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Washington: US to woo Africa with billions in new funding deals

August 5, 2014February 25, 2016 Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The US will announce nearly $1bn in business deals, increased funding for peacekeeping and commit billions of dollars to expand food and power programmes in Africa during a summit this week, US and development officials say. President Jacob Zuma will be in the front row at the August 5-6 summit in Washington to which US President Barack Obama invited 50 of Africa’s 53 heads of state or government “in good standing with the US and the African Union (AU)”. This criterion has excluded Eritrea, Sudan and Zimbabwe. US…

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BlackBerry finally cedes to Indian government monitoring its servers

July 23, 2014February 25, 2016 Staff Writer

Blackberry appears to be losing an ongoing dispute with the Indian government over the state’s access to its data, as today an internal document from the state’s Department of Telecommunications stated “the lawful interception system for Blackberry Services is ready for use.” According to the Economic Times, after over two years of pushback, BlackBerry has finally ceded to the Indian government’s insistence that the Canadian phone maker provide the state with access to portions of data exchanged between any of its users. The company has provided a solution that allows…

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Evidence is growing of Open Data’s potential economic benefit

July 23, 2014February 25, 2016 Staff Writer

One of the key policy drivers for Open Data has been to drive economic growth and business innovation. There’s a growing amount of evidence and analysis not only for the total potential economic benefit but also for some of the ways in which this is coming about. This evidence is summarised and reviewed in a new World Bank paper published today. There’s a range of studies that suggest that the potential prize from Open Data could be enormous – including an estimate of $3-5 trillion a year globally from McKinsey…

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Big IT vs SME IT in government – it’s really about changing IT suppliers’ behaviour

July 4, 2014February 25, 2016 Staff Writer

The Cabinet Office plan to bring in more SME IT suppliers and reduce dependence on the old “oligopoly” of big systems integrators (SIs) was always going to come under greater scrutiny once some of those SIs saw their lucrative outsourcing deals come to an end. The Financial Times ran a strange article recently featuring unattributed claims that ministers including business secretary Vince Cable were telling David Cameron that the pro-SME IT policy was wrong, after his department suffered email problems soon after it transitioned away from a Fujitsu mega-outsourcing deal.…

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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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CentralNic contracts to acquire Internet.BS

June 17, 2014March 3, 2016

CentralNic has contracted to acquire the business and certain of the assets of Internet.BS Corp, a leading retailer of domain names registered in The Bahamas, for a maximum consideration of $7.5m. CentralNic says Internet.BS is one of the world’s top 30 domain name retailers, and it serves a global customer base from 199 countries. It has been trading for eleven years and it is accredited by the global regulator ICANN as well as the numerous operators of country codes including .eu for Europe and .in for India. Internet.BS is a…

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Vodafone admits some governments have a direct link to their network for snooping

June 6, 2014March 3, 2016

LONDON (Reuters) – Vodafone, the world’s second-biggest mobile phone company, said government agencies in a small number of countries in which it operates have direct access to its network, enabling them to listen in to calls. Security agencies across the world, and in particular in the United States and Britain, have faced greater scrutiny since Edward Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), disclosed the extent of their surveillance to newspapers. Snowden’s disclosures caused an international uproar, showing that U.S. and British agencies’ monitoring programs took…

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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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