Mali Leads Africa

OpenLife Nigeria reports that Mali, a landlocked country in West Africa has made a breakthrough in technology that places her ahead other African countries in enhanced domestic policies.

Reputed as the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over 1,241,238 square kilometres (479,245 sq mi), Mali is now one of the first states in Africa to bring visibility to its digital sector

This breakthrough for the 21.9 million peopled country came about as N-Soft has delivered a new governance solution for mobile internet in Mali enabling the country to enhance transparency and oversight of its domestic policies.

The testing of the new data solution was officially approved recently by the experts of AMRTP, the regulatory authority for telecoms, TICS, and, mails from the Malian state and N-Soft.

With the implementation of these advanced digital governance solutions, Mali emerges as one of the pioneering nations in Africa to enhance transparency and oversight of its domestic policies.

This development offers a significant advantage for global financial institutions and investors who seek clear visibility into specific sectors of the economy to make informed investment decisions and provide loans within a trustworthy business environment.

N-Soft has been managing mobile voice, SMS, and mobile money in Mali since 2019. For example, they are overseeing USD 3 billion in mobile money transactions per month.

As a vote of confidence, N-Soft was granted an extension of the initial contract and now provides real-time visibility on Mobile Data service with regards to volume (download/upload), and the bandwidth per application (OTT, Web, Streaming, etc.)

This service extension also aims at overseeing mobile internet and calculating, in real-time, volume usage, the bandwidth generated by Androids’ mobile apps, apple, etc. to bring visibility over the effective bandwidth.

“N-SOFT is highly honored by the trust bestowed upon it by the AMRTP, reaffirmed by the signing of this project,” the technology company said in a statement.

Continuing, the statement maintained that “This project aims to provide Mali with a precise regulatory tool, giving it complete visibility into the internet volumes consumed by its nationals.

It is not about controlling how Malians use the internet, but rather measuring the overall bandwidth used by the country, classifying OTT applications (e.g., WhatsApp, YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, etc.) based on their adoption by the population, and addressing a multitude of similar questions.

Mali is now among our privileged partners, and we will continue to mobilize all our resources to provide it with complete visibility into its digital environment.” Explains Alex-Ariel Tchetgnia, VP of services at N-Soft.

Since N-Soft has been a Digital Sector Supervisor for more than ten years, its governance solutions stand out in the GovTech sector as tried-and-true and reliable.

They can assist any government in tackling the informal economy and tax avoidance by providing full visibility into the mobile data industry.

N-Soft solutions can also be used in other sectors besides mobile telephony.

In addition, they supervise pay TV, the gambling and betting industry, mobile phone importation, digital advertising, financial services, and any other sectors part of the digital economy.

The transparency brought by N-Soft tools can be used for the volume of transactions, as in Mali’s case, or for revenue mobilization to allow governments to pinpoint revenue leakages to maximize revenue mobilization.

Such thorough tracking ensures that governments can collect all taxes owed to them.”

Curiously, 67% of Mali’s population is estimated to be under the age of 25.

Its capital and largest city is Bamako.

The sovereign state of Mali consists of nineteen regions and its borders on the north reach deep into the middle of the Sahara Desert.

The country’s southern part is in the Sudanian savanna, where the majority of inhabitants live, and both the Niger and Senegal rivers pass through.

The country’s economy centres on agriculture and mining.

One of Mali’s most prominent natural resources is gold, and the country is the third largest producer of gold on the continent of Africa.

On record, Mali is home to the richest man who has ever lived, known as Mansa Musa.
The county also exports salt.