Website Technology has been and continues to play me. This time round I lost all my site widgets and plugins which are supported by Jetpack under WordPress. I opened my site and it was not there, error something.  Just like the thief Jesus talked about it was gone.

On resolution from the server the site had no widgets, it was naked. No fancy colorful pictures on the side, nothing, only plain empty sides welcomed me. I don’t like basic, I try to do mediocre and advanced but not basic. The thought of my personal site being basic site frustrated me, I got a mini depression coupled with stress while trying to find where the problem was. I am still at it as I type this. But I got help, @TheRisingPage is my all-time heroine, she flew in like WonderWomen. Progress….

So as we work with my WonderWoman on fixing this site’s problems, here is your #PKTechWeekly;

 

AirBnB Aims to Double its African Customers this 2017

That is an expressed expectation by Airbnb who are aiming to increase customers from 765,000 to 1.5 million in 2017.

The number of people using the online room rental service on the continent rose by 143 percent to about 765,000 guests in 2016 from the year before, said Nicola D’Elia, the firm’s Africa and Middle East chief.

Airbnb CEO Chesky confirmed that the California-based company expected to double African customer numbers this year. “Certainly that would be the forecast,” he said in an interview in Cape Town, adding: “This is literally just the beginning. It (Africa) is still relatively under-penetrated.”

There are 77,000 homes represented out of the company’s 3 million globally in Africa, a continent that is home to over a billion people.

ChapChap, Do You Know What That Is?

My Friend Joyce gives a detailed experience with their service in her blog and says its more better than PayWay or even using MobileMoney to top up on your Yaka Meter.

What caught my eye is where she says “You get a cash back for using the service, for YAKA it is 600….”

Read more http://jnochwo.blogspot.ug/2017/03/out-with-payway-and-in-with-chapchap.html

Bail Hearing Set for Canadian Accused in Yahoo Email Hack

A Canadian man of Kazakh origins who was arrested in the massive hack of Yahoo emails appeared briefly via video link in a Hamilton, Ontario court on Friday where a date was set for his bail hearing.

Karim Baratov 22 years, did not say anything during his appearance, looking straight ahead with his hands in front of him. He was arrested during an extradition act on Tuesday last week in the Ontario community of Ancaster, Ontario.

U.S. authorities said last week that Baratov and three others, including two men alleged to be officers of the Russian Federal Security Service, were indicted for computer hacking, economic espionage and other crimes.

2017 Airtel Internship Program

Airtel Uganda is offering career opportunities for talented and motivated individuals. These opportunities are not limited to;

  • Customer Service
  • Administration
  • Human Resources
  • Marketing
  • Networks
  • IT
  • Legal&Regulatory
  • Finance
  • Mobile Money
  • Enterprise
  • Sales&Distribution
  • Supply Chain Management

Those interested can apply by

  1. Visiting the Airtel Uganda Website here
  2. Click on Careers Tab
  3. Go to the Internship Tab section
  4. Fill in Your Information
  5. Answer the 20 Questions in 9 minutes
  6. Submit your answers.

There are terms and Conditions though. These are;

  • Internship places are available for the period of 1st June – 31st August 2017 in several departments depending on the course being pursued.
  • Only students who are recommended to undertake internship by their university should apply i.e. students should possess a letter of recommendation from their university.
  • Participants must have a LinkedIn account and follow Airtel Uganda on LinkedIn to qualify.
  • All applications for internship should be submitted online through the Airtel Uganda official website page.
  • All those who had delivered their applications to Airtel Uganda are advised to re-apply online.
  • Participants will be expected to answer the 20 Questions in 9 minutes and after 9 minutes the system will time out and submit the answered questions by then.
  • Applications should be submitted not later than 1st May 2017 at midnight. The Internship Application tap will thereafter be disabled from the Airtel website page.
  • Successful applicants’ may be subjected to a secondary interview afterwards the names will be published on the website and social platforms on 15th May 2017.

Do you know that Scientists Are Preparing to Use Gene Drives to End Malaria in Africa?

Its reported that in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Uganda, groundwork is being laid for a powerful kind of experiment. A project  is now under way that aims to release mosquitoes that have been genetically programmed to drive themselves and their malaria-causing brethren toward extinction.

The program called Target Malaria, is meant to use a gene drive to drastically reduce the number of mosquitoes that transmit the disease in sub-Saharan Africa.  Not long ago this was merely theoretical, but modified mosquitoes with gene drives on board are already being bred and tested in labs.

The idea is that a so-called selfish gene with effects that would ultimately doom the population is introduced and then replicates itself at a far higher rate than normal, spreading rapidly.

Target Malaria, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is exploring several ways to use this technology. One of the most promising involves altering mosquitoes in such a way that new generations are almost exclusively male. Male mosquitoes don’t bite people, and a population with hardly any females would be unable to reproduce.

There is still a long way to go before gene drive insects are released into the wild, but plans are moving ahead. Apart from further developing the technology, one of the biggest challenges at this stage is making sure people living in the region understand the nature of the work and what’s at stake.

Airtel Wewole Service

Airtel Uganda launched the Wewole (meaning borrow) service, a micro-credit service using its Airtel Money platform. This will allow Airtel Money users and agents access loan facilities through Airtel Money. Wewole is executed in partnership with Jumo, that describes itself as a marketplace connecting millions of small businesses to a world of financial choices.

Jumo is to provide the back-end software that will determine one’s credit worth basing on usage patterns while Airtel Money will provide a platform from which money can be borrowed. The more one uses Airtel services, the higher are his/her chances of qualifying for a bigger loan from the service.

Loan applicants have to be registered with Airtel Money with a minimum of active 6 months of transaction history through Airtel Money. They will have to dial *185*8# to access Wewole. The service targets both ordinary Airtel users as well as Airtel Money agents who relatively transact large volumes but both won’t be required to provide collateral.

Wewole will allow Airtel Money users to borrow between 8,000 to UGX 500,000 Shillings while Airtel Money Agents can borrow between 100,000 to 1,000,000 Shillings.

Regarding loan repayments, the borrower has 3 loan repayment periods of 7,14 or 21 days depending on one’s choosing with a minimum interest of 6.75% while the maximum is capped at 15%.

What If We Used African-Made Low-Tech Cooling Unit to Save Food?

“How long is the shelf life for your fruits since you guys don’t have electricity or somewhere permanent to keep them?”

Do you know about FreshBox a solar-powered, walk-in cold room that provides retailers with storage facilities to preserve perishable products? Operating for five months, the project offers vendors and farmers refrigeration services for 70 Kenyan shillings ($0.68) a crate per day.

What about a pot-on-pot system that preserves produce for weeks instead of days. The two earthenware pots are fitted into each other, filled with wet sand, and the produce covered with a wet cloth?

There is also Go Energyless, a Morocco-based social enterprise which developed a natural low-cost cooler that can save food for over 13 days for people in remote areas. Its prototype is made with clay by local potters.

Many of the innovative cooling units available, which could potentially save billions of dollars of food from waste, are also a reminder of the need to scale innovations with backing from investors in order to have a real impact on Africa’s agriculture ecosystem.

The innovations around renewable or alternative energy are paramount given that access and connection to electricity, especially in rural areas where food is produced, is still a luxury in many African countries.

Google ramps up investment in fibre cable, training Africans

Google Inc scaled up investment in Africa by laying fibre optic cable, that aimed to ease access to cheaper Android phones and training a workforce in digital skills as the US technology giant seeks to expand on the continent.

“We laid about 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) of fibre in Uganda and we are busy doing about 1,000 kilometres in Ghana,” Google’s South Africa head Luke McKend said “We want to make sure that we cover all the bases. We want to train people and make sure that they have the devices and are able to connect to the internet.”

About 1 million people in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa have been trained by Google over the past year, yet many had to complete their courses with limited internet access due to unreliable coverage and high data prices, McKend said. The Mountain View, California-based company is now turning its attention to web-focused skills training for small businesses across Africa.

Alongside US competitors including Facebook Inc, Google is seeking to boost connectivity on the continent to rise open a new market for smartphones and services such as web search and social media.

Patricia Kahill

Patricia Kahill is a multipotentialite Christian entrepreneur, Content Marketing Coach and founder of the Content Marketing agency, Kahill Insights that helps business owners create engaging and interactive content items for digital platforms with a focus on returning a desired outcome. Patricia was the producer of SlamDunk Basketball Talk a show on House of Talent online TV, a former fellow at Harvest Institute for leadership and now an assessor there, and an alumnus of the YELP class of 2017. A member of the BNI Integrity chapter and African Women Entrepreneur Cooperative. She is driven by passion and curiosity, been taking every opportunity that has been given to her with an ambition of stamping her footprint on the world.

2 thoughts on “#PkTechWeekly: Uganda Gene Drive to End Malaria, ChapChap, Airtel Internship Program, African Tech to Preserve Food”

  1. Gene editing to wipe out malaria? Interesting read but very dangerous technology depending on whose hands it fall into.

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