Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Connect with us

E-Business

Africa in Motion: Accelerating Africa’s Digital Future

Published

on

Kindly share this post

By Fadi Pharaon

As a continent with very high potential for growing economies, how can African countries accelerate their digital adoption and leapfrog into a new era of socio-economic prosperity?

This could be achieved by leveraging new technologies that make it easier to conduct business, raise productivity and efficiency while encouraging an inclusive society. Embracing new ways of enabling positive change will boost livelihoods, promote financial inclusion and improve access to health, education, government services and more.

With the ambition of supporting the acceleration of Africa’s digitization journey, we are working jointly with our customers – the service providers – and other stakeholders across the continent to enable #AfricaInMotion.

Digitization Boosting Economies

We believe that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is the catalyst for digital transformation, with mobile networks being the crucial ingredient in increasing Africa’s economic competitiveness in the global arena. While we have witnessed impressive market developments in recent years, Africa’s ICT sector still has growth potential compared to leading economies.

As digital infrastructure and transaction become increasingly impactful to the development of the African societies and economies, affordable broadband access will need to be extended to over a billion individuals to bridge the “digital divide” and enable them to reap the benefits of the digital economy.

The Ericsson Mobility Report shows us that, by 2025, 77% of subscriptions in the Middle East and North Africa are expected to be for mobile broadband, while in Sub-Saharan Africa mobile broadband subscriptions will increase to reach around 72% of mobile subscriptions.

Mobile broadband connectivity not only offers great potential to transform cities and industries, but it enables connectivity as a basic human right; fostering inclusion and making a positive, sustainable economic impact.

With our commitment to innovation and long history of engaging in Africa’s telecom industry, we at Ericsson are driven to deliver the next-generation technology solutions to Africa. These can enable sweeping changes to industrial production, allow seamless access to societal services and provide people with ways of living harmoniously with their environment.

Sustainability Through Connectivity

Bridging the “digital divide” is a demanding journey both for the public sector and the telecoms industry. This carries significant potential to contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa. In order to achieve that, we have a continuous on-going journey serving several parameters.

And the story just begins here. We strongly believe in the importance of education for the economic development of Africa by building the right foundation to propel a steady eco-system.

Our efforts to support education in Africa is a continuous determination and for that we are proud to launch our three-year global partnership with UNICEF that will help map school connectivity in 35 countries by the end of 2023. Our partnership will support the UN’s Giga initiative, a global program led by UNICEF and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that aims to connect every school to the Internet.

Another key example in supporting education is our “Connect to Learn” program, an initiative that implements Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in schools often in resource poor settings to enhance the quality and access to teaching and learning resources in a safe, cost effective, and user-friendly way.

The program uses the power of mobility, broadband and cloud solutions. Since 2008, we have helped to connect over 500,000 people, students and teachers at remote villages across 10 sub-Saharan countries with technology tools, digital learning resources and new interactive forms of teaching pedagogies.

Furthermore, another testimony that reiterates our efforts in supporting education, is our recently announced “Ericsson Educate” initiative with UNESCO.  In response to how the global COVID-19 Pandemic, UNESCO and Ericsson have  launched a new portal for teaching Artificial Intelligence (AI) to children.

Teaching AI is a learning program, which includes a free, multi-lingual artificial intelligence (AI) skills portal that can be accessed globally by parents and teachers, enabling them to support children and students in home learning environments to learn about AI.

Additionally, we have also launched recently our Digital Lab program in South Africa. The program represents Ericsson’s commitment to supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals – especially Goal #4, with the aim of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.

The Ericsson Digital Lab program is an innovative education program targeted towards older children to support them in their first encounters with the world of programming and new technologies.

The program started in Gothenburg, Sweden, as a collaboration with Universeum, a public science centre based in Gothenburg. During 2019-20 the program was expanded to South Africa. We partnered with “Wot-If? Trust” to bring this innovative digital skills program to the youth in Diepsloot, Johannesburg, South Africa and our ambition is to expand this initiative to more young students across Africa.

On the other hand, we also focus on another fundamental goal and that is financial inclusion through the use of digital technology which is an essential element in furthering the economic development of Africa. Mobile money services have become an essential, life-changing tool across the continent, providing access to safe and secure financial services but also to energy, health, education and employment opportunities.

One key example to showcase our efforts in that area is our Ericsson Wallet Platform that allows users to store, transfer and withdraw money; pay merchants and utility providers; and use financial services such as savings and loans.

With connectivity acting as a critical enabler of social and economic change, sustainable technologies that support the SDGs are the need of the hour.

According to Ericsson research, ICT solutions could help to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 15% by 2030, amounting to around ten gigatons of CO2e—more than the current carbon footprint of the EU and US combined.

Examples of areas where the savings can be enabled by ICT solutions are transportation, energy, industries and agriculture. This is reflected in our initiatives such as Ericsson Weather Data and Mixed Reality for Urban Design.

Clearly, the SDGs provide a unique opportunity for interesting discussions that will lead to more multi-sectoral partnerships and opportunities that will help spur progress towards meeting the goals.

Partnerships and Collaborations for Societal Impact

What is now needed is a framework that facilitates harnessing the power of ICTs to foster inclusive socioeconomic development across Africa. However, this bridging of the digital divide – which promises to level the global playing field so Africa can achieve its full potential – requires a well-planned policy and regulatory environment.

A conducive, enabling policy environment that generates regulatory certainty is key to encouraging market development through partnerships, entrepreneurship, job creation and knowledge sharing. Factors like:

  • Timely availability of ample, cost-effective and harmonized spectral resources
  • Support of long-term stable network regulations that uphold the principle of technology neutrality, stimulate investments and foster infrastructure competition
  • Provision of free flow of data, while ensuring data protection, privacy and security regulation

We at Ericsson Middle East and Africa are constantly looking for opportunities to collaborate and engage with partners across the board to facilitate such policy development to fast tracking digitization across the African continent and our recent collaboration with the African Telecommunications Union is one clear example.

Fostering and Empowering Local Talents

At Ericsson, we strongly believe in the great competencies of the local talents in each market where we operate and for that we continue to offer our employees opportunities  that guide and supports them from a knowledge, competence, and skill development perspective — to foster an innovative, high-impact learning culture focused on continuous development.

Additionally, coaching and mentoring are critical elements of career development at Ericsson. We have best-in-class mentors who guide our people in Africa through every stage of their career, empowering them to seek more learning and growth opportunities.

One of the initiatives we launched in-light of our efforts to supporting young talents is our “Ericsson Graduates Program “, a program that will offer fresh graduates a chance to join experienced Ericsson staff for on-the-job, online and classroom learning followed by recruitment to join the Ericsson world.

The program also engages with young talents from Africa -the Change makers-to explore and identify innovative ideas, which reflect and capture the needs of the continent with an ambition to accelerate the African markets’ digitalization journey.

The Change makers attend multidisciplinary sessions with Ericsson specialists spanning across technology, business and entrepreneur to empower and enable them to ideate and work on their ideas in a well-rounded approach. Our ambition is to continue with this program and train and hire more fresh graduates in the coming period.

When it comes to empowering young talents and innovation, we can proudly mention the Ericsson Innovation Awards (EIA), a global competition that gives university students the opportunity to turn their ideas into reality by collaborating with EIA mentors.

In 2018, a team from Senegal has been selected as the overall winner of the Ericsson Innovation Awards winning an amount of 25,000 Euros for their idea that addresses lack of school labs in Africa. This year we are excited to launch the same competition very soon and we look forward to receiving ideas from young students from Africa and across the world.

Accelerating the Future

As we look ahead, it’s clear that Africa shows significant promise for economic, technological and infrastructure growth over the coming years. Yet, there are still many challenges we must overcome if we are to deliver real sustainable change for all.

While there are parts of the continent trialing 5G services, majority of countries remain focusing on 3G and 4G as smartphone affordability improves year on year. The development of advanced wireless digital infrastructure is an integral part of Africa’s growing economy.

Mobile broadband access has proved to be an essential driver of an inclusive information society that integrates digitization in all critical aspects of life, such as education, transport, health, energy and even homeland security. Never has this been more evident than during the current COVID 19 pandemic.

Ericsson focuses on assuring best performing networks in Africa, while also offering the best digital services and solutions to our customers. Our aim is to create a unique customer experience evolving from networks adopting automation, artificial intelligence and analytics.

One of our focus areas also is reducing time-to-market and flexibility in launching services for our customers towards their subscribers. From an operations perspective, we emphasis driving service delivery efficiency through adoption of advanced tools. We will continue our purposeful growth of mobile broadband, fixed wireless access and fintech services so that our service provider partners reach out to further communities across the continent.

Our promise to Africa

Tackling the digital divide, continuing to build a robust ICT infrastructure, promoting sustainability, innovation, education and entrepreneurship will be critical for maximizing the role of technology in boosting resilience and inclusive growth in Africa.

By achieving that, Africa will experience a paradigm shift on all levels with new game-changers as e-health, e-government and e-education; the African society will accelerate into a much economically advanced nation. However, collaboration between the different stakeholders in the ecosystem becomes even more important than ever to achieve this vision.

Our promise and commitment towards Africa are to always support a world where digitalization is transforming the eco-system; enabling sustainable growth, economic development and opening up opportunities for all.

To accelerate our promise to Africa and achieve a true impact, we are looking forward to supporting our customers in their quest, bringing our latest innovation, leveraging our global skill and scale to the benefit of Africa’s digital development.

Fadi Pharaon is President of Ericsson Middle East and Africa


Kindly share this post

Dear Reader, Your support matters. But we believe that technology makes life more exciting and helps improve the lives of people around Nigeria and indeed the world. That is why, we have devoted our energy to independent reportage of technology and finance and how they affect lives. Our incisive and analytical view of how technology news affects the daily life help individuals and organizations make up their minds. Quality journalism costs money. Today, we're asking that you support us to do more. Kindly support our effort to deliver technology and finance journalism to everyone in the world. Donate as little as N1,000. Bank transfers can be made to: UBA Plc 1017156876 Communication Week Media Ltd

E-Business

Survey Reveals Marketing Leaders See Strong Potential in gTLDS Despite Knowledge Gap

Published

on

Kindly share this post

A new global survey from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) reveals that 52% of marketing leaders believe generic top-level domains (gTLDs – the three characters or more that come after the dot in a URL) have strong potential for enhancing brand presence online; however, a knowledge gap is preventing many brands from taking advantage of the opportunities that a gTLD can bring.

The research surveyed over 2,000 marketing leaders across eight countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, U.K., and U.S.) with the purpose of creating a picture of the evolving digital marketing landscape and understanding the levels of awareness around gTLDs.

It comes as ICANN prepares to open the next application window for new gTLDs in April 2026 the New gTLD Program: Next Round – the first opportunity in more than a decade for organizations to apply to operate their own gTLD.

Top-level domains are the letters found at the end of an Internet address (with gTLDs including .charity, .menu, .paris and .ceo). Brands can apply to run their own gTLD as a way to indicate the purpose of their organization or to clearly mark a website as being related to their brand.

The research shows that increasing brand awareness and visibility is the top priority for marketing leaders (54%) and that over half believe that gTLDs have strong potential for enhancing brand presence online.

However, the research also shows that almost a third (32%) of marketing leaders surveyed are unfamiliar with gTLDs, which suggests that operating a new gTLD may be a strategic opportunity that many organizations are currently overlooking.

Key findings from the research include:

  • After defining a gTLD, 92% of marketing leaders responded that they could see the potential benefits to gTLDs, with enhanced brand differentiation (46%), improved customer trust (45%), better control over online presence (44%), and improved SEO (44%) topping the list.
  • 19% of marketing leaders work for organizations that have previously applied for a gTLD.
  • Cost concerns (31%), knowledge gaps (27%), and insufficient resources (24%) were identified as the main barriers to application.
  • The research revealed notable regional variations, with Nigerian (74%) and Indian (61%) marketing leaders showing the strongest belief in gTLDs’ potential for branding and online presence. In contrast, marketers in China expressed more mixed views, with 50% seeing strong potential but 49% considering gTLDs an unnecessary investment with unclear Return On Investment.

The findings come at a time when marketing leaders are facing significant challenges in standing out from competitors (53%), attracting and engaging the right audience (52%), and keeping pace with digital trends (47%).

A new gTLD can be an innovative tool for commerce and communication. They allow businesses in specific countries, sectors, or niche markets to create an exclusive, descriptive, and memorable label on the Internet.

An entity operating a gTLD can provide its users and customers with an extra measure of confidence in its security and legitimacy online. This can be valuable in today’s environment, where users often don’t know whether they can trust the source on the Internet.

Theresa Swinehart, SVP, Global Domains & Strategy said: “The New gTLD Program: Next Round presents an opportunity for businesses, communities, governments, and others to apply to operate their own secure space online, tailored to fit their organization, community, culture, language, and customer interests.

Now is also the moment for brands to consider applying for a gTLD, and this research tells us there is still a lack of awareness. ICANN can help provide information and raise awareness of the Next Round and the opportunity it presents for global communities, organizations, and businesses, including brands.”

To help address the knowledge gap, ICANN is developing resources to help organizations understand the application process and potential opportunities for gTLDs ahead of the 2026 application window. ICANN also offers the Applicant Support Program (ASP), which provides financial and non-financial assistance to eligible applicants.

 


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

E-Business

Firm Reports a 48% Increase in Malicious Packages Threatening Software Supply Chains

Published

on

Kindly share this post

Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) experts at the 10th annual Cyber Security Weekend – META 2025 held recently, talked about supply chain attacks and reported that by the end of 2024 a total of 14,000 malicious packages were found in open-source projects, a 48% increase compared to the end of 2023. 42 million versions of open-source packages have been examined by Kaspersky throughout 2024 in search for vulnerabilities.

Open-source is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance. Popular open-source packages include GoMod, Maven, NuGet, npm, PyPI, and others.

These are tools that power countless applications and help developers easily find, install, and manage pre-built code libraries, making it simpler to build software by reusing code others have written. Attackers take advantage of the popularity of these and other packages.

In March 2025, the Lazarus Group was reported to have deployed several malicious npm packages, which were downloaded multiple times before removal. These packages contained malware to steal credentials, cryptocurrency wallet data, and deploy backdoors, targeting developers’ systems across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The attack leveraged GitHub repositories for added legitimacy, highlighting the group’s sophisticated supply chain tactics. Kaspersky’s GReAT also found other npm packages related to this attack. Malicious npm packages could have been integrated into web development, cryptocurrency platforms, and enterprise software, risking widespread data theft and financial losses.

In 2024, a sophisticated backdoor was discovered in XZ Utils versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1, a widely used compression library in Linux distributions. Inserted by a trusted contributor, the malicious code targeted SSH servers, enabling remote command execution and threatening countless systems globally.

Detected before widespread exploitation due to performance anomalies, the incident highlighted the dangers of supply chain attacks. XZ Utils is integral to operating systems, cloud servers, and IoT devices, making its compromise a threat to critical infrastructure and enterprise networks.

In 2024, Kaspersky’s GReAT discovered that attackers uploaded malicious Python packages like chatgpt-python and chatgpt-wrapper to PyPI, mimicking legitimate tools for interacting with ChatGPT APIs.

These packages, designed to steal credentials and deploy backdoors, capitalised on the popularity of AI development to trick developers into downloading them. These packages could have been used in AI development, chatbot integrations, and data analytics platforms, endangering sensitive AI workflows and user data.

“Open-source software is the backbone of many modern solutions, but its openness is being weaponised. The 50% rise in malicious packages by the end of 2024 shows attackers are actively embedding sophisticated backdoors and data stealers in popular packages, which millions rely on.

“Without rigorous vetting and real-time monitoring, a single compromised package can trigger a global breach. Organisations need to secure the supply chain before the next XZ Utils-level attack succeeds,” comments Dmitry Galov, Head of Research Center for Russia and CIS at Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team.


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

E-Business

NDPC Probes Suspected Data Breach in Examination Centres

Published

on

Data Breach
Kindly share this post

Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has launched an investigation into allegations that the confidentiality and integrity of candidates’ personal data may have been compromised by hackers.

NDPC Probes Suspected Data Breach in Examination Centres

The Commission initiated the inquiry following concerns over possible data breaches during examinations.

Preliminary findings indicate that several examination centres may not have implemented adequate technical and organizational measures to safeguard candidates’ personal information, as required under data protection regulations.

Although the incident reportedly affected 379, 997 candidates, the NDPC’s investigation is poised to cover a systemic audit of data processing and third parties.

It will be recalled that JAMB recently admitted that a technical error on its platform affected a total of 379,997 candidates in 157 examination centres across Lagos and the South-East.

Further investigation led to the arrest of at least 20 suspects who are currently in the custody of the Department of State Services and the Nigerian Police Force.

 

 

 


Kindly share this post
Continue Reading

Trending