Author: Kaluka wanjala

Under the remit of its recently established Africa Transformation Office (ATO), Microsoft has announced new initiatives to accelerate the growth of 10,000 African start-ups and fast-track investment in Africa’s start-up ecosystem over the next five years. Microsoft’s recently launched global Founders Hub will now be available to African start-ups through the ATO. The Founders Hub is a self-service hub that provides start-ups with a wide range of resources, including access to mentors, skilling content, tools like Microsoft Azure and GitHub, and go-to-market and business support. Microsoft is also creating new partnerships with accelerators and incubators across Africa, including Grindstone, Greenhouse,…

It seems like every other month we get the limits of smartphone charging technology pushed even higher. Just recently, we were getting excited with Xiaomi with its 120W fast charging that can fully charge the Xiaomi 11T Pro to 100% in about 17 minutes. The 11T Pro is available in Kenya for Ksh 50,000. OPPO wants to take the spot of having the fastest charging tech for smartphones. The company has showcased the 240W ‘SuperVOOC’ charging prototype at MWC 2022. This is double the speeds that Xiaomi is currently offering. The difference is Xiaomi has a device already on the…

The Redmi Note 11S is one of the three smartphones launched by Xiaomi in Kenya about two weeks ago. This phone is available in stores in Kenya starting from Ksh 22,999 for the 6/64GB model and going all the way up to Ksh 29,999 for the 8/128GB model. Besides the Redmi Note 11S, the company also unveiled the Redmi Note 11 and the Redmi Note 11 Pro. Below is a look at their prices: Redmi Note 11 Pro 6+64GB – 29,999/- 6+128GB – 33,499/- 8+128GB – 34,999/- Redmi Note 11 4+64GB – 19,999 4+128GB – 22499 6+128GB – 23,999/- You…

HUAWEI Mobile Services (HMS) returns to MWC 2022, showcasing a range of innovative tools, capabilities, and experiences through HMS Core, HMS Apps, and Five HMS basic service engines, as well as the latest hardware innovations. Held in Barcelona, Spain from 28 February to 3 March, located at Fira Gran Via, Hall 1, Booth 1H50, Huawei announces HUAWEI Mobile Cloud for PC, AI Search for PC, AppGallery for PC, HUAWEI Assistant·TODAY for PC, Petal Search enhanced for AR Glasses, and HUAWEI Vision’s Somatosensory Game mode for the first time to global developers and consumers. Huawei is also displaying the capabilities of…

After six quarters of  growth, HMD Global has announced that its Services business will see significant growth and scale in 2022 with projected one million subscriptions to its suite of services in H1 2022. This milestone marks an inflection point in the scale of HMD Global’s connectivity, EMM, IoT and security offerings and positions the company for greater penetration into the enterprise space in the coming years. Industry veteran Janne Lehtosalo has overseen the growth of the HMD Global Services offering since its inception in Q4 2019 and will continue to build on these successes to launch the Services business…

M-KOPA has today announced its $75M Growth Equity round*. The round was led by Generation Investment Management and Broadscale Group, with participation from new investors including LocalGlobe’s Latitude Fund and HEPCO Capital Management. M-KOPA’s existing investors, CDC Group** and LGT Lightrock also participated in the round. This capital injection brings M-KOPA’s total equity funding to $190M. Today’s news also coincides with M-KOPA providing financing to two million customers. With the funding, M-KOPA plans to expand into additional countries, adding to its hubs in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and recently launched Ghana, to further scale its footprint across the continent. The company…

HMD Global has launched two new feature phones exclusive to Africa – Nokia 105 African Edition and Nokia 110 African Edition. The refreshed handsets bring more value, connectivity, and quality with their wireless FM radios so you can listen to your favourite sports, news and more, all without the need for a headset. Gopher Ogembo Senior Business Manager Kenya & East Africa HMD Global said: “Feature phones play a vital role in connecting people. People in Africa want handsets that place battery life fears at the back of their minds and durable devices that are strong enough to withstand the…

When Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 11 series in Kenya last week, the company also announced the availability of some of its TVs in Kenya. One of these is the MI TV P1 series. There are two models available, a 32 inch and a 43 inch one. You get Android TV 9 with these TVs and this is what might set them apart from some of the other smart TVs Xiaomi hopes to compete with. Xiaomi has had a number of smart TVs but we have just never seen the company aggressively push them in Kenya. The Mi TV P1…

Equity Group, in partnership with Microsoft, has launched a virtual hackathon open to students from The University of Nairobi and Meru University of Science and Technology. The Hackathon, which opened for registration on 4th February, saw a total of 663 students from the two universities register to be among the 100 shortlisted participants to take part as innovators. The Hackathon is the first of its kind to be run by the Group and seeks to drive innovation and crowdsource solutions to address business problems and social issues. Students from the two universities will have an opportunity to take part in a competitive…

Realme has today announced the availability of its latest smartphone, the realme 9i, in Kenya. The realme 9i is available in Kenya starting from Ksh 21,999 on Jumia among other retailers. The realme 9i comes with a number of updated features including adaptive refresh rate, faster charging, Snapdragon 680 processor etc. This one of the first smartphones powered by the Snapdragon 680 processor. The other one is the Redmi Note 11 series that was launched in Kenya last week. Realme has launched the 6GB RAM variant with 128GB of storage. This is the one available for Ksh 22,999. At this…