By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/jade-scipioni/">Jade Scipioni</a> 



There are only about <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/07/forbes-there-are-a-record-2208-billionaires-in-the-world.html">2,200</a> billionaires in the world — or 0.0002% of planet’s population.



And&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/07/forbes-there-are-a-record-2208-billionaires-in-the-world.html" class="">67%</a>&nbsp;of those billionaires are self-made.



The members of that self-made group generally made their money in one of a few ways: they invented a useful product (think Bill Gates with Microsoft, whose net worth is around&nbsp;<a class="" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/">$107 billion</a>); they innovated a new way of solving a problem (think Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky, whose net worth is around&nbsp;<a class="" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/brian-chesky/#7feaad8944d3">$3.7 billion</a>); or they are savvy investors (think Warren Buffett, worth&nbsp;<a class="" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/">$87.3 billion</a>). Indeed, climbing the corporate ladder will rarely get you into the club (Tim Cook who runs nearly&nbsp;<a class="" href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/history/">$1 trillion company</a>&nbsp;Apple, for example, is worth around&nbsp;<a class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-net-worth-apple-ceo-2018-8">$625 million</a>).



But beyond sharp entrepreneurial and investing chops, self-made billionaires share some traits, according to according to Rafael Badziag, who interviewed 21 of them (including early Uber investor Tim Draper and InfoSpace and Viome founder Naveen Jain) for his book, “The Billion Dollar Secret.” Here are three of the top things they have in common, according to Badziag.



 1. They succeed no matter what the ‘weather’ is



Badziag says it’s clear why most of the general population (he calls them “drifters”) don’t succeed in life: They are waiting for conditions to be perfect before they strike, and often those ideal conditions never materialize so they don’t fully pursue their dreams.



“Self-made” billionaires, he says, are different. Most of the billionaires Badziag interviewed didn’t come from well-off families or ideal situations, but they pursued their dreams no matter the circumstances around them — no matter the “weather outside or inside,” he says.



Take for example, one of the billionaires Badziag interviewed: N.R. Narayana Murthy, who co-founded IT giant Infosys, which is valued at more than&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INFY?p=INFY" class="">$45 billion</a>.



The 72-year-old, who is now worth as estimated <a class="" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/nr-narayana-murthy/#632698863e05">$2.4 billion</a>, grew up in India in ’50s and ’60s, a poor country that he says was one of the most hostile to free enterprise at the time. As a child, his family was so poor he had to sleep on the floor because they had no furniture.



But despite having no money, Murthy was eager to learn; he would go to the public library in town (he lived outside Karnataka) and read everything he could. From what he learned, Murthy believed software was the future, so in 1981 he and some colleagues got the idea to create a software company. But they didn’t have a computer, and at the time, the Indian government required a license to import one, he told Badziag. So for three years, Murthy back and forth to Dehli by train, 1,500 miles each way, making at least 50 visits to pitch officials on why he should be granted a license. With their computer and phone line (which he says took <a class="" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-12957104">a year</a> to procure), Murthy and his co-founders started Infosys and grew it from an operation with seven employees into a global business and one of the leading technology consulting companies in India.



 2. They don’t do it for the money



Most “drifters” are dying to have big incomes but never quite achieve a high net worth status, or if they do, they lose motivation when they have some good in money in bank, says Badziag. (He refers to it as “the gold digger’s trap.”)



However, Badziag found that the “self-made” billionaires he interviewed aren’t motivated by wealth. Instead, they “have a strong sense of purpose and passion for their work,” and are motivated by a desire to “to grow and learn no matter how big their bank accounts get,” he says.



As Apple founder Steve Jobs once famously said, “I was worth over a million dollars when i was 23 and over $10 million when I was 24, and over $100 million when I was 25. And it wasn’t that important, because I never did it for the money.” Jobs said he started Apple with a simple vision of trying to create a “<a class="" href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197538">computer in the hands of everyday people</a>. ” and they ended up succeeding beyond they wildest dreams.



Murthy told Badziag he was driven by the belief that the only way to solve the problem of poverty was “through the creation of jobs with good incomes and that entrepreneurship was the best instrument for such a solution.”



And French-Syrian businessman Mohed Altrad, who made his now&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mohed-altrad/#2c128ff45057" class="">$2.7 billion</a>&nbsp;fortune by acquiring a scaffolding company in France in 1985 and growing it into the industrial services giant&nbsp;<a href="https://www.altrad.com/en/home.html" class="">Altrad Group</a>, told Badziag that he doesn’t view money as an objective.



“It’s one of the signs of success. The success of the organization is to be sustainable, in which people are happy, in which humanity finds its foundation,” Altrad said.



 3. They are frugal



“Drifters” love spending money, according to Badziag, often going into debt to spend even more than they have. Even successful people are prone to showcasing their wealth via cars, expensive clothes and lavish vacations.



But the billionaires Badziag interviewed were different: They “get pleasure making money, but don’t enjoy spending it,” he says.



Take for example, Warren Buffett, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/" class="">fourth-richest person</a>&nbsp;in the world with a net worth of around&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/" class="">$87.3 billion</a>. Despite his massive wealth, the 88-year-old still lives in the same modest Omaha house he purchased in 1958 for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-modest-home-bought-31500-looks-2017-6" class="">$31,500</a>&nbsp;(which is around $277,00 in today’s dollars). He also keeps his breakfast budget low, only spending around&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/18/warren-buffett-buys-breakfast-from-mcdonalds-for-under-3-point-17.html" class="">$3.17</a>&nbsp;a day at McDonald’s to get one of three items: two sausage patties, a sausage, egg and cheese or a bacon, egg and cheese.



And Peter Hargreaves, the founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, one of the UK’s largest financial services businesses, told Badziag a few years back that he was still driving an eight-year-old Toyota Prius. Hargreaves’ net worth is estimated at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-hargreaves/#147ef4b8691c" class="">$4.2 billion</a>.



Hargreaves also told Badziag that his children were frugal too. ”[My kids] drive very modest cars; they both have a car that’s seven years old. They both have quite modest flats. And if they go on holiday, they go with their mates, and they go to the back of the plane,” Hargreaves said.



Of course, some billionaires adjust to their level of wealth. For example, though Bill Gates is famous for wearing a <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/28/two-popular-items-bill-gates-refuses-to-spend-a-lot-of-money-on.html">$10 watch</a>, he recently <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/25/why-bill-gates-younger-self-would-be-disgusted-with-him-today.html">admitted</a> that he also indulges: “Now I take lots of vacation. My 20-year-old self is so disgusted with my current self. You know, I was sure I would never fly anything but coach and you know, now I have a plane,” Gates said last <a class="" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&amp;amp=&amp;amp=&amp;amp=&amp;v=W5g4sPi1wd4">month</a> at a Village Global event.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/02/self-made-billionaires-have-these-traits-in-common.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/02/self-made-billionaires-have-these-traits-in-common.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

3 traits self-made billionaires have in common, according to a guy who interviewed 21 of them

By<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/jade-scipioni/"> Jade Scipioni</a> 



In 1975, at the age of 19,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/24/bill-gates-says-his-biggest-mistake-was-not-beating-google-on-android.html?forYou=true" class="">Bill Gates</a>&nbsp;dropped out of his sophomore year at Harvard to launch Microsoft with his buddy Paul Allen.



Gates worked weekends and never took vacation in his 20s to get the company off the ground. And it worked. Today, Microsoft is valued at more than&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSFT/" class="">$1 trillion</a>&nbsp;and Gates is the second richest man in the world with a net worth of around&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/william-h-gates/" class="">$107 billion</a>&nbsp;(just $12 billion shy of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ fortune of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-bezos/" class="">$119 billion</a>).



“It really is true that I didn’t believe in weekends; I didn’t believe in vacations,” Gates told Eventbrite co-founder and CEO Julia Hartz&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&amp;amp;amp=&amp;amp;v=W5g4sPi1wd4" class="">Thursday</a>&nbsp;at a Village Global event.



Gates was at the office so much that he knew the license plates of everyone who worked for him, and he would see what time they would come and go and therefore how many hours his employees were putting in.&nbsp;



“Microsoft was a high-stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as he drove himself,” Gates’ co-founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/paul-allen/" class="">Allen</a>&nbsp;wrote in a 2011 article for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/paul-allen-201105" class="">Vanity Fair</a>. “He was growing into the taskmaster who would prowl the parking lot on weekends to see who’d made it in.”



Gates’ spy tactics and often intense office demeanor during the company’s prime years in the late ’80s and ’90s famously earned him the reputation as an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/17/advice-microsoft-billionaire-bill-gates-would-give-his-younger-self.html" class="">office bully</a>, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gq.com/story/young-bill-gates-was-an-angry-office-bully" class="">GQ.</a>



However, once he got into his 30s — and started dating his now-wife&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/06/14/melinda-gates-the-best-advice-warren-buffett-gave-me.html" class="">Melinda</a>&nbsp;— he said he began to relax a bit and started taking time off, which helped him tone it down.



“Now I take lots of vacation. My 20-year-old self is so disgusted with my current self. You know, I was sure I would never fly anything but coach and you know, now I have a plane,” Gates said.



He refers to the change of heart as a “counter revelation” and he said he can’t imagine working to those extremes today.



“I don’t recommend it and I don’t think most people would enjoy it,” he said.



However, he said he still believes that hard work is essential during the early years of building a business, especially if you want it to become something great.



“You’ll have individuals who have, you know, health or relatives or things that [distract them]. But yes, I have a fairly hardcore view that there should be a very large sacrifice made during those early years&#8230;.” he said.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/25/why-bill-gates-younger-self-would-be-disgusted-with-him-today.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/25/why-bill-gates-younger-self-would-be-disgusted-with-him-today.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Why Bill Gates says his 20-year-old self would be ‘so disgusted’ with him today

By <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/jade-scipioni/">Jade Scipioni</a>



You might assume that as the second richest person in world with a net worth of <a class="" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/">$107 billion</a>, Bill Gates doesn’t have a lot of <a class="" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/19/bill-gates-this-is-a-great-way-to-use-your-tech-skills.html">regrets</a>. But there is a big one that still eats away at him, he says.



Gates admitted his “greatest mistake ever” was allowing Google to develop Android — one of Apple’s biggest smartphone competitors — before Microsoft could develop a competing mobile operating system, he told Eventbrite co-founder and CEO Julia Hartz&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&amp;amp;v=W5g4sPi1wd4" class="">Thursday</a>&nbsp;at a Village Global event.



“That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win,” he said.



Gates said he blames his own poor “mismanagement,” since he didn’t guide his team to jump on the opportunity. He also partially blames Microsoft’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/technology/antitrust-tech-microsoft-lessons.html" class="">antitrust problems</a>&nbsp;in the early 2000′s for allowing Google to get ahead.



Google moved on mobile shortly after Apple did, when it acquired Android in 2005. Google later released it first Android device in September 2008, a little more than a year after Apple released its first iPhone on June 29,&nbsp;<a href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/14/04/14/exclusive-android-docs-reveal-before-iphone-googles-plan-was-a-java-button-phone" class="">2007</a>.



“These are winner-takes-all markets. So the greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is,” he said.



Gates added that there is now only room for one “non-Apple” operating system, and that market is worth $400 billion, he said.



He added that if Microsoft would have “got that one right,” Microsoft would be the top technology company in the game right now.



“We would be&nbsp;the&nbsp;company. But oh well, ” he said.



Despite Gates’ blunder, Microsoft still currently has the highest market cap of the contenders at&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSFT?p=MSFT&amp;amp;.tsrc=fin-srch" class="">$1 trillion</a>; Apple currently has a market cap of&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL?p=AAPL&amp;amp;.tsrc=fin-srch" class="">$918 billion</a>, with Alphabet Inc. (the conglomerate which owns Google since 2015) coming in at&nbsp;<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/" class="">$776 billion</a>.



“It’s amazing to me, having made one of the greatest mistakes of all time&#8230;our other assets — Windows, Office — are still very strong. So we are a leading company,” he said.



Correction: This story has been revised to correct that Google acquired Android in 2005.



This article first appeared on CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/24/bill-gates-says-his-biggest-mistake-was-not-beating-google-on-android.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/24/bill-gates-says-his-biggest-mistake-was-not-beating-google-on-android.html</a> and is republished with its permission.

Bill Gates reveals his ‘greatest mistake’ that potentially cost Microsoft $400 billion

NAIROBI (Reuters) &#8211; Microsoft Corp will invest $100 million to open an Africa technology development centre with sites in Kenya and Nigeria over the next five years, the company said on Tuesday.



Global tech giants, including Alphabet Inc and Facebook, have been increasing investment on the continent in recent years to take advantage of growing economies with rising access rates to the internet by a youthful population.



Microsoft will hire more than 100 local engineers to work in the new Africa facility in both countries to customise its applications for the African market and to develop new ones for the continent and beyond, it said in a statement.



“In addition, it is an opportunity to collaborate with partners, academia, governments and developers, driving impact and innovation in sectors important to the continent,” the company said, citing financial technology, farming technology and off grid energy.



Engineers at the new Africa development centre will build applications using artificial intelligence, mixed reality and machine learning, Microsoft said.



The company already has six other development hubs located elsewhere in the world. The new Africa development hub will also support Microsoft’s established businesses such as Office, Azure and Windows, the company said.



Reporting by Duncan Miriri, editing by Louise Heavens

Microsoft is planning on spending $100 million on Kenya, Nigeria tech development hub, what you need to know

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EOH will no longer be selling Microsoft software licences after the American software giant terminated its contract with the JSE listed company. The decision to withdraw the contract with EOH is linked to allegations of corruption. Microsoft advised EOH that it would not be able to enter into any discussions regarding re-instatement of the partnership until its investigations are concluded. Lillian Barnard, Managing Director of Microsoft said the decision was not taken lightly.

EOH’s termination not taken lightly: Microsoft CEO

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Lillian Barnard, MD, Microsoft SA joins CNBC Africa to talk about the results of their global Artificial Intelligence survey.

The impact of AI on global business performance

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Technology company EOH’s share price continues to fall this week after it was announced that Microsoft would be cancelling contracts under suspicious circumstances. For this CNBC Africa Exclusive CEO Stephen Van Coller spoke to Kopano Gumbi to set the record straight.

EOH pay the price for alleged illicit contracts

By Sebuh Haileleul, Country General Manager, Microsoft East Africa 



Digital transformation is the adoption of advanced technologies and the rise of innovations as companies and individuals reorganise to be mobile- and digital-first, multimodal, and intelligence-driven. It is a catalyst for engendering agility, and has become crucial for organisations to stay competitive, achieve successes, and even survive. 



A key enabler of this is artificial intelligence,which has been dubbed a ‘great transformer’. Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to systems that change their behaviours without being explicitly programmed to do so – simply put, they learn. These systems use things like aggregated data, usage analysis, pattern recognition, and predictive analytics to deliver intuitive insights or make choices, improving efficiency and even shifting business models across all sectors. It is also expected to ultimately boost overall economic growth, and create jobs not yet imagined. 



Transforming
organisations and industry



AI, machine learning, and automation are expected to provide organisations with new means to overcome typical challenges like time constraints, limited skilled resources, and bottlenecks to overall business processes. It can also be used to support security and safety systems,to spot anomalies and patterns. 



AI platforms will support critical systems to run securely and reliably and extract the right information. That’s why we want to see AI embraced in Africa, bringing AI to every application, business process, and every employee. AI technology from Microsoft, for example, is enabling accident prevention through computer vision – scanning video inputs for potential risk, and using this information to improve organisational safety going forward. 



Empowering societies



We believe that AI has the potential to empower people – making the world a better place and Africa will not be left behind. Microsoft has invested $115 million over five years into initiatives that provide funding, technology and expertise to nonprofits and organisations so that they can tackle pressing issues within their own societies. Examples of this exists in <a href="https://www.cio.co.ke/news/little-boosts-platform-security-face-api-part-microsoft-cognitive-services/">Little Cab</a> – a Kenyan cab hailing service. In 2017, LittleCab partnered with Microsoft to launch a driver login verification feature on its app, using facial recognition technology provided by <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/face/">Microsoft Cognitive API</a> and selfies. A smart African-grown system like this ensures that riders have peace of mind while using the service, as it eliminates the opportunity for non-registered drivers to pose as Little Cab drivers.



Within the financial services industry, AI is the underlying tech that helped Finserve launched <a href="https://techweez.com/2018/09/03/finserve-mkey-launch/">mKey</a> – Africa’s first keyboard app that converges social,and financial services into an integrated lifestyle. Operating on MicrosoftAzure technology, it also rewards users the more they transact, blending the best of social conversations with the full breadth of financial services,capturing that entire world on your keyboard, giving users the opportunity to make more possible.



Transforming economies



It is said that by 2050, the need to produce food globally will become crucial. With water levels receding and arable land already limited, the agriculture industry has been placed in the spotlight for needing to adopt innovative technologies crucial to long-term survival. At a time where resources and crops need to be tracked – AI enabled data-driven insights are able to boost agricultural productivity through increasing yields and reducing losses. Through <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/farmbeats-iot-agriculture/">Farmbeats</a>,seamless data collection is collected from various sensors, drones and cameras. The solution also accounts for weather-related power and Internet outages. 



Clearly the potential inherent in AI is huge, but the emergence of AI in combination with automation has also prompted fears – specifically about its long-term impact on employment. Opponents caution that many people may stand to lose their jobs to machines fitted with AI capabilities, particularly at the lower-skill end of the spectrum.



Proponents, on the other hand, argue that new or refreshed industries will benefit from AI, which according to some research will actually create more jobs than it makes obsolete. Additionally Gartner reports that AI augmentation will generate about $2.9 trillion in business value and recover about $6.2 billion in worker productivity by 2021. Others argue that AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030,more than the current output of China and India combined. 



At Microsoft, we do not foresee AI fully replacing humans in the workforce, but rather functioning as a tool that augments human abilities, freeing up people from routine, repetitive tasks, to focus instead on higher reasoning, creativity, and relationship-building –skills that remain uniquely human. 



Microsoft’s vision for AI is one of empowerment – technology providing organisations and individuals with the tools required to innovate and perform to the best of their ability. Our approach of making AI accessible through infusing it in everything we do will only add and streamline the greater agenda of governments, forging the way forward to an all encompassed digital society.

Op-Ed: How artificial intelligence is spearheading unprecedented change in Africa

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The rise of cloud computing in Africa, has provided businesses with the ability to quickly provision computing resources without the costly and laborious task of building and running data centres. The question that remains however, is if organisations can build trust in cloud, joining CNBC Africa to tell us why they should is Microsoft in Eastern Africa&#8217;s County Manager Sebuh Haileleul.

Building trust in the security of cloud computing

ROME, May 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) &#8211; In 2016, a Thai-flagged fishing vessel was detained in Seychelles on suspicion that it had been fishing illegally in the Indian Ocean, one of the world’s richest fishing grounds.
The Jin Shyang Yih 668 was caught with help from technology deployed by FISH-i Africa, a grouping of eight east African countries including Tanzania, Mozambique and Kenya.
But as the vessel headed to Thailand, which pledged to investigate and prosecute the case, it turned off its tracking equipment and disappeared. Its whereabouts remain unknown.
Such activity is rampant in the global fishing industry, experts say, where illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is estimated to cost $23.5 billion a year.
However, a range of non-profit and for-profit organisations that are developing technology solutions to tackle IUU say it is a matter of time before vessels can no longer vanish.
“The industry is developing very fast &#8230; basically the oceans will be fully traceable. There is no place to hide,” said Roberto Mielgo Bregazzi, the co-founder of Madrid-based FishSpektrum, one of the few for-profit platforms.
EAGLE-EYED
With backing from Google, Microsoft’s Paul Allen and Leonardo DiCaprio, among others, such platforms also track fishing on the high seas and in marine reserves, aided by radio and satellite data that send vessels’ locations and movements.
They use satellite imagery, drones, algorithms and the ability to process vast amounts of data, as well as old-fashioned sleuthing and analysis, to help countries control their waters.
Algorithms could identify illegal behaviour, Mielgo Bregazzi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, including predicting when a fishing vessel was about to meet its quota, triggering an alarm.
Bradley Soule, the chief fisheries analyst at OceanMind, a non-profit, said technology can help even rich countries, which might otherwise struggle to process the volume of data broadcast by hundreds of thousands of vessels.
Organisations such as his crunch that data and help to differentiate between normal and suspicious activity.
“The bulk of the threat is non-compliance by mainly legal operators who skirt the rules when they think no one’s looking,” said Soule, who helps Costa Rica monitor its waters.
Others go further. Trygg Mat Tracking (TMT), a Norway-based non-profit, digs up data on a vessel’s identity, its owners, agents and which company provides the crew. Its approach saw a South Korean ship in 2013 pay a then-record $1 million fine.
<h3>KNOWN UNKNOWNS</h3>
Decades of over-exploitation mean fishing grounds are under strain. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in 2016 nearly a third of commercial stocks were being fished at unsustainable levels.
Dirk Zeller, who heads the Sea Around Us &#8211; Indian Ocean project at the University of Western Australia, said as the ocean’s bounty is a public resource, the world should know who is taking what.
Part of the problem, he said, is overcapacity in the global fishing fleet.
But he also points to difficulties in calculating IUU’s scale: the FAO’s estimates of fish stocks, for instance, are based on official government data, which are open to under- and over-reporting.
His research shows global catches from 1950 to 2010 were 50 percent higher than countries had said.
All of which goes some way to explaining why the true extent of IUU remains unknown, experts say.
The best IUU study came out in 2009, said Miren Gutierrez, research associate at London-based think-tank the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). That study, which experts rate as the most reliable, came up with the $23.5 billion figure.
In a bid to update that, the FAO is developing guidelines to help countries estimate IUU fishing in their waters. It is also working with non-profit Global Fishing Watch (GFW) on a report scheduled for July to estimate how much fishing is taking place.
GFW head Tony Long, a British navy veteran, said transparency would drive better behaviour, and meant “those people who choose not to be compliant stand out more”.
<h3>NO SILVER BULLET</h3>
Yet there is still much to do: to date, a recent ODI report on technology platforms noted, governments and multilaterals have “failed to produce a single, effective, public global fisheries information tool”.
Alfonso Daniels, who co-authored the report, said a database of vessels known to be involved in IUU fishing would help.
TMT has tried to fill this gap. In April it launched a website with up-to-date details of nearly 300 vessels accused by nine regional fisheries management organisations of being involved in IUU fishing.
That, though, is a drop in the ocean. The FAO estimates 4.6 million fishing vessels are out there, the ODI report said, yet its database listed &#8211; as of 2015 &#8211; just 5 percent of them.
The FAO is looking to improve on that: last year it launched an online database of vessels that, although currently open only to member states, will be publicly accessible later this year.
But for all the promise technology brings, it cannot provide a complete picture, said Duncan Copeland, chief analyst at TMT.
“You need a combination of other information sources, like working with neighbouring countries,” he said.
The FAO’s senior fishery officer, Matthew Camilleri, agrees technology is no silver bullet.
“What use is it if you’re able to detect IUU fishing and find the vessel with illegal fish on board, but you do not have the process in place to enforce, to prosecute?” he said.
Progress is underway towards that in the form of the FAO’s 2009 Port State Measures Agreement, which is aimed at curbing IUU fishing. Close to half of the 194 U.N. member states have signed it, including four of the top five fishing nations &#8211; Indonesia, the United States, Russia and Japan.
China, though, has not. It is the world’s largest fishing nation, whose 2014 catch of 14.8 million tons, the FAO’s 2016 State of the World’s Fisheries report showed, was as much as the next three nations combined.
When asked whether it was likely to sign, China’s mission to the FAO in Rome told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it was not authorized to comment.
Tony Long from GFW &#8211; which runs a free-to-access platform that uses Automatic Identification System (AIS) data to track the global movement of vessels &#8211; said combining technology with cooperation between countries could close the loopholes.
“We are in a very imperfect situation, so the more countries that ratify tools like the Port State Measures Agreement and mandate the use of tracking systems &#8230; and go transparent, the better,” he said. (Reporting by Thin Lei Win @thinink, Editing by Robert Carmichael. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)

How Africa is fighting against those illegally fishing in its oceans

Sebuh Haileleul | Country Manager, Microsoft East Africa
If you are still struggling to grasp what exactly the cloud is and why it will completely change your business, here’s a simple explanation.
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If you’ve ever experienced the mind-numbing panic that comes with being unable to access important business documents stored on your laptop – perhaps your PC was stolen or damaged – then you’re already halfway to understanding the importance of the cloud.
In truth, the concept of cloud is much easier to grasp than you might think. Instead of storing your programmes, documents and data on your computer’s hard drive, you’re storing them on the internet. That’s it.
Looking at the benefits of the cloud, it’s easy to see why it has quickly become an invaluable tool for businesses, large or small.
It’s safer in the cloud 
While there was initially confusion around cloud safety, the reality is that your data is more secure when it’s stored in the cloud than it is sitting on your hard drive. Think about the example of the missing laptop – if your company data is stored in the cloud, you can continue to access it, with or without that laptop, because you can access the internet from anywhere on any computer.
In terms of the security of the cloud itself, established service providers like Microsoft have a wealth of resources at their disposal to ensure their cloud platforms remain safe. They can spend more money than people, small or large companies, and sometimes even governments can. In fact, <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/default.aspx">Microsoft</a> invests more than a billion dollars each year on security-related research and development.   
To understand the positive impact cloud can have on business, let’s look at South Africa’s <a href="https://customers.microsoft.com/en-US/story/gauteng-provincial-legislature-government-azure-hyper-v-server-system-center-r2-office365-en">Gauteng Provincial Legislature’s (GPL)</a> recent migration to the cloud. In 2015, auditors warned the GPL that its lack of reliability and security in its technology was a serious problem, leaving it exposed to potential loss of data. At the time, the legislature was working off old technology, making it difficult to accurately update and protect its assets.
To address the situation, the GPL made the decision to adopt Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure. Through Azure’s cloud database service, the Legislature ensured all of its data was backed up, improving its governance and compliance controls.
All-round cost saving
Because you don’t have the expense of setting up an actual physical server to store your data, operating in the cloud can save you costs.  The best part is that you only pay for what you need. For example, Azure pricing is based on the service you use and storage you need, and is calculated as a per-hour fee.
Companies that have already made a significant investment in on-premises infrastructure can also choose to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy. This allows businesses to store some of their data and software on a shared public cloud infrastructure while still making use of their own existing servers.
There are also operational savings to be made, as in the example of the GPL, where the Legislature was able to cut down on thousands of annual software payments, such as those non-Microsoft packages used for security and operations management. Thanks to these savings, the GPL expects to save at least one million Rand over the next three years.
You’ll work smarter
What is particularly powerful about a cloud platform like Microsoft is that it can think for you. Not only is it able to store your data and draw insights from that data, but it can also help you foresee future problems and find ways of addressing them before they even occur.
The very nature of cloud also enables greater operational efficiency. For example, if you have multiple people needing to work on the same document, it can be difficult to keep track of which version is the latest and who made which changes. With the cloud, all documents are saved centrally, enabling you to work smarter. Similarly, team members can collaborate from remote locations as they are able to access, edit and share documents from anywhere.
The GPL found this element of cloud capability to be a significant advantage. Through OneDrive, the Legislature has been able to promote great information sharing and increased staff engagement, while cutting down on use of paper.
Grow your business with ease Most businesses absorb the cost of computing resources, such as additional servers and software licences, which are on reserve in anticipation of future growth. However, cloud solutions are scalable – this means you can increase your resource capacity as and when you need it.
For this very reason, the GPL has goals of moving completely onto the cloud, removing the cost of having its own data centre on site. The Legislature says its journey to date has been well worth it, providing a solid foundation from which it can keep on modernising and optimising operations.
There are many ways in which cloud can help your business. Taking the leap to transform your business can be scary but once you make the move, you’ll probably wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

This Is How Cloud Makes Your Business Smarter and More Secure

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Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative partners with the United States International University to launch an app factory in Nairobi. Lutz Ziob, Dean of the Microsoft 4Afrika Academy joins CNBC Africa for more.

Microsoft 4afrika launches first Appfactory in Kenya

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Technology multinational, Microsoft has embarked on a drive to influence creation of technology and innovation policies in Africa.

Microsoft calls for resilient tech policy in Africa

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Uber’s closest rival in Kenya, Little has introduced a driver online verification feature on its app in efforts to curb non-registered drivers.

Little, Microsoft partner to curb non-registered drivers

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<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/jeff-bezos/">Jeff Bezos</a> is the richest man in the world, with a fortune of over $90 billion.
According to Forbes and Bloomberg, the Amazon CEO had a net worth of over $89 billion as of the close of markets Wednesday, while <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/bill-gates/">Bill Gates</a> had a net worth of just over $90 billion.
<a class="inline_quotes" href="http://www.cnbc.com/quotes?symbol=AMZN" data-gdsid="9399" data-inline-quote-symbol="AMZN">Amazon&#8217;s</a> share price has jumped by more than $15 a share overnight, and was recently trading near that level, while Microsoft is down slightly. If the stocks hold up today, Bezos — who around 80 million shares of Amazon — will add more than $800 million to his fortune. That would put him past Gates, assuming the valuations of their non-stock holdings haven&#8217;t changed.
<div id="inline_movable_ad"> Of course, Amazon stock could pull back, or Microsoft could rally. But even if Bezos doesn&#8217;t end the day as the richest man, he will likely take the crown from Gates more permanently in the coming days and weeks.</div>
When he hits the mark, Bezos, who started selling books from his garage 22 years ago, becomes the first man to bump Gates from his perch in seven years and is only the sixth man to hold the &#8220;richest person&#8221; title in the past 30 years, according to Forbes.
Bezos&#8217; rise carries important symbolic weight — signaling Amazon&#8217;s unbridled power and value, presenting a new face of outsized wealth to the world and heralding a new kind of billionaire who is skeptical of philanthropy and has massive reach in culture, technology and media. Bezos will be a stark contrast to his fellow Seattle-area resident Gates, who has topped the list for much of the past quarter-century and devotes his time and money to philanthropy.
What&#8217;s most astounding about Bezos&#8217; rise is his recent wealth surge. He has been a billionaire for nearly 20 years, first making the Forbes list in 1998 with a net worth of $1.6 billion after Amazon&#8217;s IPO. He chugged along for the following decade, reaching $4.4 billion in 2007, gradually rising to $18.4 billion by 2012, ranking him 26th on the list.
But over the past two years, as Amazon&#8217;s stock has soared, so has Bezos&#8217; fortune. He owns 79.9 million shares, or just under 17 percent of the company. His net worth has grown by $70 billion over the past five years, surging by $45 billion in the last two years alone — possibly the largest wealth-creation surge in history.
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<div class="pro-video-chapters fall dyperf dyMonitor" data-adid="535383||2071|||">Of course, Bezos avoids talking publicly about his wealth. Like most tech tycoons, he insists he&#8217;s trying to change the world rather than get rich. In his commencement speech at Princeton, Bezos said he had the idea of selling books on the internet while he was working at a New York hedge fund. Torn between his high-paying job and a risky start-up, he chose the start-up.</div>
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&#8220;I took the less safe path to follow my passion and I&#8217;m proud of that choice,&#8221; he said.
Bezos may not only be the richest man in the world today — he might become the richest man ever, at least measured in pure dollars. At his peak Gates was worth $90 billion, marking the largest single fortune ever. With little sign that Amazon&#8217;s momentum may be slowing, Bezos could well be the first 12-digit man, worth $100 billion one day.
On Thursday, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/27/amazon-is-on-its-way-to-becoming-a-2000-stock-says-leading-analyst.html">a leading analyst said that Amazon &#8220;could be the first trillion-dollar company&#8221; with its stock doubling to $2,000.</a>
Indeed, Bezos&#8217; rise to the top of the rich list shows just how large and fast today&#8217;s biggest fortunes have become. In the 1980s, Saudi businessman Adnan Khashoggi was considered the richest man in the world with a net worth of around $4 billion. By 1995, when Gates first became the richest man, he was worth $12.9 billion.
By 2005, Gates was still topping the list at $50 billion.
In 1987, according to Forbes, there were 140 billionaires in the world with a combined net worth of $295 billion. Now, billionaires number 2,043 and have a combined $7.7 trillion. In fact there were more new billionaires in the world in 2016 — 233 — than the entire population of billionaires in 1987.
Gates has been the richest man for 18 of the past 23 years. The only interlopers were <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/carlos-slim/">Carlos Slim of Mexico,</a> who was the richest man between 2010 and 2012, and <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/warren-buffett/">Warren Buffett</a>, who was the richest in 2008.
Indeed, with the exception of Slim and the occasional overseas billionaire, Gates and Buffett have been a duopoly at the top of the rich list. Their close friendship and partnering in philanthropy made them a potent symbol of the philanthropic side of wealth.
Bezos will be a different figurehead. Unlike Gates, he is still actively running and building a business. He is far more press-averse, rarely giving interviews or public addresses. He is hyper-competitive. And he is only moderately — some would say barely — philanthropic.
But like Gates and Buffett, Bezos is not given to many flashy displays of wealth. He has loads of real estate — he bought the most expensive home in Washington, D.C., and owns homes in Beverly Hills, California, and New York along with his spread in Medina, Washington — and is one of the nation&#8217;s largest landowners, with over 300,000 acres.
He also owns The Washington Post and founded Blue Origin, the space-travel company. Yet Bezos drove his 1996 Honda Accord long after he became a billionaire.
When asked how his life changed when he became a billionaire he said: &#8220;Personally, it hasn&#8217;t changed at all. The big difference is that we now have $50 million in the bank, which is huge.&#8221;
With a net worth topping $90 billion, Bezos&#8217; definition of &#8220;huge&#8221; may have changed.
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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest man

Saheli Roy Choudhury | @sahelirc
HYDERABAD, India — Voice-powered virtual assistants, underpinned by artificial intelligence, like <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/AAPL" target="_self" data-gdsid="8016" data-inline-quote-symbol="AAPL">Apple&#8217;s</a> Siri, <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/AMZN" target="_self" data-gdsid="9399" data-inline-quote-symbol="AMZN">Amazon&#8217;s</a> Alexa, <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/GOOGL" target="_self" data-gdsid="19004" data-inline-quote-symbol="GOOGL">Google</a> Assistant and <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/MSFT" target="_self" data-gdsid="25619" data-inline-quote-symbol="MSFT">Microsoft&#8217;s</a> Cortana are becoming regular fixtures in people&#8217;s lives. They&#8217;re present at homes, on devices and watches and in cars, sending driving directions, weather updates, meeting reminders and the occasional joke or two when prompted.
http://cnbc.africa/news/technology/2017/01/04/amazon-is-selling-tvs-that-you-can-talk-to/
Beyond that, they remain limited in their ability to hold conversations with users, the same way real people might. Efforts are on, however, to use machine learning and real-time big data analytics to make virtual assistants understand multiple languages, accents, contexts and nuances to hold more human-like conversations.
International Data Corporation <a class="inline_asset" title="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS42439617" href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS42439617" target="_self">predicts global spending on cognitive and AI solutions will see significant investments</a> over the next several years, and could achieve a compound annual growth rate of 54.4 percent through 2020.
Microsoft, for example, is turning to an unlikely group to bridge the gap between human-machine interactions: bilinguals. Of specific interest is the practice of code-mixing, which is when speakers switch back and forth between multiple languages in a single sentence or conversation. It&#8217;s commonly found in multilingual societies.
A handful of Microsoft researchers in <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/india/" target="_self">India</a> started Project Mélange, where they are studying the use of code-mixing among Indians online. They are trying to figure out how virtual assistants might be taught to respond to a user switching between, for example, English and Hindi in a conversation.
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&#8220;Compartmentalization of mixed languages (by multilinguals) have gone away with each coming generation,&#8221; Kalika Bali, a researcher at Microsoft, told CNBC in an interview. &#8220;So younger people use mixed languages in more and more phases of their lives.&#8221;
&#8220;To have a digital assistant, something like Cortana, you have to be able to understand (the user base),&#8221; she said, adding current systems weren&#8217;t trained to pick up multiple languages in a single conversation.
Microsoft&#8217;s philosophy is that virtual assistants should not be too intrusive on a user&#8217;s space and time, and only show up when they need to, Sundar Srinivasan, general manager of the AI division in India at Microsoft, said in a recent interview. Srinivasan&#8217;s team works on Cortana and Microsoft&#8217;s search engine Bing at the company&#8217;s development center in Hyderabad.
&#8220;A personal assistant is only as effective as you want her to be,&#8221; he said.
Cortana is available on Windows 10 and in selected smartphones running on the Windows operating software. It has about 140 million monthly active users versus about <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/10/microsoft-windows-10-on-500-million-devices.html" target="_self">500 million devices currently running Windows 10</a>. The program is not available in many regions, but Srinivasan said Microsoft plans to expand it into other markets and onto more devices in the future.
By comparison, Google Assistant is available on both Android and iOS platforms, which <a class="inline_asset" title="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3725117" href="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3725117" target="_self">support about 99.8 percent of all smartphones in the world</a>.
http://cnbc.africa/news/technology/2017/02/27/smartphones-dead-in-five-years/
Srinivasan explained that Cortana was not like other Microsoft products such as Office, where the company could add features as and when needed. Instead, Cortana &#8220;needs to really understand human beings, and the bar for that is very high because that means we have to train the assistant with lots of human speech data,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;It&#8217;s going to take us time.&#8221;
Bali said the researchers&#8217; code-mixing study was inspired by observations from an anthropologist who was looking at the use of technology among Urdu-speaking youth in Hyderabadi slums. They were found using the internet to befriend and interact with girls from Brazil, who primarily spoke Portuguese. English, however, was the primary language for that communication, which piqued Bali&#8217;s interest and she had asked to see the data collected by the anthropologist.
&#8220;When I started seeing this data, I saw that not only were they using this very pidgin English kind of thing, but (they were) effectively communicating with each other,&#8221; Bali said, referring to the type of code-mixing that was happening in these conversations.
The team looks at every aspect of code-mixing, including text, speech, understanding and recognition. Bali said they also look at generational variations and why people switch between languages in a single conversation — for example, sometimes it&#8217;s for humor and at other times it&#8217;s to change topics.
But it may take years before a voice-powered virtual assistant can eloquently switch back and forth in multiple languages to respond to users. The biggest challenge now for Bali and the researchers is getting access to adequate data sets for study.
&#8220;Trying to solve just mono-lingual natural language processing and understanding has taken years. Now we&#8217;re talking about mixed stuff and where are we going to get data from?&#8221; Bali said. &#8220;Because everything is data-driven. And what are we going to do? It just seemed like a very difficult problem to solve but we were all so excited about this that we just went on.&#8221;
Currently, the team uses data collected from Twitter to study how users would switch between languages. Studies, Bali said, already showed Indian men who spoke English and Hindi tended to switch to the latter when they had to express negative sentiments or abuse. Women who are having a conversation in English, however, tended to stick with that language even when the content took a negative turn.
Teaching machines to interpret code-mixing could also potentially lead to developments in areas of opinion mining, customization and a better interpretation of nuances and context, Bali said.
&#8220;I think this would definitely help to bridge the gap in the human-computer interaction. The fact that you can actually talk to a machine the way you would normally talk to your friend is something we still need to wrap our heads around.&#8221;
http://cnbc.africa/news/technology/2017/04/28/artificial-intelligence-will-replace-half-jobs-next-decade-says-widely-followed-technologist/

Microsoft researchers are trying to humanize virtual assistants

Pete Johnston&#8217;s plan to build &#8220;the world&#8217;s most badass recruitment engine&#8221; could put a dent in Microsoft&#8217;s plans to wring money from LinkedIn&#8217;s 500 million users.
Johnston, a former designer for Google and ad giant M&#038;C Saatchi in London, and his backers, including PayPal co-founders Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, are betting that managing contract workers will one day become as valuable to corporations as hiring and paying their own staff.
The start-up, formerly known as Lystable and now renamed Kalo, charges 3 percent of what its customers pay to contractors they hire through the platform. It&#8217;s a bet on the growth of the freelance economy.
A report out this month from consulting firm McKinsey suggested that the gig economy will be here sooner than later. The study said 20 to 30 percent of workers in the U.S. and Europe already do &#8220;independent work.&#8221;
For his part, Johnson said that &#8220;we know who they are, what they worked on and have access to their financial data.&#8221;
But before he and his 50-person start-up take on the world&#8217;s largest software maker, Johnston first has to get used to a new name for the company, which until last week was called Lystable.
That name had an air of exclusivity — as in, you needed special qualifications to be &#8220;listable&#8221;—and Johnston wanted to move away from that. So the company asked the 50,000 freelancers registered on its website to come up with ideas. Johnston also hired a consulting firm that came up with another 30 names.
Yet the company&#8217;s new moniker came not from either of those sources, but from a much more serendipitous process.
Johnston earlier this month looked out onto San Francisco Bay, and saw two ships passing each other. As they crossed, the name of one was truncated to Kalo — and the proverbial light bulb went on.
&#8220;It was an emotional decision,&#8221; says Johnston.
Managing freelancers is a mess
He got the idea for the company while sitting in his Dublin apartment in 2014. He&#8217;d been working for a Google design unit in London that had just seven staff employees, but used more than 150 freelancers per year.
The process, run on a platform made by &#8220;a large enterprise software company&#8221; he declined to name, was worse than cumbersome.
Workers often were not paid quickly — and thus not exactly happy when Johnston and his co-workers asked them to come back for another project.
At first, the software was designed to identify workers and assign them tasks.
But those two steps weren&#8217;t enough, Johnston said, as &#8220;the (freelance) process would then go into this dark place&#8221; when it came time to pay them.
So the company, then based in London and still called Lystable, built a payment module, started charging a fee, and began signing up customers including Google, Airbnb, Expedia and The Economist.
Soon Johnston, a native of Belfast in Northern Ireland, moved to San Francisco, convinced two marquee investors to back him, and opened a new office in this city&#8217;s Financial District early this year. 
 
Microsoft&#8217;s LinkedIn deal as validation
&#8220;This is the sweet spot,&#8221; Johnston told CNBC, while pointing to a group of silos he&#8217;s drawn on the white board of the only conference room in Kalo&#8217;s new headquarters.
The silos represent various back-office functions now run largely by software from tech giants like SAP, IBM and Microsoft.
Putting together back-office data on contractors &#8220;is the key to building the world&#8217;s most badass recruitment engine,&#8221; said Johnston.
His talk of silos echoed one of the rationales given by Microsoft when the software giant acquired the professional social network LinkedIn for $26 billion last year.
&#8220;Today, all the information a professional needs to be successful are in silos,&#8221; according to a presentation Microsoft prepared to explain the deal.
&#8220;By connecting all these apps and data, we can create more connected, intelligent and productive experiences,&#8221; Microsoft said.
Yet Johnston believes that managing contract workers will become more valuable as their ranks grow, and that &#8220;any company that tries to manage them like staff workers is going to run into problems&#8221; like those he saw at Google&#8217;s London office.
He added that Microsoft&#8217;s LinkedIn&#8217;s deal validates his business model, but is confident Kalo can measure up.
&#8220;Do I think they&#8217;ll attack the freelance market and build a module as fast as us? No,&#8221; Johnston said.

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Microsoft

3 traits self-made billionaires have in common, according to a guy who interviewed 21 of them

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Op-Ed: How artificial intelligence is spearheading unprecedented change in Africa

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This Is How Cloud Makes Your Business Smarter and More Secure

Microsoft 4afrika launches first Appfactory in Kenya

Microsoft calls for resilient tech policy in Africa

Little, Microsoft partner to curb non-registered drivers

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest man

Microsoft researchers are trying to humanize virtual assistants

This ex-Googler is building a LinkedIn killer

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