan to introduce a 5% excise duty on telecom services. Today the executive is trying a second time to impose this tax because it wants to primarily rely on taxation to finance its 2023 budget.
Digital technologies are still widely underutilized in microenterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa despite their huge potential for productivity gains, according to a report published on January 23rd by the World Bank. The main factors that prevent African microenterprises from using computers, smartphones, or stock management software on a large scale are the lack of information about these technologies, insufficient digital skills, the high cost, and the lack of suitable infrastructure.
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The Central African Republic component of the Central African Backbone (CAB-RCA) project is finally entering its operational phase. The infrastructures were officially handed over to the Central African government on Monday, January 7th in the presence of partners. Spanning 935 km, they connect the Central African Republic (CAR) to the Republic of Congo and Cameroon. The network's commercialization is expected to begin "soon."
Data center operator iColo, a subsidiary of Digital Realty, inaugurated its first operator-neutral data center in Maputo, Mozambique on Wednesday, February 8th. Named MPM1, the infrastructure is expected to allow the company to expand its footprint and meet growing connectivity needs along the East Coast of Africa. The project was first announced in October 2021.
Wholesale bandwidth provider West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) has laid the 2Africa fiber optic submarine cable at the Durban Open Access Data Centers (OADC) in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. This is the fourth and final landing of this infrastructure in the rainbow nation.
The arrival of 2Africa in KwaZulu-Natal comes about three weeks after Vodacom laid the same cable system in its Gqeberha facilities in Eastern Cape. A month earlier, MTN SA and MTN GlobalConnect landed the cable in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein in the Western Cape.
The Zimbabwean government has announced that it plans to deploy over 300 base stations across the country this year to address connectivity issues, particularly in rural areas. The equipment needed to build these telecoms infrastructures has already been purchased, it has been learned. Installation and operation will be entrusted to NetOne, the mobile branch of the historic operator TelOne. " We have sent in our team to conduct mapping and scoping and we want to make sure that we connect the unconnected." said Jenfan Muswere, Minister of Information, Communication, Technology, and Postal and Courier Services.