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The Rocket League Championship Series is expanding to Asia and Africa
Psynonix is taking a step toward creating a true global esport in the 2021-22 season, which has a $6 million prize pool.
Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey launch a Bitcoin development fund
Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey has teamed up with rapper and Tidal chief Jay Z on a new endowment to fund bitcoin development starting in Africa and India.
Hitting the Books: Kenya's digital divide is hampering its mobile money revolution
While mobile money apps have been slow to gain acceptance in the US, they’ve taken other nations like Sweden, China and especially Kenya by storm, enabling people for whom conventional banking has remained out of reach new ways to send, receive and invest their hard-earned cash. In Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution, author Sibel Kusimba examines how apps like M-Pesa have radically adjusted the ways in which everyday people throughout Africa manage their money. In the excerpt below, Kusima looks at the financial roadblocks that prevents a significant portion of the country’s population from participating in this emerging digital economy.
Alphabet will use beams of light to deliver internet in Kenya
It’s been a while since we’ve heard about Alphabet’s Free Space Optical Communications (FSOC) project. If you’ve forgotten all about it, we don’t blame you: the acronym doesn’t stick in the mind quite like Google Fiber or Project Loon. To solve the problem, Alphabet’s ‘X’ division has renamed the initiative Project Taara.
Netflix signs John Boyega's production studio to expand African content
Netflix is continuing its push to get more African content on its platform by partnering with Star Wars actor John Boyega and his company UpperRoom Productions. The indie production house will be responsible for developing non-English language films focused on West and East Africa, based on "stories, cast, characters, crew, literary properties, mythology, screenplays and/or other elements in or around African countries."
Facebook pulls Russian accounts over political meddling in Africa
Facebook has once again caught Russians trying to meddle in the politics of other countries, this time in Africa. The social media giant has pulled a total of 66 Facebook accounts, 83 Pages, 11 Groups and 12 Instagram accounts for "coordinated inauthentic behavior" that used a mix of real, fake and hijacked accounts to shape political news and discussions in eight countries, including Libya, Mozambique and Sudan. They frequently posted stories and comments boosting Russian policies in Africa (while blasting US policies), shared stories from Russian state-controlled outlets like Sputnik and RT, and took a keen interest in elections in Madagascar and Mozambique.
Huawei technicians may have helped African governments spy on opponents
An investigation by The Washington Post claims Huawei technicians helped African governments spy on domestic political opponents. According to the report, Huawei employees helped authorities in Uganda intercept encrypted messages and allowed police in Zambia to locate opposition bloggers. Such claims could validate the Trump administration's concerns about the use of Huawei technology in the US, but Huawei told The Washington Post it has "never been engaged in 'hacking' activities."
DeepMind uses AI to track Serengeti wildlife with photos
DeepMind has joined the ranks of those using AI to save fragile wildlife populations, and it's doing that on a grand scale. The company is partnering with conservationists and ecologists on a project that uses machine learning to speedily detect and count animals in "millions" of photos taken over the past nine years in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. Where it normally takes up to a year for volunteers to return labeled photos, DeepMind has developed a model that can label most animals at least as well as humans while shortening the process by up to nine months That's no small challenge when animals seldom cooperate with motion-sensitive cameras -- the AI can recognize out-of-focus cheetahs or fast-moving ostriches.
Google's next undersea internet cable will link Africa and Europe
Google has announced its third private undersea internet cable will run between Europe and Africa. One end will make landfall in Portgual. While you might expect the cable would connect to Morocco, it'll run all the way down the African coast to South Africa, with pit stops in other nations.
Facebook creates an AI-based map of Africa to help with crisis relief
Facebook has created AI-based population maps before, but it's now generating them on a truly massive scale. The social site is releasing new, ultra-detailed population density maps that cover the "majority" of Africa, helping relief agencies know where to go when providing aid. The technique is similar to what Facebook has used before, but tweaks to the formula kept the accuracy high even across Africa's 16 million square miles.
Microsoft beats Amazon to open the first cloud data center in Africa
Microsoft has become the first major cloud provider to open a data center in South Africa. Its two new Azure facilities in Cape Town and Johannesburg have been in the works since 2017, and while they were originally slated to go live in 2018, their arrival still pips other big players to the post -- Amazon plans to open a data center there in 2020, while Huawei announced back in November its intention to deliver on the continent later this year.
Intel-powered camera uses AI to protect endangered African wildlife
Technology is already in use to help stop poachers. However, it's frequently limited to monitoring poachers when they're already in shooting range, or after the fact. The non-profit group Resolve vows to do better -- it recently developed a newer version of its TrailGuard camera that uses AI to spot poachers in Africa before they can threaten an endangered species. It uses an Intel-made computer vision processor (the Movidius Myriad 2) that can detect animals, humans and vehicles in real-time, giving park rangers a chance to intercept poachers before it's too late.
Netflix will order original shows from Africa in 2019
Netflix has filmed originals in Africa, but it hasn't really commissioned originals from Africa. That's about to change, the company's Erik Barmack revealed at a conference this week. He promised that Netflix would "definitely" order some shows from Africa in 2019. He didn't hint at what might be coming in the pipeline, but the service was already "looking at opportunities" in the expansive continent.
Artificial insemination used to breed lions for the first time
Artificial insemination isn't new, but the technique is still breaking new ground -- and it might just save one of the world's better known species. South Africa's University of Pretoria has successfully used artificial conception with lions for the first time, producing two cubs (Isabel and Victor, above) who've been healthy since their birth on August 25th. This wasn't a simple case of repeating familiar methods, either. The researchers relied on a new approach that could represent a breakthrough for species conservation.
Autonomous drones will help stop illegal fishing in Africa
Drones aren't just cracking down on land-based poaching in Africa -- ATLAN Space is launching a pilot that will use autonomous drones to report illegal fishing in the Seychelles islands. The fliers will use computer vision to identify both the nature of boats in protected waters as well as their authorization. If they detect illegal fishing boats, the drones will note vessel locations, numbering and visible crews, passing the information along to officials.
Google will roll out 200 WiFi hotspots in Nigeria by 2020
Google's work to boost connectivity in Africa will include efforts to provide WiFi to Nigeria. By the end of 2019, the search juggernaut will roll out some 200 hotspots to places like transportation hubs, shopping malls and universities in five cities across the country. It's part of a broader push to bring Nigeria online, which includes a few other updates.
Alphabet's Loon internet balloons are making their way to Kenya
Alphabet has announced Loon's first commercial deal in Africa merely a few days after the former X lab experiment finally became a full-fledged company. According to Reuters, the new subsidiary will deploy internet-relaying balloons in Kenya starting next year in partnership with local provider Telkom Kenya. The partnership will bring high-speed internet access to rural communities in the country, particularly those in remote locations ISPs can't service.
'Semblance' is proof of Nintendo's new indie hustle
I found Semblance on the second floor of the Fuego Lounge, squeezed into a booth beside a dance floor and a small stage. It was early afternoon, and waitstaff were restocking the long, rectangular bar in the center of the room as game developers, press and PR handlers flitted from station to station. A cloth tent on the balcony offered psychedelic VR meditation; a geodesic dome on the roof showcased swirling galaxies. And all along the walls inside, indie games waited to be played. Semblance stood out among the row of screens for its energetic, purple-tinged visuals. It's a platformer starring an adorable bouncing blob named Squish, and it's heading to PC, Mac and Nintendo Switch this year. Its conceit is innovative and also glaringly obvious: It's a platformer where players actually create platforms as they go. Squish is able to distort the world, building tall ledges or deep indentations in the ground in order to solve a series of tricky spatial puzzles. Everything about the game is at once super cute and filled with mystery, from the squashy, haunting sound effects to the cartoonish yet deep background animations.
Netflix deal provides a much-needed boost in the Middle East
Despite what it seems, Netflix isn't a dominant force everywhere on the planet. In fact, it's struggling in the Middle East and northern Africa -- Netflix and Amazon combined represent 21 percent of the local subscription video space. The company is determined to get a leg up, however. It just forged its first partnership deal in the region, signing a pact with pay TV provider OSN to make its content available across the area. OSN customers will have access to Netflix through a set-top box launching near the end of the second quarter (around June), and will have the option of paying for Netflix through their existing OSN bills.
Quika promises free satellite internet for developing countries
Facebook's plans for free satellite internet access may have run into some... setbacks, but another company is promising to make that ubiquitous data a practical reality. Quika, a company led by the chief of satellite provider Talia, is launching a free satellite broadband service in the second quarter of 2018. It's promising speedy, low-latency Ka-band data in developing countries where income inequality and a lack of infrastructure (especially in rural areas) make conventional internet access impractical for most. Service will begin with Afghanistan, Iraq and most of Africa, but there are promises of more countries afterward.
