Tag: .Africa

New off-grid and mini-grid technologies to extend energy

Dianne Jacobs
DPA

Investing in new off-grid and mini-grid technologies to extend energy access across Africa will be instrumental in helping smallholder farmers to meet rising food demand, according to a new report. Africa accounts for just six per cent of the world’s  demand, despite hosting 20 per cent of the global population, leaving rural areas relying on manpower for as much as 80 per cent of the energy used in farming.  In Energized: Policy innovation to power the transformation of Africa’s agriculture and food system, experts from the Malabo Montpellier Panel highlighted opportunities…

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High Tech Solar pumps for underground freshwater

Dianne Jacobs
pump

High-tech solar pumps mapping underground freshwater reservoirs across Africa are collecting data that can help prevent them running dry, the project’s developers said on Tuesday. Manufactured by British social enterprise Futurepump, the solar pumps are being used by thousands of small-scale farmers in 15 African nations, including Kenya and Uganda, as a cleaner, cheaper option to diesel and gasoline-powered ones. The pumps’ sensors record real-time data such as energy usage and pump speed in each location, which is shared with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) to calculate groundwater extraction…

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Coding centers launched in Africa

Dianne Jacobs
Coding

The African Development Bank has launched a digital tool to help African youth learn coding.The goal is to scale up the program to 130 centers of excellence across the African continent over a 10-year period. The African Development Bank and technology firm Microsoft launched the ‘Coding for Employment’ digital training platform, an online tool to provide digital skills to African youth, wherever they are across the continent. The platform, launched at the 2019 African Economic Conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, aims to promote a continuous learning culture among young…

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Green Energy: Is it too late to tame Climate Change?

Dianne Jacobs
Airlines

Wind and solar energy have become significant participants in primary energy mix, with the new electric battery storage technology poised to remove the continuity of solar and wind energy to provide uninterrupted day and night, all weather grid supplies. Battery storage combinations of up to 100mw capacities have been achieved. Last month a game-changing solar energy concentration technology was unveiled by Heliogen, a startup company backed by Bill Gates capital. It will concentrate solar energy to a temperature as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius by aligning large mirrors on a…

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Negotiated fares taxi hailing app inDriver, targets more African cities

Negotiated fares taxi hailing app inDriver, targets more African cities

Online ride hailing service, inDriver, which allows passengers to negotiate the fare with drivers, has begun recruiting drivers in Harare for the service, which it intends to launch in the capital towards the end of this month. inDriver, which is headquartered in New York, has 26 million users in more than 200 cities throughout the world. The service is already operating in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The inDriver app is used by passengers and drivers to be linked up and negotiate fares. The app can also be used…

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Startups and Partnerships, EurAfrican Forum enables cross pollination of ideas: Dr. Precious Lunga – Baobab Circle

Search Results Featured snippet from the web Dr. Precious Lunga is CEO and Co-Founder of Baobab Circle, a health technology company delivering innovative health solutions via phones across Africa. She will be joining the 2nd edition of the EurAfrican Forum in Portugal as a speaker.

Dr. Precious Lunga, CEO and Co-Founder of Baobab Circle, will be joining the 2nd edition of the EurAfrican Forum in Portugal as a speaker, taking place on July 4-5. The EurAfrican Forum exists to explore and promote the power of diasporas as a connecting force between cities, regions and continents, between cultures, companies and people. It is an action-oriented gathering of leaders that aims to foster stronger collaboration between Europe and Africa to promote a shared green and inclusive growth for the two continents, fostering mechanisms for collaboration and creating…

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Ethiopians in diaspora allowed to invest in banking, insurance sectors after a precedence setting court victory in 2017 by Sophia Bekele

Editor

“Sophia took up the gauntlet and headed to the court to vindicate her right” The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), the agency in charge of regulating the financial sector of the country, will soon introduce a new regulation that will allow Ethiopians in the diaspora to invest in the financial sector that includes banking, insurance and micro finance. The Council of Ministers during its extraordinary meeting approved the Draft Banking Business Proclamation, allowing Diaspora citizens to establish banks in Ethiopia. This was indicated by Yinager Desse (PhD), Governor of NBE,…

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Disruptive technology emerging markets in Africa could leverage to transform utilities

Editor

The entire installed generation capacity of Africa’s 48 Sub-Saharan countries is just 68 gigawatts, no more than Spain; this is according to the Africa’s Infrastructure report conducted by the World Bank. Up to one-quarter of that capacity is unavailable because of aging plants and poor maintenance. In Sub-Saharan Africa, just one person in five has access to electricity. If current trends continue, fewer than 40% of Sub-Saharan African countries will reach universal access to electricity by 2050. Per capita consumption of electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) averages only…

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Mobile now accounts for 47% of all online transactions in Middle East and Africa, Criteo

Editor

The advertising platform Criteo released its 2018 Q2 Global Commerce Review, having analysed browsing and purchasing data from over 5,000 retailers in more than 80 countries. Michele Iozzo, managing director for the Middle East & Africa, Criteo, says, “Mobile continues to command a higher share of the online transactions pie driven by high smartphone penetration across the MEA region. The study has revealed a year-on-year increase of the share of In-App Transactions for retailers who promote their shopping app, proving that it isn’t enough to just launch an app, but…

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Fintech Will Contribute $150 Billion to Africa’s GDP by 2022

Dianne Jacobs

The contribution of the financial-technology industry to sub-Saharan Africa’s economic output will increase by at least $40 billion to $150 billion by 2022, according to Financial Sector Deepening Africa, a development-finance organization. The industry currently employs about 3 million people directly and indirectly in the region, FSD Africa Financial Markets Director Evans Osano said in an interview on Thursday. Sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product is about $1.6 trillion, according to data compiled by the International Monetary Fund. “If you look at the value chain, most of that money is coming…

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