By Alex Perry (Nairobi)

Thursday, June 30, 2011

The buzz at Pivot25, a conference for mobile-phone software developers and investors held this June, is all about the future of money. Ben Lyon, the 24-year-old business-development VP of Kopo Kopo, wants $250,000 to produce his app for shops to process payments made by text message. Paul Okwalinga, 28, describes his money app — called M-Shop, it allows you to buy travel tickets and takeout via mobile phone — as "not reinventing the wheel but pimping it." Kamal Budhabhatti, 35, claims Elma, the latest product from his company Craft Silicon, lets a phone do and be almost anything financial — act like a credit card or an online bank (a "digital wallet," he says), trade shares or forex, organize a company's payroll and (incidentally) surf the Web and phone home. Cash suddenly seems very old. The previous week, Joe Mucheru, a senior manager at Google, declared credit cards prehistoric. Adding to the giddy mood is the thought that the inventions on display might make some lucky Pivot25ers gazillionaires. And where are these extraordinary futures being imagined and plotted? The giraffes and zebras grazing in the game park outside rule out Silicon Valley, Seattle and Bangalore. Try Nairobi.

Suggested By Biko Agozino

Whereas the conflict in Libya arose over the legitimate demand for increased democratization of the country in line with the mainly peaceful democratic revolutions sweeping across the world, it was quickly hijacked by an armed gang of rebels and metamorphosed into a civil war with the help of NATO countries that took military action in support of their sponsored UN resolutions 1970 and 1973 supposedly to protect civilian lives but inevitably killing Libyans and drowning hundreds of fleeing African refugees;

By Ozolua Uhakheme, Assistant Editor (Arts) for The Nation.

Born: 1944 in Ogidi, Nigeria.

Died: June 2011 (age 67)

Real Name: Prince Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyelale Osuntoki

A multidimensional artist, singer, musician, actor, writer and poet, Twins Seven-Seven, one of the greatest artists of the Osogbo School, has died at aged 67. He passed on yesterday at  the University College Hospital, Ibadan, where he had been on admission following a stroke.

The artist, real name Olaniyi Osuntoki was one of the most famous products of Ulli Beier's experimental art workshops, held in Osogbo in the 1960s.