Technology

14, April 2019

France: Could Macron and Brexit make Paris the capital of European tech? ⁰

Shortly after his election in May 2017, President Macron said he wanted France itself “to think and move like a start-up” – a vision of the country’s digital future that is gaining traction as Britain wrestles with Brexit.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s vow to make France a ‘start-up nation’ amid the uncertainty over Brexit is raising the question of whether Paris could supplant London as the capital of European tech.

Since his election, Macron has wooed tech entrepreneurs with a string of initiatives in the form of lavish tax breaks, subsides, and credits for research. In March 2018, he promised to invest €1.5 billion into artificial intelligence research through 2022.

Some of these initiatives, in addition to Macron’s dynamism, have lured British tech companies who are looking to gain a foothold in Europe.

“It made sense to have a European base,” said Cedric Jones*, a Briton who recently launched a start-up at Station F, the cavernous old train station that is now home to the world’s largest start-up campus. “If I’m going to make waves in continental Europe… I wanted to get here before Brexit happened.”

Jones is among dozens of foreign entrepreneurs who have recently launched their start-up at Station F, whose 3,000 desk hub has seen spiralling applications from English-speaking nationals in the last two years.

Some cite political woes back home, the burgeoning French tech sector, or are inspired by Macron’s bid to make Paris the innovation heart of Europe.

“There’s an air of optimism and a can-do spirit in France that I feel we’ve lost somewhat in the US,” said Mark Heath, a New Yorker, who stayed on in France to launch a start-up after studying at INSEAD in 2017.

The Macron effect

Much of the investment in French tech predates Macron’s reforms. The state investment bank Bpifrance, launched by former French president François Hollande in 2013, has been widely credited with developing the sector. Hollande also set up new foreign visas for start-up entrepreneurs.

But Zahir Bouchaary, a Briton who works out of Station F, credits Macron with injecting dynamism into the sector.

“Macron has installed a [start-up] mentality within the French ecosystem itself,” said Bouchaary, adding that it has become much easier to do business in France in the last few years.

“French customers are a lot more willing to work with start-ups than they were before,” said Bouchaary. “France was a very conservative country and our clients were used to working with big old-fashioned companies that have been around for a while. For the past few years they’ve opened up a lot more to working with younger companies and seem to take more risks than they did before.”

Jones agreed that Macron was “the single variable”. “When he [Macron] goes, the dynamism will go too. I absolutely would not expect that to remain the case if he’s not president.”

However, although Macron has moved to ease labour laws, Jones said that navigating the country’s labyrinthine bureaucracy in French remained “very burdensome”, and that it was far easier to build a business in the UK. “Whether it’s from a tax perspective or from a legal perspective it’s just so much more complicated.”

UK tech ‘resilient’

The tech scene in London appears to be just as vibrant as ever, explained Albin Serviant, president of Frenchtech in London, who said many UK-based tech entrepreneurs are adopting a “wait and see” approach to Brexit.

“The UK ecosystem is quite resilient,” said Serviant.

“In the first quarter of 2019, there were about €2 billion invested in tech in London. That’s compared to 1.5 billion last year, which is plus 30 percent. And that’s twice as much as France – which invested 1 billion. France is catching up very fast but the investment money is still flowing in the UK,” he added.

Serviant cited London’s business-friendly ecosystem and international talent pool as reasons for why London remains the capital of the European tech sector.

Nonetheless Serviant cautioned against the effects that a hard Brexit would have on the tech sector in the UK.

“‘If Brexit happens in a bad way and if people like me and other entrepreneurs have to leave, obviously that’s very bad for the UK because what makes it very different is the international DNA of London.”

Hard Brexit would not just damage the UK tech sector but would also pose challenges for British developers, who post-Brexit may need a carte de séjour to work in the country, looking to find work in France.

Sarah Pedroza, co managing director of Hello Tomorrow technologies, a Paris-based startup NGO, said that if she had to choose between hiring a British national and an EU citizen with the same skillset, she would opt for an EU citizen because there would be less paperwork involved.

Brexit aside, others suggest that France is snapping at the UK’s technological heels.

“I do think France has the potential under Macron to close the gap with the UK,” said Jones.

“The single biggest factor in what’s going on for France is that France is developing a sense of confidence in itself, in its start-up scene, as a tech hub, that’s being helped by France and that’s also being helped by Brexit.”

Source: France 24

9, April 2019

Yaounde moves towards its national cyber risk assessment ⁰

A 3-day Cyber Risk Assessment workshop was organised to train IT experts in strategic state institutions in Cameroon to establish an inventory of critical cyber risks.

The workshop from 2 to 4 April addressed issues on cybersecurity and cybercrime in Cameroon, national critical assets identification and the protection of critical cyberspace. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the workshop, the General Manager of the [National Agency for Information and Communication Technologies (ANTIC) Prof. Ebot Ebot Enaw highlighted the severity of cybercrimes in Cameroon amongst which scamming, phishing, identity theft through the creation of fake social media accounts, web defacement and skimming. Furthermore, with the exponential growth of internet usage in Cameroon Prof. Ebot said there have been more than 1400 cases of scams, over 2000 cases of phishing especially with mobile money transfers, 32 government agencies and ministries web defacements and several local banks have suffered considerable financial losses estimated at over £4.8 million.

Citing the pros and cons of technology, British High Commissioner to Cameroon, Rowan James Laxton said:

Advances in technology are transforming businesses, and transforming lives, around the world. The way we do business, use information and communicate with each other has changed beyond recognition in our lifetimes. In the wrong hands, these powerful capabilities can be used to disrupt our everyday lives, instead of improving them. They can be harnessed by malign actors to disrupt our democratic elections, undermine our financial systems and cripple our critical infrastructure.

Cybercrime has become a scourge that spares no state and the protection of critical assets has become a global challenge for both the developed and developing countries.

Mr Laxton added:

The UK is developing its own capability through a system called Active Cyber Defence which is blocking fake emails, taking down phishing attacks and preventing public sector systems from switching to malicious servers. In the past year, this system has stopped over four and a half million malicious emails from reaching users and has weeded out over half a million scam emails that pretended to come from government accounts. The UK is also committed to working with our partners to build cyber security capacity across the Commonwealth. The British Prime Minister announced during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting last year that the UK would be making £15 million available to support this work through to 2020. We are already funding capacity reviews for 11 Commonwealth countries in Africa and Asia under this Programme. The remaining £10 million will be delivered through our Digital Access Programme and the international strand of the National Cyber Security Programme.

The National Cyber Risks Assessment workshop is part of the Commonwealth’s Cyber Security Programme to support low and middle-income countries to tackle cyber threats.

Source: British High Commission Yaounde

30, January 2019

Electricity-hungry Cameroon boosts solar energy in push for rural power ⁰

Adrienne Ngonou’s 25-seat restaurant used to open from 8 am to 5 pm, shutting it doors as the sun began to go down. But these days it’s open until 11 pm – and her profits have tripled. “We now sell both during the day and late in the night because of the constant electricity supply,” she said. “Two years ago, this was not possible.”

Ngonou’s new power source is a government-provided solar array that supplies power to about 300 homes, businesses and other institutions in Mfou, a town of about 10,000 people east of Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital.

Earlier the area relied in part on grid power, which has been unreliable as more erratic rainfall and droughts linked to climate change hit the county’s hydropower dams, which supply the majority of its energy.

But the $13,000 battery-backed solar grid, installed in 2017, has given the area it serves 24-hour reliable power – and is now being replicated in other power-hungry parts of Cameroon, as the government tries to plug a stubborn energy gap and shore up its energy system against climate change, officials say.

Mfou’s solar system was part of a deal between Cameroon’s government and China’s Huawei telecommunications company, which also installs solar installations, to supply solar energy to more than 160 villages, largely in rural areas, they say.

So far solar power – much of it small-scale and often installed by non-governmental organizations – provides only about 1 percent of Cameroon’s energy needs, according to 2017 government figures. Energy expansion plans for Cameroon have focused largely on fossil fuel plants and hydropower expansion, mostly funded by China.

But now Cameroon’s President Paul Biya “has thrown his hefty political weight in support of renewable energy and this has brought a new stimulating perspective,” Martine Akame Mesumbe, director of gas exploitation at the Ministry of Water and Energy, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The government hopes to boost Cameroon’s electricity access in rural areas as part of its “Vision 2035” development plan, aimed at expanding the economy and slashing poverty to 10 percent.

So far that expansion has been hampered by a lack of power, experts say. According to a 2018 World Bank report, just half of Cameroon’s people have access to electricity, with 80 percent of the supply concentrated in urban areas. Rural electrification is just 17 percent, it said.

As part of its push to change that, the government now aims to reach 1,000 communities – about 250,000 people in total – with solar power by the end of 2020, according to Mesumbe. Altogether it hopes to get electricity, from a variety of sources, to 40 percent of rural Cameroonians by 2020.

“This could drive significant economic change in rural Cameroon,” Mesumbe said. More than $120 million in funding for the push is coming from a Bank of China loan for renewable energy projects, he said.

MAINTENANCE?

Communities now hooked up to solar panels – like those in Mfou – say they are happy to have a cleaner and less costly source of energy. “It is a cheaper alternative to diesel generators and wood energy … used in the past to power small businesses,” said Roger Belinga, the mayor of Mfou.

Jarome Angwi, a beer vendor in the town, said solar energy to power his refrigerator and premises costs just a fifth of what he used to pay for diesel.

Local officials say they hope access to electricity will help keep young people from deserting rural areas for jobs in Cameroon’s cities.

In Mfou, “even some of those who left are already coming back” since the solar panels were installed, Belinga said.

Whether the new solar systems will be maintained, however, remains a question. Local authorities in some towns said they lack the funds to train local solar technicians.

“Many local councils do not have the financial resources to sustain these projects. They need financial support from government,” Rose Ngassa, the mayor of Tombel, in southwest Cameroon, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in Yaounde.

But national government officials say an ongoing political decentralization push in Cameroon – including an expected 70 percent boost in cash transferred to local authorities in 2019 – should give local councils more money to invest in and maintain solar energy systems.

Greater use of solar power could also help cut worrying deforestation rates in Cameroon, home to part of Africa’s Congo Basin forests, environmentalist say.

“The cutting of trees for wood and charcoal used for cooking and heating will now reduce in many villages with the coming of solar energy,” said Augustine Njamnshi, the Cameroon-based coordinator of the African Coalition for Sustainable Energy.

Reuters

24, January 2019

La Republique’s plan for a Francophone-led tech hub isn’t being welcomed in Ambazonia ⁰

The Cameroon government is backing a new technology hub to be called “Cameroon Silicon River” in its capital city Yaoundé, in a move that is likely to move attention from its small, but already thriving ecosystem in the country’s southwest region.

The new tech hub is modeled after Buea’s Silicon Mountain and will take a sizable portion of the 11.92 billion CFA francs ($ 20.6 million) 2019 budget of Cameroon’s ministry of scientific research and innovation. The government says Cameroon Silicon River will be a platform for research and innovation where young, creative, and enterprising Cameroonian software developers and other technologists will have the infrastructure and support they need.

But the news has not gone down well with tech leaders and entrepreneurs in Silicon Mountain; the already burgeoning tech ecosystem in Buea, in the English-speaking region of Cameroon. It is seen as the latest part of a wider national effort to marginalize the minority English-speaking regions of the country in the southwest and northwest.

For the last two years activists in the English-speaking regions of the country have protested against marginalization by the French-speaking dominated government. Modern Cameroon was formed from part of a former British colony and a much larger French colony, which makes up about 80% of the country’s population. But over the last year, those initially peaceful protests by Anglophone professionals, including lawyers and teachers, have turned into violent clashes with government security forces.

There has also been an information battle conducted mainly online. The government has taken to shutting down the internet for months in the English-speaking regions, ostensibly to prevent anti-government activists organizing.

Tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Mountain have often complained of systematic neglect by the government, citing specifically the lack of tax incentives for their tech start-ups and want of financial support.

Despite the difficulties, some Cameroonian start-ups in Silicon Mountain have received global acclamation and are being scaled up to spread across the world. These include Zuo Bruno (Zuoix)’s Zoomed car-tracking application using SMS and Churchill Mambe Nanje’s Njorku.com – a fast-growing job search engine and aggregator that helps thousands of African job-seekers find employment opportunities in locations nearest to them.

Bruno, an ethical hacker from Silicon Mountain, described the Yaoundé hub plan as a waste of resources. “I think it is a decision that assumes creativity and innovation can be taught and politicized.”

Many techies in Silicon Mountain say government officials often speak with them on how to improve the local ecosystem but their suggestions or proposals often end up being implemented in other parts of the country.

“We had proposed to officials that there was need to put in place an institution in Buea that will help startups in registering their ventures and scaling them up. Now we hear it is Yaounde,” said Otto Akama, co-founder of Makonjo Media. He indicated that same had been done with the creation of a technopole in Kribi, in the country’s French-speaking region.

Internet rights activist, Gwain Colbert Fulai predicted Cameroon Silicon River will die off in a relatively short timeframe.

“When you copy an initiative, you miss out the essential details. Even Silicon Valley in the US was not a government creation,” Colbert said. He argued government should only create an enabling environment for technology to strive.

Despite being Cameroon’s capital city, Yaoundé has few little-known tech entrepreneurs compared with Silicon Mountain. The entrepreneurs believe government should use the striving Silicon Mountain tech ecosystem as a springboard to build and expand other ecosystems in the country.

Source: Quartz

6, November 2018

Facebook’s Cameroon problem: stop online hate stoking conflict ⁰

A video link posted on Facebook on June 20 showed a man cooking human body parts in a pot over a wood fire. In Cameroon, the footage went viral. Some Facebook users said the man was a cannibal and that the video was shot in the country’s English-speaking west, where separatist insurgents are fighting to create a breakaway state.

Local websites quickly debunked this notion. The man in the video was not a separatist fighter or cannibal, and the body parts were not real. The clip was taken on a Nigerian film set and uploaded to Instagram on June 17 by make-up artist Hakeem Onilogbo, who uses the platform to showcase his work.

But the video’s rapid spread raises questions about Facebook’s ability to police millions of posts each day and crack down on hate speech in a country where internet use is rising fast, social media are used for political ends and the company has no permanent physical presence.

The day the link was posted on Facebook, a member of the government brought the video to the attention of international diplomats in the capital, Yaounde, via the WhatsApp messaging service, according to messages seen by Reuters.

Five days later, Cameroon’s minister for territorial administration cited it as justification for an army clampdown against the secessionists that was already under way in the Anglophone regions.

The minister, Paul Atanga Nji, compared the rebellion – over decades of perceived marginalisation by the French-speaking majority – to an Islamist insurgency waged by the Nigeria-based militant group Boko Haram which has killed 30,000 people.

“Boko Haram committed atrocities, but they did not cut up humans and cook them in pots,” the minister said in comments broadcast on state television and widely reported in Cameroon.

Nji did not respond to requests for comment. Government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary said that in future the government would work to verify information before commenting.

Facebook said the video had not been reported by users and that it could not comment further on the clip. It was no longer available on the site by late October.

A senior Facebook official said tackling misinformation in Cameroon was a priority for the company, which acknowledges more needs to be done.

“We’re prioritising countries where we’ve already seen how quickly online rumours can fuel violence, such as Myanmar and Cameroon,” said Ebele Okobi, Director of Africa Public Policy at Facebook.

UNDER FIRE

Facebook is under fire for carrying misleading information, including in the United States and Britain, and over posts against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar which have had deadly consequences.

Sri Lankan authorities briefly banned Facebook this year because the government said it was fuelling violence between Buddhists and Muslims. In India, messages on Facebook-owned WhatsApp have been linked to attacks on religious minorities.

In Cameroon, Facebook has been used both to incite violence and to make threatening posts.

Simon Munzu, a former United Nations representative, said he was the target of death threats on Facebook after it was announced in July that he would help organise negotiations in the separatist conflict. Afraid, Munzu went to stay with friends.

Facebook removed the posts in October, after it was made aware of them by Reuters, saying they violated company standards.

Esther Omam, who runs a non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Reach Out, hid at a church and then fled to the Francophone region after receiving death threats from separatists following a peace march which she led, she told Reuters.

“The crisis has destroyed my life and my family,” she said. “I cannot work anymore. My family is divided. My husband is elsewhere, my children are elsewhere.”

Facebook has no staff operating permanently in Cameroon and says it monitors the country from Britain and the United States. It has an Africa-focused team that frequently visits the region, and has partnered with NGOs and civil society in Cameroon in recent months to combat hate speech.

This included paying several thousand dollars to civil society to help organise training sessions for journalists to spot falsehoods online, representatives from two groups involved told Reuters. Some groups also flag offensive posts to Facebook.

Facebook has removed pages and accounts related to the separatist conflict, and is working to slow the spread of kidnapping videos, the company said.

It declined to say how many people it had helping it in Cameroon, how much money it had so far invested or how many posts it had taken down.

Reuters found dozens of pages posted in recent months showing graphic images in Cameroon, some of which were months old.

One Facebook user on July 18 posted a picture of the decapitated body of a Cameroonian policeman lying in a gutter, and said the image gave him joy.

The same day, separatist spokesman Ivo Tapang applauded the killing of two Cameroonian soldiers and linked to a website raising funds for guns, ammunition and grenade launchers. Tapang did not respond to requests for comment.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company was unaware of the posts before Reuters pointed them out but that they were both removed after review. It is against Facebook rules to celebrate suffering or crowdfund for arms, she said.

Facebook has artificial intelligence that it uses globally to detect problematic posts. But in Cameroon, it does not have a consortium of fact-checking companies to monitor posts – as it does in the United States.

Leading civil society figures in Cameroon say Facebook needs more resources and faces an increasingly difficult task as internet use grows.

“It is not possible to stop misinformation on Facebook,” said Maximilienne Ngo Mbe, executive director of REDHAC, a civil society group that has organised training sessions and flags indecent posts to Facebook.

NO EASY FIX

The number of people with internet access in Cameroon rose from 0.86 million in 2010 to 5.9 million in 2016, about a quarter of the population, according to the International Telecommunications Union, a U.N. agency.

The government shut down the internet in English-speaking regions for three months last year because of the unrest.

After service resumed in April 2017, Facebook was the main outlet for people speaking out against the army crackdown, in which soldiers razed villages and shot dead unarmed civilians.

But misleading and hateful posts have persisted, groups that monitor posts say, echoing issues Facebook sees worldwide.

Facebook is not the only service facing a battle to tackle misinformation and hate speech. Offensive videos and images are posted on Twitter or transmitted by WhatsApp.

WhatsApp cannot view private, encrypted conversations, a WhatsApp spokeswoman said, so detecting hate speech there is harder. A Twitter spokeswoman said it prohibits the promotion of violence and encourages users to flag those posts.

Reuters

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5, September 2018

Now is the time for local investors to step up and electrify Africa ⁰

For years, the African renewable energy development market has been dominated by foreign investors and financial institutions. Now is the time for African investors to step up to the plate and join the continent’s solar energy transition.

Africa is now even preparing to feed Europe’s growing energy needs through various projects, such as the TuNur CSP project. The project is currently in the early phases of development and will comprise a 2.3 GW concentrated solar power plant situated in the Sahara desert and a 2-G high-voltage DC submarine cable from Tunisia all the way to central Italy. Additional plans of building other export routes to Malta and France are on the table. The project is being financed mostly by European investors and will be constructed using the most modern technology. Europe will soon enjoy of the benefits of green energy coming straight from African soil. But while Europe seeks to power more coffee shops, chain stores and crypto mining server-farms, 50% of Africans are not electrified at all, and the other 50% are often connected to unreliable energy sources.

There are vast opportunities for local African investors present in the solar sector. The continent has an abundance of land available for project development and is home to some of the sunniest places on earth, which makes it an ideal location for solar energy development. Lydia van Os, Africa Lead at Solarplaza, believes that this is the right time for local investors to take action and get involved in Africa’s rapidly growing solar industry. She is convinced that this can only succeed if the movement of people committed to providing clean, reliable and affordable energy is inclusive, from Wall Street investors to Congolese rural households.

To fulfill its mission of accelerating the global sustainable energy transition and create the platform for international and local solar stakeholders to meet and share knowledge, Solarplaza is hosting Unlocking Solar Capital (“USC”) Africa. The third edition of this leading conference will take place on 7 to 8 November 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda. The two-day event is being organized in partnership with the Global Off-grid and Lighting Association (GOGLA), and is wholly focused on unlocking capital for new solar project development in Africa.

For those who can’t wait for the conference to get an in-depth look into the African solar landscape: Solarplaza has published an exhaustive 128-page regional report on Africa’s solar energy situation. The report offers an overview of the key facts & figures related to the most relevant solar PV markets in Africa. The detailed country profiles provide overviews of a range of issues related to solar PV project development and include summaries of key demographic info; insights into legislation and policy; electricity generation capacity; and assessments of the current status of the solar industries in: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia and South Africa.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Solarplaza

11, August 2018

On top of the World: 5 Anambra State School girls win gold at World Technovation Challenge in US ⁰

Five Anambra girls from Regina Pacies Secondary School Onitsha, Amanbra state, Nigeria who represented Nigeria and Africa at the World Technovation Challenge in the Silicon Valley in San Francisco, US have won the Gold Medal in the contest.

The Governor of Anambra State, Willie Obiano had personally sent them off to the US in a brief ceremony at the last Executive Council Meeting, where he charged the girls to put Nigeria and Africa on the global technological map with their rare talent.

The team, led by Uchenna Onwuamaegbu Ugwu defeated representatives of other technological giants including the USA, Spain, Turkey, Uzbekistan and China to clinch the gold medal.

The girls, who have now become Africa’s Golden Girls is made up of five brilliant girls including Promise Nnalue, Jessica Osita, Nwabuaku Ossai, Adaeze Onuigbo and Vivian Okoye.

The world champions who are reported to be attracting a lot of attention in the world’s greatest technological hub won the Challenge with a mobile application called the FD-Detector which they developed to help tackle the Challenge of fake pharmaceutical products in Nigeria.

Under the tutelage of Uchenna Onwuamaegbu-Ugwu the CEO of Edufun Technik STEM, the Golden Girls spent five months researching and developing FD-Detector which swept through over 2000 competing applications to get to the finals in San Francisco.

Technovation is a programme that offers girls around the world the opportunity to learn the programming skills they need to emerge as tech-entrepreneurs and leaders.

Every year, girls are invited to identify a problem in their communities and then are challenged to solve them by developing Andriod applications that would address those problems. 115 countries participated in the qualifiers but only 12 teams from all over the world were selected as finalists for the pitch in Silicon Valley.

Source: Africa News

14, March 2018

Pilot-less, electric, vertical takeoff taxis debut in New Zealand ⁰

Pilot-less flying taxis are being tested in New Zealand as part of a project backed by Google co-founder Larry Page that supporters say will revolutionize personal transport.

New Zealand regulators late Tuesday approved plans for Zephyr Airworks, a subsidiary of Page’s company Kitty Hawk, to develop and test the futuristic air taxis.

A video grab shows a pilot-less taxi during takeoff.

Known as Cora, the electric aircraft has a dozen small lift rotors on its wings, making it capable of vertical take-off and landing like a helicopter.

But developers say it is much quieter, meaning it could transport passengers in urban areas using rooftops and car parks as landing pads.

“We are offering a pollution free, emission free vehicle that flies dependably, we think this is the logical next step in the evolution of transportation,” Zephyr chief executive Fred Reid said.

The Cora prototype being tested in New Zealand’s South Island uses three on-board computers to calculate its flight path and is capable of carrying two passengers.

The computers operate independently as a safety measure and the aircraft can deploy a parachute if anything goes wrong.

The aircraft, previously known as Zee.Aero, has a range of 100 kilometers, reaching speeds of 150 kmh and an altitude of up to 900 meters.

The Cora project envisages they will become so common that “air travel will be woven into our daily lives.”
Zephyr said using them would be a simple experience for passengers.

“You wouldn’t have to know anything about flying a plane. Cora could fly for you,” it said in a promotional video. “And it would be all-electric, helping to build a sustainable world.”

Page’s company is also developing a prototype personal aircraft called the Kitty Hawk Flyer and unveiled an early model in the United States last year.

However, it looked more like a recreational plaything than a flying car, suitable only for flying above water and seating the pilot in an open top cabin exposed to the elements.

Cora appears far more robust and is designed more like a traditional aircraft, featuring an 11-meter wingspan, tail and a closed canopy for passengers.

In this handout picture, received on March 13, 2018 from New Zealand-based aviation company Zephyr Airworks, a “Cora” electric-powered air taxi is seen in flight. (Via AFP)

The aircraft will not be offered for sale, instead the public must book trips like they would with an airline or taxi service.

Zephyr said it would operate in a similar fashion to a car ride-share — with Uber the best known example — and is reportedly working on an app so customers could hail the air taxis on their mobile phones.

‘They could have laughed us out of the room’

It said Cora took eight years to design but then developers needed a suitable environment to safely test the new technology.

They settled on New Zealand because of its uncongested airspace and rigorous regulatory environment, with Reid saying local officials had embraced the idea.

“We had no idea what to expect,” he said. “They could have laughed us out of the room. We were pitching something that sounded like science fiction.”

Cora has been given an experimental airworthiness certificate from the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority.

Trialling the flying taxi service will reportedly take six years, with operations based around the city of Christchurch.

“This aircraft represents the evolution of the transport eco system to one that responds to a global challenge around traffic and congestion, and is kinder to the planet,” Christchurch mayor Lianne Dalziel said.

Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998, starting out in a Silicon Valley garage and transforming into one of the world’s largest companies.

He remains chief executive of Google’s parent Alphabet but the Kitty Hawk and Cora projects are a personal pursuit, not part of the tech giant’s operations.

(Source: AFP)

5, March 2018

Cameroonian launches drones for global market ⁰

Talking fast and dreaming big, William Elong shows off the first “made in Cameroon” drone at his sixth-floor workshop in downtown Douala, minutes from the economic capital’s Atlantic seafront.

The 25-year-old, known as a high-flyer after being named one of Forbes’ most promising young Africans under 30, is enthusing about his new unmanned aerial drones and keen to promote his company and Africa as a place where IT and new tech can flourish.

We must “get out of the Afro-centric vision of business” to “understand that when one has a global vision, worldwide, this includes Africa,” Elong says in a discussion of future technologies.

Elong has no degree in IT or robotics but studied strategy and competitive intelligence in France, becoming the youngest-ever graduate from Paris’ Economic Warfare School.

He founded his startup Will & Brothers in 2015 with a main project called Drone Africa, which aims to provide drones for civil purposes to businesses, the state in Cameroon and elsewhere.

With a top range of up to 20 kilometres (12 miles), the drones can be used for purposes as different as cartography, media coverage, support for agriculture and detecting gas in mines to reduce the risk of accidents.

“The know-how is here, in Cameroon,” says Elong, who is aware young African talent often seeks employment in Europe and elsewhere. He says at this stage his firm’s capital of $200,000 (162,400 euros) has come from Western backers.

Also supported by the government of President Paul Biya, Elong hopes eventually to raise $2 million to expand the business but he regrets that “not many Africans are involved” in the project, which features two airborne types of drone and one terrestrial model.

The commercial market in Africa is expanding with unmanned aircraft already whizzing across the skies delivering items like medicine and food, and even helping farmers sow seeds.

– ‘Flying wing’ –

In Rwanda, drones get medical supplies such as blood and vaccines to remote areas. Tanzania is launching a similar programme. And drones equipped with night-vision cameras help to detect and track poachers in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Elong presents the two airborne prototype models on a table inside his assembly shop. The first “flying wing that we’ve baptised Algo” has the furthest range and could prove an economical solution to the costly task of making maps, he suggests.

Three drone makers at work in the plant run by William Elong, 25, who aims for a Cameroonian entry into the market for pilotless aircraft

The second type, known as Logarythm, has four arms forming a propeller, can reach an altitude of up to 500 metres (1,640 feet) and is fitted with high-definition cameras, which would be useful in high-risk zones and for precision work, Elong adds.

Crucially, he argues, manufacturing costs are lower than those of foreign manufacturers, so the drones produced will be priced competitively across the African marketplace.

He envisages “selling drones to Vietnam, to Venezuela, to Denmark for example, and becoming one of the biggest global enterprises in this sector.”

Elsewhere, two young engineers in white lab coats are carefully building a prototype. “When all the components are available, we are able to assemble a drone like this in 24 hours,” says engineer Louis Ekani.

Some of the parts are made in Cameroon, while others are supplied from abroad.

– ‘The pride of Cameroon’ –

“The start was extremely complicated,” says young technical director Yves Tamu, who is described on the company website as an entrepreneur, digital champion and inventor. “But we have a dynamic, autonomous and state-of-the-art team thanks to which we found the solution (to assembling drones).”

The average age of employees is barely 22 and the team comprises mainly engineers and developers who have spent two years building airworthy drones.

“Will & Brothers is the pride of Cameroon,” gushed Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Libom Li Likeng at a government ceremony to present the drones in early February.

Their design demonstrates “the innovative capacity of Cameroonian youth”, she added.

Elong’s firm is represented in Ivory Coast and plans to open offices in France and the United States, but he stresses the development of artificial intelligence is his primary goal.

Will & Brothers has worked on an AI known as Cyclops, which enables drones to detect people, objects and vehicles and to identify different types of animal at specific sites.

“Artificial intelligence is the future of humanity,” Elong says, confident that Africa can at least try to compete with the big tech giants in California. “It knocks me out that so many people here take no interest in technology.”

Source: The Citizen

26, January 2018

China unveils ‘Polar Silk Road’ project ⁰

China on Friday outlined its ambitions to extend President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative to the Arctic by developing shipping lanes opened up by global warming.

Releasing its first official Arctic policy white paper, China said it would encourage enterprises to build infrastructure and conduct commercial trial voyages, paving the way for Arctic shipping routes that would form a “Polar Silk Road”.

The official paper revealed that Beijing would pursue its strategic regional objectives “jointly with Arctic States, while respecting traditions and cultures of the Arctic residents including the indigenous peoples and conserving natural environment”.

“China hopes to work with all parties to build a ‘Polar Silk Road’ through developing the Arctic shipping routes,” the paper, issued by the State Council Information Office, said.

The paper revealed that China also eyes development of oil, gas, mineral resources and other non-fossil energies, fishing and tourism in the region.

Despite being a non-Arctic state, China has gained interest and increased its activity in the polar region.

China, which became an observer member of the Arctic Council in 2013, owns a major stake in Russia’s Yamal liquefied natural gas project.

Yamal has planned to supply China with four million tonnes of LNG a year, according to the state-run China Daily.

Another advantage is that shipping through the Northern Sea Route would save almost 20 days off the regular time using the traditional route through the Suez Canal, the newspaper reported last month. COSCO Shipping has also previously sailed vessels through the Arctic’s northeast passage.

The file photo shows an Arctic LNG tanker in Saint Petersburg. (By AFP )

China’s increased activities in the region has prompted concerns from Arctic states over Beijing’s long-term strategic
objectives, including possible military deployment.

“Some people may have misgivings over our participation in the development of the Arctic, worried we may have other
intentions, or that we may plunder resources or damage the environment,” Vice-Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou said at a briefing.

“I believe these kinds of concerns are absolutely unnecessary.”

China’s Belt and Road initiative aims to connect China to Europe, the Middle East and beyond via massive infrastructure projects across dozens of countries, reflecting Xi’s desire for China to take on a more prominent global leadership role.

(Source: Reuters)