TECH NEWS

Lagos, Nigeria | THE INDEPENDENT | Airtel Africa plc has today announced the retirement of the Chief Executive Officer, Olusegun “Segun” Ogunsanya, with effect from 1 July, 2024. Ogunsanya, who joined Airtel in 2012, ran the Nigeria Operations of the Telecommunications and mobile money company for nine years before his appointment …

COMMENT | ROBERT SKIDELSKY |   A little over a year ago, the San Francisco-based OpenAI released its chatbot, ChatGPT, triggering an artificial-intelligence gold rush and reigniting the age-old debate about the effects of automation on human welfare. The fear of displacement by machines can be traced back to the nineteenth-century Industrial …

JIUQUAN | Xinhua | China successfully launched SQX-1 commercial carrier rocket into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Sunday. The rocket blasted off at 3 p.m. (Beijing Time) from the launch site, sending the Di’er-1 satellite into the planned orbit. It was the sixth flight …

Dubai, UAE | THE INDEPENDENT |  Uganda’s Michael Okao, Darius Ogwang and Joshua Elem have won this year’s Commonwealth Sustainable Energy Transition Award for the best technical solution for their solar concentrator that harnesses renewable energy for clean cooking. They are students of Comboni College in Lira. The Commonwealth Secretariat announced …

It reflects growing concerns over the ability of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deceive and dehumanise COMMENT | ROGER J. KREUZ |  When Merriam-Webster announced that its word of the year for 2023 was “authentic,” it did so with over a month to go in the calendar year. Even then, the …

BEIJING | Xinhua | The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has launched a campaign to address the growing concerns surrounding the content of short videos. The month-long campaign focuses on three prominent issues, namely, the dissemination of false information, improper behaviors in short videos, and the spread of erroneous concepts, …

    Lagos, Nigeria | THE INDEPENDENT |  Airtel Africa has this week launched Nxtra by Airtel (“Nxtra”), a new data centre business founded on a commitment to meet the continent’s growing needs for trusted, and sustainable data centre capacity and to serve the fast-growing African digital economy. Nxtra aims …

  Entebbe, Uganda |  PATRICIA AKANKWATSA | The United Nations Command, Control, Communication and Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Academy for Peace Operations on November 29th, unveiled its inaugural virtual instructor-led training (VILT) facility at the regional service centre in Entebbe. VILT, a remote training class led by a …

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT |  Cabinet has approved US $266million (Approximately 984.2billion Uganda Shillings) to revamp the now dormant Uganda Air Cargo Corporation (UACC) Limited, another of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) enterprises. The company that specializes in cargo freight has been unable to do business for almost four …

Tanzania is moving forward with plans to use its extensive natural gas reserves as a substitute for gasoline in transportation. However, there are concerns about its long-term sustainability. Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT |  Tanzania has pushed East Africa into a new era of gas-powered mobility with the commissioning of …