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P OST EVENT NEWSLETTER
Capacity Media would like to thank all of the 348 delegates, 126 companies, 22 sponsors and 30 exhibitors for
making Capacity Africa 2014 such a success!
AMREF 5 km Charity Fun Run and Opening Welcome Reception
For the third year running, Capacity Africa 2014 kicked off
with the AMREF Health Africa 5 km Fun Run, supported by
LIQUID TELECOM. This year runners once again braved
the African sun to raise money for this fantastic cause. We
would like to thank all runners who were involved and
everyone who showed their support. Well done everyone
and thank you for your tremendously generous donations,
which helped us raise $4.000 for AMREF Health Africa!
In the evening of the October 14, NEWTELCO hosted a
fantastic welcome drinks reception consisting of traditional
entertainment, food and drinks. Delegates met in a
relaxed setting to catch up with industry peers and form
new contacts before the official opening.
Day One: Opening welcome address from The Honourable Mr
January Makamba
The Honourable Mr January Makamba, Deputy Minister of Communications, Science and Technology from the
GOVERNMENT OF TANZANIA opened the conference with an optimistic outlook on the development of the
country’s ICT backbone. Mr Makamba announced the entry of a new player in the Tanzanian market, Viettel,
citing that “they will disrupt the industry” as they begin building new cable fibre in rural Tanzania. He concluded
his speech by praising Capacity Africa 2014 as an important
meeting point for the telecoms industry and invited delegates
“Capacity Africa 2014 is an excellent event to
back for 2015.
share our national ICT backbone, which can be
used by neighbouring and other Africa Countries
to grow our businesses.”
January Makamba, Deputy Minister,
COMMUNICATIONS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY,
POWERING OFF-GRID HOMES IN
AFRICA
Following the Deputy Minister’s opening, Jesse Moore, Cofounder, M-KOPA, took to the stage and delivered an
inspiring presentation on pioneering the revolution of off-grid
power through solar power and m-payments. He pointed out that 10 million homes in Africa spend $3 million on
kerosene and charging their devices. M-KOPAs product provides homes with solar panel technology to power
electricity in the home and they are able to pay for the device with small instalments through m-payments. Jesse
announced that they had just launched their first roll-out in Tanzania on the day of the conference.
GOVERNMENT OF TANZANIA
ENDING THE BLAME GAME AND BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN
CARRIERS AND REGULATORS
The third session of the day was a true highlight of the event as
carriers and regulators took their seats for the industry debate
discussing connectivity to landlocked countries and the uniform
growth of the African telecoms market. During the lively session it
became clear that operators in the region are demanding faster and
more compliant regulation from the government. An audience
member from Liquid Telecom spoke out to Mr January Makamba,
Deputy Minister of COMMUNICATION, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY,
regarding the delays operators in the country face due to regulatory setbacks. "Everything that you are doing,
please do it as fast as possible," the audience member said, adding "We want it yesterday". "We have a new
generation of service providers who understand where the world is going and what needs to be done," Makamba
said, adding that "the time has come for the second generation of regulation, and we are in that transition now".
Byron Clatterbuck, CCO at SEACOM, added to the discussion by stating that “there is no limitation on our
subsea capacity, so please come and get it”. Peter Ngota, Chief Sales and Marketing officer at TTCL noted that
the government needs to address the looting of
infrastructure through educating the public. He also
“Thanks very much for a well organised and
confirmed the "very good" relationship the Tanzanian
effective conference. It was most valuable to us
incumbent shares with the regulator in the country,
to be able to meet and discuss business
and said that TTCL is also in discussions with Malawi
opportunities and synergies for the region with
and Uganda for further connectivity. Prenesh
a number of relevant companies at a decision
Padayachee, CTO at INTERNET SOLUTIONS
maker level.”
highlighted the key challenges of overcoming price
and stability issues when trying to enter African
Eckart Zollner, Head of Business Development,
markets, the saving grace being “much more
NEW TELCO SA
competition in open-market countries, which helps the
pricing issue”.
LONG-HAUL FIBRE - AN ANALYTICAL REVIEW OF CAPACITY
BEING BROUGHT INTO THE REGION TO ENHANCE
INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT AND PROMOTE GROWTH IN
AFRICA
Following the morning break, Mike van den Bergh, CMO of PCCW GLOBAL took to the stage and delivered an
informative presentation on enhancing international investments in Africa. Mike revealed that African
international bandwidth usage increased 15-fold between 2009 and 2013, while between 2012 and 2013 it grew
by 130%. He noted that some of the demand factors for increased bandwidth have been economic growth,
content growth, mobile data and social media. The push in increased supply has been due to international fibre
expansion, 3G/LTE rollout and terrestrial fibre builds all being driven by
international investment in the region. Since 2009, 9 new
submarine systems have been introduced in the region with a
combined capacity of 22Tbs. Mike then spoke of the speed at
which Asia is taking over as Africa’s primary trading partner for
both import and export, with this relationship being further
strengthened by the AAE-1 submarine cable build-out, which is a
low-latency route that bypasses the frequent cable break zone near
Singapore.
ASSESING THE
DEVELOPMENT OF
CROSS-BORDER AND
LAST-MILE
INFRASTRUCTURE
NETWORK
“The Capacity Africa 2014 conference proved once again that this is
the prime event in the wholesale telecommunications market in Africa.
It provided an opportunity to learn the latest market developments,
and to interact with peers and competitors. The conference is the
single best meeting place of African and global operators, vendors and
service providers.
Dobek Pater, Managing Director, AFRICA ANALYSIS
In the final session of the day, Paul Jaikaran, CTO of MAIN ONE CABLE COMPANY, Ben Roberts, CTO of
LIQUID TELECOM GROUP & CEO, LIQUID TELECOM KENYA, Eckart Zollner the Head of Business
Development at NEW TELCO, Rashid Shamte, Founder & Head of Group Strategy of SIX TELECOMS GROUP
and Mokgethi Nyatseng, General Manager Wholesale of BTC expertly deliberated the challenges in crossborder and last-mile infrastructure development. The session was guided by the moderator Peter Nyamukusa,
Regional Technical Manager at WANACHI TELECOM. Ben explained that LIQUID TELECOM connects
landlocked countries, starting with Zimbabwe then Zambia, “but connecting new countries is not the end of it”, he
noted, stating that they must create rings in one network. Mokgethi provided insight based on his experience
coming from a landlocked country himself: “We worked hard to connect our land”. They have recently launched a
new network in order to get Zambia connected. Rashid Shamte insisted that there is sufficient capacity inland
but asked “who owns the capacity?” and what is the real meaning of going inland. Speaking on services in
Tanzania, he acknowledged that Tanzania has the potential to deliver better network service, but sheepishly
commented “the person who owns the infrastructure is a bit slow”. Speaking on the topic of infrastructure
sharing, Ben Roberts was asked if LIQUID TELECOM were willing to share their infrastructure with the “smaller
guys”, to which he said that infrastructure sharing is viable to an extent but costly. So while they are of course
willing to share infrastructure, it depends on the company and whether they are able to bear the costs. A big
trend that was identified during the panel is the uptake of GSM towers by tower companies to become
independent towers. The leasing of dark fibre has also become common practice.
Drinks Reception and Charity Raffle
The Day One evening drinks reception, hosted by SEACOM, gave
delegates the chance to build on contacts made during the day in an
informal environment. The highly anticipated AMREF Health Africa charity
raffle winners were announced with first prize going to Dimitrios Ves from
OTEGLOBE, who won an iPad.
Day Two - THE BIG DATA DEBATE - CONTENT, CLOUD,
INTERNET & MOBILE DATA
Day Two of the conference was formatted differently for the first time at Capacity Africa 2014. Five roundtable
discussions took place where delegates were able to choose to attend the session that was of interest to them
and their business. Each session was hosted by an expert in the topic and delegates gathered and discussed the
topics informally. The roundtables were extremely interactive, with lots of ideas being thrown around and this was
a great opportunity for attendees to network and discover more about one another’s core businesses.
ROUNDTABLE ONE HOW ARE OPERATORS COPING AMIDST THE SURGE OF CONTENT
PLAYERS TO THE REGION?
Mark Shoebridge, Chief Fixed Services Officers at UGANDA TELECOM led the discussion on the impact the
increase in traffic has had on carriers as the boom in
content players infiltrates Africa. Discussion points
centered around new strategies being deployed to
efficiently deliver services and what options there are to
partner with OTT’s.
ROUNDTABLE TWO EVALUATING AND
PREDICTING THE GROWTH OF BROADBAND IN
THE REGION
Joseph Kibwot, Business Development Manager at
SAFARICOM discussed the requirements needed to
provide faster, more reliable internet to end users. How can
bandwidth and connectivity be improved in an environment where growth in smartphones is decreasing the cost
of access to networks, but prices for service providers are too high?
ROUNDTABLE THREE AN OTT PERSPECTIVE: ASSESSING THE FUTURE OF CONTENT
DELIVERY THROUGH INNOVATION
One of the most popular sessions was hosted by Kai Wulff, Access Field Development Director at GOOGLE,
who lead the discussion about the development of over-the-top services in the region. The group spoke about
the notable lack of connectivity across all the corners of the region and how global content giants are planning to
reach the millions of customers.
ROUNDTABLE FOUR UNLOCKING THE SECRETS TO
CLOUD COMPUTING
Demos Kyriacou, COO at DJIBOUTI DATA CENTRE expertly spoke about
cloud computing securing and its position as an essential tool for businesses to
optimise IT operations and whether African carriers have succeeded in enabling
the capabilities of the cloud. He facilitated a discussion on the core essence of
cloud computing – what it is, what it can do and how it is promoting the delivery
of video content in the region.
ROUNDTABLE FIVE EXECUTIVE CASE STUDY: LTE - THE NEXT GENERATION OF
TECHNOLOGY
Finally, Mark Redman, CTIO at SMILE led an intriguing discussion on LTE deployment in West Africa.
Focussing on Lagos and Ibadan, Mark spoke about the first West African regions to receive LTE networks, how it
was achieved and what is next for Africa.
What did you think?
“For me Capacity Africa is a platform for all
Help us make Capacity Africa 2015 even better! Give
us your feedback!
to meet and discuss their business
operators and partners in Africa and the world
engagements all under one roof. I just came
from a very good business deal that I just got,
with one of our partners. So we’ll keep coming
here because it works for me.”
Mokgethi Nyatseng, General Manager at BTC
WHOLESALE
Who did you meet in 2014:
This event was attended by 348 delegates, representing 126 companies from 61 countries.
Regional attendance
Asia
7%
ME
5%
North America
6%
Africa
Europe
North America
Asia
Europe
29%
ME
Africa
53%
Professional level
Other
21%
C-level and
Presidents
12%
C-level and Presidents
EVP, VP, Director
EVP, VP, Director
17%
Executive
5%
Head
Senior Manager/Manager
Senior
Manager/Manag
er
36%
Head
9%
Executive
Other
Get the presentations:
All the presentations from Capacity Africa 2014 are online and available for download: Just fill in the feedback
form and you will have access to them.
See you next year!
We would like to thank our delegates for attending this year’s event! We hope you enjoyed the conference and
benefitted from the networking opportunities. We look forward to welcoming you to the 2015 edition.
For more information on the 2015 event, please visit: www.capacityconferences.com/Capacity-Africa
Join us next…
Capacity Asia, 18-20 November 2014, Bangkok
Wholesale Messaging and SMS World, 3-4 December 2014, London
See the full event calendar >>
Thank you to our 2014 sponsors!