in #TodaysReads, broadband, india, Safaricom

#TodaysReads: Safaricom backs War on Terror, 10 Year Old Philanthropist and more (15.5.14)

French journalist Camille Lepage killed in CAR While the world focuses on Nigeria’s missing girls, Sudan’s descent into civil war, let’s not forget the Central African Republic which has been suffering war for some time now from sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians.

Security in CAR has deteriorated in recent months. Around a quarter of CAR’s 4.6 million population have fled their homes since conflict erupted in March 2013 between mainly Muslim and Christian militias.

The 10-year-old who offered money to India’s central bank This is a really cute story coming out of India. Made me go Awwww!!!

Laila, who lives in Gurgaon, an affluent Delhi suburb, is not someone who usually spends time worrying about the economy – like most 10-year-olds, she likes playing with friends and other activities such as reading, singing, playing the guitar, swimming and athletics.
But last summer, bad news about the economy made the headlines every day – the manufacturing sector had slowed down, the rupee was continuously sliding against the dollar and India’s current account deficit was growing wider by the day.

Should broadband Internet service be treated as a basic utility? Related to my post on net neutrality yesterday. Just because it’s not a utility, in the everyday needed sense of it, doesn’t mean it won’t be in a couple of decades and we need to be ahead of the curve here to ensure it remains affordable. If we do treat them like utilities they have to pass those benefits back to us as the public.

Some ISPs in Kenya have faced difficulties when laying fibre cables to building as landlords demand monthly fees for hosting the ISPs lines.ISPs however, argue that companies like the Kenya Power or the water distributors do not ask for such payment to connect tenants. The ISPs want the landlords to treat their Internet cables as utility cables and not charge for their routing.

Varsity students demand for fees reduction I’ve already written what I think about the proposed fee increase so I won’t get into that. This though is greedy, short sighted and selfish of them. The only thing I can get behind on this is increasing the amount of money the Higher Education Loans Board gives them because that money they will have to pay back with interest which counts as an investment on the governments part.

Sh14bn Safaricom deal to boost war on terror I don’t know what to think about this deal but it is interesting. They’re doing this for free essentially and I don’t know what sort of favours that will buy them down the road. Also there’s the fact that we’re going to be collecting massive amounts of data. How will this data protected and who will have access to it? Read this post I wrote about the government wanting to play big brother look like they’re going ahead with it.