In parts of the world where electricity isn’t readily available and diesel generators are relied on, any improvements in energy efficiency are seen as interesting, according to Anders Lindblad , president of the Middle East and Africa region at Ericsson.

The feature which Ericsson calls Psi-Coverage was successfully tested in Vodafone Egypt’s 3G network uses one radio unit that connects to three antennas, instead of one for each antenna. The end-result is a 40 percent drop in power consumption, according to Ericsson.

The drawback is that base stations with the new antenna configuration don’t have the same capacity. But in rural areas, the capacity of a traditional configuration is not necessary.

Also, the removal of two out of three radio units doesn’t equate to the capacity dropping by two-thirds, thanks to a booster used on the uplink, Lindblad said.

Despite pioneering the distribution of African content online, through platforms iROKOtv and iROKING, Njoku notes that embracing failure, incorporating it into his image as an entrepreneur, was a good move, for himself and others, stating that people will respect you for overcoming hard times.

“I’m a certified failure,” he told the audience, amidst laughter, but his poignant insights into why we really fear failure, make it a refreshing and inspiring talk. iROKOtv is the world’s largest legal distributor of Nollywood movies online, and currently offers a library of over 5 000 streaming films to its 500 000 plus users, most of whom live outside of Africa.

iROKING is the largest digital distributor of Nigerian and African music. As of October 2012 its mobile site offers steaming and download services, of songs and music videos, to users directly to their phones.

The vision of iROKOtv and iROKING is to turn them into the Netflix and Spotify of Africa respectively. Watch Njoku’s talk in full, below.

East Africa Tech: 20 bold young innovators to watch

“Across Africa, we have seen countless examples of people taking control of their destiny, and making change from the bottom up.” – President Barack Obama

Like elsewhere, Africa is full of innovators. However, innovation is often the easier part. There are two very difficult things in the techology business. One is making money; a lot of money.

There have been a few cash-rich digital innovations in East Africa, where the most successful mobile application (it is also among the most successful in the world) is Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom’s money transfer service, M-Pesa.

The second difficult thing in innovation is to stay the course; not to give up and keep trying, trying, and trying again until you succeed.

Many have despaired, but East Africa has a core of young and dedicated innovators who won’t give up. Just as well. Beyond entertainment and games, mobile applications tend to have different basic life-changing uses in Africa.

Already, about 500 million young Africans, in a continent of 700 million mobile phone users, do business online. Widespread poverty and inadequate infrastructure in health, education, finance and agriculture opens up possibilities for a whole range of new possibilities, beyond business, to transform Africa through mobile applications.

Youthful innovators are providing home-grown solutions to long-standing problems in the continent. They see mobile phones not just as instruments of communication, but 21st Century tools for fighting poverty in Africa.

Click through to read the rest covering 20 top mobile app developers from East Africa.

AfroIndia Medical Services is an Africa-based integrated medical service provider. It has a unique mandate of providing accessible and affordable medical care to patients from Africa at her network of over 1,500 hospitals in India, Israel and Europe.

“Apollo’s MOU with AfroIndia Medical services will pave way for availability of tertiary and quaternary health care to a large number of patients resulting in cost, effort and time benefit,” the statement said quoting Reddy.

The telemedicine units will facilitate the doctors in several African countries to interact with specialist at Apollo.