Google: Kenya may be Africa's tech leader

Kenyan capital Nairobi has emerged as a "serious tech hub" and may become Africa's technology leader, Google chairman Eric Schmidt said last week.

Schmidt visited Kenya's iHub innovation hub last week during a whirlwind visit to Africa that also included stops in South Sudan, Chad, Nigeria and Rwanda.

...Assuming that Kenya's upcoming March election goes off without incident, Schmidt says the East African country's technology enterprises can be expected to grow quickly.

...Fibre link planned for South Sudan

Despite being one of Africa's poorest nations, South Sudan is planning to build three fibre-optic links from the country's capital, Juba, to Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia.

...Vodacom sues Tanzanian regulator

Vodacom Tanzania has taken that country's regulator to Fair Competition Tribunal over proposed cuts to interconnection rates - the fees mobile operators charge each other to field calls over their networks. The regulator has proposed a cut of 60% and wants it to come into effect at the beginning of March.

...Kenya gets Intel-powered $125 smartphone

Safaricom, Kenya's largest mobile operator, has launched a US$125 smartphone powered by processor manufacturer Intel's 1,2GHz Atom Z2420 processor.

The device, called the Yolo, will come bundled with 500MB of data. It runs Google's Android operating system.

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