CIO EA 2014

SPECIALEDITION

Kenya’s annual IT event - Connected Kenya - marks its 6th edition this year. After 5 years of IT industry and public sector dialogue, are we better off than we were in 2009 when the first Summit took place? This issue of CIO East Africa seeks to find out... 32

Kshs. 300

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RWF. 2,200

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+Windows XP End of Service: what next | P14 New APPOINTMENTS | P27AfricaHackOn: Africa’s first Hackers Convention | P44The unconnected Kenyan | P48

E A S T A F R I C A

BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP

DEMO AFRICA 2014now accepting applications P24

Orange exit: Regulatory failure or just plain old smart business? P4

FEATURE: LTE auction should be transparent, fair and open P18

APRIL 2014

E A S T A F R I C A

B CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2014 www.cio.co.ke

1CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2014www.cio.co.ke

As healthcare organizations accelerate their transition to digital record keeping, they increasingly rely on integrated technology from Hitachi Data Systems. With our innovative information solutions, healthcare professionals can now enjoy immediate remote access to comprehensive medical data, empowering them to provide the best care possible – truly personalized. See how we help healthcare innovate. www.hds.com/innovate

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2 CIO EAST AFRICA | APRIL 2014 www.cio.co.ke

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Harry Hare

EDITORMichael Ouma

TECHNICAL STAFF WRITERSLillian MutegiKamau MboteCOLUMNISTS

Bobby YaweSam Mwangi

HEAD OF SALES & MARKETINGAndrew Karanja

ACCOUNT MANAGERSAmuyunzu Oscar

Vanessa OburaBenjamin Anyetei

DESIGNBrian Kamau

ALL RIGHTS RESERVEDThe content of CIO East Africa is protected by copyright

law, full details of which are available from the publisher. While great care has been taken in the receipt and

handling of material, production and accuracy of content in this magazine, the publisher will not accept any

responsility for any errors, loss or ommisions which may occur.

ContactseDevelopment House : : 604 Limuru Road Old Muthaiga

: : P O Box 49475 00100 Nairobi : : Kenya: : +254 20 404 16 46/7 : : +254 717 535 307

Email: [email protected]

Published By

E A S T A F R I C A

Kenya

Tanzania

Uganda

Rwanda

EDITOR’S note

The invite-only conference – which brings together ICT industry players and key government decision makers – is meant to act as a platform for collabora-tion, capacity building and knowledge sharing between government and the ICT sector with a view of linking and has-tening implementation of government IT projects to world-class standards.

Five years is a long time. If you’ve worked at a place for five years, you should be able to show results, in terms of your overall productivity and contri-bution to the organization. Five years working for an employer should also help one see the significant personal de-velopment s/he has managed to attain over this period.

Remember our elections are also held every five years, as that period is enough a duration for a person or group of people to create positive change and report positive results in anything they set out to do. This can enable them win another five-year term during elections while non-performance can see them being sent home and a new term elected into office for another five years.

What am I driving at? If an event has been held annually for five years, then some visible results should be evident to the population.

Which brings us to the question: The Connected Kenya Summit has been held for the last five years but what can we show for it? What have been the Summit’s main achievements? Is the ICT industry engaging better with the government thanks to the Summit?

Which projects involving participation of both industry and government – also refered to as Public Private Partnerships or PPPs – can we directly attribute to the Summit?

The Connected Kenya website seeks to provide answers. Projects such as Kenya Open Data Initiative, Huduma citizen’s portal and the development of a national Information Security Policy were informed or refined from discus-sions and panels held at Connected Kenya, the site states.

Or maybe we expect to see results too soon while in reality these need more time to be manifest? Which makes me think of another relevant analogy: how about if Connected Kenya was a person, born in 2009 and now 5 years old?

An internet search about 5-year olds returned this: “A 5-year-old has grown from a toddler into a little person. At this age, children show us a glimpse of the adult they will one day become.” The child at this stage has some unique social skills - knows right from wrong; doesn’t use adult logic; plays make-believe; likes to play with friends rather than alone; plays with both boys and girls but prefers the same sex; seeks praise from adults and peers and finally, wants to conform and may tease those who don’t.

I’m tempted to believe that as Con-nected Kenya marks 5 years, it’s display-ing several characters of a 5-year-old kid.

Five years on, is government better connected with industry?

This year’s Connected Kenya Summit – set for mid April in Mombasa - will mark the sixth edition of the event. The

forum has been held annually for the last 5 years since 2009 when the inaugural summit took place.

Michael Ouma

[email protected]


Quoted Verbatim

Let me tell you something. This man, Mutahi Kagwe, Former Minister for Information and Communication and leader of

the African group made me the ITU Secretary General. Kagwe said that we should not be divided by language as we’re neither Anglophone nor Francophone but Afrophones

ITU Secretary General Dr Hamadoun Toure in reference to Senator Mutahi Kagwe during a media briefing. Mutahi Kagwe is currently chair of Senate Committee on Communications.

We want consumers to know that we are there for them no matter how technology evolves in the future. We need to

address our customers’ deepest desires. No matter if it is joy, it doesn’t really have to be “clear out” serenity or security, ASUS

has it all covered.”

Jonney Shih, Chairman, ASUS

I’m impressed by the introduction. I wish I had brought my wife with me to hear

how an important person I am…

Dr Bitange Ndemo, former PS, Ministry of ICT during the Access Kenya / Internet Solutions Managed Services workshop.

Using pirated software is like walking through a field of landmines,

you don’t know when you’ll come upon something nasty, but if you do

it can be very destructiveJohn Gantz, Chief Researcher, IDC.


In Kenya for instance, the company has had consistent wrangles with its partner continu-ously diluting the Government stakes from 51 to just 30 in the 6 years that they have operated.

So for those following the sector closely, the news of the planned exit did not come as a surprise. In fact, it confirmed some pundits’ concerns who from the onset believed that France Telecom was not a good partner for Telkom Kenya and that the French conglomer-ate was going to strip Telkom Kenya bare before offloading it to the highest bidder or abandon it.

To date, the Government of Kenya has con-tunued to inject cash into the firm, the latest being in mid 2013 when it gave US $ 29 million into Orange Telkom in servicing former Telkom Kenya debts and re-investments into Orange. The company also sold off all properties that Telkom Kenya had, stating that they were not a property management company, raking in millions of dollars. These properties, dilut-ing of the Government shareholding and the re-capitalization by the Government appear to have been a plan by France Telecom to bolster the value of the company ready to offload it at the right time.

When Orange became the commercial brand of Orange Telkom back in 2008, the company’s strategy was to focus on a strong data offering and involve the introduction of innovative voice services geared at providing real value to its subscribers. To support this strategy, the com-pany announced the introduction of the latest Blackberry smart phone on its mobile business offering.

Other strategies included the introduction of the first corporate mobile offer as well as re-vamping the now almost non-existent landline

network. These strategies were meant to see the company gain market share and raise its 1.8 million-subscriber base rapidly. This did not happen as planned as Orange’s competitors smartened up, and with better market knowl-edge and connection with the Kenyan popu-lace, beat them on subscriber acquisition and product development.

Last year the Public Investments Committee (PIC) in parliament, questioned Mickael Ghos-sen, Orange Telkom’s CEO over the company’s failure to exit the loss-making territory contrary to the plan when it was privatized. Ghossein blamed unfair competition, claiming that the lack of supportive regulation has contributed to the company’s woes. Particularly, Mr Ghossein blamed the failure by the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) – now Communica-tions Authority of Kenya (CAK) - to put in place a regulation that requires operators to share sites.

With yuMobile exiting and now Orange, the market is due for re-alignment. It’s still not clear how the yuMobile buyout will pan out as new interests are said to be coming on board to take over the company.

But the questions that need answers are: is there regulatory failure on the part of the Communications Authority as insinuated by the Orange CEO? Or is the market too small for more than two operators? Did the government conduct a due diligence on the intentions of France Telecom before inviting them as strate-gic partners?

Drop me a note if you have answers.

the company’s strategy was to

focus on a strong data offering and involve the introduction

of innovative

voice services

[email protected]

PUBLISHER

Orange exit: Regulatory failure or just plain old smart business?

from the

It’s now in the public domain: Orange is planning an exit from the African market. This appears to have been in the cards for a while as the giant telecom operator struggled in its positioning and profitability in the continent. Orange seems never to have settled in Africa. Harry Hare, Editorial Director


CONTENTS

APRIL 2014

18 TrendANALYSISASUS looking on the brighter sideof the Kenyan market

DEMO Africa 2014 now accepting applications

Galileo boards, Intel places computing power onto makers’ hands

27 NewAPPOINTMENTSRobert Ngeru

Deon Geyser

Isaac Kennedy Muthama48 LastWORD

The unconnected Kenyan

26 Pictorial

6 In BriefCOVER STORY

Kenya’s annual IT event - Connected Kenya - marks its 6th edition this year. After 5 years of IT industry and public sector dialogue, we better off than we were in 2009 when the first Summit took place? This issue of CIO East Africa

seeks to find out...

32

CIOPROFILE

Peter Tipapa,Head of IT Services, Dalbit Group

How CIOs can respond to emerging IT challenges

30

Product Review

5 years on, Connected Kenya Summit exposes enterprises to business opportunities | 35Connected Kenya Awards winners (2011 – 2013) | 36

17 twitterINTERVIEWIvan Lumala, Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft 4Afrika initiative@4Afrika is for innovation and affordable access to smart connected devices.

FEATURE

LTE auction should be trans-parent, fair and open

18Robert Rudin, Country Manager, Kenya, Ericsson

Nokia 1520

28

7 TrendLinesMITSUMI Distribution scoops Africa Dis-tributor of the Year at DISTREE EMEA

Sight and Sound partners with Samsungto drive uptake video conferencing solutions

Hitachi Data Systems in new drive tohelp CIOs address everyday challenge

LG goes for gold in the silver screen competition

Windows XP End of Service: What next for users of the OS after April 8?

OPINIONCelebrating mobile money

A winkle in time

The AfricaHackOn: Africa’s first Hack-ers Convention.

LIVR Your Life!!

39

Time to focus on production based innovation

Where does your E-Waste go?


AROUND

AROUND the

KENYA: UBA Kenya Bank unveils Akiba Mkononi virtual savings Account

UBA Kenya Bank has launched a virtual savings account dubbed Akiba Mkononi which allows account holders to operate a savings account via their mobile phone.

“It is an easy and stress free solution for individuals who want to save money via a platform that is paperless, readily available on demand and easy to operate,” said Tunji Adeniyi, Managing Director and CEO, UBA Bank, during the launch.

Akiba Mkononi will also allow

customers to access insurance by paying their premiums through the account. The virtual savings account is available on the Airtel Money platform and the bank is in talks to have the account on other mobile networks.

Akiba Mkononi will enable customers to save money by transferring funds from their Airtel Money account to their virtual savings account in UBA Kenya, which will earn seven percent interest rate. UBA Kenya currently has presence in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

W RLDTaiwan Mobile selects NSN as sole supplier for its

LTE-Advanced network

Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) has been selected to support Taiwan Mobile during the mobile operator’s rapid roll-out of its multi-band LTE network built with NSN’s Liquid Radio and Liquid Core technology.

NSN will also deploy LTE-Advanced Carrier Aggregation technol-ogy to increase bandwidth and network performance by com-bining the 700 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrum bands. Under the contract, NSN will implement its high-capacity Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Stations,Evolved Packet Core technology and NetAct network management system. The agreement covers also network plan-ning and optimisation services.

Agile FT showcases PoS solutions at Mortgage Bankers Association’s conference in Los

Angeles

Agile Financial Technologies, a soft-ware provider to the banking, financial services and insurance sectors, partici-pated in the National Technology In Mortgage Banking Conference & Expo held between March 18 21 at the JW Marriott in Los Angeles (L.A. Live).

Agile FT has a portfolio of software solutions for the Mortgage Banking industry including Agilis Lending Point-of-Sale (Wholesale, Retail, Corre-spondent), Loan Origination, Mortgage Insurance among others.

www.cio.co.ke

The full articlesare available on

the CIO East Africa Website

inBRIEF Vodacom customers to make cash withdrawals on Umoja Switch

ATMs using M-Pesa

Vodacom Tanzania customers can now withdraw cash from Umoja Switch ATMs using Vodacom’s M-Pesa service.

Vodacom Tanzania head of product development and marketing, Isack Nchunda, said during the launch that customers can now make use of Umoja Switch ATMs from any part of the country.

“M-Pesa has moved a notch higher. Our customers can now access their cash using Umoja Switch ATMs. This is a great move for all of us and we shall continue to bring more services and products into the market,” said Nchunda, adding that M-Pesa continues to adopt technological developments that are geared to serve our customers better. Established in 2006, Umoja Switch is a local banking network for transaction services. The service has more than 200 ATMs across the country, and by 2012, had entered into partnership with 24 banks.

Vodacom’s M-Pesa service currently has over 55,000 agents spread across the country. The service has also entered into partnerships with banks and other companies in the country, and customers are able to purchase goods and services and make payments through it.


In an interview with CIO East Africa, Steve Murphy, Hitachi Data System’s VP for Emerging Europe, Middle East and Africa said that this is part of the company’s efforts to look at how IT can enhance the operations of clients as well as society in general.

“We understand businesses better than purely IT companies, meaning we can provide better services and support. We also understand the challenges of CIOs, which range from how to attract new clients both internally and outside, how to generate more revenue as well as how to get business to more chan-nels,” said Murphy.

The other emerging challenge for CIOs, said Murphy, is how to deal with various partners working with the specific company to deliver quality services and solu-tions to customers as well as how to reduce overall IT costs, a situation which has been made more urgent by the reduction of CIO budgets.

“A key challenge which many CIOs now have to grapple with now is ‘how do I reduce my or our costs’ as annual CIO budgets only take 4 per cent of total company budgets,” said Murphy, adding that the other emerging concern is how to deal with social innova-tion and social media within organizations. Industry statistics further indicate that CIO budgets are being increased by only 5 per cent annually while their func-tions are increasing by over 50 per cent, which means that CIOs have to perform significantly more functions on limited budgets.

“We have solutions that can help them manage those challenges and perform the required functions without an increase in budgetary allocations. With our solutions, we aim to reduce costs while enhancing safety for our clients,” said the HDS regional boss, add-ing that IT is a key area for the firm, contributing about 50 per cent of overall revenues.

Data solutions provider Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), which established its Kenya office in the second half of 2013 to serve the East African region, is currently on a new drive to help chief information officers cope with the various challenges they face in their line of work.

Hitachi Data Systems in new drive to help CIOs address everyday challenge

Steve Murphy, Vice President, Hitachi Data System, EMEA

Industry statistics further indicate that CIO budgets are being increased by only 5 per cent annually

TrendLINESMichael Ouma


Advertorial

With a 30year leg-acy in the busi-ness, MFI Group is all about inno-

vation. From its beginnings as Mitaa holdings and dealing with only one brand of copiers, to a multi-national company that is an intermediary for worldwide imaging and technology solu-tion providers, MFI Group prides itself on the excellent service and customer satisfaction that is a guarantee when working with them.

What is now known as MFI Group came into existence in March 1984 and has evolved over the years, and as business expanded, to become known as MFI Office Solutions and finally, MFI Group. The history of the company gives the Group a strong position in the industry and the country.

The integration of document imaging and technology solutions under the banner of MFI Group, allows the company to be uniquely poised to offer comprehensive solutions to their client’s needs. The Group is a veritable solution provider for its clients when it comes to solutions that will aid in the enhancement of its client’s business operations.

MFI Group is focused on finding the best solutions for your organisation’s needs to

better improve infrastructure, profession-alism and efficiency. The driving mantra behind the Group’s success has always been, innovative global solutions backed by unmatched local expertise. Ultimately, MFI Group works with theirclients to achieve the following:

» Reduced cost & maximize on re-sources

» Improved convenience in delivery » Accelerated productivity to reach

your maximum

The exemplary after sales module employed by MFI Group ensures complete commitment to their clients even after the contract is signed.

MFI Group’s 30 year legacy is one of its expertises and this is enforced in the group’s tagline –“Fostering Ingenuity”. Fostering ingenuity means investing in elements that creates a value network of sustainability. We take in talents of various skillsets; we also merge with industry expertise to produce a team of innovators. Our innovation is sup-ported by strategic partnership with global companies who share our vision in creating and adding value for businesses. With this approach to the way we conduct our busi-ness, it is no wonder that MFI Group has over 5,000 satisfied clients across the Globe.

By building a team of professionals who are experts in their respective fields and domains, MFI Group has managed to bring together an elite team who are able to handle any and all client challenges with

professionalism and experience. The combi-nation of skilled experienced professionals coupled with superior partnerships with global leaders in imaging and technology solutions, makes MFI Group uniquely posi-tioned to tackle any and all requirements.

With an African footprint that currently extends to 12 countries & partnerships with internationally recognized companies like Kycocera, Canon, HP, Polaris, Alcatel Lucent, Bowe Systec, DOC-IT, Duplo among others.MFI Group is poised to expand into more territories and create a stronghold across the African continent as the superior organisation when dealing with document imaging and technology solutions.

MFI Group’s motto is simple – We believe in doing business that makes sense, feels good and inspires by investing in partnerships with entities that transform the way companies conduct their business. MFI Group is all about generating and adding value to their clients and finding innovative solutions to help their clients achieve their business goals in a better, faster and more efficient way. And with a 30 year legacy of expertise behind them, MFI Group is proud of their heritage but” it’s no longer a ques-tion of where they are coming from rather where they are headed to”


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The two solutions providers have joined hands to boost technology based business communication through video conferencing solutions delivered through Samsung visual displays and mobile devices such as Galaxy tablets.

According to Robert Ngeru, chief operating officer, Samsung Electronics East Africa, the two partners will design and deliver tele-presence packages to the market to meet dynamic business communication needs based on Samsung and Polycom solutions.

Ngeru also pointed out that an uptake in video confer-encing solutions will provide significant cost savings to local firms opting to deploy telepresence solutions in place of constant field travel and related business com-munication methods.

Rajesh Lakhani, Managing Director, Sight and Sound said the two firms will seek to step up the use of video conferencing solutions as enterprise productivity tools.

“From a communication perspective, video solutions are fast emerging as the next best thing after voice, mean-ing that an organisations capacity to engage in video con-

ferencing is turning out to be a key enterprise efficiency element,” Rajesh said.

The local partnership between Samsung and Sight and Sounds comes hot on the heels of a recent release of a global survey that confirms that video conferencing is evolving rapidly and its use as an enterprise productivity tool is growing rapidly.

The survey, conducted by Wainhouse Research and Polycom – manufacturer of open, standards-based unified communications and collaboration - on a sample size of almost 5,000 enterprise video end-users around the world reported that the main top benefit of video conferencing is increased efficiency and productivity.

In this regard, Lakhani reiterated Sight and Sound’s commitment to deepen the penetration of video con-ferencing solutions delivered through solutions such as the Polycom Video Conferencing System, the Samsung Interactive Display Systems and also on mobile devices such as Samsung tablets.

“The world is on a path to ubiquitous video, and Poly-

Local business enterprises are set to enjoy significant cost savings arising from the use of video conferencing solutions delivered by Samsung Electronics and Sight and Sound.

Sight and Sound partners with Samsung to drive uptake of video conferencing solutions

From a communication perspective, video solutions are fast emerging as the next best thing after voice

TrendLINES Lilian Mutegi

Sight and Sound staff pose with one of the many industry awards they have won


Gold partners have a national or multinational footprint

com’s goal is to drive that ubiquity by making video easy to use, secure and affordable for all, across the widest range of devices and environments, ranging from conference rooms to desktop systems, laptops, PCs, browsers, tablets and smart phones,” Lakhani explained.

As a Samsung business partner, Sight and Sound has devel-oped a one-stop solution packed as Video Conferencing plus Audio Visual Display package for a seamless and smooth Video Conferencing Session.

In recognition of their long association, Sight and Sound was recently awarded the first Gold Partner status by Polycom in the region. Gold Level Partner status is part of Polycom’s high profile EMEA certification programme, which is designed to recognize and reward partners who have demonstrated exten-sive knowledge in collaborative communication technologies through rigorous testing in their selected product categories and the associated service requirements. Sight and Sound becomes the only certified reseller of Polycom’s Telepresence and RealPresence solutions in Kenya and the region.

“Sight and Sound has enjoyed a strong relationship with Polycom for many years and our inclusion in the organisation’s worldwide certification programme reflects our dedication to maintaining the highest levels of customer satisfaction. Inclu-sion within the Polycom System Integrator Program is strictly by invitation only and this membership level ensures we have met the following requirements, as defined by Polycom,” said Lakhani.

Gold partners have a national or multinational footprint and provide consulting, integration and outsourcing services to suc-cessfully deliver to enterprises Realpresence and Telepresence, video and voice solutions powered by the Polycom platform.

In return, Sight and Sound receives a range of program benefits, including training and enablement resources, official accreditation, a presence on the Polycom Partner Locator, joint business and strategic planning for differentiated solutions and access to special incentives and product offers.

Rajesh Lakhani, Managing Director, Sight and Sound


The term online became popular in the late ‘80s and referred to the use of a terminal, keyboard and TV (or monitor) to access the banking system using a phone line.

Online services started in New York in 1981 when four of the city’s major banks (Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Chemi-cal and Manufacturers Hanover) offered home banking services using the videotext system. Today, many banks are internet only banks. Unlike their predecessors, these internet only banks do not maintain brick and mortar bank branches. Instead, they typically differentiate them-selves by offering better interest rates and more extensive online banking features.

However for mobile banking, it started in the late 90s as the first deployment was announced in 1999 by a company called Paybox and by 2003, more than a million people were registered on Paybox. Another early mobile banking platform was Mobi Pago in Spain which was later changed to MobiPay. Since 2004, mobile banking and pay-ment industry has come of age.

It is through such innovations that conventional and established current banks have embraced the mobile banking and online banking platforms, developing and deploying the same to provide innovative and convenient banking solutions to their clients.

Among such banks is KCB that has embraced and come up with ME-Banking, a suite of services offered on

a platform that allows one to take control of his or her banking transactions through mobile devices. The KCB ME-Banking services include M-Benki which is an account on mobile. It enables users to deposit, earn interest, get a loan, transfer money direct to bank, buy mobile airtime and pay bills among other services.

M-Benki launched in October 2013, is an innovation that leverages on both the banked and unbanked popula-tion. It is a simple efficient and secure way of banking as all that is required for one to get an M-Benki account is a national ID card and a mobile phone irrespective of being a member of KCB. It is as a result of partnership between KCB and Safaricom.

Apart from M-Benki, KCB also offers I-Bank, still under ME-Banking platform, which is an online banking system. KCB customers are increasingly seeking ease of financial transactions and convenience in banking. I-Bank enables clients to check their account statements, Swift, RTGS, EFT, Forex and other statements online.

Another technology that falls under the ME-Banking suite is the new chip and PIN cards which include the pre-paid cards (in KES and USD), credit cards (Gold and Platinum) and Debit card. The cards use new chip and PIN technology that is safe and secure. This technology en-sures no skimming thus giving customers secure banking, anywhere in the world.

The pioneer in modern home online banking services were the distance banking services over electronic media from the early 1980s.

KCB’s ME-Banking: Convenience at the palm of your hands

Online services started in New York in 1981

TrendLINES Staff Writer

Joshua Oigara, Group CEO, KCB


Wherever, whenever, however.Do much much more online with I-Bank.Open an account on your phone with M-benki.Choose when you want to bank on your phone with Mobi-Bank.Experience secure banking anywhere in the world with Chip & PIN cards.

Experience freedom with

Interactive 24h chat on www.kcbbankgroup.com SMS : 22522 0711 087 000 / 0732 187 000 [email protected]

Regulated by the Central Bank of Kenya


However, to dispel the rumours and get the facts straight, CIO East Africa engaged Mr Rorimi Olumide, the West, East, Central Africa & Indian Ocean Islands (WECA) Microsoft’s Windows Group Lead. Below are excerpts:

What happens to businesses that maintain their XP install base beyond April 8th?

End of Service doesn’t mean XP will stop running, but over time security and performance will be severely affected. After April 8, Windows XP users will no longer receive new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft. So in essence, they are putting themselves at risk of malware, harmful viruses, spyware, and the growing risk of cyber-attacks that can steal or damage personal information and business data. They also won’t be able to access any technical support from Microsoft.

Is there much difference between running XP and a newer version of Windows, especially to smaller businesses or computer that aren’t connected to the Internet?

Windows XP was also not designed for the modern, mo-bile, and extremely connected era. Windows XP and Office 2003 were great software releases more than a decade ago when desktops predominated, but technology has evolved along with the needs, and more importantly, the expectations of businesses’ customers and partners that have already adopted mobile platforms and devices.

What has changed between XP and Windows 8, especially on the business side?

In addition to speed, reliability, and a range of pro-ductivity apps, Windows 8 provides a modern platform designed for a new generation of hardware experiences – from tablets and innovative touch devices to traditional desktops and laptops. Although some businesses are still PC based, in the future they will be expected to deliver the experiences people will want, and be able to meet the demands of their customers and employees for the mobile lifestyle.

How is Microsoft working at making sure that newer versions of Windows and Office 2013 are af-

Tuesday April 8 is a date that many Windows XP users dread for most people are not really sure what will happen to their PCs as well as files saved in the machines still running the OS.

Windows XP End of Service: What next for users of the OS after April 8?

End of Service doesn’t mean XP will stop running


Rorimi Olumide, Windows Group Lead, Microsoft, West, East, Central Africa and Indian Ocean Islands (WECA)


TrendLINESStaff Writer

fordable, especially in Africa where a large number of people pirate the software due to what they see as high pricing in the region?

Programs like Office 365 are particularly designed for affordability with its pay-as-you go model. Office Home Premium has also been extended to be supported on up to five devices through one subscription and 100GB of free SkyDrive storage. Many individuals and business-es do chose to buy counterfeit software or use pirated software in order to save money. But in the long run, the small difference in price between counterfeit and genu-ine software is very small, especially when weighed up against the cost of dealing with the associated malware, that is deliberately loaded onto pirated software.

After upgrading, when is the next cycle of end of support?

The Microsoft Support Lifecycle is ten years, and was introduced in 2002 to ensure that the company remains up-to-date and producing technologies that are appli-cable for the current environment.The Support Lifecycle Policy standardizes Microsoft product support policies for business and developer products, and for consumer, hardware, and multimedia products. The Support Lifecycle policy has no effect on how long you can use a product, it outlines how long Microsoft will provide technical support for products.

How is Microsoft helping businesses in migrating legacy business applications?

We’re working with our customers and partners, helping them to migrate. Users won’t be able to keep any files, settings, or programs when they upgrade from Windows XP, and it is recommended to first back up all files before migration. Microsoft has also partnered with Laplink to provide XP users with a free data migration tool called PC mover Express for Windows XP, which copies all the files and settings from a Windows XP PC to a new computer running Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1. Access it here: WindowsXP.com

If businesses are unable to migrate or have a challenge migrating, can they continue running XP beyond April 8th?

Yes they can, XP End of Service won’t stop businesses from using the OS. As a last resort they can also pur-chase Custom Support for Windows XP to help bridge the gap during a migration process, while receiving critical security updates as new threats are discovered. These third parties may provide ongoing support, but it’s important to recognize that they do not address fixes and security patches in the core Windows kernel.

The Microsoft Support Lifecycle is ten years

Fujitsu has announced that it has been selected to provide server technol-ogy to Magdeburg Re-search and Competence Cluster (MRCC) for a research project to help optimise system environ-ments running the SAP HANA platform and business processes.

Due to the deal, Fu-jitsu’s FlexFrame Orchestrator will now form the foun-dation of MRCC’s latest research. The project focuses on further optimising server systems for running the SAP HANA platform and related business processes. The research findings will influence the design of future gen-erations of Fujitsu solutions and services to the benefit of customers.

MRCC, which includes the University Competence Center Magdeburg, hosts and manages SAP applications and serves 90,000 users across 38 countries at universi-ties and other educational institutions. With more than 150 systems running SAP software and technology, MRCC is an ideal partner for this research project, since solutions for efficient operations can be demonstrated and tested.

In most software landscapes, there is huge potential to simplify and streamline underlying infrastructures to make applications more flexible and efficient as well as more responsive to changing business needs. In addi-tion, many applications running on SAP HANA can benefit from being optimally integrated into overall data center administration. These needs can be addressed by Fujitsu’s FlexFrame Orchestrator, Fujitsu’s open plat-form for managing SAP applications and applications running on SAP HANA.

The goal of the research project at MRCC is to help address these needs by developing a detailed concept definition and description for simplified and improved IT operations based on Fujitsu’s FlexFrame Orchestra-tor.

Fujitsu provides solutions to key global international research institute



“The overall strategy is to expand the company’s ULTRA HD TV and Smart TV offerings with a wider range of prod-ucts that push the boundaries of innovation,” says Kim.

Among its new models is LG’s 105-inch Curved ULTRA HD TV in addition to its smaller 65-, 55- and 49-inch curved 4K units. As the first manufacturer to introduce an 84-inch ULTRA HD TV to the world in 2012, LG has consistently upped the ante with first-to-market ULTRA HD and OLED units. Rather than using a new or different display tech-nology, Ultra HDTVs are LED LCD models that “cram” more pixels onto the screen.

With more pixels in a given area, images are sharper and more detailed than on regular HD TVs. Also known as 4K TVs, consumer Ultra HD sets have four times the

resolution (3840 x 2160 pixels) of traditional HD TVs (1920 x 1080 pixels).

Promised for several years and now finally making an appearance in the large-screen TV market are OLED sets. Using organic light-emitting diodes, OLED sets can light up each picture element individually, without the need for the separate light source that LCDs require.

This translates into a much brighter, more colorful picture. Because OLED TVs don’t require backlighting, they can be made much thinner, as well. OLED TVs are still significantly more expensive compared to regular LED LCD TVs but prices are falling as the technology matures.

This month LG Electronics introduced its 2014 TV line-up in Korea, unveiling a total of 68 new models including ULTRA HD TVs in sizes ranging from 49 to 105 inches, its largest collection to date. According to Josep Kim, the MD of LG East Africa, the company plans to change the dynamics of the current TV market, capitalizing on LG’s early leadership in OLED TV technology and manufacturing.

LG goes for gold in the silver screen competition

Using organic light-emitting diodes, OLED sets can light up each picture element individually

Josep Kim, LG East Africa MD showcases features of the LG Curved OLED TV during its launch in East Africa


TWITTER INTREVIEW Staff Writter

@CIOEastAfrica tweeted @4Afrika

@4Afrika is for innovation and affordable access to smart devices.

How long have you worked at Microsoft and which key roles have you taken prior to your current role? I’ve been at Microsoft for 23 years, with previous key roles including Worldwide Partner Cloud Transformation, Product Manager Microsoft Learning and Academic Technical Evangelist

What is the mission of the Microsoft 4Afrika initiative? To increase Africa’s competitiveness through Skills development, Innovation, and Affordable Access to smart connected devices. The initiative seeks to accomplish this by engaging three primary audiences; Youth, SMEs and Policy makers.

Why did you opt to leave your previous position in the US and join the 4Afrika initiative? My family and I were involved in several not-for-profit endeavors on the continent, so my heart was always on the continent. This gave me a good feel for the kind of initiatives that would lead to material and sustainable ICT innovation and adoption on the continent.

Describe your role as the Microsoft 4Afrika CTO? To drive Africa’s competitiveness through relevant and impactful ICT innovation for Africa by Africans.

What is your leadership philosophy? “A leader leads by leading”

Microsoft has been in the forefront to nurture the youths and SMEs especially through their different initiatives, how do you ensure that the initiatives benefit the youth fully? Microsoft 4Afrika is a very flat organization. We each work directly with the beneficiaries. Every day I am talking to multiple young innovators, this is not a corporate program with multiple layers.

How do you manage technology complexity in your organization? By abstracting the complexity and delivering to my target audience only what is relevant.

Having worked in the US, how do you see the ICT industry growth in Africa as compared to the West? As they say, Africa is where India was 10-15 years ago and where the US was 30 years ago. Fortunately, with the leapfrog phenomenon, we could see a 3 times compression which could turn 30 years into 10

What is your strategy in ensuring Microsoft is always in the lead despite facing other competitors?Relevant innovation! Technological and business models innovation.

Who is your living icon? Desmond Tutu

Ivan Lumala is the Chief Technology Officer for the Microsoft 4Afrika initiative, a programme whose primary objectives are to increase Africa’s competitiveness through development and use of ICT by the youth and SMEs across Africa.

In this role, Ivan is responsible for defining and executing a strategy to catalyse a vibrant, and sustainable ecosystem of African software startups .

@CIOEastAfrica’s @murugimutegi

carried out an interview with Ivan via @4Afrika to know more about his role as CTO as well as his leadership philosophy among other interesting facts.

A leader

leads by leading


LTE auction should be transparent, fair and open

Feature

By Michael Ouma

Ericsson’s subsidiaries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which includes operations in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana and Angola among other countries, recorded reduced business in the third quarter of 2013. According to the Swedish-based company’s 2013 third quarter financial results released in the end of October, 2013, covering the nine-month period from January to September 2013, the sales figures for Sub-Saharan Africa declined.

Robert Rudin, Country Manager, Kenya, Ericsson

To shed more light on the issue, CIO East Africa sought the views of Robert Rudin, Ericsson country manager for Kenya. Below are excerpts:

Since taking over as the Ericsson Kenya country manager in 2013, what can you highlight as your main achieve-ments so far?

I believe we have a much more empow-ered local organization in Kenya and greater focus on developing local talents. This is essential to create a closer partnership with our Kenyan customers. We now have a broad business footprint with the three biggest operators in Kenya, which is the foundation for further growth. We do expect an increased demand driven by data and

smartphone usage. Our customer’s net-works would need to expand to capture that growth opportunity. We expect data traffic to grow a stunning 17 times before 2019.

There is a perception that Ericsson – and by extension other EU and US In-formation Technology firms – are losing out to Chinese companies when it comes to lucrative contracts in Kenya. What are your comments about this?

Ericsson has over 100 years of long his-tory and tradition in Kenya. Our first project was to install the telephone line between Mombasa and Kisumu in 1895. We strongly believe that our technology leadership combined with our local services capabili-ties gives our customer a competitive edge


LTE auction should be transparent, fair and open

Feature

in this market. For example, we have developed a unique radio solution perfectly suited for the mobile broadband deployment in sub-Saharan Africa, where both coverage and capacity needs are huge. In Kenya we are the biggest ICT company with local presence in Nairobi with some 300 employees. We believe we have a long-term sustainable approach to Kenya, to the benefit of the ICT sector, the Kenyan people and the local society.

Kenya currently has new administrative units which need to utilise IT for enhanced service delivery. How does Ericsson plan to work with County Governments to enhance partnerships in the country as well as increase its commercial footprint?

I agree this has created an interesting opportunity for Ericsson. We should remember that Ericsson is mainly partnering with the mobile operators to provide ICT solutions for consumers, enterprises and government. We need to explore further with the counties how we can assist them building up their ICT infrastructure.

Apart from taking part in and at times hosting the annual Social Good Summit in Kenya, what other CSR activities and projects has Ericsson initiated in Kenya? How many people have these impacted?

We are engaging a lot in CSR activities in Kenya. Since 2008, we have provided infrastructure to the Millinium Village project in Dertu, Kenya. Over 76 000 people in Kenya has benefited from mobile connec-tivity improving access to healthcare, education and livelihoods thanks for this project. Another example

is the Connect to Learn Initiative, where 630 students in Dertu and Sauri have received access to qual-ity education resources through Connect to Learn, enabled by Ericsson’s cloud-based solution deployed in schools.

According to Ericsson’s 2013 Third Quarter financial report, Sub- Saharan Africa, which in-cludes Kenya, recorded reduced business. What were the reasons for this? What initiatives or programs have you put in place to ensure better and increased results this year?

Operators continue to focus on improving capacity on 2G and 3G networks to improve quality of services. However, sales were negatively impacted by reduced deployment pace in Nigeria and South Africa. Profes-sional services growth is fueled by continued good demand for managed services. For the full year 2013 sales volumes came from 2G and 3G deployment and managed services, although the deployment pace slowed down in the fourth quarter.

In 2013 Ericsson executed a number of strategic ini-tiatives to both manage the ongoing technology tran-sition in the industry and to transform the company for future business opportunities. We have solidified our core business as well as taken important steps to build a leadership position in new and targeted key areas. This includes consolidating the modems business and the acquisition of the IPTV business Mediaroom from Microsoft. We will gradually increase resource and capital allocation in these areas as well as in IP, Cloud, OSS and BSS.

The long-term fundamentals in the

sales were negatively impacted by reduced deployment pace in Nigeria and South Africa

pg 21


TrendANALYSIS Lilian Mutegi

Founded in 1989, Asus was ranked as the world’s fifth largest PC vendor unit sales after HP, Lenovo, Dell and Acer in 2012. Asus also appeared on Business Week’s “InfoTech 100” and “Asia’s Top 10 IT Companies” rankings and ranked first in the IT Hardware category of the 2008 Taiwan Top 10 Global Brands survey with a total brand value of US$1.3 billion.

Being among the latest entrants in the IT industry in Kenya, CIO East Africa carried an exclusive interview with Chris Wen, the firm’s country product manager for Turkey and Africa department to find out more about the ASUS brand in the region, their target market, their expansion strategy and also their future plans for this market. Below are excerpts:

What expansion strategy does ASUS have for the entire East Africa region considering expansion of other tech companies?

Our first priority is to build our name gradually and cre-ate awareness about who we are. We entered the Kenyan market back in 2012 and made Kenya our key focus in

2013 and focused especially in Nairobi in the first quarter. We have gradually grown positively in the Kenyan market and also in Tanzania and Uganda.

What market is ASUS targeting with its products?We basically target the tech savvy and lovers of tech

products. We have over 50 branches across the world. We also try to make every move comprehensive and we are also targeting students with our ASUS S series which in-cludes the Transformer Book T100 and Fonepad devices.

What is the ASUS Campus Tour activation all about and so far how many universities have you visited?

The main reason why we are having the activation tour in campuses is basically to bring ASUS to people and pre-sent it to our end users. We want our customers to have a basic knowledge of what ASUS is and what we do. We have carried out the activation tour previously in the vari-ous shopping malls across the country including Westgate and other malls. We then targeted students as we believe students are our future leaders and tend to make news more viral. We also believe students

“Inspiring Innovation. Persistent Perfection,” – that’s the slogan of Asus, the Taiwanese PC vendor and consumer electronics company.

ASUS looking on the brighter side of the Kenyan market

Inspiring Innovation. Persistent Perfection

Chris Wen, Country Product Manager, ASUS, Turkey and Africa

pg 23


there is an important opportunity to license the spectrum that will be released in the lower bands when digitalizing the TV

broadcast.

TrendANALYSIS

industry remain attractive and with our ongoing strategic initiatives we are well positioned to continue to support our

customers in a transforming ICT market.

The report states that: “Sales declined Year-on-Year (YoY) despite continued growth in services mainly fuelled by Managed Services. Operators continue to build out capacity on 2G and 3G networks to improve quality of service. Initial LTE deployments are on-going but are still a small share of sales,” meaning that managed services do not contribute much in terms of revenues as well as 2G and 3G networks. What are you doing behind the scenes to fast-track Kenya’s LTE / 4G deployment, which could translate to better revenues for infrastructure providers like Ericsson?

We fully respect the complexity in issuing licenses and choos-ing a sustainable business model and we trust the policy mak-ers in Kenya to make the right decision for Kenya. As a global company, we have some experience from other countries and what have worked well for them. We do believe any intended auction for LTE spectrum should be transparent, fair and open to all incumbent operators, who have been instrumental in growing the industry to date. Further, there is an important opportunity to license the spectrum that will be released in the lower bands when digitalizing the TV broadcast. We believe that that would further stimulate growth in the ICT sector and Kenya’s economy. LTE is a technology that not only bring higher data speeds and improved coverage, it also utilize the spectrum more efficiently (spectrum being a scar resource). Ericsson has great experience in deploying LTE in the world, not at least in the US. Real-time measurement on the field indicates that Erics-son’s network is outperforming others in the same time that the end-user is becoming more demanding on network quality.

Having been in Kenya as the Ericsson boss for over 6 months now, what can you pin-point as the greatest challenges for telecoms that infrastructure providers can address?

The level of urbanization is rather low in Kenya, hence the big majority living in rural areas. This adds to the challenge to build networks connecting the unconnected. It would be challenging building a network for these people with conventional prod-ucts. Ericsson started a few years ago to develop innovative solutions for exactly this situation, which we call Mobile Rural Coverage, where we drastically reduced the need for initial investment and the running cost of such a network.

What will the reported pull-out of yuMobile (and ru-mours about Orange getting out of Kenya) mean for your business?

These are rumors, sorry, I do not want to speculate on these.

The Rockefeller Foun-dation has announced a $3.8 million grant to the Ghanaian government in partnership with the World Bank to support the establishment of world class facilities that will attract IT and IT enabled firms, includ-ing Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms to Ghana and create jobs for Ghanaian youth.

The grant complements the World Bank’s US $ 5 mil-lion provided under the eGhana Project and is part of the Foundation’s Digital Jobs Africa initiative launched in 2013; the initiative is a $100million initiative aimed at improving 1 million lives through ICT skills and jobs for high potential but disadvantaged youth.

As a result of this grant, a new mini-ICT Park to be located in central Accra will be completed by August of this year, and is expected to have the potential of pro-viding direct and indirect employment to over 10,000 people, primarily youth, who have few alternative job opportunities.

Recent research funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and issued by the Dalberg Institute identifies access to real estate as the primary barrier to expanding the BPO sector in Ghana, and thus hinders creation of new jobs for an increasingly unemployed youth population. This grant will help address that constraint directly by pro-viding the funds for the Ghanaian government to create a world class Facility. The proposed centre is expected to function as a mini-ICT park, whose impact is expected to move Ghana up the ranking among the Tier 2 coun-tries, but most importantly the IT and IT-enabled ser-vices (ITES) sector is deemed most likely to absorb large numbers of unemployed and disadvantaged youth.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Digital Jobs Africa ini-tiative is being implemented in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Morocco. The grant follows on from the Foundation’s 2012 support to Ghana ITES Secretariat.

Rockefeller Foundation extends US $ 3.8 million grant to Ghana to accelerate ICT sector


In simple terms, given a certain input, micro-controllers will have an output and are programmable devices designed to perform certain functionalities. Key charac-teristics of such devices is that they are developed on low costs, are very interpretive and usually work under open source computing hardware and software.

Microcontrollers are boards that come with key ele-ments in order to perform computing on them. They are basically devices that give one a tool to automate logic.

Recently, what we have been experiencing is a lot of consumption of computing capability and as a result of Moore’s law, the creation part of computing is getting into people’s hands; they are realizing that they can actually create things better on their own compared to market-

based solutions.

As a result, Intel has introduced a new platform of com-puting known as Quark, a small power efficient processing core that is compatible with its ‘Pentium’ family of proces-sors. With this, the company kept a reasonable amount of computing power onto a board for people who want to automate certain processes.

Galileo boards, a naming system for the Quark proces-sor line of products, shows how Intel is tapping into talents of creative people who want to develop the next big thing in computing.

“These makers are individuals who will build the next HP, Dell or Apple and we would like them to be very com-

Microcontrollers are boards that come with key elements in order to perform computing on them.

The maker community is a certain small segment in the technology market that likes to fix things, for example change the way Christmas lights blink or develop solutions for your refrigerator to send you a text message in case you run out of eggs. They like to have control over things using micro-controllers, a common phenomenon in engineering schools of major universities and polytechnics.



Chris Mwangi, Technical Lead, Enterprise and Consumer Business, Intel East Africa



TrendANALYSIS

By installing a Linux operating system on it, the Galileo board is an open software

and hardware platform that enables developers to make anything they want

fortable developing on our platform, which is one of the biggest advantage of develop-ing applications on such boards,” said Chris Mwangi, Field Application Engineer, Intel East Africa.

The entire board is built on an open source platform with all schematics ac-cessed online from the internet, allowing companies that might want to come up with processing prototypes using this board to access most information on how Intel put it together.

“By installing a Linux operating system on it, the Galileo board becomes an open soft-ware and hardware platform that enables developers to make anything they want”, says Mwangi.

Intel launched the Galileo program that specifically targets these “makers” or people interested in developing combined hard-ware and software solutions.

The program started in March this year, at 3 universities, Kenyatta University, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Tech-nology, and University of Nairobi, where we donated twenty Galileo boards and provided training and support. This followed the global launch of the Galileo boards in late 2013 at the Maker Fair Conference in Rome, Italy.

Mwangi described a case project based on the Galileo board where a robot’s hand, connected to server mortars with a mounted WiFi card, was able to monitor Twitter feeds for the developer. Every time the developer was mentioned at the same tweet with Justin Bieber, the robot’s hand would move up and down, and if anyone else was men-tioned, the hand would swing from the right side to the left – a proof of concept.

are very flexible and most of our products are out to favor them, like the Transformer T100. We plan to have the tour in every

quarter and currently we have visited Catholic University of East Africa (CUEA) and United States International University (USIU).

Which countries across Africa has ASUS set up offices in?Across Africa we have our main offices in South Africa and Egypt,

where we at ASUS classify Egypt under Middle East. Other countries where we are located include Tunisia, Morocco, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Botswana, Mauritius, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. We also have a key focus on set-ting regional offices by 2015 in Kenya, Nigeria and Tunisia for the East Africa, West Africa and North Africa respectively. This is will enhance quick penetration in Africa.

How unique are your products from the others offered by your competitors?

We at ASUS believe in innovation. We are driven by innovation. Our products are very innovative, for instance we were the first to introduce the trans-formable notebooks in 2010, the ASUS Transformer T100 which is a notebook and can still be converted into a tablet by just a single click. In terms of de-signs, our product’s bodies are mostly engineered using bamboo rather than plastic or metal, which is a different thought as compared to our competitor’s.

Which products does ASUS plan to introduce to the market this year?

This year, our key focus is on ASUS phones which were introduced during the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where we unveiled the ZenFone 4, ZenFone 5 and ZenFone 6 phones. We plan to bring these devices to the Kenyan market. We also have plans to introduce colored devices in the market as we have previously been bringing into the market black and grey products.

Could you tell us the range of products ASUS has currently in the market?

We currently have our products broken down in various units. First under the open platform business unit we have monitors, routers, motherboards, headphones/headsets and ROG. We also have other products like ASUS Transformer Book T100, Asus G series, ASUS UX series, ASUS Fonepad series, ASUS Taichi, ASUS N series and ASUS X series.

What is ASUS market share globally?Globally, we currently stand at 10%. We entered the laptop market

15 years ago and we were rated as the 3rd best compared to others who have been around for over 30 years. We believe we are making it big in the market. We have a lot of expectations in Africa in regards to attention and resources. We target to get over 5% in the Kenyan market by the end of this year.


The event is scheduled to take place between 22nd and 26th of September at the Oriental Hotel in Lagos, Nigeria and a series of events will be hosted in collaboration with the Nigeria Federal Ministry of ICT, the LIONS@FRICA Partnership, VC4Africa, and Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

DEMO Africa 2014 will be started off by a DEMO Africa BootCamp for the invited start-ups and a strategic meeting of the LIONS@FRICA partners, and will culminate in a two-day DEMO Africa stage event.

This year, for the first time, the event moves away from Nairobi to Lagos to live up to its objective of allowing for better continental participation.

Start-ups that meet the application requirements are being encouraged to apply for a chance to boost their innovation. The ability to link creativity, innovation and effectiveness is key for a chance to launch on the DEMO stage to a tech eco-system of investors, IT buyers and the global IT press.

To be eligible to launch on the DEMO Africa stage,

The application window for DEMO Africa 2014 is now open. Submission for applications will be accepted online through demoafrica2014.com between March 15th and June 15th 2014. As done in previous years, the application process will run in collaboration with the VC4Africa community platform.

DEMO Africa 2014 now accepting applications

The ability to link creativity, innovation and effectiveness is key

DEMO AFRICA 2013



applicants MUST have a working product (Not an idea) ready for market and the product must solve a commercial problem, make an impact or change the marketplace into which it is introduced or create a new market, have a business plan and a management team capable of delivering the product to market as well as make its public debut at the DEMO Africa conference .The company must also be registered.

Products that are not eligible include products currently in public distribution, either as a launched product or as a highly publicized beta test, upgrades to an existing product, products entering an already saturated market category with little market differentiation and products that have been widely covered by technology and business media.

Launch categories for DEMO Africa 2014 will include agriculture, health, education, manufacturing, retail, media and entertainment, communication, transport and logistics, energy, finance and banking, water and sanitation as well as waste management and recycling.

These categories have been created to allow for an all-inclusive application. All the applications will be vetted by a panel of judges comprising experts in Tech and Business who will shortlist the best forty. They will be coached and mentored on skills necessary to launch successfully on the DEMO stage ahead of the event.

The event is yet again expected to live up to its promise by providing capacity building and training in business development, providing connectivity to global innovation grids, promotion of access to capital, creation of opportunities for partnership as well as showcase best practices and successes in African-led innovation solutions.

Launch categories for DEMO Africa 2014 will include agriculture, health, education,

manufacturing, retail, media and entertainment, communication, transport and logistics, energy,

finance and banking, water and sanitation as well as waste

management and recycling.

TrendANALYSIS

As part of its efforts to expand its African footprint, Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) has announced the inauguration of a new office in Lagos, Nigeria. The company has also renovated its existing office in the capital city Abuja. Nigeria is a priority country in the Africa region for NSN, and these modern offices aim to enhance the company’s operational agility for delivery of its mobile broadband infrastruc-ture for all operators in the country.

The opening of this office in Nigeria further strengthens NSN’s presence in Africa and reiterates the company’s commit-ment to help operators in the Middle East and Africa region build world-class mobile broadband infrastructure.

The office was inaugurated by Igor Leprince, senior VP of Middle East & Africa region, NSN; Salvatore Maisano, head of Central East and West Africa, NSN; and Sam Nwosu, Country Director of Nigeria, NSN, in the presence of Dr Okechukwu It-anyi, Executive Commissioner, Nigeria Communications Com-mission (NCC); Johnson Salako, CEO, MobiTel; Olu Raheem, Head of Trade Center, Finland Trade Center, West Africa; and representatives from Nigeria telecom operators including Etis-alat, Airtel and Intercellular.

“NSN is committed to further strengthening its focus on Nigeria and helping telecom operators build a reliable, supe-rior mobile broadband network across the country including mid-size cities and rural areas,” said Igor Leprince. “With two modern offices and expanded operations in the country, we are ready to deliver large-scale mobile broadband rollouts in Nige-ria. As the world’s specialist in mobile broadband as well as with the expertise and experience gained from the most advanced telecom markets such as Japan and Korea, NSN will help oper-ators in Nigeria become advanced mobile broadband providers on par with the world’s leading telecom services providers.”

“The opening of the new office by NSN in our country will be beneficial for strengthening Nigeria’s mobile broadband infrastructure and economy. Our telecom market is fast grow-ing with subscribers increasingly adopting smart devices and demanding high quality voice and data services,” said Dr Okechukwu Itanyi. “NSN’s advanced products and services, and strengthened quality of delivery will help operators ensure bet-ter broadband access to a large part of the country’s population for better education and development. In addition, it enhances the position of Nigeria as a technology hub, while improving knowledge transfer toward our country.”

NSN expands operations in Nigeria, opens new office in Lagos city


Pictorial

In the picture Lucy Njoroge (R), Managing Director, XRX Technologies explains to Ngugi Kiuna, Board Chairman, XRX Technologies, how the Unibind thermal binder works when it was officially launched

Airtel Kenya staff participate in the Save a Mum Walk in support of African mothers at the Ngong’ Forest Sanctuary

Paul Alfayo Wawire (centre) , Overall Fanikisha na M-Shwari winner with Bob Collymore, CEO, Safaricom (L) and Jeremy Ngunze, Managing Director, CBA (R)

(L) Sam Warutere, Sales Representative, Asus and Josie Nabwire of USIU during the company’s marketing campaign at USIU recently


Ngeru has been appointed as Samsung East Africa’s chief commercial officer (CCO) as well as the firm’s first African Vice Presi-dent in charge of East and Central Africa. In his new position, Ngeru will be charged with leading the South Korea-based consumer electronic giant’s expansion in the region.

He will continue to operate from the West End Towers office in Nairobi, with the new title only meaning that his travel engagements increase in order to cover more

ground. Ngeru is passionate about creating ecosystems that last and says he loves mak-ing things easier for people.

The appointment come at a time when Samsung is experiencing increased huge growth both regionally and globally, becom-ing one of the major brands, with recent GFK results indicating huge growth in mobile device sales with Samsung leading in smartphone sales in Kenya

Robert Ngeru

NewAPPOINTMENTS

Telkom Kenya has appointed Isaac Muthama as Chief Mass Market Officer. Muthama is a seasoned Mass Market sales and distribution specialist with more than 15 years experience in the telecoms sector. Prior to joining Telkom Kenya, Muthama was the head of distribution at Airtel Kenya, responsible for the implementation and execution of the company’s sales strategy, a

position he held since November 2011.

He has also worked as the regional manager in charge of sales at Essar Telecom Kenya for 3 years. He holds an Executive MBA from the Indian Institute of Manage-ment, Ahmedabad, India and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nairobi.

Isaac Kennedy Muthama

Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) has announced the appointment of Deon Geyser as head of Southern Africa sub-region effec-tive today.

Deon has held a number of senior man-agement positions in leading African tel-ecom companies, including COO at Milicom International Cellular (Tigo) in Tanzania.

In his previous role at NSN, Deon served the company as Country Director for Tan-zania from 2007-2012. He has vast experi-

ence across mobile broadband, value added services (VAS), billing, business transforma-tion, managed services and customer experi-ence management (CEM).

Born in South Africa, he holds two under-

graduate degrees in Electronics Engineering and IT and a master’s degree in Engineering Management from University of Johannes-burg. He likes to spend his spare time with his family. He also enjoys running, sports and socializing. Based in South Africa, he is married and has two children.

Deon Geyser


Nokia 1520 Nokia is back with a bang. From the recent releases we can tell that the Finnish Company is picking up fights with everyone whether it is the big boys Samsung and Apple or the emerging market with its Asha devices. The Nokia Lumia 1520 is a cut above all the rest of the company’s devices.

The full HD 1920 X1080 display is a gamer’s paradise improving the experience without too much eye squinting thanks to the 6” Corning Gorilla Glass screen with a wide viewing angle feature.

Its brightness control, the super sensitive touch as well as the wide range of sensors (accelerometer, Magnetometer and Gryscope) make the device an easy pick for

both the old and young as it is both easy to use and not discouraging for people with optical issues.

This device is likely to attract socialites on imaging apps as the huge screen coupled by its superb pictures - thanks to the various camera and picture enhancing apps by Nokia - helps you appreciate the art and creativity on various apps such as Instagram.

Another outstanding feature of the 1520 is the easy-to-type keyboard thanks to its larger keys, smart correction, easy-to-clean screen.

If there is any feature that the device triumphs hands down over its competitors it’s the screen.

For starters, the tall (162.8mm) and wide (85.4mm) Nokia Lumia 1520 Phablet is both beauti-ful and bold with a sprinkle of sleek straight from the first appearance.

Its body choice of colors (red, yellow and black) tells that it targets both the business executives ‘ready to make a big statement’ as well as the youthful customers who will be attracted to such a huge phone for all reasons varying from gaming experience, online streaming of videos among other considerations.

If there is something that really stands out, it’s the thin bottom that gives the big phone a slim look and makes it rather easy to carry in your pocket although the sharp edges as a result is in some way a nuisance.

The device weighs 209g which makes it impos-sible for you to carry it on your shirt pocket without sagging while in your trouser pocket the weight reminds of the phone’s presence thereby making it unlikely for you to forget it on top of a table after a week.

Also given its size, it is a two hands device, which in turn reduces mobility bringing the user to almost a complete halt.

DESIGN

Screen

ProductREVIEW Kamau Mbote

85.4mm 8.7mm

162.8mm

*Actual Size


What is the use of a Phablet without a good camera? With a 20MP PureView camera the Lumia 1520 takes the pole position in its class only second to its sister the Lumia 1020 which introduced the 41 megapixel camera.

On the specifics the device has an aperture of f/2.4 and a sensor size of ½.5 inch both inferior to the 1020 but matches predecessor in focal length, image stabilization and the maximum ISO.

Although it takes a few seconds to focus and give you the right picture the picture quality is worth the wait, it might however prove problematic to use for first time users with the screen focus lacking a camera icon to indicate they can simply tap it.

CAMERA

There are a number of outstanding apps, some that come with the phone and others on the app store, which tell you about the target for this device, young adults as well as the middle and upper class.

The device comes pre-installed with various productivity features including the Office 365 suite, business and office apps like adobe acrobat reader, Lync, SkyDrive, Excel, Word, Powerpoint, OneNote and supports pdf and word document formats.

One of the amazing apps suited for this device though not exclusive to it is Story teller which creates stories from your photos, videos and cinemagraphs including sorting them by location making them more interactive and easy to follow. Also notably is the wide range of imaging apps that correspond with the company’s investment on high performance cameras.

The Nokia Smart combines various features from the Lumia 1020 namely the Nokia Pro Cam and Nokia Smart Cam making it fast to edit and share photos while the creative studio, cinemagraph and panorama make it easy to bring life into pictures and stitch them to perfect view for the latter.

Software and Applications

ProductREVIEW

CONNECTIVITYSIM card type: Nano SIM Charging connectors: Micro-USB AV connectors: 3.5 mm audio connector System connectors: Micro-USB-B USB: USB 2.0 Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0

HARDWARE


CIOPROFILE

Peter Tipapa,Head of IT Services, Dalbit Group


CIOPROFILEKamau Mbote

Peter Tipapa is the group head IT services at Dalbit Group, a position that puts him in-charge of ICT strategy and project management for four companies in the group – that is Dalbit Petroleum, Africa Spirits Limited, Wines of the World and Belgravia Services.

Tipapa specializes in strategic positioning of ICT in the companies, project management and policy formulation among many other areas in the IT space.

Soon after graduating from JKUAT with a Bsc in Mathematics and Computer Science, Tipapa joined SERA Software East Africa, a regional software development firm where he began his career as a product support and development staff.

Long way down the line, Tipapa managed the implementation of ERP in multiple industries and has also served as the treasurer of IT service management forum East Africa or SMF East Africa. He has also served as head of IT at indigo telecom during his 20-year career. During this time, he also attained an MSc in IT Management from Strathmore University.

To many, it is unclear and curious what such an experienced IT professional would be doing in oil distribution. But that is until you understand the procurement and logistics complexities in the industry. The huge documentation trail that exists in this area has created a need for paperless and easy-to-track system in the entire East African region where Dalbit has a presence.

The firm’s huge footprint also creates a challenge in connectivity among the different offices as the headquarters need to track inventory flow, monitor cash movements and keep communication going via emails, VoIP and IP telephony. This situation requires seamless integration of both hardware and software to put together a technological remedy if the long processes are to be trimmed and the operation made efficient.

“On arrival at Dalbit, I set my first goal to be to ensure that I utilized IT as a strategic tool that can reduce the long inefficient processes and to upgrade the requisite infrastructure to facilitate this. To this effect we installed first virtualization infrastructure that could place the organization on the cloud and then utilized IP connectivity for VOIP and video connectivity to reduced travel costs for meetings,” said Tipapa.

According to Mr Tipapa, today’s CIOs are faced with various concerns and challenges which they have to cope with. Below are highlights:

Relevance: In an age where departments are fighting for shrinking budgets, the IT section can act as an enabler of other departments that need it to survive and evolve. And to this respect, the IT department can transform from the organization enforcer where it recommends and pushes ideas to a project manager with other departments as clients.

Beating Evolution: It is likely that many organizations are at a crossroads as to which technology to adopt hence many are simply stuck to the good old trusted ways. To beat this trick, stay on the same level with the customer’s adoption of technology which at times means optimal exploitation of value from available tools.

Demystifying IT to executives: The idea is to simply make it easy to understand and transform oneself from an expert to a sales person. To this end you explain the business angle the investment brings to the company such as savings.

Services still too expensive: Migration to the public cloud in Kenya is almost at the same cost as creating a private cloud in the country, with charges pegged on provision fixed monthly cost on the service rather than as a utility usage based model.

How CIOs can respond to emerging IT challenges

It is uncommon to find IT experts with an industry experience spanning over 20 years locally, so when I met Peter Tipapa, I was very keen to learn from among the industry pioneers. After talking to him for roughly an hour, I was astounded by the vast knowledge he possesses not to forget his impressive resume.


CONNECTED KENYA

By Kamau Mbote

Cover

Looking back at the achievements and failures of Connected Kenya

In order to evaluate achievements and failures of Connected Kenya, Kenya’s premier annual ICT summit that has been held for the past 5 years and which brings public and private sector players together to discuss how to improve the country’s ICT landscape, it is important to look at the overriding themes over the years.


To evaluate how beneficial the summit has been is to analyze the various themes that have formed the agenda since its induction in 2009. The ICT board recently said the annual event has had a positive effect on the industry.

There have been various themes for the event including: Enhancing Service Delivery to Citizens in 2009; Shared Services to Drive Down Cost to Citizens in 2010; Innovating for the Citizen in 2011; Knowledge and Beyond for the 2012 with the 2013 theme being “County Citizen Served” in recognition of the introduction of devolved governments.

Among the various gains seen so far include the crafting of an ICT Policy and the National Broadband Strategy, two documents that guide the sector.

The overall objective of the strategy and the policy was to provide quality broadband services to all citizens in the country. Thereby transforming Kenya into a knowledge-based economy in line with the various themes.

As a result, Kenyans have started seeing various benefits of these policies including economic growth and employment within the ICT sector, e-government, e-health, e-education among others.

The county population can also be said to have seen improved service delivery through initiatives like Huduma Centres that allow ease of access to government services as well as involvement in county ICT summits, that have so far been witnessed in a few counties, with the first such event being held in Nanyuki in 2013 for Laikipia County.

“Citizens desire fast and accessible services. As the counties look into ways of ensuring their people’s needs are addressed promptly most times with limited resources, the only way to achieve this is through technology,” said former chairperson of the Kenya ICT Board, Catherine Ngahu during the event Laikipia County ICT Summit.

The Huduma Centres in particular have made it easier for county citizens to access various services more easily and more conveniently. Such services include drivers licences, duplicate IDs, NHIF registration, business permits, payment of stamp duty, application and paying of students loans as well as reporting suspected corruption among public officers.

“Endless, static queues have been the order of the day, wasting countless hours. Public service became the epitome of inefficiency. This inefficiency bred

The overall objective of the strategy and the policy was to provide quality broadband services to all citizens in the country

Catherine Ngahu, former chairperson, Kenya ICT Board, during a past connected kenya event

CONNECTED KENYACover


the event has become a good platform to bringing various parties together to discuss common industry concerns

Paul Kukubo, Former CEO, Kenya ICT Board during a past Connected Kenya Summit


corruption, initiating a cycle of vice which has tormented many and cost the country billions,” said President Uhuru Kenyatta during the launch of the centres last November.

Other than the 2013 edition, the 2010 summit which focused on shared services saw the government discuss with stakeholders ways of enhancing delivery of services to citizens through digitization of various registries and departments, that had made it hard for Kenyans to receive crucial public services promptly.

To this end, the government was involved in the digitization of the lands registry, company registry, Kenyatta National Hospital as well as the Judiciary. Plans are underway to digitize other government departments as well.

Another important theme was in 2011 when the summit focused on using government data to drive developments as well as in research and other projects. Following the event, the country witnessed the launch of Kenya’s Open Data portal, the first such initiative in sub-Saharan Africa.

Through the Open Data portal, it is now possible to make core government development, demographic, statistical and expenditure data available in a useful digital format for anyone to access. A move that has led to a number of applications that harness this data.

“Ushahidi welcomes the launch of the Kenya Open

Government Portal. Openness is one of the three guiding principles of Ushahidi together with innovation and community. At our core, what Ushahidi does is to build tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories,” Ushahidi posted on its blog while lauding the launch of the initiative.

However, for many who have attended the event over the past five years, it is quite clear that there are no proper follow ups or a way to push for action after the event, with a long period between such stakeholder sittings. It is hoped that the county ICT summits will help address this challenge.

It has also been expressed by certain quarters that some of the stakeholders’ views have been ignored during the formulation of policies and laws. There have also been frequent complaints arising after previous summits while a number of key stakeholders have been left out of the event, an example being the county governors in last year’s Nanyuki Summit where only a few of the county leaders attended despite the event focusing on devolution.

Overall the event has become a good platform to bringing various parties together to discuss common industry concerns as well as an avenue for dialogue between government and the private sector. In 2009 only 60 attendees attended the summit as compared to 400 in 2013 indicating the level of growth in interaction and the interest from parties from both sides.



Aimed at establishing a platform for collaboration, capacity building and knowledge sharing between government and the ICT sector, the Connected Kenya Summit is meant to link and hasten implementation of government IT projects to world-class standards.

Five years down the line, it’s evident that Kenya’s ICT sector is growing at a commendable pace with some of the current government projects having links to the Summit.

Set to kick off on 14 – 17 April 2014, at Diani, Kwale county, this year’s summit is centered on three key objectives which include to build capacity of senior government officials to enable them to effectively support the implementation of ICT projects in public sector, to increase the understanding of factors that limit Kenya’s full ICT transformation and to gain insights on how to mitigate obstacles and increase ICT’s impact on service delivery. It also aims to provide a platform for high-level networking that can result in fruitful relationships that contribute to the development of

Kenya into a middle income economy.

Key players in the ICT sector and major partners in the past Connected Kenya events have realized various benefits from their association with the Summit.

Among this is Dimension Data that has been a key sponsor of Connected Kenya and also set to sponsor the 2014 edition of the summit.

“Connected Kenya has been a learning platform for us to understand specific technology challenges in the East African market. Because of this, we are able to develop solutions that specifically address technology pain-points faced by the government and enterprises then advice these institutions accordingly,” said Joseph Kairigo, GM at Dimension Data East Africa.

Kairigo said that the amount of technology solutions being consumed in the market is growing while further innovations are being made, a situation which calls for some level

Joseph Kairigo, GM, Dimension Data East Africa.

5 years on, Connected Kenya Summit exposes enterprises to business opportunities

Connected Kenya has been a learning platform for us to under-stand specific technology challenges in the East African market.

The Connected Kenya Summit was first held in 2009, as the brainchild of the ICT Authority in consultation with ICT industry players and key government decision makers.

pg38

By Lilian Mutegi


Connected Kenya Awards winners (2011 – 2013)

By Baraka Jefwa

The Vision 2030 Innovation Awards hosted by Connected Kenya are awards that celebrate Kenyan entrepreneurs who have developed new ICT products and services. The first of these awards were held in 2011 at the Connected Kenya Summit.

The awards were established to encourage entrepreneurs to keep up with the government in terms of development and to help it in the achievement of Vision 2030 goals.

The awards have several categories that include: wholesale and retail trade, BPO, financial services, education and training, health care delivery, social equity and poverty reduction, gender, youth and vulnerable groups, tourism, agriculture and country focus.

With the fourth edition of the awards set to take place during the 2014 Connected

Kenya Summit, let’s look at some highlights from the last four editions.

One of the most outstanding participants over the last four years is Digital Divide Data Kenya which has been declared winner of the BPO award category for two consecutive years, as well as emerging tops in the education and training category in 2013.

Below is a listing of the awards categories and the respective winners from the inaugural edition in 2011 to 2013:

WINNERS 2011


COMPANY WINNER CATEGORYInternational Livestock Research Institute(overall winners)

Agriculture

uzanunua.com Business Process Outsourcing/Offshoring

Mbetsa Innovations Manufacturing

Aga Khan University Hospital Nairobi Health Care Delivery

Websimba Tourism

Ushahidi Education and Training

Horizon Contact Centers Business Process Outsourcing/Offshoring

Mobikash Afrika Financial Services

Space Kenya Networks Gender, Youth and Vulnerable Groups

Virtual Essence Education and Training

Anniversary Lab Housing and Urbanisation



WINNERS

WINNERS

2012

2013

COMPANY WINNER CATEGORYMamaMikes.Com (overall winner) Wholesale and Retail Trade

Green Dreams TECH Agriculture

Digital Divide Data Kenya Business Process Outsourcing/Offshoring

Kuza Biashara Education and Training

Digital Horizons Financial Services

Ushahidi Education and Training

Michezo Afrika Gender, Youth and Vulnerable Groups

Medisoft East Africa Health Care Delivery

ALIN Social Equity and Poverty Reduction

COMPANY WINNER CATEGORYOlivine Technology (overall winner) Wholesale and Retail Trade

Digital Divide Data Kenya Ltd BPO

Web Tribe Financial services

Digital Divide Data Kenya Ltd Education and Training

Iridium Interactive Limited Health care delivery

Duma Works Social equity and poverty reduction

Technobrain BPO/ITES Gender, Youth and Vulnerable groups

Kenyabuzz Limited Tourism

Youth Agro-Environmental Initiative Agriculture

Kisasa Technologies County Focus

Web Tribe Runner-Up


We have been able to gain access to the right level of decision mak-ers and provide value to organizations and the citizens they serve

A past Connected Kenya event


of cross-pollination between business ideas and how technology can facilitate such initiatives to improve business processes.

“We can also continuously understand roadmaps of the government, that enables us to better understand their needs and issues and together look for ways on how to bridge the gap, between where we need to be and how ICT can address the same,” noted Kairigo.

It is clear that Connected Kenya has enhanced the growth of the ICT industry especially in terms of policies made by a combination of technologists brought together in one place once a year. The summit thereby offers a platform where key players in the industry get to understand technology policies and benchmarks that can help govern the IT ecosystem in Kenya and the region.

“By bringing together ICT players and partners, to share success stories and best practice we get to learn a lot and there is value in consistency of attendance,” concluded Kairigo.

SAP has been associated with Connected Kenya since 2011 and according to Andrew Waititu, MD of SAP East Africa there has been an exponential growth of

the event not only in attendance but also in the quality of content and discussions as the event has become a benchmark by which other public-private sector events are measured.

“While SAP is a key player in the public sector space globally, this was not generally a well-known fact in Kenya. The summit provides us with a platform to educate the sector about our solutions for the public services arena in achieving the most out of limited resources,” said Waititu.

As a participant at Connected Kenya, SAP has been able to make inroads into both central and local government units.

“We have been able to gain access to the right level of decision makers and provide value to organizations and the citizens they serve,” stated Waititu, adding that the Summit attracts both local and international private sector organizations that are interested in working with the public sector to interact, build relationships and understand the key priorities of Kenyan government from an ICT perspective.


25th -26th, September 2014

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DEMO Africa 2014 will be hosted in collaboration with the Nigeria Federal Ministry of ICT, VC4Africa, Nigeria’s National IT

Development Agency and the LIONS@FRICA Partners.


No, I did not misspell the word.In the recent past, the government of Kenya has

introduced measures to capture drivers who have been drinking and are behind the wheel, with Transport CS Michael Kamau stating that one can only have two beers after which s/he is then not fit to drive.

This seems unreasonable for a country where people down a whole whisky bottle and still claim to be fit to drive. All too often we have heard the saying, “Gari ina jua njia” meaning “The car knows the way home.”

There is no denying the fact that the Alcoblow, the breath-alyser that has become a controversial tool for keeping drunk drivers off the roads has proved to be a deterrent and a money spinner for the government at the same time. The Alcoblow gadget has not put a damper on many Nairobians determined to enjoy the tipple. Motorists have found new ways of evading Alcoblow police checkpoints including the hiring of temporary drivers for short distances and networking with fellow imbibers on social media to find out police movements.

On Twitter and Facebook, the handle, @AlcoblowWatch and “Alcoblow Watch” repectively, which reveals to many motorists who may be targets about the different locations where the police road-blocks are situated.

Just when you thought social networks couldn’t find originality anymore, along comes LIVR. If you’ve heard one too many gripes about your boozy postings, don’t fret - there’ll soon be a like-minded social app for you. Most social networking services are a sea of inane com-ments on people’s pictures of their pets or children. Or both.

But LIVR, a social network for drinking and social-izing, promises to be different. This social network uses a smartphone breathalyser attachment and only allows you to login when you’re drinking.

Of course, in spite of the great idea and inspired name, this may face issues about responsible drinking. A Face-book drinking game was pulled down a while back after someone died playing it. The game which became a social media craze involved people being nominated to down alcoholic drinks and posting a video online. They then nominate another person and the vicious cycle begins again.

Unlike other social apps, LIVR aims to help people have a good time without the worry of being publicly exposed. There’s a map that shows not only where other people are drinking around you, but also what stage they are at in their night out – indicated by a different color circle around the area. So, if the circle on the map is large, there are lots of people and if it’s dark in color, they’ve had a lot to drink.

This is where you might actually need the @Alcoblow-Watch to get you through the roads as you hop from one club to the next looking for your description of “action”. Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for drink driv-ing.

Everything stays within the app to share with fellow drinkers, and if it all gets a bit too messy, there’s a Black-out button to reset everything as if you were never there. Or if it was a good night, there’s a “Send morning after report” option to share with others.

LIVR acts as a biometric bouncer to a global party. Be-fore gaining access, users first must blow into a plug-in breathalyzer and demonstrate a minimum Blood Alcohol Content (BAC). All users on the network must achieve a minimal level of intoxication. This guarantees that all users logged in at a given time are in a similar state of mind. As a user metabolizes their alcohol, they must drink more to re-check in.

Did I capture your attention yet? I hope I did. An impressive app, LIVR isn’t quite ready for release just yet, but it is scheduled for launch later this year, so it shouldn’t be too long before you can download it.

Whether it will be free, chargeable or indeed will ever exist at all remains to be seen – other apps have in the past come under attack for encouraging excessive drink-ing – and, while this might sound like a bit of fun, can you actually imagine wanting to use it on your night out?

LIVR Your Life!!OPINION Ellen MARCIA

LIVR, a social network for drinking and socializing, promises to be different


Numerous changes in the National governance structure based on the implementation of the new constitution and an increased urge and appetite from the citizen for advanced services from the furthest corners of the nation have spurred the early signs of a new industrial age for the nation of Kenya.

In every relationship, we walk through honey-moon, conflict and community stages. It’s quite apparent that the region is slowly shifting from the conflict to the community stage, the honeymoon is long over and the discussions are now hap-pening around how to pay the bills.Organizations with transformation experience realize that large or mega projects will normally go live after 12-18 months.

For those at the helm of driving key institutions and organizations towards the noble ideal of mod-ern, agile and accessible technology services, it has never been more challenging of a time to select the ideal decision window for the purchase of the next ‘big thing’. This has major ramifications in terms of organizational impact and the setting of expecta-tions for end users or technology consumers who are due to benefit from new solutions and services.

Today’s leaders need to almost assume time travel capabilities, the ability to shift gears into the near and long term future, see the end results, come back into the present, map out the clear roadmaps to tangible results and then declare the precise tim-ing for unleashing new improved services. The shift-ing sands of convergence and aggregation means that the hitherto clear boundaries between Bank, Telco and Media as well as hardware, software and network are slowly being erased.

Much like the current spate of cattle rustling it’s likely that we are on the verge of begin-ning to witness a few strategic forays across industry sectors as the demand for new growth models to tap into increased profit-ability becomes the greener pasture just on the other side of already exhausted industry

vertical fences. It therefore becomes incumbent on CIOs to build strong long term partnerships around Tech giants that have already figured out the puzzle and have built innovation factories that are con-stantly churning out a plethora of custom designed solutions running on open architecture in order to accelerate their journey to success.

Some of these examples are already being wit-nessed through the signing of new partnerships and Managed Services contracts. The game is changing but so are the players to a certain extent, by consist-ently being stretched to go beyond the call of duty. The net of it is that the citizen will benefit greatly but the overall economic benefit will take some time to be realized at the grassroots.

Short of custom targeted solutions driven by op-portunistic demand we should prepare for the long haul and just like our famed regional long distance runners determine that we’re in there to win and ensure that we maintain a consistent, vigilant pace, keeping our eyes on the prize ahead.

Hitachi Data Systems has now entered the East African market with Japanese values built on Wa (harmony, trust, and respect), Makoto (sincerity, fairness, honesty, and integrity) and Kaitaku-Seishin (pioneering spirit and challenge). These key ingredi-ents have helped this global organization grow for 104 years and which will be key to fostering practical meaningful social innovation across the region. One thing is for sure: things will never be quite the same again.

(The writer is the Territory Sales Account Manager for Hitachi Data Systems)

With the advent and commencement of Kenya’s Jubilee year, we are now faced with the onerous and yet joyful task and responsibility of writing the history of the next 50 years of technology investment and advancement across the region.

In every relationship, we walk through honeymoon, conflict and community

stages.

A winkle OPINION Delano LONGWE

in time


In the last decade, Kenya has experienced tremendous transformation in the ICT space largely due to the growth of usage of the mobile phone for voice, data, SMS and mobile money transfer. The integration of mobile telephony in financial services has changed the game of financial transactions. It is now uncommon for bill payments such as utilities being settled on traditional channels.

Whereas innovation has brought the convenience store closer and opened up the wallet wider for the buyer, it has led to increase in consumerism due to easy access to goods and services and ability to pay for them more flexibly.A good number of the digital solutions have been geared towards bill payments (expenditure). Going forward, our innovations must move from promoting consumerism to wealth creation. It’s time to boost the production side of things like agriculture, mining, etc as part of the aspirations of Vision 2030.

Kenya’s Vision 2030 blueprint aspires to create a globally competitive and prosperous nation with a high quality of life by the year 2030. It aims to transform Kenya into a newly industrializing, middle-income country providing a high quality of life to all its citizens in a clean and secure environment.

According to a report by the Central Bank of Kenya, 46% of Kenya population is living on $1.25 a day and are excluded from financial services. The report further says that between 2006 and 2009, the unbanked or under banked segment of Kenyans dropped by 4%. Meaning, an additional 4% joined some form of financial services scheme. This period was around the time Safaricom’s M-PESA service was launched, it was also the time Equity Bank was transformed into a commercial bank. There

was also an increase in the number of savings and credit societies and transformation of some MFIs into deposit taking MFIs.

Whereas strides have been made in digitizing the consumer side of the economy, there has been little or no attempt to digitize the production side. Agriculture, for instance, has huge potential in boosting the economy but poor management of farm inputs, the process of production and marketing has affected supply. Attempts have been made to mechanize farming through initiatives like purchase of farm equipment through cooperatives and introduction of automated spraying solutions to manage the quantities and frequencies of crop spraying in some parts of Uasin Gishu County.

However, we are yet to see large scale solutions of the M-PESA stature that can help stop wastage on over supply of milk for example or delay in getting fertilizers for farmers. A lot has been invested in climate change but largely efforts to conserve our water towers have largely been reactive e.g the Mau Forest and Embobut Forest evictions. There is need for data from early warning systems to be unpacked, broken down in simple interpretable way beyond the custody of climatologists working for some NGOs or department of meteorology to a farmer anywhere in the country. If such tools would be integrated in the mobile phone to provide farmers with some useful updates on what to expect in the coming 3-4 months, it would help greatly in preparation for planting and harvesting seasons.

To boost our manufacturing sector, power will be critical. With power fluctuations caused by heavy rains or lack of it, alternate sources of energy, other than hydro, will be required. The Geothermal Development Corporation (GDC) has invested heavily in exploration and extraction of geothermal energy.

(The writer is an experienced consultant in the ICT industry. He is the co-founder and a director of PTI

Consulting (www.pearltouchint.com/consulting), an ICT consulting firm in Nairobi)

We went through a general election that tried to create a distinction between ‘yesteryear’ generation and ‘next’ generation using two key ICT terms – that is ANALOG and DIGITAL. The two terms have been used to imply progressive 21st century approach to issues for the latter and a regressive stagnated approach to issues for the former.

Time to focus on production based innovation

OPINION Peter MUYA

There is need for data from early warning systems to be unpacked, broken

down in simple interpretable way beyond the custody of climatologists


‘How do we decide what’s relevant to our systems and what is not?’ ‘How do we integrate and effectively use the multiple applications and tech gadgets coming up?’ ‘How do we decide what to spend money on and what to ignore?’ ‘How do we make sure we are not left behind using outdated, obsolete technology in the ever-changing world of tech?’

These are the common questions CIOs have to tackle almost on a daily basis. However, there is one area that is often overlooked and a key question that is rarely raised. What happens to all the old computer monitors, keyboards, hard drives, telephones, mobile phones, photocopiers and other electrical equipment that is phased out during system changeovers? In fact, what did you do with that old laptop or mobile phone that stopped working?

There is this very enterprising group of young men that own an outlet where they carry out all sorts of activities ranging from servicing computers to mobile phone repairs to selling bootleg movies. The entrance is always crowded with customers and if one is not keen, you may not notice the old, most likely dead, mobile phones and the occasional tablet behind the glass dis-play serving as the barrier between the proprietors and their clients clamoring for one service or the other.

This is not the only shop with such a display that, at some point, serves as a museum reminding one of eras past. Numerous stores within organizations and com-panies hold old stock from phased out computers and equipment that no one knows what to do with. Shops that trade in electrical equipment and appliances often also have to deal with the question of what to do with obsolete stock that can no longer be useful to anyone. There are also the old PCs and laptops that no longer meet the environmental standards in other countries that are sent over to developing countries in the name of supporting development efforts.

There was an initiative a couple of years ago that saw the implementation of a pilot project for the recycling and refurbishment of e-waste in Kenya. The project grew into a small scale recycling plant which is currently located in Mombasa. So far this is the only e-waste management initiative that seems active and yet organisations continue to initiate projects that result in a shift to newer, better technologies, dumping the older technologies in their stores or worse, ‘donating’ them in their faulty state to needy causes. There are many

computer engineers who have made a business out of refurbishing old mobile phones and laptops for re-sale into the market but these efforts barely do much to shift the pile of excess e-waste that is generated practically on a daily basis.

One other commonly overlooked area in e-waste management within organisations is data security. What happens to the data that was stored on a laptop that has now been declared obsolete? Who follows up to ensure that the equipment is discarded properly without landing in the wrong hands? I once heard about a non-government organization that had to wind up operations in a certain country. They were not author-ised to leave the country with the said laptops as there was fear that they might have gathered information that was harmful to the government of that time. The organisation ended up having to run a bulldozer over the laptops to ensure that no one could use them or access any data thereafter. This may have been extreme but also an indication of how sensitive an issue data security is.

Emphasis on information security is going to be increasingly important as organisations head towards adopting modern technologies such as cloud comput-ing and virtualisation as there will be less need for hardware. Previously useful equipment will become redundant as systems are upgraded and aligned to these modern technologies.

Perhaps it is time for CIOs to pay more attention to e-waste management while also finding ways to contrib-ute to sustainable development by practicing prudent e-waste management methods that do not harm the environment.

Where doesyour E-Waste go?

OPINION Nyawira MURIUKI

overlooked area in e-waste management within organisations

is data security.


The AfricaHackOn: Africa’s first Hackers Convention.

For over 8 years now, I have been a guest speaker at many IT security conferences and forums and granted they were insightful in their own capacity, something was missing. Majority were obviously driven by spon-sors who in turn would push their products during the conference thus watering down the very essence of the philosophy behind cyber security.

As time went on, we reeled in several more members most of whom are in IT security professions. We are talk-ing of IT governance crusaders, web security gurus, GSM & RF aficionados, Botnet analysis experts to name but a few. In total, we brought together a team of 14 gifted individuals to showcase their skills.

What was going to set this event apart from the rest was really simple: no single vendor was going to push for their product and 80% of it would be hands-on practical display of how hackers do it. This sparked the interest of several sponsors including but not limited to Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), IEEE, iSolutions, Serianu and Euclid Consultancy.

Some turned down our proposal alleging they do not support hack-tivism and others backed out when they realized there was nothing in it for them. Far as I was concerned this was largely expected but we chinned up and soldiered on because our vision had to turn to a reality on Feb 28, 2014. The event was graced by none other than Dr Bitange Ndemo who had just flown in from Barcelona and came straight to the event to give a profoundly insightful keynote.

On the material day, the turn-out was overwhelming. The event was overbooked and surprisingly attendees

came from all industries.

So why did we do this? I am a firm believer in showcas-ing the talent available locally in as far as cyber security is concerned. We wanted to bring to people’s attention the fact that cyber threats are a reality and now is the time to wake up to the reality that it affects everyone. Of note is Kenya is fast becoming a target especially in organized banking fraud while crime syndicates are sprouting in every technology sector, outfoxing sea-soned administrators and auditors.

So it is time to change the approach. It is time to cease boxing ourselves in boardrooms defining scopes and languishing in theoretical rhetoric while the bad guys continue to hone their skills. The main agenda for the AfricaHackOn is to enlighten and educate how it is done. We are talking of 0-day exploits, botnet rings that siphon money from financial institutions, m-Commerce fraud and ideal governance frameworks that meet organiza-tional goals and strategic agendas.

The event was in line with one of the core pillars enshrined in the National Cyber Security Master plan which is Training and Awareness. We have so far received remarkable feedback and we shall continue to cham-pion for relevant cyber security awareness programs. It is also an opportunity to develop new talent because as it stands, the market is very short of skilled professionals who truly have their hands wrapped around the subject of cyber security. This is also a call to academic institu-tions to actively recognize the need to have their courses tailored to address real-world problems and cyber security isn’t any different. Key decision makers too have a huge role to play in embodying cultural shifts from conventional bureaucratic processes to frameworks which are with the times.

In conclusion, IT security is no longer a buzzword but a reality that we all have to embrace and start living with if we are to emerge as a world-class economy by 2030.

The idea was born out of a WhatsApp group chat between Bright Gameli, Lewis Nganga and I. The philosophy was really simple: let us hold a hacker’s convention something, akin to DefCon or Black Hat Briefings. As ridiculous as it sounded at the time, one thing was as sure as day - this was going to be the first of its kind.

OPINION Tyrus KAMAU

In conclusion, IT security is no longer a buzzword but a reality that we all

have to embrace and start living with


On March 6, 2014, Safaricom celebrated the 7th anniversary of MPESA since it was launched by former CEO Michael Joseph on March 6, 2007. The mobile money transfer service is one of the biggest success stories in the ICT industry, serving more than two thirds of the Kenyan population with an approximated 43 percent of GDP flowing through it.

Second OPINION Sam M MWANGI

Celebrating mobile money

Most of the unbanked in Kenya have benefited from the service as a channel of conducting business with-out incurring the hefty bank transaction charges and enjoying convenience of doing commerce anytime anywhere. Soon after its launch, the other service providers followed suite with Airtel Money, Orange Money and Yu Cash.

The initial concept of M-Pesa was to create a service which allowed microfinance borrowers to con-veniently receive and repay loans using the network of Safaricom airtime resellers. At the moment, MPESA has over 17 million users, over 65,547 agent outlets, 1,482 paybill partners and 541 bulk payment partners. Three factors are attributed to the great success of mobile money in Kenya namely; the high mobile te-lephony penetration rate, simplicity of the SIM-based application and lack of extensive banking services in rural areas. Kenya stands out as unique with the thriv-ing mobile money transfer market. The same service has elicited different consumer reactions in other parts of East Africa.

M-Pesa was launched in Tanzania by Vodacom in 2008 but its initial ability to attract customers fell short of expectations. Vodacom M-Pesa offers mobile money services to around 53 per cent of Tanzania’s mobile money market while Tigo Pesa is at approxi-mately 18 percent while Airtel Money takes care of another 13 percent. In June 2009, 14 months after the launch of M-PESA in Tanzania, Vodacom announced that registrations had reached 280,000 users who were transferring US $ 5.5 million per month from about 930 agent locations. When this is compared to the2.7 million users and 3,000 agents that had been registered in Kenya 14 months after the launch of M-PESA, it is clear that some key differences exist be-tween the two implementations. However, there has been a change of trend with the future looking more optimistic. Last year, Vodacom Tanzania reported that M-Pesa revenue from its Tanzanian operations shot up by 125 per cent during its financial year ended March 31, 2013. This shows a good trend of the Tan-zania market in adopting mobile money service and possibly follows the Kenyan example.

In Uganda, consumers can chose from either Airtel Money, Warid Pesa , Orange Money, MTN Mobile Money or UTL’s M-Sente. Since its introduction to Uganda in 2008, mobile money solutions have had a profound effect – today some 9 million Ugandans use the service to exchange, save and spend money. The Bank of Uganda (BOU) has reported in its financial report for January to November 2013 that mobile money transfers in the country reached US $ 640 million. Small businesses can now bank their money every day instead of handling large amount of physi-cal cash, and people are able to deposit money im-mediately without the risk of theft or having to travel to a bank. Some 80 percent of Ugandans are farmers, but with mobile money, distance from traditional banking facilities is now no longer a barrier to taking control of one’s finances. Since the introduction of mobile money in Uganda, there are more mobile money users compared to bank account holders.

In Rwanda, citizens are finding it easier to trans-act business through the mobile money platform provided for by telecom operators MTN and Tigo than using the bank. Approximately about 45 per cent of the households have access to mobile phone in Rwanda. As of 2012, according to Rwanda Utili-ties Regulatory Authority (RURA), there were over 5 million subscribers in Rwanda. MTN Rwanda, the country’s largest telecom operator by market share, has handled transactions worth Rwf65 billion (US $ 95.6 million) through its mobile money service since 2010. It has 470,000 subscribers registered on the MTN Mobile money service. TIGO, the second largest operator, has 9,127 subscribers on its TIGO Cash with 1,917 transactions daily.

In Uganda, consumers can chose from either Airtel Money, Warid Pesa , Orange Money, MTN Mobile Money or

UTL’s M-Sente


Why procurementis uniquely positioned to lead during the next decade

In fact, 80% of a company’s expenditures go toward procured goods and services, and procurement is often the single function that makes decisions around all external costs. Therefore, it is critical that senior execu-tives recognize that procurement is uniquely positioned to lead a company through the turbulence of the years ahead. Look at the news headlines and the experiences your company has faced in recent years. Natural disasters and scarcities of raw materials have exacerbated volatil-ity in supply chains, disrupted operations, and caused significant swings in input pricing. External functional specialists—contract manufacturers and third-party logistics providers, to name just two—have proliferated in both the developed and the emerging worlds, and they regularly deliver new levels of innovation and efficiency up and down the value chain. And, increasingly, stringent ethical, social, and governmental requirements mean that if those specialists have a slip-up, they can spoil the brand image of the company. In examining these changes, there is dire need for mega-trends that will transform business over the next decade. For organizations to flourish in the face of these developments, procurement must be empowered to cope with the challenges and take advan-tage of the opportunities they present. In brief, here are my recommendations for how the procurement function must evolve in the face of the five mega-trends.

The Great Global Re-balancing: Sourcing will take place across the entire world; “white spaces” that may exist today will disappear. The future of the sourcing organization, therefore, is global and multicultural. Sourc-ing footprint considerations will become increasingly multidimensional and dynamic. Sourcing decisions will have to be made against the backdrop of an integrated company-footprint, including manufacturing, sales, and R&D. Procurement is in a prime position to lead these in-tegrated company-footprint considerations given its deep cross-functional nature and thorough understanding of global and local markets.

The Productivity Imperative: Integrated companies

will increasingly turn to external functional specialists that provide individual slivers of the integrated company’s value chain at superior performance—the result of econo-mies of skill and scale. The management of a company’s end-to-end value chain will cross more and more com-pany perimeters, requiring new management principles and attention to control value creation. Procurement is best positioned to assume the role of “orchestrating” the end-to-end chain since chief procurement officers (CPOs) control the supplier relationship and are deeply embed-ded with their cross-functional value-chain partners.

Big Data and the Global Grid: Available data and communication bandwidth will continue to increase by orders of magnitude in the next few years. Big data and the global grid will have a profound impact on businesses by enabling new insights, collaboration at scale, and superior, data-driven decision making. Already, procure-ment uses internal and external data for decision making and communication bandwidth for supplier integration and management. The advent of even more data and bandwidth will strengthen and expand procurement’s role.

The Volatile New Normal: Procurement will have to manage not only the increasing scarcity of raw materials but also substantially greater volatility that will have a significant impact on a company’s profitability and ability to do business. Defensive strategies, such as hedging or recovery plans, will be part of the solution, but not all of it. Agile procurement will allow CPOs to cope with risks; do-ing this well will also allow them to capture opportunities and create a competitive advantage by better managing sourcing risks.

The New Economic Drivers: Environmental, Social, and Regulatory (ESR) issues will become increasingly important, presenting procurement with new costs, risks, and opportunities. Governments and consumers will make fast and significant decisions on ESR; as a result, functions including procurement will have to anticipate and prepare. To incorporate ESR into sourcing decisions sustainably, procurement must define a comprehensive approach based on “total impact of ownership” consid-erations.

Across industries, leaders and managers may be missing a critical piece of the big picture: the increasing importance of procurement to the bottom line success or failure of their companies.

View POINT SosPeter OPONDO

The future of the sourcing organization, therefore, is global and multicultural


Last WORD Dennis MBUVI

The unconnected Kenyan

I may be notorious for having a memory that performs well at remembering mundane things and fails dismally at remembering what are said to be important things. Hey, don’t fault me here - even a computer has a central processing unit and a graphics processing unit, with one being particularly good at math. No hope lost here, I too have my role in society.

Again, Connected Kenya is notoriously said to be a talk shop, where a lot of talking happens a few meters from the ocean, washed down by copious amounts of food and drink. Recently, there has been an announcement that at least can be traced back to one of the Connected Kenya sessions - the government would stop accepting “manual” payments and would instead accept electronic payments. The timeline given was three weeks. By week three, there was nothing much happening around elec-tronic payments as a follow-up to the announcement.

It’s very easy to know if the government is implement-ing anything - it’s usually met by chaos and breakdown of some order - be it “normal” order or the corrupt order that government is notorious for. Take for example the implementation of electronic tax filing for small and medium businesses. The process had to be postponed for some three months. Typically, government imple-mentations are notorious for not working out of the box. However, even before we started paying the government by other means other than legal tender, our Cabinet Secretary for Information and Communication, Dr Fred Matiang’i, was quoted in the media saying the govern-ment would be looking for innovative mobile ideas to adopt and implement.

Which brings me back to Connected Kenya. The previ-ous events have been laced with well reasoned speeches and presentations on how the government would use technology to improve service delivery to citizens. In

2011, the government voiced plans to adopt cloud and shared service systems including information systems audit, eVoting, eJustice, citizen feedback, county index-ing, cyber security, smart identity cards, eBorder and eVisa system. All these systems were said to be part of three pillars of access to public systems, shared informa-tion and efficient government operations. In 2012, the theme of Connected Kenya was transforming Kenya into a knowledge economy, where rather than being an exporter of low-cost business processing services, the country would export high level, million dollar solutions. Applications like iCow were also mentioned at this event.

After attending as Treasury’s head of governance in 2011, Anne Waiguru returned again in 2013’s Connected Kenya, but this time as the Cabinet Secretary in charge of Devolution. She highlighted plans to connect govern-ment agencies, establishment of a single registration system, single electronic record system for government, cleaning up of government databases and investment in incubation hubs. This sounded familiar.

To date, the Kenyan citizen remains disconnected from government, even as the country protests at an “unsustainable” wage bill. Devolution, meant to bring government services closer to the citizen, is delivering mixed results. A solution, perhaps, is for the government to focus on what it has been saying it will all along do – that is automation of government services and having the same available through various delivery vehicles to citizens. An automated government will seal loopholes and lead to better and faster delivery of public services through self provisioning. Rather than trying to fund startups, it would be of more benefit if the government worked at getting services and government data acces-sible on the Internet.

The benefit in terms of ease of doing business, ease of access to business and services that will revolve around government data and e-Government will reach everybody. The startups can build apps and services and make money from the apps. When this finally happens, then is when we will comfortably fly down to the Coast and celebrate the benefits of a truly connected Kenyan.

When my editor first asked me to see what I could recap from previous Connected Kenya events, I was at first taken back. Having attended 3 of the last 4 events, I could not remember anything from the events, other than Safaricom’s and Cisco’s connected health solution being demoed.

An automated government will seal loopholes and lead to better

and faster delivery of public services

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