Technology is progressively assisting us with working on our lives, incrementing efficiency, and saving time in numerous areas, including football. From 21st November to 18th December, the biggest men’s football tournament on the planet, FIFA World Cup 2022, will officially take place. Hosting 32 nations including Ghana and Senegal in Qatar.
Let’s take a look at some of the technologies that will be applied in the tournament to make it fair and decisive.
1. VAR Technology
Following quite a while of testing with many matches, the IFAB has formally placed into utilization video assistant referee (VAR) innovation. The 21st FIFA World Cup is the first competition to apply this innovation to help arbitrators. After the progress of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, VAR innovation will likewise be applied in the 2022 World Cup. Thanks to this technology, the transparency in football in particular, and sports, in general, has been significantly improved. Also, sports betting players can be assured of the results when placing bets at reputable betting sites like soccer Betway.
VAR associates three distinct camera frameworks:
Hawk Eye: comprises 7 to 14 high-velocity cameras mounted on the top of the arena. Peddle Eye will foresee the way of the ball to guarantee that no less than two cameras can record it. At the point when the ball turns over the objective line, the official’s watch will flag that the ball has entered the net.
GoalControl-4D: incorporates 14 cameras put on the goal, following the ball’s movement and conveying messages to the arbitrator’s watch.
GoalRef: is an electromagnetic enlistment framework mounted on the crossbar and vertical post of the goal, making an attractive field. At the point when the ball turns over the goal line, out of the touchline, the chip inside the football will sound, and the ref’s watch will likewise get a sign.
As needs are, a gathering of colleague refs will observe all improvements of the match through TV screens and sit in a different room of the arena stands. When distinguishing mistakes from the choice of the ref on the field, they will convey a message to the referees on the field to survey what is happening through TV. Obviously, the ultimate choice actually lies with the ref, yet this innovation will assist with settling disputable circumstances well.
2. Goal-line technology
At the 2014 FIFA World Cup, France’s Karim Benzema was quick to profit from goal-line technology as the ball crossed Honduras’ objective inside milliseconds. . Goal-line is a technique that utilizes PCs to decide if the ball has totally crossed the objective line or not. This innovation assisted officials with tackling up to eight circumstances at the 2015 FIFA Ladies’ Big showdown in Canada.
At the 2018 FIFA World Cup, arenas in Russia were all furnished with Goal-line innovation with 14 high-velocity cameras, which can convey a message to the official’s watch in less than a second when the match shows up. The ball crosses the goal line. What’s more, this innovation will continue to be applied in the 2022 World Cup competition.
3. Electronic tracking system
This innovation will constantly be utilized in each match at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, including various specialized apparatuses and gadgets for the two teams. The specialized and clinical staff of the partaking groups will be furnished with workstations and a devoted line to speak with mentors, as well as clinical staff on the seat. By investigating the player’s movement on the field, the mentor can change the strategies as needed.
Who will emerge as champions of the 2022 world cup at the end of the competition? We will wait and see.
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Africa is known as the land of unending opportunities…the aphrodite for the ailing global economy. The continent is taking baby strides in different aspects, and there are people who are moving forward to be the harbinger of change so far as the African economic resurgence is concerned. Let’s discuss a few African Tech Tycoons and get to know more about their story here.
So let’s have a look at the African tech Tycoons …the black pearls of business in this article. (In no particular order).
1. Tunde Kehinde, Co-Managing Director Of African Courier Express
Tunde Kehinde is a London-based businessman who co-founded Jumia, Africa’s first unicorn, with a financial investment of around $1 million from a rocket internet German startup. Presently the company has set a strong foot in Nigeria, and it is now the country’s top eCommerce website.
The path of success with Jumia is so pronounced that Tunde Kehinde set up another tech business in the year 2014, collaborating with Ercin Eksin, founder of Africa Courier Express (ACE). This company aims to streamline the logistics of delivery for various companies working in Nigeria and other African countries.
Tunde recently co-founded Lidya; a digital fintech lender which allows SMEs to unlock one-click, same-day credit and build a credit rating for the first time.
So he is someone who can be a role model for African Youth. Indeed a pathfinder!
2. Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Founder And General Partner, Future Africa
At the early age of 29, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji co-founded some of the most innovative and disruptive tech companies in Africa. Talk of Andela and Flutterwave, companies working actively to transform the tech innovation infrastructure for Africa. His efforts turned Africa’s challenges into opportunities.
With Andela, Aboyeji was of the opinion that Nigerians would love to if they thought they could earn around $105000 or even half from remote work. He joined Flutterwave in the year 2016 and helped raise funding of $35milion in a Series B round. Presently the company has gone on to become the fastest growing payment technology business and Africa’s unicorn.
Iyin is currently looking to help African startups reach the same scale as western companies with Future Africa. By removing the issue of funding, a primary barrier to a startup’s success.
3. Ken Njoroge, Co-Founder Of Cellulant
Ken Njoroge started with just $3000 on his credit card and co-founded Cellulant, a mobile payment system that connects consumers to merchants.
Presently Cellulent has fitted its flag successfully in 10 countries in Africa. The company now connects to 200 merchants and 44 mobile network operators.
Impressed by reputation and integrity, the government in Nigeria turned to the company and offered it a four-year-$8.9 m contract to run a registration and validation system for fertilizers at friendly prices.
4. Obi Ozor, Co-Founder, Kobo360
Ozor Obi began with a small logistic company using the savings that he made by working part-time at a supermarket whilst in school. His small side business began to bring about $7000 every month.
Then he began his business, Kobo 360, a logistic business that uses technology. At that time, the infrastructure of this very business in Africa was not that good enough. But with a never say die attitude, the company has gone on to become one of the largest supply chain providers in Africa, reaching people with resources. It raised $37 million in its series A round.
Conclusion
Other than these, there are other prominent names like Bright Simons, president of mPedigree Network, Jason Njoku, Founder iRokoTv, and Michael Macharia, the group chief executive SevenSeas Technologies.
We are all as interested in Africa’s rise, and we know so are you too. There are many books and resources on Africa that you could download at thepirateproxybay.com to gain comprehensive knowledge.
Indeed the names discussed above are like stars that the African youth like to chase. They are working extremely hard to bring in fortunes for themselves, the company, and the continent in general.
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A reader reached out asking us if the Zuku 5 Mbps internet package works well when using it to learn. We sometimes get direct questions like this or see them in the search terms of the website. So I’ll be sharing my personal experience on this subject in this post. You are welcome to also share your experiences in the comment section below.
To start off, I’ll say there are various factors that come to play in choosing a particular service. I remember I was warned against buying Zuku fiber and advised to get Safaricom home fiber instead. Because their experiences had been sour, I went ahead and got Zuku fiber and my experience has been great so far. Actually, two years on and it is still going great. Well except for a few downtimes, but nothing major to make me regret. Interestingly, the folks who warned me had issues with Safaricom a few months on.
Can Zuku 5 Mbps internet package enable learning? I believe your question is can you use the Zuku 5 Mbps package for your educational and learning needs without any lagging and buffering? The answer is simple, YES, and this is why I say yes.
The 5 Mbps package is for light work like email, file sharing, web browsing and streaming. This also includes video calls on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Google Duo or Google classroom, etc. Watch YouTube, Netflix, Showmax videos or stream any video content and you will be fine. This package will be able to handle all these very well so far as the number of users or devices aren’t more than 5 at a particular time. Zuku says customers may experience degraded performance the more the number of concurrent users.
Let me put it into a personal context. I use the 5 Mbps package and have children at home. At a go I can have one watching cartoons on YouTube on the TV, another watching YouTube on a Tab and yet another on a phone, whilst I go about my work on my PC. Once we exceed this and have about two other devices trying to stream, you’ll see the buffering and lagging start. So if you live alone or with a family of less than five then you should be fine. But it mostly has to do with the kind of applications using the internet. I bet you can have 20 devices doing chats and it will work seamlessly for all.
I have also used it for online learning on LinkedIn learning, Microsoft learn, Coursera and taken exams with Vue Pearson. It did meet the speed requirement for the certification exams on Vue Pearson so it works.
Zuku fiber is currently offering double speed internet to customers so if you purchased a J5 (5 Mbps) package you will be upgraded to 10 Mbps. This is at the same price of Kshs 2,499. I asked Zuku and they say it isn’t a promotion for a short period but a permanent upgrade. So technically you will have enough speed and data to take care of all your learning activities.
If your package is or was the 2 Mbps and it has been upgraded to 5 Mbps you should be fine and not have to worry. So long as the concurrent users aren’t so much to cause the lagging.
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Online trading is becoming increasingly popular, with Modern Trader reporting that the number of global online traders has grown from 9.5 million four years ago, to more than 15 million today.
Dany Mawas, Regional Director at INFINOX, a leading CFD and FX broker with an international presence including in Africa, attributes this growth to technological advances, which makes trading convenient and fast. Traders can now trade from anywhere and at any time and will get quick, easy access to the markets.
“Apart from the potential of achieving lucrative financial returns, additional benefits of online trading includes greater financial knowledge and developing associated skills with trading like discipline and emotional control,”.
Dany Mawas
How to start online trading
There are those that are apprehensive about starting online trading, due to the associated financial risk. To put them at ease, Mawas notes that while fine-tuning trading skills comes with experience, the best way to start is to open a demo account with one of the many online trading partners available today.
“A demo account is a simulation account that provides users with the opportunity to place trades and to become accustomed to how markets move,” he says.
Additionally, some online trading brokerages provide bonus incentives to boost traders initial deposit and give them a better platform to start on. With INFINOX, traders are only required to deposit as little as US $50 and will, in turn, receive an additional US $25 bonus. Meaning that 33% of their at risk capital is the bonus.
However, he points out that traders should also do their due diligence when selecting the brokerage to partner with and not only base their decision on the starting bonus. “This includes investigating where the brokerage is regulated, and ensuring it has a physical presence instead of merely being an online entity,” says Mawas.
Determine your plan of action
Mawas notes that although there are several game plans that beginner traders can adopt to gain profits on their investments, the old adage of ‘over-analysis leads to paralysis’ couldn’t be more true. “When developing a strategy it is vital to spend time researching and learning what works best. The more you perfect managing your risk, the better you become. If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to start simple and keep it simple.”
Mawas emphasises that trading is a humbling experience due to its binary outcome of either making the right or wrong decision. “As such, it is important for traders to have emotional control and the willingness to learn from their trading mistakes.”
Being emotionally invested can be detrimental to success, he adds. “Often, when the market dips, traders will make the emotional decision to continue trading in the hopes that they recover quickly, which often doesn’t happen. It’s imperative to assess each situation for what it is and to make the most informed decision.”
Why trading is more accessible
Current affairs such as COVID-19, the U.S election, and Brexit have prompted people to stay more up-to-date with current news, says Mawas. “This is important as the outcomes of these events have an effect on the markets. Nowadays people are more clued up than they think they are when it comes to knowing what is happening and what could impact their trading. This knowledge makes trading more accessible for those that wish to start.”
He also states that the internet is full of useful information for new traders to digest and that websites such as IX Intel offers manuals and how-to guides to help traders learn the basics of a successful trading career.
Mawas points out that the rise of social trading has also increased accessibility for beginner traders. “Social trading apps such as IX Social, allows users to access all the financial markets at their fingertips with the added bonus of tapping into other traders’ knowledge. Users can auto-copy top traders and receive the same results that they do.”
“Today, online trading is an easily accessible journey, and anyone can be successful if they use the right tools and spend time developing the necessary skills and acumen,” concludes Mawas.
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Pikie Monaheng, CEO of Amdocs South Africa says the covid-19 global pandemic is accelerating the need for digitization. He is therefore asking communications service providers (CSPs) to step up as African customers demand a more seamless digital customer experience.
It’s no secret that CSPs need to transform their businesses to compete in the continent’s highly competitive communications landscape and deliver the experiences that customers are demanding today. However, digital transformation is a journey, which takes time. And there are many tasks to undertake on the way.
So, how do CSPs go about achieving true digital transformation? What are the main challenges they must address?
IT modernisation is a key enabler of any digital transformation and adoption of cloud technologies is central to that. In addition to cost savings, the cloud provides the ability to swiftly evolve, react to market dynamics and launch new offerings. It enables elasticity on demand, creating an always-on environment where the flexibility to do things as a service is much greater and the organisation is not confined to own-premise computing power and IT.
CSPs will necessarily adopt a hybrid approach to cloud adoption with some systems remaining on-premise and others migrating to private cloud, public cloud and even multiple public clouds (like AWS, Azure and GCP) to benefit from the latest technologies and cost efficiencies. This complex IT environment creates challenges around managing the hybrid co-existence of the current and the new platforms, which requires careful management. Moreover, adoption of cloud brings new concerns such as the need for continuous optimisation, financial and economic management, regulatory compliance and data and security management.
Data is key for anticipating customer needs. Savvy CSPs will need to start leveraging data more effectively to make more astute business decisions. Here, AI plays a key role, helping CSPs to quickly create new offerings based on what customers are demanding. Injecting artificial intelligence into everything the organisation does will help it make critical business decisions, but also keep pace with an ever-changing, connectivity-first society.
CSPs will also need to inject intelligence into their own operations. To remain ahead of technology’s rapid evolution, organisations will be compelled to introduce AI-driven operations, while making continuous improvements to their IT environments. This is the only way to ensure flexibility and a fleet-footed response to change.
Ultimately, the success of any digital transformation depends on the people and the processes that execute the transformation. This requires getting employees to buy into digital adoption, embrace new technologies, new processes and new ways of working.
CSPs need to adapt their organisational culture to break down barriers and automate and expedite processes. They must instil a continuous learning and innovation mindset in their employees. Steps such as these will allow CSPs to be more agile and ensure their employees have the inherent ability to quickly adapt to the next big disruption.
With the focus on reskilling and repurposing, as well as the automation of manual tasks, employees will no longer have to do repetitive or onerous tasks. Rather, they will be freed up to concentrate more on business innovation and customer service.
One successful digital transformation story is that of a South East Asian media conglomerate, which recently underwent a digital transformation programme and migrated its business support systems (BSS) to cloud. The aim was to improve the user experience and increase self-service adoption, personalise recommendations and improve usability.
In 14 months – and negotiating Covid-19 challenges – the transformation journey resulted in upfront operational and capital expenditure savings, as well as 10% cost optimisation. Also, the business was able to decommission data centres and enable updates to individual apps without impacting its overall digital architecture.
In another instance, Philippines-based telecommunications company, Globe, modernised a fragmented and inefficient call centre to deliver an enhanced digital experience for customers.
To deliver better customer interactions and reduce waiting time, increase call resolution rates and enrich their customers’ digital lifestyles, the company’s legacy system was migrated to the cloud (Amazon Connect) and an Amdocs solution was adopted to convert 31 screens to a single, unified agent desktop. This led to a 40% reduction in operating expenditure (OPEX) and an overall improvement in net promoter score (NPS).
Monaheng says digital transformation journeys may come with some challenges, but the rewards are worth the effort. “CSPs that have already embarked on accelerated journeys to transform their businesses are positioning themselves to deliver digital customer services that leverage new opportunities and technologies and elevate their customers’ satisfaction and happiness rates. And frankly, the operations that don’t ride the transformation wave will be left behind.”
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Lucy Kerner, Senior Principal Global Cybersecurity Evangelistand Strategist at Red Hat talks about the cybersecurity problem and shares four ways to strengthen your cybersecurity position as an organization.
Lucy notes in this insight that when it comes to cybersecurity, a lack of resources can be a bigger threat than the criminals. Read on to find out more.
Resources have always been a problem when it comes to cybersecurity. You are not always rewarded for doing security the way you are when you develop a new business application quickly. This usually leads to security teams being understaffed and overworked. At the same time, skilled cybersecurity professionals are in high demand, and there is significant turnover in cybersecurity positions.
In fact, when it comes to cybersecurity, a lack of resources can be a bigger threat than the criminals who have their sights set on stealing organizations’ data, money, time, and reputation. This has long been true, but COVID-19 turned the cybersecurity resource challenge into a full-blown problem, causing security to be overlooked in many cases.
In the best of times—or, at least, more normal times—talented cybersecurity resources are difficult to find, expensive to procure, and hard to retain. The pandemic has exacerbated the cybersecurity skills shortage as organizations’ focus and resources have shifted to shoring up, or even building from scratch, work-from-home capabilities. Proactive security has been put on the back burner for many companies, exposing big gaps between the cybersecurity resources.
In a pre-pandemic study conducted by (ISC)2, an international, nonprofit membership association for information security leaders, the cybersecurity workforce gap in the United States was estimated to be nearly 500,000. By combining its US cybersecurity workforce estimates and gap data, the association found that the cybersecurity workforce needs to grow by 62% in order to meet the demands of US businesses today. Using the workforce estimate of 2.8 million based on the 11 economies it studied and a global gap estimate of 4.07 million, the association estimated that the global workforce needs to grow by 145%.
Indeed, respondents to the survey that was used to develop the study said that a lack of skilled/experienced cybersecurity personnel is their top concern, and that the gap puts their companies at moderate or extreme risk. Research for the Ponemon Institute’s 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report began months before COVID-19 had widespread impact, but supplemental questions related to the potential impact of remote workforces due to the pandemic revealed that 76% of organizations predict that remote work will make responding to a potential data breach more difficult.
With the Ponemon research estimating that the average total cost of a data breach is $3.86 million, preventing a cybersecurity incident in the first place is critical. But all is not lost. Solving the cybersecurity resource problem outright is not going to happen right away, but there are things that organizations can do beyond adding more security bodies. Here’s how to strengthen your cybersecurity position.
1. Establish internal security training and certification programs
Savvy organizations realize that true cybersecurity requires a cultural shift. Essentially, some level of cybersecurity must be part of each employee’s responsibility. That’s not to say that your marketing director will be on the security front lines, of course, but every employee should take part in security education and certification programs. And that doesn’t mean that you can just create a PowerPoint presentation that you force employees to sit through so they can check off a box; it means developing meaningful and relevant programs that engage employees and help them understand the cybersecurity threat and their roles in mitigating it. Think about “lunch and learns,” mock breaches, and even escape rooms.
2. Encourage security cross-pollination
If security is everyone’s job, then security resources should not be limited to the IT department. Think about ways security can cross-pollinate within the organization. Just as security is infiltrating the development arena through the growing DevSecOps movement, security resources could be integrated into other areas, as well. This will not only develop company-wide understanding of security issues, but it will also encourage cross-collaboration and the opportunity to build security into processes, products, and services from the ground up.
3. Take a hard look at your security tooling
Many organizations have security tools they don’t really need or that are out of date and can’t support new technologies such as cloud, containers, or Kubernetes. This wastes time and money. For example, many companies are running legacy security tools designed to protect systems that are no longer used.
Companies also often have too many tools to keep track of, leading to redundant tooling and the inability to manage the growing number of tools. Also, many companies aren’t making full use of security tools that are already built into existing systems, such as the operating system, container platform, or security tooling provided by the cloud provider. A thorough inventory of existing security tooling will reveal what’s needed (and not needed) to address current security concerns.
4. Put a consistent automation strategy in place
With so many moving parts in place, no human or group of humans could ever fill every security hole. Indeed, as IT environments and the world around us become more complex, so do the security events facing IT teams. A consistent automation strategy can help organizations more effectively mitigate risks by reducing human errors, remediate issues, respond quickly to security alerts, and develop repeatable security and compliance workflows.
It’s important to note, however, that automation isn’t one product or even a collection of products. Organizations should look for an approach that overlays a consistent automation strategy across app dev, infrastructure, security operations, and so on. In fact, Ponemon’s Cost of a Data Breach Report noted that organizations with fully deployed automation—versus those with no automation deployed—realize a savings of $3.58 million in average total cost of a data breach.
Is the cybersecurity resource problem unsolvable?
It’s true that, realistically, the resource problem can’t be completely solved, but it’s a problem that you can effectively address and manage with proactive planning, strategic technology implementation, and widespread, ongoing, and engaging security awareness training and collaboration.
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