News (1352)
To accelerate the implementation of its 2021-2023 digital transformation strategy, Gabon initiated several projects including the construction of a national data center. The offer made by the Indian businessmen includes the designing, construction, and maintenance of those infrastructures.
Last Thursday, Gabon’s Digital Minister Jean Pierre Doukaga Kassa welcomed a delegation of Indian businessmen from the Shapoorji Pallonji group who expressed their interest in the Gabonese digital sector.
On social media, the Ministry of Digital Economy said that the businessmen "offered their expertise in the design, construction, and maintenance of digital infrastructure, including data centers.”
The group also presented the projects it completed in Egypt, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They also exchanged with the Minister on the extension of the national backbone to three of Gabon’s provinces. The backbone projects discussed include a 623 km network between Lambaréné, Mayumba, and Doussala on the border with Congo-Brazzaville.
The Minister of Digital Economy then instructed his collaborators both in the central administration and the state companies under his supervision to analyze the Indian businessmen’s offers.
The construction of a national data center is one of the Gabonese government's flagship projects for the management and storage of its data. According to the news website Le Nouveau Gabon, the Indian businessmen’s visit comes after a meeting between the Gabonese Ministers for Investment Promotion and Digital Economy to discuss the construction of that national data center.
This officialization marks the beginning of a digital process announced in July 2022.
Last Thursday, Cameroonian President Paul Biya (photo) signed a decree updating the conditions of entry, stay and exit for foreigners in Cameroon.
According to the said decree, obtaining an electronic visa requires the prior submission of a visa application on a dedicated website that will soon be launched. The application can be made, regardless of the geographical area of the applicant, following established administrative and financial terms.
After the application, an online visa authorization will then be issued to the applicant who will then be able to go either to a diplomatic mission or to a border post to formalize the visa. This final phase will be completed with an enrolment process consisting of taking fingerprints and photographs. According to the decree, the visa is issued within three days after the online application.
The e-visa project is part of the Cameroon Digital Strategic Plan. In June 2022, the government received the computer equipment that was to serve in the project, which will be implemented by the Abidjan-based firm Impact Palmarès R&D SAS. The bill updating the legal framework for entry, exit, and stay in Cameroon was submitted to the National Assembly on July 2, 2022.
The implementation of the e-visa project will help centralize and protect data, control entries, and exits and monitor the revenues generated by the government from visa applicants, who will now pay the fees online.
In July 2022, Minister for Foreign Affairs Lejeune Mbella Mbella indicated that the e-visa will also save time and costs for users since it will address two of the grievances always pointed out by foreigners seeking Cameroonian visas. Namely, it will end both the long trips to embassies and the long queues involved.
Samira Njoya
Nigerian universities train thousands of talented young people every year. However, most of them lack the valuable experience and knowledge to engage in technology entrepreneurship after college.
Last Wednesday, The Nest Innovation Technology Park, a Nigeria-based community that fosters tech startup innovation, launched the “Netlings Playbook,” a program designed to give university students access to the resources they need to explore digital entrepreneurship.
By giving access to the resources, the pioneer program, launched in partnership with Campus Innovation Circles (CIC), wants to allow beneficiaries to gain valuable experience and knowledge without significant risks.
“We believe that student entrepreneurs have the potential to create groundbreaking solutions to everyday problems. With The Nestlings Playbook’s innovative program, we’re empowering them to unleash their full potential and make a real impact in the African entrepreneurship ecosystem,” said Joba Oloba (photo, right), one of the co-founders of The Nest Innovation Technology Park.
For Nest, the Nigerian student ecosystem has numerous talented individuals but, there is a need to provide those individuals with the tools and resources to transition into the digital economy as entrepreneurs and not as primarily working-class talent. The goal is to “contribute to Africa’s transition to a digital economy through youth engagement.”
According to Toyin Bamidele, the lead, and coordinator of the Nestlings Playbook, the program is “one of the biggest collaborations to support founders across university communities exploring digital entrepreneurship to create prosperity.” The flagship program will launch with university communities and a call for applications will open in March 2023.
Samira Njoya
In Africa, the development of mobile telephony has greatly impacted critical sectors, including healthcare. By leveraging its technologies, the GSMA and Africa CDC want to improve the lives of millions of people and improve disease control.
Last Wednesday, the GSM Association (GSMA) and the African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) signed an agreement to harness the power of mobile to fight disease in Africa.
Under that agreement, the GSMA will work closely with Africa CDC on HealthConnekt Africa, a bold new initiative to connect all health facilities and personnel in Africa to the Internet by 2030.
“Bringing together expertise and resources will help establish a powerful new infrastructure, providing African healthcare workers access to the information they need in a timely fashion and the intelligence necessary to help prevent the spread of disease across international borders,” said Angela Wamola (photo, left), GSMA Head of Sub-Saharan Africa.
HealthConnekt Africa will begin with a small group of pioneering African Union member countries and communities. In the pioneering countries, health facilities will be connected to the Internet, and health workers equipped with smart devices that will allow them access to critical online resources to improve the quality of care provided to patients.
Over the past two decades, Africa has recorded phenomenal growth in mobile adoption. According to the World Bank and the African Development Bank, Africa had 650 million cell phone users in 2013, more than the users in the United States or Europe. At the same time, Swedish telecommunications group Ericsson indicates that Africa’s smartphone penetration will reach 70% by 2024.
Samira Njoya
Last December, the Biden administration announced $55 billion of new investments in Africa, including plans to expand digital access on the continent. About two months after that announcement, some projects are underway.
Last Friday, U.S. tech company Cisco announced a memorandum of understanding with the Thabo Mbeki Foundation for the realization of several projects, including the construction of a technology and education center in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“Prioritizing digital skills in young people is the first step to realizing South Africa’s potential as a forward-facing, technological powerhouse. We must step up our efforts to give learners the resources and support they need to become digitally savvy and inspire them to explore the potential of the technology they’re using,” said Smangele Nkosi, General Manager of Cisco South Africa.
Under the memorandum, Cisco will digitize the center’s end-user experience, sustaining and automating the infrastructure, cloud operations, data center, and implementing a holistic technology strategy that will position the center as a world-leading information and training repository.
In December 2022, at the U.S-Africa Summit, Cisco Systems announced a $200 million in-kind contribution to Africa for resources such as programs, tools, schools, and instructors. The U.S. company said the contribution would, among other things, extend digital skills and cybersecurity training to 3 million Africans.
So, in addition to the technology center, Cisco will build a digital skills platform that will complement the Thabo Mbeki Foundation's education programs and offer international certifications in cybersecurity, an in-demand skill that is essential for South Africa's digital transformation.
Samira Njoya
The fund aims to support women in their bid to advance tech innovation in Africa where they still face significant access to finance challenges.
Last Monday, the Women in Innovation Fund (WiNFUND), a nonprofit accelerator supporting women-led and women-focused businesses, announced the public launch of the WiNFUND NFT Africa Collection, a collection of unique digital artworks designed by Rwandan artist Christella Bijou.
The fund, launched in 2022, also disclosed its aims. “WiNFUND is an innovative model that will help entrepreneurs grow by building an engaged, global community that will provide business support and financing through the sale of unique NFTs,” said Patricia O'Hayer, co-founder of WiNFUND.
Co-founded by consumer goods company Reckitt, the Health Innovation and Investment Exchange (HIEx), Kofi Annan Foundation, and the Ecobank Foundation, it aims to address two major inequalities, namely women’s uneven access to essential health care and finance.
It will be partly financed by the sale of WiNFUND NFT while WiNFUND NFT holders will have access to invitation-only events on the Sustainable Development Goals and will be invited to join a mentoring program to directly support successful women entrepreneurs.
In the second half of 2022, it opened applications for women entrepreneurs seeking its support. Up to now, it has received 300 applications from seven African countries. The applicants shortlisted will receive business support to help them grow, while the best will receive direct funding from WiNFUND.
Samira Njoya
In Tanzania, the ICT sector is growing rapidly. But, to quicken the pace of growth, authorities want to attract foreign entrepreneurs.
Tanzanian Vice President Philip Mpango recently invited investors from around the world to explore and invest in Tanzania's ICT and digital transformation sector.
On Thursday, February 23, while opening the first Tanzania-European Union (EU) Business Forum in Dar es Salaam, he praised his country’s digital sector while reminding investors that the country's national ICT policy supports investments in digital infrastructure such as data centers and digital technology institutes.
"ICT and digital transformation are among the key drivers of rapid development...This is aimed at improving skills and leveraging cutting-edge digital innovations such as robotic engineering and artificial intelligence," he said before adding that the Tanzanian government was focused on building a dynamic economy based on four pillars, namely reform, reconciliation, resilience, and reconstruction.
To pave the way for domestic and international investors, the government has taken steps to strengthen and modernize the sector, including the establishment of the Tanzania Investment Centre and the Zanzibar Investment Promotion Authority. The centers are intended as one-stop shops for investment promotion and facilitation.
Attracting investments is just one of the actions being implemented by the Tanzanian government to develop the ICT sector. In October, the government inaugurated a $3.4 million infrastructure package. The infrastructures covered include 11 ICT centers in the 11 districts of Unguja and Pemba, the two main islands forming the Zanzibar archipelago, as well as 42 communication towers across the archipelago.
Samira Njoya
A few months ago, Tunisia kicked off the digitalization of its public services. The aims were, among others, to end unnecessary bureaucracy and guarantee the quality and efficiency required for the services.
Tunisia’s mobile ID project will target over 100,000 citizens this year, ICT Minister Nizar Ben Néji indicated last Friday.
During a campaign aimed at raising awareness of the benefits of mobile ID, the official explained that his ministry was working to reach more than 100,000 Tunisians this year and increase the number to the thousands in the years to come.
"The Ministry is working with banks to introduce mobile IDs in the banking sector,” he said pointing at the upcoming introduction of electronic contracts in car sales and purchase procedures.
The country launched its Mobile ID service on August 3, 2022. The ID was introduced as a universal and unique authentication method to access some public services online. The aim is to gradually replace cumbersome administrative procedures with digitized, simple, and fairly secure procedures.
Earlier this year, the official website dedicated to digital identity in Tunisia announced that as of Monday, January 2, 2023, the number of applications for digital identity not activated had reached 86,000 while the number of digital identities activated was 36,474. For the Minister of ICT, this is a good start. However, the country wants to generalize the use of the mobile ID and introduce other online services, in cooperation with other ministries. Hence the awareness campaign.
Samira Njoya
In sub-Saharan Africa, the chronic absence of civil servants tends to undermine many institutions. To address this growing phenomenon, governments are turning to digital technologies to provide adequate solutions.
The Gambia recently called on ministries, departments, and agencies to install biometric tallying systems to confirm the presence of civil servants at work. According to a memo issued by The Gambia's Ministry of Public Service, Administrative Reforms, Policy Coordination, and Implementation, the call is merely a reiteration of an earlier memo issued by the Secretary-General and Head of the Public Service in February 2021.
The memo instructs the concerned institutions to acquire and install the biometric attendance system, per the specifications, by the end of February 2023.
Recently in Kenya, the Nairobi County government made a similar decision. It announced that it would introduce a digital employee registration system and biometric identity cards to identify "ghost" employees at the town hall.
Johnson Sakaja, the governor of Nairobi, said the county had budgeted Ksh10 million ($79,000) for the project, which will identify irregular workers among the approximately 13,000 civil servants working for the city council.
Meanwhile, in Gambia, the government plans to replace ID cards with an electronic biometric tallying system, with data to be printed weekly and transmitted monthly to the secretary general and head of the civil service.
The new reforms aim to combat the ills that plague the sector (including absenteeism), modernize the administration, and reduce the huge wage bill that ghost workers impose on the government.
Samira Njoya
The Egyptian government has made citizen-centric digital transformation a key factor in its development. To achieve its goals, it has increased investment in the ICT sector.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi (photo, center) recently called on his government to provide all necessary support to build and develop the skills of Egypt's youth, support start-ups and encourage their expansion in the ICT sector.
Last Saturday, during his meeting with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli and Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat, the Egyptian president issued "directives to continue the state's efforts in digital transformation and the automation of administrative and governmental procedures." According to the presidency, the directives aim to "assist citizens and reduce time, effort and costs [...] while keeping up with the state-of-the-art technological applications in the field of artificial intelligence, whose importance and added value steadily increase globally."
In recent years, thanks to its digital strategy "Digital Egypt", the country has made significant progress in the digital sector. It has implemented several initiatives and projects, including "Egypt Digital Cubs", and digital innovation centers, as well as the development of Egyptian post offices, real estate registration offices, technology parks, and applied technology schools.
In July 2022, the government announced the allocation of a budget of EGP 6.025 trillion ($319.1 million) for digital and cybersecurity projects in the fiscal year 2022-2023. Specifically, EGP 5.4 trillion will be allocated to digital transformation projects and the development of digital skills.
The initiatives and efforts directed by the President of the Republic are in line with Vision 2030, the country's development strategy, which aims to strengthen economic and social development in all sectors and make the country a digital pole of excellence in Africa.
Samira Njoya
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Thanks to the assistance, Kenya expects to complete its ongoing digital projects within ten years.
Last Thursday, the Kenyan Minister of Digital Economy Eliud Owalo (photo) indicated the country requested the World Bank's financial assistance for the partial implementation of its 100,000-km fiber deployment project.
“With Cabinet approval already in place, we are now set to roll out an initial 5,000 kilometers by June 2023. We are also in talks with the World Bank, through the National Treasury, to secure part of the funding for the digital superhighway, through the Kenya Digital Economy Acceleration Project (KDEAP),” the government official said speaking at the third edition of the digital summit organized by the Nation Media Group in Mombasa. The fiber optic project is part of the 2022-2023 National Digital Master Plan launched in April 2022.
During the digital summit, Eliud Owalo also announced other equally important digital projects, including the implementation of a national identity system by June, the integration of 5,000 government services on the e-citizen portal, and the digitization of the land registry which could potentially unlock 100 million shillings in revenue (about $790,000) from the land sector.
Samira Njoya
Several African countries have adopted biometric identification in strategic sectors like public administration, security, transport, and finance. This much-appreciated development stems from their will to improve efficiency but, this adoption raises concerns, about various cases of abuse, it could facilitate.
Over the past decade, biometric adoption was accelerated in Africa with governments instituting fingerprint, facial, and iris recognition as the authentication norms in the issuance of various identity documents. and national identity cards. In its 2020-2030 Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa, the African Union even emphasized the use of such biometric identification technologies.
The Pan-African Development Institution believes that digital identity is essential for the digital economy because it promotes trust in all interactions, both online and offline.
However, this growing adoption of biometric technologies raises concerns given the legal weaknesses in African countries' data protection laws. In its report "State of play on Internet freedom in Africa 2022: the rise of biometric surveillance", the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) fears abuses such as profiling or targeting, that are dangerous for individual freedoms.
"The use of CCTV with embedded facial recognition technologies is increasingly becoming more accessible and prevalent on the continent, yet these systems tend to be intrusive. These systems can track the movement of people, recognize motor-vehicle number plates, and match live footage of people in the public with images of those on a ‘watch list’ based on their ability to recognize specific and unique facial features, akin to fingerprinting," the research center explains.
According to Africa Data Protection, by January 2023, only 35 out of 54 African countries had a data protection law while only 22 countries had a data protection authority.
At a time when many African countries are still among the "unfree" states (in the Global Freedom Score 2022), CIPESA stresses that "the right to privacy is essential in a democratic society as it plays a critical role in the realization and enjoyment of the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly and access to information." The center believes that there should be strict oversight on the use of biometric data.
Muriel Edjo
Since its launch in 2015, the App Challenge has supported the development of digital applications that address African issues. The challenges allow projects to access personalized support and even financing (for some projects).
Last Friday, the jury of the Africa App Challenge unveiled the 10 finalists of the seventh edition of the challenge.
The challenge, organized by France Médias Monde, aims to encourage the development of innovative solutions (mobile and web) that promote sustainable agriculture in Africa. The ten finalists are from Cameroon, Rwanda, Benin, DRC, Tunisia, and Morocco.
The selected projects are:
- Crop's Talk is a mobile application developed by Tunisian Rabeb Fersi to help small farmers improve their productivity and resilience to climate change.
- Bazafarm is a real-time soil quality monitoring system developed by Rwandan national Samantha Ruzibiza.
- Ki@foret, a platform created by Beninese-born Finagnon Robert Agbovoedo, connects non-timber forest product collectors and traders with the products going to the highest bidders.
- MukulimaSoko is a digital and physical trading and renovation center offering several services to agricultural actors. The project was designed by Mbumba Lapaque from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- OGPM (Outil de Gestion de Projet Agricole), developed by Cameroonian Adamou Nchange Kouotou, is a digital platform made up of two applications. The first is a mobile app that collects information to analyze technical agricultural risks while the second is a web app that recommends the best agricultural credits and facilitates technical and commercial support for farmers.
- E-Pinea is a mobile application that connects pineapple producers to potential buyers through a dynamic map that allows buyers to locate pineapple plantations and the plants' maturity state in real time. It also offers an online trading space that allows processors and suppliers to display and sell pineapple products and related services. It was designed by Lucien Medjiko from Benin.
- Kivugreen, developed by DRC native Chris Ayale, is a digital platform that provides small-scale farmers with technical information such as weather, market price, and agricultural advice. It also gives them access to a broader market.
- Daki Farm, launched by Moroccan-born Mounir Jamaï, is an app ecosystem made of two main apps. The first app is Daki Farm e-learning which gives agricultural training in local languages. The second app is Daki Farm Smart Irrigation which helps properly irrigate crops according to plants' needs and weather conditions.
- Pallitracks is a sustainable forest management platform developed by Cameroonian-born Jean Gilbert Soh Ndeh. It was initially developed, in 2012, to ensure the traceability and management of forest products.
- Clinicagro provides an in-depth diagnosis of soil and plant diseases, as well as various soil-related technical indicators. It was developed by Cameroonian-born Pyrrus Oreste Kouoplong Koudjou.
As usual, the ten finalists will receive personalized support from an incubator in their respective origin countries. The winner will also receive €15,000 to develop his/her project.
Samira Njoya
In its seven African markets, Bolt claims more than 47 million customers, 900,000 drivers, and more than one billion trips. Its new investments are expected to generate more than 300,000 new jobs.
Last Thursday, Estonian mobility start-up Bolt announced plans to invest €500 million to expand its activities in Africa over the next two years.
According to the company's statement, the investments will create new opportunities allowing more than 300,000 new drivers and couriers to join the platform by 2023. "Over the past seven years, we have built a strong team of 500 people in Africa and we remain committed to investing in local communities for the long term," said Markus Villig, Bolt's founder and CEO.
On Monday, February 20, Linda Ndungu, Bolt Kenya's country manager, announced that of the planned investment amount, €100 million will be injected into the Kenyan subsidiary to expand its services beyond the 16 cities where it currently operates.
As such, this investment is expected to intensify the growing competition in the Kenya mobility sector that recently welcomed new entrants such as Farasi Cabs and Yego Global. Nevertheless, Bolt remains the largest ride-sharing services provider by the number of cities covered in Kenya.
The multinational company plans to add more employees to its team of 200 in South Africa while establishing additional offices across the continent in the next 12 to 18 months. To date, Bolt has more than 100 million customers worldwide, nearly half of whom are based in Africa.
Samira Njoya