By Lesley Stones - Telecoms companies must continually innovate and evolve, otherwise they'll disappear from this unforgiving industry in a jiffy. Some are better at it than others, and some bounce back after setbacks that would cripple less enterprising entities. Lesely Stones looks at 11 companies that Africa Telecoms believes will do big things in 2011. They're listed in no particular order, and since technology trends and public demand are notoriously fickle, don't sue us if we're wrong!

By Rob Goodier - Rural Africans have at least one thing in common with people in developed countries: the perpetual quest for a mobile phone charge. The difference is in what we're looking for. In rural Africa, it's not uncommon to charge a phone on a car battery. 

By Pete Danko - Can a company exploit an untapped market and do good at the same time? Fenix thinks so. The San Francisco start up has unveiled a micro power generation and distribution platform aimed at the 1.6 billion people around the globe who live without electricity.

By Alex Benady - Life without mains power could become a little easier for billions in the developing world with the launch this week of a battery designed specifically for use off-grid.

By Martin LaMonica - Whereas many Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs are trying to cook up the next Facebook or cool iPhone app, a group of San Francisco entrepreneurs is designing a brick-shaped battery for poor people. "Social venture" Fenix International officially launched yesterday with the opening of its Web site, which describes its plans to sell off-grid power systems for people in developing countries. 

By Iris Kuo - Startup Fenix has created a plug-and-play portable lead-acid battery for developing countries where access to electricity is intermittent. The ReadySet (pictured, left) can power LED lights, cell phones, netbooks and wireless networks, and can last up to three years. The battery also has power generation options that allow it to be connected to a solar panel and bicycle, which users can ride to pump power to the battery. Fenix says its product is geared towards the 1.6 billion people worldwide who live without power, and another 1 billion that deal with regular blackouts. The product also aims to alleviate health problems associated with kerosene lighting, which emits CO2 emissions and causes fires.

By Katie Fehrenbacher - Among the 2.6 billion people in the world who don’t have regular access to grid power, an ad-hoc economy has emerged around junky car batteries. Local entrepreneurs in villages in Africa and India are buying these often second-hand batteries, carting the heavy and potentially unsafe devices to their shops and selling the power to the village for applications like cell phone charging. After spending some time in these regions, the young, ambitious crew from the newly emerged startup Fenix International, thought there had to be a better way.

By Victoria Schlesinger - Jonas Ketterle, a top mechanical engineering student at Stanford University, and his colleague Mike Lin, a sustainable-design lecturer at Stanford and Yale, are studying how 150 million people in developing countries make do using electricity from hacked car batteries.