African Tech Roundup Podcast

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Vodacom South Africa To Launch An SVOD Platform Called Vodacom On Demand Nov 15, 2016

Show notes

Trace TV is fixing to launch arguably the most hotly anticipated SVOD offering of the year, Trace Play. Their ambitious roll-out will involve making Trace Play available in English and French in 100 countries around the world. Trace’s Co-founder and CEO Olivier Laouchez is clearly serious about making sure that Trace TV remains the #1 urban network outside of the US. This past week, Vodacom South Africa announced the planned launch of an SVOD of their own called Vodacom On Demand. They plan to go live in 2017 with DSTV’s ShowMax onboard in a very cosy arrangement that’s left us wondering if their partnership could grow into something more substantial, like a deal to rival AT&T’s recent acquisition of Time Warner, for instance. Vodacom has said that they’re happy to partner with as many serious content players as might want to play with them, revealing that a future partnership with Netflix will happen in due course. We're fairly certain that a deal of AT&T-Time Warner proportions between a telco and big content player is inevitable as the continent’s VOD market matures. Some commentators have suggested that the AT&T-Time Warner deal was driven by the notion that distribution rather than sheer size, or even access to quality content is vital for success in executing big media plays in the digital age. There’s no doubt that on some level the deal represents a lifeboat for Time Warner, given how all of its cable channels are losing subscribers at an alarming rate. AT&T’s extensive wireless footprint and a significant share of America’s direct video businesses, DirecTV and U-verse could help turn that around. Traditional media players on the continent could very well see similar saviour potential in a mobile network like Vodacom, and be hoping that the mobile telco comes knocking to propose acquisition. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

Jason Njoku on iROKO exploiting traditional media plays on the way to a digital-led future Nov 12, 2016

Show notes

Jason Njoku is the inimitable Nigerian founder and CEO of the internet and entertainment group, iROKO. In this chat with Andile Masuku, Jason talks about how his group of companies is making lucrative traditional media plays while growing digital content platforms and producing local content for what's likely to be mobile-driven future.

Ntambwe Harlem Mufoncol of Baziks Pulse talks taking on music streaming in the DRC Nov 12, 2016

Show notes

Ntambwe Harlem Mufoncol, one of the co-founders of Baziks Pulse— a neat music streaming platform from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In this chat Andile Masuku, Ntambwe shares how well African music lovers has so far taken to their recent launch and explains what makes their platform better suited for the African market than their global competition.

Highlights From DISCOP Johannesburg and Digital Lab Africa (featuring Jason Njoku of iROKO) Nov 07, 2016

Show notes

Andile Masuku and Brian Lupiya spent three days last week at DISCOP Johannesburg— Africa’s biggest multi-screen, multi-platform marketplace, assessing trends within the continent’s digital content scene. They spent most of our time collecting insights at the fringe of Digital Lab Africa (DLA)— a DISCOP partner initiative that aims to be a springboard for African multimedia talent looking to launch worthy projects and business ideas within digital music, web creation, virtual reality and video game development. So this week, in place of the bringing you the week’s highlights in terms of digital, tech and innovation news from across Africa, Brian joins Andile on the show to help present cool snippets from four of the many great conversations they taped both at DLA and in DISCOP’s main exhibition area. The aim is to give you a sense of the vibe, as well as point to where the future of digital content production and platforms on the continent might be headed. Look out for audio featuring Harlem Mufoncol, one of the co-founders of Baziks Pulse— a music streaming platform from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwean hip-hop artist-turned-entrepreneur, Nonkululeko Kasongo Vundla a.k.a Black Bird, Ivorian video game developer and co-founder of POINTS by Work’d— Kaba Diakité Amadou, and the inimitable Jason Njoku of Nigeria, who is founder and CEO of the internet and entertainment group, iROKO. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution

The Kenya Revenue Authority Says Uber Will Not Be Subject To Value-Added Tax Oct 31, 2016

Show notes

In this week’s African Tech Round-up, we ask the question, “Should Uber’s wings be clipped before they change the world as we know it?” Lawmakers on the continent appear torn between adopting the pragmatic approach of embracing technological innovation and actively resisting the very real threat of change bringing with it the decimation of the traditional livelihoods of thousands of people who are simply not prepared or willing to adapt. In the past week, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has declared that for tax purposes, it will treat Uber as a technology company, rather than a transport company (meaning Uber needn't pay Value-added Tax), while in South Africa, the Competition Commission has dismissed complaints brought against Uber by the SA Meter Taxi Association who accused the ride-hailing service of anti-competitive behaviour. But in Nigeria on the other hand, Lagos State politicians are reportedly putting pressure on Uber to operate based on the old taxi franchise system in a bid to protect incumbents within the existing taxi business from disruption. Who’s got it right, do you think? Also in this week’s podcast, Nick Saunders of email security firm, Mimecast, joins Andile Masuku to discuss the recent hacking allegations at Kenya Commercial Bank that we covered in last week’s show, as well as to unpack the diabolical DDoS attack that ground Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, Netflix and others to a halt in the US last week. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

80: Kenya Commercial Bank Gets Hacked? Oct 25, 2016

Show notes

So, Episode 80 of the African Tech Round-up, aka the episode that nearly never happened, is finally out. In an interview Andile Masuku just taped for the upcoming season of the African Tech Conversations series, Co-founder and Chief Credit Officer of M-KOPA Solar, Chad Larson, shared words he lives by that epitomise why I’m glad the team didn’t give up on publishing the podcast this week— despite the ridiculousness that made it nearly impossible to do so. “Done is always better than perfect,” he said. So, here it is. There’s no doubt that this has so far been a bumper year for the world’s hacking community. Last week, one of Kenya’s biggest banks, the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), spent a fair amount of energy trying to convince its customers that their personal data remains uncompromised-- this, following claims by a certain programmer who goes by @IrakChris on Twitter claiming to have accessed KCB's client data through vulnerabilities found in the bank's mobile app. Meanwhile, Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, Reddit, Yelp, Netflix, and The New York Times suffered easily one of the world's biggest coordinated distributed denial of service (aka DDoS) attacks last Friday which led to the sites either slowing to a snail's pace or being knocked out altogether. For all the details on these stories and more, tuck into this week's show, and be sure to tell us what you make of the week's headlines on Twitter @africanroundup, or via email using hello@africantechroundup.com. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Podcast photo credit: jjackowski via VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Rwanda Launches World's First Drone Delivery Service Oct 17, 2016

Show notes

Rwanda has helped Africa beat the rest of the world to rolling out a commercial drone delivery service. The land of a thousand hills has partnered with the UPS Foundation, Gavi, and the Californian drone startup Zipline, to start using drones to deliver life-saving medical supplies to hard-to-reach places in the country. Zipline's autonomous drones will now fly blood and plasma to places where poor road conditions often result in delays to time-critical deliveries of medical supplies for hours or even days. With drones, delivery time is reduced to minutes, even in bad weather. Take that, Amazon! Also in this week's African Tech Round-up is high-profile tech investment news involving Naspers, MTN, as well as William Kirsh-led Triptech Media's 20% acquisition of the social transit application GoMetro-- a startup which seems to be generating a fair amount of investor interest at the moment. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Julian von Plato on how PockitTV & Stream.Digital are pushing short-form digital content Oct 14, 2016

Show notes

Digital video content creator, streaming evangelist and co-founder of Pockitttv, Julian von Plato joins Andile Masuku to chat about VOD trends and the adoption of streaming technology on the continent. In this conversation, Julian explains why he believes that mobile is the future of video content consumption in Africa, and why PockitTV, Sstreamm's new VOD platform (in partnership with MTN), is a great way for savvy video producers to distribute their content.

Tecno Plans To Start Manufacturing Mobile Devices In Nigeria Oct 10, 2016

Show notes

This week’s African Tech Round-up episode is jam-packed. Digital video content creator, streaming evangelist and co-founder of Pockitttv, Julian von Plato joins me to chat about VOD trends and the adoption of streaming technology on the continent, then TechCabal.com’s Editor-in-chief, Bankole Oluwafemi aka Lord Banks factors in on MTN’s ongoing run-ins with the Nigerian Communications Commission. The past week saw internet access being blocked in Ethiopia in an effort to quell violent anti-government protests and MTN Nigeria rethinking its planned acquisition of Visafone, so Tecno’s announcement of its plans to start manufacturing mobile devices in Nigeria provided some respite. The company is looking to consolidate the rather impressive 25.3% market-share it has so far managed to carve out for itself in one of Africa’s most competitive mobile device markets while demonstrating its commitment to Nigeria’s growing mobile ecosystem. Finally, the team at the African Tech Round-up would like to express our heartfelt condolences to all those who have lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods in the recent storms that have swept through Haiti and are continuing to devastate parts of the US. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by the tragedy. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

The Co-Founders of Airbuy on promoting financial inclusion Oct 05, 2016

Show notes

Andile Masuku chats with the four co-founders of a promising South African start-up called Airbuy— a business which plans to help people convert airtime into “airbucks” that they can use to purchase goods and services online. The chaps are still celebrating their recent win at an MIT Global Startup Labs competition hosted at Wits University, and they allow us a peek under the hood of their passionate entrepreneurial hustle.

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