Some of the life-changing tech trends the world will see in 2019.



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From automated transportation, to digital pills&nbsp; and social credit algorithms, technological
advancements are growing at the speed of light.



The big question is, can we keep up with the pace?



The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Computer Society, based in New York City, predicts some of the future tech
trends for 2019. 



Deep learning accelerators, assisted transportation, and the
Internet of Bodies (IoB) lead their 2019 technology outlook.



Some local experts weigh in on this from an African perspective and contribute and identify some of the tech trends we can look out for.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Assisted automated transportation</h4>



Assisted transportation is already in use in some countries.




The phenomena of self-driving cars has been growing. 



Although many critics fear that it still needs more time to
test and trial, IEEE experts predict that there will be a wide recognition for
fully autonomous vehicles this year. 



“I don’t think self-driving cars would solve a major social
need in Africa at the moment,” says Aatish Ramkaran, who is a Digital Architect
at Nedbank and Co-Founder of Blockchain Entrepreneurs Club South Africa.



“What we really need are better, more affordable mass
passenger transport systems, as the majority of the South African workforce
live significant distances from their workplaces,” 



Ramkaran adds.



This technology in autonomous vehicles is highly dependent
on deep learning accelerators.



Early last month, a robot was struck down by a self-driving
Tesla Model S. 



Electrical engineer Darryn Cornish predicts that it may take
a while before self-driving cars become a trend in Africa, “mainly because we
don’t have a law around it”. 



He currently serves as the chair for the IEEE in South Africa and is pursuing his PhD in high voltage physics at the University of the Witwatersrand.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Your social media could reveal your credit score</h4>



The IEEE report states that these are algorithms that use
facial recognition and other advanced biometrics to identify a person and
retrieve data about that person from social media and other digital profiles
for the purpose of approval or denial of access to consumer products or social
services. 



“In our increasingly networked world, the combination of
biometrics and blended social data streams can turn a brief observation into a
judgment of whether a person is a good or bad risk or worthy of public social
sanction,” says the report.



“Using social media to check credit scores could work for
someone who doesn’t have the transaction history that’s built with a bank
account,” Ramkaran says.



He says this method attempts to build a psychological
profile using your social media behavior, rather than your banking history, to
indicate whether you would honor your loan repayment.



“Discovery Bank, which claims to be the first behavioural
bank, is taking this a step further by not only observing, but actually
influencing your behavior,” he says.



At the moment, China has been popular for planning to
incorporate a nationwide social credit system. 



It is due to be fully operational nationwide by 2020.



However, a report by Business Insider critiques this method
of checking credit scores as people with low credit scores in China have been
banned from flying, as well as banning students from certain universities as
they have been considered bad students. 



“Li Xiaolin, a lawyer who was placed on the list in 2015, found himself unable to purchase plane tickets home while on a work trip, Human Rights Watch reported. He also couldn’t apply for credit cards,” says Business Insider.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Internet implants?</h4>



We’ve heard of Internet of Things, a buzz phrase that came
with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 



Internet of Bodies (IoB), on the other hand, is exactly
that; internet activity found within the human body. 



There have already been external self-monitoring
technologies such as fitness trackers and smart glasses. 



IEEE now predicts that “digital pills are entering
mainstream medicine, and body-attached, implantable, and embedded IoB devices
are also beginning to interact with sensors in the environment”.



“These devices yield richer data that enable more
interesting and useful applications, but also raise concerns about security,
privacy, physical harm, and abuse,” the report says. 



Critics, however, are concerned that they could be setting
dangerous precedents and courts and regulatory bodies may not be ready for them
yet. 



“The biggest concern for a while now has been around the
transparency and protection of personal data being collected by devices and
their service providers on consumers that wear or have ingested Internet of
Bodies type devices,” says Lee Naik, CEO, TransUnion 



Africa and a digital and technology transformation expert.



Examples of these are smart contact lenses that are being
developed to monitor glucose levels and could eliminate the daily blood sugar
pinprick for people with diabetes. 



Other devices are the Bluetooth-equipped electronic pills
being developed to monitor the inner workings of the&nbsp; body. 



They could eventually broadcast what you’ve eaten or whether
you’ve taken drugs.



Another emerging piece of technology related to the IoB is
the radio-frequency identification chip that can contain details of a person’s
bank details and identification in a chip implanted in the body.



In a report by The Independent, a company by the name of
Biohax has implanted chips in more than 4,000 people.



“Further regulation will be required to protect consumer
interests in relation to the Internet of Bodies, specifically to deal with the
security of consumer personal data which needs to be effectively protected in
balance with consumers receiving further benefits from innovation in this
space,” Naik says.



Despite some of the concerns around IoB, a recent study
published by Market Research Future reveals that the global smart contact
lenses market is set to thrive at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 10.4% during
the forecast period 2017 to 2023.



This could potentially change the way personal health is monitored and personal data is kept, connecting the body to the internet forever.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Cyber security pre-installed </h4>



IEEE experts suggest that a new generation of security
mechanism is merging.



The traditional method of protecting computer systems looked
at software such as anti-virus.



But now, new software uses an active approach such as hooks
that can be activated when new types of attacks are exposed and
machine-learning mechanisms to identify sophisticated attacks.



Already, cyber security solutions company McAfee announced
at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 that it would extend its collaboration
with PC hardware giant Dell to provide pre-installed security software for its
PCs and laptops.



According to Techradar, Dell Consumer and small business customers who purchase a new PC or laptop will also have the option to protect all of their devices with McAfee by installing the company’s cross-device software on their smartphones and tablets.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Selling your electricity to your neighbor</h4>



According to Cornish, this year, we may see the move from a
concentrated power producer such as Eskom to a micro grid system.



The concentrated power is usually produced in a certain
location and then distributed via transmission lines where it is used by the
consumer.



With a micro grid system, it uses a distributed power
system.



“Little communities have their own little power grids and
can generate power where they use it,” Cornish says.



“In other words, your house would have solar power and
whatever energy you have extra you would sell onto a grid and your whole
community is a micro grid and a system controls who gets power and when.”



Ramkaran says this trend would really work well in Africa.



“The major issue holding back these ‘micro-grids’ are not
technological. We are perfectly capable of building these systems, just look at
Australia and Germany, but regulatory hurdles prevent their implementation
locally,” he says.



Another trend is the emergence of a worldwide power grid. 



According to a Reuters report, the world’s first ±1100-kV
ultra-high voltage direct current transmission line was put into operation last
month in China, marking the project with the highest voltage, the biggest
transmission capacity, the longest transmission distance and the most advanced
in technology in the world, running 3,293 kilometers long and having a
transmission capacity of 12 million kW.



“There are many talks with China, Europe and Asia, to create
a huge high voltage transmission line along the entire continent and possibly
down to Africa. And it would be a worldwide grid that everyone could connect
to.



“If we are suffering with power problems, we could buy power from China or Russia or whoever has spare capacity, so we get rid of that capacity issue,” says Cornish, who predicts this could happen in South Africa in the next five years. 



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Consumers the new producers</h4>



With the rise of blockchain data, crowdsourcing has become a
growing trend, according to Cornish.



Using a blockchain platform for crowdsourcing helps solve a
variety of tasks through a collective approach.



“We are moving towards a crowdsourced idea instead of having
monolithic entities who create and consumers who consume. We are now going into
the phase where consumers are now producers,” says Cornish.



According to Markets Insider, one of the world’s first
blockchain-based e-commerce verification platform launched a platform by
integrating blockchain, AI and crowdsourcing.



The platform SimplyBrand aims to end online counterfeiting
through a safe and trustworthy digital commerce ecosystem in conjunction with
strategic partner Cobinhood, a leading cryptocurrency service platform
featuring zero-trading-fee exchange as well as an end-to-end ICO service
provider.&nbsp; 



They launched their token pre-sale early last month. 



Within this ecosystem, crowdsourced participants who report
fake products through the SimplyBrand App can “earn token rewards to purchase
brand privileged items or sell them on exchange, while brands can buy tokens
from exchange and purchase brand-protection services,” according to Reuters.



“It would be interesting to see how we will be leveraging
from that but we will be seeing much more of that,” Cornish says. 



Ramkaran says that this trend of peer-to-peer exchange is intensifying.



“With established platforms like Airbnb and Uber, people have become comfortable with buying goods and services from others, however, they’ve also become aware of the high transaction fees they’re charged,” he says.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Personal data becomes personal advertising</h4>



Cornish predicts the rise of big data analytics.



Big data is known as extremely large data sets that may be
analysed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations,
especially relating to human behaviour and interactions.



“If you go into big data, you can start telling a lot about
how a person lives. For example, if someone goes every Friday to buy a specific
item, you could tell whether they get wages as opposed to salaries just from
that load.”



“If you had their health data like Discovery does, you could
collect that data and start targeting ads like Google.”



However, Cornish suggests that it would be interesting to
see if Google would go ahead and collect consumer data as well.&nbsp; 



Naik says that businesses will start to invest in data
science and AI to drive insights from their large and growing big data.



“Big Data will be central to helping businesses understand
consumers better and develop products that best address consumer needs. Ultimately,
big data and artificial intelligence will be a big driver of business strategy
in future,” he says.



Ramkaran says that focus has shifted from ‘Big Data’ to
‘Machine and Deep Learning’, as companies have found more value in how
specially trained algorithms interpret and make decisions on data.



“Tech giants like Facebook and Google have mastered the art
of collecting your personal data, for free, which they leverage for massive
advertising revenues.



“People are beginning to realize how they’re being exploited
and manipulated, but based on the sheer numbers of connected users and power
that these platforms have, it won’t be an easy fight,” adds Ramkaran. 



&nbsp;But with big data
analytics as such, the ethics of tapping into personal information may be of concern.




Cornish predicts that it may take two years or more before
big data analytics will trend.

Internet

Internet In Our Bodies?

Many in the aviation industry believe that an electric passenger plane with a useful range and seating capacity is at least a decade away. The Israeli startup Eviation is hoping to prove this year that it can get there a lot sooner.



The company is working feverishly to assemble a prototype of its nine-passenger battery-electric plane by June to display at the Paris air show, and to gain an airworthiness certificate shortly thereafter to begin flight testing in the United States.



The 35-employee company is getting its funding and supply chain squared away. It says it&#8217;s secured the roughly $200 million it needs to get through certification, and it announced Wednesday that it will source high-power electric motors from Siemens.



A good chunk of its funding is from Clermont Group, the private investment fund of Singapore-based billionaire Richard Chandler, which acquired notes convertible to a 70% share in Eviation for $76 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dated Jan. 3.



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Eviation is developing a plane targeted at the regional transportation market in North America, believing there’s untapped demand for short-haul flights of 500 miles or less at a lower price than currently possible with the piston and turboprop planes that ply many secondary routes.



Amid a flood of startups trying to build electric urban air taxis that can take off and land vertically, Eviation stand out with its strategy to tack a new propulsion system onto an airframe that isn’t radically different from existing ones, and to serve and expand an existing market, which could give it greater near-term odds of winning regulatory approval. 



Washington State’s Zunum Aero is also taking a similar approach, but the Boeing-backed company is planning to use a hybrid gas-electric propulsion system.



Eviation says its plane, dubbed Alice, will be able to cruise at 275 mph with a maximum range of 650 miles, with a half hour of recharging time for every hour in the air. The company claims that the plane’s reduced maintenance demands and the much lower cost of electricity relative to aviation fuel will give it direct operating costs of about $200 per flight hour, at least 50% less than turboprop planes with comparable seating capacity.



 “This is a game-changing cost reduction,” CEO Omer Bar-Yohay told Forbes in a telephone interview. He’s betting Alice&#8217;s low operating costs will motivate fleet operators of small planes to replace decades-old Cessna Caravans or Beechcraft King Airs.



Eviation debuted a one-third scaled autonomous version at the 2017 Paris Air Show that the company has flown to validate its design. The plane will will weigh 14,000 pounds and measure 60 feet across the wings, larger than comparable conventional aircraft, with a little more than half the weight accounted for by the batteries, which will be distributed throughout the fuselage and wings. 



It will have a main pusher propeller behind its V-shaped tail and two smaller propellers at either wingtip that will reduce drag. Bar-Yohay says the weight and the ability the plane will have to adjust thrust propeller by propeller will give the plane a smoother ride.



“You can do yaw corrections or even pitch corrections not by moving control surfaces but by using differential thrust,” says Bar-Yohay, who spent 13 years in the Israel Defense Forces as a paratroop officer.



His co-founder, Aviv Tzidon, is a former fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force and serial entrepreneur who has taken three tech startups public on the Nasdaq.



The plane will be controlled by a fly-by-wire system developed with Honeywell. Siemens will supply electric motors with an output of 260 kilowatts; lithium-ion batteries will be supplied by Kokam of South Korea. The French company Multiplast is producing the composite airframe and is assembling the initial prototype.



Bar-Yohay says Eviation has had extensive discussions with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on requirements for certification, a milestone he hopes to achieve in 2021, with first deliveries in 2022.



While Bar-Yohay acknowledges that there could be a first-mover disadvantage in being the first company to try to certify a commercial electric passenger aircraft, he says it won’t require the rule-writing that will be needed to bring radical new designs like VTOL air taxis to market.



“Our plane behaves like a plane and looks like a plane,” says Bar-Yohay.”For the regulatory bodies we’re probably the aircraft they want to see first.”



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Nonetheless there are a multitude of safety questions that the FAA has never addressed before, warns Ernie Arvai, head of the consultancy AirInsight, including the fire risks of the batteries, charging degradation and power reserves, and the agency could proceed cautiously and potentially painfully slowly for Eviation. “If there’s something that they don’t understand there’s a risk aversion and they won’t push it,” he says.



Arvai anticipates the painstaking certification process, which is expensive even in the best cases, could cost 1-1/2 times the norm for Eviation.



Bar-Yohay says he has a sufficient war chest to make it through to what he calls initial “embryonic” production of 10 to 20 airframes a year, with a total of roughly $200 million in capital raised and loans. 



The lion&#8217;s share of that appears to be from billionaire Richard Chandler, a native of New Zealand who moved to Singapore in 2006 after shutting down Sovereign Group, an investment firm he co-founded with his brother Christopher. Chandler&#8217;s Clermont Group has also invested in MagniX, a Redmond, Wash.-based startup developing an electric propulsion system for aircraft.



An Isle of Man-registered company called Timon Limited also has made a $10 million investment in Eviation, according to an SEC filing. Bar-Yohay declined to disclose the sources of the rest of the company&#8217;s funding.



The company filed to deregister its U.S. listing as an over-the-counter stock.



Bar-Yohay says Eviation has firm orders from two small commercial carriers for a “double-digit number” of aircraft, enough to account for the first two years of production.



Eviation may be targeting the right market, says Arvai, and he’s impressed by the plane’s design, but he’s skeptical that the current generation of batteries have a high enough power to weight ratio to allow the company to deliver a product that has competitive operating costs.



Many short-haul planes operate for 11 to 12 hours a day, notes Arvai, with perhaps one 15-minute refueling. If the Eviation Alice will need a half hour of charging for every hour in the air, and it can only fly 8 or 9 hours a day, that would reduce the number of flights it could perform and revenue.



“I think they’re ahead of where the battery technology needs to be,” Arvai says. “We will get there, but I think it’s 2030, not 2022.” &nbsp;



Bar-Yohay believes batteries are good enough now, and that this is a rare moment when scrappy entrepreneurs can elbow their way into aerospace by leveraging new technologies. &#8220;Someday we’ll look back and say, &#8216;these were the good old days.&#8217; &#8220;



-Jeremy Bogaisky; Forbes Staff

1130200259

Eviation Gains Backing From Billionaire Richard Chandler To Make First Electric Passenger Plane Take Flight

Morocco’s economy is getting lost in translation. 



With so many students dropping out of university because they don’t speak French, the government has proposed reintroducing it as the language for teaching science, maths and technical subjects such as computer science in high schools.



It also wants children to start learning French when they start school.



The country’s official languages are Arabic and Amazigh, or Berber. Most people speak Moroccan Arabic – a mixture of Arabic and Amazigh infused with French and Spanish influences.



In school, children are taught through Arabic although they don’t use it outside the classroom. When they get to university, lessons switch to French, the language of the urban elite and the country’s former colonial masters. Confused? Many are.



Two out of three people fail to complete their studies at public universities in Morocco, mainly because they don’t speak French.



The linguistic morass has stymied economic growth and exacerbated inequalities in the North African country, where one in four young people are unemployed and the average annual income runs at approximately $3,440 per person, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) &#8211; less than a third of the world average.



The plans to broaden the teaching of French go to the heart of Morocco’s national identity.



They would overturn decades of Arabisation after independence from France in 1956 and have triggered a furor in parliament, where members of the Islamist PJD party, the senior partner in the coalition government, and the conservative Istiqlal party view them as a betrayal.



The disagreement has delayed a vote on the changes.



“Openness to the world should not be used as an excuse to impose the primacy of French,” said Hassan Adili, a PJD lawmaker.



Proponents say the changes reflect the reality that French reigns supreme in business, government and higher education, giving those who can afford to be privately schooled through French a huge advantage over the majority of the country’s students.



“In the Moroccan job market, mastery of French is indispensable. Those who do not have command of French are considered illiterate,” said Hamid El Otmani, head of talent and training at the Confederation of Moroccan Employers.



Even before parliament votes on the changes, Education Minister Said Amzazi has okayed the roll-out of French in some schools, declaring its use in teaching scientific subjects as an “irreversible choice”.



Like many Moroccan politicians, his children received a private education.



“When decision-makers start sending their children to public schools, only then can we say that we have a successful education system,” said Jamal Karimi Benchekroun of the co-ruling socialist PPS party.



Amzazi did not respond to a request for comment.



Frustration over jobs and poverty has fueled periodic protests in Morocco, but the country has avoided the sort of instability suffered by other North African states, where pent-up anger has triggered uprisings and provided fertile ground for Islamist extremism.



King Mohammed VI, the ultimate power in Morocco, has proven adept at introducing limited reforms in response to popular protest. He has spoken publicly about the need to teach foreign languages to students to reduce unemployment and has made the economy a top priority.



Last year, he sacked the minister for finance after calling on the government to do more to boost investment.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">C’EST LA VIE</h4>



Problems with language are not unique to Morocco. In neighboring Algeria, another former French colony, students are also schooled in Arabic only to be greeted “en francais” in university and the workplace.



French’s pre-eminence reflects Paris’ continuing influence in the region. France is the biggest foreign direct investor in Morocco and large companies such as carmakers Renault and Peugeot employ tens of thousands of people.



Privately-run universities such as the International University of Rabat (UIR) have courses geared toward high-growth industries such as aerospace and renewable energy and offer tuition in French and English.



But a year at UIR can cost up to $10,000 in fees, way beyond the budget of most Moroccans. They go instead to non-fee paying public universities, where the abrupt transition to studying in French is frequently a burden for students and their lecturers.



“Sometimes we find ourselves giving French language courses during economy classes,” said Amine Dafir, economy professor at Hassan II University, a public institution in Mohamedia, near Casablanca.



Hamid Farricha, 37, dropped out of his applied physics and computer science degree at Hassan II University during the first year. He dreamed of becoming an engineer but the language barrier meant he struggled to keep up.



Trying to find Arabic translations for French scientific words was a drain on his time.



He switched instead to studying mechanics at a vocational school. He still had to master French to get hired.



“The biggest challenge after earning my diploma was writing a CV and sitting for job interviews in French,” Farricha said.



He got a job as a technician at a plant repairing car frames, paid below Morocco’s minimum monthly salary of 2570 dirhams, or $270.



Farricha was one of the lucky ones. Morocco’s economy cannot absorb all the young people looking for work. Around 280,000 graduates entered the labor force last year but only 112,000 jobs were created.



The unemployment rate for graduates is 17 percent, above the national rate of 9.8 percent, according to data from Morocco’s planning agency.



Morocco’s reliance on small and medium-sized companies which do not typically employ graduates, and austerity drives which have cut public sector jobs are part of the reason for the high rate of graduate unemployment.



The education system is also failing to prepare students for work.



In addition to high dropout rates, Moroccan students score badly compared to peers on international tests, and at university level, students oversubscribe to social science fields at the expense of technical subjects, according to an IMF report in late 2017. That means many don’t have the skills employers are looking for when they graduate.



Even for roles not requiring a degree, French is a must. On the French website of Morocco’s job promotion agency, almost all employers were looking for French speakers, including for jobs as guards, waiters, cooks and drivers.



Determined to get ahead, Farricha worked on his French while employed at the plant. He read newspapers and books in his spare time and gave himself a daily list of new expressions and vocabulary to learn.



He went back to university in 2014 for a degree in French law and is studying for a masters in diplomacy and international arbitration.



To meet his living costs, he teaches French to other students. -Reuters



&#8211;Ahmed Eljechtimi

RC1269A18E00

Morocco Looks To French As Language Of Economic Success

Software pirates have hijacked technology designed by Apple Inc to distribute hacked versions of Spotify, Angry Birds, Pokemon Go, Minecraft and other popular apps on iPhones.



Illicit software distributors such as TutuApp, Panda Helper, AppValley and TweakBox have found ways to use digital certificates to get access to a program Apple introduced to let corporations distribute business apps to their employees without going through Apple’s tightly controlled App Store.



Using so-called enterprise developer certificates, these pirate operations are providing modified versions of popular apps to consumers, enabling them to stream music without ads and to circumvent fees and rules in games, depriving Apple and legitimate app makers of revenue.



By doing so, the pirate app distributors are violating the rules of Apple’s developer programs, which only allow apps to be distributed to the general public through the App Store. Downloading modified versions violates the terms of service of almost all major apps.



TutuApp, Panda Helper, AppValley and TweakBox did not respond to multiple requests for comment.



Apple has no way of tracking the real-time distribution of these certificates, or the spread of improperly modified apps on its phones, but it can cancel the certificates if it finds misuse.



“Developers that abuse our enterprise certificates are in violation of the Apple Developer Enterprise Program Agreement and will have their certificates terminated, and if appropriate, they will be removed from our Developer Program completely,” an Apple spokesperson told Reuters. “We are continuously evaluating the cases of misuse and are prepared to take immediate action.”



After Reuters initially contacted Apple for comment last week, some of the pirates were banned from the system, but within days they were using different certificates and were operational again.



“There’s nothing stopping these companies from doing this again from another team, another developer account,” said Amine Hambaba, head of security at software firm Shape Security.



Apple confirmed a media report on Wednesday that it would require two-factor authentication &#8211; using a code sent to a phone as well as a password &#8211; to log into all developer accounts by the end of this month, which could help prevent certificate misuse.



Major app makers Spotify Technology SA, Rovio Entertainment Oyj and Niantic Inc have begun to fight back.



Spotify declined to comment on the matter of modified apps, but the streaming music provider did say earlier this month that its new terms of service would crack down on users who are “creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements” on its service.



Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds mobile games, said it actively works with partners to address infringement “for the benefit of both our player community and Rovio as a business.”



Niantic, which makes Pokemon Go, said players who use pirated apps that enable cheating on its game are regularly banned for violating its terms of service. Microsoft Corp, which owns the creative building game Minecraft, declined to comment.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SIPHONING OFF REVENUE</h4>



It is unclear how much revenue the pirate distributors are siphoning away from Apple and legitimate app makers.



TutuApp offers a free version of Minecraft, which costs $6.99 in Apple’s App Store. AppValley offers a version of Spotify’s free streaming music service with the advertisements stripped away.



The distributors make money by charging $13 or more per year for subscriptions to what they calls “VIP” versions of their services, which they say are more stable than the free versions. It is impossible to know how many users buy such subscriptions, but the pirate distributors combined have more than 600,000 followers on Twitter.



Electronic Arts&#8217; new game challenges Fortnite



Security researchers have long warned about the misuse of enterprise developer certificates, which act as digital keys that tell an iPhone a piece of software downloaded from the internet can be trusted and opened. They are the centerpiece of Apple’s program for corporate apps and enable consumers to install apps onto iPhones without Apple’s knowledge.



Apple last month briefly banned Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc from using enterprise certificates after they used them to distribute data-gathering apps to consumers.



The distributors of pirated apps seen by Reuters are using certificates obtained in the name of legitimate businesses, although it is unclear how. Several pirates have impersonated a subsidiary of China Mobile Ltd. China Mobile did not respond to requests for comment.



Tech news website TechCrunch earlier this week reported that certificate abuse also enabled the distribution of apps for pornography and gambling, both of which are banned from the App Store.



Since the App Store debuted in 2008, Apple has sought to portray the iPhone as safer than rival Android devices because Apple reviews and approves all apps distributed to the devices.



Early on, hackers “jailbroke” iPhones by modifying their software to evade Apple’s controls, but that process voided the iPhone’s warranty and scared off many casual users. The misuse of the enterprise certificates seen by Reuters does not rely on jailbreaking and can be used on unmodified iPhones. -Reuters



-Stephen Nellis and Paresh Dave

Man hacking into computer

Software Pirates Use Apple Tech To Put Hacked Apps On iPhones

Venture capital-backed financial technology companies raised a record $39.57 billion from investors globally in 2018, up 120 percent from the previous year, according to research by data provider CB Insights published on Tuesday. 



Funding was raised through 1,707 deals, up from 1,480 in 2017, the research said.



The surge in funding was due in large part to 52 mega-rounds, or investments larger than $100 million, which were worth $24.88 billion combined, the research said.



A $14 billion investment in Ant Financial, the payment affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, accounted for 35 percent of total fintech funding alone last year, the research said.



In the last three months of the year, five companies joined the coveted ranks of fintech “unicorns”, or companies valued at more than $1 billion. These include credit card provider Brex, digital bank Monzo and data aggregator Plaid.



Venture capital investors have been pouring billions of dollars into fintech companies, in the hopes that they can gain market share from incumbent financial institutions by offering easier to use and cheaper digital financial services.



Fintechs have emerged globally across all sectors of finance, including lending, banking and wealth management.



While the large rounds minted new unicorns and led funding to hit a record high in 2018, CB Insights estimates these will likely delay initial public offerings.



“IPO activity is likely to remain lackluster in 2019,” the research reads.



Asia saw the biggest jump in number of deals in 2018, growing 38 percent from the previous year and accounting for a record $22.65 billion, according to the study.



In the United States, fintechs raised a record $11.89 billion through 659 investments, while the number of deals dropped in Europe, but funding reached a record $3.53 billion. -Reuters



-Anna Irrera

1096088158

Fintech Companies Raised a Record $39.6 Billion in 2018: Research

If Volkswagen realizes its ambition of becoming the global leader in electric cars, it will be thanks to a radical and risky bet born out of the biggest calamity in its history. 



The German giant has staked its future, to the tune of 80 billion euros ($91 billion), on being able to profitably mass-produce electric vehicles &#8211; a feat no carmaker has come close to achieving.



So far mainstream automakers’ electric plans have had one main goal: to protect profits gleaned from high-margin conventional cars by adding enough zero-emission vehicles to their fleet to meet clean-air rules.



Customers have meanwhile largely shunned electric vehicles because they are too expensive, can be inconvenient to charge and lack range.



The biggest strategy shift in Volkswagen’s 80 years has its roots in a weekend crisis meeting at the Rothehof guesthouse in Wolfsburg on October 10, 2015, senior executives told Reuters.



At the meeting hosted by then VW brand chief Herbert Diess, nine top managers gathered on a cloudy Saturday afternoon to discuss the way forward after regulators blew the whistle on the company’s emissions cheating, a scandal that cost it more than 27 billion euros in fines and tainted its name.



“It was an intense discussion, so was the realization that this could be an opportunity, if we jump far enough,” said Juergen Stackmann, VW brand’s board member for sales.



“It was an initial planning session to do more than just play with the idea of electric cars,” he told Reuters. “We asked ourselves: what is our vision for the future of the brand? Everything that you see today is connected to this.”



Just three days after the Rothehof meeting of the VW brand’s management board, Volkswagen announced plans to develop an electric vehicle platform, codenamed MEB, paving the way for mass production of an affordable electric car.



For months after the Volkswagen scandal blew up in 2015, rival carmakers treated diesel-cheating as a “VW issue”, according to industry experts. But regulators have since uncovered excessive emissions across the sector and unleashed a clampdown that undermines the business case for combustion engines, forcing a sector-wide rethink.



Now the “villain” of dieselgate is likely to become the largest producer of electric cars in the world in coming years, analysts say, putting it in pole position to flood the market &#8211; should the demand materialize.



“Decisions to convert the Emden factory (in Lower Saxony) to build electric cars, would never have happened without this Saturday meeting,” said Stackmann, one of five senior VW executives who spoke to Reuters.



However the full scale of VW’s ambitions were only revealed two months ago when it took the industry by surprise by pledging to spend 80 billion euros to develop electric vehicles and buy batteries, dwarfing the investment of rivals.



It plans to raise annual production of electric cars to 3 million by 2025, from 40,000 in 2018.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">STRATEGIC PERILS</h4>



It’s a risky bet.



With regulators and lawmakers, rather than customers, dictating what kind of vehicles can hit the road, analysts at Deloitte say the industry could produce 14 million electric cars for which there is no consumer demand.



It’s also an all-or-nothing bet in the long run.



VW, whose ID electric car will hit showrooms in 2020, has set a deadline for ending mass production of combustion engines. The final generation of gasoline and diesel engines will be developed by 2026.



Arndt Ellinghorst, analyst at Evercore ISI, said betting on electric vehicles (EVs) could be risky because customers did not want to own cars dependent on street-charging facilities.



“What if people are still not ready to own EVs? Will adoption be the same in the U.S., Europe and China?” he said.



But he added that EU and Chinese emissions regulations made electric vehicle adoption inevitable and that being an early industry mover in that direction offered a “positive risk-reward”.



Another by-product of dieselgate that quickened VW’s electric drive, according to the senior executives, was a purge of the company’s old guard, who became the focus of public and political anger.



This empowered Diess, a newcomer who had joined as VW brand boss shortly before U.S. regulators exposed the carmaker’s emission test cheating.



Diess, who joined from BMW where he helped pioneer a ground-breaking electric vehicle, has since been appointed CEO of Volkswagen Group, a multi-brand empire that includes Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Seat, Skoda, Lamborghini and Ducati.Slideshow&nbsp;(3 Images)



Carmakers have failed to mass-produce electric cars profitably largely because of the prohibitive cost of battery packs which make up between 30 percent and 50 percent of the cost of an electric vehicle.



A 500 km-range battery costs around $20,000, compared with a gasoline engine that costs around $5,000. Add to that another $2,000 for the electric motor and inverter, and the gap is even wider.



Even electric start-up Tesla’s cheapest car, the Model 3, is on sale in Germany at 55,400 euros, priced just below a base model Porsche Macan, a compact SUV. In the United States, Model 3 prices start at $35,950.



VW believes its scale will give it an edge to build an electric vehicle costing no more than its current Golf model, about 20,000 euros, using its procurement clout as the world’s largest car and truck maker to drive down the cost.



“We are Volkswagen, a brand for the people. For electric cars we need economies of scale. And VW, more than any other carmaker, can take advantage of this,” a senior Volkswagen executive told Reuters, declining to be named.



The carmaker’s electric-vehicle budget outstrips that of its closest competitor, Germany’s Daimler, which has committed $42 billion. General Motors, the No.1 U.S. automaker, has said it plans to spend a combined $8 billion on electric and self-driving vehicles.



Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi said in late 2017 they would spend 10 billion euros by 2022 on developing electric and autonomous cars.



“On a 2025 view, we expect Volkswagen to be the number one electric vehicles producer globally,” UBS analyst Patrick Hummel said. “Tesla is likely to remain a niche player.”



U.S. shale boosts BP profits to five year high



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">STRICTER TESTING</h4>



VW’s test cheating using engine management software &#8211; “defeat devices” &#8211; resulted in the introduction of tougher pollution tests which revealed in 2016 and 2017 that emissions readings across the industry were up to 20 percent higher under real-world driving conditions compared with lab conditions.



This has raised the bar on the auto sector’s efforts to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, blamed for causing global warming.



EU lawmakers in December agreed a cut in carbon dioxide emissions from cars of 37.5 percent by 2030 compared with 2021 levels. This was after the European Union forced a 40 percent cut in emissions between 2007 and 2021.



“This goal is no longer reachable using combustion engines alone,” Volkmar Denner, chief executive of Bosch, the world’s biggest auto supplier, said about the 2030 proposals.



Every gram of excessive carbon dioxide pollution will be penalized with a 95 euros fine from this year onwards.



Strategy firm PA Consulting forecasts VW will face a 1.4-billion-euro penalty for overstepping average limits in Europe by 2021, while Ford and Fiat-Chrysler face fines of 430 million euros and 700 million euros respectively.



Daimler, BMW, PSA, Mazda and Hyundai will miss their 2021 average emissions targets, PA Consulting forecasts. Toyota, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, Volvo, Honda and Jaguar Land Rover are on track to meet their goals.



PA Consulting’s forecasts were extrapolated using 2017 registration data for each powertrain type and consumer buying trends, but do not include more recent sales trends.



Ford, VW and BMW said they would meet their targets because of a push to sell more hybrid and electric cars in 2018. Daimler said it aimed to meet the targets, PSA said it would respect the targets while Fiat-Chrysler declined to comment. Mazda had no immediate comment, while Hyundai did not respond to a request for comment.



Carmakers have struggled to lower their average fleet emissions because of a shift in customer taste toward heavier, bigger SUVs (sports utility vehicles), which make it harder to maintain the same levels of acceleration and comfort without increasing fuel consumption and pollution.



SUVs are now the most popular vehicle category in Europe, commanding a market share of 34.6 percent, according to JATO Dynamics. Even Porsche, which makes lightweight sportscars, relies on sports utility vehicles for 61 percent of sales.



As the industry-wide scale of excessive emissions prompted Brussels to push through tougher laws late last year, VW executives concluded that purely electric cars were the most efficient way to meet carbon dioxide goals across its fleet.



This was the point of no return, according to executives, when the company made the final electric investment decisions and committed to staying the course it had plotted after dieselgate.



“After evaluating alternatives, we opted for electromobility,” chief operating officer Ralf Brandstaetter told Reuters about VW’s deliberations in November. -Reuters



-Ilona Wissenbach and Agnieszka Flak

gettyimages-950606096-594×594

Bet Everything on Electric: Inside Volkswagen’s Radical Strategy Shift

Online platforms have become an important site for political and social engagement. On the one hand they have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/special-report/2014/11/07/technology-democracy-social-media/">praised</a>&nbsp;for their progressive characteristics. This is because they offer great organising potential, enhance political accountability and disrupt old media practices that tend to exclude less powerful voices from important social and political discussions.



On the other hand, they have invited notes of&nbsp;cautioun. This is because new media platforms embolden and even midwife bullies, ethnic jingoists, and nationalist radicals who are a threat to social cohesion.



Both points of view have merit. New media platforms can be powerful forces for democracy and also a space for dangerous, sectarian and divisive ideas. A number of governments seem to be exploiting these fears in a bid to control these platforms.



These attempts are likely to become a lot more commonplace across Africa. Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Gambia have already passed laws that target social media users specifically. Some of these laws&nbsp;criminalise free speech online, while others have made the use of social media too&nbsp;expensive for users.



Nevertheless, new media platforms are increasingly being used. Their importance on the political landscape can’t be over-emphasised. This is because they have allowed people excluded from public communication to articulate their fears and desires in a way that wasn’t previously possible. The widespread use of applications such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp has been particularly instrumental in including a broad range of users in public discussions.



Rather than rely on the mainstream press to cover important political stories, citizens are able to discuss issues in the digital space. When their stories go viral the mainstream media then begins to cover them as important news items.



Twitter in particular has become a&nbsp;useful political tool&nbsp;for many. And Twitter’s standard vernaculars such as hashtags and memes have also been creatively appropriated to reflect local inflections. Humour, local languages, and idioms abound.



The fact that participants are also able to “tag” their leaders further means that authority is confronted directly. And a poor person living in an informal settlement is now able to confront the head of state with just as much authority as anyone else. These small victories matter.



These platforms have also enabled users to link local issues with international concerns to give them global currency and legitimacy. In Kenya for example, an anti-rape campaign which coalesced around #JusticeForKemunto could be seamlessly linked to the [#MeToo movement], a similar rebuke and articulation of anger against sexual violence against women.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Government control</h4>



The shift from legacy media has not been accidental.&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-african-governments-use-advertising-as-a-weapon-against-media-freedom-75702">A number of African governments still exert enormous control</a>&nbsp;over the media sector. The is because the state remains the single largest advertiser in the media in sub-Saharan Africa, and so can influence coverage and content.



In some countries, presidents and high-level politicians even&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/corporate/Kenyatta-business-empire-goes-into-expansion-drive/539550-2069704-liwltz/index.html">own media </a>houses.



This is why the digital space is so important. The emergence of a relatively new structure of communication – which is amorphous, unrestrained, and largely unaffected by state control – has meant there are new ways of&nbsp;holding governments to account.



But their popularity has drawn negative reactions from some governments.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Cracking down</h4>



Some are now&nbsp;employing digitally savvy state operatives&nbsp;to counter opposition discourses online.



Others have gone further by enforcing regulations to control online discourse through punitive laws and taxation.



In Tanzania for example, digital content producers – including bloggers – are&nbsp;required to get yearly licences&nbsp;which cost $900 dollars. In Uganda, data bundles are now much more expensive with a&nbsp;$0.05 levy charged per day. And Zambia plans to introduce&nbsp;similar measures.



Other countries have been a lot more brazen in their efforts to clamp down on free online speech. Cameroon, Egypt, and Ethiopia, for example, have regularly&nbsp;shut down the internet. Users considered too critical of the government are routinely arrested,&nbsp;threatened or even jailed.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Fake news</h4>



This is not to say that new media platforms are entirely without problems. Social media has been used to create and disseminate fake news. This has contributed to a dangerous regime of misinformation that has undermined democratic processes in a number of African countries.



This was the case during&nbsp;Kenya’s 2017 general elections&nbsp;when the ruling Jubilee party&nbsp;employed Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based public relations company, to boost its electoral prospects. The company was later accused of populating social media and using bots to create and circulate fake news.



Similarly, in South Africa, both the ruling African National Congress and the opposition Democratic Alliance were reported to have&nbsp;used social media to spread fake news&nbsp;to besmirch opponents during municipal elections.



These trends reflect the fact that fake news, misinformation and disinformation have infected the continent’s body politic, which is a dangerous development.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Future threats</h4>



It’s however safe to say that new media platforms are now firmly part of Africa’s public culture and any attempt to stop, frustrate or undermine their significance in public life is bound to fail.



However, the creative use to which they are put must be constructive and progressive. For example, in countries where collective political organisation and expression is increasingly being undermined by the state – such as Tanzania – instances of self-expression through new media form important pockets of resistance. These pockets, when viewed collectively, can help focus attention on state repression and excesses.



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INDIA-US-INTERNET-FACEBOOK

How New Media Platforms Have Become Powerful Across Africa

China and the United States are ahead of the global competition to dominate artificial intelligence (AI), according to a study by the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published on Thursday. 



The study found U.S. tech giant IBM had by far the biggest AI patent portfolio, with 8,920 patents, ahead of Microsoft with 5,930 and a group of mainly Japanese tech conglomerates.



China accounted for 17 of the top 20 academic institutions involved in patenting AI and was particularly strong in the fast growing area of “deep learning” &#8211; a machine-learning technique that includes speech recognition systems.



“The U.S. and China obviously have stolen a lead. They’re out in front in this area, in terms of numbers of applications, and in scientific publications,” WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry told a news conference.



U.S. President Donald Trump has accused China of stealing American innovations and technology and has slapped trade tariffs on $234 billion of Chinese goods to punish Beijing.



China said in December it resolutely opposed “slanderous” accusations from the United States and other allies criticizing China for economic espionage and stealing intellectual property and company secrets.



Gurry acknowledged there were accusations about China’s behavior but there was no doubt it had embraced the global intellectual property system, with the world’s largest patent office and the largest number of domestic patent applications.



“They are serious players in the field of intellectual property,” he said.



The WIPO study analyzed international patent filings, scientific publications, litigation filings and acquisition activity, and found there had been as many patent applications for AI since 2013 as in the half century since the term was coined in the 1950s.



Patent applications in machine learning, which includes techniques used by ride-sharing services to minimize detours, averaged annual growth of 28 percent between 2013 and 2016, the last year for which data is available, because of an 18-month period before confidential applications are publicly disclosed.



Much of that growth came from deep learning, which overtook robotics as it ballooned from 118 patent applications in 2013 to 2,399 in 2016.



The single most popular AI application was computer vision, used in self-driving cars, and mentioned in 49 percent of all AI-related patents.



The study showed how technology had followed science, Gurry said, with the 2013 boom in technological applications coming 10 years after a similar surge in scientific publications.



Apple bans Facebook app that paid teens for data



However, the world did not have any reliable way of measuring the quality of patent applications.



“If you did, you wouldn’t need a venture capital industry,” he said. -Reuters



-Tom Miles

RC1D431A8DC0

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Tesla Inc’s chief financial officer will leave the company as the automaker on Wednesday promised cheaper Model 3 sedans, the launch of Chinese production this year and profits in every quarter in 2019. 



The departure of Deepak Ahuja as well as missing Wall Street profit targets for the end of 2018, sent Tesla shares down nearly 6 percent after hours. Zach Kirkhorn, Tesla’s vice president of finance, will replace Ahuja, who is about 56 years old.



Chief Executive Elon Musk touted strong demand for the Model 3, as the company begins to ship the car to Europe and Asia from its Fremont, California factory. But he acknowledged it was paramount to cut costs to lower the price of the vehicle for a wider customer base.



“We have to be relentless about costs in order to make affordable cars and not go bankrupt,” said Musk on a conference call with analysts.



While the company expressed optimism that it could post a profit in the first quarter despite fewer deliveries of its flagship S and X vehicles, Tesla warned of challenges such as logistics and global deliveries of its new Model 3.



Tesla said plans to lower the price of the Model 3 were contingent on quickly building its factory in China. It hopes to produce 500,000 vehicles a year there by the last quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020, a goal it originally expected to meet in 2018.



To start, the Shanghai factory will build 3,000 Model 3s per week, while production at Tesla’s Fremont plant will rise to 7,000 Model 3s per week by year’s end, the company estimated.



“Bottom line is we need the Shanghai factory to achieve that 10,000 rate and have the cars be affordable,” Musk told analysts. “The demand for Model 3 is insanely high. The inhibitor is affordability.”



Musk announced a 7 percent workforce reduction earlier this month, saying it was crucial to cut costs to roll out a lower-priced, yet still profitable, Model 3.



The cheapest today is priced at $44,000. Musk gave a “rough guess” that Tesla would begin building its originally promised $35,000 version around the middle of this year.



Roth Capital Partners analyst Craig Irwin called Tesla’s results “somewhat weak, but largely as expected.”



“We think people have been too bullish about Tesla showing earnings power, and sustained positive cash from operations,” he said.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">MORE CASH</h4>



Investors have wondered whether Tesla, which has never posted an annual profit, will seek more capital to fund a planned Model Y SUV, the building of factories in China and Europe, and the expansion of Tesla’s existing Nevada battery plant, the Gigafactory.Slideshow&nbsp;(3 Images)



Tesla said it ended the quarter with $4.3 billion in cash and said it could pay a $920 million convertible bond maturing in March.



“Tesla has a fantastic brand, and by all accounts a fantastic product, but we’re worried it’s also fantastically expensive,” said Nicholas Hyett, Equity Analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. “2019 could prove a make-or-break year.”



The winding down of a U.S. tax subsidy this year will make all Tesla cars more expensive and could hurt sales.



Tesla said it expected lower S and X deliveries in the first quarter, given a “pull-forward in demand” in 2018 for those vehicles when the full subsidy was still available. Tesla recognizes revenue once a vehicle is delivered.



Apple posts revenue drop but optimistic on China



In the fourth quarter, customer deposits decreased by $113 million from the prior quarter to $793 million. Tesla said it was working through its Model 3 backlog without clarifying further.



Asked about Model 3 reservations, Ahuja said that number was “not relevant.” Tesla last disclosed in May that net Model 3 reservations &#8211; accounting for new orders and cancellations &#8211; exceeded 450,000.



The company made a net profit of $139.5 million in the three months ended Dec. 31, compared with a $311.5 million in the third quarter, when it benefited from regulatory credits. 



Excluding items, Tesla earned $1.93 per share, missing expectations of $2.20 per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.



Tesla’s total revenue rose 5.9 percent to $7.23 billion, beating the analyst average estimate of $7.08 billion. -Reuters



-Sonam Rai in Bengaluru and Alexandria Sage

RC11AFA40560

Tesla CFO Leaves as Automaker Promises Profits and Cheaper Cars

In sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 600 million people still lack access to electricity, off-grid renewable power is seen as one of the fastest ways to get energy where it’s needed, particularly to remote and rural areas where many Africans live.



But one big challenge stands in the way, experts say: Too few trained workers able to plan, install and maintain solar, wind and other clean energy systems.



In power-hungry Goma, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, “we’ve had very significant challenges finding very capable talent, particularly at the senior management level,” said Kweku Yankson, head of human resources in Africa for BBOXX, a clean energy company working to expand off-grid systems in 12 countries from Rwanda to Pakistan.



Rwanda, in turn, has what Yankson described as a big pool of job-ready young talent – but still relatively few people trained in clean energy technology, Yankson said.



Overall, only 16,000 people are recorded as working in renewable energy in sub-Saharan Africa, outside South Africa, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).



That is just 0.1 percent of the global renewable energy workforce, and fewer than the number of people who work on wind power in the U.S. state of Illinois alone, IRENA noted.



But with demand growing for renewable energy entrepreneurs and for workers in product assembly, sales, marketing, finance and intellectual property, efforts are now underway to provide the talent needed.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">4.5 MILLION JOBS</h4>



A Powering Jobs campaign, launched in October at an international off-grid renewable energy conference in Singapore, aims to train up to a million people globally by 2025 to meet demand for renewable energy workers.



The effort, led by Power for All – an organization that promotes more use of decentralized power – and backed by the Schneider Electric Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, will focus on building skills in countries where electricity access is very low, said Gilles Vermot Desroches, director of sustainable development at Schneider.



The push is part of a broader global campaign to fill an expected 4.5 million jobs related to expansion of off-grid renewable energy by 2030, according to IRENA estimates.



That expansion is focused in part on achieving a global sustainable-development goal of providing universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy by 2030.



In Africa, lessons are being drawn from India, which has trained more than 30,000 solar electric installers in the past two years as part of a government-backed effort.



The country aims to train a total of 50,000 installers by 2022, according to India’s government.



One of the biggest problems facing expansion of renewable off-grid power in Africa is that systems need to be built and operated in remote locations, where it can be harder to attract and retain staff, said Yankson of BBOXX.



Also, even in countries such as Rwanda, where a growing number of multinational companies have trained large numbers of young workers, “the most pressing challenge has been around finding very capable and experienced managing directors and finding senior finance managers,” he said.



In Kenya, Yankson said, the difficulty is cost: Skilled talent comes at high salaries, thanks to competition for the best people in Nairobi among companies and non-profit groups.



“The main limitation we’ve faced in Kenya has been the cost of talent,” he said.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">NEW LEADERS</h4>



To provide a broader pool of potential hires, BBOXX has created the BBOXX Academy, an online learning platform that offers professional courses, said Emery Nzirabatinya, a former learning and development manager at the firm who now works in Nairobi for a U.S. hearing aid company



BBOX also has started a future leaders program in Kigali, he said.



“The program seeks strong university graduates that are put through a rigorous, year-long development and exposure program at BBOXX,” Nzirabatinya said.



Julienne Ayinkamiye, a recent civil engineering graduate from the University of Rwanda College of Science and Technology, is one of two inaugural participants in the leadership project in Kigali.



As part of the program, she is responsible for running a BBOXX pilot solar lighting project being launched this year in Rwanda and then across Africa, and has worked in a range of different departments of the company.



The work has included customer satisfaction research and analysis of competitors, she said.



She said she believes the training, “will help me increase my analytical, project management and general management skills” – and give BBOXX a larger potential pool of talent to hire.



“I am now working on real projects impacting the lives of thousands of rural households across Africa,” she said.



The push for more trained renewable energy workers comes as an increasing number of countries around Africa try to ramp up use of off-grid renewable energy.



Kenya in December launched a new national electrification strategy that includes stand-alone, off-grid renewable energy systems as a key part of the country’s goal of achieving 100 percent access to electricity by 2022.



About three-quarters of Kenyans currently have access to electricity, according to the new plan.



Part of Kenya’s push is an off-grid solar access project that aims to connect 1.3 million people in 14 particularly under-served counties, said Isaac Kiva, secretary of renewable energy in Kenya’s Ministry of Energy.



“We are also now working with our education system to develop solar-specific curricula in order to build the necessary capacity,” he said.



In Rwanda, the government is collaborating with U.S.-based universities, including Carnegie Mellon, and partnering with online learning efforts to provide better access to training for clean energy jobs, Nzirabatinya said.



“This will have a positive impact on the job readiness of the talent pool in Rwanda,” he predicted. -Reuters



-Geoffrey Kamadi

Operations At The Senergy Santhiou Mekhe PV Solar Plant As Dawn Of Solar Age Declared

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Cryptocurrencies stolen from exchanges and scammed from investors surged more than 400 percent in 2018 to around $1.7 billion, according to a report from U.S.-based cyber security firm CipherTrace released on Tuesday. 



Of the $1.7 billion, the report, which looks at criminal activity in the digital currency market, said $950 million constituted thefts from cryptocurrency exchanges and infrastructure services such as wallets, up nearly 260 percent from $266 million in 2017.



Korea and Japan were home to most of the thefts from exchanges, or 58 percent, throughout 2018.



The numbers on crypto theft surprised many observers given the price declines in digital currencies in 2018. The market capitalization with more than 1,600 digital currencies was $112 billion in January, 2019, down more than 80 percent from its peak a year earlier.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2018/12/14/bitcoin-ransoms-just-are-not-what-they-used-to-be/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Bitcoin Ransoms Just Are Not What They Used to Be (opens in a new tab)">Bitcoin Ransoms Just Are Not What They Used to Be</a>



In addition to those thefts, the research found that investors and exchange users lost about $725 million in cryptocurrency in 2018 to exit scams such as fraudulent initial coin offerings, phony exchange hacks, and Ponzi schemes.



In 2017, the exit scams totaled just $56 million, according to CipherTrace.



“These numbers only represent the loot from crypto crimes that CipherTrace can validate; we have little doubt that the true number of crypto asset losses is much larger,” the cybersecurity firm said in the report.



Whereas in the first three quarters, thefts by hackers dominated the crypto crime scene, the fourth quarter was mostly about inside jobs or fraud, CipherTrace said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">We have been seeing new types of crimes that involve money laundering</blockquote>



said Dave Jevans, chief executive officer of CipherTrace, told Reuters in an interview.



Jevans is also the chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a global organization that aims to help solve cyber crime.



Snapchat weighs permanent snaps



“So we have seen in 2018 a lot more exit scams where companies disappear and steal people’s money. There’s huge increase in that,” he added.



Jevans noted that in all likelihood the bulk of the $1.7 billion in stolen and scammed cryptocurrencies has already been laundered.



“These bad actors are clearly flocking to jurisdictions with weak AML (anti-money laundering) and know-your-customer (KYC) regimes, because in our Q3 report we published the results of research showing 97 percent of criminal bitcoin flows into unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges,” the CipherTrace report said. -Reuters



-Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

File: Crypto Losses Near $700 Billion In Worst Week Since Bubble Burst

Cryptocurrency Thefts, Scams Hit $1.7 Billion in 2018: Report

Snap Inc is considering changes to its Snapchat app, known for disappearing photos and videos, that could make users’ public posts longer lasting or even permanent, people familiar with the matter said. 



The company is also weighing an option to reveal the identities of Snapchat users who make public posts, a person familiar with Snap’s plans said.



Together the changes would mark a big step in Snap’s effort to lure and keep users by making content shared publicly via the “Our Story” section, more available outside Snapchat. They could also create a new revenue source for money-losing Snap, which has seen its user base shrink and executives flee the company.



But such changes to Snapchat, which launched in 2011 and became an instant hit among teenagers and millennials, could trigger backlash from users who cherish their privacy, especially as rival Facebook Inc has been plagued by scandals over how it handles user data.



Snap is carefully weighing the privacy, technical and legal considerations of revealing user identities on public posts, said the person familiar with Snap’s plans.



Only Snapchat photo and video content shared to “Our Story”, which shares the snaps publicly to a wider audience and not just a user’s friends, would be affected and users would still have the option of deleting those stories, said the person.



Snap has already extended the shelf life of public stories, but making them last even longer or revealing more about the users who create them would be a further departure from Snapchat’s hallmark features.



Snap declined to comment.



The changes would come in response to feedback from Snap’s four partnerships with news discovery platforms that help media companies spot, analyze and republish public breaking news content on Snapchat, sources said. Reuters is a customer of SAM Desk and NewsWhip, two of the news discovery platforms.



The news partnerships are part of Snap’s “Stories Everywhere” initiative, launched last year to push content to more places outside Snapchat.



Snap announced the partnerships last year and will sign four more deals in the near future, said the person familiar with Snap’s plans.



Initially, public stories would disappear after 30 days but now remain viewable for 90 days, according to Snap’s support website.



Some partners have said that the disappearing and anonymous nature of public stories makes them difficult to work with, the sources said.



Some news organizations will not embed Snapchat stories into articles because the content eventually disappears, while others will not use them because they are unable to verify anonymous users’ Snapchat videos.



One source familiar with the news partnership said Snap is already talking with one partner about making public posts last even longer and to make some content from celebrities permanent.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">LUCRATIVE BUSINESS</h4>



Snap’s stock has been under pressure as investors question the company’s plan to reach profitability. Snap shares on Friday closed some 60 percent below their March 2017 initial public offering price.



Making user content more valuable for partners has helped boost revenue at Snap’s rivals.



Twitter Inc was one of the first social media platforms to sell access to public posts or tweets and reported $108 million in third-quarter revenue from non-advertising businesses like data licensing, its fastest-growing division.



Twitter sells access to more than 500 million daily tweets to customers including analytics firms, news organizations and financial institutions that use trending tickers and stories to place trades.



Snap does not currently charge for access to public data, but could earn more advertising revenue if snaps embedded outside of Snapchat last longer, said Debra Aho Williamson, a social media marketing analyst with research firm eMarketer.



“The advertising would be visible for longer, and I could see advertisers paying more for it,” Williamson said.



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Facebook, viewed as a rival to Twitter in the data licensing market, recently implemented strict restrictions that have in turn made Snap’s content more valuable, industry sources said.



Snapchat’s video-heavy posts also offer elements that Twitter and Facebook’s largely text content cannot, especially in breaking news events, one of the sources said. -Reuters



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A decade into the modern electric-car era one thing is clear: easy access to charging is vital to convince more drivers to make the leap to battery power from gasoline. So to ensure a smooth launch for its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lianeyvkoff/2019/01/24/with-better-than-expected-demand-porsche-plans-to-double-taycan-supply/#14b0240d332f" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">much-anticipated Taycan</a>electric sports car Porsche is taking a page from Tesla&#8217;s playbook and ensuring customers have access a coast-to-coast network of fast-charge stations.



The German luxury company said it will offer three years of charging at hundreds of stations operated across the U.S. with Volkswagen-owned&nbsp;<a href="https://www.electrifyamerica.com/index" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Electrify America LLC</a>&nbsp;as part of Taycan&#8217;s purchase price, which starts at about $80,000. Additionally, fast-charge stations will be installed at all of its 191 dealerships across the country, while customers will also be able to purchase Porsche home-charging systems, the company said.



“Together, Electrify America and our Porsche dealer network will provide a national infrastructure for DC fast charging that frees future Taycan owners from range anxiety,&#8221; Klaus Zellmer, president and CEO of Porsche Cars North America, said in a statement. &#8220;Porsche home charging technology will turn the customer’s garage into the equivalent of a personal gas station.”



Tesla has dominated the market for high-end electric vehicles since it began delivering $100,000 Roadsters a decade ago, but faces an onslaught of competition from new entries including the Taycan, Audi&#8217;s e-tron and Jaguar&#8217;s I-Pace, with more on the way from Cadillac and others. Porsche last week said it&#8217;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lianeyvkoff/2019/01/24/with-better-than-expected-demand-porsche-plans-to-double-taycan-supply/#14b0240d332f" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">boosting production</a>&nbsp;plans for the Taycan owing to higher demand than initially planned.



Some&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/01/23/tesla-share-slump-deepens-on-news-its-cutting-back-on-model-s-x-production/#7955957461ee" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysts suspect the competition</a>&nbsp;from those new premium EVs, priced between $60,000 and $90,000, were behind Tesla&#8217;s recent decision to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/01/09/so-long-75d-elon-musk-says-tesla-is-phasing-out-mid-range-model-s-and-x/#4205267848b5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">discontinue its entry-level 75D versions of the Model S sedan and Model X crossover</a>&nbsp;to focus mainly on pricier versions selling for about $100,000 or more. Tesla&#8217;s core vehicle, the Model 3 sedan, starts at $44,000 and can cost more than $60,000 with all options.



Details of Porsche&#8217;s sleek four-door coupe are limited so far, though it will be a juiced up performance car offering more than 600-horsepower and over 300 miles of driving range per charge.



For three years Taycan buyers will get unlimited 30-minute charging sessions at Electrify America facilities that include&nbsp;more than 300 highway stations in 42 U.S. states and more than 180 stations in 17 cities, Porsche said. Each location will have an average of five charging bays, with some having up 10. The highway stations will have at least two 350 kW chargers per site, with additional chargers delivering up to 150kW.



The initial phase of the network, at 484 locations with more than 2,000 charging dispensers, will be installed or under construction by July 1, prior to Taycan’s launch in late 2019, Porsche and Electrify America said. Porsche dealers will spend about $70 million for fast-charge kiosks at their stores, the company said.



Tesla early on baked in a charging network to support its Model S when it launched the car in 2012. Initially, powering up at its&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tesla.com/supercharger?redirect=no" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Supercharger</a>&nbsp;stations was also free, though over time it began charging customers as its owner base grew. Last week it moderated a planned increase in charging rates that&nbsp;<a href="https://electrek.co/2019/01/22/tesla-cuts-supercharger-prices-back-down-customer-backlash/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tesla fan site Electrek</a>&nbsp;estimated would go up by about 33% per kilowatt hour.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/">-Alan Ohnsman</a>Forbes Staff

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Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is planning to unify the underlying messaging infrastructure of the WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger services and incorporate end-to-end encryption into these apps, the New York Times reported.



The three services will, however, continue as stand-alone apps, the report said, citing four people involved in the effort.



Facebook said it is working on adding end-to-end encryption, which protects messages from being viewed by anyone except the participants in a conversation, to more of its messaging products, and considering ways to make it easier for users to connect across networks.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“There is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work,” a spokesperson said.</blockquote>



After the changes, a Facebook user, for instance, will be able send an encrypted message to someone who has only a WhatsApp account, according to the New York Times report.



Integrating the messaging services could make it harder for antitrust regulators to break up Facebook by undoing its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, said Sam Weinstein, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.



“If Facebook is worried about that then one way it can defend itself is to integrate those services,” Weinstein said.



But Weinstein said breaking up Facebook is viewed as an “extreme remedy” by regulators, particularly in the United States, so concerns over antitrust scrutiny may not have been a factor behind the integration.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">MAJOR TRADEOFFS</h4>



Some former Facebook security engineers and an outside encryption expert said the plan could be good news for user privacy, in particular by extending end-to-end encryption.



“I’m cautiously optimistic it’s a good thing,” said former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, who now teaches at Stanford University. “My fear was that they were going to drop end-to-end encryption.”



However, the technology does not always conceal metadata &#8211; information about who is talking to whom &#8211; sparking concern among some researchers that the data might be shared.



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Any metadata integration likely will let Facebook learn more about users, linking identifiers such as phone numbers and email addresses for those using the services independently of each other.



Facebook could use that data to charge more for advertising and targeted services, although it also would have to forgo ads based on message content in Messenger and Instagram.



Other major tradeoffs will have to be made too, Stamos and others said.



Messenger allows strangers to contact people without knowing their phone numbers, for example, increasing the risk of stalking and approaches to children.



Systems based on phone numbers have additional privacy concerns, because governments and other entities can easily extract location information from them.



Stamos said he hoped Facebook would get public input from terrorism experts, child safety officers, privacy advocates and others and be transparent in its reasoning when it makes decisions on the details.



“It should be an open process, because you can’t have it all,” Stamos said. -Reuters



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Zuckerberg to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger

Volkswagen will manufacture electric car batteries and charging stations in its home region in Germany, as it prepares to mass produce electric vehicles and overhaul its components division, which makes engines and steering parts. 



 Volkswagen (VW) said on Friday it would invest 870 million euros ($985 million) by 2020 to developing e-vehicle components, adding the batteries business would manufacture battery cells and packs as well as overseeing recycling of old cells. 



The German carmaker, which is headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, also said it would start producing mobile electric car charging stations at its nearby plant in Hannover, which currently makes engines and castings.



VW will bundle cells from electric car batteries into storage powerbanks that can be used to recharge up to 15 electric cars at a time and be transported to locations where power is needed, such as a stadium during a rock concert.



Customers can find the mobile charging stations using an app on their smartphone, it said.



“It can be set up flexibly and independent of the power supply wherever it is needed: for example, in public parking lots in the city, on company premises, or as a temporary charging point at large-scale events,” VW said.



A depleted charging point could be exchanged for a new one, or the station could be permanently attached to the power supply to recharge itself, VW added.



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The battery charging station would allow VW to store solar and wind energy, and could recharge itself during off-peak hours, helping to ease strain on the power grid, the carmaker said.



The first mobile charging stations will be set up this year in VW’s hometown of Wolfsburg and rolled out to other cities in 2020. -Reuters



-Jan Schwartz and Edward Taylor

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