The future's bright, the future's ... Africa
Telegraph -- The CEO of Orange, Stéphane Richard is a man who speaks his mind and doesn’t mind how he speaks. As former French Minister for the Economy, Industry and Employment, recipient of the prestigious Legion of Honour and one-time adviser to a certain Dominique Strauss-Khan, the 49-year-old Richard knows how to get his audience’s attention. At a reporters’ lunch during the French Open tennis at Roland-Garros he described eventual winner Rafael Nadal as ‘vulgar’ and was equally forthright when describing recent meetings with Presidents Obama and Sarkozy. Lost in translation maybe, but while Richard made these remarks with a twinkle in his eye, his subsequent comment that he will visit every African country where Orange does business ‘within two years’ was delivered with more serious intent...
Britain: Give us back our money
Daily Nation -- Britain is demanding a refund of Sh7 billion aid to Kenya’s free education programme following revelations of massive corruption. “The UK Government will push the Government of Kenya hard for return of the UK’s share of lost funds,” the Department for International Development (DFID) said in a statement. During an interview in Nairobi, DFID deputy head Mike Harrison said the money once repaid will be ploughed back to fund education in Kenya but through non-State channels. “We are insisting that besides the government instituting radical reforms in the Ministry of Education, our proportion of the pool fund must be returned,” Mr Harrison said...
Senegal president in U-turn after protests
Guardian -- Senegal's president has agreed to cancel a proposed change to the constitution that would have paved the way for his son to take power, amid massive street protests that marked the biggest challenge to his 11-year rule and threatened to derail a country known as one of the most stable in the region. Anger boiled over Thursday as thousands of protesters attempted to rush the gates of parliament, where lawmakers were meeting to debate the law. Clouds of teargas enveloped the square, as police fought back the demonstrators with gas, rubber bullets and fire hoses. The demonstrations quickly spread from central Dakar to the suburbs and on to three major towns in the interior. There were also protests abroad in Paris and Montreal. The controversial amendment would have created the post of vice-president, a departure from Senegal's European-style government, which has a president and a prime minister...
What if everything were just a game?
BBC -- One more step, and a tiny creature will cross the bridge and get to safety. Just one more step - but letters do not match, the fragile structure blows up and the brown mole falls into a digital abyss. But as Juha Valtamo, a 21-year-old Finnish student, correctly types the next word that appears on the screen of his laptop, another mole happily reaches the destination. Digitalkoot may sound like a typical online game - but there is more to it than just building bridges and saving moles. Every time players complete a level, they help with a real-life task - digitising huge archives of Finland's National Library. Developed by Finnish start-up business Microtask, Digitalkoot - which means digital volunteers in Finnish - combines two very hot trends in today's business world: gamification and crowdsourcing. Words that players need to type come from millions of pages of newspapers, magazines and journals, digitised by optical character recognition...
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