The Nation Newspaper

Category: e-Business

  • NCC seeks CAPDAN’s partnership against dumping

    Regulator of the telecoms sector, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), said it would partner with Computer and Allied Products Dealers Association of Nigeria (CAPDAN), to prevent Nigeria from being turned into dumping ground for fake/substandard devices.

    Its Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umaru Danbatta, who spoke during a tour of Computer Village, arguably Africa’s  largest Information and Communications Technology (ICT) accessory market, said the market for substandard device has become a source of worry to the regulator because of its effects on service quality.

    According to Danbatta, as a responsive and responsible Commission, it has the duty to protect the Nigerian citizens.

    Currently, the NCC restricts its role to type-approval of devices that come into the market. Sister Federal Government agencies such as the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) have traded blame over which of them is responsible for the menace.

    But Danbatta said the NCC would sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with CAPDAN, and partner it on all fronts to ensure consumers got value.

    The EVC also urged CAPDAN to put up measures that would aid both parties in addressing issues of phone and other devices cloning; substandard products, stressing that many mobile devices sold in the market are not type-approved by the NCC.

    He said unregistered mobile devices are not safe, and negatively affect the quality of service rendered by mobile network operators in the country. He reiterated that the NCC has huge responsibility to protect the consumers of telecoms services, stressing that it is “the reason we are calling on the CAPDAN to please support us to rid the market of unwanted elements peddling fake and substandard products.”

    Also speaking, the CAPDAN President, Ahmed Ojikutu, said members of the group were prepared to partner with the NCC to rid the industry of fake/substandard devices.

    According to him, the popular Computer Village, located at Otigba Street, Ikeja, Lagos, adds about N1.5billion daily to the economy, adding that it also provides the highest number of ICT solutions in the country and Africa at large.

    He said the market, which is also known as the Hardware Market of Africa, employs the largest number of graduates in any market in and out of the country.

    Ojikutu said CAPDAN has already partnered FONEREG to discourage theft and urged the NCC to make the initiative a national policy so that the menace of phone theft could be addressed.

    He appealed to the regulator to fast-track broadband deployment, noting that if the market is supported with the facility, it will improve business in the market by 25 per cent.

    Meanwhile, the booming smartphone market over the past decade has created a corresponding thriving handset repair industry across most countries, including Nigeria.

    Globally, according to Deloitte Global predictions, in 2016, consumers sold or traded in about 120 million used smartphones generating more than $17billion for the owners, at an average value of $140 per device. This is a 50 per cent increase from the 80 million smartphones traded in 2015, with a value of $11billion, or an average value of $135 per unit.

    Investigations showed that the rising popularity of expensive, but fragile, smartphones, with rising display sizes, has given the repair industry a huge boost since 2010.

    Today, an estimated 80 per cent of the mobile phone screen aftermarket is now supplied by China makers, with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)  providing the remainder. Driven by lower prices, acceptable quality and quick delivery, demand for Chinese LCDs has increased strongly over the past few years, and the OEMs are facing a significant slowdown.

     

  • Moves to break monopoly in pay Tv market

    Moves to break monopoly in pay Tv market

    The pay Tv subsector of the broadcast industry plays critical roles in nation building. It does not only provide public information, education and enlightenment through its rich content, it’s also a veritable vehicle for entertainment. In Africa, this subsector is practically under a monopoly. Lucas Ajanaku reports on moves to break the monopolistic vice-like grip of the subsector in South Africa.

    THE independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has published a document on its inquiry into the subscription Tv market.

    According to Mybroadband, the regulator found that MultiChoice has significant market power – enjoying a 98.1 per cent market share in the subscription Tv space. Deukom and StarTimes are considered MultiChoice’s competitors in pay Tv.

    ICASA said it looked at what constitutes premium content, in addition to premium movies and other Tv content. It also created a separate category for sports, stating that live sport was premium content.

    Its breakdown of which broadcasters own the rights to the content categories is summarised below.

    To address, “MultiChoice’s dominant position in the market”, ICASA  is proposing six possible remedies. These are:

     

    Shorten exclusive

    contracts

     

    Using European standards as a benchmark, ICASA said rights contracts may not be longer than five years.

    Broadcasters undertake long-term content agreements to reduce the effective cost of transacting, but at the cost of competition, it said.

     

    Unbundling

     

    ICASA said sports rights should be unbundled, similar to Europe, and rights should be sold under the following conditions:

    Open tender

    Allowing more than one buyer; No excessive exclusivity, with three being considered the general norm;

    No automatic renewal of contracts

     

    Rights splitting

     

    ICASA said rights-owners must split their content rights and sell them to more than one broadcaster.

    Consumers may find it difficult to subscribe to several service providers to get access, but it has the advantage of allowing smaller entrants who do not have deep pockets to bid for rights.

     

    Wholesale-must-offer

     

    Wholesale must-offer regulations, which UK regulator Ofcom imposed on BSkyB’s Sky Sports channels, is another option. This allowed other channels to acquire key sports rights.

    Ofcom launched a review of the regulations in 2014 and found that the availability of sports and Internet Tv services made the regulations unnecessary, however, and scrapped them.

    ICASA believes such regulations may still be a feasible remedy in South Africa, though.

     

    Open up the network

     

    ICASA said forcing MultiChoice to open its distribution infrastructure to other broadcasters is a way to grow the market.

    It referenced Ofcom’s interventions as an example, where channels can distribute direct to the consumer using BSkyB’s digital satellite platform at a regulated price.

    This would include the use of the existing conditional access system.

     

    Set-top box

    interoper-ability

     

    ICASA also proposed decoder interoperability, where viewers can use one set-top box/decoder for all direct-to-home satellite services.

    ICASA said it would undertake further work before proposing it as a licence condition for MultiChoice, however, due to the technical complexities.

    Stakeholders have until October 31 to make submissions to ICASA on its suggestions.

     

  • Local traffic to drive Africa’s internet

    MainOne CEO, Funke Opeke has said local traffic will drive Africa’s internet value. Speaking at a three-day African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF), she  said Africa’s leading internet players exchange traffic, has significantly lowered costs and improved performance.

    Opeke  said Africa needs to retain more local traffic within the continent to drive more value from the Internet, as reported by CIO East Africa.

    “This can be achieved by leveraging robust Internet Exchange Points and access via local interconnection points and local data centres which provide a platform for different networks to directly interconnect with other operators and exchange traffic, guaranteeing lower bandwidth costs, quicker access to more content providers and carriers and lower latency for local markets,” she added.

    According to CIO, AfPIF, which is an initiative of the Internet Society, “focused on developing Internet interconnection and traffic exchange opportunities where the West African Internet service provider reiterated the importance of Internet traffic domiciliation as a key requirement for growing the Internet ecosystem in Africa.”

    During her keynote address titled:  Vision 80/20 by 2020, which approached the goal set by AfPIF to route 80 per cent of Africa’s Internet traffic on the continent by the year 2020, Opeke examined the internet landscape in Africa and rued the current ecosystem of routing over 80% of the internet traffic from Nigeria abroad, incurring  expensive transit costs and increasing service latency.

     

    and OTT operators to host and serve data locally.

    Opeke also shared the company’s strategy towards deepening regional integration and digital transformation of West Africa with submarine access to data centres in Lagos and Accra interconnecting all major operators, a new data centre coming up in Sagamu, Nigeria, and its intent to extend its submarine cable to Cote D’Ivoire.

     

  • Artificial intelligence ‘ll drive GDP to $15.7tr, says PwC

    The implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives in businesses in Nigeria and other parts of the world will contribute around $15.7 trillion to global gross domestic product (GDP)  by 2030, a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report titled: AI Impact Index, has stated.

    The report found that global GDP will be 14 per cent higher by 2030, as a result of productivity driven by AI initiatives used by organisations around the world – more than the current output of China and India combined.

    The report draws on input from sector experts and partners at Fraunhofer, a global leader in emerging technology research and development (R&D).

    This growth rate, according to PwC, makes AI the biggest commercial opportunity in today’s fast changing economy. All regions of the global economy will experience benefits from AI, including North America, China, Europe and developed Asia. However, developing countries will experience more modest increases (less than six per cent of GDP) due to the much lower rates of adoption of AI technologies expected (including Latin America, and Africa).

    Intelligent Automation Lead for PwC South Africa, Alistair Hofert, said: “The report highlights how AI can enhance and augment what enterprises can do, the value potential of which is as large, if not larger, than automation. It shows just how a big game changer AI is likely to be and the impact it will have on our lives as organisations, individuals and society as a whole. AI is set to be the key source of transformation, disruption and competitive advantage in today’s fast-changing economy. No industry or business is immune from the impact of AI.”

    Overall, the report further reveals the biggest absolute sector gains will be in retail, financial services, and healthcare as AI increases productivity, product value and consumption.

    Providing a local perspective, solutions architect at software solutions company Entelect, Rishal Hurbans, said in South Africa certain industries such as the banking and retail industries are experimenting with AI, with mixed success.

    “South African organisations have yet to fully embrace AI, they’re using chatbots to quickly and efficiently respond to customers but chatbots are flawed because they don’t understand sarcasm or depth of sentiment and can only respond to limited questions. We’re still in the experimental stages and organisations should resist the temptation to implement AI for the sake of following a buzzword or craze because this could result in wasted time and investment. It’s important to have a use case and execution strategy within the business before investing time and resources,” he said.

    One reason narrow AI is becoming more prominent within local businesses, Hurbans said is that computing power and data have made it feasible to experiment with AI – with the goal of making money, saving money and uncovering business opportunity.

     

  • Telcos: 100% tariff hike on data, calls is inevitable

    The rapidly declining average revenue per user (ARPU) for voice calls, continued constraint on access to foreign exchange (forex), government policy, naira devaluation, revenue loss to Over The Top (OTT) and others are reasons why a 100 per cent tariff hike on calls and data by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) would be inevitable from the perspective of telcos.

    Since 2004, ARPU has decreased from just over $15 per month per subscriber to a new low of $4 due to the current economic crisis. This has eroded the bottom line of telcos which have resorted to job cuts.

    Also, over the last one decade, a drastic reduction had been recorded in call and data tariffs because on-net and off-net per minute tariffs which now stand at N12.01k and N12.64 respectively used to be N24 and N75.30k.

    In the light of this development, telcos are alleged to have started a push to convince the NCC to tinker with existing call and data tariffs.

    Source said if the NCC agrees to such increase, subscribers will now pay close to N24 per minute and about N2,000 for one gigabyte of data per month, from N1000 currently being charged by most operators.

    The Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) had complained of decreasing revenue of its members due to increasing operating cost and intrusion of Over The Top (OTT) services.

    Its chairman, Gbenga Adebayo, said increasing usage of OTT services by customers was adversely impacting on traditional telecoms platforms.

    He quoted Ovum, the independent analyst and consultancy, as saying the growing adoption of OTT services by customers instead of traditional telecoms services will occasion global revenue loss of $386 billion over a period of six years (2012 – 2018) for the traditional telecom operators, thus endangering network development.

    Engr Adebayo confirmed that the core voice and SMS revenues were decreasing continuously due to impact of OTT players who offer voice, video and messaging services free of charge to their users.

    The increasing adoption of OTT applications by telecom subscribers is also negatively impacting on incoming international traffic as well as SMS at huge cost to the telcos but generating revenue to OTT, he added.

    But the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS) has advised NCC not to accede to any such demand from the telcos.

    Its President, Deolu Ogunbanjo, said the review of the rates is unnecessary in view of the present economic situation of the country.

    “I don’t think this is the right time to do any upward review. Government and its agencies, and the operators should be sensitive to the plight of the people.

    “‘They should understand that we are just coming out of recession and subscribers shouldn’t be confronted with this again,” Ogunbanjo said.

    He said instead of reviewing the rates upward, the regulatory body and the operators should consider a downward review.

     

  • NCC: Why subscriber figure keeps dipping

    The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has identified three reasons why active subscriber figures have kept going down in the country.

    Its Executive Commissioner, Stakeholders Management, Mr Sunday Dare, blamed the dip in active subscriber figures estimated at about 10 million on subscriber identity module (SIM) card churning, adding that some subscribers buy SIMs, register them only to dump them later.

    Speaking with ICT reporters in Lagos, he said the industry has attained technology consolidation, a development that allows the subscribers to do so many things with their smartphones.

    He said with one SIM card on a smartphone, it is now possible to make voice calls and subscribe to data bundles to navigate the web.

    This was near impossible at the beginning of the telecoms revolution which saw the preponderance of feature phones.

    Now with smartphone, it is possible to take advantage of over the top (OTT) services provided by Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and many other applications.

    The Executive Commissioner also blamed the economic recession that swept through the country for the drop in subscribers figures. He said the recession took a terrific toll on subscribers’ total disposable income, adding that it inevitably affected people’s approach to telecoms as efforts by families were shifted to picking essential bills. Telecoms subscribers number has continued to drop consistently from 155 million in January this year, to 143 million as at the end of June this year, according to the recent statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms industry regulator.

    According to figures obtained from NCC’s website, subscriber number had in January this year, reaked at 155 million active subscribers across all networks, but the figures began to drop consistently from 155 million in January, to 143 million in June this year.

    The consistent drop in subscriber number also reflected in the drop in subscriber teledensity from 110.8 per cent in January, to 102.19 per cent in June this year.

    Teledensity in technical terms is the number of active telephone connections per 100 inhabitants living in a particular area, and expressed in percentage.

    The regulator however said it is worried about the consiatent dip in the figures.

     

     

  • Monitoring network traffic more efficiently

    Monitoring network traffic more efficiently

    In today’s data networks, traffic analysis – determining which links are getting congested and why – is usually done by computers at the network’s edge, which show the state of the network from the times at which different data packets reach their destinations.

    If the routers inside the network could instead report on their own circumstances, network analysis would be much more precise and efficient, enabling network operators to more rapidly address problems. To that end, routers manufacturers have begun equipping their routers with counters that can report on the number of data packets a router has processed in a given interval.

    But raw number counts are only so useful, and giving routers a special-purpose monitoring circuit for every new measurement an operator might want to make is not practical. The alternative is for routers to ship data packets to outside servers for more complex analysis, but that technique does not scale well. A data center with 100,000 servers, for instance, might need another 40,000 to 50,000 servers to keep up with the flood of router data.

    Researchers at MIT, Cisco Systems, and Barefoot Networks have come up with a new approach to network monitoring that provides great flexibility in data collection while keeping both the circuit complexity of the router and the number of external analytic servers low. They describe the work in a paper they are presenting this week at the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication.

    Dubbed Marple, the system consists of a programming language that enables network operators to specify a wide range of network-monitoring tasks and a small set of simple circuit elements that can execute any task specified in the language. Simulations, using actual data center traffic statistics suggest that, in the data center setting, Marple should require only one traffic analysis server for every 40 or 50 application servers.

     

    Future-proofing

     

    “There is this big movement towards making routers programmable and making the hardware itself programmable,” said Mohammad Alizadeh, the TIBCO Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a senior author on the paper. “So, we were really motivated to think about what this would mean for network-performance monitoring and measurement. What would I want to be able to program into the router to make the task of the network operator easier?

    “We realised that it’s going to be very difficult to try to figure this out by picking out some measurement primitives or algorithms that we know of and saying, here’s a module that will allow you to do this, here’s a module that will allow you to do that. It would be difficult to get something that’s future-proof and general using that approach,”he said.

    Instead, Alizadeh and his collaborators co-designed the Marple language and the circuitry required to implement Marple queries, with one eye on the expressive flexibility of the language and another on the complexity of the circuits required to realise that flexibility.

    The team included first author Srinivas Narayana, a postdoc at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; Anirudh Sivaraman, Vikram Nathan, and Prateesh Goyal, all MIT graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science; Venkat Arun, an undergraduate at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, who visited MIT for a summer; Vimalkumar Jeyakumar of Cisco Tetration Analytics; and Changhoon Kim of Barefoot Networks.

    The idea behind Marple is to do as much analysis on the router itself as possible without causing network delays, and then send the external server summary statistics rather than raw packet data, incurring huge savings in both bandwidth and processing time.

    Marple is designed to individually monitor the transmissions of every computer sending data through a router, a number that can easily top 1 million. The problem is that a typical router has enough memory to store statistics on only 64,000 connections or so.

     

    One-way cache

     

    Marple solves this problem through a variation on the common computer science technique of caching, in which frequently used data is stored close to a processing unit for efficient access. Each router has a cache in which it maintains statistics on the data packets it is seen from some fixed number of senders – say, 64,000. If its cache is full, and it receives a packet from yet another sender – the 64,001st – it simply kicks out the data associated with one of the previous 64,000 senders, shipping it off to a support server for storage. If it later receives another packet from the sender it booted, it starts a new cache entry for that sender.

    This approach works only if newly booted data can be merged with the data already stored on the server. In the case of packet counting, this is simple enough. If the server records that a given router saw 1,000 packets from sender A, and if the router has seen another 100 packets from sender A since it last emptied A’s cache, then at the next update the server simply adds the new 100 packets to the 1,000 it has already recorded.

    But the merge process is not so straightforward if the statistics of interest is a weighted average of the number of packets processed per minute or the rate at which packets have been dropped by the network. The researchers’ paper, however, includes a theoretical analysis showing that merging is always possible for statistics that are “linear in state”.

    “Linear” means that any update to the statistic involves multiplying its current value by one number and then adding another number to that product. The “in state” part means that the multiplier and the added can be the results of mathematical operations performed on some numbers of previous packet measurements.

    “We found that for operations where it wasn’t immediately clear how they’d be written in this form, there was always a way to rewrite them into this form,” Narayana said, adding: “So, it turns out to be a fairly useful class of operations, practically.”

    “While much work has been done on low-level programmable primitives for measuring performance, these features are impotent without an easier network programming environment so that operators can ask network-level queries without writing low-level queries on multiple routers,” said George Varghese, Chancellor’s Professor of Computer Science at the University of California at Los Angeles. “This paper represents an important step toward a programming-language approach to networks, starting with a network programming abstraction. This is in stark contrast to the state of the art today, which is individual router programming, which is fault prone and gives little visibility into the network as a whole. Further, the network programming language is intuitive, using familiar functional-language primitives, reducing the learning curve for operators.”

    The new work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Defense Advanced Projects Agency, and Cisco Systems.

     

    Culled from Mybroadband

     

  • NCC to minister: facilitate broadband infrastructure deployment

    The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has urged the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Malam Mohammed Bello to assist in resolving the challenges inhibiting the deployment of broadband infrastructures in the city.

    Its Executive Vice Chairman, Prof Umar Danbatta, who led the management team of the Commission to the minister, lamented that the “FCT appears to have some of the most challenging issues with quality of service”.

    Also on the team was the Executive Commissioner, Stakeholders Management, Mr Sunday Dare, the Director of Public Affairs, Mr Tony Ojobo and other top officials of the Commission.

    Dambatta said the visit has become imperative given the fact that the contribution of the telecoms sector to the economy has become so important. He listed some of these contributions to include the more than $68 billion private sector investments it has attracted to the country since 2001.

    According to him, the number of mobile and fixed line subscribers have averaged 150 million within the first six months of this year, while internet access stands at 92 million as at June 2017 and ICT contribution to the GDP is close to 10 per cent.

    Danbatta, who said the NCC would strive to attain 30 per cent broadband penetration by 2018, however, said the feat cannot be achieved without the support of the FCT administration.

    “It is interesting to note that FCT belongs to the first set of two zones (North Central and Lagos) where the commission has issued Infraco licenses to enable broadband deployment in all parts of the federation using the Open Access Model,” he said.

    Dambatta continued: “Given the status of the FCT today in the scheme of things, it ought to be the city with the best telecommunications connectivity. But the reverse is the case and has been so for several years now.

    “This presents us with the reality that our FCT has some challenges that may deny it the opportunity of the revolution in the ICT of the future.”

    He listed the challenges as collocation of telecoms base stations in the FCT, the fee regime, retroactive FCTA laws that affect telecom facilities, activities of road construction companies with attendant damages and cuts of fibre lines and delayed approval for installation of base stations and fibre deployments.

    Prof Danbatta further said the implementation of the national economic council resolutions on multiple taxation, levies and charges on ICT infrastructures also inhibit the operations of telecom companies in the FCT, noting that “some service providers have indicated that the FCTA collects more than 100 per cent of some charges prescribed in that resolution”.

    Prof Danbatta urged the FCT administration to look into the issues with a view to address them for the growth and development of the telecommunication industry in the country.

    Mallam Bello, in his remarks, described NCC management visit  as timely, noting that issues raised by the NCC boss were of great concern to the FCT administration.

     

  • GTX: world’s slimmest 14-inch notebook

    Designed by foremost indigenous Information and Communication Technology (ICT) firm, Zinox Technologies Ltd, in partnership with a number of foreign technology firms including Microsoft Inc., Intel Corp., Ashour Corporation and Tecsync Technology Co Ltd., the GTX is a 14-inch device rated as the world’s slimmest notebook.

    Built to meet the computing needs of a dynamic audience, the ultra-slim GTX laptop is a powerful tool, which runs on Intel Cherry Trail OS with 1.9GHz computing power and a durable 10,000mAh battery which offers users up to 10 hours’ average use. Boasting a 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage expandable to 120GB, the 14-inch GTX is sleek at 18.2mm in dimension and weighs a paltry 1.5kg, thus making it a light-weight companion for work, travel and leisure.

    Designed for a global audience, the two models – GTX 100 and GTX 200 – of the device, which have gone on sale in Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa, comes loaded with MS Windows 10 and Office 2016 and is available in Black, Premium Grey & Classic Gold colours at an introductory price with 12 months’ nationwide warranty.

    For the contemporary tech-smart population, a laptop is often regarded as more than just a work tool. Many rely on the laptop for multi-faceted purposes, spanning social, entertainment, educational and business-related needs. This makes it imperative for the right decision to be made when shopping for a new device or a replacement unit for your old laptop.

    According to the Research and Development Unit of Yudala, Nigeria’s fastest growing composite e-commerce outfit, here are major things to look out for when shopping for a new laptop.

    Gone are the days when laptops weighed a ton and took up so much space. On-going advancements in the sphere of computer manufacturing has seen a lot of refinements in laptop sizes. For students and busy executives, portability is a core requirement. The easier it is to fit your laptop PC into a small bag, the better. Therefore, a laptop with a screen size between 12.5-14 inches and weighing between 1–1.5kg fits the bill. When shopping for such a portable device, it is often best to go for a notebook.

    Bearing in mind the peculiar power supply challenges in the country, you are better off investing in a laptop with a strong battery that can guarantee at least up to 10 hours of battery life on average use. For a notebook, a battery capacity of 10,000mAH/3.7V or higher is adequately sufficient to begin with, especially as both the total charging capacity and life of a laptop computer’s battery will diminish as you use your computer.

    Price is another significant factor to consider when shopping for a new laptop. Laptop prices are often predicated on the features of the device, especially the ones listed above. As such, a laptop with a faster processor speed and RAM would likely cost more than a model with less speed. However, increasing competition in the market and more attention to research and development of new products makes it possible these days to find moderately-priced devices boasting features that would naturally be found in more expensive models.

  • 9mobile: SMEs, software developers vital to growth

    Nigeria’s fourth largest carrier,  9mobile, has partnered Africa’s Talking to empower software solutions developers and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with access to telecommunication infrastructure through mobile communication Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

    9mobile’s partnership with Africa’s Talking, a pan-African company focused on providing developers with an easy and reliable way to access telecommunication infrastructure, aims at boosting Nigerian software developers activities and enabling SMEs to effectively engage customers across multiple channels.

    The telco’s Director, Digital Business,  Adia Sowho, said through the direct connection to 9mobile’s infrastructure and the unified API platform that Africa’s Talking provides, developers will be able to access and build innovative applications while SMEs can use the platform to improve their marketing capabilities.

    She said: “We at 9mobile are delighted to partner with Africa’s Talking in our bid to support Nigerian software developers and small businesses as they build viable and scalable businesses. This partnership will provide businesses with quality and affordable mobile communication tools like 2-way SMS and USSD APIs that they can then embed into their day to day business activities. With these tools, SMEs can improve their marketing capabilities and interact easily with their customers.

    “In the past decade, mobile communication has proven beneficial for businesses seeking to create and maintain meaningful relationships with their existing and future customers. It is through this that businesses are able to offer effective customer support, real time communication solutions, collect data as well as optimise their operations. With this solution, SMEs will also be able to tap into the local developer community to build systems that enhance business efficiency, leading to job creation and overall support of local talent,”she said.

    Sowho noted that with the partnership, individual developers do not need to interface directly with telco-grade protocols, which prove to be difficult and time consuming.

    “With an estimated 250,000 developers in the country, having easy access to this infrastructure will encourage more developers to build innovative solutions that can directly impact the lives of the Nigerian populace. At 9mobile, we are always passionate about providing technology based support to innovative thinkers,” Sowho said.

    She added that 9mobile and Africa’s Talking were dedicated to working closely with the developer community across the country through supporting training workshops, hackathons and other developer activities, with the aim of educating and encouraging developers to take advantage of the tools that are now available to them locally.

    Africa’s Talking has also provided a sandbox environment for developers to use while learning how to work with the APIs as well as testing out their applications before taking them to production.