KENYA RANKED NO. 3 IN DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION

Kenya has been ranked third in domain-name registration in Africa after Egypt and South Africa.This is such a good news since its a move in the right direction for businesses and consumers in the Kenyan market. It puts Kenya in the tech map as an upcoming giant from Africa

This means that companies and Kenyans in general have started appreciating the power of the internet and are comfortable accessing services online. 

Mr Abdalla Omar, the general manager of the Kenya Network Information Centre (Kenic), said Kenya has about 46,000 domain names.

Mr Abdalla said Kenyans are losing millions of shillings by not registering their domain names.

The losses occur in arbitration, where other international firms take up their brands.

"We plan to have 90 per cent of Kenyan firms on domain. Pricing has now changed to Sh1,000," he said.

TACKLING INSECURITY WILL HAVE KENYANS LOSE PRIVACY OF PHONE COMMUNICATION

Kenya has been facing insecurity challenges that have led to loss of life and seen some sectors such as tourism get crippled prompting the country to come up with means to counter them the latest being getting an American company to monitor information exchanged between citizens.

The Business Daily reports that over the next two months there will be a roll out of digital personal identification cards and a telecoms surveillance network to remotely intercept voice and text messages between people.

Yesterday Interior secretary Joseph ole Lenku said Kenya is negotiating with American firm Richmar and Associates for the supply of Biometric Identification Cards as well as portable data centre technology that will hold a person’s biometrics including voice.

“The technology has the ability to strategically and tactically track all forms of communication (cellphones, SMS, satellite and Web, helping security agencies to pursue criminals,” Mr. Lenku said during a briefing on President Uhuru Kenyatta’s recent trip to the US.

It is however unclear how this will be carried out without contravening the rights of privacy of citizens and if the matter is not addressed it could have telecoms being exposed to legal suits as the constitution provides for right to privacy in  Article 31 that also includes  “the right not to have the privacy of their communications infringed.”

Yesterday the government set the stage for the issuance of digital IDs and everyone is expected to acquire the cards within a year of its roll out failure of which they will not be able to transact in banks, make utility payments or travel out of the country.

HOW WARREN BUFFETT HIRES

When you analyze how we initially screen job applicants, something becomes obvious: it is all about what the applicants have done (or said they’ve done), instead of finding out who the people really are.

Think about it. Looking at a resume – 80 percent of which contain misleading statements, and 53 percent of which contain outright lies, according to ERE.net – is little more than looking at a self-reported work history that is likely embellished. It does little to answer the critical three questions to hiring: can the person do the job, does this person really want this job and will they fit in culturally.

Instead, candidate screening should be all about discovering who the person is. And that’s done through capturing behavioral data.

Just ask Warren Buffett.

How Buffett Hires

Buffett is a great example of someone who cares more about behavioral data than a resume. During his hiring process, he aims to find out three things: is the person smart, does the person have energy and do they have integrity.

Buffett’s interviewing process isn’t just someone sitting and answering questions. Instead, it is full of hands-on activities to see how the person is really going to act if they are hired,according to CBS News.

To find out if the person is smart, Buffett gives them puzzles or a tough situation to see if they can figure out a solution. To find out if they have energy, he asks candidates to give a 10-minute presentation and, after they are done, gives them two minutes to figure out a new way to present that same information in a five-minute presentation.

Integrity is harder to uncover in an interview, so Buffett relies more on background checks,according to CBS. But the point is that Buffett puts his energy on discovering who the person really is and not what they did.

How Will It Scale?

Buffett’s process is great if you have to pick between three applicants. But what if 100 people apply for a job? How do you get behavioral data on them without working 24 hours a day for a week?

The answer is technology. Use candidate screening software to ask candidates tough situational questions to see how they react and to determine if they have the mental aptitude to do the job. Use gamification to see how they handle stress and if they can adjust on the fly.

These investments can be invaluable because they are investments into the people who will eventually work for your company. And, ultimately, those people are going to determine if your company will continue to grow or get run over.

SAFARICOM & VIRTUAL CITY UNVEIL M-DISTRIBUTR, A REAL-TIME ORDER MANAGEMENT TOOL

Today, Safaricom Business and Kenya’s Virtual City, a mobility solutions developer announced the launch of M-Distributr an application to help FMCG sector firms to track their orders, sales and deliveries.

M-Distributr is set to enable sales teams and businesses generate sales transactions, place orders, collect returns and enable mobile money payments on the go. Available on Google Play store for Android devices, M-Distributr monitors every sale from the initial point of contact with a customer to close and also from the sales agent in the field to the distributor and back to the guys at the warehouse or store.

The app aims to help sales teams track orders and deliveries in real-time over their phones. It also aims to speed up the ordering process and minize any losses of both money and time.

Speaking to TechMoran, Sylvia Mulinge, General Manager-Safaricom Business said, “M-Distributr was developed by Virtual City and aims to enhance service effeciancy in the FMCG sector. It runs on our already existing platforms such as our cloud infrastructure, data services, M-Pesa among others. We have entered into a revenue share agreement with Virtual City to make M-Distributr available to the FMCG sector.”

Already firms like PZ Cussons and several Safaricom Airtime Dealers are using the service which has been integrated into the pre-existing ERP solutions to help them map their sales teams, distributors and orders or returns.

According to John Waibochi, CEO Virtual City, the firm that has developed and tested M-Distributr for a few years before launch, “Technology’s role in this day and age is to make our lives easier. A lot of opportunities however remain unexploited. Our role is to create a bridge between these two divides.”

Though only available for Android smartphones and tied to Safaricom’s M-PESA, Waibochi told TechMoran M-Distributr can be inegrated to any mobile money platform or configured for any mobile operating system.

“M-Distributr now uses Lipa Na M-PESA which is nearly 99% used by businesses. As a technology firm, we can integrate any mobile money payment platform to it.”

If the uptake is as high as the two firms expect, M-Distributr can be launched in as many country’s in Africa as possible because of its scalability. Before Safaricom believed in M-Dstributr, Nokia saw its potential and supported the firm to develop it further.

Cisco Projects There will be Nearly 850 Million Mobile Users in M. East and Africa By 2017

According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2012 to 2017, in the Middle East and Africa (MEA), there will be 849,226,090 mobile users in 2017. The expected steady increase in mobile traffic is partly due to continued strong growth in the number of mobile Internet connections (personal devices and machine-to-machine applications), which will exceed the world’s population (United Nations estimates 7.6 billion) by 2017:
2017 VNI MEA Highlights:

• In Middle East and Africa, mobile data traffic will grow 17-fold from 2012 to 2017, a compound annual growth rate of 77%.
• In Middle East and Africa, mobile data traffic will reach 861,298 Terabytes (0.86 Exabytes) per month in 2017, the equivalent of 215 million DVDs each month or 2,374 million text messages each second.
• In Middle East and Africa, mobile data traffic will account for 17% of Middle Eastern and African fixed and mobile data traffic in 2017, up from 8% in 2012. (An official Cisco VNI fixed IP traffic forecast through 2017 will not be released until June 2013.)

Business Mobile Traffic in MEA:

• In 2012, Middle East and Africa’s business mobile data traffic grew 1.7-fold, or 69%.
• In Middle East and Africa, business mobile traffic will grow 11-fold from 2012 to 2017, a compound annual growth rate of 60%.
• Business will account for 12% of Middle East and Africa’s mobile data traffic in 2017, compared to 19% at the end of 2012.

Video in MEA:

• In Middle East and Africa, mobile video traffic will grow 27-fold from 2012 to 2017, a compound annual growth rate of 93%.
• Video will be 72% of Middle East and Africa’s mobile data traffic in 2017, compared to 47% at the end of 2012.
• Video reaches half of Middle East and Africa’s mobile data traffic by year-end 2012

Consumer Mobile Traffic in MEA:

• In 2012, Middle East and Africa’s consumer mobile data traffic grew 2.1-fold, or 110%.
• In Middle East and Africa, consumer mobile traffic will grow 19-fold from 2012 to 2017, a compound annual growth rate of 80%.
• Consumer will account for 88% of Middle East and Africa’s mobile data traffic in 2017, compared to 81% at the end of 2012

During the 2012 to 2017 forecast period, Cisco anticipates that global mobile data traffic will outpace global fixed data traffic by a factor of three. The following major trends are driving global mobile data traffic growth:

• More mobile users: By 2017, there will be 5.2 billion mobile users (up from 4.3 billion in 2012).
• More mobile connections: By 2017, there will be more than 10 billion mobile devices/connections, including more than 1.7 billion M2M connections (up from 7 billion total mobile devices and M2M connections in 2012).
• Faster mobile speeds: Average global mobile network speeds will increase seven-fold from 2012 (0.5 Mbps) to 2017 (3.9 Mbps).
• More mobile video: By 2017, mobile video will represent 66 percent of global mobile data traffic (up from 51 percent in 2012).

Impact of Mobile Devices/Connections

• Smartphones, laptops, and tablets will drive 93 percent of global mobile data traffic by 2017.
• M2M traffic (such as GPS systems in cars, asset tracking systems, medical applications, etc.) will represent 5 percent of 2017 global mobile data traffic.
• Basic handsets will account for the remaining 2 percent of global mobile data traffic in 2017.
• In 2012, 14 percent of all mobile-connected devices/connections (1 billion) were IPv6-capable.
• By 2017, 41 percent of all mobile-connected devices/connections (4.2 billion) will be IPv6-capable.

Traffic Offload from Mobile Networks to Fixed Networks
To address the rise in demand for mobile Internet, and to address the lack of available new mobile spectrum and the expense and complexity of adding new macrocell sites, service providers are increasingly looking to offload traffic to fixed or Wi-Fi networks.
4G Adoption and Mobile Data Traffic Growth
Many global mobile carriers are deploying 4G technologies to address consumer and business users’ demands for wireless services. In many emerging markets, carriers are creating new mobile networks with 4G solutions. In mature markets, carriers are supplementing or replacing legacy (2G/3G) networks with 4G technologies. The Cisco Mobile VNI study now projects the growth and impact of 4G.