Innovation and Smart Cities in Africa

Africa it has been the mother of innovation. While the continent is huge, the level of innovation has been interesting to watch, largely fueled by the equalizing nature of technology and mobile telephony. Mauritius , the smallest country in the African country is playing a major role willing to finance startup in the Fintech, IOT and Mobile App by private initiative like the Mauritius Startup Incubator runned by Nicolas Goldstein

The Smart City Scheme is an ambitious economic development program aimed at consolidating the Mauritian international business and financial hub by creating ideal conditions for working, living and spurring investment through the development of smart cities across the island.

The development of smart cities in Mauritius & Africa is opening up a plethora of investment opportunities.
The smart city project is a new initiative to stimulate innovative scientific and technological activities, provide technology-driven facilities to the business community and create a vibrant city lifestyle.

The smart-city concept is about providing investors, nationals and foreigners, with options for living in sustainable, convenient and enjoyable urban surroundings.

The Internet of Things: Sizing up the opportunity

Three years ago, industry pundits and analysts predicted that, by 2020, the market for connected devices would be between 50 billion and 100 billion units. Today, the forecast is for a more reasonable but still sizable 20 billion or 30 billion units. This leveling off of expectations is in line with what we have seen in past introductions of new technologies. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, for instance, there was much discussion in the semiconductor industry about the potential benefits and implications of Bluetooth technology, but the inflection point for Bluetooth did not happen until 2003 or 2004, when a large enough number of industry players adopted it as a standard and pushed new Bluetooth-based devices and applications into the market. The market for Internet of Things devices, products, and services appears to be accelerating toward just such an inflection point, in view of four critical indicators.

Supplier attention: Internet of Things developer tools and products are now available. Apple, for instance, has released HealthKit and HomeKit developer tools as part of its latest operating-system upgrade, and Google acquired Nest to catalyze the development of an Internet of Things platform and applications.

Technological advances: Some of the semiconductor components that are central to most Internet of Things applications are showing much more functionality at lower prices. Newer processors, such as the ARM Cortex M, use only about one-tenth of the power that most energy-efficient 16-bit processors used only two years ago. This leap forward in technological capabilities is apparent in the evolving market for smart watches. The first such products released in 2012 boasted 400-megahertz single processors and simple three-axis accelerometers. Now a typical smart watch will include 1-gigahertz dual-core processors and high-end, six-axis devices that combine gyroscopes and accelerometers. Meanwhile, the prices of the chip sets used in these products have declined by about 25 percent per year over the past two years.

Increasing demand: Demand for the first generation of Internet of Things products (fitness bands, smart watches, and smart thermostats, for instance) will increase as component technologies evolve and their costs decline. A similar dynamic occurred with the rise of smartphone usage. Consumer demand for smartphones jumped from about 170 million devices sold annually just four or five years ago to more than a billion devices in 2014. The increase in orders coincided with a steep decline in the price of critical smartphone components.

Emerging standards: Over the past two years, semiconductor players have joined forces with hardware, networking, and software companies, and with a number of industry associations and academic consortiums, to develop formal and informal standards for Internet of Things applications. AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM, and Intel, for instance, cofounded the Industrial Internet Consortium, whose primary goal is to establish interoperability standards across industrial environments so that data about fleets, machines, and facilities can be accessed and shared more reliably. Other groups have been focused on standardizing the application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable basic commands and data transfer among Internet of Things devices.

Digital Africa Conference and Exhibition 2016 edition is Themed “AcceleratedDevelopment for Africa with IoE (Internet of Everything)” holds from the 1st – 3rd of June, 2016 at the International Conference Centre, Abuja. The Internet of Everything has gone from a small and interesting topic of conversation to an industry with the potential to change the way the world functions.

Digital Africa 2016 to Focus on Internet of Things

Intense preparations for the successful hosting of the 2016 edition of the Digital Africa conference and exhibitions have commenced, with the organisers promising to make this year’s edition the biggest in the history of the 4-year old annual gathering of major, medium, and niche players in the broad ICT sectors.

This year, the organisers said they would focus on Internet of Things (IoT), since it has become a global driver for technology innovation in the 21st century.

Chairman of Digital Africa Global Consult, organisers of the annual technology show, Dr. Evans Woherem announced that the 2016 edition has its theme as “Accelerated Development for Africa with Internet of Everything (IoE).”

The 2016 edition of Digital Africa conference and exhibition is the fourth in the series of successful events earlier held in 2013, 2014 and 2015. It has attracted renowned ICT experts to discuss Africa’s ICT sector development as well as proffer solutions to the challenges limiting the continent’s advancement to the point of digital singularity with the rest of the globe.

Woherem noted that the Internet of Everything (IoE) has gone from a small and interesting topic of conversation to an industry with the potential to change the way the world functions.

He said: “In recent years, we gave entered a new era of connectedness beyond the human realm. More and more objects in our physical world are now able to communicate with each other or with us through embedded sensors, tags, and actuators without human involvement. These ‘smart objects’ can see, hear, feel, and smell the world around them. Intelligence embedded into personal items, household appliances, cars, clothing, factory equipment, and infrastructure generates vast amounts of valuable data that can be collected, networked, and analyzed for a wide range of business, societal, and personal advances.”

Woherem observed that everything one can think of is now about to start being linked to every other thing in the world through the Internet adding that in the past, only computer servers were interconnected into the Internet, then eventually the laptops, tablets, and smartphones also got connected. Today, according to him, every other thing imaginable is about to start being linked to the Internet, leading to a world of Internet of Everything (IoE).

“Internet of Everything helps the cities and vehicle owners or drivers. The cities that embrace technology in the future will be the winners in the management of the increasing sizes of cities due to rural to city migration. Barcelona is one of those cities doing that today through IoE," he said.
“It is full of innovation and transforming into a smart city through the Internet of Everything. Job creation has increased due to smart city implementation. Elderly ones can put a piece of technology on their necks that helps them to be much more independent and enriches their quality of life. The Internet of Everything is also helping to remove the silos in departments and how many things were done," Woherem added.

He said Africa needs leaders that have a good vision of the modern Africa, countries, cities and villages they want to create to modernise, enhance economic growth, increase standard of living, make life more pleasant and convenient for her people. He, therefore, urged Africa to get ready to embrace the new trend, IoE.

“Since the evolution of the first and second industrial revolutions till date, Africa has been at the lower rung of the technology league table. Hence, Africa is the least developed continent economically and so the weakest in power, for there is a positive correlation between having technology and economic development. Europe, supported heavily by technology, started the first and second industrial revolutions with the US, and Asia followed, through Japan,” he stated.

According to him, billed to hold June 1-3, 2016, this year’s edition will see speakers touch such areas as infrastructure needs and the role of government; the environment, such as smart cities and homes, urban development; Agriculture; Security; Oil and Gas; Health and Life Style; Retail, among others.

Will Africa take the lead in the Internet of Things?

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become one of the most talked about technological trends in recent history. It can seem complex but is simply the concept of connecting many devices to the internet from washing machines and lights to wearable devices and Electronic gadgets that previously operated as stand-alone units with no interconnectivity. These devices can then communicate with each other and share relevant data.
As a key feature is sharing of content to relevant platforms, concern has been raised over how secure this data will be and the risks of hacking. Major investment must be made in the security of cloud-based data, so that no private information can be compromised.

Practical Applications
With an internet penetration rate of 16% and eight out of the 10 countries with the world’s lowest internet access rates, there are major barriers to the adoption of the IoT. However, there is clear growth potential. Consulting firm McKinsey estimates that by 2025 Africa will have tripled internet penetration to over 50%, or around 600m people, and as it does not have the same extensive infrastructure as Western countries, it can adapt its cities for IoT solutions more easily.
African businesses and individuals are expected to be impacted heavily. Full-scale integration of IoT could, for example, revolutionize medical care. A small chip could be implanted into hospital patients, allowing their vital signs to be monitored more accurately and easily than in any current system. Everyday applications of IoT connectivity in households could save Africans money, as the pooling of data from individual devices is shared and translated into information, which can regulate the usage of home applications and increase their energy efficiency.

Social Benefits
The promise of IoT enhancing life for individuals and society has been shown in small-scale projects, such as the addition of GM OnStar to GM’s cars. This automatically detects when the car has been in a collision, calls for assistance and provides the emergency services with the location.
Many industries can adopt IoT to better track assets, control inventory and limit inefficiencies. A simple yet highly effective usage of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is in vending machines. Connected to the internet, they can share data to enable stock control, and alert the need for maintenance.
Embracing IoT will give companies a competitive edge in an ever-changing global marketplace and it can only go from strength to strength as the level of ICT literacy in Africa rises and the cost-benefit analysis of investment in IoT solutions becomes more heavily weighted in favour of the benefits. Africa is a continent of innovators with an entrepreneurial spirit, one of the many reasons why IoT can expect to play a powerful role in Africa’s economic development for the foreseeable future.

This year’s Digital Africa Conference & Exhibition will focus more on the challenges and also, proffer solutions for accelerating development for Africa with Internet of Everything (IoE)

Apple vs. FBI: What's Really Going On?

  

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Apple is embroiled in a battle with the FBI over an iPhone that was used by one of the shooters involved in the December attack that killed 14 and wounded 22 in San Bernardino, California. The two sides are involved in an ongoing court case over Apple's refusal to comply with a Feb. 16 order from a federal judge that demanded that the tech giant build custom software to help the FBI break into an iPhone 5c given to slain attacker Syed Rizwan Farook by his employer.
With both sides refusing to back down in what is turning into a complicated legal skirmish, untangling the realities from the rhetoric has proved difficult.
Here's what you need to know about Apple's fight with the FBI. [6 Incredible Spy Technologies That Are Real]


What is the FBI asking Apple to do?
In 2014, Apple deliberately changed its operating system (OS) to ensure that all iPhones were encrypted by default and that Apple had no access to the encryption keys. Instead, keys are generated by combining a user's password with a unique identifier stored on the phone. Farook's phone runs iOS 9, which includes the new security setup as well as a feature that permanently locks the phone after 10 incorrect entries.
Because Apple can't decrypt the phone, the FBI wants the company to upload a modified OS that disables the 10-attempt limit and permits electronic entry. Farook used a 4-digit passcode to lock the phone, so the new software would allow the FBI to rapidly cycle through the 10,000 possible combinations.
The FBI needs Apple to build the software because any updates require the company's digital signature, according to cybersecurity expert Alan Woodward, a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. "These are the keys to the crown jewels — it's what makes their software legitimate," Woodward told Live Science.
The FBI is willing to let Apple build and upload the software at its own facility, but the agency wants to input the passwords itself.

What are the key legal arguments?
The FBI's legal argument relies heavily on the All Writs Act (AWA) of 1789, which gives judges general authority to demand compliance with court orders as long there are no other legal avenues, the subject of the order is closely connected to the case and it does not impose an undue burden. Apple says it is "far removed" from the case and the resources required to build the modified OS are an undue burden on the company. [Smartphone Encryption: What You Need to Know]
Apple has also invoked the right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment, saying code is a form of speech and the company is being compelled to code for the FBI as part of the court's request. Previous cases have determined that code can sometimes be considered speech, but the circumstances were different in those situations, according to Peter Swire, a privacy law expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
"We don't have clear guidance in the courts about whether the First Amendment would apply," he added.
Importantly, though, a federal judge in New York ruled in favor of Apple in a similar case last week regarding an iPhone that was seized in a drug case. While the decision has no direct impact on the San Bernardino case, the ruling from Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, in New York's Eastern District, said the government's interpretation of the AWA was so expansive it "cast doubt on the AWA's constitutionality."
Still, Swire said it's hard to predict the outcome of this legal fight. "Judges sometimes disagree, and if they do, this could quite possibly go up on appeal — maybe all the way to the Supreme Court," he said.

Why now?
This battle is just the latest attempt by law enforcement to circumventgrowing levels of encryption in consumer devices. The White House announced last fall it would not promote legislation compelling tech firms to build "backdoors" into their devices to allow agencies to sidestep encryption, which means the FBI has been forced to explore alternative means.
Court briefs from Apple show that the company has challenged at least a dozen recent FBI requests to unlock iPhones. Woodward said the case appears to be more about the government's right to force companies to unlock phones than it is about evidence on this particular device. And, the FBI has chosen a case where public opinion is likely to be on their side, he added. "Terrorism is a very emotive subject," Woodward said.
FBI Director James Comey admitted as much when he conceded recently that the case could set a precedent. And other law enforcement groups, both at the state and local level, have said they will try the same tactics if the FBI wins, reported The Intercept.
"If Apple is forced to open up the San Bernardino phone, then it's hard for it to avoid opening up others' phones when faced with a similar court order," Swire said. [15 Best Mobile Security and Privacy Apps]

What are the wider implications?
Apple and its supporters claim the FBI is asking it to effectively create a backdoor into its products, with no way of guaranteeing that these workarounds will only be used by the "good guys." The company also argues that a precedent like this would strengthen law enforcers' hand when demanding other workarounds that further erode encryption and privacy. For its part, the FBI says it is only asking Apple to do what was standard practice before the company made changes to its operating system, and the court order only covers a single phone.
If a precedent is set and these requests become routine, the risk of such technology ending up in the wrong hands would certainly increase. But, Woodward said the FBI's solution only deals with the limited situation where devices are in the physical possession of a would-be hacker, so fears spread by privacy lobbyists that the outcome of this case could lead to mass surveillance are most likely wide of the mark.
Rather, Apple's decision to fight the case is as much a battle to protect its reputation for security, Woodward said."Apple is trying to make it look like they are doing this for people's good but I don't think it's entirely altruistic," he said. A more pressing concern is that complying with the federal court's order would make it harder for Apple to resist similar requests from governments with poor human rights records, such as China and Iran.
Ultimately, the point may be moot, according to Woodward, because users have been able to create pass codes of up to 90 characters using both numbers and letters since the release of iOS 7. Even if it were possible to skirt security features and use a computer to automatically generate possible passwords (what's known as brute-force search), it would take years to chance upon the right combination, he said.
"If they did try, it would take longer than anyone at the FBI would be alive," Woodward said.

Culled from www.livescience.com, written by  Edd Gent, Live Science Contributor  .