Making Use of Big Data

A lady pregnant with twins gets a call from the local supermarket for a 50% offer on baby items on Thursday between 10 o’clock in the morning to midday. On arriving at the supermarket, she is lead to a section where all the baby items suited for twins were arranged carefully. She has an easy time piking the necessary items and heads to the till. As she walked out, she asks “How did you know I was going to give birth to twins?” The manager informs her there they had noticed her shopping trends; she would buy baby items in twos in all the supermarkets of the chain. May be your favourite supermarket might do this for you soon. This in essence is known as customer profiling from Big Data analysis. 

Citing an example closer home, M-Shwari uses a credit score algorithm based on your credit history as well as usage of M-PESA and other Safaricom products, to determine your loan eligibility and maximum loan amount. In Tanzania, Vodacom Tanzania has partnered with a New York based company, First Access, to enhance financial inclusion. First Access is a data analytics company that can predict risk for consumers who have never had a bank account or a credit score, using their prepaid mobile data. First Access offers the first instant risk-scoring tool for financial institutions serving low-income customers. Scores are authorized by subscribers in real time via text message through an approval system that First Access has pioneered The scores are based on demographic, geographic, financial and social network data from subscriber mobile records. Delivered in real time to any participating financial institution, they include a recommended loan size in the local currency and eligibility for instant disbursal.

In some cases, these analytics can be used to prevent calamities. During the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Orange Telecom in Senegal handed over anonymised voice and text data from 150,000 mobile phones to Flowminder, a Swedish non-profit organisation, which was then able to draw up detailed maps of typical population movements in the region. Authorities could then see where the best places were to set up treatment centres, and more controversially, the most effective ways to restrict travel in an attempt to contain the disease. In developed countries, Port, train and flight data, and number plate recognition, can all help track potentially infected people and identify who they may have come into contact with an infected person.

To most of us, Big data is an all-encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using traditional data processing applications. Every day, we leave traces of data on social media, telephone calls, bank transactions, mobile money transactions, hospital visits, credit card transactions, supermarket tills, fast food restaurants, online trading and many more. The sheer size of data generated on a daily basis is amazing. Both Google and Ebay generate approximately 100 petabyte, each to 100,000 Terabytes, of data per day. This is in comparison to Facebook at 600 Terabytes and Twitter at 100 Terabytes per day. The presents challenges such as analysis, capture, curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, and privacy violations. 

In today's environment of data abundance and frequent data overload, the ability to discover unique insight enables organizations to improve decision making, resulting in the ability to take advantage of opportunities, minimize risks, and control costs using Big Data analytics. Big data analytics is about asking new questions, formulating new hypotheses, improve customer experience, exploration and discovery, and making data-driven decisions. Big data analytics is about bringing together many different data sources and mining them to find patterns. The first task is to break down data silos to access all data an organization stores in different places and often in different systems. A second task is to create platforms that can pull in unstructured data as easily as structured data. Specialized software tools and applications are then used for predictive analytics, data mining, text mining, forecasting, and data optimization.

International Airtime Remittance

During the East Africa Com Conference at Safari Park on 9^th and 10^th September, one thing caught my eye- International Airtime Remittance. The statistics involved are just mind boggling. For instance, in general, there are over 200 million foreigners in diaspora sending approximately 400 billion dollars to their home countries in cash. According to the Central Bank of Kenya, Kenyans remitted around 1.29 billion dollars in 2013 alone, which translates to 114 billion Kenya Shillings in cash. However, sending cash has hitherto been expensive. An alternative to remitting cash is to remit mobile air time instead. Mobile airtime is considered an electronic product, rather than cash, by most regulatory authorities, and is therefore easy to manage. Many people in diaspora now choose to use air time remittance as a gift for friends and family in their home country; a little bonus on top of a weekly cash remittances, or something to encourage the family member to phone. It is cheaper and allows them to send money is small denominations.  

A study by Juniper Research indicated that international transfers made via mobile phone top up exceeded $10 billion in 2013. In the developing world, there are 2.7 billion people who do not have a bank account. At this same time, there are 1 billion people who have cell phones in these areas. The overlap of these numbers is substantial. In Kenya, mobile penetration is at 78% while the banking is at 40% of the population. Many people without bank accounts have cell service. For those in developing countries, buying airtime for them could really make a difference. By having someone complete an airtime purchase on their behalf, individuals with a cell phone and no bank account can continue to stay in touch. This has propelled the growth of International airtime remittance.

How does it work? International Airtime Remittance can be implemented using a number of channels available to users, including web portals, SMS, USSD, Mobile Web Apps and Android Apps that can be fully customized. The solution requires a trans-global entity, providing a platform to integrate with mobile operator top up systems in different countries. The International Top-up Operator purchases airtime from international mobile operators at a wholesale or discounted rate. By offering international top up, retail channels can enable their customers to conveniently purchase airtime and send. Retail distribution channels purchase airtime from the international top-up operator, and sell airtime to customers for a service fee added to the top-up amount at the time of sale. 

The future of International remittances is bright, with operators looking to offer consumers ability to seamlessly send value across virtually any border to any recipient without traditional intermediaries. For instance, paying electricity bills, dental bills, or school tuition with the same ease as sending of airtime from a prepaid mobile phone. Over the last few years, Kenya Power and Lighting Company has been rolling out prepaid meters for urban households and has installed approximately 400,000 meters. Instead of the postpaid meter, you’ve got a prepaid meter and as soon as there is no money left in the meter, the light goes out. Once this happens, the consumer buys prepaid tokens to resume the service. What if a relative living in the diaspora to top up your prepaid electricity meter to ensure that your lights never go off?

Another example of a prepaid utility service is the M-Kopa Solar. The solar lighting system offers clean lighting solutions to millions of homes that are not on the electricity grid. M-Kopa provides pay as-you-go solar home solution and comes with two LED solar lights and one solar rechargeable LED torch, and a larger 8W panel that gives 60 percent more charging capacity. Following the removal of VAT on solar-powered devices, M-KOPA Solar charges an initial deposit of KES 2,999 followed by 365 daily payments of KES 40. The growth of this service has been tremendous. M-Kopa is currently connecting 2,000 homes to solar every week, with a customer base of around 90,000 and targeting 1 Million customers in the next four years. Most of the M-Kopa customers are in the rural areas, some have relatives in the diaspora. Considering it only costs $0.40 per month to use the solar solution, most people in the diaspora would be more than happy to support their families back at home. There are many existing and upcoming pre-paid utilities that may use International remittances in the near future.

Advent of MVNO

During my short stay in Germany in 2006, I used a mobile service provider that did not own any infrastructure. By then, I only understood the company as a reseller of O2, later I came to understand that it was a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). The first MVNO was created by Tele2 in Denmark, and subsequently rolled out in several European markets. This model formed the basis between the cooperation between Tele2 and Telia in Sweden. However, the first commercially successful MVNO was Virgin Mobile UK, which was launched in 1999. The success of Virgin Mobile UK was replicated by the United States licensee of the Virgin Mobile brand. Initially an independent company, Virgin Mobile USA was eventually acquired by its host mobile network operator, Sprint Nextel.

As of October 2012 there were 634 active MVNO operations worldwide, which in turn are operated by 503 companies. In April this year, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) recently issued MVNO licenses to Finserve Africa Limited, a subsidiary of Equity Bank, Zioncell Kenya Limited and Tangaza’s Mobile Pay Limited, with the three companies entering into an agreement to use Airtel’s infrastructure. In hot pursuit of the same is Kenya Airways, having signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Airtel to deliver an MVNO service for the airline, subject to regulatory approvals.

An MVNO is a cell phone carrier that typically does not have its own network infrastructure and licensed radio spectrum. An MVNO pays wholesale fees for minutes and SMSs and then sells them at retail prices under its own brand. The advent of MVNO in most countries is as a result of the regulation authority’s intent to compel mobile service providers to offer wholesale access to their network to encourage competition whose aim is to benefit the consumers. As the number of MVNOs increase, the consumer will have a variety of pricing models and value propositions to choose from. The main advantage of MVNOs is that they do not incur capital expenditure on spectrum and infrastructure and does not have the time-consuming task of building out extensive radio infrastructure. These factors make them fiercely competitive and innovative leading to new products and services in the market.

There are some disadvantages to MVNOs. Since they do not control the network infrastructure, the response time to technical challenges is hampered and may lead to instances of customer dissatisfaction. Some MVNOs do not allow roaming, due to lack of commercial agreements with providers in other countries. From the perspective of the mobile network operators, MVNOs cause a cannibalizing effect by targeting the same retail market as them. In some cases, it may lead to a shift of same consumers from the mobile network operator to the MVNO considering it’s essentially the same service rendered.  It is essential for the regulatory authority to consider the merits and demerits of MVNOs as the authority issues licenses. In developed markets MVNOs can avoid cannibalizing a host operator’s subscriber base by targeting low-end segments the MNO might find too costly to tap.

MVNO market in Africa is in its infancy with only a few countries having taken up the concept. South Africa is the leading with several operating and upcoming MVNOs; Virgin Mobile, Redbull Mobile, Econet, Hello Mobile, 8.da and Appchat. In Cameroon there is SET Mobile and SMS Mobility, in Senegal there is Sonatel and Toubatel, Morocco has Poste Maroc, Madagascar has Blueline and Tanzania has Zantel. Virgin’s subscription numbers are closing in on half a million, which probably makes it the biggest MVNO on the continent, although such figures only put it fifth in South Africa and barely noticeable behind the 60 million total of the big three. One of the biggest challenges is how to position an MVNO in a low-income market. Stability of retail pricing will be a key driver as to whether MVNOs can be sustainable in low ARPU markets.

MVNOs have to be innovative. Working with one host network operator across multiple countries sounds ideal; it could mean the same technology platform, contractual agreements and volume discounts on wholesale rates. This is the model Kenya Airways has adopted with Airtel leveraging on the provider Pan African coverage in 17 African countries. In some countries, MVNOs use a mobile virtual network aggregator (MVNA). MVNAs would normally establish scale of their own by working with a number of MVNOs. So far there hasn’t been sufficient activity in Africa to attract aggregators–MVNAs–which enable MVNOs to launch at a lower cost of entry and often greatly facilitate the set-up process. The single enabler–MVNE–model through which operators can cost-effectively host specific strategic MVNOs is more likely in the near term. Some MVNOs have taken advantage of popular established brands during market entry; Cell C’s sub-brand Red Bull has the obvious youth appeal of a ‘cool’ drinks brand. Set’Mobile, on the other hand, which came to market in Cameroon, borrowed the name of the country’s world-famous footballer Samuel Eto’o.

The Most Technologically Advanced World Cup

The 2014 World Cup in Brazil made headlines all over world. The most popular, of course, was the embarrassment of the ‘Samba Boys’ at home in the hands of an efficient German ‘machine’. We need not over emphasize this point. Other headlines included various demonstrations by Brazilians against the development of extensive infrastructure for the tournament at the expense of other programs, the rumours of Jennifer Lopez not performing at the opening ceremony, collapse of a bridge in Belo Horizonte, and so on. Among the headlines was the fact that the 2014 World Cup in Brazil was definitely the most technologically advanced football tournament we have ever seen. Everywhere you looked, there was technological amazement. If we start with basics, the soccer ball, Brazuca. The ball was made up of six propeller-shaped polyurethane panels being thermally bonded together to ensure smooth gliding in the air. The purpose of the design was to overcome the challenges of the Jabulani, the ball used at the 2010 World Cup tournament in South Africa. 

With most of the cities at the coast line of Brazil, the weather during the tournament was bound to be warm and humid. The clothing vendors went all out to provide players with kits that had a cooling mechanism. For the home team Brazil, Nike combined technical fabrication with thermo-regulation. The team’s jersey had 56 per cent more airflow than previous versions. It was composed of 94 per cent polyester and just 6 per cent cotton thus giving the players a comfortable feel of cotton, but the heat regulation properties of polyester. Adidas on the other hand, had designed a series of pre-cooling sleeves and vests that can be worn by players before and after matches, or during training. The garments were cooled in a freezer before being worn by a player, bringing their temperature down over 15 to 20 minutes. In some matches, the weather was so harsh that there were water break. Technology can only go so far, right?

Apart from the players, the referees were technologically advanced. The World Cup referees had access to foam, water-based, vanishing spray that will be carried in special belts. This particular brand new feature of the World Cup impressed most the football fans. This was the first time it was used in the tournament, having been used prior at the under-20 World Cup. Every time there was a foul, the referee would first circle the ball using the spray, walk nine meters and spray a straight line where the ‘wall’ of players would be. In this World Cup, the referees did not have to guess if there was a goal or not. In fact, the word "GOAL" would appear on the screen of their watches courtesy of goal line technology. A German company, GoalControl, had fitted 14 high-speed cameras - seven per goalmouth - to the roof of each of the 12 stadiums. The cameras were connected to an image-processing computer that filtered out non-ball-shaped objects and tracked the ball's position to within a few millimeters. Some experts predict that goal line technology will soon be used to detect offside, most offside called by the referee are always controversial and the technology would ensure precision.

This World Cup has also seen an abundance of apps make their way to various devices in order to keep fans better connected than ever before. Fans would keep up-to-date with the latest scores and fixtures on their mobile devices. There were a myriad of applications to choose from. With the Official FIFA World Cup app the fans did not miss any news, standings, or team schedules throughout the tournament. The ‘Onefootball Brasil – World Cup’ app kept the fans updated and informed, the app features all the latest team news, match schedules, results and statistics. With this app, you could choose your favourite team and keep track of their performance throughout the tournament. The ‘World Cup Brazil 2014’ was packed full of features including a countdown timer for the next games which can be displayed on your device’s home screen, fixtures, videos, news, data match updates in real time, notifications and more. The ‘FotMob’ allowed fans to access lives scores, match stats, lineups, goals, assists, cards, penalties, substitutions, tables and more. In addition to this, the fan would also be able to access news from the World Cup as well as various football leagues.

Using Technology for Health in Africa

Hitherto, Africa has been plagued with the threat of disease and other health related issues amongst its population.  There rarely has been real-time disease surveillance and monitoring of data on Africa, and as such have had to rely upon a few sentinel sites and modeling estimates to track the spread and prevalence of disease. Use mobile telephony technology has drastically changed this. A recent TA Telecom report on the African telecommunications market indicates that mobile penetration in Africa hit 80 percent in the first quarter of this year and is still growing at 4.2 percent annually. That’s faster than anywhere else in the world, the report says, and Africa is, after Asia, the world’s second-largest market. Which means that today, more than eight in 10 Africans have a mobile phone.

Using systems integrated to mobile telephony, quality data has been gathered such that one can tell who is dying and from what, who is sick, and where clusters of disease are occurring. Mobile phones are also helping by improving vaccine supply chains. By allowing real-time data of stock levels in remote facilities to filter back up the chain, it is possible to prevent unnecessary stock-outs and ensure that vaccines are available when infants and children are brought in to be immunized. Meanwhile, health-care workers in the field are now able to access health records and can schedule appointments using their phones. They can even issue automated text reminders to parents about when vaccine clinics are being held. These are simple measures, yet highly effective.

Things have also improved for pregnant women by use of technology. KimMNCHip, a national-scale mHealth initiative to offer pregnant women in Kenya more choice, control and care during their pregnancy, and improved medical care for them and their babies during and after delivery. Once pregnant women register with their due dates, information via a Maternal, Newborn, and Child (MNC) mHealth advisory service is shared. The women receive a mix of “push” SMS and voice messages, and access to call-in advisory hotlines and information databases for Maternal Newborn and Child Health issues. This information is disseminated at no cost to the women since SMS/voice charges to be covered by donors. In additional to the information dissemination, the women also get mFinancial services. They are provided with electronic vouchers to redeem in a collaborating clinic of their choice. The vouchers act as an incentive for clinics to enhance the quality of their services and attract more pregnant women, through a results-based payment system.

Further afield, a team of ophthalmologists comprising of Dr Andrew Bastawrous and Stewart Jordan at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Dr Mario Giardini at the University of Strathclyde, and Dr Iain Livingstone, at the Glasgow Centre for Ophthalmic Research had a vision to extend eye care in Africa. Working with developers, they created an Android application, known as Peek, which is integrated to a clip on to run a range of tests, including visualization of the back of the eye. Peek, portable eye examination kit, is currently under testing with approximately 5,000 patients in Kenya. It can diagnose blindness, visual impairment, cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and other retinal and optic nerve diseases and crucial indicators of brain tumour and haemorrhage. The application is expected the help health workers in the remote areas without skills in eye care to share images of the patients’ eye with their skilled counterparts.

Smart tablets are also playing and important role in improving health. In Cameroon, a 26 year old engineer developed a touch screen tablet that would be used to examine a patient’s heart. Named a Cardiopad, the device is integrated to sensors and is capable of carrying out an electrocardiogram. Mr. Arthur Zang is currently working on a model that can run on solar power to cater areas without access to electricity. The great invention will help patients with cardiovascular health problems to access medical treatment faster and cheaper thorough their local clinics and dispensaries. It wasn’t possible to send or save the results electronically. With the Cardiopad, the results are digitalized and transmitted. There is no need to print them; the heart surgeon can interpret them, even remotely.