Media, Internet, and Technology

This week, numerous companies from emerging economies will gather in India to participate in the third annual Growth Net conference, a unique platform focused on promoting business, trade and financial partnerships amongst the countries represented.  South-South cooperation will be the focus of much of Growth Net’s agenda, and a principal…
Continue Reading India’s ICT Companies Lead the Way to Further Indian Investment in Africa

In yet another example of how mobile technology is revolutionizing service delivery in Sub-Saharan Africa, application developers, data mining companies and financial institutions are using mobile usage data and social media activity to determine the credit risk of potential borrowers.  These efforts are helping to surmount one of the most…
Continue Reading Alternative Data Is Making (Credit) History in Sub-Saharan Africa

For the past few years, the explosive growth of mobile financial services (which includes mobile banking, mobile payments and mobile money transfers) in Kenya and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa has indicated that the future of banking on the continent will be through mobile phone accounts rather than brick and…
Continue Reading Mobile Money Continues to Prove to be the Way Forward for Banking in Sub-Saharan Africa

On 4 January 2015, India’s Acting High Commissioner in Nigeria, Kaisar Alam, announced that the Indian commission is facilitating a partnership between Nollywood (Nigeria’s movie industry) and Bollywood (India’s movie industry).  Mr Alam noted that the two industries contribute greatly to their respective countries’ gross domestic product and stated that…

Continue Reading Nollywood and Bollywood Film Industries to Collaborate

Today, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights issued its judgment on the landmark freedom of speech case, Lohé Issa Konaté v. Burkina Faso.  In a major victory for media and human rights organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Court “has ruled that imprisonment for defamation violates the…
Continue Reading African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights Issues Landmark Ruling on Criminal Defamation Laws

Although it groups the African region within its “Rest of World” operating segment, Facebook’s attention to — and resulting successes on — the continent indicate that Africa has the potential to play a significant role in the company’s future.

This month, Facebook reached 100 million active users in Africa, a…
Continue Reading Facebook Makes Strides in Africa by Enabling the Market and then Tailoring to It

As various African countries seek to engage their sizeable youth populations, this human capital investment will prove as important as the other types of investments being made on the continent.  The e-Curriculum portal in Nigeria demonstrates how the public and private sector can work together to ensuring that these youth…
Continue Reading e-Curriculum Portal: Innovative Service Delivery in Nigeria’s Education Sector

Similar to the growing U.S. interest in exploring civilian uses of unmanned aircraft systems (“UAS”), efforts are underway across the African continent to deploy UAS in innovative ways such as protecting wildlife, expanding internet connectivity to isolated communities, and delivering humanitarian aid.  In Kenya, Dickens Olewe and…
Continue Reading Drones Over Kenya and South Africa?

One of the most effective and innovative uses of mobile technology in recent years has been in the delivery of government services.  Yesterday, during the Corporate Council on Africa’s “Leading the Way in U.S.-Africa Investment” program, the Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Dr. Akinwumi Adesina detailed how mobile…
Continue Reading The Electronic Wallet System: How Nigeria Is Dialing Into Its Agricultural Sector

In the past two decades, the spread of democracy has been one of the most important advances across the African continent.  Since the 2008 launch of the website Ushahidi (the Swahili word for “testimony” or “witness”) which crowd-sourced and mapped user-generated reports of post-election violence in Kenya, technology has been…
Continue Reading The Role of Technology in Spreading Democracy