As part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to boost technical and engineering skills, Samsung Electronics South Africa launched the Samsung Electronics Engineering Academy.
The initiative strives to transform communities through education and skills development and in return, open up skilled, well-paying job opportunities for individuals. Samsung will equip underprivileged students attending government technical schools with the skills and practical experience required to make them competitive in the local job market.
The Samsung Electronics Engineering Academy is located in Boksburg and will benefit the Technical High schools in the Ekurhuleni municipal area. Samsung has already signed participation agreements with four Tech High schools in Katlehong and Vosloorus, and will accommodate more schools in the coming years. The Academy boosts a state of the art Electronics Engineering Lab to be used for all the practical work, and a technology-rich space where students, sourced from Grades 10 – 12 Physical Science and Mathematics, will undertake their theoretical lessons and discussions. The overall emphasis is hands-on, practical experience for the workplace. Furthermore, Samsung is focused on entering graduates of this class into a service centre programme.

Students who graduate from the Academy will also compete for an internship opportunity at one of Samsung’s various service centres across the country where they will put the skills learned at the Academy to practical use for Samsung customers. Because the program provides students with the necessary engineering acumen, Samsung will help give the graduates a head start in the workplace, making them attractive recruits for Samsung, Samsung partners and or other industry players.

From Samsung

MTN and the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) today announced the launch of a futuristic water utility payments service that will allow about 300,000 customers of the national water utility company to pay their bills using MTN Mobile Money.

The service, distinguishes the NWSC as a forward-looking government parastatal for embracing the most modern tools for the convenience of its customers.

NWSC Customers will pay their water bills using MTN Mobile Money, off an easy-to-follow menu updated on all MTN Mobile phones.
Announcing the innovation, MTN Uganda Chief Executive Officer Themba Khumalo congratulated the NWSC team for adopting MTN Mobile Money and its benefits.

“When we first introduced MTN Mobile Money, we saw the endless possibilities it presented to individual subscribers and to organizations such as NWSC. However, the speed with which you have taken MTN Mobile Money on for utility payments is gratifying, and sets you apart from the rest as visionaries,” Khumalo said.

Commenting on the innovation, NWSC Managing Director, Dr. William Muhairwe said mobile bill payments increased reliability of water supply to customers.

“The convenience of MTN Mobile money to our customers is what we as a customer centric organization are looking for because it is a real time solution and will eliminate delays in updating customer accounts as well as the need to physically move to pay your bill or check your account balance. When customers find making payment so simple, they will certainly keep their accounts up-to-date and will therefore never get disconnected. Our desire is to ensure that our customers get the best service in the most convenient way possible and innovations that lead us towards that goal like this product is what we are after because at NWSC, the Customer is King.”Muhairwe said.

The MTN Mobile Money service was initially launched as a person-to-person transfer service, but has since launch in March 2009 began to be adopted by corporate bodies such as Multichoice Uganda for DSTV subscription payments, and now NWSC.

“Since we launched MTN Mobile Money, approximately 1.5million users have registered for the service, and we have over 2500 agents across Uganda. Over 1.7 trillion Uganda shillings has been transferred countrywide, which proves that the service is vital to more and more people in their daily lives,” Khumalo added.

The service is available to all MTN Mobile Money registered customers.

Computer Point has partnered with IBM, to provide computing and information technology services to companies that want to streamline their Information systems to increase profitability.

The alliance will see Computer Point, an IT systems integrator in East Africa, offer IT solutions including infrastructure, application maintenance and development to willing financial institutions, government, telecoms and other corporate companies in Uganda on behalf of IBM.

Speaking at the launch of the partnership in Kampala on Wednesday, Mr Tony Mwai, the IBM country general manager for East Africa said the alliance seeks to leverage the firm’s IT expertise to support Ugandan businesses and help them meet their business and technology challenges.
The deal will also enable businesses that don’t have IT as their core business to outsource the service to IBM so that they can concentrate on their core operations for effectiveness and profitability. “IBM is devoted to innovation to make a difference in the world and help businesses realise profits,” he said.

By outsourcing IT systems, Mr Mwai, said companies will be facilitated to speed the development cycle, improve performance and maximise their return on investment with cost-effective end-to-end solutions. He added that to succeed in today's competitive economic climate, it requires that businesses outsource their noncore operations to reduces costs and improve service delivery.

Recently, IBM signed a 10-year agreement mandating it to deploy and manage Airtel’s IT infrastructure in 16 African countries to provide a platform for the firm to offer affordable and innovative mobile services throughout Africa.

IBM intends to deploy technologies; processes and best practices to transform Airtel’s Africa’s operations into an integrated IT system to enable it support its vision of providing affordable innovative mobile services throughout Africa.

Mr Anil Kuruvilla, the Computer Point managing director, said the alliance will accelerate the transformation of Ugandan business operations and positively impact on the speed of economic development across the East African region.

The alliance, he said, will enable local companies to get superior IT services and solutions to help them maximise their IT infrastructure investment and take the state-of-the-art computing technology and IT services in Uganda to the next level.

IBM also provides computer hardware and software, infrastructure, outsourcing and consulting services such as computer maintenance to small and medium businesses.
From: The Monitor

World's internet giant GOOGLE INC owners of most popular search engine announced  co-founder Larry Page will take over as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) as Eric Schmidt becomes executive chairman after a decade at the helm.
Google decided to turnback to the entrepreneurial ethos that helped it create the most used and highly profitable tools for culling information from the Web.

Page’s task will be to accelerate a drive into new areas of growth as Web users spend more time on social sites like Facebook, and Apple Inc. poses a threat in mobile advertising.

Google's vice president Vint Cerf, who was in Australia to address a conference, said he the new chief executive of the California-based giant, Larry Page, was ready to lead the company into the future
Cerf said Schmidt had been chief executive for 10 years -- "a nice round number" -- and Page was ready to lead the company into the future.
He continued, Larry and Sergey are 10 years older than they were when they thoughtfully hired Eric to be the CEO... so everybody's growing up.

Google has grown over the past decade from a start-up battling other Internet search engines into a technology giant with nearly 25,000 employees and annual revenue of nearly $30 billion.

The company meanwhile reported its fourth-quarter net profit increased to $2.54 billion from $1.97 billion a year ago, while revenue rose 26 percent to $8.44 billion.
See more About Google Executives

The ICT minister, Aggrey Siryoni Awori, said the jobs will be created from the government's new initiative in developing the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector.

The programme, which begins tomorrow, will initially start with training 500 out of the 1,400 youths identified through interviews.
The training, he said, will be at the Makerere University Faculty of Computing and Information Technology.

Awori said adverts were placed in the media and over 4,000 responded from which the 1,400 youths have been identified to participate in the programme, fully sponsored by the Government.
The programme is a partnership between the Government and private sector, which will involve the setting up of a call centre.
The call centre is an initiative of the Uganda Youth Convention (UYC) and other Ugandan entrepreneurs to address the problem of job scarcity, especially for the youth.

"We expect that by the end of this year some 3,000 youths will be employed and earning higher than they would elsewhere. The individuals will work at least five hours a day with a pay of $2-3 (sh4,500 - sh7,000) per hour," he said.

The minister yesterday said the Government had injected sh5b to promote the sector. Other funds would come from the Job Stimulus Programme which is in the Ministry of Finance and the private sector, he said.

This, according to the minister, is one of the strategic intervention being implemented by the Government through the ICT sector to create employment and improve people's income.

If well-implemented the initiative will create opportunities for investors and the business community to make money while providing jobs to the youth like it has happened in India, Awori said.

Business Process Outsourcing is the strategic use of the third party service providers to perform activities traditionally handled by internal staff. It is common in the airlines, insurance, banking and energy sectors. Awori said there is a growing demand for ICT outsourcing in Africa that Uganda needs to capture.

"BPO has two categories including; back office outsourcing which involves internal business functions such as billing or purchasing, and front office outsourcing which includes customer-related services such as marketing or technical support," Awori said.

He said the programme cuts cost and improves efficiency by outsourcing services of a distant skilled work force.

Awori said the ministry and National Information Technology Authority-Uganda (NITA-U) have already developed a road map for the implementation of BPO model for Uganda.

Awori noted that with only 40% of the graduates being absorbed in the formal job sector, the BPO would be able to employ a large number of graduates both for basic routine functions and specialised services.