This was revealed when the firm announced that its money transfer service, M-Pesa has so far netted 11.89 million customers, a 60 per cent growth as at last month compared to 7.4 million last year.

The amount of money the service has transferred since inception in 2007 reached Sh525.84 billion in the financial year ended July.

With this acquisition, Bharti Airtel will expand its African footprint to 16 countries and its overall presence to 19 countries. Bharti Airtel had recently acquired the mobile operations of Zain group in 15 countries across Africa.

Mr. Manoj Kohli, CEO (International) & Jt. MD, Bharti Airtel, said, “We are delighted at the addition of Seychelles to our Africa portfolio. Telecom Seychelles has world-class operations that include state-of-the-art 3G services. These operations will benefit further by leveraging the efficiencies of scale of our African operations.”

Low penetration in rural areas
Both the service providers and the Ministry of Information and Communication is alarmed by the low penetration rate into rural areas and and are intent on launching a countrywide campaign to educate people on the need to access the internet reports IT News Africa.

They both acknowledge the need to bring down costs:

Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Communication Dr Bitange Ndemo said that the Ministry was looking at conducting a countrywide sensitization campaign in an effort of increase the number of Internet users.

A tense PS says, “We have to actively increase the number of users to a point operators are able to reduce costs,” Dr Ndemo said.

Kenya down the list of African internet usage
Kenya has about 3.5 million internet users, equivalent to 8.6 percent of the Kenyan population. Among the top African countries with the highest internet users are Egypt with about 12.6 million of its population , followed by Nigeria with 11 million, Morocco 10.3 million, Sudan 3.8 million, and Algeria 3.5 million in that listing.

Service providers have predicted that it could take up to three years before consumers would see a drop in rates.

According to Allafrica.com the government is building the national fibre optic cable of 2,300 kilometres across the country.
The cable shall connect over 230 institutions in all 30 Districts and all the 9 Rwandan borders with the main cities.

The infrastructure will support various e-applications such as ehealth, e-education and other government applications.
The national backbone project started in September 2008 with a target to be ready in one year. However, the project delayed one year and started in October 2009.

The Head of Information Technology (IT) department of the Rwanda Development Board, which implements the project Mr. Patrick Nyirishema says changes in the project layout caused the delay.

He says the government’s initial plan was to build its own cable but later it merged that the private sector also wanted to benefit from the scheme. This required the government to adjust initial designs and the budget, which potentially affected initial timelines.

As a result, the government included multiple ducts (free pipes) in which the private service providers would plug their fibre optic cables without necessarily digging for them separately.

“The process of deciding on the final configuration caused that delay.
This changed the budget and we imported more than 6,000km of duct or 250 containers of ducts,” says Mr. Nyirishema.

He says this phase is complete and the new target for completion of the project is by December.
“Our commitment was to finish this project by December 2010, and according to our project schedule, we shall meet the target,” Nyirishema said in an exclusive interview in Kigali recently.

In a David v Goliath contest, ForgetMeNot Africa’s Message Optimiser came second to Blackberry Messenger for the Innovation in Messaging award, at the Global Messaging Awards held last night in London.

While we were disappointed not win we are delighted that our Global Messaging industry peers recognise Message Optimiser (MO) as a major innovation in the messaging space and one we know will change the lives of millions of people in Africa going forward.

We congratulate RIM on their achievement and hopefully we will be back again next year to do battle once again!

Filmed at West and Central Africa, Dakar, Senegal June 2010.

Developments and trends in West and Central Africa
New stats and trends for West and Central Africa (WCA) for telecoms markets were discussed and these inlcude …..
• WCA market to grow by 100% over next 5 years
• WCA telecoms market has generated $16 billion in 2009
• Overall penetration at 40% in Q1 2010
• Over 10 new networks launched between 2009/10

The Nigerian market is strongest and represents 46% of WCA market, although not all WAC markets are growing. The DRC for example has experienced negative growth rates in 2009 , a combination of being hit by economic crisis and the local market environment.

Rising trend: Wireless broadband new frontier for investors
Subscriptions to soar from 3 million in 2010 to over 30 million by 2013

Rising trend: Mobile money used as retention tool
Mobile money is taking hold in WAC. Originally started in East Africa for the unbanked population, mobile money is now entirely part of strategies for all big the investors in West and Central Africa (MTN, Orange, Zain, Vodafone). The service is being used as customer retention tool to reduce churn.

Rising Trend: Increased Regulation
WAC seing increased regulation which is thought to be positive. For example SIM card registration are enforced for security reasons and this will maybe force operators to be more transparent on reporting subscription rates.

60% of Population not connected
The most staggering statistic on Day 1 is that 60% of rural population are not connected by internet and broadband. This highlights the large digital divide in WCA and reaffirms what we at ForgetMeNot Africa are trying to achieve by enabling everyone to access email and chat on any mobile phone.

Chief Operating Officer Jeremy George speaking from West Africa Com in Dakar, Senegal said:

“We are delighted the eTXT service which enables emails and chat messages to be sent and received seamlessly as an SMS has been recognised by the mobile industry as a major innovation in messaging”

He added, “ eTXT has already been deployed in Africa and is changing the way people communicate.Our technology transforms low grade mobile phones into stepping stones across the global digital divide, which ultimately changes peoples lives in Africa”

The awards take place on the 22nd of June 2010 in London.

We are looking forward to meeting our friends and colleagues from the industry, while making new ones from West Africa and discussing how eTXT can drive SMS traffic for carriers.

Visit us at stand no.3 at West Africa Com.

Unconfirmed reports from Moneycontrol.com revealed that Anil Ambani from Reliance will be visiting Johannesburg to meet the top brass of MTN on Monday.

Economic Times also reports that the South African government on Wednesday said any merger deal between MTN and any other global telecom company would have to clear its regulatory processes. “We have business people keen on MTN and as long as they comply with regulatory approval it is fine,” South African Minister for Trade and Industry Rob Davis said when asked about the reports of Reliance Communications’ renewed interest in MTN.

Meanwhile, R-Comm is still in talks with Abu Dhabi’s Etisalat for selling a 26% stake.