Technology
MainOne, Orange to Boost Internet Access in Francophone West Africa
By Dipo Olowookere
French Telecoms company, Orange, and leading West African Connectivity and Data Centre services provider, MainOne, have struck a partnership that will see the French telecoms giant co-invest in two new cable landing stations in Dakar, Senegal and Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire while the broadband infrastructure provider will provide additional capacity via its 7000km cable system from Europe to Africa with landing stations in Nigeria, Ghana and Portugal, reinforcing the position of both companies in the African telecommunications ecosystem.
Thanks to this new cable connection, several countries in West Africa will benefit from better connectivity, lower prices and access to new services.
Orange will benefit from multiple Terabits per second of additional bandwidth for the development of fixed and mobile data in Africa to meet the increasing demands for Internet access via 3G and 4G network.
More specifically, this cable extension is an opportunity to improve connectivity and offer a broader range of services for both Orange Côte d’Ivoire & Senegal’s Sonatel. In addition, neighboring countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania will benefit from enhanced capacity.
For MainOne, the partnership underscores the company’s vision for a better connected region, its Chief Executive Officer, Funke Opeke says “MainOne continues to lead the digital transformation of our sub-region by investing in affordable connectivity to drive economic development. Our objective is to bridge the digital divide between and within West Africa and the rest of the world. We are committed to deepening broadband penetration across West Africa and believe our investments in technologically advanced subsea infrastructure will continue to liberalize the international bandwidth market, further support Orange and other wholesale customers, and ultimately result in improved digital services in the region”.
Speaking on the strategic deal, Chief Executive Officer of Orange Middle East and Africa, Alioune Ndiaye says “The development of new digital services in Africa has fostered huge social and economic developments over the past few years. As barriers to access continue to fall with improved networks and more affordable equipment, Orange, as part of its multi – service strategy, is seeking to position itself as an important partner in the continent’s digital transformation Through this new partnership, Orange is set to secure and improve direct access to high – speed broadband services in two of its most important countries, Senegal and the Côte d’Ivoire.”
The MainOne Submarine Cable System links West Africa with Europe, bringing ultra-fast broadband in the region. It runs from Seixal in Portugal through Accra in Ghana to Lagos in Nigeria, with capacity to land branches in Morocco, Canary Islands, Senegal, and Cote D’Ivoire. The cable system, which now has an upgradable capacity of over 10 TBPS, first went live in July 2010, becoming the first private subsea cable to bring open-access, broadband capacity to West Africa.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
An easy-to-integrate Application Programmable Interfaces (API) platform designed for developers for creating digital products and solutions for Africans has been introduced by Interswitch.
The interface has internal APIs, partner APIs, and infrastructure APIs designed to empower Africa’s digital ecosystem. It also serves as a one-stop shop for innovators in the tech ecosystem who seek to build viable, market-fit products that address local needs.
To attract innovators, the firm, which prides itself as Africa’s leading integrated payments and digital commerce company, has introduced a referral system to reward developers who refer merchants to use its APIs.
At the unveiling of the API platform on Thursday, August 11, 2022, at the Zone Tech Park, Gbagada, Lagos, the Managing Director of Paymate, Interswitch Group, Mr Muyiwa Asagba, stated that the tech giant remains focused on providing digitally empowering products for developers and business owners who are crafting solutions for the everyday African.
Over time, Interswitch has continued to champion the development of the continent’s technology ecosystem through strategic partnerships and the democratization of developer and business integration tools that help tech creators and small business owners produce market-ready products within a short period.
“For two decades, Interswitch has consolidated its efforts in its support for the growth of the African tech ecosystem by availing developers with valuable resources that enable them to build commercially viable products with ease.
“Away from that, we also take seriously the need to innovate so as to stay ahead of the pack, which is a core part of who we are as an evolving technology brand,” Mr Asagba said.
On his part, the Business Development Manager for Merchant Acquisition at Interswitch, Mr Sunday Olaniyan stated that, “Developers will earn 5% of every transaction fee that Interswitch charges on their referred merchants for 5 years.”
Also speaking at the unveiling event, Abdul-Hafiz Ibrahim, Group Head, Engineering, Paymate, Interswitch, noted, “Launching our API Platform was driven by the need to make API integration seamless for developers without the bureaucratic hurdles that have characterized the API-integrating system over the past few years.
“Not only are we making products and solutions development faster, but we are also creating an interface where developers can communicate, share ideas and offer solutions at an accelerated pace.”
To expand its goal of creating a sustainable African tech hub, Interswitch remains a firm supporter of initiatives that spur conversations around the evolution of the Nigerian, and in general, African tech ecosystem. This was expressed in its recent support of the Nigerian Fintech Forum where seasoned experts across sectors including Fintechs, telcos, and banks were in the audience.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp has raised an alarm over a dangerous new malware in fake YouTube and WhatsApp apps.
The company in its latest Quarterly Adversarial Threat Report 2022 said the new threat named Dracarys is being injected into fake versions of popular apps such as WhatsApp and YouTube.
According to the report, this malware strain is capable of stealing call logs, contact information, files, SMS texts, geolocation, and device details from an Android device as well as taking photos secretly, enabling the phone or tablet’s microphone.
The latest report revealed that the Dracarys malware is named after the famous Game of Thrones dragon attack order, which is run by the hacking group Bitter APT, which operates out of South Asia. This hacking group has been said to attack users from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, India, and Pakistan.
“We found Bitter using a new custom Android malware family we named Dracarys. Notably, it used accessibility services, a feature in the Android operating system to assist users with disabilities, to automatically click through and grant the app certain permissions without the user having to do it.”
“Bitter injected Dracarys into trojanized (non-official) versions of YouTube, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, and custom chat applications capable of accessing call logs, contacts, files, text messages, geolocation, device information, taking photos, enabling microphone, and installing apps.
“While the malware functionality is fairly standard, as of this writing, malware and its supporting infrastructure has not been detected by existing public anti-virus systems. It shows that Bitter has managed to reimplement common malicious functionality in a way that went undetected by the security community for some time,” it added.
The Bitter APT group, which has been active since 2013, has previously targeted the energy, engineering, and government sectors with Remote Access Trojans (RATs) that were spread via spear-phishing emails or by the exploitation of known flaws. In 2021, for instance, researchers found the group exploiting a zero-day privilege escalation flaw (CVE-2021-1732) in the Windows 10 operating system.
By Sean Riley
The start-up economy in Africa is booming, but all that noise makes it hard to get the correct message across to the right customers. In order to thrive, new businesses require the marketing skills relevant in our current digital age, and there has never been a better time to be a digital marketeer, capturing audiences and achieving business targets by curating campaigns and crafting narratives.
Lagos has been ranked the best city for start-ups by StartupBlink, maintaining its standing as the continent’s sole entry, within the top 100 global destinations, to stake a digital business. Moreover, in Nigeria the digital sector is contributing about 10% to the GDP, making Nigeria the best home for digital skills in the continent.
That said, the youth unemployment rate in Nigeria has accelerated to over 53% during the pandemic. Many of these so-called digital natives, born during the digital age, despite their confidence in engaging in the digital world, lack the skills or the funds to unlock the potential of this emerging tech market through traditional academic streams. There are, however, still other paths that can be explored.
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While social media can seem overwhelming, it can also be a valuable learning tool, allowing you to interact directly with your role models, and locate mentors. The Twitter Spaces tab is your door to topical discussions that are relevant to your interests and is the perfect way to further expand your digital understanding, wherever you are, at your convenience.
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Sean Riley is the CEO of Ad Dynamo by Aleph
