African Tech Round-Up

Data costs need to come down significantly if Africa is ever going to realise the dream of making access to the internet available to every single person living on the continent. As things stand, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, an estimated 590 million Africans still do not have access to electricity, to say nothing of reliable web access. However, South Africa’s largest telecoms operator, the government-owned Telkom, has announced some game-changing 4G/LTE data-led mobile packages that may signal the beginning of the end of exorbitantly high data prices in that country. Aside from throwing down the gauntlet towards its rivals, Telkom seems to be committing to a business model that seeks to sign up the masses and incentivise them to consume ever increasing amounts of data, as opposed to attempting to profiteer in the short to medium term. What’s not to love about that? Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up, I speak to Frank Schutte, the former Retail Product & Marketing M