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Tag Archive: Nigeria

Cable Damage Takes West Africa Offline

Cable Damage Takes West Africa Offline

Just a couple of weeks ago, a new cable brought East Africa online. Now, problems with an undersea cable have caused communications disruption in several West African countries – specifically Benin, Togo, Niger and Nigeria.

The damage is to the SAT-3 cable which runs from Portugal and Spain to South Africa, via West Africa, the BBC reports, and in Nigeria it’s taken out around 70% of the bandwidth, forcing companies to use satellite links to keep in touch.

The cable is 15,000 km long, and touches on several West African countries on its route.

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OLPC Sued Over Multilingual Keyboard

OLPC Sued Over Multilingual Keyboard

Sometimes even the best intentions can’t avoid patent troubles: Nigerian-owned Lagos Analysis Corporation (a.k.a. LANCOR) has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the One Laptop Per Child project and its head Nicholas Negroponte over the multilingual keyboard design used in the low-cost OLPC XO notebook intended to benefit educational systems in developing nations. The suit accuses the OLPC project of willfully infringing on LANCOR’s design patent for multilingual keyboards, and reverse-engineering the company’s software drivers. The initial suit has been filed in Nigeria, and say it plans to bring a similar lawsuit in a U.S. federal court.

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Govt. Rapped Over Data Protection

The Information Commissioner has taken the British government to task over breaching its own data protection laws. According to a report, the UKVisas site, which is run jointly by the Foreign Office and the Home Office, but which was outsourced to an Indian company, VFS, didn’t make data from visa applicants secure.   A Channel 4 News report in May forced the parties to admit the breach, which affected some 50,000 visa applicants to the British High Commission in India.. However, it transpired that VFS had been told of the problem as early as December 2005, according to the Guardian.   “Sound security needs to be woven into the business and cannot be simply bolted on as an extra," said the Information Commissioner’s report. "The earlier contracts paid insufficient attention to the requirements of the Data Protection Act and to basic IT security."   As a result of the investigation, the Foreign Office is reviewing its operations and has ended its contract with VFS, which also operated the UKVisas sites in Nigeria and Russia.

Libya in Deal for 150,000 Classmate PCs

Libya in Deal for 150,000 Classmate PCs

Intel and Microsoft have inked a deal to supply Libya’s education ministry withh 150,000 of Intel’s Classmate PC laptop computers. The systems are designed for educational use in developing markets and compete with the One Laptop Per Child project; like the OLPC XO’s final pricetag, the Classmate PC costs about $200 to build.

According to Reuters, the deal was announced in the Libyan press in August, but Intel and Microsoft haven’t discussed the deal outside Libya. Intel spokesperson Agnes Kwan said neither Intel nor Microsoft are subsidizing the cost of the notebooks, but did not reveal how the country is paying for the notebooks.

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Nigerian Scammers Busted

You know those annoying Nigerian scam e-mails we’ve all had? Or perhaps the eBay scams where you’re paid by check from somewhere, only to discover too late that the check is a fake. Well, payback has happened.   A series of co-ordinated raids in the US, Canada, Britain and Nigeria last week led to a number of arrests, following a long sting operation. In the UK alone, over $17 million in checks were seized, while worldwide that figure was said to be over $2 billion.   As Internet crime grows by leaps and bounds, there has been a vast rise in complaints over the fake check scam – by 60% in the US alone. Many victims only lose small amounts, but the sheer volume translates into big business. And in some cases, the victims are hit hard – two in Canada are reputed to have lost $300,000.   There are several types of scam thought to have originated in Nigeria, from the “I’m the son/widow of a government official” type of e-mail to the advance free fraud now known internationally as the Nigerian 419 scam.   A source quoted by the Daily Mirror said,   "This was aimed at tackling the people at the top. There have been a number of arrests in Nigeria and the authorities there have been active in tackling this fraud. We believe we have landed a significant blow on the individuals behind this fraud."   Although the raids and arrests have made a dent in the criminal business, it’s probably no more than that. The Dutch group Ultrascan believes there are around 250,000 Internet conmen operating out of Nigeria.    

Net Use Soars As Nations Embrace Broadband

A new annual report from the Economist Intelligence Unit aims to rank how nations’ “e-readiness,” that is, how prepared they are to take advantage of the opportunities represented by the Internet and digital technology. This year, the report has changed its methodology to factor in not only the basic availability of Internet technologies, but how easy and affordable it is for citizens to get online. The result? Although countries which ranked at the top of previous years’ surveys are still at the top of the pack, the 2007 e-readiness report finds nations in Asia and Africa are coming on strong as broadband Internet access gets cheaper and more ubiquitous.  Read more...

Quanta Confirms One Mln OLPC Orders

Taiwan’s Quanta Computer says it has confirmed orders for one million notebook computers for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, and may be able to ship between five and ten million OLPC systems this year as new nations sign up for the project. In addition to confirmed countries Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, and Thailand, Rwanda and Uruguay have recently announced their participation in the project.

The OLPC initiative is intended to put laptop computers in the hands of children in developing nations around the world, in an effort to bridge the “digital divide” between rich and poor. In developing economies, lack of infrastructure and high costs prevent many children from the educational and developmental possibilities offered by software, modern communication technology, and the Internet.  Read more...

OLPC To See General Release?

OLPC To See General Release?

The One Laptop Per Child Project might have just seen its first XO units come off the assembly line for developers and testing in developing nations, but the project’s backers are already floating new plans to offer the inexpensive machines for sale to the general public—so long as consumer also buy one for use in the developing world.

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Quanta Builds First 1,000 OLPC Laptops

Quanta Builds First 1,000 OLPC Laptops

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) effort has reached a major milestone: Shanghai’s Quanta Computer has pushed the first 1,000 XO laptop computers off its assembly line to begin environmental testing and software refinement.

The idea behind the One Laptop Per Child initiative is to improve the educations of children around the world—and especially in developing nations—by putting low-cost, energy-efficient, open-source, network-capable computers in the hands of children and teachers so they can more readily access information and knowledge. The units till be sold to governments to be issued to children on a one-computer-per-child basis. Spearheaded by the MIT Media Lab’s Nicholas Negroponte, the OLPC project has not been without its challenges and setbacks—not to mention skeptical tongue-lashings from the likes of Microsoft’s Bill Gates—but the project continues to move forward.

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MIT’s OLPC Gets Name, Field Testing

MIT

MIT’s One Laptop Per Child portable Linux-based system aimed at the developing world will be apparently be named the Children’s Machine 1, or CM1. The OLPC project has also confirmed to DesktopLinux.com that 500 unit will enter field tests in September 2006, with full production scheduled to begin in November. The systems will be manufactured by Chinese computer maker Quanta; the four countries leading interest in the CM1 systems are Nigeria, Thailand, Brazil, and Argentina, although none have formally signed purchase agreements for the machines. Originally aiming for a $100 price point, it’s now looking like the CM1’s will land at about $140 apiece.

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