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The election of South Africa and other countries, on Monday, October 3, 2022, into different regional groups that constitute ITU Council was the highpoint of the Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 (PP-22) ongoing in Bucharest, the capital city of the Republic of Romania.

The seats in ITU Council are divided into five regions, A to E. South Africa was elected into the ITU Council Region D for Africa, which has 13 seats. The other 12 countries elected alongside South Africa are Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Uganda.

Elections of member states also took place into Region A for The Americas (nine seats); Region B for Western Europe (eight seats); Region C for Eastern Europe & Northern Asia (five seats); and Region E, for Asia and Australasia with 13 seats as Africa.

The 21st Plenipotentiary Conference of the Council, also saw the election by member states, …

The world largely considers Africa as the next great growth market, a designation that has persisted for years. There are several reasons to be optimistic: the African continent has some of the world’s youngest populations, promises to be a key consuming market over the next three decades, and is becoming more mobile phone-enabled. Because access to smartphones and other devices improves consumer information, networking, job-creating resources, and even financial inclusion, a rising digital ecosystem is especially important as a multiplier of heightened economic growth.…

The market growth is extensively attributed to the rising health and fitness awareness, growing penetration of the internet & smartphones, and increased consumer disposable income levels.

The rising adoption has led to an increase in device development & innovation as more market players race in to deliver the growing demand and capture a higher market share.

According to Kewalramani, to set itself apart from competitors, Fitbit has evolved from being a pure fitness tracking device company to bringing more functionality and innovation around stress and sleep management to help users gain control of their health goals.…

According to McKinsey published February 23, 2022, transport currently makes up 10 percent of Africa’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This is expected to increase in line with sub-Saharan Africa’s expanding vehicle parc.

South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Nigeria make up around 70 per cent of Africa’s annual vehicle sales and 45 per cent of the region’s population.

The vehicle parc is expected to grow from 25 million vehicles today to an estimated 58 million by 2040, driven by urbanization and rising incomes. As its vehicle parc grows, the challenge for Africa will be to push for more sustainable mobility and avoid the risk of becoming the dumping ground for the world’s unwanted used ICE vehicles.…

IPv4 was the first version of IP to be used, and despite having been officially released in 1983, it is still the most widely used version to identify devices on a given network.

According to the CA report, with the imminent exhaustion of IPv4 address space, the length of IP addresses was increased from 32 bits to 128 bits, creating almost 340 undecillion addresses. The two address sets are not compatible, implying data sent using IPv4 address cannot be delivered to a recipient using IPv6 addresses.

The IPv6 was developed and standardized, as the next-generation Internet Protocol in 1996, with initial assignments for use in 1999, had the main goal of massively increasing the number of IP addresses available. Over the past year, major content providers and access networks have started offering IPv6 services to ordinary Internet users.…

South Sudan and Djibouti have signed an MoU to lay fibre optic cable from Djibouti to South Sudan’s capital, Juba, via Ethiopia. Djibouti’s fibre optic is not the first telecommunications infrastructure that South Sudan is connecting to. In January 2020, Liquid Intelligent Technologies (LIT) announced the installation of a 200km fibre backbone to connect the Uganda border to Juba.

Authorities believe additional data capacity will enable the country to successfully implement its digital transformation strategy by making broadband internet connectivity more affordable. South Sudanese officials said the agreement would ensure that region is connected to the international community and reduce the high cost of the internet.

South Sudan’s Ministry of Information, Communication Technology and Postal Services said South Sudanese and Djibouti government officials would establish a technical committee to oversee the project.…

Online payment solutions are immensely beneficial for their users, both customers and merchants alike. Online payments help reach global customers, reduce the cost of transactions and provide payment security (compared to cash payments). They create a more pleasant experience for the users who need not rush to banks and malls to buy or pay for their needs.

Pan-African fintech giant Flutterwave has kept its promise about Google Pay, as users of the global payment service can now use it for transactions with merchants on Flutterwave’s stores.

Google Pay was designed to enable users’ safe, seamless, contactless payments. It uses near-field communication (NFC) technology to facilitate fund transfers for retailers in physical stores. Users can also save their card details into the Google Wallet service and make online or in-app payments.…

Partnerships have largely driven technology innovation and global collaborations among tech companies, and Alibaba Cloud is not slowing down in committing itself to such partnerships.

System integrator Business Connexion (BCX) has announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intellectual backbone of the Alibaba Group, to bring the best-in-class cloud technologies to local businesses in South Africa to drive local digitalization.

• System integrator Business Connexion (BCX) has announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba Cloud
• The two parties sealed an exclusive distribution contract to grant BCX exclusive rights and authority to distribute Alibaba Cloud’s products and services in the country.

According to Selina Yuan, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International President, “Partners have always been a key focus for Alibaba Cloud, and we are committed to providing them with strong support for our ongoing co-creation and value-add – both technologically and commercially – to further empower our customers.”

According to …

CyborgIntell Africa says it will work closely with financial institutions and other enterprises to help them rapidly develop, deploy and operationalize AI applications at scale.

A statement says the CyborgIntell platform addresses the key challenges companies face in the data science/machine learning lifecycle – from data selection and modelling, and operationalizing AI, to managing risk and governance.

“AI is a powerful and transformative technology, yet many companies across the world find it difficult to unlock its full potential. More than a third (36%) of organizations take more than 90 days to deploy data science machine learning (ML) projects, while the failure rate of such initiatives is estimated to be 85% across industries,” said McLachlan, CyborgIntell managing director.…

Smartphone adoption in Africa remained sluggish in the latter part of the last decade. This is beginning to change as a combination of pandemic-driven demand for better connectivity and improved affordability of smartphones drive uptake.

According to a report by GSAM, by the end of 2020, 495 million people subscribed to mobile services in Africa, representing 46 per cent of the region’s population, an increase of almost 20 million in 2019.  It is estimated that 615 million people in sub-Saharan Africa will subscribe to mobile services by 2025, equivalent to 50 per cent of the region’s population.

• Utilizing the development of mobile digital technologies can assist farmers in gaining access to essential data and information needed to solve certain farming management systems and underlying constraints.
• It is estimated that 615 million people in sub-Saharan Africa will subscribe to mobile services by 2025, equivalent to 50 per cent of the