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11:36
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
We just finished a really good conversation on the the future of the mobile web at MobileActive ‘08. Toni Eliasz of Ungana Afrika moderated a discussion where one side of the room was charged with arguing against the mobile web, and the other half for the mobile web. I sat on the “for” side of the room.
My Position
The web is made up of data, and we generally think of it as what we access via the PC. However, that same data can be accessed and added to through mobile phones as well. Whether its basic SMS, Java apps or direct web browsing. Data is data - how you access is what matters.
Some of the issues holding back penetration of the mobile web:
- Accessibility - though this gets better every year
- Cost - The reason why you can’t directly compare interaction or development of apps and services that use the mobile phone to the PC is because of the cost associated with data and SMS costs on mobile right now.
- Interface - usability can be a major problem on Java apps, and 160 characters is very limiting.
But the basic truth remains. If you can access and contribute to the global databases of content, then you are in fact on the mobile web.
The mobile web is already here. It’s happening now.
Mobile Web Questions
The questions we debated.
Rabble’s and Blaine’s Positions
Rabble, creator of Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, and Blaine, the original architect of Twitter, continued the discussion with me afterward. The claim here is that the only truly mobile web device is the iPhone, all else is negligible - maybe not in theory, but in action.
Rabble tells me that it’s much like saying that if you could get the web through this blurry glass, even if it’s feasible, it’s not useful or likely. He’s got a good point…
[final note: I was preoccupied while trying to post this with Rabble and Blaines' conversation...]
 
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5:20
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Kelele, the African Bloggers Conference, was announced today at Barcamp Africa. That event has an incredible amount of energy and enthusiasm behind it, and it makes the perfect segue to the next big African community event: Kelele! This event was born out of connections made at TED Global in Tanzania last year, when 25+ bloggers from around Africa were brought face-to-face for the first time.
The specific theme of Kelele ‘09 Nairobi is “Beat Your Drum” – which connects the traditional African method of getting your message across vast distances – the talking drums – to the 21st century and the tools we use today, blogs and the Internet. We anticipate that this conference will continue to be called Kelele wherever it is held.
Daudi Were is producing the event, along with an organizing committee of bloggers from all over Africa. This includes Ndesanjo Macha, Dave Duarte, Nii Simmonds, Mshairi, Sami Ben Gharbia, and myself.
Why Kelele?
From Daudi:
“Kelele is the Kiswahili word for noise. We are organising a gathering of African bloggers in the tradition of historical African societies where everyone has a voice. With too many voices marginalized, or simply ignored in Africa society today for a variety of reasons, we believe that the internet in general and grassroots media tools such as blogs in particular represent the most powerful way in which to give Africans back their voice. We are gathering to make a powerful, positive, inspirational noise that will be heard across the continent and beyond. KELELE!”
I think we’re at a place saying, if Africans want to do something, then do it. So, let’s do it! Let’s celebrate the cultures we have in Africa and let the conference be a reflection of that. Let’s make it truly African, where the people involved are coming from all 52 countries on the continent and the diaspora. Let’s seed the next generation of bloggers and advocates of open dialogue in Africa - which is why one day will be focused on having the top 100 bloggers around Africa training new bloggers in whichever host country it’s in.
This is a pivotal kind of event that I think will grow each year. The goals are big - REALLY big - and I think we’ll reach them.
Sponsorships and a big Thanks!
Sponsors - We have only begun canvassing for sponsors for Kelele this week. Already, the Berkman Institute at Harvard is on board. If you’d like to join us and be a part of making some real noise in Africa, please get in touch with Daudi, or at main@kelele.org.
A very special thanks goes out to Foxinni and David Kobia for the logo and WordPress design work.
As my friend and fellow organizer, Ndesanjo, puts it: Peace and kelele!
[follow along on Twitter @kelele]
 
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4:52
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
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Bush-videostreaming at Barcamp Jozi, originally uploaded by whiteafrican.
We had a great day 1 at Barcamp Jozi yesterday, and then a mad evening rushing around Johannesburg trying to find a good enough uplink connection to run the live streaming panel back to Barcamp Africa. We didn’t exactly succeed in live streaming, but the video will be uploaded shortly.
More importantly, we had an incredibly good time having the adventure, spending the evening having a conversation about mobile phones, the web and technology in Africa - all under the open skies of South Africa.
Panelists:
I can’t actually view the video, but if I could it would be at this link: Barcamp Jozi panel
 
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19:00
From: White African
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1:02
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I’ve had a rather active 5 days in Nairobi. Eventful enough to give an update on what’s going on with the Ushahidi developers, the pilot projects and some mobile phone fun. I head out tomorrow for Johannesburg for the MobileActive conference, and will also be attending the Friday night meetup and Barcamp Jozi on Saturday.
Ushahidi Smartphone Developments
(more on the Ushahidi blog)
Steve Mutinda put together a working Ushahidi Java application - and surprised me with it, this Saturday. It works well, and he and Wilfred Mworia are hard at work on the Ushahidi API to ensure that this app and the Ushahidi iPhone app both can sync with the database easily.
Speaking of iPhone apps, Chris Blow and Joe Jones have finished making changes from the feedback received on the first mockups. Wilfred Mworia starts this week on his new iPhone to get this working. We’re thinking it will take about 3 weeks.
(We’re still looking for feedback on the iPhone screens)
Ushahidi Devs Meetup
Just last night we had a great Ushahidi dev meetup in Nairobi. The combination of brains and energy in the room was just incredible. We ate good food, got up to speed on the latest Ushahidi news, and had a geeky good time.
One of our advisory board members was there as well, Patrick Meier, from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. He fit right in, as he also grew up in Kenya and went to secondary school in Nairobi.
Jason Mule and Wilfred Mworia are going to start running monthly Ushahidi dev sessions, so get with them if you want to jump in.
Pilot Project Meetings
The last, but probably one of the more important things that I’ve been doing while in town, is the meetings I’ve been having with the different organizations that have agreed to test out the alpha release of Ushahidi. This is extremely important for us, as it gives us a chance at some feedback and direct hands-on experience with launching Ushahidi instances in the wild.
More updates on this as we get through them, but in short, everyone is very excited about being a part of the pilot and the potential for Ushahidi to change the way the gather and visualize information from the field.
 
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1:05
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I’ve had some recurring thoughts over the last couple weeks, mostly pertaining to how technologists in Africa present ourselves, and how those outside Africa see us. How does “Brand Africa” - from the technology angle - play out, and why? What is unique that we offer to the world, and why should African technology matter in the global context?
It’s about “Brand Africa”
 We need to re-frame the way we think about technology in Africa before we can expect others outside of Africa to do the same. Our challenge is to get people to realize that there is a real competitive advantage to developing and testing software in Africa. After all, if it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.
The development conditions are unreliable and the environment is harsh. It isn’t fun to work off slow internet connections or deal with expensive and poor mobile phone networks. All of these things, and more, make just the technological side of developing in Africa a challenge, which is why it’s also a particularly good place to try new things.
If we embrace those handicaps, we might find that there’s a silver-lining inside.
African technology exported to the world
Fring and Ubuntu are two popular products coming out of South Africa that have gone global. There are more though. When Ken Banks built FrontlineSMS, he first tested and developed it within the African context. Ushahidi is being developed in Africa because these are the conditions that will make it work anywhere in the world.
In the enterprise solutions space there are a couple companies that do some good work. Two examples of this are Herman Chinery-Hesse’s Softtribe in Ghana, and Microhouse in Kenya. Some of their solutions are for the local markets, and some are used in bidding on international projects.
Africa as a testing grounds for new applications
There’s a really neat application called Qik, which allows you to stream video live from your phone to a website. It has amazing potential for live video reporting, especially in a war zone. So, that’s just what David Axe did - and it failed miserably. Why? Because Qik designed their application not thinking of the unreliable and poor data connections found in much of the developing world.
David gives a couple suggestions:
First, there should be a “store” function, whereby you can shoot a video in some austere location, save it to your phone’s memory, then stream it later once you’ve got a solid network.
Second, Qik needs some way to buffer videos so that, if the software briefly loses its wireless network connection, it doesn’t also lose the whole video.
Granted, Qik is probably not aiming at a global market, just the US and Europe. However, it’s a good example of how creating or testing software to work in harsh settings can make your product more robust and help you think of simple solutions (like David’s) that can make your product better for everyone.
Final Thoughts
Most people outside of Africa don’t align any type of technological edge to what we do here on the continent. In fact, most are surprised when a developer from Africa pops up on the international stage at all. Though there are fewer software developers in Africa per capita relative to their Western counterparts, what most don’t realize is that those few are really quite talented.
This means the South Africans as well as their counter parts in Ghana, Uganda and Senegal. We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not. Remember, to outsiders we’re one homogeneous landmass. What we each do reflects on everyone, whether we’re creating for local or global markets.
Finally, let’s first realize that the challenges we face also provide excellent opportunities and a competitive advantage. Then, let’s start creating world-class software here, and start exporting it to the world.
(Brand Africa image via Brand Africa Project)
 
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8:45
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I happened to be in Nairobi for the first Skunkworks organized conference on local-grown mobile, web and desktop software - setup by Alex Gakuru. It’s a mixture of demos, with a scattering of talks by high-level sponsors and the Permanent Secretary of Information Dr. Ndemo.
Tulipe - An African Payment System
Kenneth Mwangi just gave a presentation on his new web and mobile payment application called Tulipe, which means “let’s pay” in Swahili. It’s most similar to PayPal in how it is setup, where you signup to use it on the web, and then can start using mobile phones for payment after the account is set up.
Kenneth is in is final year at Strathmore University, well known for their tech programs, and this is his final project. The prototype is still being built, but it has a lot of potential. This is one of those ideas that a savvy business investor should jump on.
TimeTabler - School Scheduling Application
Bonn Ndegwa is part of a company called Unwired Technologies, based out of Western Kenya, that works on what we call “tropically tolerant software”. In other words, they create desktop applications that work in rural, unconnected Africa on old computers. It’s a perfect example of Africans developing software for their own needs, instead of just importing solutions created for a different world.
TimeTabler has a specific niche, they focus on serving the needs of schools putting together their schedules for both classes and teachers. It doesn’t sound that exciting, but it is if you’re a headmaster that used to spend a week trying to do what now takes only an hour with TimeTabler. It’s simple, working off of an Access database, but it works - and that’s all that matters.
Reasonably priced, they have 3 pricing levels, with a one-time cost of:
- Primary schools - 9,000 ($125)
- Secondary schools - 19,000/= ($250)
- Universities - 90,000/= ($1250)
Kikwe - Send Airtime Across Africa
 Sam Kitanye and Victor Murage are talking about the Kikwe application that allows you to send airtime anywhere in the world (not just Africa). They use electronic inventory, so they bypass the need of keeping physical voucher inventory, which is very useful when you think about times when the shops run out.
Scalable to any network, because you’re sending a pin number - if you tried to do this by keeping an account, SIM card or modem, that wouldn’t work. The airtime is sent instantly.
Fraud is always a problem with these kinds of international transactions - especially when you’re dealing with airtime in Africa as it has become its own pseudo-currency. Victor talks about the ways they are tracking fraudulent activity, but past experience in this space reminds me of how difficult it is, made even harder as their product is instant.
This is a good business idea for making money from the diaspora, assuming you can manage the fraud. However, the achilles heel for use within Africa is (again) the lack of local payment systems to actually create the transaction. Hopefully they’ll get together with Kenneth of Tulipe (above) and figure something out.
Jahazi - Local Kenyan Internet Content
Mugambi is giving a review of the newer version of Jahazi (which I reviewed in it’s earlier stages). One place where you can get all your local information for Kenya. Mixing things, including email, news reader, SMS and local internet content.
It’s another good example of home-grown software made for local markets, challenges and content.
 
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21:56
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 Things are definitely heating up in the African tech sphere according to my calendar of African tech events (Events RSS feed) for the remainder of the year. From Madagascar to Mauritius there are unconferences, conferences and adhoc meetups happening at a rate I haven’t seen before. The African tech scene is definitely getting bigger and noisier.
In the next two weeks we have 8 events covering 6 countries:
** I’ll be attending these
* I will stream in live to Barcamp Africa with the South Africans, but it’s also open in Kenya and Ghana.
On top of these scheduled conferences and unconferences, there are many meetups happening all over the place - from the monthly 27Dinner in cities around South Africa to the bi-monthly Skunkworks meetings in Kenya.
Africa’s a happening place - just watch!
[As always, if you know of an upcoming African tech event, let me know and I'll add it to the calendar]
 
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19:36
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Jon Gosier and Paul Engulu of Appfrica has just launched Afridex, an index of African tech startups. Anyone can submit their website or mobile application and be added to the index. What an excellent idea, and really well executed as well!
It’s still brand new, but I think it has a lot of potential - we should see a lot of mobile and web companies adding themselves to the index pretty quickly. As it grows, it becomes more valuable as a resource, thus feeding itself ad infinitum.
Why is it useful?
- Persistent Search queries a search engine in combination with select keywords to track mentions of your company around the web as they occur. When any new information about a group appears online it appears here.
- Blogstream syndicates the ten most recent posts from a company blog. People can also use to follow company blogs by subscribing to the RSS feed.
- Comments allows consumer feedback and comments about a group or organization. Get instant feedback from your customers, crowd source a product review, or offer public customer service.
- Brand Watch is a feature that allows users to monitor mentions of a company across various social networks, blogs and websites. Like persistent search, Brand Watch scans all the popular web portals in africa and abroad for mentions of a company name.
- Embed allows users to export standards compliant code that will allow them to embed information related to a company in their profile. This allows data from the Afridex to be portable. This information can be used as a quick citation tool for blogs, news articles, email and reports.
If you click on any company’s name, you will be taken to the detail page on them. On that page you will find a bunch of publicly available information, including everything from contact information to blog and Twitter posts. It’s really quite impressive.
In the lower-right corner you’ll notice the “embed” code that will allow you to add a widget to the sidebar of any website with basic information about that company. The one for Node Six looks like this:
#afridex { font-family:helvetica; font-size:1em; border:1px solid #ccc; padding:5px 5px 5px 5px; margin:5px 5px 5px 5px: color:#333; line-height:1.1em; display:block; width:350px; }
#afridex img { border:3px solid #333; }
#afridex h1 { font-size:1.35em; font-weight:strong; }
#afridex a { color:#71000; }
#afridex a:active { color:#71000; text-decoration:underline; }
#afridex p { text-align:justify; font-size:75%; }
NodeSix
[Map]
URL - [www.nodesix.com]
Email - sales@nodesix.com
Node Six began life as a division of Elemental Edge, a leading multi-media and visual communications solutions provider in Kampala, Uganda.
Information Provided by the Afridex
Summary
The only problem that I’ve found so far is that I can’t find a way to either “get listed” (it’s currently a dead link), or create a login so that I can submit a couple companies. I’m sure this is because it’s so brand new, and I’m sure Jon or Paul will leave a note here when that works.
I’m not surprised that this excellent idea came from Jon Gossier, I’m starting to expect this type of top-class work from him. I’m sure we’re going to see even more of this in the future. Brilliant.
Want to help out with this cool project? Get involved on the Afridex wiki
 
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4:54
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
(This is from my talk on mobile phones in Africa, at the Picnic conference in Amsterdam this morning.)
Africa is brimming with innovative people, projects and organizations. The fact that I’m standing here today proves this out - you see, I’ve been writing about those stories for the past 3 years.
Some of you are already familiar with Africa’s mobile stats, but not everyone is. Let’s run through some numbers, and take a minute to really appreciate the staggering growth of just one industry on our continent.
Mobile Phones in Africa - PICNIC 08
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: mobile phone)
Statistics
- At the end of 2007 there were over 280 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4%
- Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 30% to 100%
- Look at the diversity in penetration rates among countries, just in Africa. It’s good to remember that when we speak about “mobile phones in Africa” that not all are created equal.
- Fastest growing markets are in Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt
- Increased competition as more operators come online in each country (11 in Nigeria, 4 in Kenya and SA, 3 in Egypt and Morocco)
- Pre-paid subscriptions account for nearly 95 percent of total mobile subscriptions in the region
How fast has it grown?
- The Democratic Republic of Congo, population 60 million, has 10,000 fixed telephones but more than a million mobile phone subscribers.
- In Chad, the fifth-least developed country, mobile phone usage jumped from 10,000 to 200,000 in three years.
What sectors does this touch? All, of course, but mobile’s have proven especially effective in:Transport, Micro-commerce, Finance, Healthcare, Governance, Education, Infotainment
Examples of innovative services
Mobile payments and mobile banking
- MPESA - This is what happens when the rest of the world ignores your need for a payment system. One of the golden children of Africa’s mobile revolution, when anyone brings up a successful mobile service in Africa. It works, and we’re all extremely happy to have the idea of mobile micro payments piloted and tested by Safaricom, but it also promotes a carrier monopoly in an industry AND continent that is crying for a real payment solution.
- Wizzit - Mobile banking in South Africa
- Celpay - Zambia - An innovative payment solution that allows consumers and businesses to complete cash transactions from their mobile phones. CelPay eliminates the problems that accompany dealing in cash visits to the bank, waiting in lines, counting and recounting money, fear of theft, and forgone interest payments. Instead, consumers with CelPay can use their mobile phone to do anything they would with cash, thanks to a payment system that works like a bank account.
Africa News Mobile Reporters
The Dutch group behind Africanews.com has put together a fleet of reporters around Africa using high end mobile phones, equipped with video and camera, to report short interviews and events from the field. Nokia/Reuter’s mobile newskit - Nokia N71
Ushahidi - Citizen reporting during a crisis (now an open source project).
mPedigree
Ashifi Gogo created a way to use SMS to authenticate drugs in Ghana, a system that simplifies and decreases the cost of doing this and that can be replicated anywhere in the world.
Winafrique’s Wind-powered cellular towers
Hybrid wind and diesel turbine systems for powering cell phone base stations.
Agricultural markets
Tradenet
A free service for farmers in West Africa to see local agricultural market prices around their region. It enables farmers and traders in agricultural commodities in Africa to conduct business through the use of SMS.
Manobi
Senegalese company Manobi, which operates online systems for businesses in the developing world, first launched the trading platform for farmers and fishermen in the west African nation, and says it has signed up 40,000 customers there. Farmers can access the information on a web-based trading platform via Internet-enabled phones, or can request prices and make trades via SMS, or text message.
How is it being used?
Projects, products and services created as secondary services by individuals and organizations all over the continent.
Restricted mobility
A cell phone operator in a remote African village where competition is tough, offers his customers some privacy, by allowing them to try out a cell phone, tethered to a long wire.
Steve Mutinda’s 3 java applications
Shows an individual using his free time, and trying to create applications that are value added and will make him money. He epitomizes the smart, young entrepreneurs of the continent.
Morris Mbetsa - “Block & Track” auto anti-theft system
Feedelix, dealing with government censorship (Ethiopia)
The Ethiopian government instituted SMS filtering services, which caused some enterprising Ethiopians to launch Feedelix, which is an SMS-like client that supports Amharic characters. The Java application then uses the ability of many phones to transmit data via GPRS through internet protocols to mimic SMS.
Ethioblog - Literacy and/or linguistic challenges
There are challenges to in Africa too, where there are higher rates of non-literacy, or where they don’t speak the language available on their handset. Last year in Ethiopia, some guys got together and developed 200 Amharic language characters that they used to develop a phone book, message and phone settings in Amharic.
Mobile phone equipped bicycles - Bodaphone (Kiwanja), Wheelchair bikes equipped (Ruud Elmendorp)
Phone charging stations/businesses
Most of the time this takes the simple form of a car battery, but you’ll also find enterprising people using other methods (legal and illegal) to run business that only do this.
In Summary
The truth is that there are some very interesting, and surprising, developments coming out of Africa. Every culture modifies use or the device itself to meet local needs - this is no different in Africa, and we’re seeing that evolution happen right before our eyes.
The default device in Africa is the mobile phone.
Here’s one more compelling thought. The challenges brought about by bad governance, poverty, low bandwidth (all the negative things you associate with Africa) also provide an incredible opportunity. The developers who are coming up with solutions in the continent, the ones who are writing software or hacking hardware, are creating for some of the harshest environments and use-cases in the world. If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.
(Africa News has the video up already - video’d through their mobile phone of course. )
 
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11:00
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
…Then you’re not paying enough attention.” - Ethan Zuckerman at Picnic ‘08
Ethan has just finished giving an excellent 20 minute talk on why people need to start paying attention to Africa. Not for Africa’s good alone, but for their own good as well.
One of the comments made was that the African reaspora will be the ones who rebuild Africa. Those are the Africans who have left and are now coming back with money, purpose and drive to see change happen. Binyavanga Wainaina and Helen Omwando represent that group, and are up on stage having a conversation with Ethan, discussing what is really going on.
“The default form of organization in Africa is a tribe.”
- Binyavanga Wainaina
“When you force people to use Western Union, you’re basically saying, ‘go rob this guy’.”
- Ethan explaining how having such a high profile, undistributed means of transferring money sets up the receiver of the funds as a target.
More tomorrow at the day-long event on Africa - I go on stage at 10:30 and will be talking about how mobiles are being used in Africa.
 
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15:07
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I’m really excited to be almost on the airplane today as I’m heading to Picnic to take part in the festival. I’ll be speaking on Friday, the day focused on “Surprising Africa” (as in, you’d be surprised at what type of innovation is coming out of Africa).
If you take a look a the lineup of speakers it’s rather impressive. In fact, it’s a little depressing realizing that I have to go on stage right after the incomparable Binyavanga Wainaina. I had the pleasure of seeing him talk at TED Global last year in Tanzania, and he was even better there than in his normal writing. Besides Binyavanga, I’m also looking forward to hearing Ethan, Gisel Hiscock from Google, and Younghee Jung of Nokia.
Afrophile Meetup
Tomorrow evening (Wed, 24th at 6pm) a couple of us involved with tech in Africa are getting together for an Ethiopian dinner at the Abyssinia restaurant. If you’re free and want to come hang out for a couple hours, we’d love to have you.
 
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10:52
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
My good friend Josiah Mugambi in Nairobi was at the Kenya chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) exhibition in Nairobi last weekend. This is where students showcase their innovation in engineering, ICT, mobile application and renewable energy. He did me a great favor by sharing some pictures and research that he did on some of the really interesting students he came across.
1. MPESA Online Shopping
By Denis Ndwiga Nyaga
Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph was especially interested in this one for obvious reasons. Denis called it ‘nakupesi‘, Naku for Nakumatt (the local mega-store). nakupesi is an online shopping mall, with payment based on MPESA. One would need to be registered on MPESA to be able to pay for items online via MPESA. One thing that is possibly lacking is delivery to one’s residence or office after purchase. This shouldn’t be too hard to incorporate though.
2. Green Tree Markets - a Business Intelligence tool for farmers
By Andrew Owuor
This looked quite interesting - A business intelligence tool that allows a farmer to choose where to sell his produce based on price, and location. Some of the obstacles that the developer Andrew Owuor mentioned include the need for real time market data from markets round the country, for the system to be of use. This isn’t a completely new idea, but it’ll be interesting to see what local twists are created for East Africa.
3 more…
3. Automatic headlight dimming for two approaching vehicles - By Jemimah Wachenje
Jemimah has developed a system that automatically dips two vehicles head lights when approaching each other at night. Josiah has ranted about headlights before, and I agree, it would be very useful and potential could reduce some accidents on those dark lightless roads around Kenya.
4. Energy harvesting using piezos to charge mobile phones - by Richard Assanga Otolo and Gilbert Barasa
Very interesting, yet practical.
5. Synchronous Solar Heliostat - by Samuel Njoroge
Sammy Njoroge’s demostration of a synchronous solar heliostat used to track the sun, and orient a solar panel accordingly thus improving the efficiency of solar panels. Automatic tracking of the sun to increase the efficiency of solar panels, Makes economic sense. Innovation runs in the family it seems.
 
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23:31
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I’ve finally gotten around to adding a simple calendar of African technology events that are upcoming focused around the continent and abroad. The astute amongst you would notice it in the navigation above. It is meant to be a resource for others to find (and tell others of) conferences that they are interested in.
If you have an upcoming tech event, contact me and let me know the following information:
- Name
- Dates
- Venue
- City, Country
- Website
- Short summary of event
I know there are some Barcamps and local tech events upcoming around East and West Africa. Get them to me to add to the calendar. It seems like it’s all South Africa at the moment.
[sidebar: yes, I know it's not pretty yet, I'll get to that as I can... I'm using Dan's Gigs Calendar WP plugin for this.]
 
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13:17
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
If you follow a lot of web startups, you see that many have a hard time reaching critical mass. Even more have a hard time staying in business, so “time alive” becomes an important measuring stick. Zoopy, a web video hosting site, has gone from strength-to-strength ever since they first launched in two years ago. They have done this by working very hard, and by focusing on their niche: South Africa.
Zoopy Upgrades
A recent investment partnership by Vodacom put them in a position to announce some major new upgrades this week.
- Local South Africa hosting - This allows for much faster speeds, particularly important when dealing with video and images.
- Doubled file sizes - Users can now upload 200Mb files, as opposed to the old 100Mb limit.
- A new video player - A spiffed up and much more usable video player.
The Importance of Being Local
I’m particularly impressed with the move to local servers for their content. Besides local goodwill issues, South Africans are very patriotic and like to see stuff succeed in-country. International hosting is cheaper, but the user experience is eroded due to lag. However, as Jason mentions in a comment,
“The biggest question here for us was: how could we afford NOT to move in this direction for the South African online community at Zoopy? Our users deserve more, and we’re happy to deliver.”
Right now, Jason Elk and some of the Zoopy team are in New York at the Web 2.0 Expo, measuring their product against the competition, and learning from their peers.
I’m a big fan of Zoopy, enough so that we’ve moved to Zoopy as AfriGadget’s video hosting site as of this Summer. Congrats guys, and keep up the great work!
 
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7:09
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Please jump on over to the Ushahidi blog for some background history, to study the mockups, and let us know what we can do better, or what should change.
The dev team on this is really looking forward to getting some constructive criticism. Thanks!
 
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13:04
From: White African
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I spent this Saturday morning listening to some pretty smart bloggers at IZEAfest in Orlando (Merlin Mann, Loren Feldman, etc.). This afternoon I’m on a panel talking about blogging tools. Below are my notes and slides for that short talk.
Blogging Tools
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blogging api)
Simplify & Streamline It
If you’re like me, you don’t blog for a living, but you’re trying to blog while you’re living. I need tools and features that simplify my life and make it easy for me to be more effective as I’m doing the day-to-day things that actually run my life. That means I mainly want tools to work in the background, or I want a system coordinated in such a way as to make the work I have to do a lot easier and streamlined. So, it’s a little bit about making things easier and being productive while going about it.
All Things in Moderation
My next consideration is how cluttered additional items make the site look. Your mileage may vary - and it will depending upon your readership, but I like to keep my sidebar clean. Not empty, but with items that are relevant. So, I’m extremely careful about adding a new sidebar item. For me, this rule also applies to the posts themselves, so I’m careful not to add too much before or after the main text as well.
- The cluttered look itself
- Slow page load
- Ads - Takes away from things that are making you money
- Most readers don’t care! (about your Technorati or Alexa rank, about the local weather in your area, etc…)
The Tools
Okay, so let’s dig into a few of the tools that I use, and I’ll explain why I use them and why you might want to use them to. I’ve broken these down into a couple categories: 3rd party tools and plugins.
First off, I want to run down the “must haves”, then I’ll give you a list of items that are also worth looking into.
Email signup (Feedburner or Zookoda) (3rd party)
Most people don’t know what RSS is, make it easy on them and allow them to get a simple email whenever you post something new. By the way, I’ve seen this happen on to many blogs to think it an accident - most blogger’s feeds double when they install this. Oh, and talk about a secondary way for ads to be delivered too…
Subscribe to comments (WordPress plugin)
Want people coming back for more? For many readers, this is the best way to stay involved in a conversation that was started on your blog post. They don’t need to keep checking to see if anyone responded to their comment, they can just get it in their email box.
Contact Form or Page (cforms) (WordPress plugin)
Please, please, put a simple contact form on your blog. There’s no excuse for not providing a way for readers, old friends and potential advertisers from getting in touch with you this way. This has the additional impact of not putting your email address (however mangled) onto the website. Simple and it can be done really easily with plugins.
Integrating 3rd party tools
One of the easiest ways to be a little more productive is to integrate blogging with other third party tools and websites that you use. For instance, I like to take pictures, so I make sure that I can easily blog straight from Flickr as needed. The same rule applies to YouTube, or any of the other video or image hosting sites like Picasa.
Plugins
I’m a big WordPress fan, though I have used Blogger before, so I apologize in advance to any Typepad users when I start talking plugins - I just don’t know much outside of the WP plugin world. I don’t use a ton of plugins myself, usually between 5-7 of them is all that I really need, here are my favorites:
- Akismet
- Contact form (cforms)
- Subscribe to comments
- Feedburner feed replacement
- Role manager (more than one author)
- WP database backup
- WP Super Cache
- Recent Posts
- Related Posts
Tools for Tracking and/or Better Content
All of the previously mentioned tools are good and useful, but beyond the tools directly used in your blog you should also think about some of these others that will help you manage your content and track what readers really like.
- Twitter - using either Monitter or Twitter Search
- Your RSS reader - being informed is a very important part of the blogging process, plus it really helps with blogger’s block
- Moleskine notebook - For all those ideas that you get in the strangest of places
- Google Alerts - track yourself, your blog, or important words
- Technorati - see who’s linking to you
 
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16:43
From: White African
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I admit, I’m a little confused.
Yesterday Google, HSBC bank and Liberty Global cable company launched O3b Networks (which stands for “other 3 billion”), a satellite service to bring high-speed low-cost internet connections to the world’s poorest people starting in 2010 - many of them in Africa.
On the Google Africa blog, they state:
O3b plans to deliver fiber-like Internet backhaul service using a constellation of medium-orbit satellites. This means data can be quickly transmitted to and from even the most remote locations such as inland Africa or small Pacific islands. The O3b satellite constellation will provide high-speed, low-latency backhaul services at speeds reaching into the gigabits per second.
The Good
This is the type of technology chess move that makes me sit back and truly laugh out loud. It bypasses inefficient, greedy or corrupt government bureaucracies and gives power to the local people. I’m absolutely thrilled with it and wish them the best of luck - hoping that they can execute on the deployment.
The Confusion…
The founder of O3b is a certain Greg Wyler. You know, the guy behind the big “wiring of Rwanda” initiative with his company Terracom. Well, his record hasn’t been stellar, and so I wonder why he is leading this whole initiative?
It might very well be that they’ve learned their lessons from Rwanda. I’d rather have a guy who has tried and failed and LEARNED from it, than some wide-eyed idealist. Let’s hope that’s the case here.
 
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8:39
From: White African
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There has been a lot of talk in the Kenyan tech backchannels over the upcoming Barcamp Africa. Kahenya has a posted the email thread from the Skunkworks email list into his blog for further reading - it’s worth reading for context alone.
The two biggest points of contention seem to be over the name “Barcamp Africa”, with the conference being held in the US, and the fact that Google has agreed to sponsor the facility for it to take place in.
On the Name
The first thing I’d say is, don’t get caught up in the nomenclature on this one. Barcamp Africa happening in Silicon Valley is being put on by a couple people who are from Africa, or have a vested interest in what happens here.
From what I understand, it’s really only about drawing attention to African projects and initiatives in the world’s largest tech mecca: Silicon Valley. Could one/should one be held in Africa? Of course, but at a local, level like we already see in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, etc. I’d also be interested in seeing one at a continental level, but so far haven’t seen anyone step up to take charge on that idea.
I know for a fact that Kaushal and Ellen specifically didn’t want to be the “owners” of Barcamp Africa as a name. From my conversations, they are hoping that other Barcamp Africa’s happen around the world (inside and outside of Africa). In fact, they wouldn’t even spend the $10 on registering the domain name, so I did that in their stead to make sure that no squatter would jump on it (it’s available to anyone who wants to use it).
On Google Sponsorship
As anyone who has put on a Barcamp knows, it does take having a couple sponsors to put on a free conference. They’ve been talking to almost every tech company in the Silicon Valley trying to get them to sponsor the event - by either providing facilities or money for food, etc. After a lot of work, Google finally came on board to sponsor the facility (and they’ve got one of the best facilities around), so it’s a big win.
Speaking of Google sponsorship of free tech events outside of the US, it should be noted that they happily sponsored our own Barcamp Nairobi in June, and showed up to participate in Barcamp Kampala in August. If anything, it should be the African tech companies who should be ashamed for not sponsoring their own local talent at these events.
On Africans in Africa Taking Part
I’ve added my two cents in with the Barcamp Africa team of creating some way for people from around the African continent to take part. One of those ideas would be to set up a live stream of what they’re doing, but that’s not truly interactive. What would be even better is for them to setup one of the rooms where people from Kenya (or elsewhere) could signup for a 20-30 minute spot to address everyone in the US. Then, when your slot came up you could give a Barcamp talk just like everyone else. It would require a certain amount of bandwidth of course, but might be just the type of thing to get everyone involved.
 
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6:33
From: White African
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Most of June I spent in Kenya, much of that time talking to developers and getting ready for the next big Ushahidi push. During that time there was a new article about Ushahidi being one of the “Ten Startups to Watch” in the Technology Review, which was exciting for us to say the least!
July and August have been spent working hard on getting the application rebuilt, the site redesigned and creating partnerships with other organizations. September is about launching the NEW Ushahidi.
A New Website
Now we’re off and running with a new website design, live today, that shows how our goals and focus have changed since things blew up in Kenya. (get a new Ushahidi button for your site.)
Funding
I’m very happy to announce that we’ve secured more than the $25,000 prize money from NetSquared (which has allowed us to do so much already). We have also just secured a grant of $200,000 from Humanity United!
 Humanity United is an independent grantmaking organization committed to building a world where modern-day slavery and mass atrocities are no longer possible. They support efforts that empower affected communities and address the root causes of conflict and modern-day slavery to build lasting peace.
There is an obvious fit between Humanity United and Ushahidi, after all, we were founded on the same beliefs back in January in Kenya. Though we’re creating the Ushahidi engine as an open source project, our goal remains to see it used to better understand, give warning of, and recover from mass atrocities.
The Vision
Ushahidi is moving from being a one-time mashup covering the post-election violence in Kenya to something bigger. We are setting out to create an engine that will allow anyone to do what we did. A free and open source tool that will help in the crowdsourcing of information - with our personal focus on crisis and early warning information.
We see this tool being used in two ways:
- First, to crowdsource crisis information by creating an online space that allows “everyday” people all over the world to report what they see during a crisis situation, and whose reports are generally overlooked or under reported by most media and governments.
- Second, make that software engine free and available to the world, so that others can benefit from a tool that allows distributed data gathering and data visualizations.
We’re aiming to release an alpha version of it in just a few weeks for internal testing, and for alpha testing with pre-screened pilot organizations.
Volunteer Devs, Designers and Others
One of the reasons Ory and I were in Kenya was to talk to developers about helping with Ushahidi. We were overwhelmed with the amount of interest and the quality of the people who stepped up. So far we have a team working on mobile phones, a designers group, and a number of PHP experts. Go ahead and take a look at the development wiki as well.
If you’d like to play a part, get in touch and we’ll see where you can best fit in. You don’t have to be a developer or designer either.
[Credits: Richard “Ochie” Flores for the excellent design, Kwame Nyong’o for the beautiful illustrations, and Ivan Bernat for the spotless HTML/CSS markup.)
Press Release: Ushahidi Funding & New Website (PDF)
 
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7:45
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
 Recently Merlin Mann wrote an outstanding post on what makes a good blog, and why they’re so rare. I’d suggest everyone read it, especially if you’re trying to figure out how to be a better blogger. Having said that, in honor of BlogDay 2008, here are 5 Africa-focused blogs that I think are interesting. Keep in mind, I’m particularly interested in African tech so that’s why they lean in that direction…
Nairobi Notes
I initially found out about Nairobi Notes through her Twitter updates (@nairobinotes) - they were interesting, funny and timely, which eventully led me to her blog.
Startup Africa
First off, I love their name - I’m just not sure how they got that amazing URL… How was it not taken? Anyway, Startup Africa does an excellent job of providing news on events, websites and startups in Africa, with a particularly good focus on South Africa.
TechMasai
Another new favorite of mine in the African web tech scene is TechMasai. They profile new African websites and services, often with some opinionated commentary which I like.
Mootbox
Short, interesting, and tends to be Nigeria-focused. In Omodudu’s own words, it’s about, “business, Micro-finance, Social Entrepreneurship, Small business development and other assorted randomness.” Follow Oz on Twitter too @Osize.
Jackfruity
I could just tell you that I like this blog because of it’s design - I’ve always salivated over Rebekah’s site design(s). However, she writes really cool and interesting stuff about Uganda, Sudan and humanitarian issues too. Keep her in your feed.
That’s all for this year!
 
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