IT News Africa: Top Tech Stories of the Week

Making the headlines this week was Airtel CEO, Christian De Faria. According to De Faria, “Over-the-top service (OTT) providers must be regulated.” Also making the headlines this week was Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo. Costolo has revealed that he will no longer be Twitter’s chief executive as of July 2015.

Be sure not to miss the upcoming CIO Roadmap 2015, which will feature cutting-edge demos, engaging keynotes, lively panel discussions, noted local and international speakers, along with an amazing technology exhibition area. Additionally, IT News Africa will be hosting its next Innovation Dinner at the Michelangelo Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg – which will be held on the 15th of June 2015, and address the theme “Leveraging Video Surveillance for world class security.”

The team at IT News Africa hopes you have a wonderful weekend. The top stories of the week can be found below:

News

Online job portal begins operations in Senegal
Everjobs, an online job portal, recently started its operations in Dakar. During a press conference, Co-founder and Managing Director for Africa Eric Lauer introduced the company officially to the public. Read More.

Twitter CEO steps down
Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo has announced that he will be step down. The 51-year-old stated that he’ll no longer be Twitter’s chief executive as of July 2015. Read More.

BlackBerry leaps into Africa
BlackBerry Limited has launched its latest smartphone, the BlackBerry Leap, in Nigeria and South Africa. Read More.

Airtel CEO calls for the regulation of over-the-top operators
Over-the-top service (OTT) providers must be regulated as they utilise and profit from the infrastructure put in place by mobile network operators, said Christian De Faria, Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Africa. Read More.

8K videos surfacing on YouTube
Video sharing platform “YouTube” has now begun to label 4K and 8K videos accordingly. Read More.

Kenya: SimbaPay launches M-Pesa PayBill
SimbaPay, a digital money transfer provider, has launched a new M-Pesa service which has been dubbed “M-Pesa Paybill.” According to the company, the new payment platform will allow citizens of Kenya to make bill payments whilst abroad. Read More.

SAP streamlining transition to new regulations for local municipalities
SAP South Africa has announced its intent to engage with its ecosystem and local government with a view to assisting local government municipalities to simplify its functions and new regulatory processes, following the recently published Municipal Regulation on Standard Chart of Accounts Regulation (MSCOA) by the South African National Treasury. Read More.

MTN Cameroon selects Userful Desktop for Digital Schools Project
The MTN Cameroon Foundation, in partnership with Cameroon’s Ministry of Secondary Education, recently chose Userful Desktop as the computing platform for its Digital Schools Project. Read More.

Kenya: Google to back USD 700 mln wind farm?
Google is allegedly in talks to become an investor in a USD 700 million, 40,000 acre Lake Turkana Wind Power Project – which is located in Kenya. Read More.

Opinions

Dynamic, flexible IT architecture is essential for online retail
In the retail market, competitiveness has always revolved around differentiation, be this of product, price or service. However, as the world has become more digital and traditional retailers have joined the online retail market in the ecommerce space, differentiation has become increasingly difficult. Read More.

Is scheduled downtime ever acceptable?
In the age of the always-on business, downtime is increasingly unacceptable – even when it’s planned and announced in advance, says Veeam Regional Manager for Southern African Warren Olivier. Read More.

Can data protection unlock the full potential of virtualisation?
Server virtualisation is a darling of IT administrators for a number of reasons such as delivering more efficiency and cost control than adding physical servers to accommodate the data explosion. Read More.

Top Feature

Mobile Roaming versus Wi-Fi Connectivity: What are the risks?
Whether you are travelling throughout Africa, or globally, you may be considering activating your mobile roaming services with your mobile operator of choice. Read More.

Top List

Africa’s Top 20 most connected countries by user numbers
Africa has always been viewed as a continent that isn’t very connected in terms of internet speeds and the number of users – compared to other parts of the world. However, the latest statistics say otherwise. Read More.

Top 5 African sectors ripe for transformation by IoT
The spread of technology is an interesting phenomenon. In some instances, it is only available to the wealthiest people or the largest businesses at first, before slowly filtering down to the rest of the populace. Read More.

From latency to transparency: Top 5 tips for better storage
Storage of the past was defined by vendor specific terminology for pieces of functionality, which have perpetuated the market/users thinking about storage narrowly in terms of a single vendor or technology provider. Read More.

Gadgets and Gaming

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Review
To say that the Witcher 3 is a typical Role-Playing-Game (RPG) is an understatement. The Witcher 3 is a genre re-defining game that has changed the expectations of gamers for years to come. For those who have never experienced a Witcher title, now is the time to play one of the greatest titles to grace the world of gaming. Read More.

Borderlands – The Handsome Collection Review
The Borderlands series is possibly one of the most colourful, crazy and hilarious game series to grace the First-Person Shooter genre. Since it inception in 2009, it’s spawned three titles which have provided gamers with hours of fun, humour and fast-paced action. Recently Borderlands: The Handsome Collection has been released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which contains Borderlands 2 with all its released DLC. Read More.

Darryl Linington