Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 23 | Page 7

NEWS Action achieves results at AfricaCom Close to 14,000 people attended this year’s AfricaCom event One of the elements in preventing Africa’s rapid progression is a critical lack of appropriate skills. The importance of this was reflected in the number of E-Learning solutions and deployments on display in the Connectivity Hall and the Technology Arena. As pointed out by several speakers, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is now not so much about the technology itself but how to use it to enable advancement. The Internet of Things (IoT) will have a transformative impact on both African business and African society. And this year’s IoT World Africa proved it by providing a platform for the burgeoning IoT ecosystem to get together and share their expertise, industry insights and transformation stories. Also disrupting and changing the status quo is the increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AfricaCom 2018 played host to the first staging of the AI World Summit in Cape Town. T estament to the growing influence and importance of the entire digital ecosystem on everyday life, the 21st edition of AfricaCom attracted close to 14,000 record-breaking attendees at the CTICC in South Africa, with the most diverse and informed, audience ever. “The buzz around the entire AfricaCom precinct was tangible, as those attending and participating in shaping Africa’s digital future appear to agree the time has now come for less talk and more action in order to get things done,” said Tom Cuthell, Event Director at KNect365, organiser of AfricaCom. ///////////////// RCS-Communication launches new Ka-Band service in South Sudan R CS-Communication, a leading ISP in South Sudan, has established the first site for Avanti’s HYLAS 4 high-speed satellite broadband service in the country. Following successful beam testing in Juba, the new Ka-Band service with high throughput speeds of up to 35Mbps download and 4Mbps upload is now available to RCS-Communication’s customers. RCS-Communication partnered with iWayAfrica, an Avanti Master Distributor, to bring the service to South Sudan. “We have a long-standing relationship of almost 10 years with iWayAfrica for the provision of high throughput volume capped VSAT services and are pleased to extend this to the new HYLAS 4 service that offers much improved speeds,” said Flippie Odendal, Managing Director, RCS-Communication. “RCS is always on the lookout for suitable technology and services that increases options to our clients and enhances their www.intelligentcio.com user experience. We focus on the enterprise and SME market, and with the HYLAS 4 broadband service, we see SME clients across South Sudan benefiting from high speeds and a selection of volume options at affordable rates.” Michèle Scanlon, Managing Director, iWayAfrica, added: “We have been working with RCS since May 2009 for VSAT broadband services in South Sudan. “It is the leading ISP in its market with an excellent service reputation. Now with HYLAS 4, we can bring Avanti’s service to South Sudan and enable our partner RCS to deliver even faster download and upload speeds.” INTELLIGENTCIO 7