Apple is in a fresh hell for refusing to unlock a terrorist’s cell phone, for the second time. US president, Donald Trump, went after Apple on Twitter. US Attorney General, William Barr, accused Apple of refusing to assist law enforcement in an investigation into a suspected terrorist shooting at a…
Author: Charity Mbaka
Turkey is has finally listed its ban on Wikipedia after nearly three years. According to a local newspaper, a Turkish court ruled that the ban curtailed citizens’ freedom of expression. Wikipedia is a free web-based encyclopedia which is created and edited by volunteers worldwide. Turkey blocked Wikipedia in April 2017…
Kenyan telco giant Safaricom has partnered with M-Gas to debut a prepaid cooking gas service to the Kenyan market. The service targets Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) communities. The service will leverage the Narrow Band(NB) IoT network to deliver a smart meter which will monitor the gas payments and usage.…
German lender, KfW Development Bank has injected US$ 33 million into African Guarantee Fund (AGF). AGF is a Pan-African financial institution that promotes economic development, increases employment and reduces poverty in Africa by providing financial institutions with guarantees and other financial products specifically intended to support Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in Africa. AGF Group CEO, Felix…
India has a population in the hundreds of millions, and telcos are fighting each other to the teeth to dominate the Indian market. Despite the presence of many telcom operators, Indian subscribers still have to deal with poor call quality and regular abrupt call drops. Reliance Jio recently announced that…
The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) is developing a mobile payment module to aid in the collection of the newly imposed turnover tax. KRA announced the new tax on the first of January 2020. The new tax targets businesses earning less than US$ 50,000 annually. They will be required to pay…
French telco giant, Orange, is making the necessary steps towards an IPO for its Africa and Middle East business ventures. According to a report by Bloomberg, Orange is planning to list them on the London and Paris stock exchange, pending advice from Morgan Stanley and BNP Paribas. Orange’s Africa &…
Kenya’s Little Shuttle yesterday announced that it would be suspending its services temporarily. Little posted a statement on Twitter announcing the shutdown that read, “We deeply regret to announce that the Little Shuttle service has been temporarily suspended effective immediately. We apologize profusely for the inconvenience but the service will…
Egypt-based ride hailing service Swvl has will now take its riders to destinations outside Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi. Swvl’s commuter buses will take customers to four towns: Nakuru, Naivasha, Meru, and the latest addition, Eldoret. The long distance shuttle services were quietly launched earlier, with Swvl only making an official…
MTN has struck a deal to sell its Ugandan tower operations to American Tower by the end of Q1 2020. MTN had fallen into hot water with regulator in Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana. Thus led to the company spending US$ 1 Billion over the course of 3 years in its…
Safaricom is making moves to monetize the vast amount of customer data it holds. The Kenya-based telco giant is looking to pre-qualify suppliers of a location tracking and intelligence platform thus hinting at it potentially monetizing data. Safaricom has called for bids for the services which would allow the telco…
Microsoft has appointed Kendi Ntwiga to the top spot in its Kenyan operations effective January 2020. Ntwiga, formerly the General Manager of Checkpoint Software Services, has vast experience working in the STEM fields, and has contributed to Microsoft’s diversity and digital transformation journey in Africa. She will spearhead strategies and…
Huawei has the last laugh in 2019, making US$ 122 Billion in revenue despite US sanctions against it. According to Huawei’s chairman, Eric Xu, this is a record high, an 18% increase over its 2018 earnings. It however warned about an even more difficult 2020 in a report. The Chinese…
E-commerce giant Amazon has applied for a patent for its touchless hand-scanning system. The system identifies individuals by their palm characteristics such as wrinkle and vein patterns. In the future, Amazon could switch to the hand-scanning system to replace the current method, where shoppers scan an app to get into…
NYU cardiologist, Joseph Wiesel, has accused Apple of stealing his technology for their Apple Watch. Apple Watch has a lifesaving feature that detects irregularities in the wearer’s heartbeat, and alerts them when they show signs of arrhythmia, which could lead to further complications like blood clots, stroke, heart failure. Wiesel…
BeiDou, China’s answer to US-owned GPS is almost ready for use after the state deployed two new satellites into orbit. The new satellites join a constellation of 22 others at an altitude of 20,000km. The constellation covers the entire earth, with five or six satellites being accessible from any point…
Snapchat has been experimenting with Bitmoji TV for select users in limited geographic regions. The social media giant has finally completed testing this feature and has announced plans to roll it out globally in February 2020. Bitmoji’s are personalized avatars that people often use as their profile picture across their…
Elon Musk has hinted at Disney+ soon being one of the streaming services that users will be able to access in their Tesla vehicles. He made this announcement in response to a question from a Twitter user about the entertainment options available in-car via the Tesla Theater software feature. The…
Security researcher, Ibrahim Balic, was able to match the phone numbers of 17 million people to Twitter accounts linked to them. Speaking to TechCrunch, Balic highlighted that when he uploaded a user’s phone number through Twitter’s contact upload feature, it would fetch the associated user’s data. He however had to…
Russia’s Ministry of Communications has announced that it has successfully tested its own independent internet. The Russian government has been working on this internet project in a bid to tighten control over internet activity in the region. Recently, Russia passed its “sovereign internet law” which allows the government to block…