Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

{In an event to celebrate 25,000 clients around the country that took place in Mukarange sector; Kayonza district; BBOXX Rwanda donated medical insurance and goats to 40 vulnerable families. }

The event was attended by different leaders from Kayonza district and staff members from BBOXX Rwanda offices.

BBOXX aims to provide 20 million people with electricity by 2020. By satisfying the genuine energy needs of individuals and families from home lighting to phone charging, BBOXX helps the developing world to climb the Energy Ladder.

With BBOXX products, customers have the ability to have a western energy experience off-the-grid and in rural areas.

Through a vast network of outlets and outlets, BBOXX focuses on giving access to the fundamental need of access to electricity combined with superior customer service. Within this network, we provide hundreds of jobs to local employees and create a retail market unlike anything seen in the developing world.

BBOXX Rwanda has operations in the whole county. The business sells and finances solar home systems to the Rwandan population without access to the Grid, providing clean, reliable and affordable electricity. We have provided electricity to 25000 households and 1,500 schools. BBOXX has 26 outlets around the country making it the biggest solar company in Rwanda.

At this event too, BBOXX Rwanda unveiled its new Managing Director Monica Keza.

{The Africa Internet Summit 2017 (AIS’17) will be held in Nairobi, Kenya from 21 May – 2 June co-organised by AFRINIC, the Regional Internet Registry for Africa, AfNOG, the African Network Operators’ Group and the Af* organisations.}

This fifth edition of the AIS is proudly hosted by TESPOK under the high patronage of the Ministry of ICT in Kenya.

The Internet has changed the world for the better particularly in Africa where communities have seized the power of the Internet and are using it to improve lives from the remotest corners of our continent to the tower blocks of our high-tech cities.

Every year in June, hundreds of key players in the African and global Internet industry gather at one of Africa’s pinnacle ICT events, the Africa Internet Summit (AIS), to discuss Internet policy development, Internet technologies and infrastructure and access issues, as well as the unique successes and challenges of operating and maintaining the Internet in Africa and beyond.

{{Internet Penetration}}

With an Internet penetration rate of 66% and an impressive 88% mobile penetration rate, Kenya is one of Africa’s leaders in terms of Internet access.

In 2016, the number of Kenya’s Internet users grew to around 37 million, mainly due to the expansion in mobile services.

The upsurge in the mobile data/Internet was driven by provision of affordable Internet bundles offered by the various service providers as a result of fair competition in the data market.

The huge growth of e-commerce services and social networking on mobile devices has also pushed the demand for mobile Internet/data usage. Online banking is hugely popular in Kenya too, with mobile money transactions hitting around 30 million transactions per quarter. .KE, the country’s top-level domain (TLD), also records significant increases in domain name registrations monthly, indicating that more and more businesses, institutions and entrepreneurs are getting online.

{{Learn. Contribute. Participate}}

The theme of the AIS’17 is “Beyond Connectivity: Internetworking for African Development” and the event aims to facilitate knowledge-share as well as to promote capacity building and participation in Internet policy development throughout the African region.

At the Summit, participants can join in discussions, workshops, panels and tutorials on Internet number resource policy development, Internet security, IPv4 exhaustion, IPv6 deployment, ICT business issues, ICT for development, women in tech, mobile networking, Internet research, local content provision, IXPs and access provision – among many others.

Technical training workshops, led by globally renowned experts will take place from 21 May – 28 May.

General plenary sessions, Internet policy development discussions and the AFRINIC-26 Meeting will take place from 29 May – 2 June 2017. Register now to secure your place: www.internetsummitafrica.org/ or contact us at for more details.

{A decade after its first big oil find, East Africa’s emergence as a crude exporter has been hindered by security and cost concerns that left the region building two pipelines instead of one.}

Uganda and Kenya are developing two new basins and originally agreed to build one line to connect the landlocked discoveries to the coast. That changed last year, when Uganda chose a more southerly 870-mile route through Tanzania, citing lower transit prices.

Kenya will go it alone with an 865-kilometer line to a port on the Indian Ocean. Two pipelines will test the economics of the developments. Both projects probably need an oil price of $50 to $55 a barrel to break even, while lower costs or taxes may be required to justify a final investment decision in Uganda, according to BMO Capital Markets.

The Tanzanian route will get some funding help from France’s Total , which owns a stake in the Uganda reserves, but it still hasn’t secured the financing it needs. Further north, Kenya’s explorers are under pressure to improve the project’s viability by finding more resources.

“The Kenyan pipeline seemed economically viable when Ugandan oil was going to flow through it,” said Jacques Nel, an economist at NKC African Economics. With separate lines each carrying less oil than planned and global prices remaining weak, the economics “will continue to cast a shadow over the development of the sector,” he said.

While Africa produces more than 8.4 million barrels of crude daily from major exporters like Libya and Algeria in the north and Nigeria and Angola in the west, eastern countries weren’t on the world oil map.

That changed in 2006, when Tullow Oil Plc found what may be as much as 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable reserves in landlocked Uganda’s Lake Albert region. In 2012, Tullow made another find in Kenya’s South Lokichar basin that may contain 750 million barrels. Combined, Kenya and Uganda may be able to produce about 400,000 barrels a day once production begins.

That could catapult Uganda, which will account for about two-thirds of the output, to upper-middle income status by 2040 as economic growth rebounds to as much as 10 percent from 4.6 percent in the last fiscal year, according to the World Bank.

Kenya’s government would generate revenue of $650 million a year in the late-2020s, even with crude at just $45 a barrel, said KCSPOG, a nongovernmental organization.

Originally, the two countries agreed to share a pipeline running through Kenya’s arid Lokichar basin to the coastal town of Lamu. But parts of the route have been prone to attacks by bandits and cattle rustlers.

It’s also is close to Somalia, where Islamist al-Shabaab militants have waged an insurgency against the government for the past decade, as well as carrying out raids inside Kenya.

Safety was a concern for Paris-based Total, which in January increased its holding in the Lake Albert site. The French company agreed to help finance part of an alternative route through Tanzania that may cost about $4 billion.

Uganda government of ficials said the switch was a business decision. The Kenyan route would have been “very costly,” with a tariff of $15.90 a barrel, compared with $12.20 for the Tanzanian pipeline, according to Energy Minister Irene Muloni.

“We took a decision which is good for our country,” Muloni said in an interview in Kampala, the capital.

Tullow’s CEO-designate Paul McDade said last week that Uganda’s resources could be developed at a total cost of about $20 a barrel, including capital expenditure on drilling and pipeline construction plus operating costs. “Along with the offer of better tariffs, Uganda argued that the Tanga pipeline would mean easier land access, better security, and would open up another important trade route,” said Emma Gordon, an analyst for East Africa at Verisk Maplecroft.

“Currently, the country is heavily reliant on Kenya for its trade.” Uganda’s decision dented Kenya’s ambitions to develop a $26 billion regional transport corridor, leaving explorers in the country under pressure to improve the project’s viability by boosting resources.

Source:Daily News