ICTworks Interview: Crystal Watley Kigoni of Voices of Africa

ICTworks Interview: Crystal Watley Kigoni of Voices of Africa

Published on: Aug 05 2009 by Wayan Vota - 1 Comment
Our inaugural ICTworks Interview is with Crystal Watley Kigoni, Voices of Africa who will explain her project, Access to Knowledge, which is better know as “Pimp My Tuk Tuk. Crystal’s Mobile Information Empowerment...
Facebook is Driving ICT Adoption in Africa

Facebook is Driving ICT Adoption in Africa

Published on: Aug 04 2009 by Wayan Vota - 9 Comments
tweetmeme_source = 'ICT_works'; During a recent Inveneo training of ICT professionals, I was amazed to hear that most everyone had a Facebook account. Not only that, the computer technicians were seeing a spike in bandwidth...
Innovations in Solar Power and Solar Panel Cleaning

Innovations in Solar Power and Solar Panel Cleaning

Published on: Aug 02 2009 by Wayan Vota - 1 Comment
It’s our learned opinion that the best power source for rural ICT implementations is solar panels feeding deep-cycle batteries. But solar is expensive, $10-14 per Watt installed (see Mat Berg’s Solar Calculator),...
Kenya is Investing Ksh16.3 Billion in Rural ICT to Benefit Wananchi

Kenya is Investing Ksh16.3 Billion in Rural ICT to Benefit Wananchi

Published on: Jul 29 2009 by Wayan Vota - 1 Comment
With the eminent arrival of Seacom and Teams broadband infrastructure to Kenya, it’s Minister for Finance, Uhuru Kenyatta, proposed three major investments in ICT to benefit university students, public servants and...
Navigating Google Maps of Naiorbi

Navigating Google Maps of Naiorbi

Published on: Jul 28 2009 by Wayan Vota - Comments Off on Navigating Google Maps of Naiorbi
If you’re used to the poor selection of maps for African cities, let me show you the future, today. Google Maps has an amazingly accurate and detailed map of Nairobi, Kenya, where you can do detail searches, for restaurants...
Quixotic Quest: Registering Prepaid Mobile Numbers

Quixotic Quest: Registering Prepaid Mobile Numbers

Published on: Jul 27 2009 by Wayan Vota - 4 Comments
As everyone in Kenya knows, there’s been explosive growth in voice and data usage, mainly through mobile phones. And while the vast majority of mobile phone usage is beneficial to Kenya’s economy, the very ubiquity,...
East African Fiber Goes Live While Benin Goes Dark

East African Fiber Goes Live While Benin Goes Dark

Published on: Jul 27 2009 by Wayan Vota - 3 Comments
To great fanfare the Seacom fiber optic cable from London to South Africa, was turned on this past Thursday. Offering 10,000 Mbps capacity to bandwidth starved East Africans, there was great hope that connection speeds would...
Less Watts for Better Computing

Less Watts for Better Computing

Published on: Jul 21 2009 by Wayan Vota - Comments Off on Less Watts for Better Computing
When you’re working in rural areas, electricity is often very scarce. Your only source of power may be a battery array, which may cost you $10-per-watt to install and recharge via solar power. That means a 100W system...
Win $100K Towards an Sub-Sahara African Business

Win $100K Towards an Sub-Sahara African Business

Published on: Jul 20 2009 by Wayan Vota - 3 Comments
A new program from USAID is offering 10-20 matching grants of between $50,000 and $100,000 each for start-up and existing businesses that are partnerships between US-based African diaspora and Africa-based enterprises. The...