http://www.kencall.com/

India and Kenya are looking to double their trade in the next two years. Kenya wants support in its textile industry and India has its eye on renewable energy sources. The new agreement aims to goose bilateral trade up to 200 billion Kenyan shillings, or about $2.5 billion, by the end of 2013.

India, it seems, is emerging to be a prominent player across the continent of Africa. Trade has grown 145% in the past four years between India and South Africa alone.

“Fifteen months after Kofi started to set up shop, we already have higher revenue in Ghana than in South Africa,” said Richard Pinder, chief operating officer of Publicis Worldwide, a unit of Publicis Groupe SA, which wants to increase its business on the continent. The reason: Advertising growth in Africa is soaring, driven by telecom companies, financial services firms and makers of consumer products.

For the first time since Doing Business started tracking reforms, a Sub-Saharan African economy, Rwanda, led the world in reforms. Rwanda has steadily reformed its commercial laws and institutions since 2001. In the past year it introduced a new company law that simplified business start-up and strengthened minority shareholder protections. Entrepreneurs can now start a business in two procedures and three days. Rwanda has also enacted new laws in order to improve regulations to ease access to credit. Other reforms removed bottlenecks at the property registry and the revenue authority, reducing the time required to register property by 255 days. Overall, Rwanda introduced reforms in 7 out of the 10 categories, rising from 143rd to 67th place on the ease of doing business rankings.

Developed nations such as the U.S., Japan and the UK are driving mobile data demand, but emerging markets aren’t far behind when it comes to mobile data service revenues. A new report from Informa Telecoms & Media suggests that by 2014, 36 percent of global mobile data revenues will come from nations like Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Poland and the Ukraine — areas that, as compared to countries with national network coverage, lag in terms of 3G and 4G infrastructure.

http://gigaom.com/2010/07/20/emerging-markets-will-bring-a-third-of-global-mobile-data-revenues-by-2014/

The African Economic Forum has grown to be the largest Africa-focused event at Columbia University. Each year, AEF strives to highlight opportunities and challenges through stimulating discussion, insights and strategies for a prosperous Africa.

Our generation has witnessed remarkable changes that revolutionized our thinking with respect to African growth and development. Today, we seek to highlight the rebirth of the beautiful African minds that have emerged as a result of these changes. Together we can engage, discuss, and propose new ways to build Africa’s new frontier and inspire the way we view economic sustainability on the continent.

http://africaeconomicforum.com/aef2010/

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15695325

• By 2014, social-networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.
• By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.
• Through 2012, more than 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.
• Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.
• Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1293114

Google Trader is a marketplace application that allows you to buy and sell goods and services on your phone using SMS.
Want to sell your house or mobile? Post your ad on Google Trader so that people who want to buy what you want to sell can easily find you. Looking for a job? Search for jobs by location or vocation — or look for transportation (car, motorcycle, boda) to get you to your job — on Google Trader.

http://www.google.co.ug/mobile/sms/#6007

More analysis from Erik Hersman

http://whiteafrican.com/2009/06/29/new-sms-services-in-uganda-from-grameen-google/