McKinsey recently released a report titled, “Reopening and reimagining Africa: How the COVID-19 crisis can catalyze change,” which recommends policies aimed to help Africa use the crisis as an opportunity to create a recovery that features a more inclusive economy, more competitive industries, and more resilient services The report recommends using the pandemic as an opportunity to accelerate digital transformation across the continent. Figure 1 highlights a number of industries poised for swift growth in digitization following the pandemic. Among these, some are already relatively digitized, such as information and…
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Online Retailers Sales see Their New Highest Growth on Record in April
Online retailers are seeing Black Friday-like sales due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their business. According to new data from Adobe’s Digital Economy Index, U.S. e-commerce jumped 49% in April, compared to the baseline period in early March before shelter-in-place restrictions went into effect. Online grocery helped drive the increase in sales, with a 110% boost in daily sales between March and April. Meanwhile, electronic sales were up 58% and book sales have doubled. The data comes from Adobe’s index of the digital economy, which analyzes more…
Read MoreUsing Big Data In The Fight Against Coronavirus
One of the advantages we have today in the fight against coronavirus that wasn’t as sophisticated in the SARS outbreak of 2003 is big data and the high level of technology available. China tapped into big data, machine learning, and other digital tools as the virus spread through the nation in order to track and contain the outbreak. The lessons learned there have continued to spread across the world as other countries fight the spread of the virus and use digital technology to develop real-time forecasts and arm healthcare professionals…
Read MoreMicrosoft Unveils Microsoft 365 With New AI + Cloud-Powered Features
Microsoft will be launching it’s new Microsoft personal together with family subscriptions to replace the current office 365. The plan will be available as of 1st April 2020. Both the personal and family option will include access to office alongside other new features that will be rolled out. The personal plan will be retail at $6.99 and $9.99 monthly subscriptions for the family package of up to six persons. Both plans will include everything in the office 365 including desktop office apps. 1TB of Onedrive cloud storage per person, 60…
Read MoreNew: Kenyan Parents Urged to Monitor Children’s online consumption
Now that the children have closed school for the holidays, it is no doubt that some if not most of them will be on their phones chatting and sharing pictures on the different social media platforms and browsing on the internet for what’s new and trendy. Some children as young as 10 years old own phones. This is totally different from how things were in the past. Nowadays children prefer staying indoors and using their phones or playing video games than playing outside. ICT regulator Communications Authority of Kenya (CA)…
Read MoreTwitter CEO Jack Dorsey will be moving back to Africa for at least 3 months in 2020, new home?
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and mobile payments company Square, tweeted his farewell to Africa on Wednesday, but announced that he would return and temporarily move to the continent for at least three months in 2020. JHe uggested that he may move to Africa for at least three months next year. Sad to be leaving the continent…for now. Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!). Not sure where yet, but I’ll be living here for 3-6 months mid 2020. Grateful I was able to experience a small…
Read MoreVisa acquires new stake in Nigeria’s Interswitch
Nigerian digital payments firm Interswitch confirmed today it has reached unicorn status after Visa acquired a minority equity stake in the firm. Global payments giant Visa will invest $200 million for 20% stake in Interswitch, electronic payments company, UK’s Sky News reports. The investment places a billion-dollar valuation on 17-year old Interswitch and is a major boon ahead of a proposed initial public offering slated for the London Stock Exchange next year. “The investment makes Interswitch one of the most valuable African fintech businesses with a valuation of $1 billion,”…
Read MoreNew Disney, 10 million subscribers attraction, should Neflix be worried?
Disney’s just launched its premium subscription streaming service Disney+ but was not without issues — high demand resulted in content not being accessible for hours on its first day of availability. The company cited higher-than-expected demand as a factor, and now we have a rough estimate of the size of that demand — Disney has revealed that it signed up 10 million users since its Tuesday debut. That’s a lot of subscribers in a very short period. To put it in perspective, Netflix recently reported 158 million subscribers, but that’s…
Read MoreAmazon to launch new Amazon CloudFront Edge Location in Kenya
Kenya will be the latest country in Africa after South Africa to have the Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), Amazon CloudFront Edge location launched locally. The launch promises customers a fast and secure Content Delivery Network (CDN) that accelerates the delivery of applications, data, and videos to users worldwide, with high transfer speeds. Amazon Web Services says the Amazon CloudFront is expected to be operational in early 2020 promising up to 50 percent reduction in latency for delivery of content with the new Edge location. The AWS’s global infrastructure network,…
Read MoreWindows 7 end-of-life To New Windows 10
Ivanti, the company that unifies IT to better manage and secure the digital workplace, today announced survey results that capture the pain points and priorities of IT professionals when faced with migrating user devices to Windows 10. Surprisingly, 59% of IT professionals report that they still haven’t migrated all their users to Windows 10, despite the imminent end of regular support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020. As many as 39% will not be completed with their Windows 10 migration projects in time for the January deadline. The study…
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