After several false starts, Glo Mobile Ghana appears to have taken its most remarkable step yet, towards a commercial launch. The cellular network obtained its operating licence since 2008 but had failed to launch its service to the public, citing logistical difficulties. Its last false start was 17th November 2011. A much-publicized commercial launch slated [...]

The 2012 edition of Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas USA did not disappoint. Being the biggest platform for tech companies to show-off their latest innovations, a lot of new tablets (mostly running the Android OS) were among the announced. I have followed the news reports and one tablet that stood-out of the crowd was [...]

TEDxDzorwulu comes-up in Accra Ghana this Saturday 10th December 2011. Find the full press release from the organizers, below: On Saturday, December 10, 2010, from 8:00AM – 5PM GMT, the inaugural TEDxDzorwulu conference will be held at the African Regent Hotel in Accra Ghana on the theme: Think, Create and Innovate. TEDxDzorwulu will focus on [...]

I got the following message from a reader of this blog: Good day Mr. Ajao. I am a post graduate student at the university of Northampton, United kingdom, studying MA International Marketing Strategy. I am really proud as I see a Nigerian like you writing good articles on current issues on the internet. I have [...]

Esoko is an agricultural market information platform. It takes advantage of the explosive growth of mobile communication services in Africa. Managed on the web and delivered via mobile, individuals, agri-business, government and projects use Esoko to collect and send out market data using simple text messaging.

Following the launch of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Ghana on 7th July 2011, the mobile networks all launched campaigns geared towards enticing mobile subscribers to port to their network. Newspaper ads, radio jingles and TV ads have taken the lead but since the internet is slowing going mainstream in Ghana, the leading mobile networks [...]

Esoko was founded in 2005 as TradeNet by Mark Davies, who also founded BusyInternet years ago. TradeNet was rebranded as Esoko in April 2009 and its investors are: Jim Forster, the International Finance Corporation, and the Soros Economic Development Fund.

It appears MTN failed to sufficiently communicate the new packages to its mobile broadband subscribers, early enough. Users have lost their airtime because they simply loaded airtime and continued browsing as usual, without actually subscribing to any data packages. Thus they were billed at the very high tariffs that MTN now charges outside the packages.

.gh is the country code Top-Level Domain name (cc-TLD) for the Republic of Ghana. Introduced in 1995, it is currently managed by a private company in Accra Ghana. This company sponsored the .gh domain with ICANN (the international body for managing domains) and currently serves as the registry and registrar, simultaneously. Although .gh is intended [...]

Gregory Eid is the Managing Director of TeleData ICT, a leading Internet Service Provider in Ghana, targeted at individuals, cyber cafes and SMEs. In this interview, he spoke frankly to Russell Southwood of Balancing Act about some aspects of the operations of TeleData ICT, challenges of offering internet connectivity in Ghana and the network upgrade [...]

I was invited to cover the Tech Showcase of Esoko’s 3rd Annual Partner Conference. The Tech Showcase was a segment of the larger partners’ gathering. Esoko Partners are their international clients who have paid to use Esoko software in their respective countries. I was able to gather information that I would be sharing in the [...]

In case you missed the memo, Africa is rising. Having been largely ignored in the development of the Internet, things have been changing rapidly in the past decade with telecommunication companies forming alliances with financial institutions to bring serious data connectivity into Africa, and with it, lots of potential for prosperity. You can thus understand [...]

GTBank announced the passing of their former Managing Director a few minutes ago, via Facebook and Twitter: We regret to announce the passing on of our CEO, Tayo Aderinokun, today, aged 56. As MD, Mr. Aderinokun led the Bank to the top of the banking industry and the Bank became the 1st sub-saharan bank to [...]

At Combit Africa 2009, I gave a presentation on The impact of submarine connectivity on West Africa’s web hosting industry. The premise of the presentation was simple. The presence of more submarine fibre connectivity in West Africa would give birth to commercial data centres in the sub-region. At this time, an overwhelming majority of West [...]

BarCamp Ghana 2010, an ad-hoc gathering where attendees meet for discussions, demos and networking, will take place on December 18 2010 at the Ashesi University campus in Accra. The theme is  “Create dreams, work smart and shape the future”. Following the successes of BarCamp Ghana ’08 and BarCamp Ghana ’09, regional BarCamp events were organized [...]