Author: Kaluka wanjala

Most of us spend a significant part of our days on the internet accessing different services from Google, WhatsApp, Netflix, Twitter, Facebook etc. We don’t really think about what it takes to access these services as that is not important to us. We want the services and expect them to be available and fast all the time.  With each passing day, demand for these services keeps rising and we need to appreciate the role data centers play in ensuring some of these services are available with very low latency. Colocation data centers such as IColo plug into this by providing…

The UK, through the East Africa Research and Innovation Hub (EARIH) of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), is participating in the Kenya Innovation Week (KIW), running from 6th to 8th December 2022 at the Sarit Expo Centre. The EARIH is showcasing innovations supported through various UK-funded programmes that are breaking ground with emerging technologies and initiatives in agritech, clean energy solutions, health, and more. “It is an immense privilege to know that the UK Government and the UK science and innovation sector have been Kenya’s partners on this journey right from early-stage grant funding of innovations and start-ups…

Safaricom is making some changes to its postPay plan. The telco has announced that it will be revamping its PostPay and All-in-One offerings under what it calls the Go Monthly plan. The company went ahead to say that the new plans will be available at slightly lower prices than before.  The reduced prices got many people excited as we all like saving money. The only issue is in the fine print as Safaricom is making some changes to the Call minutes subscribers get with each PostPay plan. With the current PostPay plans, you get a given number of minutes to…

Back in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading, the Central Bank waived the transaction fees between mobile money wallets and banks. The fees for mobile money transactions below Ksh 1,000 were also waived. This was meant to get money to flow through the economy whose growth  was slowing down.  Most banks and even Safaricom were not happy with this decision as they argued that it would reduce their profit margins. Their protests landed on deaf ears as the transaction fees were done away with in the end.  Even as banks and telcos seem not happy with the decision, it…

Earlier today, Lipa Later announced its official acquisition of ecommerce platform, SkyGarden. SkyGraden has been in financial crisis having run out of money and would have gone under were it not for the acquisition by Lipa Later.  According to Eric Muli, LIPA Later CEO, they have fully acquired SkyGarden and its team who now work from Lipa Later’s offices. The two companies will continue working independently but there will be some overlap in some areas. SkyGarden will run as it has before just with a new owner. The acquisition cost is still unknown but Lipa Later may share those details…

Earlier today, a new e-commerce platform officially launched its operations in Kenya. This new platform is called Kapu and was started by former Jumia executives including Sam Chappatte who at one point was Jumia CEO. He left Jumia back in November 2021 and is now the CEO of Kapu.  Some of the other former Jumia executives joining him include:  Cyrus Onyiego former MD of Jumia Travel and former COO of Jumia Foos– he will be the COO at Kapu.  Former Jumia CMO who will now be the Head of Marketing at Kapu.  Stanislas Barth who was Jumia’s head of Offline…

Africa Data Centres has announced it has secured a piece of land adjacent to its existing data centre in Nairobi, Kenya, and plans to expand the facility up to an extra 15MW of IT load. The build will be completed in the first half of 2024 and will bring five times more than the current capacity. According to Hardy Pemhiwa, Group President & CEO of Cassava Technologies, “Colocation has become the foundation of African digital transformation and will be for the foreseeable future. Our investment into expanding our data centre operations in Kenya is in line with the increasing demand…

SkyGarden has had a few rough months and even had plans to shut down operations. The e-commerce platform was running out of cash and could not keep operating unless it got a cash injection. The company was burning a lot of cash but was just not profitable yet as is the case with more other e-commerce sites. Just last year, $4 million in series A funding but by October this year, the company was running out of money. With e-commerce requiring huge investments in marketing to attract buyers, the platform spent a significant chunk of the funding to do just…

Black Friday seems to still be on and ecommerce platform, Masoko, has some deals that you can get. You can get up to 36% off on the various deals available in case you want to get a new smartphone and save some money at the same time.  Unlike other ecommerce platforms, Masoko isn’t very vocal about the deals it has to offer. I don’t get why this is the case as they do have some good devices on offer.  The phones are in different price segments as you will see below.  Smartphones below Ksh 30,000 Nokia C2 – Ksh 10,999…

Pay Television Company StarTimes Media is set to enrich subscriber’s viewing experience following the introduction of a bouquet upgrade campaign that will see subscribers on both terrestrial and satellite platforms enjoy automatic access to higher bouquets at the cost of lower bouquets for the first 15 days upon renewal of their monthly bouquets of choice. StarTimes will offer more premium channels for every subscription renewed where subscribers on terrestrial platform’s Nyota bouquet will for the initial 15 days access content reserved for Basic bouquet while subscribers on Basic will access Classic bouquet for a similar period with Classic subscribers earning…