Archive for the ‘background’ Category

Digital super highway between East Africa and Europe

Mittwoch, April 8th, 2009

SEACOM has signed a contract with Interoute to connect its 17,000 kilometre intercontinental submarine fibre optic network to Interoute’s pan-European fibre optic network, providing East Africa with access to major business centres in Europe and throughout the rest of the world, plus Interoute’s range of innovative wholesale and enterprise services.

East Africa has seen a phenomenal increase in demand for Internet connectivity, with users rising by 1062% from 2000 to 2008 (Source: Internet World Stats).

The development of telecoms in East Africa has been restricted owing to its dependence on low capacity expensive satellite based connectivity. which suffered from quality issues and increased round trip delay not suitable for large streams of rich multimedia content The new subsea cable will radically change the economics of high capacity bandwidth for the East African telecoms industry, enabling businesses to get more capacity for less cost, and at a higher quality.

SEACOM’s new fibre optic cable will run along the east coast of Africa, creating a digital super highway that links South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya with Europe and South Asia. The cable will extend to Marseilles, where it will connect to Interoute’s network providing a speed of light route to Europe, North America and the Middle East. The new subsea cable is scheduled for service in June 2009, and will offer 1.28 Tera-Bits Per Second of capacity, the equivalent of streaming approximately 1,600,000 simultaneous YouTube videos and will enable high definition TV, peer to peer networks, and IPTV, as well as supporting surging Internet demand.

2008 was a strong outsourcing year – even for Africa

Samstag, Januar 31st, 2009

TPI, the largest sourcing data and advisory firm in the world, revealed 2008 was a strong year for the outsourcing industry with both total contract and annualized contract values exceeding overall values for 2007.

The TPI Index, which measures commercial contracts greater than $25 million, also showed that India-based providers made steady and significant increases in market share this year. However, it also indicates that the global financial crisis is impacting the form of outsourcing contracts as corporations focus on near-term concerns related to their day-to-day business.

Total contract values (TCVs) softened in the second half of 2008, producing one of the weakest half years for TCV performance on record. Strong performance from the first half of the year sustained the $90 billion year-end TCV. Annualized contract value (ACV) — the TCV divided by the duration of the contract — was the largest ever with a record $17 billion. This fact reflects the impact of shorter overall contract duration, another evidence of a tactical orientation to outsourcing.

In 2008, the market was defined by a 12 percent increase in smaller contract awards. These comprise contracts of less than $1 billion in value and represent the inherent demand for outsourcing among corporations.

While the first half of 2008 witnessed 12 mega deals, or contracts valued at more than $1 billion, the second half of 2008 only had three mega deals — making the first half of 2008 very front end heavy. Historically, mega deals have been move evenly spread across the half-years. These higher-valued contracts weigh heavily on the TCV record for the full year tally.

With more providers that have deeper capabilities than ever before, the industry stands prepared to respond quickly to these challenges. In many ways, 2009 will be a defining year for outsourcing as the industry steps up to help clients find near-term cost-realignment opportunities.

Additionally there were telling industry sector and geographical trends that are important to note. Declining activity in the financial services sector had the greatest impact on overall 2008 values while manufacturing, telecommunication and energy increased their TCVs a moderate or substantial amount. In the second half of the year, financial services TCV actually increased as a result of companies divesting captive offshore operations and issuing an associated outsourcing services agreement.

Contract volume and its share of the total market have increased in EMEA, with the region accounting for 55 percent of the global outsourcing market TCV, while the U.S. accounted for 38 percent. 2008 is the first year EMEA contracts surpassed those in the Americas. The regional contrasts in the use of IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing are also noteworthy. EMEA adopted the most IT outsourcing – 62 percent in 2008. The Americas adopted the most business process outsourcing – 43 percent in 2008.

While contract values remained steady in the Americas during 2008, EMEA saw its strongest half-year in the first half of the year followed by a drop of nearly 50 percent in the second half. Asia-Pacific values nearly tripled between the first and second half of 2008 with a TCV in the second half that was at its highest in two years. This can be attributed to significant gains in the Indian market as well as captive center disposals as it now ranks fifth among countries where companies were awarding the most outsourcing contract value.

„I still think that 2009 will be a defining year for outsourcing“, Mike Slavin from TPI says.

Black Weblog Awards: The Roberto Blanco of the Blog Awards

Dienstag, Dezember 16th, 2008

Black Weblog AwardI have learned, that there are  ‚Black Weblog Award‘ out there.

The Black Weblog Awards were created in 200 a) to recognize the best black bloggers in the industry and b) to serve as a platform for supporting and uplifting those shaping the minds of the black community through the use of online technology and communication.
The Black Weblog Awards‘ mission is to empower and encourage black bloggers to continue creating more original content, open dialogue, unique storytelling and diverse views. „Our lives, our stories and our voices matter.“

But, I am afraid, in the list of winners there are mainly Americans, mostly in the field of fashion and mostly strict conservative.  „After 9,400+ nominations and over 1,500 votes“ (more nominations than votes….), its the whitest Black Weblog Award, you can set up.

Africa’s first online delivery site for African content has started

Mittwoch, Oktober 29th, 2008

A24 Media has delivered a sorely needed shot in the arm to the African media environment with the launch of its online content delivery site, designed to bring the African voice to a global audience.
“A24 Media will change the face of journalism in Africa and will truly give us Africans control over our stories” hopes Salim Amin, Chairman of A24 Media in Nairobi.

A24 Media is Africa’s first online delivery site for material from journalists, African broadcasters
and NGO’s from around the Continent. The organisation is committed to building the
capacity of reporters and photographers to compete globally for share of voice for African
issues and is thus solely structured with the journalist’s needs in mind.

Content generators will send their material to the main office in Nairobi where it will be
verified and re-edited as necessary to create a slick, marketable and branded story. The
stories will be checked and verified for balanced, accurate and independent content, and
will be of the very highest technical and journalistic quality. Feedback will also be provided to
the contributor in order to promote a culture of journalistic excellence.

A24 has allready opened an office in Berlin, headed by Kani Tuyala.

Today is Blog Action Day 2008 against Poverty

Mittwoch, Oktober 15th, 2008

Blog Action Day PoventryIt’s Blog Action Day today, October 15th. Today around world 10. 189 bloggers are speaking with one voice on an important topic to Africa – Poverty.

Thousands of voices about poverty. Each blogger posts relating to their own blog topic. And each blogger engages their audience differently.

For me, for example, poverty is another word for nothing to make money with. Its another word of the absence of business. Do business in Africa. Do business with Africa. And you can fight poverty. Dont give people something to eat. Let them work for their food. Give them the opportunity to make money and buy food. That is, what Open Source Africa will do in the near future.

Just stay tuned. And leave a comment, whats your opinion is about poverty.

Blog action day 2008 about poventry

Donnerstag, Oktober 9th, 2008

On Oktober 15th is blog action day about poventry. Today, more than 6.300 blogs are participating. I also, of course.

Cameroonian Blogs

Mittwoch, Oktober 8th, 2008

A review of three Cameroonian Blog Dibussi Tande has done. He wrote about Chiareport, wrote from the US; GEFs Outlook, produced in Dakar, Senegal and Voice of the Oppressed maintained by Steve Neba Fuh from Sweden.

I think, GEFs Outlook is the most interesting one. his newest blog entrance is about China in Africa: Invasion or the New Face of Globalisation – a topic I also have already written about.

ICT in Nigeria

Mittwoch, Juli 30th, 2008

For those, who may be interested, a detailed report of the various roles played by young Nigerians taking advantage of ICT opportunities can be downloaded from www.pin.org.ng/old/downloads/glocal.pdf.  It is a very large file and it may be easier to download through the link at the end of the book summary page (via Gbengasesan).

Why China is the „most aggressive investor nation“ in Africa

Donnerstag, Juli 17th, 2008

Thanks to African Loft I learned, that there is a market analysis about China and their business in Africa. Excerpt:

„While America is preoccupied with the war in Iraq (cost: half a trillion dollars and counting), and while think-tank economists continue to spit out papers debating whether vital resources are running out at all, China’s leadership isn’t taking any chances. In just a few years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become the most aggressive investor-nation in Africa.“

My question: What does Germany, what does Europe do? (I think, they just spent money and hope, the Africans will think good of them.)

(mehr …)

Africa & Middle East mobile revenues jump to 107 billion by 2013

Dienstag, Juli 15th, 2008

Operator-billed service revenues across the Africa & Middle East region are expected to rise to more than $107 billion in 2013, according to a new report from Juniper Research.

The report found that growth would be driven by mobile data services, fuelled by the greater availability and wider variety of rich-media content coupled with lower browsing costs. However, it noted that regional operator-billed voice revenues were likely to peak in 2011 and would subsequently fall away due to increasingly competitive pricing in that sector.

According to Juniper Research report author Dr Windsor Holden, “While the downward trend in regional ARPU will continue as adoption increases amongst lower-usage customers, we expect the decline in voice ARPU to be partially offset by an increase in data revenues, both amongst 2.5G and 3G customers.”

The report also observed that the region was likely to witness a surge in the growth of mobile financial services, with a raft of operator-led payment initiatives such as M-PESA and mobile banking providers such as WIZZIT having already gained substantial user bases.

Other findings from the Juniper Research report include:
• The Middle East/Africa mobile user base is to grow at an average annual rate of 10.5% between 2008 and 2013
• Mobile data services are expected to contribute 24% of operator-billed service revenues in 2013, against just 9% in 2008.
• Saudi Arabia will provide the largest share of cumulative regional revenues over the forecast period, followed by Nigeria

(mehr …)