The International Energy Agency has come out with an in-depth analysis of Africa’s energy sector. According to the IEA report, there are 620 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who don’t have any electricity at all — and fixing that could require burning a lot more fossil fuels.
Share of Internet usage is two times higher in Asia and Africa.
Over the past two years online photo sharing has sextupled. Nigerians are on their phones 30 percent more than Americans. We now spend more time on mobile than on print and radio combined.
Mobile penetration in Africa is still growing at 4.2 percent annually.
People tend to have certain paradigms about the “developed world” and the “developing world.” Including, of course, media-fed images of Africa as a place of almost irredeemable poverty, deprivation, and pain. Many of our paradigms are, of course, illusions.
“Nigeria is undergoing rapid changes in its agriculture sector.”
Goodluck Jonathan, President of Nigeria, has announced that the country expects about 3.5 million jobs to be created in the agriculture and allied industries by the end of 2015 with the current policy and institutional reforms taking place in Nigeria.
Tens of thousands are returning home with money and skills, hoping to cash in on a farming boom that is remaking the continent.
Last year, Kojo Anku left a high-paying job on Wall Street to return to his native Ghana. He didn’t go there to replicate his financial career but to launch an aquaponics farm, raising organic lettuce, tomatoes, and herbs indoors in nutrient-rich vats. His business, in central Accra, is now booming. “I feel I’m making a bigger difference in the lives of others by applying my knowledge and capital to food production,” Anku says. “Sure, my family and I are adjusting, but it’s worth it to help Ghana leapfrog to the forefront of innovative farming.”
Google plans on building huge wireless networks to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia using high-altitude balloons and blimps. The intend to finance, build and operate the wireless networks that will connect a billion people to the web.
There are more cellphone users in Africa than in North America.
When you are a developing continent you can skip entire stages of technological progress, like going directly from no phones to cellphones without suffering through land lines in between. Africa, for example, now has more mobile subscribers than the United States or Europe, and that means big things for African economies.
There are horrific photos of subdued rhinos with their horns amputated by poachers that have become a viral phenomenon. Google is now giving $5 million to a conservation group for lightweight drones that will patrol the African bush, exposing ivory hunters along the way.
Young, urban African consumer generation on the rise.
There is tremendous potential in Africa and most investors and businesses know this by now. Africa is the world’s second fastest growing region, second to Asia. And it may come as a surprise to most that Africa’s single-largest business opportunity is the rising consumer market.
Designers in India have built a tiny building with bamboo walls, fiber roof and a mud floor which means it can be built anywhere using local materials for $315 (£197). (Pics)
Every language can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors in Africa.
From English to Mandarin – Every language in the world evolved from a prehistoric ‘mother tongue. ‘ The mother tongue was first spoken in Africa tens of thousands of years ago, a new study reveals.