Indeed, The Economist notes, as the Al Qaeda-backed extremists are pushed back, their tactics have become increasingly desperate. The Somali people, once intimidated by Al Shabaab, are less afraid of reprisals, and “have turned hostile” towards the terrorist group. Signs are hopeful that, thanks in large part to Kenya and Ethopia’s actions, Somalians will spend 2012 rebuilding their own livelihoods, rather than “fending off jihad.”

To read the full Economist article, please click here.

MedAfrica is free to users and supported by advertising revenue. The creators hope to expand the service to include a comment feature, which would allow users to share feedback about health providers. Safaricom also recently partnered with another start-up, Call-a-Doc, which allows subscribers to call doctors for expert advice for two cents a minute.

World Bank officials see significant promise from mobile health efforts, pointing to the fact that 50 percent of all Kenyan banking is already done on mobile phones. Elizabeth Ashbourne, director of global health information at the World Bank says, “In terms of providing basic services through mobile phones on the continent, Kenya is the lead in many ways, and showing the way.” Ashbourne adds that “Local applications in the health space are absolutely frontier activities.”

To read the full Technology Review article, click here.

Reforms computerizing the approval process for small business owners will “reduce the interaction between businessmen and state workers” — and, thus, reduce the opportunities for civil servants to enforce laws capriciously or be tempted by bribes — according to Jane Joram, senior deputy registrar general at the Company Registrar Office.

E-government will also make Kenya’s government leaner and more efficient. Already, reforms have cut the time it takes to register a new company’s name from up to 21 days to a mere five. Samuel Kimeu, executive director for Transparency International in Kenya, describes the promise of Kenya’s new reforms:

“Part of the reason people pay bribes is because it took forever to register a company or do any of the other bureaucratic processes…But when we make government processes automated, such as [getting] birth certificates, licenses, company registrations, IDs, I’m sure the impact will be immense in reducing corruption.”

To read the full Christian Science Monitor Article, click here.

Dr. Ndemo’s full interview with The San Jose Mercury News’ Larry Magid can be listened to here.

With an average salary of under $800 a year, Kenya is ranked near the bottom when it comes to per capita income. But, if Bitange Ndemo has his way, the country will use technology as its ladder to prosperity.

Ndemo, permanent secretary of the country’s Ministry of Information and Communications, is optimistic that Kenya’s relatively well-educated — it has a 92 percent literacy rate — and English-speaking population will leapfrog 20th-century technologies and cash in on mobile broadband.

“A few years ago we started to think about how to absorb many youth,” Ndemo told me in a recent interview at his office in Nairobi, adding that half the population is below age 20.

While most Kenyans work in agriculture, information technology is key to the government’s plan to transform the nation from an agrarian to a service-based economy. That includes call centers, software development and light industry.

In 2007, the government drafted what it calls “Vision 2030,” a plan that includes greater government transparency and accountability as well as economic, social and political reforms. To that end, Kenya is launching “open data” websites to make government data “accessible to the people.”

In partnership with the World Bank and Nokia, the country has created an “m-lab” to incubate mobile application startups. In June, m-lab sponsored a mobile apps developers conference and a contest that recognized 25 East African app developers,

including Simba Technologies, which created an app called MedKenya that delivers heath information to Kenyans via mobile phone, using information from the government’s open data project. Last month the company participated in DEMO Fall 2011 in Silicon Valley, where it showed off an expanded version, called MedAfrica, to bring similar content to other countries on the continent.

Perhaps the most famous mobile success is M-Pesa (“M” stands for mobile and “pesa” is Swahili for money). Launched in 2007 by Kenya mobile carrier Safaricom, M-Pesa allows people to use text messaging to transfer funds via cell phone. Stores selling cards to top off M-Pesa accounts are everywhere. I even spotted them in small towns while traveling in rural parts of the country.

“Africa is the Silicon Valley of banking,” said Carol Realini, executive chairman of Obopay, a Redwood City-based mobile banking company. “The future of banking is being defined there.”

Ndemo said that there are thousands of young Kenyans involved in app development. One Kenyan company, Planet Rackus, has done well with its “Ma3Racer” driving game that the Kenya Standard newspaper said “allows one to test his or her driving skills on the busiest, and roughest Nairobi roads.” The app, I’m told, is based on racing matatus (taxi vans) on real urban roads. Just inching along Nairobi’s incredibly crowded streets in taxis has been tough on me.

Some rural communities lack electricity, let alone Internet. Although there are projects to bring fiber to the home, most Kenyans get online either at cybercafes or by purchasing an inexpensive USB modem and buying mobile Internet top-off cards.

Fortunately, my laptop has a pretty good battery, which was needed because hardly a day passed during my stay without a brief power outage — even at a luxury hotel in the capital. A lodge I visited in the Masai Mara game reserve uses generators, which they turn off late at night. But Kenya has an abundance of sunshine, and Ndemo hopes to see widespread adoption of solar power. Last year, the country lowered the import tax on solar equipment in an effort to promote “green energy.”

As for the short-term future, one corner of Ndemo’s spacious office is dedicated to a scale model of Konza City, a planned 5,000-acre technology park to be located about 40 miles from Nairobi. The area, already nicknamed “Silicon Savannah,” will eventually feature housing, a science park, a university campus and two “BPO Technology Parks.” BPO stands for business process outsourcing, which can include a variety of “back office” functions including accounting and human resources.

I don’t know how long it will take for Kenya to achieve a modicum of prosperity, but after spending 10 days with some marvelous people, I’m convinced they’ll get there.

Source: The San Jose Mercury News

East Africa and the Horn of Africa are experiencing a devastating drought — the worst in 60 years. This emergency presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The United Nations estimates that 750,000 people in Somalia alone could die without assistance. Providing that aid is an opportunity to usher in a new day in Somalia, thus alleviating one of East Africa’s most enduring problems.

Africa could be opening a new chapter. The economies of many African countries are growing, and investor interest in the continent is rising all the time. Many countries have implemented economic and political reforms to enhance openness and transparency. Last month, for example, Kenya celebrated the first anniversary of the adoption of its new constitution, which decentralized power, reformed the administrative bureaucracy, and improved governance.

Just a few months ago, the continent successfully witnessed the creation of a new country, South Sudan. African countries, including Kenya, played impressive diplomatic roles in the process and provided on-the-ground logistical assistance. (As of this writing, there are still thousands of Kenyan civil servants helping to build a new government in Juba.)

The same intense effort is now needed in Somalia. The famine is more than a natural disaster. It is a result of the inability of Somalia’s principal political actors to end inaction, division, and war. This is a moment of inflection for the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), as it has a unique opportunity to prove to the international community its determination to ensure that better days await Somalia.

Of course, Somalia cannot succeed without the help of its neighbors. Together, African countries should develop a long-term strategy for stabilizing Somalia and the region. In addition, any dialogue should include important new players such as Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s August visit to Mogadishu was the first by a non-African head of government in years. The visit was powerfully symbolic and brought much-needed attention to the situation.

Four important activities could help push Somalia in the right direction. First, the 1991 Djibouti initiative for Somali reconciliation should be refreshed. It bore no fruit a decade ago but was an important first step toward lasting peace. A new round of talks should recognize that ethnic and tribal differences in Somalia are not easily bridgeable. Thus, efforts to support and reform the TFG must be accompanied by a determined effort to decentralize power to Somalia’s different ethnicities and geographies.

Second, the African Union Mission in Somalia should be granted more troops. Ensuring stability in Somalia will require better security. The United Nations has already authorized an additional 3,000 troops to the region. Those troops are urgently needed but have yet to be deployed.

Somalia’s current crisis has escalated because of decades of food insecurity. Delegates attending a recent international conference on food in Nairobi passed resolutions calling for the provision of money, expertise, materials, and know-how to revolutionize food production in Somalia within a decade. Third, José Graziano da Silva, the newly elected director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, should continue making Somalia his foremost priority.

Finally, the international community must open refugee camps within Somalia’s borders. By establishing a presence there, more people will be able to reach relief faster. Such camps would also reduce the dangers associated with large migrations. In recent months, the population of Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp has risen by 150,000. The camp, designed to hold 90,000, is now home to half a million, making it the largest refugee camp on Earth. Many of Somalia’s famine-related deaths have occurred on the long trek toward Dadaab camp.

The recent withdrawal by al Shabaab from the Somali capital of Mogadishu presents a critical opportunity for the international community to renew its efforts. Having denied relief groups access to the affected regions of Somalia and jeopardizing millions of lives, al Shabaab is losing support fast. Of course, al Shabaab is not the root of the problem, but its absence will be helpful.

In Somalia, the world has an opportunity to do more than alleviate a human tragedy. Somalia’s past has left a long legacy of frustration. The future can be different. Any plan that holistically addresses Somalia’s problems may not, sadly, save every life in this famine. But it may give Somalia a better future than its past.

The full text of President Kibaki’s op-ed in Foreign Affairs is also available here.

During a United Nations mini-summit on Somalia convened on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings in New York, the president emphasized that “time is of the essence” and asked the international community to enhance the capabilities of both the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government.

Increased assistance would enable the federal government to extend its control beyond the capital of Mogadishu, Kibaki explained.

“It will also enable AMISOM to deal effectively with additional and complex tasks such as the provision of humanitarian aid and protection of civilians,” President Kibaki added. “The needed assistance must be deployed quickly to forestall the regrouping of al Shabaab.”

Kibaki also explained how Somalia’s instability and inability to deal with the severe famine affecting the region is “placing a lot of pressure on refugee camps and related social services, as well as [on] host communities.”

“The difficulties I have described cannot be addressed by the federal government alone, nor can IGAD [East Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development] by itself resolve them effectively. For this reason, I urge this summit to focus on urgently mobilizing international support in aid of Somalia,” he said.

To read the full Daily Nation article, please click here.

The project, dubbed “Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO)”, provides a template for SMEs to log onto www.kbo.co.ke and fill in information to upload onto their new website.

The Google-led effort will also give SMEs the opportunity to create their own website at no cost. With 10.2 million Internet users in Kenya, Google Kenya Country Manager Olga Arara-Kimani said the initiative would transform the SME landscape, while positively impacting on the economy.

Speaking at a Nairobi hotel, Arara-Kimani said many small businesses fear getting online because they think it is complicated and expensive.

“We are providing your own, easy to build website for mobile and desktop. The SME will be listed online under our website, www.kbo.co.ke. If we are able to get these businesses online, where we are now seeing that they are not only being found locally, but have the opportunity to be found internationally; they can contribute to the growth of the business,” she said.

The GKBO website is mobile and desktop compatible allowing SMEs to personally manage the site and update business information in real time. Resources available include a shopping cart service and SMS alerts providing the number of hits to the website.

According to a recent Google study, one in three mobile Internet searches in the East African region pertains to local information. Ministry of Information and Communication Permanent Secretary Dr Bitange Ndemo said GKBO also helps to address high registration prices for website domains that often discourage SMEs from signing up.

“The storage capacity in this country is four times as expensive as it is outside the country. If it continues to be that expensive it will discourage people from getting local domains. What Google brings in is the leveraging of their capacity for storage to bring lower costs,” he said.

He said the government was taking steps to boost cyber security through the Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) at the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK).

CIRT will receive, review and respond to computer security incident reports and activity, as well as create awareness of cyber security issues through the provision of cyber security advisories.

Partners involved in the GKBO initiative include Safaricom, Equity Bank, the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Information and Communication, World Bank and Kenya Network Information Centre.

Source: IT News Africa

A new geological study, being reported Thursday in the journal Nature, showed that tools from a site near Lake Turkana in Kenya were made about 1.76 million years ago, the earliest of their ilk found so far. Previous dates were estimates ranging from 1.4 million to 1.6 million years ago.

Although no erectus fossils were found with the Turkana tools, a skull of that species was excavated last year in the same sediment level across the lake. This suggests that Homo erectus was responsible for these particular tools, which were made with what scientists refer to as Acheulean technology. The term connotes the type of oval and pear-shaped hand axes and other implements that were a specialty of early humans.

American researchers at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University, established the age of the Turkana tools by dating the surrounding mudstone with a paleomagnetic technique. When layers of silt and clay hardened into stone, this preserved the orientation of Earth’s magnetic field at the time, and an analysis of the periodic polarity reversals and other records yielded the age of the site known as Kokiselei.

“I was taken aback when I realized that the geological data indicated it was the oldest Acheulean site in the world,” said the lead author of the report, Christopher J. Lepre, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty who also teaches geology at Rutgers University.

The assemblage of hand axes, picks and other cutting tools was collected, mostly in the 1990s, by French archaeologists led by Hélène Roche of the National Center for Scientific Research in France. Dr. Roche, a co-author of the paper, was steered to the site by Richard Leakey, the Kenyan fossil hunter who had discovered, just six miles away, the Turkana Boy, a young Homo erectus who lived about 1.5 million years ago and is the most complete early hominid skeleton found so far.

In the journal article, Dr. Lepre’s group said that artifacts from an earlier and simpler technology, Oldowan, were found alongside the more advanced Acheulean tools. The Oldowan tools were mainly sharp stone flakes and roughly worked rock cores, while the more sophisticated tools displayed signs of symmetry, uniformity and planning.

The presence of both Oldowan and Acheulean artifacts at the site indicates that “the two technologies are not mutually exclusive” components of an evolving cultural lineage, the scientists said. It was possible that the Acheulean technology was imported from a place yet to be identified, or originated from Oldowan toolmakers in the area.

In either case, the scientists wrote, “the Acheulean did not accompany the first human dispersal from Africa, despite being available at the time.”

Hominids thought to be Homo erectus — or possibly Homo habilis, an earlier group — were then living in what is now the country of Georgia. Their tools were Oldowan. So the archaeologists and geologists concluded that there may have been multiple groups of hominids “distinguished by separate stone-tool-making behaviors and dispersal strategies” co-existing in Africa 1.76 million years ago.

Ian Tattersall, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York who was not involved in the research, said rumors of much earlier Acheulean finds had been circulating for a long time, “and now we have it, and the evidence is well documented.”

The new find “is bound to open up the debate about the relationship between the appearance of the Acheulean and that of early African Homo erectus, the earliest hominid known to have basically modern human body proportions,” Dr. Tattersall said. It is thought that erectus evolved about two million years ago.

Although the authors suggested the possibility that more than one kind of hominid was making tools at the site, Dr. Tattersall said it was also conceivable that the Acheulean culture was born within the Oldowan. “After all, any cultural innovation has to be invented within some existing tradition,” he noted. “And it was typically the case that old Paleolithic technologies survived for long periods alongside the new.”

Dr. Tattersall said he found it odd that “the Acheulean evidently didn’t catch on widely for several hundred thousand years after it was invented, possibly for the same reasons — whatever they are — that it took a really long time to be adopted at all widely in Eurasia, even as African groups were evidently migrating out.”

Eric Delson, a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College of the City University of New York, said he was disappointed in the few pictures of the stone tools that were published with the report, describing them as “rather rough.” He said the tools “in some ways appeared to be intermediate between Oldowan and Acheulean tools, which might be expected for the first Acheulean artifacts.”

Nonetheless, Dr. Delson said, the new date for the earliest known Acheulean “moves it back closer to the earliest Homo erectus and supports — but does not prove — the widespread view that erectus made the Acheulean, at least at the beginning.”

But as he reviewed the research’s implications for the role of Homo erectus in the spread of early humans, Dr. Delson sounded the familiar lament of paleoanthropology: “Each new find raises about as many questions as it helps to resolve.”

Source: The New York Times