Wrap-Up: Our pick of main stories, Monday August 24th, 2015

MTN, Liquid Telecom partner to extend footprint and offering in Africa…. Facebook seeks ties with telcos in Kenya….. USIU, Tech Republic launch Innovation Boot Camp to equip teens with coding skills…..and more.

Facebook seeks ties with telcos in Kenya

Facebook’s plan to bring Internet access to the remote parts of the world is taking shape. This follows the completion of Aquila, a drone that beams the Internet from the sky to remote communities. Facebook CEO Marck Zuckerberg said in a statement that the unmanned aircraft will supplement internet.org, Facebook’s connectivity initiative that is in 13 countries including Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana.

USIU, Tech Republic launch Innovation Boot Camp to equip teens with coding skills

Tech Republic has partnered with The United States International University-Africa to offer upper primary and secondary pupils aged 12 – 19 with a platform through which they can learn and expand their coding prowess. Tech Republic is a technology education firm dedicated to increasing engagement in technology and computer science by making it more accessible to upper primary and high school students. Tech republic has also partnered with Google and Intel who are out to help tech republic develop a web based curriculum for the students during the boot camp.

Azuri Technologies helping rural households eliminate ‘blight of Kerosene’

Simon Kiragu is one of the propagators of renewable energy in Kenya. Since 2013, he has been working hard to push for the use of clean energy among women and poor households locally and at times abroad. His work as the programme officer at wPOWER, a donor-funded project under the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies at University of Nairobi, has exposed him to challenges faced by 620miliion people in Sub-Saharan Africa that lack access to power.

MTN Business launches Microsoft-enabled pan-African cloud solution

MTN Business has launched a pan-African cloud platform that offers customers a true hybrid cloud solution serviced from MTN’s data centres. The platform is powered by Microsoft’s technology and is built on MTN’s Global MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) network which has 23 points of presence across the globe. This will ensure an enhanced customer experience due to lower latency and better response times.

In line with the characteristics of cloud, MTN’s customers will be provided with a self-service management portal with a consistent look and feel as Microsoft Azure, one of the best public cloud providers. The platform runs off enterprise-grade infrastructure, providing clients with flexibility and increasing their agility.

MTN, Liquid Telecom partner to extend footprint and offering in Africa

Customers of MTN Group and Liquid Telecom are set to benefit from a larger connectivity footprint across Africa. This follows an announcement today that the two companies have partnered to jointly offer customers access to the largest fixed and wireless footprint across the continent. The partnership, which covers wholesale, carrier-to-carrier, high speed broadband, enterprise and fixed data services, enables MTN and Liquid Telecom access to each other’s fixed and wireless networks in countries on the African continent, where one party may not currently have presence.