Nigeria is running one of Africa’s biggest space programmes. The hope is the satellite-based project will help manage agricultural production, but not everyone is convinced of the benefits.

In 2003 Nigeria announced its space programme and within a few years it had launched its first satellite, which quickly lost power and disappeared from orbit.

Now Nigeria has three satellites in orbit including NigComSat-1R, built in China. It was launched in 2011 and has boosted internet and telecommunications services across the country.

Next, the Nigerians turned to Britain’s Surrey Satellite Technology, which has built two earth-observation satellites, including the top-of-the-range NigeriaSat-2, which at the time of its launch was producing the highest resolution images of any UK-built satellite.

The other part of the project involved a trained team of 26 Nigerian engineers putting together the second satellite, NigeriaSat-X.

Both satellites are now providing data to help government agencies with planning.

For example, the satellites are tracking crops and weather around the country in an effort to protect long-term food supply.

There is also closer monitoring of the oil-rich Niger Delta, where there has been massive crude oil theft and environmental damage from oil spills.

This vantage point could also be useful in the Nigerian government’s fight against militants in the north.

“We’ve just collected images over Mali, which we’ve handed over to the armed forces because we believe they will be helpful to them in the peacekeeping mission over there,” says Seidu Mohammed, director-general of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA).

They attached an $8 (£5) ball lens to the handset camera lens, and used a cheap torch and double-sided tape to create an improvised microscope.

Pictures were then taken of stool samples placed on lab slides, wrapped in cellophane and taped to the phone.

They were studied for the presence of eggs, the main symptom of the parasites.

When the results were double-checked with a laboratory light microscope, the device had managed to pick up 70% of the samples with infections present - and 90% of the heavier infections.

The study has been published this week in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Researcher Dr Isaac Bogoch, who specialises in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Toronto General Hospital, told the BBC he had read about smartphone microscopes being trialled in a laboratory and decided to “recreate it in a real world setting”.

“Ultimately we’d like something like this to be a useful diagnostic test. We want to put it in the hands of someone who might be able to use it,” he said.

“70% (accuracy) isn’t really good enough, we want to be above 80% and we’re not quite there yet,” he added.

“The technology is out there. We want to use materials that are affordable and easy to procure.”

Camera key

Dr Bogoch and his team, which included experts from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, said the only reason he used an Apple iPhone was because it was his own handset.

“You need the ball lens to help with the magnification - but any mobile phone with a decent camera and a zoom function will be sufficient,” he explained.

The smallest eggs visible using the smartphone were 40-60 micrometres in diameter.

“From an egg standpoint that is not tiny but it’s not enormous either,” said Dr Bogoch.

“The microscope was very good at diagnosing children with heavier infection intensities as there are more eggs, so they are easier to see.”

Intestinal worms are estimated to affect up to two billion people around the world, mainly in poor areas.

“These parasitic infections cause malnutrition, stunted growth, and stunted mental development,” added Dr Bogoch.

“It’s a big deal, a big problem.”

The Western Cape is on track to establish itself as Africa’s Silicon Valley, which bodes well for the province’s drive to become a centre of business excellence, the Cape Chamber of Commerce said on Friday.

Silicon Valley is a region in California noted for its computing and IT industries. The Western Cape and Cape Town in particular are generally regarded as an attractive destination for IT companies and start-ups. This has been largely attributed to the provincial government’s support for entrepreneurial activity.

The provincial government and the City of Cape Town have invested heavily in broadband infrastructure in recent years, and analysts believe that this could further encourage start-ups and stimulate economic growth.

“The investment in broadband by the city and the provincial government will help to establish the Western Cape as a centre of business excellence and the Silicon valley of Africa,” Cape Chamber of Commerce president Fred Jacobs said.

He said that in order to establish the province as Africa’s Silicon Valley, the government and the private sector had to work closely together.

The investment in broadband infrastructure by the city and the province would also encourage entrepreneurial activity, Mr Jacobs said.

He was speaking after finance MEC Alan Winde’s provincial budget speech last week. Mr Winde said the province’s broadband project would receive about R500m over the 2013 medium-term expenditure framework. This would be to deliver high-speed internet to government buildings, schools and public libraries. In the year ahead, the province would also roll out its pilot Wireless Mesh project in Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain and Saldanha Bay.

By 2020, the plan is to have rolled out broadband to every citizen of the province — a project which will require large public investment, Mr Winde said.

The City of Cape Town has also invested R150m in broadband infrastructure and over the next seven to 10 years it is expected that the province-backed project will cost R1.3bn.

The authorities say that, in addition to improving the municipality’s high-speed data communications and making internet services widely accessible, the broadband infrastructure will be the key to driving economic growth and development. The city says affordable bandwidth is frequently cited as one of the main factors supporting investment and economic growth in developing countries. According to a study by the World Bank, 1.4% growth is recorded for every 10% increase in broadband penetration.

Technology expert and World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck said there was “no question” that the Western Cape, Cape Town and Stellenbosch in particular, were attractive destinations for young developers and entrepreneurs.

He said the investment made by the City of Cape Town and the province in broadband infrastructure would bring more skills and entrepreneurs to the Western Cape which would have positive economic spin-offs.

African technology innovations are not mere gadgets.  They are life enhancing tools that contribute to a more productive economy and improvements in quality of African people.  African entrepreneurs who are leading the charge in the technological revolution are also creating  jobs and new income streams.

Here are just six examples of quality, life changing innovations from among the scores of African technology innovations that have been introduced in the past couple of years.  They come from the important economic segments of finance, healthcare, and agriculture.

Finance

Pesa Pata by Paddy Micro Investment

Pesa Pata means “get money” in Swahili.  Joyce Wangui, head of Paddy Micro oversees this big, mobile money application out of Kenya.  In a recent visit to Kenya, I sign billboards and placards on shops advertising the availability of this micro-loan facility.

Here is how it works.  A vender, normally a small shop or kiosk owner, gives a trusted client a scratch card worth between Ksh 250 ($3 USD) and Ksh 5,000 ($63).  The client scratches the card to reveal a secrete number that they then load onto their mobile phone and are credited a short-term loan in their Safaricom M-Pesa account.  They must repay the loan principle, plus a five to ten percent interest, in less than thirty days.  The kiosk owner derives income from the interest.

Such short term loans, procured in a matter of minutes, was impossible in the past.  With these short term loans borrowers buy new inventory for their roadside stand, purchase produce for resale, or pay for a prescription at the chemist – opening a whole new realm of possibilities for improving life.

Healthcare

The healthcare sector is getting more attention by innovative entrepreneurs.  Here are three of the most interesting African technology innovations in that space.

Teleradiology by Medisoft East Africa Ltd

Dr. Emmanuel Mukoya, Dr. Ndii Kanake and  Ruth Wangari are the brains behind Medisoft’s Teleradiology, a set of technologies that allow radiologists to remotely read medical images.  In many parts of Africa, when an x-ray or other medical image has been taken there is no guarantee that the image will be looked at by a technician or physician who is qualified to correctly read it and make a diagnosis.

Teleradiology erases the boundaries between image acquisition, reporting and referring doctors.  It speeds up the process of getting the images before the knowledgeable eyes of licensed radiologists, who live and work in the major cities of Africa.  The technicians can then provide reports and consultation services for many doctors and hospitals in rural areas or small towns.  The remote doctors can then read these reports that are forwarded to their computers in their clinical office or homes.

This application gives medical imaging centers and hospitals all over the continent the freedom to outsource interpretation services to offsite radiologists around the clock, with ease.  Patients’ lives have been saved by Teleradiology by truncating the time from scan to diagnosis.

MedAfrica by Shimba Technologies

MedAfrica is a vast, virtual library of medical information available on a smart phone.   One data set allows hospitals and clinics, even patients for that matter, to validate a doctors credentials.  Patients or rural clinicians can employ another data set to locate hospitals or physicians who provide care for specific ailments.  Doctors and other practitioners can list symptoms they have observed and a menu of possible diagnoses will be returned on the smart phone screen.

MedAfrica also contains collections of diet and drug related material.  Shimba Technologies is adding data sets regularly.

Cardiopad by Himore Medical

Marc Arthur Zang Adzaba is the Cameroonian entrepreneur who invented Cardiopad, a computer tablet that enables heart examinations like electrocardiograms (ECG) to be conducted at remote, rural locations that have never before been able to offer such crucial diagnostic tests.

CardioPad utilizes electrodes, fitted with bluetooth, that are placed on the patient’s chest sending a signal to the touch screen tablet that can then wirelessly transfers the readings to one of the few cardiologists who is normally located in the capital city.   The heart specialist then interprets the ECG and renders a diagnosis and forwards it to the nurse or examining physician who saw the patient.

Cardiopad is presently only available in Cameroon, but Himore Medical will soon market it in other African countries.  With less than a score of cardiologists in many African countries, this innovation will allow many heart patients to receive a prompt diagnosis that was a luxury that they could not receive, at any price, if they were unable to travel to an urban center.

Agriculture

Agriculture is the largest and most important sector of the economy in the majority of African countries.  Yet, African technology innovation in this sector remains wide open.  Here are just two innovations that are assisting product producers and marketers in Kenya.

AgriManagr by Virtual City Group

John Waibochi, CEO and founder of Kenya’s Virtual City Group, developed AgriManagr a mobile app and associated programs that assist farmers and middlemen by automating produce purchasing transactions.

AgriManagr facilitates the weighing, grading and receipting of produce gathered from farmers at rural or urban collection centers throughout the country. The app goes beyond mere record keeping to  allowing purchasing agents to pay the farmers via cashless transactions through M-Pesa accounts on their phones. The app is complete with the ability to automatically reward frequent and favored suppliers with bonuses and premium services.

Produce purchasing agents who combine AgriManagr with an electronic weighing scale can send the weight information directly to the AgriManagr app via Bluetooth technology. A complete report of the transaction, including quantity, quality of the produce, the farmer’s details, collection point, and the payment due, is sent to the purchasing agent’s headquarters which can then make payment.

Having real-time information about purchases in the field gives the headquarters an accurate understanding of how much total produce, by type, they will have available to supply to their retailers in the next day or two.

Kilimo Salama

Kilimo Salama is n example of the marriage of two essential components of modern development in Africa – technology and partnership.   This African technology innovation is a crop insurance scheme put together by UAP Insurance Company of Kenya, Safaricom Ltd. (a telecommunications company), and two crop input providers (MEA Fertilizers and seed company Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture). It scheme currently covers farmers who grow maize, wheat, beans, sorghum and potatoes.

Here is how the Kilimo Salama pay-as-you-plant system works.  A shop owner is supplied a cell phone.  When a farmer buys seed or fertilizer and wishes to purchase insurance, the shop owner scans the bar code on the products, collects an additional 5 percent of the retail purchase.  The seed and/or fertilizer company chips in another 5 percent. The combined payment is sent to the insurance company via the phone.

Farmers do not have to file individual claims.  The weather situation is monitored by 40 small weather stations that Kilimo Salama has installed throughout the country where the insurance is currently being offered. If the rains fail, or are too great, payments are automatically made to accounts that the farmers have installed on their cell phones.

In June 2012, Kilimo Salama won the Financial Times/IFC award for Technology in Sustainable Finance.

These are just a few of the many African technology innovations that are already enhancing the lives of people on the continent.  Others are being developed while you read this post.  Some of the innovations still in the development stage or ready to expand are in need of investors and expert partners.  Africa Mentor can assist parties who are interested in participating and profiting from the technology boom that is rapidly growing on the continent.

Nigeria is set to build the country’s first solar powered telecommunications network. Called WorldGSM, the network will be designed by India’s Shyam group and is specifically designed for rural areas.

“The general purpose network of GSM is entirely unsuited to the unique challenges of serving rural and remote communities. As operators continue to expand their networks into these areas, these challenges can escalate to a point where any further expansion is no longer viable,” said Rajiv Mehrotra, Chairman of Shyam Geoup.

“Vast portions of the developing world are denied telecommunication access. Power was clearly not an issue when GSM was conceived. A conventional base station site alone requires about 3,000 to 5,000 watts to run and this is outside of any Base Station Controller (BSC) or Mobile Switching Center (MSC),” he added.

The exorbitant cost of fuel and the cost of transporting it to remote locations has often decreased the lucrativeness of setting up telecoms networks in rural areas. However, these areas are often the sections of society in most needs of telecommunications infrastructure.

The hope is that WorldGSM will make the financials of running networks in rural areas more lucrative for operators. “The fact that the rural dweller needed services that would cope with their low Average Revenue Per User and also be profitable, necessitated the innovation of this solution which does not run on diesel,” Mehrotra said.

Running a technology news site based in South Africa that focuses on tech news from Africa and Emerging Markets it’s to be expected that I am a little attached to the region.

According to a Mckinsey report ICT spend in Sub-Saharan Africa is approximately $70 billion and will nearly double by 2015. There is also no doubt Africa is on fire right now when it comes to being at the forefront of innovation in mobile (which is where the future of the web lies) with hubs in Kenya and Nigeria.

So naturally when the “all star entrepreneur” panel took the LeWeb stage, I asked: “So are any of you investing in Africa?” The panel: “No”. No? why not? TechCrunch founder and former editor Michael Arrington says it’s because he hasn’t been pitched anything from Africa.

The rest of the panel, included: YouTube founder Chad Hurley, Digg founder Kevin Rose, and Skype founder, Niklas Zennström.

LeWeb is an event that champions the next stage in our online evolution and yet there seems to be very little African presence or discussion around the future of the web there.

More and more are accessing content on their mobile devices, because let’s face it, this is where the world is heading. As Africans we arrived late to the internet party and most of the cool innovative party favors were gone.

But we are hungry for access and content. Hence the huge potential in Africa for mobile app creators and companies that rely in the mobile space. Few of the companies presenting at LeWeb seems to have a focus in Africa, they seem intent on conquering the European market.

Yes some want to conquer China and the rest of Asia too. But why are they ignoring Africa? What did we do?

A few questions immediately come to mind. Is it a case of access? Internet penetration?

Access

Is that still a major issue? According to the head of GSMA, there are 695 million mobile subscriptions in Africa and it is predicted to hit 735 million by the end of 2012.

The most common mobile device is some parts of Africa is the Samsung E250 and it can access the web. Mobile penetration in Africa is about 70% or so. Access? Done.

Internet Penetration

According to research from Internet World Stats, Africa still has the world’s lowest internet penetration rate at 13.5%. Not an attractive figure for potential investors maybe?

No, it says there is huge potential for growth. That figure says that there is an 86.5% growth potential if we want to add numbers to it. Low internet doesn’t mean a deadzone.

Africa is moving on quite swiftly then. There are companies such as Google, that recognize this growth potential in Africa and they are beginning to invest in the continent. Google has launched the Umbono project in South Africa and Tahrir2 in Egypt.

I suppose the argument could be that LeWeb isn’t focused on Africa because it is designed for Europe and how technology is shaping the continent. Maybe, but most of the speakers are from the USA.

All are innovating in various ways true but there are equally innovative and quite frankly more useful products coming out of Africa. Where are the speakers from Africa? Someone from Ushahidi for instance should be here.

The non-profit software company that develops open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. Surely it has more to say about the innovative use of technology than Path.

Then there is innovation in social and communication companies such as Mxit, which is a mobile communication platform across all types of devices, and if you listen to its new CEO Alan Knott-Craig Jnr, it is well on its way to “conquering the African market”.

This particular conference is backed by government. That signals something important: European government cares about innovation in tech and perhaps innovating with it. Take note here African governments.

When I bumped into Michael Arrington before his session he seemed to think there isn’t much Africa can do for his fund. He also seems to think there is a security issue in Africa. Can this really still be the notion that Africa has nothing to offer when it comes to the web and how we are evolving?

Take a trip to Cape Town, Lagos and Nairobi and see how wrong you are.