Africa has been the fastest growing information and communications technology market globally over the last three years, said Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) at ITU Telecom Africa, a telecommunications industry fair held in Cairo that closed yesterday.

The UN International Telecommunication Union released a report that stated that the mobile phone sector in Africa had “defied all predictions” and that there were as many as 65 million new subscribers in 2007. For comparison, only one in 50 African people owned a mobile phone in 2000. Today, a third of the population has one and users are more evenly distributed across the continent.

In 2007, the number of Internet users in Africa has grown to approximately 50 million, which is to say that about a fifth of the population now has Internet access.

ITU Secretary-General Touré added: “Market liberalization continues and most countries have established regulatory bodies to ensure a fair, competitive and enabling environment.”

Consulting company Detica has secured an £18m contract with the Metropolitan Police Service to provide the police force with communications support - operational PDAs, mobile data terminals and associated infrastructure - over the next five years.

Supporting infrastructure also falls under the terms of the agreement. The communications devices in question will allow police vehicles to exchange information with the central dispatcher.

Analysts say that Detica has made an excellent move in deciding to use its experience and expertise in the security market to reach out to a wider client base in the UK public sector.

Detica Group is a global business and technology consultancy that specializes in information intelligence. The company's work mostly lies in the area of security, risk management and regulatory compliance. The contracts for the Mobility Projects with the Metropolitan Police total £18.1 million.

Business-to-business marketing and research firm Quadriga Consulting and MR agency Blauw Research have formed a partnership in order to offer the IT and telecommunications sector better insights and a broader range of international research resources.

Quadriga Consulting Ltd. is an experienced consultancy and a firm that focuses on technological research in the IT and telecom sector.

Based in Northern Ireland, Quadriga has broad international experience in enterprise and telecommunications software, computer hardware and digital content.

Blauw Research brings 15 years of experience in information and communication technology (ICT) to the partnership. It has offices in London, Rotterdam and Nürnberg.

Commenting on the new partnership, Quadriga Consulting Managing Director Jeffrey Peel said:

"This represents a major step forward for ICT players that need both specialist sector expertise and international data collection resources across multiple markets. Many so-called international agencies try to offer turnkey international research capability but typically that means farming data collection out to local agencies that have no overt sector understanding. What we offer is end-to-end management of the process, while never losing sight of the business and research objectives."  

Jonathan Wheeler, MD at Blauw, added: "The ICT sector is very demanding in terms of international capability. Many MR and marketing managers in tech firms get very frustrated that they can’t find agencies that can offer a full understanding of their product management challenges at the same time as offering an international data collection ability. We can offer both. The result is easier, more responsive project management and a focus on the findings rather than the process.”