climate and comms

Government authorities have a key role to play in facilitating the emergence of a digital economy.    Their mission does not only entail adopting and enforcing appropriate and effective regulations but also ensuring that existing infrastructure is leveraged for optimal utilization.   The participants in this strategic workshop will work on ways to make governments and regulators true catalysts for digitalization, with the support of all sector players. This  is the subject matter of a discussion to be held at the Africa CEO Forum in Abidjan next week.  These are my initial thoughts.  All comments welcome. In Africa we have seen the emergence of a mobile telephony market which went from zero to over a billion phones in just over two decades.   The mobile industry requires tight regulation because of the use of a scarce resource – spectrum.    The role of Government has thus, of necessity,   been important in ...

The African data centre market consists primarily of in-house data centres built by banks, Telco’s and Governments for their own use.   This has been a function of the lack of availability of carrier neutral data centres.   However this is changing with the advent of companies like Teraco which are building World Class Tier 3 + data centres which use the latest technologies for managing power and cooling.   The power and cooling requirements of new technology servers and high density suites is leading to many legacy data centre facilities being unable to deliver the energy efficiency benefits of a new purpose-built facilities.    The operating costs of older data centres are thus becoming increasingly prohibitive with the life time cost of power exceeding the cost of building a new data centre. The increased requirement for digital and physical security has lead corporations to seek better and ultimately cheaper solutions by going outs...

I have been waiting for Jeremy Rifkin to get with the African program.   It was only a matter of time.   For those of you who don't know, he is the guy who wrote ‘ The Third Industrial Revolution’ ( http://thethirdindustrialrevolution.com/ ) which is the story of the convergence of the communication and energy revolutions.   In it he talks of the rapidly emerging trend of local power generation and the sharing of that power laterally across the grid analogously to WiFi sharing between adjacent WiFi networks.    This is very powerful because it obviates the need for large capital projects for power generation – which have the downsides of : long lead times, centralised monolithic infrastructure, large expensive and wasteful distribution networks - all well illustrated by the current Eskom debacle. It is not widely known that only about 15% of Africans have access to power.   Millions of African children are forced to read by the lig...

Starting in the mid 1990’s Africa underwent a ‘mobile revolution’ whereby from a standing start of below 1% telephone penetration (tele-density) -   the Continent now boasts over 800 million mobile phones.     By skipping the so-called ‘landline’ technologies the mobile operators leapfrogged a technology generation.   These mobile networks, it can be argued, have been a major contributor to the economic upswing the Continent has experienced since the start of the new millennium.     The mobile revolution is now over as growth has moderated and penetration levels started to peak.     However, a new revolution beckons - the Internet revolution.   Africa falls behind the Rest of the World when it comes to broadband with less than 15% penetration, mainly in the cities.    During the last 5 years numerous submarine cables have been installed, connecting Africa to the Globe.   These fibre-opti...

It is a little known fact that the Internet is one of the largest contributors of carbon emissions.    ( http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/aug/12/carbon-footprint-internet ) Today 9/21/2014 [1] is a significant date in the climate change calendar,   being the largest climate march in history ( http://peoplesclimate.org )   It is a day when awareness of the impact of global warming will perhaps reach a critical mass and the decision-makers will finally wake up.   How many more Katrina’s,   Sandy’s or Haiyan’s will it take to shock the hardcore minority ( denialist’s and their patrons – i.e. the fossil fuel industry )   into realising that it can no longer be   “business as usual”.    I work in the Internet industry – building data centres.    Our work is in Africa where the potential (negative) impact of climate change could be the highest of any region in the World.    As local weather patterns chan...

I saw an article the other day headlined   “ Why saying ‘ seven of the ten fastest growing economies are in Africa ‘ carries no real meaning” [1] (By Morten Jerven writing on africanarguments.org).    Not one to be put off by such one eyed perspectives – I thought I should read it.    Always get the ‘other ‘ perspective is what   I believe and advocate,   and so I did.    What followed was a clinical analysis of GDP’s, growth rates, inflation rates and the like, indicators, so oft leant upon by economists to underpin their arguments.   Basically a dismissing of the current African economic turnaround as being statistically misleading and so on.    But all was not bad – there was a concession at the end that   ‘ the evidence does not yet readily provide us with an answer ’.   Had it been included in the title as a rider, perhaps one would have read the article with a little less disregard for the approach of the aut...

New life has started to bloom across this drought-ridden continent.     These green shoots are the fruit of the last decade and a half of increasingly feverish activity.     Democracy and mining spring to mind, but what about retail?   What about banking?   And of course mobile – the great enabler ! Chinese colonization proceeds with alacrity while their Global counterparts dawdle.    But is Sino capital and labour what Africa really needs?   Yes – but only if there is no alternative.    The rest of the World, suffering from post 2008 crisis lethargy, is slowly starting to realize that Africa should form part of their longer term plans.   The UK chugs along barely in positive territory while Osborn pats himself on the back for having squeezed the life out of the UK which he now kicks down the road and calls it growth !    The Tea Party almost dragged the USA (and the World) to the brink of an economic moras...

Trust /trəst/   :   Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. The foundations of the working of human society are built on trust.  This has been so since the beginning of recorded history.   As our communities evolved from hunter gatherer groups into agricultural chiefdoms, and ultimately modern states their operation, increasing complexity and success relied not only upon our cultural evolution as posited by Robert Wright in Non-Zero ( Non Zero )  but also upon trust.   Trust is integral to our ‘culture.’  The birth of capitalism and the rapid economic and technological growth of the last five centuries began with the pooling of capital used by investors to underwrite a ships trading expedition called the ‘ contratto di commenda ’ .  Such ventures could not have happened without the inherent trust that the investors had - that the expedition’s captain would return the profits to the investors....

The mobile ecosystem is alive and well and flourishing and reflects its current status as the globally dominant (and growing) industry  that is becoming increasingly integrated into every aspect of our lives.    The Barcelona extravaganza which is notable for two things.  Firstly its sheer size – upwards of 60 000 delegates dwarfing anything ever held in Cannes ( when I last visited the show) and secondly,  the absence of the largest company in the sector – Apple.   Never known to follow the crowd – Apple rightly or wrongly uses its own platform ( in San Francisco)  to make its announcements and thereby retains its mystique or displays its sheer arrogance – depending on your perspective. That Mobile will continue to permeate every aspect of modern life is beyond doubt.   The first phase of GSM where voice was the killer app has now been replaced by data and most particularly Internet access and mobile applications.  So Mobile expands beyo...

There are so many pundits out there who have finally jumped on this bandwagon.   But lets be honest,  five and a half (or is it now closer to six)  billion people,  can’t be wrong – the mobile revolution is finishing its transition from what have been predominantly voice services to broad-band data services.  The devices that we used to just talk on are now full blown computers and we use them for everything – although we do actually still use them to talk on as well too!.  ( See my previous blog:   http://rossmac2310.blogspot.com/2011/10/human-evolution-and-mobile.html ) There are so many exciting threads to this trend : the Internet revolution in Africa and other emerging markets,  the plethora of new services being created every day that add value to our everyday existence and the emergence of real competition in the mobile handset space.   I applaud Microsoft ( and Nokia) for their exciting new partnership and a handset t...