TECHNOLOGY

Sophia the robot meets Ethiopia PM, attends ICT expo

Sophia, the famous humanoid robot, has finally met Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, after her lost body parts were found. A bag containing some parts of the robot was lost at Frankfurt airport last week, leading to the cancellation of a press conference scheduled to take place on Friday at the Ethiopian National Museum and dinner with Abiy on the same day. ...

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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos beats Bill Gates in new rich list

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is now worth $150bn (£113bn), according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. Jeff Bezos’s net worth has increased by over $60bn in the last 12 months, which makes him the world’s richest man. This places his worth higher than that of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who has previously topped the rich lists – even at his peak ...

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Facebook moderators ‘keep child abuse online’

Graphic videos showing children being abused remain on Facebook despite numerous requests to have them removed, an undercover film has suggested. Moderators also do not remove posts that violate hate speech and routinely ignore posts from children who may be under-age. The allegations are made in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary. Facebook said mistakes had been made and the staff ...

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Nissan admits falsifying emissions tests in Japan

Nissan has admitted that it has uncovered falsified data from car exhaust emissions tests at most of its Japanese factories. The firm did not disclose how many cars were involved, but said emissions and fuel economy tests had “deviated from the prescribed testing environment”. The carmaker added that inspection reports had been “based on altered measurement values”. Nissan pledged there ...

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Uganda telecom operators to start charging social media tax

Uganda’s major telecom operators, including the local division of South Africa’s MTNGroup, said they will ask customers to pay a new government tax on social media accounts before they can access them. Last month, Uganda’s parliament passed new laws that introduced a new tax on use of so called Over The Top (OTT) services: communications platforms offered over the traditional telecom ...

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Sophia the robot misses dinner with Ethiopia PM after losing some parts at German airport

Sophia, the famous artificial intelligence (AI) humanoid robot, arrived in Ethiopia on Friday, but was unable to have a scheduled dinner with the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, after a bag containing some of her parts went missing at the Frankfurt Airport, en route to Addis Ababa. Designed by Hong Kong firm Hanson Robotics, Sophia has been programmed to speak Amharic, ...

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Rwanda unveils first home-built car

Rwanda unveiled its first locally built car at Volkswagen’s new factory in the capital, Kigali, on Wednesday. The Polo is the first model being made at the site and the German automaker plans to reach annual production of 5,000 cars in the first phase, by also building its Passat, Tiguan, Amarok and Teramont models. Volkswagen, which is Europe’s biggest carmaker, ...

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Akon wants to build ‘Crypto City’

American-Senegalese artist Akon has revealed plans to outdoor a new cryptocurrency named after himself called ‘Akoin’ as the central form of exchange. He unveiled this ambitious project at a creative festival in Cannes, where he spoke at a panel titled Branding Africa: Blockchain, Entrepreneurship and Empowering the Future. The Grammy-nominated and multi-platinum selling artist also wants to build his own ...

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I’ve Never Met Kelni GVG Officials – Vodafone CEO

The CEO of Vodafone Ghana Yolanda Cuba has revealed she has never met or had a meeting with any official of Kelni GVG, the entity carrying out the Common Platform. Six months after signing a contract with the Ghana Government for real time traffic monitoring of the telecommunications networks, Vodafone which is a major stakeholder is yet to set sight ...

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