ITWeb Africa launches at opportune time

ITWeb yesterday unveiled its new Web site, ITWeb Africa, at the Hyatt Hotel, in Rosebank, with keynote speakers saying it was launching at a time of accelerated activity in the continent's ICT and telecoms sectors.

Speaking at the event, attended by more than 180 delegates, were Dobek Pater, director of Africa Analysis; Stafford Masie, angel investor in tech start-ups and former head of Google SA; and Gareth van Zyl, editor of ITWeb Africa.

Also present were some of ITWeb Africa's correspondents: Tom Jackson, Bob Koigi and Ken Macharia, who represent ITWeb in Kenya; Michael Malakata, from Zambia; and Tawanda Karombo, from Zimbabwe.

“ITWeb has undertaken its latest venture into Africa, at a time when the continent is experiencing massive social and economic change,” said Van Zyl.

He said Africa was both one of the world's fastest growing economic zones and one of the fastest growing adopters of technology. IT spending in Africa is expected to grow by almost 11% in 2012, outperforming the global average of 3.7%, according to Gartner.

“Mobile operators in Africa experienced super growth in the last decade, as penetration rates exploded from 2% in 2002 to 51% in 2010, amounting to 500 million connections. Similarly, undersea cables, such as Seacom and Eassy, have connected many African countries to high-speed broadband. Those with access to the Internet at the end of 2011 numbered 139 million,” noted Van Zyl.

African governments have started to play their part in boosting their countries' technology prospects as well, he said. Kenya's administration, for example, plans to make the country one of the top 10 ICT hubs in the world by 2017.

“Africa is still a risky place to do business and knowing where the possibilities and pitfalls lie is critical to those decision-makers in the industry who need to make the right choices,” said Van Zyl. “ITWeb Africa aims to provide daily news, analysis, features, market reports and insights into the continent's changing telecoms and technology industry to help those with interests in the continent's ICT industry stay in the loop.”

Business people, traders, investors, entrepreneurs, industry experts, start-ups and those who want to know more about Africa's rapidly changing ICT sector are ITWeb Africa's target audience, said Van Zyl. The content is provided with a local perspective, with a plan to expand the network of journalists to Egypt and more parts of English-speaking SA.

Stafford Masie, who was MC and guest speaker at the launch, noted that a platform like ITWeb Africa will be crucial in informing the world about the potential of the African ICT and telecoms sector.

He challenged businesses to be always creative. “Innovation doesn't begin with entrepreneurs... it begins with people having fun. Technology today is like when electricity was first discovered and finally became useful. Three things happened which ensured electricity incurred the industrial revolution: a wide area network able to transport it over vast distances; a standard method of access; and a per minute service usage - not too different to notions of cloud computing. We in Africa should take advantage of this new digital renaissance and architecture,” he said.

While social media Web sites such as Facebook have been successful at selling advertising, Masie said they were also looking to diversify their incomes. These Web sites could look to offer financial services similar to those of banks, as social networks not only fight for peoples' identities, but also their wallets. "I think that social networks, social containers, will become the largest financial institutions in the world in the next 48 months. The democratisation of currency and transaction enablement is upon us. Africa has displayed innovative inventions and we lead the world in innovative banking. ITWeb Africa will give the world an insight into these efforts and showcase Africa's technological leadership."

Masie also said telcos need to look to offer financial services as diminishing revenues from voice calls and lower-than-expected earnings from data services are putting them under pressure.

"[Users] will look at the phone not as a phone; they'll look at the phone as a credit card, a transaction aggregation platform that can make phone calls," he said.

Meanwhile, the ITWeb Africa launch did not go unnoticed on the social networks, as the ITWebAfrica hashtag was the second top trending on Twitter for a while in Johannesburg.

Analyst Dobek Pater noted that, by 2014, total terminal connectivity out of Africa on submarine cables is expected to be more than 60Tbps with existing and planned cables.

However, he expressed concerns that it will be difficult to foresee if these cables will use their full capacity over their 20-year lifespans, as this will depend on demand.

He also revealed that the abundance of cables will possibly result in a bandwidth glut, but on a positive note, would result in further price decreases, beyond those expected.

“Price reductions are expected across all market segments, but most notably in the international and national segments due to greater competition and future installed capacity.”

Pater also highlighted that terrestrial fibre networks are being deployed on the continent nationally, regionally and in some of the large metros.

Pointing to the other growth areas, he said the past two years have seen significant growth in data centres in sub-Saharan markets such as Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and SA.

“These data centres tend to be concentrated in main business hubs and co-location services are the most popular, although not the most lucrative. Cloud services are also beginning to make an appearance in some of the key African markets, but we expect another four to five years before they can be viewed as a 'regular' service. Improving the telecoms environment is a key driver.”

Africa's anticipated growth in data traffic per device will be considerably higher than the global average, but off a low base, he also noted. “This will be facilitated by greater bandwidth availability and lower retail prices of products or services.”