Kenya also received the Government Leadership Award.

Zain’s ZAP mobile money service also received Best Mobile Money for the Unbanked Service which also includes its service in Kenya.

Africa is really showing potential in software and mobile innovations and this is a great improvement from where we have been in the past.

Get the rest of the award winners at the GSM World website

Safaricom and Equity bank have moved a step higher to strengthen their working relationship by introducing new ATM withdraw for M-Pesa through the Equity Bank ATM network. Equity Bank, Kenya’s largest bank in the aspect of account holders joins hand with Kenya’s largest money transfer service. Currently, M-Pesa has over 8 million users while Equity Bank offers 550 ATM points countrywide.

Just recently, Equity partnered with the 3rd competitor of Safaricom’s M-Pesa, yuCash offering similar services.

Well, the ever growing unlimited email storage on google is now a thing of the past. You still have your free account but now you need to pay for anything above 20GB. The plans are between $5 and $256 per year although the storage is quite big compared to other services. Below is the pricing structure:

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)
80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
200 GB ($50.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
400 GB ($100.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card

Although compared to other services this is relatively cheaper, Google started out offering these high end free services and with that it got to everyone. Eventually, they have almost every internet user in one of their free services. Gmail makes most of its money from advertising and its grown quite fast compared to its competitors, Hotmail and Yahoo.

Question is, will it keep the same pace? Poeple shy off from services easily the moment they start billing. Lets watch how it goes. I got this on my account, the official Gmail blog hasnt mentioned a thing about this yet…or I havent seen it. Hopefully they will soon, I noted the pricing when they introduced the Eye-fi card.

If you are web/mobile application developer in Africa, you have a great chance to win the $125,000 set aside for African developers by Nokia and get to sell your product on the Ovi store.

“We’re inviting all mobile and web application developers to create best-in-class applications to run on Nokia devices. This competition is aimed at the development of applications relevant to Africa. Whether it’s wallpapers or widgets, if it’s bold and brilliant and African then submit your content now!

We’re looking for applications that are as uniquely African as bunny chow and biltong are and ones which will add value to the lives of the Africans who use it.” Reads http://callingallinnovators.com/africa/

So…get creative and tap this great opportunity.

Motorola Cliq

The war of high end mobile gadgets initially dominated by Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry has a new player threatening to take over the market. Motorola has unveiled their first Android based smart phone, The Cliq. This new gadget has a sleek design more resembling the iPhone at a glance but moves slowly to prove better reliability when you pull up the slide with a QWETY keyboard that has always given Blackberry a lead ahead of the iPhone.

The phone has a touch screen and a physical slide-out keyboard, a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, 3G connectivity, the ability to shoot video at 24 frames per second, a standard headphone jack and GPS capability.  A price for the device has not been announced yet but its not expected to go too far from the current prices of the high end iPhone and Blackberry.

The Cliq is lovely to hold. It feels quite slim (about 0.62 inches thick) and light (weighing 5.6 ounces). Comparatively, the Palm Pre is 0.67 inches thick and weighs 4.76 ounces, while the iPhone 3G is 0.48 inches thick and weighs 4.7 ounces. The sliding keyboard on the Cliq is smooth and the physical(!) keypad offers fantastic tactile feedback, making touch-typing a very real possibility. The phone comes in a polished black the company calls “Titanium” and “Winter White.” The 3.1-inch display is bright and easy to read — at least under the florescent lighting where we put the phone through its paces. The screen is touch capable and very, very responsive. It’s certainly on par with the iPhone.

The device will have a custom interface called Moto Blur that will bring together e-mail messages, text messages, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and photos into a single interface.

The new social Motorola

The Cliq has a 5.2-megapixel auto-focus camera. We tested it briefly by shooting some pics in low light and comparing it to photos from the iPhone’s camera. Guess what? The Cliq’s cam captured finer details and offered a brighter picture with true colors. It’s easy to share and upload photos, in the spirit of Cliq fun. The user interface on every photo has four choices: Share, Gallery, Set as Wallpaper and Delete. Clicking on the Share tab means you can post the photo to MySpace, Gmail, Picasa or any other photo-sharing site you have set up such as Flickr.

As usual, it launches the American and European market before it gets to Africa but am sure we shall have access to it real soon. It seems like the perfect gadget for anyone torn between the iPhone and a Blackberry, combining the business features of Blackberry and the social that is an iPhone.

Color Rings - Lets electronize the Jewels

Technology has proven to be leaning towards beauty and love for sleek devices. The iPhone is a good example, sleek and beautiful – and its a toy for men. Now this is heading to even personal reach and soon girls will be demanding diamond rings with blutooth and all the tech talk… BCK has come up with a very innovative way of using just your fingers to talk…forget your bluetooth headsets, here comes the Color Rings

“The color rings are an accessory for cell phones that are inspired in the gestural language of the use of the phone. It is conceived as an extension of the hand, which makes their use a more natural one, and more comfortable and more attractive as well. The rings are thought to be either an electronic component, or a fashion accessory. They were designed to be worn in the thumb and pinkie fingers, and work as a microphone and headset, respectively. These, interconnected wirelessly with the phone, allow responding calls only by separating the fingers and speaking, using distance sensors between rings to activate the call.” Says BCK’s portfolio page.

Color Rings

Working together with your cellphone (presumably via bluetooth), the ‘rings’ are worn on your thumb and little finger. One ring works as the microphone, and the other is the headset.

Now this is the new version of the rings and I assume that soon some diamond company will get innovative and start spreading the love with technology. Each day gets better with technology! This is an amazing innovation, just imagine where we are headed!! Your hand has just become the new headset.