Global Tech - Afrikan Heroes

MTN to Launch OpenRAN Network in Africa

June 20, 2021

Africa’s largest telecoms network, MTN Group is leveraging its expansive footprint across the continent to test and ultimately deploy OpenRAN – an innovative technology that will enable it to launch new services more quickly, cost-effectively and seamlessly, supporting future strategies in line with the company’s Ambition 2025: Leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress.

The telco plans to modernise its radio access networks using OpenRAN. This is in line with one of five vital enablers of MTN’s strategy: to build technology platforms that the company believes are second to none, thereby allowing for the rapid expansion of 4G and 5G population coverage across its markets.

With up-to-date technology, MTN expects a reduction in its power consumption and associated carbon emissions. This, in turn, supports its plans to decarbonise its network and achieve net-zero emissions by 2040, MTN’s Project Zero.

OpenRAN allows for the disaggregation of hardware and software elements of a network, enabling telcos to build a network using components with the same specifications and scale from a diverse base of vendors. This disruptive trend is gaining popularity as the industry seeks to promote an open and interoperable ecosystem between various vendors.

MTN says it aims to roll this out by the end of 2021 in collaboration with its partners Altiostar, Mavenir, Parallel Wireless, TechMahindra and Voyage.

As an early adopter, MTN first rolled out open-source technology in 2019 to improve rural coverage. MTN says that this was in line with its belief that everyone deserves the benefits of modern connected life.

To date, MTN has deployed over 1100 commercial sites in more than 11 countries and were among the pioneers of open-source adoption, facilitating cost-effective deployment in unconnected areas.

For all mobile network operators, radio access network (RAN) make up the bulk of capital and operating costs. By applying OpenRAN, MTN targets further innovation and cost efficiencies.

“At MTN we are alive to the potential of open interfaces. There is a lot of value that dominant players bring to the business, but telecommunications today is as much about the stability of the network as it is about new services,” says MTN Group CTIO Charles Molapisi.

“Customers measure us against the speed with which we can deploy the latest technology and we are committed to finding faster and better ways to do that.”

The many benefits of OpenRAN include diversifying the vendor landscape, disrupting the cost flow, and removing dependencies on proprietary suppliers.

The new technology also promises cost savings and flexibility as it allows operators to use generic hardware and open interfaces. It enables a so-called ‘Lego architecture’ where many different vendors supply the components and software products that together make the end-to-end radio network work. By modernising the network, MTN hopes to reduce its power consumption and emissions in support of Project Zero.

“While OpenRAN brings a new architecture to mobile networks and more suppliers to deal with, it gives telcos much-needed flexibility,” says Amith Maharaj, MTN Group Executive: Network Planning and Design.

“This means that MTN can now look at building a network that can meet cost and capacity requirements of specific markets, or even rapidly deploy 5G and/or 4G seamlessly with existing legacy services. This is a real game-changer for mobile advancement in emerging markets.”

While the technology is still in its early days and widespread adoption is likely years away, MTN has already collaborated with a number of global players to reap the benefits and trigger innovation. In efforts to drive OpenRAN standardisation, MTN says it is also participating in Facebook’s Telecom Infra Project.

“Early adoption gives us the ability to improve and deploy appropriate network architecture underpinned by technology, both tried and tested, and disruptive, to ensure we continue to deliver an exceptional experience, and ultimately play our part in harnessing the power of technology to lead digital solutions for Africa’s progress,” concludes Molapisi.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Dark Fibre Africa Names Andries Delport a New CEO

June 16, 2021

Andries Delport, former Vodacom Group chief technology officer has been named as new CEO of Dark Fibre Africa, the Remgro-controlled DFA parent CIVH has said. He will replace Thinus Mulder who was CEO of Dark Fibre Africa. Mulder, DFA’s founding chief financial officer who has been with the business for the past 13 years, will leave the company at the end of September, CIVH and DFA said in a statement. They did not say where Mulder is going.

Andries Delport, New CEO Dark Fibre Africa

“Thinus will still be available to the group until at least December 2021,” said CIVH CEO Raymond Ndlovu. “His consummate knowledge of the CIVH group’s businesses and the ICT industry is an asset that CIVH will still want to draw upon.”

He will immediately become more involved with DFA operations during the intervening transition period. Delport, who is currently chief technology officer of CIVH, will take the reins from Mulder at DFA on 1 October. “He will immediately become more involved with DFA operations during the intervening transition period,” DFA said.

Ndlovu lauded Mulder’s leadership in “achieving the company’s stellar financial performance and the significant improvement in DFA’s Net Promoter Score in recent years”.

DFA builds fibre-optic telecommunications networks and has deployed over 14 000km of ducting infrastructure in major metros, secondary cities and smaller towns. It is the sister company in the CIVH stable to fibre-to-the-home operator Vumatel.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Confidential Computing – Why Privacy Should be the Heart of Digital Experiences

June 11, 2021

By Hamilton Ratshefola

In this past year, the consumer experience came to the forefront. As we faced various stages of lockdowns, we turned to online banking, seeing our doctors remotely, running our businesses using technology and socializing through a screen. Digital interactions became a part of our lives – ever-present and normalized as we navigated changes swept in by this pandemic.

As our digital interaction became seamless and permeated through every aspect of our lives, privacy continued to be top of mind. We carried out our lives predominantly online – making many of us more vulnerable to fraudsters.

As we navigated living our lives digitally, data theft dominated 2020 as the most common attack in the Middle East and Africa. Across the region, data theft and leaks accounted for a significant 29% of attacks- underscoring the threat from information-stealing malware and phishing attacks in the region.

In turn, the role of Chief Information Officers and Chief Security Officers were at the forefront of our lives. With this need for heightened privacy and protection of our data – how could they ensure that our digital experiences and interactions remained secure? Technology leaders and CIOs turned to confidential computing.

As businesses need to remain trusted stewards of other people’s data, CIOs looked to confidential computing to ensure confidence and trust in every digital interaction. With confidential computing, they enabled full authority and privacy in computing, code, and data, even when running in a cloud environment.

Guided by standards and controls in a cloud environment – confidential computing provides greater assurance that the data is protected and visible only to its owner and no one else, not even the cloud vendor that is hosting the data – even during processing.

This is especially crucial for highly regulated industries like financial services, telecommunications, government and healthcare that are stewarding vital data.

Cybercime Online

IBM Security X-Force discovered sophisticated attackers using targeted spear-phishing campaigns in attacks against manufacturing businesses and NGOs involved in the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain.

Cyberattacks had evolved in response to the unprecedented changes brought on by the pandemic – and threats in 2020 targeted businesses such as hospitals, medical and pharmaceutical manufacturers and energy companies powering the COVID-19 supply chain.

Through confidential computing, CIOs leading organisations in highly regulated industries – whether large and small – were able to run in a cloud computing environment where there are others also running workloads, but still have full privacy and authority over those workloads, effectively running in an enclave.

And IBM is leading the charge in bringing this technology to the enterprise. After over a decade of research, confidential computing moved quickly from projects in IBM Research to fully deployed offerings across the industry being adopted by global companies including Apple for its CareKit SDK, Daimler and others.

Globally we’ve built confidential computing into the IBM Hyper Protect Software Development Kit for iOS, which helps developers build healthcare applications that are HIPAA-ready running on Apple devices.

For example, a developer can build an app that lets a consumer organise and manage their medical records from their phone, and the app will have confidential computing capabilities built-in so that personal health data cannot be accessed by anyone except its owner. Regardless of industry, organisations across South Africa can benefit greatly from confidential computing.

Banks which are setting out to become platform providers can collaborate securely with third parties on new cloud solutions – combining sensitive data with other organisations’ proprietary information to build new solutions while keeping their data and IP secure.

Digital Transformation in South Africa

Confidential computing is also the solution for South African businesses that are setting out on their digital transformation journeys. Almost 60% of organisations across South Africa say the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation. They indicate they are planning for COVID-19 recovery to include investment in technologies such as AI, IoT, blockchain, and cloud.

With the growing adoption of hybrid cloud environments, confidential computing allows an organisation to choose the cloud computing services that best meet its technical and business requirements, without worrying about storing and processing customer data, proprietary technology and other sensitive assets.

Confidential computing will enable organisations to play a leading role in securing our digital interactions. Consumers will continue to entrust their data to many organisations as we navigate the challenges of this health pandemic – and all they ask is for the confidence that security and privacy are at the centre of every digital interaction.

Hamilton Ratshefola is the Country General Manager – IBM Southern Africa

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

CribMD, Nigerian eHealth Startup Launches Expansion Drive

June 7, 2021

The trailblazing e-health startup CribMD, which describes itself as “Uber for doctors”, has kick-started its expansion drive with the $2.6 million funding it recently received. The eHealth startup which was established in June 2020, CribMD connects users with doctors for house calls and telemedicine services via its on-demand platform, allowing them to schedule appointments from the comfort and safety of their home, on their own schedule.

Ifeanyi Ossai, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of CribMD says that the startup is revolutionising each and every step of the care process, from affordability, patient-provider matching, to billing, to health record management. “Through the touch of an app or a click on our site, an affordable, highly-vetted, qualified medical doctor will arrive at your door, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” “The CribMD experience brings preventive, primary, and urgent care to a patient’s doorstep. We empower our medical teams to develop deep patient relationships through unhurried visits, comprehensive care, and immersion in the patient’s home environment.”

The startup raised a US$250,000 pre-seed round last year, and has now added to that with a US$2.6 million seed funding round which it will use to build its team and further expand its network of partners in order to scale more quickly. The funding comes from US accelerator Sputnik ATX and The Guardian Nigerian.

CribMD already has 2,800 subscribers, and another 50,000 on its waitlist. It has over 5,000 doctors on its platform, and has monthly recurring revenues of US$75,000. It hopes to scale its operations via the investment.

“Funds are being deployed to product management, hiring and marketing,” Ossai said. “We plan on expanding to other parts of Africa within the next two years.”

He is certain of the positive impact of the startup’s platform.

“Before CribMD, people in Nigeria queued up at clinics and hospitals, waiting all day to get care, and in most cases they were not served the same day due to hospital or clinic capacity issues. Prior to CribMD, we ran five clinics under WeCare in Delta State Nigeria and were overwhelmed everyday by demand,” said Ossai.

“The clinics simply cannot serve that many people and we could never build enough clinics to keep up with demand. That’s why we started CribMD. With CribMD, every home is a clinic and we don’t have to build it ourselves. Just like Airbnb – every home is a hotel and they didn’t have to build it themselves. With tech, we can now serve people in the comfort and safety of their own home.”

CribMD makes money through subscriptions, with clients paying a monthly, quarterly or annual fee.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Vodacom to Drive Connectivity in KwaZulu-Natal

June 6, 2021

South Africa’s leading telecoms firm, Vodacom has launched a huge injection of infrastructural development in the country’s KwaZulu Natal region to the tune of R100-million ($73,137.60). This will see to the deployment of 84 brand new base station sites as part of the telco’s KwaZulu-Natal Region drive

Ishmael Mathinya, Executive Head for Operations, Vodacom KZN

The new sites were rolled out in 9 District municipalities and 14 local municipalities including Jozini, uMhlabuyalingana, uMfolozi, uMlalazi, uMsinga, uMzumbe, uMgeni, Ray Nkonyeni, Mandeni, eNdumeni, eDumbe, Msunduzi, Newcastle and Nqutu.

This is part of Vodacom’s Rural Coverage Acceleration Programme, firmly aimed at expanding network coverage for people who live in deep rural and remote areas in South Africa. Vodacom hopes this investment and new infrastructure will augment the continued development of network infrastructure outside of urban areas in the region.

“In a bid to ensure the widest and first-class network that is accessible to all South Africans, we made a deliberate decision to invest in the region and are making great progress so that we leave no one behind,” says Ishmael Mathinya, Executive Head for Operations, Vodacom KZN.

“Critically, with these new base station sites, we have connected previously unconnected areas enabling scores of people to use innovative digital services in their daily lives that will empower themselves in a Digital Age.”

Vodacom claims that its commitment to accelerate network coverage for people who live in deep rural areas has resulted in a positive social impact. With the telco’s newly deployed 3G and 4G sites, young children have access to internet resources in schools, job-seekers can use the internet to search for jobs. For Vodacom subscribers, the telco has zero-rated both its e-school and jobs portal.

People who previously had to travel long distances to do banking are now able to bank through their devices from the comfort of their homes.

Vodacom is planning on deploying 29 new Deep Rural Base Stations fitted with standard technologies across the region to cover 14 more municipalities.

The telco hopes that the new investment will continue to bolster the local economy and its development.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Qatar Airways Ramps Up Potential in RwandAir Partnership

June 5, 2021

Early this year, Qatar Airways announced intentions to purchase a 49% stake in Rwanda’s national carrier, RwandAir. Qatar airline’s CEO, Akbar Al Baker has outlined the importance of this partnership with the central African carrier and the proposed takeover. Qatar Airways has multiple partnerships with airlines around the world. This means that if the Middle Eastern giant doesn’t serve an area, it likely offers a connection with somebody who does. One area of keen interest to the airline is the continent of Africa, with Al Baker calling it the most unserved continent.

According to Akbar Al Baker, “Africa is the most unserved continent, and the airlines that are serving them are taking the passengers to the cleaners. My job is to provide them a world-class airport and partner with RwandAir to give them the kind of service we provide in Qatar Airways.”

It’s not just the airline that Qatar Airways is interested in. The airline is actively involved in the construction of the Bugesera Airport around 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

According to previous reporting from ch-aviation.com, Qatar Airways signed a deal with the Rwandan government for 60% of the airport, valued at $780 million at the time. The deal includes three separate agreements concerning, Building the airport, Owning the airport and Operating the airport (BOO).

RwandAir was founded in 2009 following a rebrand from RwandAir Express, which was active from 2002 to 2009. The airline serves 26 destinations spread across 20 countries and 42 routes. One of the airline’s more exciting routes is operating a fifth freedom to Guangzhou via India’s Mumbai. Of course, the route was impacted by the current situation faced by the global aviation industry.

Across a fleet of ten active and two inactive aircraft, the airline has a capacity of 1,658 seats. RwandAir owns seven of its 12 jets,1x Airbus A330-200,1x Airbus A330-300,2x Boeing 737-800,2x CRJ900ER,1x Dash 8 Q400. The remaining five are leased from AerCap (1x 737-700), ALC (2x Boeing 737-800), Dara Aviation (1x Boeing 737-700), and Montrose Global (1x Dash 8 Q400).

The airline did have commitments for two new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft alongside two new A330neo jets. These were due to be delivered from leasing companies. In September, it was revealed that the airline would not be taking these jets, instead looking to lease equivalent jets from its Qatar Airways partnership. Qatar had been using a similar approach with its partner Air Italy before it ceased flights.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Nigeria’s Terragon Verified as Leader in Data and Marketing Technology

June 3, 2021

Africa’s leading data and marketing technology company, Terragon, has been listed as a verified CDP company by the globally renowned CDP institute, having met the institute’s specific criteria for qualification as a RealCDPTM. This makes Terragon the first and only African CDP company in its directory.

This was made known recently in an announcement by the CDP Institute after a rigorous audit and demo assessment of Terragon’s Customer Data Platform (CDP) – its key functionalities and user interface.

David Raab, the founder of the CDP Institute had this to say about Terragon being the only African CDP company listed by his Institute

“Every market has unique requirements. We are pleased to welcome Terragon as a firm that will be able to meet many African companies’ needs for unified customer data.”

Speaking on the new development, CEO of Terragon, Elo Umeh acknowledged the verification, noting that it validates the great work done by the Terragon team over the years.

“We are very excited about this recognition. Being listed alongside leading global CDP providers is no small feat.

The team is elated and motivated to keep leading the charge in the African Data and Marketing Technology space”

On what differentiates the Terragon CDP from others, Mr. Umeh added “Beyond our CDP meeting the standards of this renowned Institute, Our CDP comes equipped with the ability to reach over 350 million profiles of African Customers online and offline; which gives our Clients a huge leap in their data-driven marketing efforts.

With the eventual phase-out of third party cookies, slated for 2022, posing a huge threat to the digital marketing ecosystem, Facebook has developed a solution to help Brands prepare for this new reality – the Facebook Conversions API solution.

This solution helps Brands by capturing important online and offline events necessary for specific business outcomes through performance based campaigns such as customer acquisition, app install, lead generation and lots more, without cookies.

It offers more data control, reliability and privacy compliance. Terragon is the only African-founded CDP partner for this solution for Africa.

Also reacting to this, Mr. Umeh urged brands to test and learn the solution now as it guarantees seamless online advertising when the cookies crumble.

“Our clients will be able to carry out their online advertising seamlessly even after cookies go extinct as our CDP now comes uniquely equipped with the Facebook solution.” He added

“I urge Brands and Agencies to start to try out this solution now, rather than wait and get caught up in the aftereffect of cookies extinction which will negatively affect Brands advertising efforts”

On Terragon’s partnership with Facebook. The Terragon CEO stated: “We’ve positioned ourselves as the “go to” Partner for global big-Tech players seeking entry into the African market in order to effectively reach African consumers.

We do not compromise on data governance, customer success or product quality, which is why we boast of having top tier Brands as clients and partners spread across FSI, FMCG, E-commerce and Telco brands.” He added.

Since its evolution as an Enterprise solution Company, focused on Africa, Terragon has successfully deployed its Data Platforms and Solutions in at least 20 Brands, including top tier Banks, multinational FMCGs as well as Digital Agencies in Africa.

These solutions have helped these Brands in their data-driven marketing efforts, resulting in lower Cost of Customer acquisitions and higher returns on Ad Spend; with use cases including data enrichment, insights generation, customer acquisition, look-alike model creation, credit scoring for loan applicants, multi-channel customer engagements and lots more.

Terragon is the leading data aggregation and enrichment, consumer insights and activation platform that helps Brands gain a deeper understanding of African consumers in order to create and deliver better experiences that drive meaningful relationships.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Why Immutable Architecture is Key to Protecting Backup Data

June 1, 2021

Kate Mollett, Regional Director at Commvault Africa

By Kate Mollett

Ransomware and other malware are a constant threat, and data backup is critical to safeguard a business’s most important asset. However, cybercriminals are increasingly targeting and encrypting backup data copies as well, a strategy that leaves organizations unable to recover unless they pay the ransom.

Keeping an immutable copy of backup data is a best practice for data protection and is the solution in the event of a successful two-pronged ransomware attack.

What is immutable architecture?

For data to be immutable means that it is unable to be changed over a period of time. With an immutable architecture, when retention policies are set for data backup and recovery, data will be secured, locked and unchangeable for that retention period. This in turn means that it cannot be encrypted by malware, keeping it safe from cybercriminals and ensuring that recovery is possible without the need to pay a ransom.

An immutable architecture is critical in today’s landscape and should address three key elements: data locks; air gaps and isolation; and data validation.

Automatically secure against unauthorised changes

Data locks automatically secure storage, applications, and the backup infrastructure from unauthorised changes, such as those that would be made by malicious applications like ransomware. Locking mechanisms should be able to be applied to any storage, including hyperscale, and should be applied at a deep layer under the operating system. This is to ensure that the locks do not rely on software so that if a malicious actor moves or alters the software, the storage is still protected.

The first layer is hardening the storage infrastructure itself. Leading-edge industry standards, as well as industry best practices, need to be used to harden storage appliances. This includes the underlying operating system and databases for metadata. This layer helps to improve the overall security posture.

Secondly, it is essential to harden the application, in other words, the backup and recovery management interface. The typical environment has many users at varying levels of permission who have access to the backup and recovery environment. They may be able to change, delete or maintain data, and this introduces the potential for both accidental and malicious removal of critical data. To protect against this, it is essential to lock the storage and the application layer using multi-factor authentication controls. This will help to protect and validate access to backup and management software. It is also advisable to implement command authorisation as an additional layer of locking, to add yet another safeguard.

By adding layers of protection at both the appliance and application levels, organisations are better protected against both accidental data loss and malicious intent.

Segment and block direct access to backup data

Air gaps and isolation enable organisations to segment data and block direct access to backup data copies. This is essential for protection against ransomware events. Threats typically infiltrate an environment through various exploits, which gain the malicious actor access to the network. From there, the attack infiltrates through the environment, locating data and ‘lying in wait’ to be triggered in a full-blown ransomware attack.

Air gapping mitigates this, providing a layer of protection against these laterally moving threats. Since storage is segmented, isolated and unreachable, it becomes difficult for a threat to gain access to storage targets.

Continuously ensure backup copy integrity

Organisations rely on backup data to be protected and secured. This in turn relies on the assumption that the data is not corrupted since this would make it unrecoverable. However, without data validation, it is impossible to verify the integrity of backup data. With an on-premise solution, this needs to be performed at a hardware level, whereas with cloud-based and hyperscale storage, data validation can be performed more efficiently, at a software level. Data can be validated at a block-level as it is being transmitted, and if it passes checks it will be written to disk. Should data be invalid, an alert will be sent so that the backup can be rerun.

This delivers a more proactive view of data, rather than a reactive strategy once corrupt data is already written to disk, ensuring that the backup copy is always valid and can be restored. Intelligent solutions can even use distributed file systems that have the inherent capability to mitigate data corruption and heal at the file system level. This offers extra resiliency to ensure data is valid from the start and always stays valid.

Unchanging, protected, safe from harm

Today, successful ransomware attacks rely not only on encrypting primary data but attacking the backup copy as well. Once this happens, organisations are defenceless and are left with little option other than to pay the ransom or lose their data. Implementing data management best practices, including keeping an immutable copy of data, is essential to an effective disaster recovery strategy. An immutable architecture that incorporates data locks, air gaps and data validation, will ensure organisations can recover from any data disaster.

Kate Mollett is Regional Director at Commvault Africa

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Twitter Plans to Adopt Facebook-like Tweet Reactions

As part of efforts to create more engaging interactions on its platforms, social media giant, Twitter is rolling out new features that observers say are copycats of what obtains in rival Facebook platforms in a bid for better user experiences. This development is coming from a series of tweets from noted app researcher, Jane Manchun Wung. She shows off a WIP version of the system in the Tweet below:

Twitter Is Working On Tweet Reactions View:

“Likes”, “Cheer”, “Hmm”, “Sad”, “Haha”

The new reactions panel so far includes 5 potential Tweet reactions complete with corresponding emojis. More reactions will probably be included in the final system if it does eventually leave the testing phase. Right now the system appears very bare-bones, so it is probably early in development.

The reactions do resemble Facebook’s own system, no doubt Twitter sees Facebook’s as inspiration. Time will tell how closely the final reaction system resembles Facebook’s, or if it is even released to public use.

This follows another report from The Verge that the Big Blue Bird had begun testing these features. Apparently, the company has been surveying users over May about the possibility of adding the reactions. “We’re exploring additional ways for people to express themselves in conversations happening on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Verge.

The spokesperson emphasized that Twitter’s research is still in its early stages at this point and that the new reaction emojis would add to Twitter’s current “Heart” button instead of replacing it.

Twitter also seems to be testing and applying new features on a monthly basis, perhaps in an effort to gain an edge over its competitors.

Last month, the company launched its Spaces initiative. Available to users who have over 600 followers, the system promotes more intimate conversations with a small group of users and their followers.

Twitter went on to say that it hopes Spaces will let users use their voices and talk about what’s happening now – live.

“From Tweeting to talking, reading to listening, Spaces encourages and unlocks real, open conversations on Twitter with the authenticity and nuance, depth and power only the human voice can bring.”

The company has also been considering a premium, or subscription-based optional service, where users will be able to charge “super followers” for exclusive content.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

How Emotion Artificial Intelligence Can Make the World a Better Place

May 31, 2021

Most of us take it for granted that we can read another person’s emotions through subtleties such as body language, yet this is a real struggle for many others. Enter emotion AI. Researchers at Stanford University modified Google’s augmented reality glasses to read emotions in others and notify the wearer. The glasses detect someone’s mood through their eye contact, facial expressions and body language, and then tell the wearer what emotions it’s picking up.

“Emotion AI taps into the individual,” explains Zabeth Venter, CEO and co-founder of Averly. “If you think about facial recognition, which is a kind of emotion AI, I can pick up if you like what I’m saying by whether your smile is a smirk or a real genuine smile.”

Such nuances go deeper. Another example is polling: what is your favourite colour? Maybe it’s purple. But did you say that enthusiastically? Did you hesitate? Did you just say it to say something? Did you even understand the question?

We simply can’t get this level of context from the available surveys, sales data and the many other ways we try to understand humans through information. But through emotion AI, we can grasp incredible nuance.

The problem with AI bias

AI is in a quandary – it’s handy but also potentially biased. A notorious example is how, several years ago, Google’s photo AI mistakenly tagged people with dark complexions as gorillas. Why did this happen? Thankfully there isn’t some racist cabal working at Google. Instead, the data used to train the AI lacked the diversity to make a proper distinction, leading to a phenomenon called AI bias.

“How the data bias comes in results from how good the data is and the understanding you have of your data. It’s very easy as a machine learning company to just go broad and find public data on the internet. That’s a cheap way of doing things, but you’re not getting accurate representation. Ethical AI is about looking for that nuance. If I’ve built my machine learning model to just cover one demographical group, and now I rate everybody else with that model, that’s just plain stupid.”

Emotion AI is doubly vulnerable to this issue. Emotions are more abstract, and even cultural nuances are often essential to understand someone’s perspective.

AI matters because relationships matter

Relationships are crucial to success in many transactions. But it’s a concept we often paid lip service to: companies may talk about relationships and customer-centricity, but they quickly fall back on other, more convenient positions. Then the pandemic happened, placing a renewed emphasis on relationships. And AI is the conduit to understanding those connections better.

“If you do not have great relationships, how do you build them? How do you get people to understand what’s important to others? That’s really what you can do with AI.”

Using AI to create authentic context and relationships with others, especially customers, is key to Africa’s development. Many Africans primarily access information and services through their phones – AI is a terrific way to engage with such audiences, providing it has that nuanced data that respects local differences.

This creates a fantastic opportunity for the continent. Most AI – and their biases – comes from the developed world. It’s fair to say that data bias exists because those places don’t understand the local contexts of the places their technologies reach. But AI trained in those localised environments is very powerful and progressive.

Emotion AI is at the cutting edge of what ethical AI should be. To get there, you need two things – relevant local data and diversity among those using the data.

“Even something like who’s analysing your data makes a huge difference,” says Venter. “If you have a bunch of guys looking at data, they might think something is not important when it is. If you have women-only looking at it, they might have a completely different view. It’s about having a balanced view, and making sure you analyse your data in that sense, that creates fair and useful AI.”

Artificial intelligence could be the most incredible technology we’ve ever invented. If it is honed, trained and used in the local context, made by locals for locals, it will change the world for the better.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry