The Africa 2008 telecommunications conference, to be held in Cairo from 12 to 15 May 2008, will welcome leading names in the ICT industry, and more than 5000 visitors. It comes at a time when increased liberalisation of markets is leading to a boom in telecommunications on the continent.

Organized by the International Telecommunications Union, ITU Telecom Africa 2008 is intended to promote the ICT industry both regionally and internationally. Five to six thousand visitors are expected to attend the event and explore the region’s ICT and telecommunication market.

The event promises a concentration of government, regulatory and private sector players, together with leading thinkers to negotiate and debate the industry’s most innovative technologies and its most significant issues.

“The investment climate in Africa is particularly inviting right now,” said Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General. “Liberalised markets forge forward and demand continues at a remarkable speed.”

Referring to the successful Connect Africa Summit, Dr Touré added, “We’re certain to see further momentum on the investment commitments generated in the last six months.”

AFRICA 2008 boasts an extensive international Exhibition – a key component of ITU Telecom since its inception in 1971. Leading players from the region as well from major international companies come together with a huge display of ICT products and services at the Cairo International Conference and Exhibition Centre.



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Brand strategists and marketers face major challenges in 2008: from the painful death of traditional advertising and the stratospheric rise of social networking to environmental consciousness and, in South Africa, a divided ANC. Idea Engineers’ Managing Partner, JANICE SPARK, looks at what we can expect on the brand front this year.

Globally, 2008 will mark a decisive shift into the dynamic world of Web 2.0. For brand strategists and marketers, the painful death of traditional advertising will be accompanied by the stratospheric rise of social networking. Add a global boom in environmental consciousness and you have a complex matrix of competing variables to negotiate. Locally, a divided ANC offers a telling sign of the social challenges that will continue to underpin all commercial activity.

These are some of the key movements South Africans can expect on the brand front in the year ahead:



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Ahead of the Joburg Art Fair running from 14 to 16 March in Sandton, independent curator CAROL BROWN looks at the changing face of corporate art collections, what it means for African and South African artists, and the why and how of supporting art.

Until about ten years ago, corporate art collections were hidden behind doors and only shared with employees of the leading banks, law firms and financial institutions. They were mainly purchased for financial investment and to decorate the walls of the offices. Now, walls are disappearing from offices and the art is changing and having to fulfil new roles.

Artworks have become widely publicised assets which are used to brand a company and build internal corporate identity and as part of a wide ranging package of community and social responsibility activities.

There are many reasons for this but one which has recently surfaced is that national art museums are now longer adequately funded. It’s pretty much an international trend and not only applicable to South Africa.

This means that our heritage cannot be preserved by museums and our cultural capital becomes lost as artists seek other occupations or, in South Africa’s case, leave the country to go to places where there is more interest in purchasing contemporary art. So the big corporate collectors now have a great opportunity to fill the role previously played by museums and to become keepers of heritage and patrons of living artists.



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Limited roll-out of WiMAX has resulted in dampening of its potential impact, according to a new research report from World Wide Worx.

Delays in the award of licenses for providing the new WiMAX high-speed wireless broadband service to businesses and consumers and the limited roll-out of services that have been licensed has resulted in dampening of its potential impact.

This is the core conclusion of the first study on the impact of the technology in South Africa, conducted by World Wide Worx. The report, “WiMAX in SA 2008: Year Zero”, released yesterday, shows that only those companies that have already deployed WiMAX have appreciated its impact.

These companies are all using Telkom’s scaled down version of WiMAX, which is provided only where its ADSL fixed line service is not available, and only at ADSL-type speeds. WiMAX can theoretically offer speeds of up to 70Mbps, as opposed to ADSL’s fastest option in South Africa of 4Mbps. Even at far lower speeds, however, the potential offered by WiMAX is not yet on the horizon, since no serious competition exists to spur its roll-out.



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With the concept of ubiquitous services being at the heart of this month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a keynote session focused on the topic of ubiquitous networks rang a loud bell.

The CEOs of Bharti Airtel, Ericsson, Qualcomm and Telstra examined the way in which networks are developing to support mobile as the access method of choice and deliver anywhere, anytime connectivity to anyone or anything.

Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, said that for him the idea of a ubiquitous network was ‘broadband everywhere,’ and that this was being achieved through the rapid growth of the HSPA ecosystem. He pointed to some 250 vendors producing around 400 devices as proof, stating that the ever-shrinking size of HSPA data cards means they will soon be installed in multiple devices and ‘everything will communicate’. Within a year, he claimed, HSPA will be delivering 40Mb/s in the downlink.

Of course, that is a rich claim, bearing in mind the big deal South Africa’s networks have made of moving to 3.6Mb/s download speeds on HSDPA cards.



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