bitSIM, BitPesa, Africa

PIKETTY AND THE SITTING TRILLLIONS

The M-Pesa Concept Applied To Voting
Africa Deserves To Manufacture
Africa Can Save The World

MOVE OVER M-PESA, BITCOIN’S ZSIM IS THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

Globally, close to 2.5 billion adults remain unbanked. The vast majority of them live in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. However, the bitSIM would enable this huge market to be brought into the formal financial sector literally overnight ..... The emerging global financial stage will see increasing competition between telcos and banks for control of the market share. bitSIM being able to compete against one of them promises to become a third force that will eventually muscle out the first two. bitSIM might even go further. Since the technology is built on the block chain, it effectively eliminates the middleman that exists both in banking and in the telcos and potentially promises much, much lower fees for transactions. ..... For many developing countries, bitSIM could enable many other industries to really take off including mCommerce and mRemittance, or even mRebittance. Remittance has become one of the main sources of income in many developing countries ....... bitSIM would enable the reforms undertaken in Nigerian agriculture to be spread overnight to other countries around the world. ...... a dedicated agro-blockchain could be created that could be used to manage all aspects of the value chain including smart contracts, and even the development of a viable continental commodity trading for African regions or even the continent itself. Trade on this agro-blockchain would be enabled across borders via the bitSIM without the usual bottlenecks that are inherent in traditional banking. ....... Many of the applications that could be powered on top of the bitSIM may be unimaginable as at now. For example, what role would bitSIM have in powering an internet of blockchains or even an internet of things?

Kenya’s million dollar bitcoin startup BitPesa expands to Tanzania

“We’re the first company on the planet to link mobile money with bitcoin,” company CEO Elizabeth Rossiello boasted. “About 97% of the people in Kenya use mobile money. In Tanzania it’s even better.” ..... We call it mobile money 2.0, where they have three key operators using it instead of one company. ..... “Instead of sending bitcoin to another bank account or bitcoin wallet, you can actually send bitcoin to someone’s mobile wallet using their contact number in real-time” ....... “Banking infrastructure has fallen behind and money transfer services like Western Union have filled the void,” Rossiello said. “The bitcoin technology is in the cloud, which means that everyone has access to world-class infrastructures. For us it’s a very convenient, cheap, scalable, robust piece of software.” ...BitPesa’s CEO added that other countries like Ghana, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Romania, and Turkey all have very advanced mobile money systems and are potential markets for the company’s remittance services.

Reimagining Africa as innovator

He travels to Kenya this July for a “summit” on entrepreneurship and hopes to show what the United States can do for the continent...... When he gets there, however, Mr. Obama may be surprised to discover what Africa is already doing for itself. In recent years, its young inventors and entrepreneurs – two-thirds of Africans are under age 35 – have begun to reverse the narrative that the continent is mainly a recipient of foreign technology and a backwater for ideas. ...... Kenya, for example, which is the birthplace of Obama’s father, has become a world leader in mobile money systems – far ahead of Apple Pay. Across Africa, software such as M-PESA is revolutionizing daily financial life for people with little access to banks or credit. About 1 in 7 Africans now uses a phone for banking, a ratio higher than anywhere in the world. Kenya is also home to an IBM research lab and has plans to become a “Silicon Savanna.” ....... Africa has more mobile-phone users than the US or Europe. This pool of 635 million devices provides a giant digital platform for innovation that fits Africa’s culture and its unique needs. Technology is lightly regulated, which gives innovators more freedom to try new products. ..... The continent’s big tech hubs – Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, and Senegal – are starting to draw global attention as potential exporters of new technology. One Ghanaian start-up, for example, has done well in California with an online tool, Dropifi, that helps businesses manage customer feedback. ...... Last year, the African Union drew up a 10-year strategy to drive technological innovation as a way for the continent to move beyond exports of raw materials. ..... An innovation expert in South Africa, Mammo Muchie of the Tshwane University of Technology, says Africans must destroy the “false narrative” that other races are better at innovation. Africa can build on its special strengths – its large population of young people, its ancient cultural traditions, and its large market for inexpensive solutions to poverty. Innovation, after all, first requires imagination. Reimagining Africa seems to have already begun.

Barack Obama Africa Foundation
Barack Obama And Africa

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Sahara And Amazon And Solar

A few days back I came across this video. And it is fascinating. It is showing that the Amazon forest (full of life) is totally dependent on the Sahara (lifeless) for its very survival. This is mind blowing. Mother Nature.

Another thing I see is, the Sahara could also meet all of Africa's energy needs. Used to be solar was expensive and complex. Not any more.

The coming era of unlimited — and free — clean energy
Why Obama should stop pushing nuclear energy on India
Unlimited Free Solar Power?

Solar Energy Revolution: A Massive Opportunity http://t.co/bblDqsqC53 by @peterdiamandis -- 100% solar energy within 20 years amazing
— Vivek Wadhwa (@wadhwa) September 3, 2014

The Sahara alone could meet all of Africa's energy needs. The Sahara probably is the best place on earth to harness solar energy. And, guess what, the Sun is not going anywhere. The oil fields of Saudi Arabia will run dry, but the earth will evaporate before the sun will disappear. I think the Sahara could generate 1,000 GW easy. Imagine a solar panel - one panel - the size of Texas.

Africa could become the leading continent on earth based just on Sahara's solar energy. It truly is the central continent. It is closer to every other continent than any other. Which means, it could end up the manufacturing hub of the world.

Africa so deserves a political union. It only makes sense that Africa should become one country. Because political leadership is what has been in the way. Or rather, lack of it. The continent that deserves to be the richest is the poorest.

The Sahara is in need of a serious image makeover. It is not lifeless. It is the opposite. It is life-sustaining.

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African Hopes

Satellite image of Africa, showing the ecological break that defines the sub-Saharan area (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The coining BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India, China - did not have A for Africa in it. But Africa is on the march now. That is swell. This is not the Africa of unfair history, or false stereotypes. But Africa still has a lot of political homework to do. There is much cleaning up that remains.

Africa rising

Over the past decade six of the world's ten fastest-growing countries were African. In eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. Even allowing for the knock-on effect of the northern hemisphere's slowdown, the IMF expects Africa to grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia...... With fertility rates crashing in Asia and Latin America, half of the increase in population over the next 40 years will be in Africa. But the growth also has a lot to do with the manufacturing and service economies that African countries are beginning to develop. ........... Most Africans live on less than two dollars a day. ... Some countries praised for their breakneck economic growth, such as Angola and Equatorial Guinea, are oil-sodden kleptocracies. Some that have begun to get economic development right, such as Rwanda and Ethiopia, have become politically noxious. Congo, now undergoing a shoddy election, still looks barely governable and hideously corrupt. Zimbabwe is a scar on the conscience of the rest of southern Africa. South Africa, which used to be a model for the continent, is tainted with corruption; and within the ruling African National Congress there is talk of nationalising land and mines ..... around 60m Africans have an income of $3,000 a year, and 100m will in 2015. The rate of foreign investment has soared around tenfold in the past decade. ...... China's arrival has improved Africa's infrastructure and boosted its manufacturing sector. Other non-Western countries, from Brazil and Turkey to Malaysia and India, are following its lead. Africa could break into the global market for light manufacturing and services such as call centres. ...... It has more than 600m mobile-phone users—more than America or Europe. ..... Around a tenth of Africa's land mass is covered by mobile-internet services—a higher proportion than in India. ..... productivity is growing by nearly 3% a year, compared with 2.3% in America. ..... Africa still needs deep reform.

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Apple: $10 Billion To $400 Billion In 10 Years

Image via CrunchBaseAnd with most of the growth happening once the Great Recession hit.

CNN: At $400 billion, Apple is worth more than Greece

Only Exxon Mobil has a higher valuation, at about $420 billion. PetroChina (PTR) is Apple's closest competitor, at $270 billion, and Microsoft follows at $235 billion. ..... Apple's market cap is higher than the gross domestic product of Greece, Austria, Argentina, or South Africa. ..... Despite its size, Apple is still one of the fastest growing technology companies...... a $15 price cap for e-textbooks

This is a remarkable story. It came from the company inventing one new category after another. There were digital music players before the iPod, but I remember a Time or Newsweek front cover that said: iPod, therefore I am.

The iPhone was the gizmo that really did it for Apple. This was truly a trailblazing product. It shook the landscape.

And now Apple marches into TV and textbooks. TV is a hard nut to crack.

I stay fascinated as to how Apple manages to keep its startup culture. It still acts like one.

I Am Big In Canada

An image is worth a thousand words, so let me not elaborate too much. This map above is based on the traffic to this blog this past week. The major countries seem to be as follows.

The Germans Called Me Robin Hood

Canada
United States
United Kingdom
India
Brazil
Mexico
Australia
Germany
Japan
South Africa

Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand

I got Brazil and India but not Russia and China.

A 4 AM Traffic Peak, Mostly From Canada
Traffic: Canada Top Country, 2 AM Peak
What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

The page hits for yesterday stand at 2,000 and for today so far stand at 1,000. So I guess that 3,000 hits a few days back not an aberration. That 3,000 could be my new daily floor.

Weekends tend to be slow for bloggers in general. People read blogs when they are at work! So 1,000 for a Saturday is good, it is like getting 2,000 hits on a week day.

My Secret Sauce

If you want to know how to do this, this is my attempt at a formula.

Blog Traffic = (Number Of Total Posts)*(Number Of Inbound Links)*(Frequency Of New Posts)

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