I noticed multitudes of GOtv Africa banners and balloons in the ancient city of Ibadan Nigeria in the last quarter of 2011. The similarity with the name/logo of DStv was clear. Promotional drives were ongoing at different vantage points in Ibadan. GOtv is a new digital terrestrial TV (DTT) service by Multichoice Africa, operators of DStv. Instead of broadcasting via satellite, GOtv broadcasts from TV masts, sending encrypted digital signals to ... [Read more]
Too many people in Africa happen to fall within the low-income bracket. Thus, one would expect budget airlines to be commonplace on this continent, catering for the masses. This is not so. Budget airlines are rather common in high-income countries of Western Europe, North America, India and many Asian countries. The relatively few airlines that ply major African cities do so at rather exorbitant fares. As of 21 Nov 2011 7:30am GMT: a return ... [Read more]
From Wikipedia: The 2011 Horn of Africa famine is a famine occurring in several regions in the Horn of Africa as a result of a severe drought that is affecting the entire Eastern Africa region. The drought, said to be "the worst in 60 years", has caused a severe food crisis across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya that threatens the livelihood of more than 10 million people. Other countries in and around the Horn of Africa, including Djibouti, Sudan, ... [Read more]
This is the 3rd and final part in a series of posts related to Esoko. Esoko: The Platform Esoko is an agricultural market information platform. It takes advantage of the explosive growth of mobile communication services in Africa. Managed on the web and delivered via mobile, individuals, agri-business, government and projects use Esoko to collect and send out market data using simple text messaging. The Esoko platform provides automatic and ... [Read more]
Following the huge success of its Africa Magic channel, MNET has since launched variants of the channel. Africa Magic Swahili is the latest of them all. It will showcase Swahili film-making and storytelling for Swahili speaking audiences in East Africa. The content will be in Kiswahili language, with subtitles in English language. The channel will feature movies, series and music. According to Wikipedia: Swahili (known in Swahili itself as ... [Read more]
I granted the following video interview to ICTWorks.org in January 2011, and spoke about ICT for development, mobile communications, e-commerce, web hosting in Africa. ... [Read more]
DStv is offering a major boost to residents of Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya who might be interested in their DStv Mobile service. Before now, the DStv Mobile had been restricted to a few mobile phones - these phones have in-built circuitry that enable them to receive and decode DVB-H signals. DStv is now offering a new device called Drifta, that should increase patronage for DStv Mobile. The DStv Drifta is essentially an adapter. It ... [Read more]
Google recently announced that more smartphone users on the Android platform in some 99 countries now have access to paid apps in their official apps store, Android Market. The newly-added countries include 26 African countries including South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria. The Android users in this category had hitherto been restricted to free apps only, from the Android Market. From the official press release: Today ... [Read more]
Big Brother Amplified debuted this evening with the 28 contestants from 14 African countries. The 28 were selected out of over 7,000 applicants. As always, Big Brother Amplified came with its unique set of innovations among which is Live Video streaming available 24/7 on Big Brother Africa's official website http://bigbrotherafrica.dstv.com Sponsored by Coca-Cola, this edition is exclusive to DStv Premium, DStv Compact and DStv Mobile ... [Read more]
I got a tip through a comment from a reader of this blog. I am republishing the comment verbatim because I have verified the information. Sehemu-Nyeti wrote from Kenya: PayPal users in the following African countries can now receive money: Malawi, Algeria, Mozambique, Lesotho, Morocco, Botswana and Seychelles. Whats even better for them (unlike those from South Africa and Kenya) is that they can withdraw directly to a debit card which is a ... [Read more]
