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Watt’s Technology
Bright boys
‘programmed’
for Egypt
Four young South African computer programmers
– selected from more than 34 000 entrants – will
be taking part in the International Olympiad in
Informatics in Egypt later this year. Over the past
17 years, South African teams have won four gold , 13 silver
and 18 bronze medals at the International Olympiad.
The four-person team consists of brothers Saadiq Moolla,18,
who is studying an MBChB at the University of Cape Town
(UCT) and Haroon Moolla, 17, who is a Grade 12 pupil at
Rondebosch Boys’ High. Both brothers have participated in
the science and maths Olympiads in the past.
The other two members are Mark Danoher of Port
Elizabeth who is studying computer science at UCT and won
a gold medal at last year’s Computer Olympiad and Schalk-
Willem Kruger who is a Grade 11 pupil at Ferdinand Postma
High in Potchefstroom. Kruger won a bronze medal at last
year’s Computer Olympiad.
About 80 countries are expected to send teams to compete
in the International Olympiad in Informatics.
Super-cable for
Africa by 2010
The $510-million African West Coast Cable (AWCC)
linking South Africa with Britain via the west coast
of Africa will allow for the deployment of a 3 840-
gigabits-a-second super cable that will start in Cape
Town and terminate in London. It will have 10 branching units
allowing connections from other African countries to link into
the cable and share the bandwidth.
The 13 000 kilometre cable will be significantly larger than
the 120-gigabits-a-second existing SAT3/West Coast Submarine
Cable that currently connects South Africa with Europe. It will
take until 2010 for the cable to be functioning and even then it
will have a capacity of just 320-gigabits-a-second.
State-owned communications infrastructure company
Broadband Infraco holds 26 percent of the equity in the project
and the balance is split between various telecommunications
companies including Neotel and Telkom. Namibia is believed to
be one of the first countries likely to build a landing station for
the cable as it does not have access to the SAT-3 cable.
Once the various cable projects are complete South Africa will
have a combined total of 6010-gigabits-a-second connectivity
available to it. The other cable projects include: Safe; Eassy;
Seacom.
The more controversial Uhurunet system that will eventually
encircle the whole of Africa and which has the backing of the
New Partnership for Africa’s Development, has yet to get the
go-ahead but if it does this project would make a significant
amount of additional bandwidth available to South African
companies.
May June July 2008
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