The African Telecommunications Union (ATU) and Finnish telecommunications company Nokia have together pledged to speed up digital transformation in Africa.

The two signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Nairobi, Kenya, this week saying they plan to leverage the power of telecommunications – including 5G networks – to connect the unconnected and identify innovative use cases, as well as business models.

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An ambitious action plan has been proposed to connect African universities and other post-secondary education institutions on the continent to high-speed internet at a cost of US$52 billion, an expense that would also provide laptops to 15 million students and 500,000 teaching staff in the next five years, running between 2021 and 2025.

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Africa’s leading technology group, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, is now delivering affordable high-speed connectivity to communities in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) using state-of-the-art Wireless Optical Communication technology (WOC) from Project Taara at X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory. This achievement marks a robust high-capacity communications bridge between Kinshasa and Congo Brazzaville.

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As the dateline for the deployment of 5G networks in Nigeria narrows down to early next year, there are indications that about 25 million Nigerians in 114 telecommunications clusters would remain outside coverage areas as telecom authorities get set for roll out.

It is also likely that about 13 million Nigerians in another 103 clusters that were recently connected into the GSM network for the first time under the 1G-4G technology would also come behind under the 5G regime.

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The North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria has officially issued an order setting aside a decision by the communications regulator to publish an invitation to apply (ITA) for spectrum, after the regulator and communication companies in the matter failed to reach a settlement over the terms of the auction.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) had issued the contested invitation in October 2020, with the intention of holding the auction by end of March 2021.

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The Federal Government has approved the deployment of the Fifth Generation Network, otherwise called 5G in Nigeria.

The Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami) announced the approval after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja on Wednesday, September 8, 2021.

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In the coming weeks, Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet constellation, will be able to beam down satellite-based internet to the whole world. “We’ve successfully deployed 1,800 or so satellites, and once all those satellites reach their operational orbit, we will have continuous global coverage,” Starlink President, Gwynne Shotwell, said in late June. Starlink is aiming to reach the African connectivity market with Beta tests as early as 2022.

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African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) has announced that its subsidiary, Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), has taken a minority investment in Liquid Intelligent Technologies (Liquid), a pan-African telecommunications technology group.

FEDA is a development impact-oriented subsidiary of Afreximbank, which provides equity and quasi-equity funding to companies developing trade and value-added export of goods and services in Africa.

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African countries are looking to space to meet the rising demand for connectivity, fueled by fast-changing data consumption patterns and the growing need to bridge the digital divide in land-locked countries.

Demand for internet connectivity has skyrocketed across the continent in the last two years, driven largely by Covid-19 disruptions that have significantly altered the way Africans consume data.

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The highly anticipated 2Africa subsea cable system is expanding even farther, adding four new branches to extend connectivity to the Seychelles, the Comoros Islands and Angola, as well as adding a new landing in southeast Nigeria.

The 2Africa consortium is made up of tech heavyweights and major telcos including Facebook, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, Vodafone, China Mobile International, Saudi Telecom (stc), Telecom Egypt and WIOCC.

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