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NEWS
Agenda / North Policy brief on forest protection Mediterranean forests are a key socio-ecological system, playing a crucial role in a transition towards a green bio-economy in the region. In an area with difficult socio-economic conditions, forests are vital for ensuring the economic viability and resilience of rural communities. However, their future is seriously threatened by climate and land use changes, particularly in countries like Tunisia and Morocco, where these changes are more rapid and intense. National forest programmes are being developed. However, while forest research in North Africa has improved in recent years, it still suffers from fragmentation, and lack of largescale infrastructures or experiments with long-term funding. Poor coordination among countries also hinders the efficient sharing of knowledge. The European Forest Institute (EFI) Policy Brief, ‘AGORA Making the Difference: Towards a Mediterranean Forest Research Area’, looks at the work of AGORA – Advancing Capacities in Mediterranean Forestry Research– a project financed by the European Union. AGORA has provided a focused, innovative and ambitious response to the problem by implementing research partnerships, networking, capacity building and knowledge transfer in two North African countries, Tunisia and Morocco.
Morocco set on 2,000 solar MW North Africa and the Middle East could belong, by 2025, to the world’s leading solar markets due to the growing energy consumption, driven amongst other factors by a dynamic economic growth. This is why the North African region is becoming increasingly interesting. The high solar irradiance represents a further advantage. In order to make full use of the whole potential offered, some measures and improvements still need to be made. Findings presented at the PV Technology Conference – North Africa recently has enabled exploration of these measures and on the actual framework in the field of photovoltaic in Northern Africa.
Saïd Mouline from the Moroccan National Agency of Renewable Energies Development and Energy Efficacy (ADEREE) has confirmed that Morocco´s vision for solar energy is that 42 per cent of its energy supply should be covered by regenerative energies and a capacity of 2,000 Megawatt (MW) of solar energy should be reached by 2020. This goal has been affirmed by Ilias Hamdouch, from the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN), who offers particular insights into the Morocco solar programme. Unlike other countries, Morocco is not basing its business on feed-in tariffs, but on projects and programmes coordinated by MASEN.
Centrify raises security presence Centrify Corporation, a provider of security and compliance solutions that centrally control, secure and audit access to cross-platform systems, mobile devices and applications, has signed a distribution contract with Shifra – a value added distributor serving the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) markets – to promote, sell and service Centrify's security and compliance solutions. Shifra, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, now offers and supports the entire Centrify Suite 2012 product portfolio for centralising authentication, privilege management and auditing of cross-platform systems within Microsoft Active Directory. "With increasing awareness for information security and the increase in cyber security attacks in our region, demand for securing customer environments and centrally managing them to give visibility of who did what on the network has become a priority," said Ahmad Elkhatib Managing Partner of Shifra.
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African Review of Business and Technology - November 2012
Ingram Micro adds value to technology services
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ngram Micro Inc., a technology distributor and supply-chain services provider, is broadening its geographic reach into the Middle East and North Africa following the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire certain IT businesses of Dubai-based Aptec Holdings Ltd. Aptec is a valueadded distributor in the Middle East, Turkey and North Africa - with products and solutions covering data center, storage, security, networking, and software categories, including technical services. The acquisition is expected to contribute more than US$250mn in revenue to Ingram Micro on an annual basis and is expected to close before the end of the third quarter of 2012, subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions. Dr Ali Baghdadi, founder and chief executive officer of Aptec, leads the acquired operations and reports to Shailendra Gupta, senior executive vice president and president, Ingram Micro Asia-Pacific. "The acquisition of Aptec fits well with our strategic objectives to continue to build our higher margin specialty businesses while broadening our geographic reach to capitalise on higher growth markets," said Alain Monié, president and chief executive officer of Ingram Micro Inc. "The Middle East and Africa are robust and growing markets with total IT spending projected to reach US$80bn by 2015. Aptec has been highly effective in growing their business and enhancing profitability in these emerging markets and we believe this combination will further accelerate these ongoing objectives. Aptec has a long-tenured, accomplished leadership team and we look forward to joining forces with them."