Last week I attended Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum; it brought together ISPs, content provider and regulators from 20 African countries but the Communications Commission of Kenya was conspicuously missing.

It is only after attending such meetings that you understand some of the reasons the cost of internet will not drop for the individual, who is probably looking forward to the day we pay $20 per month for limited connectivity.

First, peering means exchange of content between ISPs at a central point like the Internet Exchange point (IXP). Think of an IXP as a hub in airline terms. Nairobi is the regional hub and most arlines with no connections to the region from Europe usually get their passengers to Nairobi, then they are taken over by KQ or another airline.

For instance, if you are travelling from Windhoek Namibia to Lome in Togo, you will have to buy a ticket from different airlines or from one airline that goes to Lome, which is likely to give the cheaper option. If you decide to travel SAA then KQ, there is no doubt the ticket might be higher; this is Africa!

The same principle applies, if your content is hosted abroad and you are in Kinshasa, you have a choice of ISPs that will charge the cost of international connectivity because at some point, the data will leave your ISP network to another, and they have to pay. Assuming that content was hosted locally, it means that cost of international connectivity would be eliminated.

But the internet costs remain the same whether local or international, so why bother? Thats a question that many people ask and the answer is simple; we do not generate enough content to spur competition in hosting services and lower the costs. Abroad, people can charge lower because maybe the server is in a garage somewhere, under the bed or in a company like Yahoo, that attracts 10 million sites a year, so it can afford to charge 10 dollars and still make money.

Ever wondered why a ticket to Malawi costs $800 and one to South Africa costs $400 yet it may seem logical that the reverse be the case? Well, it is argued that the Jo'Burg route has more flights and airlines compared to Malawi and therefore more competition. Indeed, if you are going to Lilongwe via Kenya Airways, you might be taken on a round trip of your life but if they attempted that on the Jo'burg route, they may lose the customers.

Anyway, if the ISPs in the region do not see the need to share content and so long as we continue hosting abroad, the cost will remain high. Of course those are not the only issues, there is licensing and the desire to get a quick return on investment, maybe the period may be made longer.

There are ways content providers can reduce costs by setting up POPs like in Nigeria and ISPs evolving to be more of regional carriers and reduce backhauling costs like Orange is doing in the region

There is no doubt that the industry is getting better; maybe most us host 9 out of 10 websites locally but it will probably get to a time when ISPs say that if you access websites that are local, then the cost is low and flat, maybe like they do with on network calls.

It may look simplistic but we all have a role to play in making internet cheaper. Follow-up piece can address licensing issues and benefits we can expect from having Kenyan Internet Exchange Point, Mombasa Internet Exchange Point and a POP hosted at Internet Solutions in Kenya.

There is something about people, internet and their laptops. I think if you want people to become the absolute anti-social, make sure they have internet- at least for the addicts. You almost do not talk to the person seated next, and if you do, then it is an absolute necessity.

On the referendum day, the iHub was buzzing and there were more laptops than you can think, after all, there was proof that this was going to be a very tech day for the team monitoring via www.uchaguzi.co.ke

Being at the iHub on the day, you get to help a bit and work at the same time and get to catch up if you find someone you know or if you find the time. Well, I always get time to chit chat in between the emails and calls, if the photo below is anything to go by.

Thanks to Erik, for alerting me of this photo, I was looking quite busy, on phone, on the laptop and all... but I guess I was just acting busy.

From bird's eye view, we all look very busy....

Maybe if I wasn't acting busy I would have been busy playing fusball in the background like people would do once in a while.

But when I realized the camera was zooming on me, I had to smile, you never know who will see the photo :)

Thanks to Daudi and Erik for the photos :)

Awards are now flowing in, may be the tech start-ups will benefit..... here is the announcement.

Applications are now being accepted for the 2010 Legatum

Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship.   With prize money of USD 350,000, the

2010 Legatum Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship will continue the tradition

of recognizing and rewarding the very best examples of small and

medium-sized businesses, and spotlighting the continent¹s most inspiring

business leaders.

This year we are looking for online applications from Botswana, Cameroon,

Cote D¹Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. The application form and more details of the program are available at www.africaawards.com.

A Grand Prize of USD 100,000 and five runners-up prizes of USD 50,000 each will be awarded at a Gala Awards Banquet taking place in Accra in early

December 2010.

Winners will be selected on their ability to operate truly sustainable and

innovative businesses and demonstrated excellence in:

€Creating value for owners/shareholders

€Long-term business strategy

€Innovative and effective market strategies

€Leadership, culture and values

€Investment in their employees

The competition is open to all businesses that have had a for-profit entity

in existence for three years or more; located in one of the designated 15

countries; and with annual revenues of between US$2 ­20 million.

Applications will close on August 31st, 2010.

Its always nice to see old friends and evening functions provide a perfect opportunity; given that parallel sessions may not promote "catching up".

It was time to catch up with Remmy Nweke and Brenda Zulu; we had a chance to remember the old times

We were all happy when they announced that food would be served before kick off; it was a better plan compared to waiting till half time or eating when the game was going on.

Then it was time for testing MTN knowledge and those who were good at it were rewarded

But not all were lucky; she could not believe that she got the answer wrong and missed the gift pack!

When Guy Berger was telling me about tweetdeck French translation, he probably did not know that it will be hard to even send an email, forget do the blog posts, podcasts and video.

He was right to make suggestions, given that last year, there was a projector showing all the twitter feeds and given the number of journalists that are here with lots of laptops, you can imagine the amount of social media that would have been in use; it would have been "churnalism".

An hour after Guy gave me the hint and I was busy sharing with the other, the system became slow; I thought it was because of the many internet users and maybe hardware issues.

Then it became bad and all journalists became grumpy because they could not get online; only those with local mobile phones could send tweets, which actually took out the fun.

It was hard to understand how Rhodes University could be down, given its an ISP and is very efficient; by lunch break, we were told that SEACOM was down, which was bad for us.

SEACOM is great, and am sure when the capacity is up, its great but it would have been nice to see who would have been tweeting more; the new media professors or the students or working journalists.

The funniest thing was that the MTN stand just outside was working well and they had public laptops, which as you can guess pulled many people. Love it or hate it, MTN saved the day for some of us.

The SEACOM social media team is very efficient, sent them a tweet asking about the downtimes and they confirmed they had a repeater problem somewhere between Mombasa and Mumbai.

My next question was why the capacity was not being routed through SAT 3 or TEAMS, I thought they had redundancy, given that TATA is all over. They confirmed that they had no redundancy, but why?

Anyway, I am sitting here whining but am lucky to have the modem, can you imagine having 600 journalists and the #ha2010 hashtag on twitter is virtually empty? Hard to imagine.

To answer my questions, today morning I received the following press release from SEACOM and as of lunch time there was no update on this, so take it as the latest.

"SEACOM has experienced a submarine cable failure resulting in service downtime between Mumbai and Mombasa. Current investigations indicate that a repeater has failed on segment 9 of the SEACOM cable, which is offshore to the north of Mombasa. This unexpected failure affects traffic towards both India and Europe. Traffic within Africa is not affected.

SEACOM has initiated emergency repair procedures to replace the repeater. Once mobilized, the repair ship is deployed to the location of the fault to pick up the cable. The cable is then brought on board to undergo the repair – the faulty element is replaced with a new repeater - before being put back in the water.

Whilst the repair process itself will only take a few hours, the overall process may last a minimum of 6-8 days. The actual duration is unpredictable due to external factors such as transit time of the ship, weather conditions and time to locate the cable. For these reasons, the estimated duration of this repair remains uncertain.

SEACOM in co-operation with its clients, is actively seeking alternatives to restore service whilst the repairs are undertaken. "

Elvira van Noort was very excited to see her former professors at the University of Eutrect; it was great they were here to witness how she has "grown up" and busy training citizen journalism in Grahamstown. I almost went to the table to say hello to the professors; given her excitement.

Elvira represents many journalists who are meeting at the same venue with their former lecturers attending the World Journalism Educators Congress, a parallel meeting with Highway Africa.

It is the first time that such a meeting is taking place; so when people complain about the standards of journalism, you can turn to the educators and find out whats going on; at the same time, educators can turn and question journalists on what happened to all the lessons and massive notes given in class.

For a conference that is usually held in September and had few scholarships given the world cup pricing of everything, Highway Africa is very attended and the interaction with the educators is likely to have positive effects.

The corporate sector also turned up as usual; MTN, Telkom and Multichoice are here with huge stands. One of the sessions had the corporates and Nozipho January-Bardill from MTN was asked about the stories she thinks journalists should be covered.

Her answers boiled down to the usual stuff of positive and detailed stories; she gave the example of a BBC documentary on Oliver Tambo and wonders why SABC had not done it. The upshot was that the reason people switch to international channels is mainly because of the depth of reportage.

For the next three days, there will be interactions and discussions on some of the challenges affecting journalism and the continent. There will be no shifting blame because the journalists, educators, public and private sector are there to defend or expound on the status quo.

Ends

It is the talk of town, buzzing on twitter, facebook; people just can't stop talking about Ghana and what would happen if it upsets Uruguay: Africa will have won and reached a new football high.

Everybody is an expert on football now, and hypothesizing on what Ghana should or should not do is common. This morning I took a taxi and the driver could not stop talking, giving me his run down on Ghana and how Michael Essien must be feeling bad that he is not in the team.

For a guy who can not speak proper English, I must say he was good; he gave me his analysis of what he thinks went wrong with African teams and how Portugal pulled a fast one on Ivory Coast by scoring seven goals against North Korea; meaning that the goal difference would remain far more superior.

Online, even my American friend, who I never thought had interest is sports beyond basketball, emailed me to say "go black stars". I think its great that Ghana knocked out the US, I guess it raised some awareness.

At the Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, fans are gathered chanting and singing while others are blowing the vuvuzelas. It seems people have gone home or their teams are eliminated because the noise is not as much.

The radio stations have been running analysis from morning and it seems the belief in the Ghana team has gone higher. People are impressed that the team may not have renowned stars like Cameroon or Ivory Coast but is playing as a team, which is vital in the games.

Whether Ghana wins or loses tonight, there will be no doubt that African hopes were high and that the people who believed in the Black Stars even before the kick off were right.

Ends

The version looks a bit sophisticated compared to the common one that requires lots of energy and skill

I think they can grow head muscles with the stuff on the head...

It looks massive- jokes aside...

Alexandra neighborhood is famous, but unfortunately for the wrong reasons; it was the heartbeat for xenophobic attacks and the soaring crime rate has not helped the image either.

I have been longing to go to Alex, as its commonly known, because every time I tell my South African friends that Soweto suburbs is probably better than most Kenyan middle class estates, they always advise me to go to Alex, apparently because its worse.

Many friends have said how they have never or can not step in Alex because of the way the place is infested with criminals and every time I passed by young men and women, I could imagine that they are probably honing their skills by mugging people or doing drugs, which is not exactly alien.

The idea I had about Alex was something else; maybe rivaled by the American drug and gangster movies and the idea of a crime infested neighborhood, that has been over dramatized in Hollywood.

I got a chance to visit by accompanying a friend who was going there on official duties; the fact tat I look South African worked in my favor although there was no significant threat that is out of the norm.

The visit was timely, I know understood the reason why foreigners like the place; and maybe the problem of xenophobia lies somewhere else but demonstrated through killing the hapless neighbors, just because you cant get to the real culprits.

First, Alex is not a slum by Kenyan standards (because thats what am familiar with) ; they have tarmac roads and if there was a fire, at least the fire engine would access the place; Alex is more like the upper lower class or lower middle class in many countries, if that makes sense.

So, what people think is appalling, is probably what foreigners are used to and maybe the rent is far cheaper. Plus for some people, they are used to places with no order or no authority e.g if you escaped war or poverty, then you don't mind so much the place and besides for some of the criminal activities to thrive, chaos is vital.

Am only using the argument to understand why foreigners like the place; although that may not necessarily be the issue.

The bone of contention is the rising crime rate and the fact that some people dealing drugs are so rich, they are untouchable.

On my way back, I had a conversation with an old man, who made the issue clearer; he argued that there are some nationalities that are known for dealing drugs, perpetrating criminal activities and getting away with it, just because they have money or power to influence.

Just like in many communities where people feel frustrated by people or the system they can't reach, they start fighting or killing with whoever is the representation of that figure.

So, in the old man's opinion, the xenophobic attacks were more to do with frustrations with the system, rather than nationalities. He argued that previously, South Africa was very comfortable with other nationalities but that has since changed.

That is not to say that its guaranteed that if the issue of crime was sorted, then the animosity will stop; there are no such guarantees but that would be a start.

Then there is the argument that the animosity is all about jobs that are taken by foreigners. Who is to blame, the employer or employee? None. but the debate is far more complex than that.

There is not much you can understand by taking to people in an afternoon, but it helps!

There is something about sports and booze; we see it more in football and rugby but am sure it happens in other sports too.

But during the world cup, the beer consumption goes up; indeed just before the world cup, i remember pub owners in the match cities saying that they were stocking on beer big time.

German and British fans top the list; you can imagine how the fans celebrate the team win or loss. At the world cup stadium, fans just get beers, you don't see many holding cans of soda, I guess its not cool.

You can imagine the beer that will be consumed on sunday when Germany meets Britain. It will be great for the local pubs.

The funniest was these South Korean fans, a man and woman, who were sharing some booze, which had straws and was carefully packed on the head.

I think beer is one of the indicators that the fans are spending as they should; that is why the big footballing countries should stay in the draw; the economy will be much better am sure.