Safaricom Warns Tarriff cuts could cripple industry

By Dan Muhuni

Kenyan consumers are rightly excited that the mobile phone company Airtel, now owned by Bharti Airtel, has kicked off a price war with just announced unprecedented low and permanent new tariffs call rate to Sh1 for its subscribers within the network, Sh3 to call and Sh1.00 per SMS message to any mobile network in Kenya. This huge price reduction caused such a storm of traffic on Airtel’s network; they actually had connectivity problems with other mobile phone companies.
Safaricom, the dominant mobile phone company in Kenya, in other hand is owning up to the mobile phone tariff wars warning Kenyans that the tariff cut could cripple the whole mobile telephony industry in the country. Speaking in an exclusive interview with Dan Muhuni, the new Safaricom CEO, Mr Bob Collymore said its unheard off that our competitor is coming up with prices that we cannot afford to match up with. “to be sincere we have more that 13,000 employees in our call centres and we have some other employees who work with us and we cannot match up with what our competitor is offering since we have to pay our bills” added Collymore………………. more of this catch up with my weekly ICT column in your favourite newspaper…………….daniel@prestigekenya.com

Safaricom houses along Waiyaki way to be demolished in 6 months. “Sufferingcom

By Dan Muhuni

Safaricom Limited are among several companies whose multi-million shilling buildings have been earmarked for demolition under a compulsory acquisition programe by the government.The government has announced intentions to acquire land where Safaricom’s two sites on Waiyaki Way stand for purposes of a road expansion project.
A safaricom employee who seekd anonymity told us on phone that Safaricom is bn targetted. We are vey sure that Airtel is part of this since they have had internal secret meetings and agreed to use all means possible to finish Safricom. “Inside source from Airtel tells us that even the president is aware of this since Airtel had a closed door meeting with the president and the prime minister just days after they arrived in Kenya” Said he: Tunaomba serikali ingiililie kati na kutupa suruhisho la kudumu. Hahahhahaha

In a Gazette Notice dated December 31, the Ministry of Lands announced it would acquire various parcels of land of varying sizes on both sides of Mombasa Road and Waiyaki Way.

The government said it intends to acquire the land in order to expand the road between the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport through to Museum Hill and Gigiri.

In a quick rejoinder, Safaricom Limited’s CEO Bob Collymore said the company does not own the buildings they operate from and would be negotiating with their landlords to get a practical solution.

“Safaricom is not in the business of brick and mortar and as such, we do not own any of the sites from which we operate,” Mr Collymore said in a statement.

“We are in touch with our landlords and the authorities with a view to working out a practical resolution.”

The two buildings on which Safaricom operates from are not built on a road reserve but the government has indicated it will be invoking the section of the law that deals with compulsory acquisition to use it for a road expansion project.

Under such arrangement, the government compensates legitimate owners of the land as per the current market value of their property.

The statement said a consultative meeting of key stakeholders convened on Tuesday had resolved that “such action is arbitrary, autocratic and smirks of an attitude of a Government that does not care about private investments.”

“The stakeholders expressed shock and disbelief that a democratic government can adopt a high-handed approach of unilaterally announcing an intended compulsory acquisition without due regard to a consultation process,” the statement sent to newsrooms said.

They said that the parcels of land in question constitute private, legally acquired assets and not any land earmarked as road reserve – a fact verifiable by the absence of a caveat in Ministry of Lands records.
SAFARICOM opinioned: “Those charged with the responsibility of design and development of the country’s road master plan have failed in their duty, care and professionalism to plan for workable solutions consistent with best international practices and have elected a draconian option that amounts to destruction of tens of billions of shillings worth of investment and loss of thousands of jobs.”

Safaricom believes that their businesses are being targeted because “It is apparent from the road design that the routing could have been influenced by other factors that amount to a conspiracy to target specific businesses as evidenced by the inconsistency in the width of expansion and where the road begins, besides lack of transparency in the project design.”

Safaricom seems not to be lucky this time round after the massive customer exodus to the cheeper n more clear Airtel

Nokia Intensifies Fight Against Counterfeits

It has proved difficult for the East Africans to tell the diffrence between Original Nokia and a Fake one

Nokia Intensifies Fight Against Counterfeits

By Dan Muhuni

I conducted the following interview following the public outcry of innocent East Africans who falls into the hands of the fake Nokia phones without noticing.

Dorothy is Nokia’s Communications Manager in East and Southern Africa

What is Nokia currently doing in intensifying the fight against counterfeit in Kenya? Since Nokia has been the mostly affected.

Dorothy: Counterfeit affects Nokia products because of the leadership position and the reputation they have.  Nokia participates with local and global authorities and groups on the proliferation of fake products. We constantly promote the purchase of genuine products through our dealers and through these associations. We continuously recommend that customers buy only from authorized dealers and look out the warranty logo in blue, marked 12 months-Kenya. Nokia has been using the media as a medium of reaching people in the East African region to sensitise the public on the differences between a genuine Nokia and a counterfeit one.

We are also encouraged by the warning by the Kenya Bureau of Standards and the Communication Commission of Kenya warning consumers about compromising the quality and performance of the goods they purchase. This indeed further supports our call to our consumers to be vigilant about their purchases and where they make the purchases.

Do you think the implementation of anti-counterfeit legislation in the country which is still in parliament will help curb counterfeits?

Dorothy: Absolutely.  We would like to see stringent measures taken to discourage those selling the counterfeits and thereby endangering the lives of Kenyans. We believe this anti-counterfeit legislation is a step in the right direction.

How much is Nokia currently losing annually to the counterfeit products which have flooded the Kenyan market?

Dorothy: It is difficult to assess the volumes and the financial impact of counterfeit products to Nokia, other legitimate businesses and local economies. The challenge is much broader than financial.  Nokia is concerned about the inferior quality of counterfeit products and how the poor quality can adversely impact the consumer experience and the Nokia brand. Local economies also suffer from counterfeit products due to lost revenues to legitimate businesses, lost tax revenues and enforcement costs to government. We won’t speculate on the volume or financial impact for Nokia.

These fake products are made and sold illegally.  We do not have information on the margins.

To conclude, a customer should insist on buying a phone with 12 months Nokia warranty. This way the customer will be certain they are buying a genuine phone. Nokia is soon introducing warranty stickers that will be on the sales box and this will assist the customer to identify phones on warranty. Generic warranty cards will also be available as further proof of warranty. However, the customer does not need to present the warranty form to get warranty services at Nokia Care points. The Nokia Care points are able to confirm warranty status through access to the Nokia database using the consumers IMEI or serial number.

We will continue to fight it by educating our consumers on how to tell the difference between a genuine Nokia and a counterfeit device.  The box with the genuine phone must be intact and sealed with the Nokia logo, a hologramme and the IMEI number written on the outside. There will also be a blue warranty logo, with 12 months written on it, and clearly marked KENYA.

Dan Muhuni- EA ICT correspondent.(Blogs www.ictkenya.wordpress.com www.ictkenya.blogspot.com)

Undersea fibre-optic cable nears East African coast

    
 By Dan Muhuni  

 The wait for the landing of an undersea fibre-optic cable to boost communication in the region could be coming to fruition as indications point that one arm is almost at the East African coast. Officials at SEACOM, an undersea cable partly funded by East African countries, have announced that the first portions of the cable are now resting on the seabed of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.
The 15, 000-kilometre Sea Cable System (SEACOM) is valued at US$650 million.

The cable is 76 percent African owned and is expected to boost bandwidth and communication between the region and the rest of the world.

The cable has been laid from the edge of the South African waters to Mozambique and cable laying is also proceeding in the Red Sea from Egypt towards the coast of Yemen. A third ship is currently being loaded with the remainder of SEACOM’s deepwater cable which will be deployed from India towards Africa, where these three cable segments will be joined.  

In parallel to the marine installation, SEACOM has made significant strides in land-based construction.  The high-performance optical transmission equipment which connects customers to inland terrestrial networks has been installed in the Maputo, Mumbai and Djibouti cable landing stations.

 Construction of the cable station in Kenya will be complete early February followed shortly by the Tanzanian and South African stations. Equipment installation in these locations and in Egypt will be complete in April. At each station, SEACOM has taken special precautions to assure the construction  April. At each station, SEACOM has taken special precautions to assure the construction activity is consistent with environmental policy and regulations. As an example, in South Africa, SEACOM recently transferred protected plant species from the cable station site to the Umlalazi National Park with the help of KwaZulu Natal Wildlife Rangers.

SEACOM has also been preparing to provide services to customers by June and recruited over ten experienced local telecommunications professionals from India, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania to operate and maintain the cable stations. They have already been trained at the SEACOM Network Operations Centre in India and are now participating in the testing of the system as it is being installed. A complementary set of personnel is being recruited and will start training in March. These teams will also work with the landing partners’ operators in Egypt and Djibouti.

Brian Herlihy, SEACOM President, said: “We have made tremendous progress since our groundbreaking in Mozambique last November and we can now sense a real level of excitement for SEACOM’s arrival. Through my travels, I continuously meet people who speak about the many ways they intend to exploit the world of broadband which is about to reach Africa.

Companies urged to invest in Information Technology to survive hard times

By Dan Muhuni

Businesses have been advised to adopt efficient software to help them navigate the current economic slowdown.
Management experts say companies will have better chances of survival and growth in the messy economic conditions if they are able to find means of maximizing revenue creation and cutting costs. Small and medium size enterprises particularly need to focus on activities that will stimulate demand through broadening their range of customers, as well as products and services that generate good returns.
But Mr Paul Marketos the group Managing Director of Bluekey Software Solutions Company warns this might not be possible without the correct systems in place. Speaking in Mombasa while introducing the company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution known as SAP Business One, Mr Marketos said businesses should invest in Information Technology (IT) infrastructure to sustain their growth in profitability.
“Businesses must move away from the traditional ledgers and point solutions for production and stock towards integrated management systems. Management must have a single view of the truth; so it’s out with spreadsheets, and in with a solution that binds departments together through business processes,” he said. An ERP system is an integrated solution that helps companies to collect and use the same data or information to make different business decisions – like in customer service, selling, procurement, financing, hiring, technology, among others.
Bluekey’s Kenyan subsidiary, relaunched last year, has entered the coastal town of Mombasa as part of its expansion in Kenya and the region. The company is the largest reseller in Africa of SAP Busines One, a business management software designed specifically for small and midsize businesses. In Kenya Bluekey has customers across a wide range of industries including manufacturing, distribution, professional services/consulting, advertising and corporate PR, education and construction industries.
“We have a strong base of highly experienced personnel to implement and manage the solutions, and our core focus is to make sure that we do not compromise on quality,” said Ms Mala Bhatt, the managing director of Bluekey Kenya.
With SAP Business One, she said, a business can see returns within two years. The software integrates critical business functions across sales, distribution and finance. “With SAP Business One, a company can instantaneously access a complete and up-to-the minute view of their business, so they can respond to customers faster and grow their business more profitably,” said Ms Bhatt.
According to Mr Marketos, on average, investment on ERP system for a small company costs between Sh500,000 and Sh1.5 million, but the savings can be enormous. But companies might fail to get optimal return on investment because of poor implementation. “Very often lack of ownership reduces returns, and companies must understand that once the system is in place, they need to invest in time, skills and other resources to make it work for their business,” he said.
An ERP drives profits through improved efficiencies and processes, greater productivity and better access to information.
As companies battle hard economic times, experts warn that laying off workers to cut down costs could be counterproductive if companies do not improve on efficiency in service delivery. A Deloitte and Touché Partner John Kiarie said that as much as companies were concerned about costs, inefficiency was still the major stumbling block in enhancing business performance.
Mr Kiarie delivered a keynote address on ‘Growth in Uncertain Times’ at the Mombasa Club at the Bluekey seminar to promote the software. “Companies must have efficient processes especially in inventory, procurement and sales planning as well as managing information. Any restructuring has to be focused and not done in a blanket manner as this could lead to more problems in the running of business especially for the small and medium enterprises,” he said.
Mr Kiarie said companies needed to invest in information technology, adding that it is much cheaper to do business using automated systems than having a bigger workforce.

Postal Corporation signs agreement with Kenya Data Networks

By Dan Muhuni

The Postal Corporation of Kenya’s chances of survival in a highly changing industry seem to be dimming as competition in the telecommunication industry grows.

Postmaster General Fred Odhiambo says the corporation whose main service is postal services will introduce a hybrid mail service in order to stay relevant in the market.

It has been tough for postal corporation of Kenya to remain relevant by doing the same thing it has done for 60 years while modern technology becomes more dynamic.

With its core business being mail conveyance, PCK has seen its major activities come under serious competition from electronic mail and the mobile phone Short Message Service.

KDN Chief Executive Officer, Kai Wulff said the move was not just a commercial venture but aims at providing best services to their consumers.

Wulff said customers will access the top up cards and access the butterfly hotspots facilities in all postal outlets in the major cities and towns countrywide.

“We aim to provide value as a communication infrastructure provider. We will continue to explore opportunities that guarantee the very best for our customers and partners”, said Wulff.

The post master acknowledged that their revenue collection from individual mails is decreasing while that from corporate mails is realizing a growth rate of only 15 percent annually.

Posta pay which is a money transfer service that contributes 17 percent of PCK revenue has also seen intense competition from mobile phone money transfer services.

Odhiambo say with the introduction of the hybrid service the corporation intends to cut on expenses incurred while delivering mails to various post offices countrywide which consumes close to 70 percent of its earnings.

The launch of the fibre optic cable in the country that is expected to bring down the cost of internet makes an already bad situation worse for PCK.

Meanwhile, Kenya Data Network has signed an agreement with the Postal Corporation of Kenya to distribute top up scratch cards to KDN customers.

The cards that allow KDN customers to make voice over internet protocol calls and surf the Internet will be available in 800 of the PCK branches countrywide.

KDN chief executive officer Kai Wullf says this service will allow its customers to connect to the web anywhere using the scratch cards.

Postmaster General Fred Odhiambo said the partnership will help the mail firm diversify its operations in the country.
Posted by Dan Muhuni at 11:28 PM 0 comments
The bandwidth question in e learning
By Dan Muhuni

This month, the Kenya ICT Board will commence distribution of bandwidth to Colleges and Universities to support electronic learning efforts. The project will double the current bandwidth at the institutions of higher learning.

Electronic learning is a type of technology-supported education where the medium of instruction is computer technology. In some instances, no face-to-face interaction takes place and uses a wide spectrum of technologies, mainly internet or computer-based, to reach learners.

The ICT Board seeks to support e-learning efforts by supporting internet-based learning by subsidising bandwidth. With the internet, students can register from other towns and get course materials and exams online.

But is bandwidth the solution to e-learning? Are the institutions well-equipped to offer online services or the bandwidth will facilitate idle internet surfing and email on Yahoo and Gmail?

Is there any conditions precedent that the ICT Board should consider before giving the bandwidth, apart from the fact that it is a college or university? What are the software and hardware requirements, to maximize on the available bandwidth?

This is a positive gesture by the government, which will lay the foundation for future projects but bandwidth is just one block; hardware, software and training are the other blocks.

There is no doubt that e-learning has become the new buzz word in institutions of higher learning. Colleges and Universities claim to offer e-learning just because they have a computer lab, which in many cases have five students sharing one computer.

For instance, an institution may be currently using one megabyte of bandwidth which will be doubled to 2MB. This is relatively huge capacity for an institution used to 1MB, but how will it help if the number of computers remains the same. The capacity will be there but students will still share the computers.

The institutions need to be interconnected so that students and universities can access services via their laptops at any point at the university. This may be an expensive exercise for many institutions, yet the board covers the bandwidth costs only.

Kenyatta University (KU) is probably one of the best examples because it has made major strides towards marketing the institution as an e-learning hub, after completing the final leg of the 30-kilometer terrestrial fiber linking all the buildings and campuses.

The University is seeking to emulate other institutions South Africa that have switched to fully converged solutions, offering connectivity through fiber in addition to 112 Local Area Networks (LAN) points.

The terrestrial fiber within the university along Thika road is owned by the institution while the fiber linking Parklands and Ruiru campus has been provided by local loop providers.

“KU currently uses 10 MB per month but the bandwidth is still insufficient for the 20,000 students,” Andrew Mungai, the Director of ICT at KU.

In the new scheme, KU expects to receive 10 MB from the board, which will significantly improve speeds.

The university has a challenge of providing computers and laptops to lecturers and fully equipping the computer labs.

So far, the university has received 2000 computers from Computer Aid International and bought 1000 more computers, yet there is a shortage of 2,500 computers in order to satisfy the student computer ratio, according to Mr Mungai.

�Computer Aid International has focused mainly on provision of computers, but we knew of the related need for training and value added services,� said Tony Roberts, Founder and Director of International Programmes at Computer Aid International.

For e-learning, KU has received training on Moodle, an e-learning software, deployed with the help of instructors from the university of Worcester, who were linked to KU by Computer Aid International.

“Moodle implementation is very tough given that KU has the highest percentage of physically challenged students,” said Mr Mungai. “The collaboration with Computer Aid and Sight Savers has helped provide laptops with speech functionalities for the blind students.”

KU currently requires 80 MB to sufficiently cater for the students and staff, the hardware has its own challenges. The university will have to maintain the servers and ensure that they are efficient and least down times for communication to be fluent.

In this regard, if KU faces challenges of hardware and connectivity, how are the other universities expected to link their buildings with fiber and Local Area Networks, considering budgetary constraints?

There is the social aspect; students and staff have to start using official college emails instead of yahoo or Gmail and to gain this faith, the institution has to guarantee minimal downtimes and that information will not be lost at any one point.

Then there is the small problem of monitoring and evaluation, which is not unique to educational institutions.

The institutions will need to put in place a software solution that enables it to centrally collect and analyze internet activity. A comprehensive selection of built-in reports including most visited sites, individual user or user group activity, attempted access to blocked pages, bandwidth utilization and performance.

There are open source and proprietary software that allows network administrators to use a template facility to create, store and schedule their customized reports.

The application will ensure all web browsing activity is stored in database that can be either viewed on screen or exported for further external analysis. An extensive range of detailed reports can be generated to show anything from ‘most visited domains’ and ‘top blocked categories’ to time spent browsing and bandwidth utilization.

This will then confirm that the bandwidth is utilized through actual e-learning platforms and not emails only or other sites that have nothing to do with education.

The fibre benefit to hospitals

By Dan Muhuni

When Bitange Ndemo, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication announced that the government would pay 50 percent of bandwidth cost for the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, it caused excitement in the industry.
Everybody in the BPO business wanted to benefit from the government scheme, which is calculated to reduce the cost of bandwidth and allow Kenya to compete with countries like India�s BPO sector. The announcement also made many entrepreneurs to invest in the sector with the hope of enjoying the reprieve.
While the step can be said to have spurred activity and raised the profile of Kenya�s BPO, the health sector remains neglected, yet telemedicine could save lives and ensure that many people access expert doctors locally, regionally and even abroad.
This year, more than 50 hospitals in East Africa will be struggling to raise the money for internet connectivity so that they can benefit from a project that seeks to interconnect hospitals in the region. The project by Africa Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) and Computer Aid International (CAI) requires hospitals to cater for the cost of connectivity while computers, cameras, scanners and training would be provided by the two organisations.
Currently there are 15 hospitals across the region practicing telemedicine under the project but the high cost of bandwidth means that they are restricted to emails as opposed to real time telemedicine and video streaming.
The move has however improved quality, effectiveness, access and the cost of providing health care for the hospitals that are mainly based in remote areas. For effective telemedicine, a hospital would require bandwidth of 512kbps uplink and 512kbps downlink which costs about Sh140,000 (US$ 2000) per month. Because of poor infrastructure, the remote hospitals can not use wireless or microwave links; they will have to purchase VSAT equipment at the cost of Sh406,000 (US$ 5800).
Therefore, a hospital will have to incur an initial cost of about Sh1 million which includes bandwidth for two months, the equipment, internal networking and staff training.This high cost of connectivity has deterred many hospitals from embarking on telemedicine yet the referral hospitals are there and willing to assist other doctors from remote hospitals. Paul Maziku, an assistant ICT officer at Bugando hospital in Mwanza says connectivity is a challenge, citing instances when remote hospitals are disconnected because of failure to pay the monthly bills. The cost of bandwidth remains a stiff challenge to the hospitals; they have opted to lower bandwidth tiers, which are shared, making the quality and speed of the internet slow.
For instance 128 kbps uplink and a downlink speed of 384 kbps costs Sh64,350 (US$ 990) and is shared among eight users, meaning that the speed is low for a hospital that needs instant connectivity and response. With a 128/384kbps shared link, a hospital can send emails, scan and send attachments. The hospital can also network the computers among the offices within the compound and share information such as finance and administrative data and also access patients� records online. For instance; if a radiologist in one wing wants to know whether a patient had been treated for any other ailment, she or he will access the data instantly by the click of a button instead of searching for the file or retrieving it from the archives.
In deed, apart from telemedicine, hospitals can improve their efficiency because records will be online and they can confirm details with suppliers before sending a vehicle to receive the supplies. The computer would also store details of the expiry dates of all medicines. With subsidised bandwidth, more hospitals will be in a position to deliver telemedicine to many more people who may not have the resources to travel to referral hospitals. Connectivity in rural hospitals would greatly help governments monitor the health care system. But connectivity is not the only issue. There is that of software and availability of computers.
Because they are few, hospital administration wants to utilise the computers for both telemedicine as well as a repository of all hospital information. This makes the computer slow and at times it is not used for the actual work. An increase in the number of computers would improve the level of efficiency. Then there is the question of software. Computer Aid usually donates machines according to software specifications by the users.
In this case, AMREF selects the software that should be installed into the computers before they are shipped to the rural hospitals. �The software specifications are similar in all stations, the packages, the needs for these stations are also similar in many ways, some of the software is installed in operating system but for some we have to install in all the machines we receive. We install Gimp application which helps the users in the station trim their pictures to the right dimensions and DPI (Dots per inch) without compromising the quality,� says Frank Odhiambo, who has been working with the remote hospitals all over East Africa.

Microsoft Corporation signs agreement with UNEP

By Dan Muhuni

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Microsoft Corporation have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on leveraging information and communication technology (ICT) solutions to help address today’s complex environmental challenges.

The signing took place yesterday during UNEP’s 25th session of the Governing Council and Global Ministerial Environment Forum on the theme “Globalization and the Environment”, held at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and attended by more than 100 environment ministers.

The partnership focuses on helping environmental stakeholders – including UNEP and other international organisations, governments, nongovernmental organisations and researchers – work more effectively by making use of new technologies.

UNEP and Microsoft are cooperating to support UNEP’s mandate of promoting environmental understanding and increasing public knowledge about environmental factors and the problems facing future generations.

Areas of cooperation include providing access to research and scientific information on the environment, Building integrated knowledge platforms to enable better cooperation between different actors and supporting the development of applications for environmental sustainability management.

“We view our partnership with Microsoft as key to delivering solutions on a scalable level to a community of more than 190 nations and the UN system as a whole,” said Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director.

“UNEP’s ability to mobilise information technology and the platforms for sharing environmental information is a precondition for working together as an international community to tackle environmental issues.”
“Without equitable access to information and the capacity for developing countries to engage on an equal level in negotiating key agreements like the climate change treaty or the biodiversity convention, we will not make much progress,” he said.

UNEP and Microsoft have been collaborating since 2006 on Research4Life, a public-private partnership that includes the Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) consortium.

Research4Life provides access to the latest scientific research through an online library of more than 7,500 peer-reviewed scientific journals, books and databases, made available by 130 publishers at low or no cost to developing countries.

OARE focuses on environmental information, providing scientists, practitioners and policy-makers in participating countries with the information they need to implement targeted programmes and make environmentally sound decisions.

The platform is already having an important impact on communities, such as in Kenya’s Rift Valley, where researchers used OARE resources to address pollution of the Njoro River watershed through a series of programmes, resulting in a reduction of waterborne diseases among the local population and cleaner use of the river.

Also, Microsoft Research’s Computational Science Lab in Cambridge, UK, is partnering with the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) to advance environmental and ecosystem science, prioritising areas of urgent concern in environmental policy, at the intersection of climate change, biodiversity, human activity and sustainability.

WCMC is the world’s authoritative institution for monitoring biodiversity and ecosystems for conservation purposes and collecting data globally on important biodiversity indicators.
Microsoft Research’s Computational Science Lab is one of the world’s leading research laboratories pioneering new computational approaches to tackle fundamental challenges in the science of complex natural systems.

At the same time, a seven point plan to reduce the risk of hunger and rising food insecurity in the 21st century has been outlined in new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Changing the ways in which food is produced, handled and disposed of across the globe – from farm to store and from fridge to landfill – can both feed the world’s rising population and help the environmental services that are the foundation of agricultural productivity in the first place. Unless more intelligent and creative management is brought to the world’s agricultural systems, the 2008 food crisis – which plunged millions back into hunger – may foreshadow an even bigger crisis in the years to come, says the rapid assessment study. The report, entitled �The Environmental Food crises: Environment’s role in averting future food crises’, has been compiled by a wide group of experts from both within and outside UNEP.

Internet Service provider Swift Global has acquired a Sh79.5 billion capital injection

By Dan Muhuni

Internet Service provider Swift Global has acquired a Sh79.5 billion capital injection from principal shareholders Altech Corporation of South Africa and Sameer Africa Group.Swift Global General Manager Nick Odero says the capital injection will finance the company�s ambitious regional expansion, development and launch of new products as well as an aggressive staff development programme.
Speaking at the launch of a new Business Plan, Mr Odero said the company was refocusing its business style in a bid to attract more small and medium term enterprises to partner with.�Swift Global has been a sleeping giant all this while and we are here to take our rightful place as leaders in the expanding internet market,� he said.�Swift Global will offer new value-added solutions like IT disaster recovery, Offsite backup, Server farm, Spam filtering and Hardware lease and sales,� Mr Odero said, adding that the ISP intends to grow its business and drive sales through franchising its regional branches which has proved successful in other market sectors.
�This strategy will also spearhead the initiative of taking ICT innovations to the local communities across the region. The project is aimed at creating partnerships with franchisees in various parts of the country,”he said.Mr Odero said 60 percent of the Sh79.5 million fresh injection, would be allocated to new product development, 30 percent for disaster recovery renovation while training will take up 10 percent.
He said provision of corporate internet solutions had been split into two categories: premium and standard services. Meanwhile, the company also launched its new website that will, among other things, allow customers to critique Swift Global on-line as well as request for online support. �The new website is in line with the company�s strategy to offer customers easy access to its wide range of Internet Technology services and products.
We have spent a lot of time in establishing what our customers want and we believe this is a remarkable value proposition for them.� said Mr Odero. Swift Global is a privately owned Kenyan company; it began providing Value Added Fax Services in 1995 and was among the first Private Network Operators in Kenya.

Phone operators banking for the poor

Dan Muhuni/ Agencies

Extending basic banking services to the world’s poor is seen as vital for economic progress in underdeveloped countries and the mobile phone industry is emerging as part of the solution.Network operators, keen for the revenues such services generate, have launched money transfer programmes in more than a dozen countries, providing a basic service that local banks are unable or unwilling to provide.
The reason is that mobile networks cover large parts of even the poorest countries, while banks have limited numbers of branches and provide only for those able to pay what are substantial account fees for most people.”There are over one billion people in emerging markets today who don’t have a bank account but do have a mobile phone,” says Rob Conway, chief executive of mobile industry trade body the GSM Association (GSMA).
Research by microfinance centre CGAP and consultancy McKinsey & Company shows the mobile money market for the unbanked could grow to five billion dollars over the next three years, the GSMA said.
To this end, Microsoft founder Bill Gates’s humanitarian foundation, which has mostly focused on disease eradication up to now, announced Tuesday a grant of 12.5 million dollars (9.8 million euros) to help fund 20 new mobile money transfer projects worldwide.The trust said the grant was part of its programme to extend financial services to the poor. It identified mobile phone technology as a means to help people “manage life’s risks and build financial security.”"Traditional financial services are often too costly and inconvenient for people who earn less than two dollars a day to obtain, and too expensive for banks to provide,” said Bob Christen at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Eden Zoller, an analyst at telecom research group Ovum, says any initiative in mobile banking should look to emulate what British network operator Vodafone and local partner Safaricom have achieved in Kenya.
A mobile payment system there called M-Pesa was used to transfer 40 million euros (50 million dollars) in January, mostly in small payments, and there are five million account holders, according to figures from Vodafone.Ovum forecasts that mobile money transfers in the Middle East and Africa will grow from one billion dollars in 2008 to 20 billion dollars in 2012.
“There is already strong evidence that mobile payments in emerging markets can be successful for all parties concerned,” said Zoller.Nick Hughes, who set up the M-Pesa system in Kenya for Vodafone and is the group’s head of mobile payments, says the key to the project’s success is the ease with which people can deposit and transfer money.
Without a comprehensive banking network in Kenya, Vodafone and Safaricom set up a network of 7,000 agents, mostly storekeepers, who take deposits and issue cash on demand.Once money is deposited, a user can authorise payments on his or her mobile phone using a PIN number.Money can be transferred directly to another user’s M-Pesa account and even to non-members, who receive a text message instructing them to visit a local M’Pesa agent to retrieve their cash.”Our target is someone who doesn’t have a bank account but wants to move money around quickly,” he told AFP on the sidelines of industry event Mobile World Congress which is taking place here this week.”We have a fantastic distribution network that is an order of magnitude bigger than any banking branch network.”Vodafone has already deployed its mobile payments platform in other countries, including Afghanistan and Tanzania.
South African group Fundamo, which enables mobile phone owners to manage a bank account via their handsets, is already present in Africa, central Asia and Latin America and is working on a major new deal to extend its reach.”You cannot consider someone is empowered if they don’t have access to electronic money in a digital world,” chief executive Hannes van Rensburg told AFP.In Zambia, for example, the company runs a system called Celpay which van Rensburg says handles transactions yearly equivalent to about 10 percent of the African country’s gross domestic product.
A Celpay application comes pre-loaded on mobile phones and a user can complete transactions such as paying bills or transferring money by scrolling through a menu and entering his or her PIN number.”Mobile phones give the opportunity to bank people more quickly and much more efficiently,” he says.The main obstacles to expansion are regulation and the reliability of mobile networks which have to be able to handle the extra volume required to support mobile banking.Vodafone would like to move into India with its M-Pesa model, but regulators have so far thwarted its efforts.”Regulators won’t allow any mobile payment scheme. India has said you have to be a licensed bank,” he said.In the midst of the financial crisis light-touch regulation is out of fashion, but Hughes is keen to see softer regulation to reflect the low-risk and small-scale transactions enabled by mobile payment systems.