Africa, Europe link up

Africa has a new communications link with Europe bringing together Portugal and Nigeria via the Spanish island of Tenerife, states Rapid TV News.

Infrastructure has been built by the company Main One which has been in charge of the deployment of the undersea fibre optic cable between Portugal and Nigeria. It is hoped the project bridges, literally and metaphorically, the digital divide between Africa and Europe.

The total project consists of 7 000 km of cable and has cost about $400 million. At the presentation of the project, the first simultaneous video conference between Africa, Europe and India took place.

Bharti Airtel has shortlisted five companies for a contract worth more than $1 billion to provide technology outsourcing services for its newly acquired African operations, the Economic Times newspaper reported, reveals Total Telecom.

The report said IBM - which currently provides IT services to Bharti Airtel in India and Sri Lanka - as well as HP and Accenture are among the multinational vendors. Wipro and Tech Mahindra are the Indian vendors that have been shortlisted.

"Both Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services are no longer in the race," the report quoted one of the persons as saying.

A new research report paints a gloomy picture of Africa's move to digital broadcasting, saying over half the continent's countries would not make the switch ahead of the deadline, writes Journalism.co.za.

The report by Balancing Act reveals over half of Africa's 52 countries are unlikely to make the 2015 deadline set by the ITU for the transition to digital broadcasting.

“Over half of the African states have not yet even started the policy implementation process and although 2015 is four and half years away, the time remains tight to complete the process,” said analyst Russell Southwood.