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Advocacy group sues Nigerian government over failure to publish Twitter agreement
A legal advocacy group has sued Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to force his government to publish the agreement that allowed Twitter to return to the West African country last month following a seven-month ban.
Twitter is no longer blocked in Nigeria
Nigerian has lifted the ban on Twitter, over seven months after it ordered telecom providers in the country to block the social network.
Nigeria lifts Twitter ban but demands it’s used for ‘business and positive engagements’
Nigeria is set to lift a ban on Twitter under the condition that it's used in the country for "business and positive engagements."
Twitter suspended in Nigeria amid face-off over president's tweet
Nigeria says it has suspended Twitter use in the country after the social network removed a threatening tweet from President Buhari.
Two Nigerians face US charges over online fraud worth 'hundreds of millions'
Two Nigerians have been sent to the US to face charges over massive online fraud schemes.
Fraud ring uses stolen data to scam unemployment insurance programs
Fraudsters have been using stolen identity data to milk unemployment insurance systems with poor security.
Google Gallery Go is a lightweight, offline Android photo manager
Google Photos is a great way to organize and store your photos, but it's a bit on the beefy side, taking up space and needing constant access to the cloud. So it's not ideal for people with mid-tier phones, or those who don't have a reliable data or internet connection. Enter Gallery Go, a lightweight photo gallery that boasts a lot of the features of Google Photos, and is designed to work offline.
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 will expand its political ad rules to Nigeria, Ukraine and EU
Facebook will be introducing some of its political advertising policies in additional regions in the coming months, Reuters reports. In Nigeria, where a presidential election is set to take place in February, Facebook will now require those purchasing electoral ads to be located within the country. That same rule will roll out to Ukraine next month ahead of its March election.
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.
US builds a $100 million African drone base to fight Boko Haram
The Department of Defense announced on Friday that it is investing $100 million in a drone base located in Agadez, in central Niger. The base will serve as a central surveillance hub in the fight against both Boko Haram and roaming militant groups linked to al Qaeda.
Nigerian telecoms to face jail time over shoddy cell service
Nigeria's Consumer Protection Council (CPC), with the backing of the country's government, is threatening to throw telecom executives in jail unless they improve their call quality. The African nation has seen mobile phone adoption rates soar over the past four years thanks to a price war that has dramatically lowered prices. That may seem like a win for consumers but, in fact, the increased user base (combined with the telecoms' general unwillingness to invest in their infrastructure and capacity) has rendered many cell services nearly unusable. The CPC argues that network congestion and dropped calls are so common that it's starting to cost consumers money. What's more, regulators recently performed Quality Assurance tests (QAT) for operators throughout the region and failed to find a single one that actually achieved the connection promised in their consumer service agreements.
Google, Facebook seek to drive down cost of internet access, join Alliance for Affordable Internet
Tech titans Google and Facebook are just two of the boldface Silicon Valley names joining the fight for affordable internet access in the developing world. And to that end, the two companies -- in addition to a host of other notable tech outfits (i.e., Yahoo, Intel and Microsoft, amongst others), special interest groups and governments -- have formed the Alliance for Affordable Internet, a public / private coalition designed to drive down anticompetitive costs through policy change. The group, spearheaded by the World Wide Web Foundation, aims to begin advocating for cheaper access in a handful of locations within the developing world by year end, with an eventual target of reducing costs to "less than 5-percent of average monthly income" in up to 12 countries through 2015. Beyond advocacy, the group also intends to survey the global state of internet access with the release of an "Affordability Report," the first of which is due this December. You can read more about A4AI's policies and best practices right here.
Google launches Gmail SMS for text-based email in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya
Smartphones and email-equipped feature phones have proliferated in even the most resource-dry areas of Asia, Europe and North America, but for many subscribers in Africa, SMS is the only option for text-based communication on the go. And, to give residents a more consistent method for reading and responding to email from their mobiles, Google just launched Gmail SMS in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. To sign up, simply head over to the "Phone and SMS" settings page in Gmail, add your mobile number and complete a verification process. Once enrolled, the service will automatically forward all email to devices as text messages. The service could even be useful for those that do have access to Android, iOS or Windows Phone devices -- data outages can cripple smartphones, forcing users to turn to phone calls and SMS to connect with family, friends and colleagues. Geva Rechav, a Google product manager for emerging markets, confirmed in a blog post that Gmail SMS messages will be free to receive, but standard fees will apply for outgoing emails. You'll find full signup details at the source link below.
Visa aims at developing countries with new international prepaid mobile payment service
Shortly after announcing its new digital wallet service V.me for developed markets, Visa also made a presence at Mobile Asia Congress in Hong Kong to promote its new prepaid mobile money platform aimed at the under-banked and the unbanked consumers. By utilizing its recently-acquired Fundamo (which currently has more than 10 million mobile payment subscribers), Visa aims to leverage on the vast number of mobile phone users in developing countries -- many of whom are already using local but carrier-bound mobile payment systems -- in order to offer a globally interoperable mobile payment network. This overlaying platform is said to be more secure, much cheaper and more convenient than the likes of Western Union, especially when you can simply make mobile-to-mobile payments when sending money across countries. Nigeria and Uganda will be the first nations to get a taste of this early next year courtesy of telecommunications provider MTN Group, and eventually more developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America will join the list. Full press release after the break. %Gallery-139688%
Brilliant PS3 Slim ad loses Nigerian scam reference, internet rumors now known to have started WWI
Turns out not everyone was amused by Sony's tongue-in-cheek PlayStation 3 Slim ad about internet rumors -- just ask the Nigerian government. The line in question, "you can't believe everything you read on the internet, otherwise I'd be a Nigerian millionaire by now," apparently caused a bit of a stir, and the local authorities demanded the company pull the commercial. It's now been replaced in the company's Viddler account with a slightly altered version that claims online FUD is "how World War One got started." Someone should tell Sony Director of Rumor Confirmation Kevin Butler that there's a certain assassinated Austrian Archduke who would beg to differ. Revised video after the break, and just for kicks, we found the old video on YouTube for comparison. [Via Joystiq]
Sony edits PS3 ad due to backlash from Nigerian government
We thought that everyone enjoyed the first few television spots for Sony's new "It Only Does Everything" ad campaign -- but apparently, the Nigerian Federal Government was none too pleased with the commercial's jab at internet fraud. For those who missed the commercial, the offending line was, "You can't believe everything you read on the internet. Otherwise, I'd be a Nigerian millionaire by now." In response, government officials in Nigeria demanded an apology from Sony, as well as the immediate removal of the commercial.Sony was quick to issue just such an apology, and has since replaced the original ad with a new version that swaps out the incredulous statement with a less controversial one: "That's how World War I got started." We can't wait to see the next edit once the three surviving WWI veterans start raising a stink.[Via MaxConsole]
5-year-olds repair OLPC laptops at Nigerian "hospital"
During the recent Greener Gadgets Conference in New York, former OLPC CTO (and XO challenger) Mary Lou Jepsen discussed the real-world difficulties with using the kid-friendly laptops, including the creation of an XO "hospital" used to repair broken computers. Apparently, in the crowded conditions of schools in places like Nigeria, the little green laptops have a tendency to be jostled around and even knocked on the floor from time to time. As there's typically no repair shops nearby, the kids have learned to fix the systems themselves, setting up a "laptop hospital" where they can repair what's broken using simple tools and cheap replacement parts. Mary Lou says the company designed the systems to be easily fixable, including extra screws embedded in the computers themselves, and allowing for quick changes of the LCD backlight and other components. The in-house repairs cut down on shipping, promote reuse, and increase kids' understanding of ownership and responsibility, thus furthering the OLPC mission, and making everyone generally want to hug.[Image courtesy NotebookReview / Kevin O'Brien]
Nigerian firm sues Negroponte, OLPC for patent infringement
Just months after a slew of OLPC XOs made their way into Nigeria, a Nigerian-owned company is filing suit against Nicholas Negroponte and the OLPC Association for patent infringement. Lagos Analysis and subsidiary LANCOR filed the lawsuit on November 22nd in Nigeria, claiming that the aforementioned parties willfully and illegally reverse engineered its keyboard driver source codes. Turns out, LANCOR makes its ends by selling region specific-based keyboards that allow for direct access inputting of "accents, symbols and diacritical marks during regular typing," and sure enough, the XO's board looks mighty similar to those offered up by the plaintiff. Additionally, the outfit is in the process of "filing a similar lawsuit against OLPC in a United States Federal Court," so we'd recommend snagging an XO or two before Nik Neg and company are forced to inflate prices to pay off those highfalutin lawyers.[Image courtesy of Konyin and Digital Crusader]
Nigeria opts for Linux on Classmate PCs after all
We're not sure if Mandriva CEO François Bancilhon's recent rant on the matter had anything to do with it or not, but it seems that Nigeria will be using the company's Linux distribution on the 17,000 Classmate PCs it purchased after all, despite earlier reports that it had switched to Windows. According to IDG News, an unnamed government official said that "we are sticking with that platform," although the official added that they reserve right to switch to another platform in the future. It appears that the situation might not be entirely settled just yet, however, as Microsoft is reportedly claiming that Nigeria is "still demanding Windows," and that it's still negotiating a deal that would give TSC (the company handling the laptops) $400,000 for "marketing activities around the Classmate PCs" once they've switched to Windows.
