AFTER 93 DAYS OF GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, INTERNET SERVICES RESTORED IN CAMEROON

Internet services have resumed in two English speaking regions of Cameroon after a 93 day blackout. President Paul Biya ordered the restoration of internet services yesterday April 20. 

The internet was cut off in January in the north-western and south-western regions, following protest from English speaking community against alleged discrimination by Cameroon's French-speaking majority. The government had alleged that social media was being used to spread false information. The government pressured mobile operators like MTN to shut down the internet by including suspension of internet connectivity as part of their license conditions. No prior notice was given before the internet shut down

Various regional internet and digital rights groups like Internet Sans Frontiers and Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN) canvassed for a restoration of internet services in Cameroon using such hashtags like #bringbackourinternet and #keepiton. Top UN officials viewed it as a rights violation.

Sadly, African leaders are increasingly embracing internet shutdowns as tools to stifle spread of information on social media. Countries like Gambia, Congo, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe have all shut down the internet in their countries previously. Even though neighbouring Ghana did not shut down the internet during elections, its Police Chief advocated for it. According to reports, the internet in African countries was shut more than 50 times in 2016. This has spurred proposals to punish African governments if they shut down access to the internet

It is hoped that Nigeria would not join this negative trend

FG PROPOSES TO OPEN ICT UNIVERSITY IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2017

The Federal Government has proposed to open an Information and Technology University sometime in the first quarter of 2017. This will be done in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission. It will also help earn foreign exchange for the country Adebayo Shittu, Minister of Communications, disclosed this on Monday, the 26th of December 2016 in Abuja while speaking at a News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) forum. “By the grace of God, in the next three to six months, we should have established in Nigeria an ICT university which will be first of its kind in Africa. “This is with the sole purpose of providing training environment and training facilities to make the industry have enough skilled manpower in various sub sectors of the ICT sector. “I am happy to say that we already have what is called the Digital Bridge Institute which is for short term training programmes in six locations across the country and we hope to transform this institute into the ICT University of Nigeria. “I am already talking to a lot of operators at the international level, Facebook, Motorola, Ericson, all of them. We are encouraging them to come and adopt the university campuses as their own.

“They can bring in money and bring in faculties and a lot of logistics to assist in training Nigerians and we can now export these trained skilled facilitators to African countries to work,” said Shittu

You can read the full story on Pulse Tech

How to find out all the information Facebook REALLY has on you

Its no secret. Facebook has a lot of user’s information, they may be unaware of. ProPublica, an investigative journalism site, has revealed a chrome browser plugin that exposes everything Facebook claims to know about its users – from how many credit or debit cards they have to where they like to fly and their travel plans. With the new plugin, users can see and even rate how accurate it is.

Facebook functions by collecting loads of information from subscribers as they surf the net. As you browse through your favorite online book or fashion store store online, or book a flight or visit a travel site, Facebook collects the information as long as the pages have Facebook share buttons. Pro Publica also reveals that it also buys data about its users’ ‘mortgages, car ownership and shopping habits from some of the biggest commercial data brokers.

And it’s not just Facebook. User’s data is the currency of the internet and loads of other sites thrive on collecting this data and using it for their ad marketing purposes. I have been recently disgusted by ads from a particular travel site popping every time i visit any page on the internet, just because i chose to patronise them. Talk about irritating! So maybe you might want to use this Pro Publica plug in to check what Facebook really has on you. Here is the link to download the chrome if interested.

NIGERIA IS ONE OF THE COUNTRIES WITH THE BEST PROGRAMMERS IN THE WORLD

According to Hacker Rank, Nigeria is currently ranked nos 48 country with the best developers in the world.

Interestingly it is not the US home to the silicon valley and some of the greatest tech gurus like Bill Gates that came tops. China and Russia according to the study were the two best countries. Poland took a close third. The US is 28^th position even though they have more programmers and developers participating in the challenges than other countries.

Hacker Rank is a programming site that regularly posts tens of thousands of new coding challenges for developers from around the world to participate and improve their coding skills. Developers are scored and ranked based on a combination of their accuracy and speed. Hacker Rank got this result by analysing the countries that perform best at its programming challenges.

For a country like Nigeria, this is definitely hope that young people can excel in tech and ICT despite all of the challenges back home and minimal support compared to some of the higher ranked countries in this study.