Thieves and vandals are at it again, using the cover of darkness wrought by the current bout of load-shedding to target mobile operators’ base stations. Since Eskom started load-shedding, SA’s mobile operators have seen a spike in incidents of theft and vandalism of their infrastructure, leaving communities without connectivity. Over the years, whenever troubled power...
The Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MINT) of Ethiopia and the Internet Society announced a new collaboration agreement to help advance the digital economy and drive economic transformation. The Digital Ethiopia 2025 Strategy was officially introduced last year by the Ethiopian government with the central goal to leverage digital technologies to bolster socio-economic development. The...
The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) will help fund a fibre rollout feasibility study aimed at expanding reliable and affordable Internet access and digital services to underserved populations living outside of South Africa’s major urban centres. It will contribute $901,188 (around R12.3 million) to the study, which is expected to start within months and...
Only six months to wait, and Ethiopians will be able to experiment with new telecom services at more advantageous prices. The Global Partnership for Ethiopia consortium has completed all administrative procedures that confirm it as a new player in the national telecoms market. The Global Partnership for Ethiopia consortium (made up of Safaricom, Sumitomo, Vodacom, Vodafone...
President Cyril Ramaphosa encouraged telecommunications operators, sector regulator Icasa and the department of communications to engage in mediation to get South Africa’s spectrum auction back on track. The auction was due to take place at the end of March but was derailed after Telkom and e.tv successful secured an interdict preventing it from going ahead. MTN...
Tanzania has initiated feasibility studies to ascertain the possibility of connecting the DRC to its National Information and Communications Technology Broadband Backbone (NICTBB). Tanzania’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dr Faustine Ndugulile said the objective was to establish the East African country as a communication hub for the East and Southern African regions. The...
Over the last three years, SA, Nigeria and Kenya have maintained their positions as the top three market contributors to e-commerce in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. In 2020, West African nation Ghana also broke ground, tied in third place with Kenya. This is according to Visa’s “E-commerce developments across Sub-Saharan Africa” white paper, which highlights...
MTN, Airtel, Globacom and other telecommunication companies lost more than three million subscribers in the month of April 2021, according to a report released yesterday by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). The industry report showed that subscriber base fell from 192,413,613 in March to 188,705,734 in April. According to NCC, Globacom was the biggest loser...
In its bid to boost Liberia’s digital financial platform, Lonestar Cell MTN has launched its MTN Mobile Money In-App QR Code. The app, identified as MTN Momo can be easily downloaded from the apps store and can be used to perform whatever financial transactions in both the Liberian and U.S. currencies, much faster and convenience...
The much-rumoured eSIMs developed by Safaricom have officially been released in Kenya. What is an eSIM? eSIM or embedded SIM is built into your phone. It is a tiny device, much smaller than even the smallest available micro SIMs. The smallest “nano” SIM is 8.8 mm by 12.3 mm, whereas an eSIM is 2.5 mm...
