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Kenya: Safaricom, Seven Seas Technologies in joint bid for county ICT tenders

September 29, 2014June 2, 2016 Staff Writer

Safaricom has partnered with Kenyan based ICT multinational Seven Seas Technology in an initiative aimed at harnessing the use of technology to offer integrated communications solutions to Safaricom enterprise and mobile consumer segments. In Summary Under the partnership signed Tuesday, the two firms will market education, health and agriculture IT management solutions to the counties. The Safaricom and Seven Seas partnership comes at a time when most county governments are adopting automated systems to get rid of ghost workers and streamline their financial platforms to seal revenue leakages through corruption.…

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Ericsson chosen for money platform in Peru

August 19, 2014February 18, 2016 Staff Writer

Asbanc, Peru’s national bank association, has chosen Ericsson to design and build what is claimed will be the country’s largest private initiative aimed at financial inclusion. The aim is to deliver the underlying infrastructure over which financial services can be pitched to the country’s mobile users, most of whom do not have access to traditional bank accounts. The platform will have a staged rollout but Asbanc wants to see services generally available in Peru during 2015. Ericsson’s platform is intended to host services from different financial institutions and other companies…

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Report: NSA was allowed to spy on Africa since 2010

July 1, 2014February 25, 2016 Staff Writer

Virtually no foreign government is off-limits for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept information “concerning” all but four countries, according to top-secret documents. The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — in a group known collectively with the United States as the Five Eyes. But a classified 2010 legal certification and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept…

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Germany cancels Verizon contract over spying anxiety

June 27, 2014February 25, 2016 Staff Writer

The German government has cancelled a contract with Verizon over concern that US firms may be giving data to US authorities. Verizon has provided internet services to a number of German government departments and the current contract was due to run out in 2015. The firm did not comment on the move. There was anger in Germany over allegations that a US agency bugged Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone. Earlier this month Germany announced an investigation into those allegations which were made by a former contractor of the US National Security…

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Sophia Bekele aka AddisHilton, gives The SCOOP on her story of Balancing Life & Work and how Change is Controversial

June 19, 2014June 2, 2016

People The SCOOP, features Sophia Bekele as “an international entrepreneur, ICT activist and fondly referred to as “AddisHilton”. Her story depicts of a lady who found her niche in creating a balance between her work of narrowing the digital divide, challenging the status quo, and a life of leisure with global travel, exotic hobbies, and an upcoming book on Africa – certainly seem to have done a successful job of living life her way, as she says, “she has already lived a full life and wants now to lead by…

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New York Forum AFRICA 2014: Bekele Moderates a High Level Panel on US/Africa

May 30, 2014March 3, 2016

Sophia Bekele moderated a high level panel from Washington DC, on the upcoming President Obama US-Africa Leader Summit and weighs in on “How does Africa see the United States” at the New York Forum AFRICA 2014 in Gabon. Picture: Sophia Bekele at the NYF Africa forum with Robert Wolf & Dante Paradiso The forum focused on transformation: unlocking the competitiveness of the African economy through building value chains around the transformation of the continent’s natural resources, including its human capital. In knowledge economies, such as those in the western world,…

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Privacy under attack: the NSA files revealed new threats to democracy

May 28, 2014March 3, 2016

In the third chapter of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon gave two reasons why the slavery into which the Romans had tumbled under Augustus and his successors left them more wretched than any previous human slavery. In the first place, Gibbon said, the Romans had carried with them into slavery the culture of a free people: their language and their conception of themselves as human beings presupposed freedom. And thus, says Gibbon, for a long time the Romans preserved the sentiments –…

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Tech Entrepreneur Sophia Bekele Named In Europe’s Top 20 Inspirational African Diaspora Women Professionals

April 23, 2014March 3, 2016

Sophia Bekele has been named one of “Top 20 Inspirational African Diaspora Professional Women” by (ADIPWE List 2014) on International Women’s Day, released on 28th March 2014. Last year, Bekele was named Top “50 Trailblazers – A future made in Africa”, by the influential UK’s NewAfrican Magazine and also in the same year, recognized among the leading ladies in Africa’s ICT sector” by “Bloomberg TV that same year. The ADIPWE list recognizes Sophia Bekele as a serial entrepreneur, who has founded and run various tech start-ups and initiatives, and her…

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Critical ‘homework’ before the U.S. relinquishes stewardship of ICANN

March 31, 2014 Staff Writer

The Department of Commerce announced on March 14 that it will give up its last bit of control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 2015. As is often the case with government decisions announced late on a Friday, this decision is controversial. The U.S. has exercised light oversight of ICANN since it established the organization and emphasized the need for a free and open Internet. Other nations do not share America’s perspective and have sought repeatedly to work through U.N. organizations such as the International…

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