IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

African healthcare providers are gradually recognising the convenience and cost benefits of adopting patient portals integrating financial and clinical data, according to Frost & Sullivan, giving a boost to a number of startups operating in the e-health sector.

In its Patient Portals in Africa analysis, Frost & Sullivan said healthcare providers were realising such services offered easy and secure access to patient data, while also reducing cost of care and eliminating penalties such as readmissions.

The future competitiveness of sub-Saharan Africa’s agriculture and its contribution to national economies will depend on how countries position themselves to utilise and exploit digital technologies.

African countries, however, are far from reaching the expected levels of development and are at various phases of the changeover to digital agriculture.

The $650 million open-access cable system is the biggest to land on the Africa continent and will link southern Africa and Europe.

The 14,000 kilometre ultra-high-capacity fibreoptic system will also land in Namibia, Angola, Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Cape Verde, the Canary Islands, Portugal and the UK.

Touted as the largest design capacity submarine cable to land on the African Continent, the WACS landing will mean increased network capacity for Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN) subscribers and an additional diversity for its enterprise customers' Internet Protocol (IP), data and voice communication needs.

The cable, the product of a consortium of companies including Gateway Communications, Angola Telecom and Telkom South Africa, has a 5.12 Tbit/s capacity, making it substantially faster than the celebrated SEACOM cable with its 1.28 Tbit/s design capacity. The speed of the WACS cable is such that one could theoretically download about eight million MP3 files or over eight thousand DVDs per minute.

John Kieti, manager of m:lab East Africa, a mobile innovation and entrepreneurship development facility, points at internet connectivity as one of the major challenges in the region.

“Infrastructure is still not even across the countries. The density of connectivity points in Kenya, for instance, is much more in Nairobi than in other towns across the country. If we assume that Nairobi is the infrastructure centre, we might as well say that Nairobi is the hub, not the country or the region,” notes Kieti.

Dr. Derege Kebede, head of the African Health Observatory (AHO) and Knowledge Management Unit at the WHO Regional Office for Africa Office (WHO/AFRO) in Brazzaville, Congo made the call here, on the sidelines of the ongoing 63rd session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa.

The initiative was set up in Pretoria last month and is being led by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research's (CSIR's) Meraka Institute.

Project leader Chris Morris believes wireless technology is a solution to connect remote communities on the world's least wired continent. “Why should rural, poor and remote areas in Africa be denied access to the information society through lack of infrastructure, or because of exorbitantly high telecommunications costs?” he asks.

M-health works in Africa for two reasons. The people, and the widely spread African diaspora across the world, are already adept at using mobile phones for social and financial transactions. Also, the technological concept gets to start from the best place you can possibly imagine: from the bottom up.

The bank has provided over US$424 million in loans to African governments for the project in a bid to compel them to get the project off the ground. The Kenyan government becomes the third country in the East African region after Rwanda and Burundi to start rolling out the project.

Elsewhere on the continent, Mauritius and Burundi have already implemented e-governance projects after receiving more than $164 million from the bank.

The program, the World Bank said, will complement the submarine fiber cable projects being developed along the east coast of Africa, which will link the region into the global communication network.

The summit decided to bring forward ICT connectivity goals to 2012 to enable the achievement of the broader Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

Ghassan Azzi, Sales Director for Africa at Western Digital, has highlighted how artificial intelligence (AI) computing extends beyond traditional cloud and data centres to various end devices.

In his expert opinion piece, “Empowering Smart Transport with AI Embedded Computing and Data Storage,” he stated that for smart devices to evolve and learn, they require access to data and the capacity to store, process, and analyse it efficiently. Embedded AI computing facilitates this by integrating AI capabilities directly into electronic devices, from PCs and mobile gadgets to self-driving cars, industrial automation setups, and robotics.

President Banda said the exchange of and access to information and knowledge through the use of ICTs has contributed to development of many countries in Africa .

He said ICTs have the potential to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich nations in the world, adding that it would be to the advantage of the African countries to embrace the ICTs in their quest to develop further.

Der Zugang zu Breitbandtechnologien ist in afrikanischen Ländern am teuersten. Verglichen mit dem Einkommen kostet ein Monat Breitband laut aktuellen UN-Zahlen in der Zentralafrikanischen Republik mehr als drei durchschnittliche Jahresgehälter. Mit Äthiopien, Malawi, Guinea und Niger führen weitere afrikanische Staaten die Liste an. Zum Vergleich: In den USA müssen Leute gerade einmal 0,5 Prozent ihres Monatsgehalts für einen Breitbandzugang ausgeben. In den meisten europäischen Ländern liegen die Kosten nur unweit höher.

Addressing local and international delegates to the 5th International Conference on ICTs for Africa in Harare, Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara said the continent is tired of being consumers of ICT products from the developed countries, adding that ways should be sought for Africa to be actively involved in the production of ICT materials.