CIO East Africa looks back at 2011, for the most read articles of the year. From our analysis, the entertainment and consumer devices sector is quite big, with most of the articles revolving around consumer devices and entertainment.
10. Safaricom launches cloud services
"Cloud" was quite a buzz word in 2011, and continues been one. Safaricom's held a heavily publicised launch of their cloud services, with a dinner party hosting over 700 attendees. The firm launched what they term as Africa's largest native cloud. Read more to find out what the buzz was all about.
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9. Western Union reveals the world’s most networked person
M-Pesa, Kenya's popular money transfer service may be handling more transactions per day than Western Union, the mostly country to country money transfer service, handles in an year. However, Western Union still accounts for a large percentage of African countries' foreign exchange inflow. In 2011, Western Union was highlighting their role in inter-country money transfer by using a Facebook App to find the most internationally connected Facebook user.
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8. Mobile data: comparison of Kenya mobile operators

Communication Commission's of Kenya figures show that 99 per cent of Internet access in Kenya is through Mobile operators. It therefore made sense that CIO East Africa should review the offerings of various mobile operators. The review was done in February 2011, but is due up for a refresh seeing that 3G networks have now expanded , with several operators now touting that they have the fastest networks. How was the Internet landscape in Kenya an year ago?

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7. LG establishes customer information centre in Kenya

Consumer electronics is a growing business in Kenya, with approximately 6,000 fridges and 7,000 flat screen televisions sold in the country every month. It follows customers will be looking for after-sales service for their products, and this has seen LG, one of the top brands to the country, implementing several initiatives in customer care. The article is also one of the most commented on CIO East Africa.

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6. Kenyan doctors perform the country's first distant surgery

Video conferencing and telepresence was another big buzzword in 2011, but not for doctors. While Kenya sees many patients travelling to Aga Khan for specialised treatment, 2011 saw doctors at the Aga Khan hospital perform the country's first distant surgery, with supervision from doctors in India.

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5. Safaricom announces Huawei IDEOS launch date

2011 was the year that smartphones finally got to see mass adoptions (or not, read the CIO East Africa February Issue for more on market share between different mobile phone ecosystems in Kenya). Huawei's IDEOS smartphone was the most anticipated phone, and arrived at Safaricom shops in February, going on to sell more than 100,000 handsets according to Huawei.

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4. 20 East African firms scoop 2011 CIO 100 Category awards

CIO East Africa held our annual CIO 100 Awards and Symposium in November last year, attracting quite a large turn out of delegates from both the government and private sector. The Awards also saw little known Kenya Educational Network(KENET) top the list of hundreds of project applications. The awards recognise firms that are deploying ICT in an innovative manner while making business out of it. The awards have special sectors that recognise the most innovative firms in various sectors.

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3.KENET, Eat Out , Nakumatt top 2011 CIO 100 Awards

More on the CIO 100 Awards, little known Kenya Educational Network(KENET) top the list of hundreds of project applications. The first runners up was also a fairly young business that seeks to help restaurants meet their consumers, while giant retail chain, Nakumatt , continued to revolutionise the retail sector.

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2. GOtv, new pay and digital TV launches in Kenya

The Multichoice launch of GoTV , which doubles up as a digital television set-top box and a monthly pay TV service saw lots of interest in the following days. The service, in addition to existing digital TV stations, also had select titles off DSTv's bouquet. GOTv has a total of 21 channels and cost Ksh 585 per month after launch. The service was however not as clear as promised then , as digital TV in the country is still in its infancy, while uptake still appears to be low.

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1. Airtel Kenya lowers call rates to Kshs 1/= on its network

Airtel started 2011 on a high, or rather low note when it comes to how much it charges its customers for calls, as it lowered Airtel to Airtel calls to Ksh 1 per minute. This was yet another move in Kenya's network wars which Airtel started with a 67 per cent drop in call charges in August 2010, slashing calls from Ksh 8 to Ksh 3 a minute. Safaricom, the largest network later followed by reducing their calls to Ksh 3 a minute for within network calls and Ksh 4 a minute for calls to other networks. Safaricom later revised their rates upwards by Ksh 1 , though other networks are yet to revise their rates. Latest reports form the Communications Commission of Kenya show that both Safaricom and Airtel added about half a million customers between July and September 2011, while Nairobitech blog reports that Airtel has been adding about the same number of customer per month through out the remainder of 2011 , after Safaricom raised their rates.

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Other Articles

While some articles were published before 2011, they remained hugely popular through 2011

M-PESA to ease payment of water bills

M-Pesa, Safaricom's hugely popular mobile money transfer service has developed into an essential utility payment platform, with millions of Kenya's using it to pay for goods and services. This includes payment of water bills for certain utilities such as the Nairobi Water Company, which has seen many coming online in search of the process for making the payments, skipping the queues at such firms offices.

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SMART TV launched in Kenya

Kenyans love their TV and TV related services will generally attract lots of interest. The launch of Smart TV in 2010 , another digital TV set-top box and monthly TV service continued to generate lots of interest through 2011, even as Smart TV seemed to spend more of their time tackling legal challenges, with various local TV broadcasters challenging their right to charge, as part of a bouquet, what they broadcast free.

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