“The African continent is rapidly changing. In the next two years 2 billion dollars will bring 12 terabits of connectivity to the continent. Will africa become the world’s newest outsourcing hub? Will it foster it’s own tech and startup culture? The image above explores the ‘infostate’ of Africa in 2009.”
(Read More)

Flickr set here
Full-resolution version here
Buy it in print here

My plan is to keep this list pared down to only those who put out a good number of tweets regarding technology in Africa. I’ll be the biased curator, and hopefully it’ll be useful to others. This means that people will get dropped, and others added, from time-to-time. Don’t be offended if you’re not on it, it’s not personal, it’s just that I have to keep it small to be useful to others. Ping me if you think I should add someone.

You can get my curated African Tech Twitter list at [twitter.com] .

Here’s a widget with the list in it. You can get your own here, just enter “whiteafrican” and choose the “African Tech” list.

new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: 'list', rpp: 30, interval: 6000, title: 'The Best of ', subject: 'African Tech on Twitter', width: 250, height: 300, theme: { shell: { background: '#96c4ff', color: '#ffffff' }, tweets: { background: '#ffffff', color: '#444444', links: '#358efa' } }, features: { scrollbar: true, loop: false, live: true, hashtags: true, timestamp: true, avatars: true, behavior: 'all' } }).render().setList('whiteafrican', 'african-tech').start();

Afritwit’s list of African twitterers (maxed out)
Alisdair’s development list
Sciculturalist’s Techies list
A list of Twitter employees
Tim O’Reilly’s Tech News list

Lastly, Listourious has a huge index of Twitter lists for you to peruse.

(You can always find me on Twitter at @WhiteAfrican)

Do you trust this bridge? Why?

In some ways, this train of thought stems from the posts on bridgers and xenophiles started by Ethan Zuckerman and riffed on by myself. It’s only as my continued work in the African tech space has evolved that I have come to understand the true value of this concept. Seeing my position makes me realize how valuable it is to be trusted and in the center of a group of unknowns (ideas, funding, people or projects). It’s in the unknown areas of our lives that we search for trust, for people or conduits that impart a measure of confidence to our next decision. For the nod that tells us we’re heading out on the right path.

We lean on trusted intermediaries all the time, in both mundane decisions and important interactions. When you’re looking for a mechanic, you’ll trust your neighbor’s opinion over the phone book. If you need a new bike helmet, you’ll trust online reviews before you buy one with no reviews. Likewise, when you’re going to make a large investment in the African tech space, you’ll search out trusted intermediaries first.

When someone is looking to invest in an African tech startup, using seed funding or grants (and it is the same for non-profits or for-profits) they are nervous. There’s a lot of other good ideas out there in other parts of the world, the low hanging fruit, that they feel more comfortable in putting money into. Why Africa? Why you?

Ushahidi started off quickly, and we were able to raise funds for continued operations much faster than many other similar non-profit tech organizations. While we’d all like to think it’s due to the brilliant tool we’ve built, we have to be honest and recognize that the individuals behind it are what gave the funders confidence to move forward. Ory, David, Juliana and I had been on the public stage for a while; we were known quantities.

We were trusted intermediaries before Ushahidi was even thought of. Which begs the question: would our team have been able to raise funds for almost any idea just as easily? Probably not, as the Ushahidi idea, timing and application are special. However, the point is still made, money flows when the people are trusted.

Jon Gosier is a trusted intermediary. His Appfrica Labs incubator and innovation center in Kampala provides a person and entity that funders, projects and individuals are drawn too. His blog keeps him front and center in people’s minds.

Glenna Gordon is a trusted intermediary. She’s a photographer who has been romping around Central, East and West Africa for a couple of years. If you need a pro shooter in a hard spot like Liberia, you’ll find her blogging away at Scarlett Lion.

Eric Osiakwan in Ghana is a trusted intermediary. His leadership at the African ISP Association and the track record he’s had on projects makes him an easy person to go to in West Africa, and his Internet Research firm makes a perfect conduit for interacting with him.

Of course, these three are just a sample, there are many more like them cross the continent in different fields.

What is consistent about trusted intermediaries is that they have found a way to create a bridge between two things, and are trusted by both sides of that bridge. It’s why personal relationships, consistency, reliability and trust are more important now than ever before.

PesaPal is an eCommerce platform focused on Kenya. It’s built to work seamlessly with Kenya’s main mobile payment services; Zain’s Zap with approximately 300,000 users and Safaricom’s MPesa with around 2 million users.

Most Kenyans do not use credit cards, many are unbanked, and there is no consumer-oriented payment system in the country. PesaPal is aimed squarely at these wananchi (ordinary Kenyans). It’s a way for local vendors to offer digital payment for goods in a systematic way that they can track, and in a format that Kenyans have and are familiar with: mobile phone transactions.

Think of PesaPal as akin to the services offered by PayPal and Google Checkout to businesses – except that it actually works in Africa. (long rant coming if I continue down that thought path…).

• Phase 1 (this release) is about vendors being able to receive money, think mCommerce, ticketing, education, online stores, etc.
• Phase 2 (time TBD) is about paying money, which would include things like payroll, payday loans, micro-loans, etc.

A prototypical business might be someone who manages a school or a vendor who wants to sell products via a website or billboard. They would come and sign up with PesaPal and get approved mobile phone payments set up using their own Zap or Mpesa account.

At this point the business is up and running and can receive payments.

If the business has a website, there are a few more options. They can pay a one-time fee of 4,000/= ($50) and get a pre-built plugin for common website content management systems like Joomla or osCommerce. The more advanced implementers can access and use the exposed web services (API) that PesaPal has built to allow for merchant and buyer verification or transaction processing.

A good example of this is Totally Toto, a website that sells children’s clothes and delivers them locally. Their only option in the past was cash-on-delivery, with PesaPal they are now also accepting, and tracking, payment in advance.

The business model for PesaPal is a transactional one, where they make approximately 15/= ($.20) per transaction that uses their system. I’m in favor of this because it gives PesaPal a great incentive to grow their user base and provide a service that truly helps vendors using their tool.

Further revenue opportunities for the PesaPal team include customized product integration, web site design and licensing of more advanced API functions by larger organizations.

Out of the box in phase 1, users will have:

• Immediate receipting and confirmation
• Transaction details stored for 7 years
• Vetted merchants/vendors
• Monitoring for KYC (Know Your Customer) and AMC (Anti-money Laundering) to protect vendors
• Safe and secure hosting within Kenya, the same place that Swift (money transfers) hosts theirs

Agosta Liko is the Founder of PesaPal. He brings to the table a wealth of experience working in the US banking sector, Insurance field and Consulting. Agosta has worked on Wire Transfer, Loans Origination and Anti Money Laundering Systems for First Citizens Bancshares in USA. Paul Mungai, PesaPal’s Chief Software Engineer has over 5 years experience with Verviant Consulting Services where he worked on a wide array of ecommerce outsourcing projects. Onesmus Kamau Kagwanja, PesaPal’s Chief Technology Officer has been building software in East Africa for years, creating enterprise-level applications for some of the larger insurance companies in the region.

This background gives the seasoned team a particular edge when it comes to doing this work in Kenya. It has also helped them to bootstrap the venture, to build the application, launch it and keep them running through next year. The need and the ability to raise funds locally is a big deal in and of itself, and it’s a big mark in PesaPal’s favor that they’ve been able to pull this off.

It takes more than just pushing the “go” button on a website to make a business take off. It also takes deep pockets to launch a country-wide marketing campaign, a necessary expense for consumer products. Look for a major billboard, radio and web push by their team starting in October.

The FLAP bag is still very much in its testing phase. What I was doing was alpha level, today more people are getting access to the bag and will help with beta testing in more places. This is good. It means that the team behind the project are not just rushing something to market to take advantage of the buzz, but are really trying to get it right.

Some of the suggestions from the African users can be found in the Fast Company article I wrote last week, but there are more coming in too, from South America and an Indian reservation in the US.

• The American-style Timbuk2 bags were generally thought of as too large
• Electronics need to be put into a more rugged case to survive the beatings that they’ll take in Africa
• People wondered if there was a way to hide, or cover, the solar panels to disguise what the bag was – for security reasons
• There was a general feeling that there was more use for portable light and power in rural settings rather than urban
• The ability to remove the solar components from the bag was genius
• The tailors wanted to make their own designs, and wanted access to cheap components to experiment with, and then sell

One of the most compelling things that happened on the trip was my interaction with tailors. I would give them a bag, but also give them the raw components and challenge them to make a bag of their own design, using local materials that they thought would be right for them, or right to sell in their market.

The bag above is my favorite customized bag design, it’s a smallish backpack that was made by Stephen Omollo in Nairobi. There are others though (see them here), and these creations serve as an indicator of the desire to own the technology. To make the technology relevant to specific local needs.

What this left me with was a nagging thought – that I was the wrong person to do this testing project. Sure, AfriGadget connections make me and the other editors a likely vector to do this, but that It was Timbuk2 that needed to be out in Africa with us. (I’m letting Portable Light off the hook, because I know they already do this)

Luckily, I’m here at Pop!Tech with the team from Timbuk2 and the team from Portable Light. I’m inviting them out to Kenya to actually get on the ground with these tailors and people who understand the pulse and cultural usage norms of the clients that they serve locally. With a little luck, we’ll get even further with the project, seeing a true partnership across two continents.

A big thank you goes out to my colleague Henry Addo in Ghana and David Ngigi in Kenya for their help with both videography and the interviews.

If you were to ask me, I’d just scrap the prize altogether.

There’s been a lot of debate in the past week about the Prize Committee’s decision not to award a prize this year.   From those who feel that this says a lot about the dire state of leadership in Africa, to those wondering why Kufuor the former president of Ghana didn’t qualify for the prize and what this means as far as the idea that the prize is meant to serve as an incentive.

And lets not forget the brouhaha about the governance index and how (whether?) to “Africanize” it.   My two cents, while I’m at it, why not feed it to the Nepad African Peer Review Mechanism?   It’s still slow but most countries are cooperating, there’s a whole infrastructure supporting it, and there’s that slight advantage of you know – the data being compiled in places that are not Cambridge, Massachusetts and Washington DC.

But I digress.

As far as the motivations behind the prize, you have written:

I have faced some criticism, with people suggesting I am trying to bribe leaders to do their jobs, and therefore patronising them, to others asking me why I have not spent the money on bed nets and boreholes. The critics are failing to take into account how central governance and leadership are for Africa’s development. In addition, western leaders have a future after their time in office – they can sit on the boards of companies, take up speaking engagements or write memoirs. But what do decent, hard-working African leaders have to look forward to once they retire? This is part of the importance of our prize. It provides African leaders with the option of continuing a life in public service.

I don’t get how the prize enhances governance and leadership in Africa – the problem is that most African leaders today are thieving, corrupt, buffoons who spend their time in office lining up their pockets so deep that the Ibrahim prize is chump change and that issues of legacy are irrelevant (see e.g. “I have no regrets”Moi),  but I do get the part that decent leaders need a plan B – post retirement…although the fact is that most of them are voting themselves very nice “exit” packages anyway (see Mozambique, Ghana) .   But, rather than rewarding African leaders for doing what they should be doing as a matter of course, why not set up a fund where e.g. if they want to build a library, or write a book, or set up a business – they have to apply for the money.   So they have a plan B, it’s just not automatic.

Better still.   Just shift the foundation’s focus away from things that have a minimal impact on the future of African leadership…I mean the index and the prize are just as about as impractical you can get if you are serious about changing the face of African leadership…if you ask me.

What should you be doing then you ask?

Well, any organization that is trying to do any serious work around leadership in Africa has make young people the core of any programming.   Otherwise you haven’t looked the demographics of Africa yet and seriously thought about the implications.   Convincing the Mugabe’s of the world to step down, is only part of the problem – you have to ask who is replacing the old guard?  Is there a pipeline?  Are the replacements different?  Or are they just a younger, hungrier, more cynical version of the same (see Kenya’s parliament today).

I see that your foundation does offer scholarships to rising leaders, that’s a good start.   But if the intention is to grow leaders at home, I would offer scholarships to enable students to attend local institutions as well.

And scholarships are so inside the box.

How about a fund for young Africans who are running for office – they have to come up with a plan, sign a commitment to good governance, and commit to being open with their campaign and if they get elected with their voting records in Parliament, public declarations etc….sound a bit crazy?  Maybe.  But in comparison to a index of democracy…hhhm.

Or if that’s too political – a travel fund/scholarship for young Africans to travel within Africa and spend a month or 6 months or a year – living in a different country, doing community service, writing a book, taking pictures…whatever – the underlying idea being that they would have the opportunity to get to know their own continent, to expand their worldview in a different way, to network with their fellow Africans, and to start building cross-border relationships which are critical to the future of the continent (think trade, ease of travel, etc.).  Really, the AU shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of opportunities for Africans to engage meaningfully.

Or, if that’s too wish wishy – an Africa corps then – sort of like a peace corps for Africans by Africans – open to those in Africa or the diaspora.

You get the point.   The Mo Ibrahim foundation needs to jazz it up and be more disruptive, if you are really serious about more Mandelas, and not Mobutus.

Regards,

Ory

*KP readers, what you do differently?  Indulge me please.

As you can see, there are limited practical ways for getting money transferred internationally on a regular basis. It’s no wonder then, that even with the transaction costs ranging from $15-70, people tend to use the safer, more secure methods of banks, and money transfer businesses like Western Union and MoneyGram. I’ve used all three of these, and over time have started to drift towards MoneyGram as my favorite. They have a cheaper transaction cost than the other two, and I’ve experienced a much easier time with them over the hurdles that Western Union decides to throw in your way.

All this to say, if we consider banks wires a static white-collar service, then MoneyGram is quickly becoming the best option as the common man’s way to transfer money internationally. As such, I’ve been getting deeper into their services, seeing what types of API and digital offerings that they have which could be useful.

Currently, MoneyGram has around 180,000 agent locations around the world. More importantly, they’ve just announced that they are set to tackle the mobile payments space by creating relationships with the mobile networks.

“Mobile money transfer services are an emerging part of our product offering and we are eager to bring these services to the Middle East. Overall, we expect mobile service to be in highest demand in developing economies where individuals are more likely to have mobile phones than bank accounts.”

This is an important point, as it merges two different ecosystems of payments. At the local level, in countries that have the right tools and cultures for them, mobile payment solutions act as transfer services for people within the country. Traditionally, this local mobile payment system is not available for use by those internationally.

Right now MoneyGram’s connection to the mobile payments agents is focused on the Middle East and Asia, my hope is that countries in Africa will soon follow. My guess is that Zain’s Zap service might be one of the first, due to their connection to the Middle East, but no one knows for sure yet.

[Update: Just before posting this I heard about a couple of banks and Western Union in the UK working with Mpesa in Kenya to do transfers via mobile. Others are working hard in this space too, and for good reason, it provides a great deal more usability for end-users on both sides of the ocean. If one entity catches that mindshare, they’ll have a lot more profitability in the space)

So it’s fitting that I recommend Al-Jazeera blogs, for those of you interested in international news as seen from a different lens.

iWarrior is an iPhone game (iTunes link), created by the cross-Afrian team of Kenyan Wesley Kirinya and Ghanaian Eyram Tawia of Leti Games. It’s a unique top-down shooter game that utilizes the iPhone’s inbuilt accelerometer to both move and shoot. Your goal: protect your village, livestock and garden from the incoming marauding animals.

It’s a great first-effort from the team, and I believe it’s the first game created by a team in Africa. This itself is a much more difficult task than what many might expect. Just to get an iTunes account and a way to be be paid for your application is a challenge due to Apple’s inbuilt prejudice against Africa (they’re not alone in this, as many other platforms, like PayPal’s or Google Checkout’s are the same). That seems like a dramatic statement to make, but I ask you to stay your judgment until you’ve walked in the shoes of an African programmer.

Gameplay
I’m not an exceptionally talented twitch gamer, so I found the unique movement plus shooting actions hard to come to terms with. However, as I played it longer, I found myself slowly figuring it out and getting better at it. Thankfully, the team has built in a completely different way to play using your finger to slide and tap, you can move and shoot. So, for the accelerometer-challenged (like me) there’s another option.

iWarrior also allows you to play your own music while playing the game. This might seem small, but it’s something a lot of game maker’s overlook, and it’s a lot more fun than listening to the same repetitious in-game music.

The game costs $2.99, which is a little steep for new games on the iPhone. For many reasons the costs of most applications (games or otherwise) on the App Store have been driven to about 99cents. So, it takes either a really big name or an app that has hard to replicate features in order to break past $1.99 and sell a lot. In the team’s defense, it’s difficult for them to download paid games to test and see if they compare to their own prior to putting it on the market (again, due to them being in Africa).

Graphics
The graphics are okay. I’m a stickler on this type of thing though, and I go for either over-the-top quality or simplicity. Examples of this is comparing Fieldrunners to Doodle Jump, both excellent graphically, yet with completely different aesthetics.

So, I’m going to ding the team on this part of the game. This, after a lengthy discussion in Ghana with Eyram over the difficulties of finding quality digital artists. It’s not an easy thing to do, the best designers aren’t digitally literate, with a few exceptions. So, you get great sketching and painting, but few can put that into vector graphics, 3d or even Photoshop.

Though the challenge is high, we live in a digitally connected world where top quality digital artists from Asia and Eastern Europe can be found to do the work at acceptable rates. There are other options, and a game can be made or broken on looks alone.

iWarrior is an excellent first game on the iPhone platform from two highly talented and creative African game developers. I expect that there will be a lot of good games, and other applications, coming from this team over time – both on the iPhone and other platforms. It’s a game to be proud of and one that I hope a lot of others will buy.

“The simple task of finding the next available flight is an inefficient and labor intensive undertaking for the Nigerian business traveller. Nigerian airlines don’t operate call centers and the Internet is slow. So the business traveller must assign staff to search all airline web sites or even send them to the ticketing office through stifling traffic.”

A user sends in a text message to +447786201082 with a simple command, like “From Lagos to Abuja on Monday at 8am”. In response, the system gathers the information about all of the flights in Nigeria that fit your requirements, and sends them back to you as an SMS message.

As Timi states, this is ” A Nigerian solution to a Nigerian problem”. Interestingly, it’s not only useful in Nigeria, and I could see this same application being used elsewhere, not just in Africa but in the developed world as well.

I’m curious as to why the service is only available via SMS. It seems that if you have the data, then it’s easy to make it web-accessible. The advantage there is that you also can start creating ways for people to purchase tickets and thereby have another revenue stream.

In terms of business model Text2Fly is paid for by premium SMS once it officially launches. It’s free right now though, so definitely worth testing out to see how much it helps in your daily life.

User numbers are still modest because the site and backend system was only flipped on 3 weeks ago. There has been very limited marketing to this point, but there is a plan to launch a real-world and digital campaign once the service is fully tested and stable.

When I asked Timi about how local Nigerians are taking to the product, he stated:

The reactions from people who have used the service has been far better than I could have imagined. One chap I spoke to on the phone enthused about how Text2Fly is not just for busy business people but for “everybody”. Another told me a story of how he showed it to some friends while they were having a drink and all 7 of them stored the Text2Fly number.

[Note: David Ajao has also done a review, worth reading as he's a fellow Nigerian.]

Nice profile of African fashion magazines in the NYTimes, but the writer

should have consulted Binyavinga’s “How to write about Africa” piece before constructing that first paragraph

Sub-Saharan Africa does not bring to mind an image of a woman with perfectly manicured nails flipping through glossy magazines in search of the latest handbag or celebrity haircut.

…yeesh!

“A rare and inspiring story of hope in rural Africa, a true story of youth challenging and winning against all of the adversity that life throws at it. William represents a new generation of Africans, using ingenuity and invention to overcome life’s challenges. Where so many tilt at windmills, William builds them!”

Three years ago I came across a fascinating story of a young man in Malawi who had built a windmill from scratch, and I wrote about it on AfriGadget. Since then, I’ve gotten to know William Kamkwamba as TED Africa fellows and most recently we spent a good deal of time together in Ghana at Maker Faire Africa.

There is now a book, a documentary and a foundation all set up around the inspired story of windmills from Malawi.

Fortunately, I was given a pre-release version of the ” The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” to review, and as it comes out in just 4 days it’s about time that I did that. It should also be noted that Bryan Mealer, who wrote the book with William, is an incredibly talented writer that knows his way around Africa and has a knack for getting the nuances of African life across in a way few others do.

I found the most fascinating part of this book to be William’s description of living through a famine. Imagine only one meal a day, and only a few bites at that. William’s family felt like they were the lucky ones because they at least had something to eat. I’ve seen pictures of people starving, but to have it described so frankly made it so much more real.

Because of this famine, William wasn’t able to go to school. His desire to still learn was what led to his reading books from the local library. It was there that he discovered the books “Using Energy,” “Explaining physics” and “integrated science.” Ironically, he discovered “using energy” (the book that inspired his famous windmill) while looking for the dictionary to look up “grapes.” On the front of “using energy” was a row of windmills, and William was reminded of the pinwheels that he and his friends made as a child out of cut up water bottles. He spent days looking through old parts at a junk yard, trying to find the right parts to build his own windmill.

As a young boy, William and his friends would often take radios apart and put them back together, cannabilizing some of them to fix others that were broken. A prototypical AfriGadget inventor, William was an expert at creative thinking and improvising, using a bicycle dynamo to power his first windmill.

What I appreciate the most about William is, despite all the notoriety that has come with his inventions, he remains humble, easy to talk to, loyal to his family and home, and full of desire to learn. You see this come through in his interviews, even with all of the success he has had, he is still a well-grounded individual.

A final bit of trivia: William’s windmill came very close to being the final logo for Maker Faire Africa this year, here’s the prototype of that. It’s great to see how he has influenced my work with AfriGadget over the intervening years. Many times he is on the stage at big western-focused events, however last month in Ghana he stood in front of his peers at Maker Faire Africa. The room of 300-400 fellow African inventors was enthralled… After all, how much more exciting is it to see home-grown ingenuity and innovation making it big than it is if it’s imported in from overseas?

Okay, go buy the book!

Tucked away in a blog post on Calestous Juma talking about the future of African communications, Ethan Zuckerman states:

“The spread of connection infrastructure into Africa now points to the need for devices that can access the internet, content to be delivered and applications. These, in turn, point to the need for institutions, laws and policies to regulate this space, which are currently lagging far behind the technology.“

We all like to discuss the technology gap in Africa, which is this space between those who have access to technology and can use it (the West) and those who do not (Africa). Does this create the environment to take advantage of technology arbitrage?

From a certain perspective that can all seem very bleak and depressing. From another, it smells like opportunity.

This time and knowledge lag between government “institutions, laws and policies” that Calestous Juma and Ethan are discussing is just the sort of gap that allows arbitrage to happen. You should be able to turn the lack of technology in one place, or at least information, compared to the other to your advantage.

Put another way, when a government is too slow, inefficient and technologically incompetent to keep up with the rest of the world, what happens?

I think we see the answer in a number of places already, not all of them savory. We see this in business executives who corner a market, like we’ve seen with Safaricom in Kenya, or the notorious 419 scammers in Nigeria. We read about it when Egyptian youth use Twitter to broadcast police brutality, or when Zimbabweans send MMS images of completed ballot counts from voting precincts in advance of those trying to perpetrate fraud.

Two main groups seem to take advantage of this: businesses and activists.

The natural inclination of the market is to leverage these gaps and inefficiencies, to create opportunities out of the void, that technology can often overcome. The best businesses in our current era are built to do this as are the activist groups with the greatest impact.

[Authors note: I've made up this term "technology arbitrage", but I couldn't think of a better way to describe what I've been thinking about. Speaking of which, I've been muddling this over in my head for a week and just wanted to air it out to hear other's thoughts.]

“The number one cost for most agents was liquidity management – moving cash. Agents report a host of expenses, including bank charges, transport costs, and fees to aggregators who advance commissions and provide easy float/cash swaps for agents. On average, liquidity management consumed 30% of total expenses.”

Asynchronous Info, Disjointed Data and Crisis Reporting
Jon Gosier talks about Uganda’s riots and what he’s learned in the process.

Africa’s diaspora and the cloud
Teddy Ruge writes a great essay on the web and Africa’s diaspora.

“There’s a cloud gathering over Africa; a storm of connected thoughts and ideas that are pushing African countries violently forward. The Diaspora is using emerging web technologies in increasing numbers, frequency, and variety to stay connect with Africa, simultaneously charting a new digital course for it’s economic independence on the world stage.”

New Africa broadband ‘ready’
The BBC Digital Planet team is in Kenya and doing a knock-up job of interviewing people about what’s going on around the tech space there.

(Note: all the people in the BBC “in pictures” for this day are part of the Ushahidi extended dev team in Kenya)

Mobiles offer lifelines in Africa
Ken Banks writes about mobile phone growth and development in Africa, stating “Africans are not the passive recipients of technology many people seem to think they are.”

Let me tell you a personal story:

I’m sitting, sweating in the sweltering heat of a Monrovia cyber cafe, I have my notebook out and my am watching the clock. My goal is to see how fast I can load up the Ushahidi home page for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it has a map, timeline and list of recent events tracking the current level of unrest in the country.

It’s not looking good. As I look around, waiting for the page to load, I count 8 others in the room – 6 of which have fired up stuttering and unusable Yahoo and Skype video chat windows. Why this is the channel and usage of choice, when it so obviously doesn’t work, I cannot answer. But this is reality, and if we expect ordinary Africans to use our application, we had better make sure that it loads up relatively fast on the low-bandwidth, shared internet connections that proliferate across the continent.

Utter failure. After 20 minutes painfully watching the page load byte by byte, I give up. I quickly type out a message to our team, imploring everyone to streamline this “fat, squeeling pig of a page”. Peppering them with questions… Can I buy some caching please? What can we do with this map to make it not kill the load? Can we get rid of 75% of the images on the page? Do we need to redesign this from the ground up?

Granted, Liberia’s internet situation is worse than almost any other on the continent. Especially when it comes to the grinding halt you see in the cyber cafes during the daylight hours as the local population piles on at the same time, completely overwhelming the limited satellite connection. That’s no excuse though. Ushahidi is built on the idea that the lowest common denominator, whether it’s PC or mobile-phone based access, will work. The PC-side is clearly failing.

Worst of all, my patience is short, Liberia is pissing me off with the heat, humidity, lack of bandwidth and no electricity grid. Objectively, this is the perfect state to be in, I am now able to come up with a solution for normal users in Africa.

Speed… if there’s only one thing that you do with your application, make it faster. No, it’s not fast enough.

This isn’t news to anyone, or it shouldn’t be. For years the major web sites around the world have known this and have been building for it. Mozilla, Amazon, Google and Facebook are all aware of just how critical speed is to their success. It boils down to attention threshold and what we, as users ourselves, are willing to put up with.

There is no area in which our team has felt more pain than in trying to speed up the page loads of our apps. Maps tend to be page killers by themselves. Once we add multiple calls to the database we start to get some truly agonizing speeds. It’s a constant pressure that sits on every one of our development cycles, and for which we dedicate a great deal of energy.

One area that hasn’t seen enough true user experience testing is Africa. We know that internet speeds are slower, sometimes by orders of magnitude. I’ve got a lot of questions, more than answers at this point. Should we cut out the maps and all images? What’s the true cost of a page load +/- 7 seconds? What is the real value of maps in Africa compared to the West – do they matter?

Jessica Colaco is a top-notch programmer who has shifted to doing research in Kenya. I hope that she, and others like Eric Osiakwan and his team from Internet Research in Ghana, will help us dig out these answers. More than that, I hope they will help us ask the right questions.

“The customer is always right. Gotissuez.com is a platform where customers exercise their right to expose product shortcomings, poor service delivery or suggest ways of improving the products or services.”

GotIssuez is an on-line market research company primarily concentrating on three areas: consumer research, product research and service delivery. Their website is a tool to address the real shortcomings that many in East Africa face when trying to deal with the unusually bad customer service that permeates most of the businesses that operate in the region.

Their tool is mainly focused on the younger generation, people who are web and mobile phone savvy and who aren’t hesitant to raise their voice in protest of bad customer service or bad experiences. At any given time you might see complaints on the “crappy YU (mobile) network”, “Ngong Hills – A poor welcome at the entrance” or griping about political issues. Other users can go in and agree, disagree or help solve the problem the stated problem.

It’s a play to the crowd, a home-brewed combination of what we see on sites like Digg married up with the functionality of sites like Dell’s IdeaStorm.

I was intrigued by the one above actually, as it’s a complaint over the campaign to save endangered lions in Kenya. It’s had a pretty big impact on a certain group of people, mainly businesses and the upper class (so the poster to GotIssuez states). It’s also a good reminder that one mans treasure is another mans trash…

GotIssuez is currently implementing a large research and development project called ‘Tangaza.’ With this they have already began looking and measuring high-end statistics and detailed metrics on trends, opinions, comparisons and key information relevant to brands. Their focus is to continue to work on this as their business model develops and evolves.

It’s important to note that their tool is not their only effort in the brand monitoring, consumer research and service delivery space. While that is a primary outreach and awareness tool, much of their business comes from the services that they offer to organizations offline.

Maker Faire Africa as “Bushpunk”
Bunmi Oloruntoba asks if the normal Maker Faire’s feel more like Victorian HG Wells England’s steampunk, then could Maker Faire Africa be considered “bushpunk”? (a new term as far as I know…)

Mapping the Cloud
Ethan Zuckerman’s excellent essay on the cloud, while at Ars Electronica in Austria.

Kenya’s Internet Grows Up
Shashank Bengali, in Nairobi, talks about Craigslist going live in Kenya and points to Kenya’s largest newspaper’s efforts in the same space, N-Soko. I actually disagree, until we have an electronic means to transact business on the web/mobile, then we’re stuck.

Seed funding in African tech entrepreneurs
Sean at AfricaFeed has some real-world insight and thoughts on seed investing in African tech entrepreneurs.

Innovation in Africa (panel)
A couple of us were at the SoCap conference in California last week, talking on a panel on innovation in Africa. NextBillion’s writeup captured the discussion best.

CARAVAN RECORDS presents – Mzungu Kichaa ft Professor Jay and Mwasiti

[via]

Agosta Liko - web entrepreneur in Kenya

That’s the question I was most intrigued by on my panel today at SoCap with Emeka Okafor, Nii Simmonds and Ashifi Gogo about identifying opportunities for innovation in Africa.

There are really two big issues at stake. First, how to find the right people. Second, what funding level is needed.

You’re not going to find the compelling African entrepreneurs while sitting in an office in the US or Europe. It’s only by spending significant time on the ground in the countries you’re wanting to invest in that you find the people you need to know. It’s there that you get past the first-level of non-expert opportunity profiteers and attention seekers and find the people who actually do the work.

Two examples:

1. AfriGadget is a blog about finding interesting stories of African innovation. It’s not always easy to come up with the stories though. You have to look hard, teach yourself to see things, in order to find these extraordinary individuals. Without the great blogging team and the people sending in stories from the ground, we wouldn’t have anything.
2. I grew up in Nairobi, yet it took me a solid two years of meeting people and networking within the city to get beneath the surface and find the people with the talent and drive to create actual businesses.

It’s generally not cost-effective for every funding source to have their own person canvassing the continent. The question then becomes, how do you find the trusted intermediaries who know the real story on the ground, know the players and can spot the talent?

Most of the individuals with the skills to create their own businesses in the high-tech space are working for large NGOs and multinationals. Why? They got to a place in their life where they had to make the choice of going out on their own, armed with a good idea and no hope of funding, or putting food on the table. This is similar to entrepreneurs worldwide, however in Africa the gap between success and failure is a lot less forgiving and the choices are a lot fewer.

Most of the funding available for companies in Africa comes through loans, debt financing. It’s mostly used in SMEs at the medium-sized level. There’s a gap, and that is seed funding. There are very few opportunities to get equity-based funding, especially at the levels where most entrepreneurs starting off need it. This is the $10-300k range.

Who funds them? There are a few organizations internationally who run business plan competitions with money prizes, others that fund a few startups each year (TechnoServe, Kuv and Acumen come to mind). There are also some local people and organizations that do some of the funding (as was the case for Agosta Liko pictured above), but it’s very hard to come by even within Africa’s most advanced tech/finance cities (Nairobi, Johannesburg and Accra).

Who else is out there?
How can we bridge this gap?

We’ll be holding Maker Faire Africa again next year in August, this time in Nairobi, Kenya. Get ready for an even bigger and more festive event!

Probably one of my favorite discussions of this trip was entered into after the Uganda Linux User Group (LUG) meeting here in Kampala. It was about whether we should be providing internet protocol (IP) services first, rather than SMS. If cost is the single most important factor for any mobile service aimed at ordinary Africans, then what will it take to move the ball from the SMS court to the IP court? This isn’t just for non-profits to consider, but everyday businesses as well.

Phones that can access data networks have always been in short supply here, so the easy answer has always been to use SMS, just because that’s what people have in their pocket and can use right now. While there are great arguments for either decreasing the costs of SMS, or of moving to IP, the practicality of that was remote due to the costs involved. Either you need a big organization, or a government, who can force the mobile operators to lower their rates on SMS (their cash cow), or you need to have the costs of data-enabled phones to decrease enough that the majority of users switch to them.

There is an argument that says that Grameen’s and Google’s recent deal with MTN Uganda didn’t go far enough in pushing for free, or cheaper, messaging for their new services. Whether you agree or disagree on that matter isn’t relevant if you bypass the argument altogether and provide services via data, which is drastically cheaper, using SMS as the backup.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that for the first time, last year, mobile phones shipped to Africa with data service capabilities outnumbered the simple SMS-only phones that are so prevalent on the continent (Gartner 2009). Of course, this doesn’t mean that there will be a majority of IP accessible phone users immediately, but it is on its way.

Equally important to understand, and a point that increases the momentum of the mobile services over IP argument, is the fact that where there is mobile penetration, there is also available data services. This stands true in Uganda, where MTN says there is 92% GPRS coverage on their network. It’s even true in countries still trying to catch up, like Liberia, where though there are only islands of coverage, that coverage generally comes with data.

Reinier Battenberg, who runs the only local hosting in Uganda, brought up a great point. The fact that Google and Grameen weren’t able to significantly alter MTN’s position on the prices of SMS doesn’t matter. What matters is that Google didn’t offer an IP-based solution for their new Google Trader that they launched. That’s simply unbelievable! It’s doubtful if that type of work would take more than a day for an engineer to implement. Instead of effectively providing an end-run on the strategy around SMS, they just played the same game that the operator wants to play and will win. Something that Google really wants to do is drive people to the web, so why not at least provide web-services for those that can use it? It doesn’t make sense… all around it’s both curious and a questionable strategy.

I’ve spent the last couple days talking to web designers, programmers, systems administrators and businessmen about the situation in Uganda.

Technologists in Uganda have quite a job on their hands. Sitting, land-locked, behind Kenya and Tanzania they share most of those two countries problems, find that everything is more expensive, and then have to deal with a government who has little to know understanding of how technology can spur economic growth. On top of that, the local ISPs and the mobile operators are happily providing sub-par services at larcenous rates.

It’s no surprise then that we see a lot fewer quality programmers and web designers in Kampala than in Nairobi. However, though there are fewer, there is a great depth of talent available here in those that are doing this work, whether it’s Solomon King’s Node Six, Jon Gosier’s Appfrica Labs or Software Factory the creators of Kiva’s rival MYC4.

From what I could tell, there is only one hosting company setup for anyone to get started with a website in Uganda that runs a server from within the country. Few government websites are hosted locally, and the same remains true for almost all business or personal sites. Though there is excellent bandwidth locally, the international bandwidth is what is used, which means that no one (local) is winning.

What is surprising is that there is no local caching of international content going on at the Uganda IXP. If the Google Global Cache was being used, that alone would speed up local performance and make a better user experience. There are rumors of a Google Cache being used at either the ISP-level or Makerere, but that since it’s not using the UIXP, it cannot provide the service to all of the ISPs.

However, more important than that is the fact that it would significantly decrease the amount of international traffic. What’s mind boggling is that the local providers would still be able to charge the same rates, but decreasing international traffic through caching would increase their profit margins. I’m not quite sure why this isn’t being done, I wonder if the ISPs and mobile operators are just making too much money as it is and this is seen as more work than it’s worth.

Uganda’s IXP (international exchange point) is something of a mess too. Apparently, the two founders are in a bit of a squabble, with means each neutralizes the others decisions and nothing gets done. To make matters worse, the environment where it resides can only be considered as hostile to any type of electrical equipment. It’s in the basement of a parking garage where people wash cars providing a healthy dose of moisture, dust is in the air, and there is a general lack of upkeep on it.

Basically, all of the money ($106m) that the Ugandan government and the local ISPs and mobile operators are pouring into the infrastructure is reliant upon this one poor excuse for an IXP. It works, and the packets are switching, it’s just that the operation is not working in the optimal environment – physically or organizationally.

This is troubling for a number of reasons, but perhaps the biggest reason why it sits so poorly with me is that the government has a stated aim of getting more “local content” online. So, while there might be 10 Wimax providers going live by the end of the year in Kampala, there is little foundational infrastructure to support the peering between providers locally, regionally or internationally.

It seems that the biggest problems within the Uganda internet space is more about lack of holistic focus by the government and local ISPs and mobile operators. With a little effort, the peering, content hosting, costs and speed could be improved.

Every six months, hundreds of potential “Entrepreneurs in Training” go through a rigorous screening process, which are finally whittled down to 20 finalists. It’s a two year program where young technologists are taught business and refined technology skills.

Their goal: by the end of their time at MEST, come up with a viable business plan for the Meltwater Incubator to fund.

The first graduating class is due to walk out of the building to present their business plan this year. They will have the opportunity for seed funding, which teams of them have been working on since they began this process almost 24 months ago. These are all supposed to be internationally-focused businesses, not locally-focused on Ghana.

The whole operation is a not-for profit, funded by the Meltwater Foundation, part of the Meltwater Group in Europe. The idea is for the Foundation to hold an undisclosed equity stake in the startups, then sink that money back into the educational institution for sustainability. The seed capital used to get the startups going was also unclear, but probably in the $15-50k range.

I asked Ylva why they chose Ghana, after all, there are a couple of good spots to do this type of operation across the continent. Ghana was chosen due to it being an English speaking country with good connectivity, proximity to the US and Europe, a stated government focus on ICT and political stability. It came down to a choice between Ghana and Uganda, with Ghana winning out due to stability and the general higher level of business ambition.

MEST is an impressive undertaking, and one that is hard to duplicate due to the upfront costs of running an institution and the time needed to prove it out as being successful or not. All of the students that I met, and I met a good number, were incredibly bright and engaging. If MEST truly does arm them with the best training, then I believe there could be a higher than average number of “wins” coming from the graduates.

Everyone agreed that there is a lack of general communication and collaboration in this space, though there are a few user groups for things like Linux and a new one for Java. It’s too bad really, because I don’t think there is less talent in Ghana, but that this lack of cohesion of the tech community means that it’s hard for people to “announce” new things and/or get help for areas that they need to get assistance in. The reason I see this is due to the great activity that I see on the Kenyan Skunkworks email list – the contrast between Accra and Nairobi in this is quite stark.

At the end of the discussion, everyone in the room decided to try for the 2nd Tuesday of every month at 7pm. Daisy Baffoe is the one with the list and is going to get in touch with everyone with a location. Hopefully we’ll see the beginnings of a general programmer community in Ghana!

The crux of the inefficiencies can be found in the number, distance and expense of MFI personnel to track and receive payments. Ben states it this way:

“By allowing microloan officers to receive weekly loan repayments via SMS instead of spending time and money to travel to group meetings, MFIs will spend significantly less on fuel and have more time to pursue and manage a larger loan portfolio.”

This might very well be true, and I’m at least interested in seeing the experiment go forward.

In the course of their research they needed to do more discovery on the possible ways to transfer funds with in Africa. This meant embarking on a study of the types of options available by every operator in every country. With that data, they decided to create the Mobile Money Transfer Directory.

This first stage looks like its about creating a simple index of the operator, the money transfer service and a designation of the service. I can see this becoming more dynamic later, with data points like “transaction cost” and “number of merchants”, along with a slew of other pieces of information needed to understand the mobile money transfer systems (and how they differ) in each African country.

[Note: African Signals, the wiki for mobile/web pricing in Africa, turned out quite useful. Ben used that as a starting point in gathering much of his information.]

I’ll start out by saying this: one of the most disappointing things that I’ve come across here is the lack of community within the tech scene. There is no mailing list, forum, or other digital touch-point for the devs to keep in touch with each other and discuss pertinent local issues. I know just how valuable this is due to my involvement with the Skunkworks tech community in Nairobi.

Offsetting that is the fact that they do have places like Busy Internet and AITI, two facilities that are well-known for supporting the tech community, that act as nexus points for tech meetups and user groups. There are also a number of good tech outfits with quality programmers.

First impressions leave me excited about the talent, but surprised at the lack of connectivity within the community.

Tonight we had an Ushahidi meetup night in Accra over at the Suuch Solutions office. It’s a great location, butting up to a hotel with nice seating for a get together like ours. We had a couple devs from BusyLab (which I’ll write a full post on soon), a couple from Succh, as well as Henry Addo from our team.

It looks like we have a couple new guys to help out on some interesting parts of the platform. George is an HTML markup guy who is itching to get his hands into some design work, and Chinedu is going to dig into the API with Henry.

We also had a chance to break out the Bug kit from BugLabs, a completely modular hardware device that can be programmed using Java. I’m not sure who will be having the first crack at it, but everyone was amazed with it. What geek doesn’t like this type of stuff? I mean, accelerometer, GPS, camera, LCD, WiFi and control unit. It’s just such a crazy-cool device.

I’m also doing some work on the “FLAP Bag Project“, testing out modular, solar and light-equipped bags in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda with Timbuk2, Portable Light and Pop!Tech.

We’ve got a big release of Ushahidi coming up this week too, so keep an eye on the Ushahidi blog where I have another write-up coming.

About the website:

Africa has long been the locus and the focus for the most impassioned and intellectually-informed debates. But for many years, specialist Africa coverage in the world’s media has been in decline, alongside the withering of many African journals and magazines that used to provide a forum for debate and opinion. African news and views have moved to the web, notably with the spectacular success of www.AllAfrica.com. But there has been no comparable Africa-wide site which provides in-depth analysis and debate of the issues and controversies that animate the continent today. With the launch of African Arguments Online we intend to fill this gap.

Three years ago we launched the book series ‘African Arguments’ with the International African Institute and Zed Books and distributed by Palgrave Macmillan in the USA. Our aim was to bring vigorous debates on the most pressing African issues to a wider audience. With eight books published and two more due shortly the series has quickly become a lively and high-quality imprint.

In launching African Arguments Online, we will bring these issues to a wider audience with the rapidity of a news magazine and the reach of the internet. We have asked a number of leading public intellectuals—writers, scholars, activists—to contribute regular columns.

The best part about a TEDx event is the other people you meet there. It’s an eclectic mix of individuals, so you could find yourself rubbing shoulders with a scientist on one side and a dance instructor on the other, all while talking to the CEO of a major multinational tech company. It’s a time for open ideas and conversation, along with a healthy mixture of thought provoking talks.

As a TED Fellow and a Nairobi guy myself, I’m highly disappointed that I won’t be able to make it to the event. I have no doubt that the speakers will put on some of their best performances, as the pressure to do a good job is on. Personally, I’d like to hear what Paula Kahumbu of WildlifeDirect will bring to the table as I’m sure it will be both moving and insightful. I’m curious to hear if Aly-Khan Satchu of Rich.co.ke will talk about his work, or bring something different to the table. Lastly, I know I will miss hearing the music of Muthoni.

What some know about, and all speakers need to read, is “The TED Commandments“. These are 10 rules that every TED speaker should know:

1. Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick
2. Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before
3. Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion
4. Thou Shalt Tell a Story
5. Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the Sake of Blessed Connection and Exquisite Controversy
6. Thou Shalt Not Flaunt thine Ego. Be Thou Vulnerable. Speak of thy Failure as well as thy Success.
7. Thou Shalt Not Sell from the Stage: Neither thy Company, thy Goods, thy Writings, nor thy Desperate need for Funding; Lest Thou be Cast Aside into Outer Darkness.
8. Thou Shalt Remember all the while: Laughter is Good.
9. Thou Shalt Not Read thy Speech.
10. Thou Shalt Not Steal the Time of Them that Follow Thee

The organizers tell me that seats are now VERY limited. In fact, as of writing this there are only 12 seats left. Try your luck, see if you can make it to the event by filling in the registration form.

I’ll be in Ghana from Aug 10-18, much of that time will be spent getting ready for and putting on Maker Faire Africa. If you’re attending that event, or want to carve out some time to chat before/after it, let me know.

We’re having an Ushahidi meetup on Wednesday, Aug 12th starting at 6pm at the Adabraka. If you want to know more about the project, let me, Henry Addo or Brian Herbert know.

I’m really interested in seeing some of the mobile and web apps that the Ghanaian community is working on. If you know someone working on something cool that I just shouldn’t miss, leave it in the comments.

I’ve got a couple days in Kenya around Aug 19-20 and Aug 23-26. As usual, my Kenya time gets busy very quickly, so let me know now if you want to meet and I’ll see if I can slot it in. I’ve always got time for cool stuff.

I’m planning to have an Ushahidi meetup on Wednesday, Aug 26th starting at 6pm at the Prestige Plaza food court (as usual). Come meet the Ushahidi team that’s behind the latest “Goma” release. Also we’ll have the two newest members of Ushahidi in attendance.

I’ve got a quick jaunt over to Uganda where I’ll be meeting up with the Appfrica team and Teddy Ruge. We’re also planning on having a tech meetup on Friday, Aug 20th. Again, let us know if you can make it.

As you can tell, it’s a little bit of a whirlwind trip. Follow along here for updates (and AfriGadget for the Maker Faire Africa reports).

Dominic Wanjihia from Kenya will be coming to show his evapocooler invention for cooling camels milk in Somalia, along with an number of his other inventions.

The FabLab team from the University of Nigeria on their way. Look for a bunch of neat stuff, including: a mobile device battery charger using cycle power, a simple mobile robot, a Wi-fi phone network, and a universal remote control for switching on/off your lights.

Planish, a company that makes cool, funky looking furniture from water bottles will be showing their wares.

Nana Kofi Acquah is an amazing Ghanaian photographer with images that capture the spirit of Ghana. His breathtaking pictures have been used by the likes of FIFA, Nike and Nestle in campaigns around the world. You can find his professional site at NKAphoto.com »

Pat Delaney, of Multimachine fame, is coming. This is an, “all-purpose open source machine tool that can be built inexpensively by a semi-skilled mechanic with common hand tools, from discarded car and truck parts, using only commonly available hand tools and no electricity.” Though he can’t bring the full machine, he is bringing all the knowledge cased in DVDs for anyone to build their own out of locally available parts.

Most of my blogging about Maker Faire Africa will happen on AfriGadget, but there will be a lot of content up on the MFA blog as well.

An event like this just wouldn’t be possible without the help of others. We’re fortunate to have some great sponsors on board, including: IDDS (happening right now in Ghana, read their blog), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Butterfly Works, Inveneo, Moving Windmills, Mozilla, AndSpace Labs and many individual donations totaling up to $2400 (thanks!). Lastly, a special thanks to Dale, and the rest of the O’Reilly team, for letting us use the “Maker Faire” moniker for this event.

Via Kenya Capital Investment Group

Kenya Data Networks, has opted to solve their energy problems by tapping the power of the sun. The KDN solar power plant generates 10MW of power, enough to buffer it from fluctuations in the grid which result in frequent brown outs. Last year, the cost of electricity increased by over 51% so its not only good for the environment, but I am sure it makes a whole lot of sense for the balance sheet of KDN. From the video they are already saving 50% on their electricity bill, I think this is a good example to other companies that they too can embrace renewable energy. Now if only Kengen could make plans to create a smart grid that allows netmetering…

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SEACOM has done a good with PR and reaching out to people via their blog and Twitter accounts. SEACOM’s media team was also uploading video in real-time to their YouTube channel, so click there if you want to hear really bad audio of the speeches… They have their new press release out here, if you’re looking for the “official” talk.

(note: if I missed one, link it in the comments below and I’ll add it here)

Kung Fu Baby and the SEACOM Cable Launch by Joshua Goldstein (Uganda)
“We launched Kung Fu baby and for the first time in Africa, I saw a YouTube video load completely and play in 6 seconds. We ran a speed test and showed 1.8mbps, 10x what we have in the Appfrica office.”

“1.28 Terabits per second-now that’s what I call digital heaven! Seacom, dare I say I love you? Now, don’t make the Africans pay too much!” by @zanibots

Seacom is here but don’t be surprised if nothing changes by Kachwanya (Kenya)
“Shockingly the people at Seacom think that revealing the names of their clients (ISPs) will jeopardize their relationship with others which are not yet on board. May be I am not getting something here but ISPs will only buy the bandwidth from the Seacom if they have somewhere to sell it.”

“This is one small MB for my laptop, one giant TB for Africa …” by @Akianastasiou on Twitter

How fast can you read this article? by Arthur Goldstuck (South Africa)
“However, the most dramatic indication of the power of SEACOM was the quality of live video links to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique. Addresses by, among other, a range of dignitaries, executives and the President of Tanzania, were carried live to large screens at simultaneous events in each of these countries.”

“This is turning to be another major hoax. Why is the internet so slow as ever? Why is it Seacom not telling us which ISP’s are enrolled?” by @KenyaFocus

“The President of Tanzania envisions having a “Silicon Valley” in Africa – This could have only be imagined thanks to #Seacom” by @SeacomLive

Oh Kenyans, we have been duped again by TrueKenyan
“According to the information already on the public domain, Safaricom have said that the cost of internet will reduce by upto 30-33% over the next five years. Access Kenya still remains mum since it’s charges are exorbitant compared to other ISP’s. Recently UUnet CEO Tom Omariba claimed that cables will only bring down costs by 20-30 percent.”

• Africa News: Seacom connects East Africa with the world
• BBC: Circle of light is Africa’s Net gain
• TeleGeography: SEACOM lights up East Africa
• Daily Nation: Superfast internet goes live in East Africa and Seacom says undersea cable to spur Africa investment
• The Citizen: Dawn of new era for telecom sector

I’m a big fan of infographics, visualization tools that help us understand something faster than reading a long-winded explanation or a spreadsheet of data. It’s disappointed to see how Africa is usually missing from the global ones – especially in relation to technology.

I call this “Africa blindness”.

Luke Wertz linked one to me earlier today from the New Scientist on Twitter saying, “Notice anything missing from this image? Oh yea, the ENTIRE continent of Africa.”:

It’s a good graphic, really well designed and it does gets a point across. However, it’s missing two continents: Africa and Australia. Thank goodness, we’re not just dealing with Africa-blindness, but Oz-blindess too.

Here’s another great technology infographic, this time by XKCD where he’s showing the IPv4 space (that’s how you get an IP address). Note the glaringly obvious fact that the entire continent of Africa has the same-sized IP allocation as the likes of Apple and half as much as Japan.

A part of me can understand how a graphic designer sitting in the US or Europe, tasked with creating a graphic, would bypass Africa. After all, if you’re not from the continent, you surely don’t think of it as having much relevance in the high-tech world. On top of that, it’s not always easy to find web and mobile data in Africa as it is in the rest of the world. The first is an issue of education and media focus. The second is far more serious of a problem.

You’d think that finding aggregate information on tech in Africa would be fairly easy to find. It’s not, at least not for free like it is for much of the rest of the world. If anyone should know this, it’s me. After all, this is what I spend a great deal of time tracking…

Bankelele writes about Professor Calestous Juma with a review of a talk that he gave on how Africa can use technological innovation to stimulate economic recovery, spur economic growth and spread prosperity.

Aptivate gave us their Top 10 Rules for Designing Low-Bandwidth Websites. This is a goldmine, every web designer in Africa should print this out and hang it above their monitor.

Jon Gosier gave us a Comparison between On- and Off-network GSM Rates in Nigeria. Proving that, “with the exception of Etisalat, it’s quite clear that it’s cheaper to own four cell phones than one [in Nigeria].” (I hope this data makes its way to African Signals)

Ethan writes about Mike Best and his team’s work in post-conflict Liberia around digital storytelling.

South Africa’s popular mobile social networking application, Mxit, is now at 14 million users. “MXit users currently send approximately 35,000 messages per second during peak times and visit the system more than 20 million times per day.” Wow!

Bill does a review of Ndiyo, the thin-client computing solution for Africa. Specifically, on how Ndiyo “provides an alternative to traditional Western notions of how technologies should be deployed, used and paid for in developing countries”.

“Steve Vosloo noted that m-learning summits have two main goals: To introduce and popularize the mobile phone as a tool for engaging students, and secondly, to identify local content needs. Examples of this may include applications that support grade submissions and attendance in remote locations or projects that explore how texting can be used in literacy.”

As Hannes notes:

“They are the inventors of that trusted voice access device that anyone that ever travelled to Africa would know about: the Adondo. Designed for Africa with anti-insect electronics, high temperature and humidity tolerance, their devices still ship with car-battery ready clamps.”

This time it’s about Kazang, a prepaid terminal for merchants selling mobile phone services, such as prepaid airtime, paying of electricity bills or insurance. The service is a year and a half old now, and boasts nearly 5,000 vendors ranging from South Africa to Kenya to Zambia.

The newest device, the Timpa, comes with all of the necessary requirements for the challenges that a merchant running a business in a rural (or urban) setting in Africa would need. It has a built-in printer and rechargeable battery which makes it fully mobile, uses GPRS technology to communicate with the Content Ready (back-end) server (just plug in a data SIM card), and a large LCD with backlighting. They have also built in fail-safes for when the GPRS connection drops, or the electricity goes out, so that the merchant doesn’t get charged for a voucher that they didn’t receive.

Psitek claims that clearing $1000/month is a reasonable to expect by vendors, which would bring home about $80/month of profit (8% margin). This alone makes it a fairly good proposition for a lot of merchants, meaning they can add a Kazang terminal to their shop as an added draw for more customers and it acts as to supplement their other revenue streams.

Not written about much relative to their impact, Psitek is one of those tech firms offering devices that run behind the scenes of many businesses in the southern part of Africa.

I’ve been getting a number of emails lately asking me connect people in the US, Europe or large organizations in Africa with local (as in “in-Africa”) talent. They’re usually interested in finding a knowledgeable designer, a good blogger or editor, and I’ve had quite a few people ask me to put them in touch with programmers.

At this time, it’s a simple and free place to post jobs for African technology professionals. So, what I’m really looking forward to seeing are opportunities listed specifically for people in Africa. That last bit is important, it’s for African devs, designers and bloggers.

A lot of these might be for short-term gigs and volunteer opportunities, but who knows… It’s a little bit of an experiment, so no promises on my part. If it proves popular and useful I’ll keep it around. Oh, I have the final say on what jobs go live too, so be forewarned. Think of me as the curator and friendly job board dictator…

Make sure you grab the news feed, so you don’t have to keep coming back to see what’s new. Take a look at the tips page – think about how you’ll deal with project scope, as well as how to pay, or be paid.

Unlike my little project solely focused on technologists, there are some real job boards around the continent that are worth keeping in mind. Here are a couple of them (leave links others that I missed in the comments area):

Kazinow
Find a Job in Africa
Job Space – South Africa
Best Jobs - South Africa
Zebra Jobs
Sama Source – Outsourcing to Africa

It’s an encouraging sign that there are a lot of people interested in finding local African talent. What I’ve found in my travels, and in talking to technologists around the continent, is that though there are more devs and designers each year, the number of top quality ones available for work are few.

One cautionary piece of advice though… and it pains me to say this. A few of the African developers that I have come across are not time-conscious and they can come across like their client/project is not as important to them as you would find in their counterparts in the West. Of course, this means if you are timely and fulfill your responsibilities you will find clients lined up 10 deep to get to you – you’re a rare commodity.

African developers are quickly going to learn that they’re on the global stage now, and there’s nothing stopping their clients from switching to someone more reliable, even if it’s a country or continent away.

The good news is that of the many devs I’ve met, many are as good as any you’ll find anywhere else in the world. A few of them are on par with the best I’ve come across anywhere.

There is also an initiative called Coded in Country focused on getting programming work done within the countries that the applications and products are meant for. Keep an eye on it, and pitch in as/where you can.

The first “Barcamp Africa“, however, was a little different than the normal local events. It was put together by individuals in the US (at the Google office in California), some of whom were diaspora, and others who had a deep interest in the continent.

That was a year ago, and now the good people behind Maneno (a blogging platform made for Africa) have taken over the hosting of content around Barcamp’s that take place in Africa or that have an African focus. Beyond that, they have created a simple way for those putting on new Barcamp’s to setup an online home for it.

“The primary objective of the new BarCamp Africa hub is to encourage a continuous stream of participant driven content from African barcamps before, during, as well as after the events take place. Barcamp Africa allows each barcamp to have a simple, hosted, lightweight site specific to their event with a custom url. As an example, check out the recent barcamp’s in [barcampafrica.com] , [barcampafrica.com] , or the upcoming [barcampafrica.com] . Stories published on this site as well as others on the platform aggregate to the main BarcampAfrica.com page (as well as the Maneno home page) and are exposed to the larger audience of barcampers all over Africa.”

As someone who has helped put on a couple Barcamps, I’ve found that there are really two components. First is the simple organization, which self-organizes best around a wiki – specifically the Barcamp.org wiki. Second, is the communication to everyone else around the community of the upcoming event, done best with a dedicated blog/website.

This second area, communication, is where the greatest value for organizers will be found with the new Maneno hosting for Barcamp Africa. It will be with the those who simply want to setup a site that will get them good, dedicated exposure and allow multiple people to write on it, with updates on location, place, attendees and initiatives arising out of it.

For those who haven’t tried it, Maneno has an incredibly fast loading blogging platform, specifially designed for low bandwidth areas in Africa. On top of that, it is available in local African languages that have traditionally had little web presence. Articles can be easily translated between multiple languages and sit atop one another to overcome the linguistic divide facilitating open communication between the different communities.

If you’re interested in upcoming Barcamps around Africa, check out the Barcamp Africa calendar.

Armed with a mobile phone, a team of 4-6 motorcyclists ride to different, pre-designate parts of the city. They take pictures of the current traffic conditions and MMS that image to the central office. That image is then geolocated and given a score of “slow”, “moving” or “free”. Anyone who has signed up for SMS or email alerts is then sent a message with the traffic update.

I asked Simon, one of the people putting the service into action, what some of their challenges are. His reply:

“Collecting information in this way, although not that technical (lots of people have said why not use stationary webcams it would be technically superior), is turning out to be more difficult than we expected. Finding people who can grasp the concept behind the service, ride well through the crazy Lagos traffic, and are reliable has been tricky, added to that we’ve had lots of issues around harassment and even arrests from the police (many police officers apparently believe you need special police permission to take photos of traffic) and just recently the weather has been in our way as the rainy season has just started in Lagos making operations more difficult and a few phones have been dropped in puddles! “

eNowNow doesn’t see much value in charging premium SMS rates for their services. They believe margins are low, and they don’t think the uptake would be high enough amongst their target market to make it work. Instead, they have plans to subsidize the service with revenues from licensing traffic information to Sat Nav providers and logistics companies.

“In Nigeria the networks will take anything between 40 and 75% of a premium SMS’s cost to a subscriber for themselves (pull or push) leaving you a tiny margin for profitability and driving the industry standard (and therefore what the networks will allow you) per SMS cost higher. Most people think that traffic only affects those in cars and they can therefore afford to pay for a service, but most of Lagos’ population aren’t in that bracket and those on public transport still have choices about which buses they take, which routes and what time they leave work.”

Maybe it’s because I’m a motorcycle fan, or maybe it’s because I have a deeply ingrained detestation for being stuck in traffic in Africa’s mega cities, but this application hits the sweet spot for me. I’ve been wanting just this type of thing in Nairobi for a long time…

One additional idea, to make this even more dynamic, and spread it over the whole city is to create a way for ordinary drivers to text into the system when they come across a new or growing traffic problem. I imagine that Lagos has areas with traffic that is not on the pre-designated points that eNowNow operates in currently.

This is a classic locally grown tech initiative, and I hope that they can pull it off. If so, it can definitely be replicated in other major metro markets across the continent.

WhiteHouse.gov/Ghana isn’t live yet, but on July 11th, it will become available. They are going to stream the talk at whitehouse.gov/live.

It’s a fairly interesting initiative to undertake, with a slew of problems, as you try to engage with as many individuals in an open travel campaign as possible. At the same time, you know that any channel you open up will get absolutely flooded with incoming comments, questions and spam of every sort. In the end, the team decided that Radio, SMS, then Facebook would be the primary new media access points – and in that order.

Radio is still the number one communications medium across Africa, and Ghana has a particularly vibrant and active one with a lot of local and national community interaction.

As everyone knows, mobile phone penetration has grown at an explosive rate in Africa, this means that SMS is a fairly democratic means for getting feedback from people of every demographic across the nation. (Funnily enough, not available to US-based residents – more below on that)

Lastly, there are no major homegrown web-based social networks in Ghana, and like many other countries across Africa Facebook has a decent amount of penetration. In Ghana, it’s at 100,000+, so it makes the most sense for the new media team to engage and interact without splitting their energy over too many services. Having Twitter on as a backup is natural, as there will be a great deal of chatter there as well.

SMS. We’re launching an SMS platform to allow citizens to submit questions, comments and words of welcome (in English and in French) . Using a local SMS short code in Ghana (1731) , Nigeria (32969) , South Africa (31958) and Kenya (5683), as well as a long code across the rest of the world*, Africans and citizens worldwide will be encouraged to text their messages to the President. SMS participants will also be able to subscribe to speech highlights in English and French. Long numbers for mobile registration pan-Africa: 61418601934 and 45609910343.

This SMS platform is not available to US participants due to the Smith Mundt Act (The act also prohibits domestic distribution of information intended for foreign audiences).

Radio. A live audio stream of the President’s speech will be pushed to national and local radio stations during the speech. After the speech, a taped audio recording of the President’s answers to the SMS messages received will be made available to radio stations and websites. The President hopes to answer a variety of questions and comments by topic and region. The audio recording will also be made available for download on White House website and iTunes.

Video. The speech will be livestreamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live. The embed code for this video is available so you may also host the livestream on any Website.

Online chat. We will host a live web chat around the speech on Facebook (it will be at http://apps.facebook.com/whitehouselive). The White House will also create a Facebook “event” around the speech wherein participants from around the world can engage with one another. A Twitter hashtag (i.e. #obamaghana) will also be created and promoted to consolidate input and reaction around the event.

Part 1

Part 2

More details here.

That’s essentially the question raised by Katrin Verclas on MobileActive, and it’s an excellent one. Specifically, Katrin calls out the new Google Trader service offered by Google in Uganda, in conjunction with the release yesterday of their SMS products with Grameen and MTN Uganda, one of the local mobile phone operators. Basically, they charge 220 Ugandan Shillings per use, instead of the median 110 UGS charge across most networks. This is called a premium SMS rate.

Premium SMS rates are charged so that third-party service providers can make money off of services that they provide over the mobile phone network. The operator makes their (ridiculously high) profit as normal, and the overage is for the third-party. You’ll find a lot of dating, event and sports services offered in this way all over the world, not least across Africa.

The question posed is if people who are claiming to help the poor should charge, and if so, should they make a profit?

I think we’ve seen from the Grameen model in Bangladesh (ex: Grameen Bank and Grameen Phone’s Village Phone program) that you can (and possibly should). By doing so you help both parties; first, by providing a service that consumers value and are willing to pay for, and second by making the business of running an operation self-sustaining. Many good business, or project, ideas die due to lack of sustainable cash flow.

For instance, if a 220 shilling SMS can save you the 1500 shilling visit to the doctor or veterinarian, or give you a 10% higher return for your crops, is it worth it?

There ends up being a paternalist nuance to that original question. After all, is it up to us to decide what services to offer the poor and at what price? Aren’t poor people able to make the value-based decision on whether a trip to the doctor is more useful to them than a call or an SMS to one? If services are being offered, the person making the decision to call, SMS or go physically to solve their problem, or not, is ultimately the arbiter of whether or not a service has merit and should be offered. It’s a classic market-led approach – if the price is too high for the service, equilibrium will not be reached and one will give, usually price.

This is particularly true when talking about for-profit companies offering services – like Google is with Google Trader. They don’t operate under the same development/grant funded subsidization that a lot of others do in Africa. Even if their goal was not to make a profit on this service, they still need to cover internal costs, as does every organization that isn’t provided with free money.

This space in Africa, of offering services to the poor (in lieu of the governments actually doing their jobs), has been primarily “owned” by large development and aid organizations. This has created a false floor for the economy, as projects and initiatives are propped up by outside money and services rarely have to survive on their own. This is changing, as low cost and high value options come into the market, be they mobile phone operators providing new communication opportunities, or cheap chinese batteries and LED lights for local energy/lighting needs.

I’m sensing a flux in the space, like two bull buffaloes before they fight, the heavyweights in the aid industry and in business are circling each other before they knock heads. The marketing is over who is helping the poor and marginalized in Africa best. In the end the market will decide, and regardless of the messages spouted by both sides, the “poor African” will choose the winner.

If there’s a problem with collusion and price fixing in an industry (like there sometimes seems to be with SMS services in a country), that’s something beyond the scope of individuals and needs to be tackled separately by regulation. However, that’s not the case here, we have expensive SMS services in East Africa, but the new entrants into the space always offer low rates, and the costs of switching providers is relatively low.

No, this is market-based competitive services and both non-profits and for-profits have the right to offer them at whatever price they like. Equally, individuals have the right to use it or not, be they premium SMS rates or not.

I’d like to hear some other African’s thoughts on this.

Do you want big multinationals like Google and MTN coming in and providing their services to you? Should we be asking questions for the poor, or is that condescending in itself? What is the sticking point here, and is there a side that I’m missing?

**UPDATE**
Thanks to Katrin’s email to Rachel Payne, Google’s lead in Uganda, we have the following response from her on this topic, and it does clarify quite a few unknowns:

Hi Katrin.

Yes, I saw your blog post where you speak in detail about the pricing. However, what is written is not quite accurate. You see, Google, Grameen and MTN launched three types of mobile services yesterday: Google SMS Tips (targeting low-income, rural users primarily), Google SMS Search (urban, mainstream) and Google Trader (all users).

The second service is somewhat similar to other “premium SMS” content services currently available (except that it is built on Google search technology) and therefore, is the same price as other content services. To accommodate the first group, we have priced Google SMS Tips at half the price of a content service; this is available for the cost of a person-to-person SMS, which many rural individuals are willing and able to afford currently.

The third service drives income and livelihood benefits, so we decided to begin charging at the normal content service rate and monitor whether this excludes rural communities or not (we did extensive testing during the pilot, which included pricing discussions and most of the users found that Google Trader provided far greater, direct value than the 110 shilling price difference). For all services, we are offering them for free for the first few months, just to ensure that all users have an equal opportunity to try them out, risk-free and allow them to access critical content during this period so that they can assess whether or not they would like to continue to use the service.

I hope this helps provide a bit more information that clarifies the questions raised.

• Farmer’s Friend: a searchable database with both agricultural advice and targeted weather forecasts
• Health Tips: provides sexual and reproductive health information
• Clinic Finder: helps locate nearby health clinics and their services
• Google Trader: matches buyers and sellers of agricultural produce and commodities as well as other products. Local buyers and sellers, such as small-holder farmers, are able to broaden their trading networks and reduce their transaction costs. (known locally as “Akatale SMS”)

Back in 2004 Grameen started to replicate in Uganda what they had done in Bangladesh with their Village Phone Operators. That is, they would go 20km beyond the best phone signal and provide a loan to a lady in the village that would let her buy a phone and an antenna that would extend the range of the network. The lady would then resell services to local individuals who didn’t have access, or the ability to buy their own phone.

I’m actually quite impressed with this initiative, as it fits in perfectly with Grameen’s mission: providing opportunity through the most basic of mobile phones. All of these services work on SMS-only phones, so anyone with a single bar of coverage and a phone has access to a lot of knowledge in their hands.

Here is a promo video from Uganda, explaining why these services are needed:

Beyond the applications themselves, what I find most compelling is how the Grameen Foundation collected such a high-powered group of partners. The list reads like a who’s-who of innovative mobile services and development in Africa with Google, MTN Uganda, Technoserve, Kiwanja.net, and BRODSI to name a few. It’s a mixture of for-profit businesses, local NGOs and non-profit tech organizations.

I remember a conversation a couple months back with Sian Townsend (Google) and Ken Banks (FrontlineSMS) about how they did the field studies for this project. Sian shared with us some of her research on mobile user experience while in Uganda – it was extensive. Through a month of rapid prototyping and studying how users were actually using the new services, the team quickly learned what was important and how to better serve information up to the end-user.

Though I haven’t been able to personally test the services yet, with this group, I would expect the results to be better than average. For instance, Google doesn’t tend to get involved with ideas that don’t scale. I imagine that they see replicability with both SMS Search and Google Trader in many other countries as well. Rachel Payne, the country manager for Google in Uganda, has a blog post here, but not much more information on the long-term plans for Google Trader. I’d be interested in seeing how this compares to Esoko out of Ghana.

Adii Pienaar (aka Adii Rockstar) is the 7th in the African Digerati series of interviews. At only 24 he’s the youngest one on the list – he’s here because he represents the success that can be achieved as a young digital entrepreneur in Africa. Just under a year ago Woothemes splashed onto the stage as a new seller of WordPress (blogging tool) themes.

Rumor has it that this might be the most monetarily successful startup in the new media scene coming out of South Africa… That’s in less than one year. Regardless of whether that is true or not, the fact is that Woothemes is one of the top WordPress theme sites in the world, and it’s grown out of Africa with a lot of work, an eye for design and passion.

Woothemes just launched version 2 of itself, called WOO2. This interview is in response to that, and a chance to take a look at one of the visionaries behind it. After reading the interview, take a look at Adii’s blog. You’ll realize he’s light-hearted and doesn’t take himself to seriously, personality traits that I appreciate.

When was the seed of Woothemes planted in your mind, and what was it’s genesis? What caused you to go from idea to actually building something, and how did you do that?
I don’t really know… Magnus, Mark & I had been collaborating a bit more loosely and the business was growing quite steadily. So I think it was just a natural progression to formalize the collaborations into a business and brand it as WooThemes. Luckily for us, we had a good following at that stage and the foundations were good all round to launch WooThemes.

What inspires you?
Would I be egotistical to say that I inspire myself? Honestly though, I’m inspired by a bunch of different things on a daily basis; and those things are random at best. The “being inspired” bit, along with willingness to act on said inspiration is a result of me absolutely loving a challenge and thus being completely driven to pursue those challenges.

Who are your biggest influences?
Online, I’ve got a lot of respect for entrepreneurs like Ryan Carson & Collis Ta’eed, who are at the top end of this new wave of entrepreneurs. Offline I’ve always appreciated Richard Branson’s way of going about business and marketing his ideas. And then closer to home… I’ve learned a helluva lot from both my business partners – Magnus & Mark – whilst I’d be lying if I said that my dad didn’t influence my business mind a lot – especially when I was younger.

Woo2 is a redesign of the Woothemes site and the community platform behind it. What are the big changes, and why do they matter?
Facing outwards, I think WOO2 signals our intent with regards to further growth and also improving the current experiences on WooThemes.

On a business level, I think WOO2 is more professional and we put a lot more strategic thinking into it. So again, it’s some kind of natural progression of how we’ve grown. WOO2 is the next step and the next part of the journey ahead.

Woothemes is expanding to other platforms beyond WordPress (Drupal, Expression Engine, etc.). What is your strategy here, and when will we start seeing these themes for different platforms?
The strategy is basically one that aims to diversify our offerings (and also our risk of having all our eggs in one basket), along with the growth aspects (new products = new markets = new users). And whilst I’m reluctant to commit to any schedule in this regard, we will start rolling out the Drupal themes in the next 2 / 3 weeks, and we’ve already started work on the EE & Magento stuff.

There’s always been the debate amongst the WordPress intelligensia about some theme providers not honoring the WordPress GPL licensing. iThemes, Brian Gardner and others have changed stances. I noticed you have as well. Is this where you wanted to go, or was it something that the greater community forced upon you? How will this help your business?

I can categorically say that this wasn’t something we did because we felt forced to do so. Way back in August 2008, I told Matt Mullenweg (at WordCamp SA) that going GPL was on the horizon for us and we’d do so when we felt comfortable doing so.

And as for how it will affect / help our business… I don’t know yet. We’ve only been GPL for a day, so I guess we’ll have to wait & see.

How big is Woothemes and how active is your community? Can you give any numbers?
This is tempting, but I’d rather not share these numbers… Maybe in the next couple of months, we’ll adopt a more open approach and share some of these numbers, but we’re not into boasting about supposed success.

I can however say that our support forum has racked up almost 45K posts, which means that the community is active. And our free themes (6 of them) have been downloaded about 35 000 times in the last month…

You’ve successfully created a web business out of South Africa that has impacted people around the world. You’re tapped into the web in a way that few others are. What’s next? What does the big picture look like from a the Rockstar perspective?
I’m taking over the world, one WordPress installation at a time.

LOL no… I’m very content with what I’m doing at the moment and very happy with the space & freedom that WooThemes has afforded me. I’m still young (24), so at this stage I’d like to think that I’m trying to revolutionize my own life, in terms of how I work and how I act outside of business hours. Beyond further growing WooThemes, that’s probably my main focus, because I want to do this now and not when I turn 30 / 40 and realize that I’ve work my life away.

And a shameless punt… I’m writing a book called Rockstar Business that basically airs my thoughts & experiences within this journey!

Finally, what are your thoughts on the impact of blogging in your own continent: Africa?
I’m ashamed to admit this, but Africa is generally a deep dark place for me (which I’m planning on rectifying with a proper journey into Africa – for holiday – later this year). So I’ve honestly not met many Africans who are bloggers.

BUT… In theory I think blogging gives everyone a voice; a voice they didn’t have before. And that’s true freedom & power for me, which we’ll ultimately see itself manifest when Africa becomes one of the strongest nations / economies in the world.

[Disclosure: I'm a customer of Woothemes, having purchased (full-price) one of their themes for the Maker Faire Africa website. I'm very happy with this too, everything is rock solid.]

Here’s one of my favorites (can’t you just see everyone lining up to visit the Philippines after reading this?):

“10. Don’t wear a nice watch, for that suggests a fat wallet and also makes a target. I learned that lesson on my first trip to the Philippines: a robber with a machete had just encountered a Japanese businessman with a Rolex — who now, alas, has only one hand.”

In response to Kristof’s op-ed, here are my take. Not all about your kit, but also some thoughts on traveling in general.

1. Take only one bag. “Suitcases are for suits, check-in for suckers” as my well-heeled friend Jan Chipchase points out. My choice is the Northface Heckler backpack (in black). It’s got a convenient sleeve for my computer, and plenty of room for the camera and other items – your mileage will vary.

2. Pack less. This is what makes #1 work. You’re going to be tempted to pack for every eventuality. Don’t. only to find out when you get there that you only need 1/3 of what you brought.

3. Carry a power bar. Usually you can find food wherever you are, however for the small cost in space having something handy that gives you some energy and that you can trust to not get a stomach bug over, this is my first choice.

4. For the techies… USB devices are great for transferring information, applications and pictures use one. However, remember that there are no condoms for USB devices and that every PC and internet cafe device should be treated as a pox-ridden carrier of digital STDs for your virgin device. Keep it faithful to only your computer (and vice versa).

5. Paperbacks trump hardbacks. There’s a lot of waiting around when traveling, which makes it nice to have a book handy.

6. On mobile phones. You have two choices on your phone. a) buy a cheap one when you get there ($20-40) and get a local SIM card. b) get an unlocked phone before you leave and just buy a SIM card when you hit the ground. For multi-country travel I suggest going with “b”, which is what I do. If you lose a lot of phones, or are terrified of being robbed, go with “a”.

7. Bargain for everything. Have a great conversation with the first seller of whatever service or product you’re interested in. Never buy from that person. Instead, figure out exactly where the line is and then haggle harder with the next vendor, tout or merchant. (How can I state this delicately…? If you’re paying 25% of the asking price, you’re still being ripped off.)

8. On Cameras. A lot could be written about this, but suffice it to say that smaller is better unless you really like to take good pictures. I would suggest something that is waterproof. My personal favorite is the Sanyo Xacti – I love this thing. However, I could equally suggest getting something that runs off just a couple AA batteries. (Pros and Prosumers who, like me, carry a larger body DSLR ignore this one. You have your own rules to live by).

9. Spread your money out. Never carry all your money in one place. This isn’t just for security reasons, its for bargaining as well. I suggest carrying varying amounts of cash in 3 different spots and knowing what the amounts are so that you never pull out too much.

10. Eat local. This is especially true if you’re going on the cheap, don’t be afraid to eat the cooked foods at the road-side kiosks. You’ll see me regularly eating beans and chapatis on the streets of Nairobi for lunch. At $.50 I’m getting a good full meal and I can do it in a hurry if need be. If that’s too adventurous for you, you can choose other local spots, just don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to eat at the “westernized” establishments.

11. Mosquitos are made in hell and must be killed. I could write a whole post on the epic battles I’ve had with these satanic insects. Buy a can of Doom (insect spray), get insect repellent, sit on the smoky side of the fire, use a mosquito net – whatever it takes. My favorite way to kill them is a wadded up t-shirt as it has a wide area of impact – if you’re good you can smash them up against the wall/ceiling from a good distance away.

12. Remember your power adapter. Know what the outlets are going to be like where you’re going so you can recharge your computer and/or camera. Not knowing where you’re going, I would suggest this one – though a little big, it does fit almost everywhere you’re likely to travel.

13. Watches are overrated. It’s just one more thing to carry, use your cell phone for the time. Time doesn’t matter as much anyway to be honest… I haven’t worn one for years, but it could be I’m missing something here.

14. Drink a lot. I’m not going to get into it on whether you drink bottled water, sodas, beer or tap water – just make sure you’re drinking. You’ll end up sweating more, walking more and not realizing just how dehydrated you are until you notice that you haven’t gone to the restroom all day.

15. Toss out your expectations, embrace the differences. It’s not all going to fit the “standard” (as I reminded myself when I nearly bashed my skull in) that you think it should be. Just roll with it and keep a light-approach to life. When something goes wrong, which it will, remember that a smile, a shake of your head and a laugh will take you a lot further than the angry, frustrated and shouting “white person in Africa act” will.

The bonus tip is this: make friends locally and listen to them. They know the area and can point you towards people and places that you’ll get a lot out of. They also know most of the dangerous and dark corners of the region that you should stay away from, which Kristof talks of. People, at the end of the day, are your greatest assets when traveling, not your gear, knowledge or prior experience in the region.

The best ones in the comments will be added here (so leave a link so I can attribute it to you).

From Ethan Zuckerman:

• Bring a hat. One you don’t mind wearing all the time, one you can wash in the sink or a bucket every night, one that keeps the sun from frying your brain. Or buy one. But this is a “don’t leave home without it” item for me.
• Undershirts keep you cooler. I rarely wear one in the States, but they’re essential equipment in tropical climes, and one of the few ways to remain presentable if you’ve got to do a business meeting.
• And an urban Africa tip – a cheap flashlight/torch is your friend when the power goes out and you’re staggering home from the bar at 2am. We refer to them in Ghana as “sewer avoidance systems” – trust me, fall into one open sewer and you’ll carry a torch with you for the rest of your life.

From Kari:

• Live as much like an average-incomed local as possible (very poor by US standards). it leads to richness.

From Patrick Meier:

• listen and make friends locally. Stress on all those words. Take the time to greet and exchange greetings with people whose paths you cross, everyone is important, chat with the guard outside your hostel, make every effort to learn the local language, it’s a sign of respect and is appreciated, say a warm hello to the mama selling the peanuts on the street, make friends with taxi drivers, and know how to ask questions, and then how to listen.

From Alan Davidson:

• Carry a copy of your passport and an international driving license. Don’t know how many times a copy of my passport and not the original has saved me a world of trouble.

From JKE:

• I used to carry a USB-2-mobile cable instead that plugs into any USB port and also comes with an adapter for the 12v socket in any car. Helps you get some energy where there’s no socket and is much lighter than most power adapters.

From Tony Durham:

• If you can’t patch holes in the mosquito net, apply some repellent around the hole.

From Christopher Fabian:

• Nokia phone with built in flashlight becomes a clock, alarm, torch and phone…magically!
• Two each of small packets of tylenol cold (2 daytime / 2 nightime) are great if you get slammed with some bug and just need to get through a day and a night somewhere.

From SW:

• Always have tissues with you as the lavs are seldom well stocked.

From Catherine:

• Especially in very busy areas like indoor markets, hugely populated street corners, etc, I carry my day backpack on my front.

More on the history of this project.

Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to ask/discuss on the panel.

I won’t blog much, but will be tweeting lots so catch me on Twitter. Also search for #africa09 on twitter.

“Inbox Preview is now launched in Gmail Labs – while Gmail is loading, a simple, static preview of your inbox with your ten most recent messages is displayed. This will allow users like myself to be productive even before Gmail has completed loading.”

Basically, Google realized what slow connections were doing to people’s interaction with their email accounts. So, they sent in a team of engineers to work in cyber cafes in Ethiopia to test out where the bottlenecks were and to come up with a solution.

So, besides building in Africa to serve just African audiences with web specific solutions, we can see solutions coming from Africa that also serve the rest of the world. On top of that you can also use our continent as a testing and R&D grounds for new or improved services.

Morris and I got together shortly after his first system was created. He shared a couple other ideas beyond that first invention with me.

He had received a lot of attention due to the Kenyan TV coverage, but it hadn’t turned into any real money for him. No one within Kenya was interested, either as a business partner or funder. There were a couple international groups that were trying to angle in on him, but when I spoke to him he didn’t know or trust them. What he had was all the makings of a sad story of inventiveness leading to… nothing.

This is our story in Africa isn’t it? How so?

• We’re continually fighting to get our own money people interested in what we’re doing. We lack seed capital and no one locally cares.
• We need business mentors that we can trust, ones that we’re not always worried about being fleeced by overnight. Ones that aren’t just looking out for how they can either steal the idea, the IP or the equity.
• Lacking any local funding or business partners, we hope that an international funder will notice us.
• If we’re able to get international attention, the next trick is trying to figure out if any of these people are real, honest or legitimate.

It’s frustrating. Why won’t anyone locally come in and fund an idea? Not just an idea, as in the case of Morris Mbetsa and others like Steve Mutinda, but real prototypes. These are working models. (I could go off on a tangent talking about all of the great software developers in Africa who talk a lot about good ideas but never build them – but that’s another post). No, these kinds of guys actually build the prototype first, then try to find someone to fund it. Basically, they’re doing it the right way.

It should, but only in so much as they create a system which limits the hurdles that entrepreneurs need to overcome to create a business, get funding and bring their ideas to market (not just for tech, but for everything). Private investment should be the lion’s share of this type of growth for the country, but in Morris’ case, he’s created a system for Government, so there should be some government funding for just this type of activity.

In fact, Kenya went so far as to create the ICT Board a couple years ago for this express reason:

“To rapidly and innovatively transform Kenya through promotion of ICT for socio-economic enrichment of our society.”

Here we have a young Kenyan with (many) good ideas and prototypes. He needs some structural support though, and we hope he gets it before the vultures descend. I know Paul Kukubo, Al Kags and a couple others within this group – they’re good people and have big ideas themselves. I know that they’re trying to come up with big structural ways for Kenyans to access ICT services and for Kenya to become an global ICT hub.

My question is this: How will that ever be the case if guys like Morris Mbetsa don’t have the requisite government structures in place to allow them to succeed?

We have a foundational investment-in-innovation problem in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. If Kenya is one of the top 5 African hubs for technology, then we know that the rest of the countries are in similar or worse conditions than this. What is it going to take for us to truly setup an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and the structures that support innovation, especially in the tech sphere?

1. Outside investment as catalyst
I’m starting to wonder if it will take a concerted effort by investors in the international space who can inject large amounts of capital into business ideas that have potential. Why international, isn’t local good enough? Normally it would be, but international investment comes with some benefits that local investment doesn’t. As anyone who lives in places like Nairobi knows, almost any money you take locally comes with two problems. First, it’s usually a small amount given for an excessive demand on equity. Second, it comes with political ramifications that tend to compromise the receiver of the funds.

Is what we really need a shakeup? A wake-up call for the local investor to realize that they will miss out on the big ideas and products if they don’t create a local system that allows real innovation to flourish, grow and enrich the inventors.

2. Government mechanisms for entrepreneurs
Outside investment as a catalyst for change in this space is one possible idea, but it’s not enough. As mentioned earlier we also need someone within our highly-bureaucratic government system to create a channel for entrepreneurs and investors to act. This could be accelerated business entity creation, and it would likely include lowering certain licensing terms and restrictions. My guess is it would also mean a structure for low-interest business loans as well.

3. A united technology community
Lastly, we need the technology community itself to band together. This is coming into being in a few countries, places where we have techies networking and creating relationships with business people and government. We’re starting to see when an investor comes into town, people okay with sharing the names of other entrepreneurs that have good ideas, and not trying to just tie that investor down with their own stuff.

While there will always be competition, lets put aside the tendency to pull someone else down when they’ve achieved some modicum of success. Instead, trumpet the small wins and help each other get ahead. Goodwill pays off so much better in the long run.

You can see this is something that I’ve been thinking about a great deal, and it bothers me to no end. For, if we don’t fix this we’ll continue to have the best and brightest head to other parts of the world – there is no industry where this is easier to do than the digital one. With them goes all the intellectual capital, inspiration and revenue that would further enrich our own continent.

I’m determined to play my part in seeing change happen. I want to see real technology powerhouses grow within Africa – ultimately with African investors and with solutions that will take the world by storm.

[Interesting update on Morris]

Before I get into that though, you should take a look at these numbers.

Currently, Africa is the second fastest growing internet market after it was passed with the Middle East in terms of connectivity. The growth rate is 1,100% with only 5.6% of Africa’s 975 million people online.

The 10 largest internet markets in Africa are seen below. These 10 countries account for a staggering 86% of the 54.2 million Africans online:

1. Egypt – 10.5 million
2. Nigeria – 10 million
3. Morocco – 6.6 million
4. South Africa – 4.6 million
5. Algeria – 3.5 million
6. Sudan – 3.5 million
7. Kenya – 3 million
8. Tunisia – 2.8 million
9. Zimbabwe – 1.4 million
10. Ghana – 0.9 million

(Research number are from the Internet World Stats)

Quirk is successful, and they’re looking to expand into other parts of Africa. However, one of the hurdles that they face is that there just aren’t that many people who understand why web marketing is needed, and that there is a need for a real strategy behind everything from your website to links to emails. It’s a problem of education in the business sector, and it comes with two problems.

First, low-bandwidth has caused most internet usage to be lower than normal in Africa. So, a lot of businesses don’t recognize the value of good web marketing, since most of the executives never get online to see their work anyway. For instance, think about the tourism industry in Africa, it is plagued with slow, ugly and hard to find websites. Most of them don’t even realize the business they’re missing out on.

Second, there are any number of people who will tell you that they can do your internet marketing or help with your online strategy and execute upon it. However, that’s simply not true for many claimants. There are likely only a handful of real experts in online marketing in any sub-Saharan African country. In Kenya alone, I can only think of a couple firms or individuals who really know what they’re talking about, and even fewer who can execute upon what they speak.

So, Rob has a challenge in addressing this market in Africa. It’s a big market if it can be cracked, but it takes more than just sales skills, it takes someone with the patience to educate and grow an industry.

Joshua Wanyama found himself in a bind. He had just moved back to Kenya after growing a successful web firm in the US. Now he wanted to put Pamoja Media on the map in Africa, and he realized quite quickly that there was a major knowledge-gap in the interactive marketing space. How could he sell the connections that his ad network gave him if the very people he was selling to didn’t have an online strategy at all?

This realization caused him to change his strategic direction of the Kenyan operations to gain a customers. He changed it from being just about his ad network, and added on 5 more areas of expertise that would really give his clients positive returns:

• Interactive strategy – how to scale a company’s operations and marketing online
• Creative Development – Interactive ads, landing pages, enewsletters & micro sites
• Placement – We run ads on the Pamoja Media Network, Yahoo, Google and Facebook network of sites
• Social Media Marketing – This works for clients seeking long term social engagement with customers. We handle blogging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and other accounts for such clients
• Online PR – We also handle online PR for companies seeking to grow their reputations outside of advertising African Market online

It’s a lot of work to sell yourself into new accounts and then keep up with the demands of high profile clients. I know, I’ve been there. I know Joshua, and I know he’ll be successful with this.

What I also know is this, it’s terribly hard to scale a service organization. It takes more people. My hope is that Pamoja Media will be able to gather enough clients in the ad network space so that that remains the core business. This can scale, and it can be done efficiently.

“The USAID and Western Union have launched a business-development program that will support U.S.-based African Diaspora in creating plans for sustainable start-up and established businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa. The program will also provide grant funding to 10-20 small-and-medium businesses with the strongest proposals for boosting economic opportunity and job creation in Sub-Saharan Africa through Diaspora-driven development.”

Deadline to apply is July 21, 2009.

“The greatest number of merchants and retail customers will be reached over mobile operators, not banks.”
- Ken Njoroge

Ken Njoroge is a homegrown Kenyan technology entrepreneur. One of the original founders of one of Kenya’s top digital agencies, 3Mice, he moved on to co-found Cellulant, which has been doing some great work all over East Africa and is now active in 9 countries in Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, South-Africa, Ghana, Rwanda, Botswana, Zambia & Ethiopia).

Cellulant started in this space 5 years ago, they began by selling music via mobile devices, but really got active in banking about 3 years ago as a customer trying to make things work for their buyers. It came down to this question: How could their customers pay directly via their mobile phone? Their problems were around usability and no one yet had a successful business case for this issue. This is still true within the banking space.

Cellulant are privileged to meet in the board rooms of banks and mobile operators. They hear first-hand the issues that are being discussed, and the build solutions for thOn the mobile operator’s side they are most closely aligned with Zain, creating a lot of third-party applications for them.

Ken spoke about the 4 pillars of the mobile payments space, briefly covering banks and operators, but then delving deeper into what he considers the really big prize at the end of the day: merchants and retail consumers. (I agree, it’s the long-tail and it once tapped it will have an extraordinary impact on the economy)

Banks
They provide technology solutions that extend banks into mobile banking, and use mobiles as a channel to provide their services. The banks and the mobile operators are coming from different business models. The regulatory area needs to be looked at quite keenly because both are large and have a big impact.

Mobile operators
They have been the most innovative and a true success story in Africa.

Consumers
They have become increasingly sophisticated. They thought the low-hanging fruit was going to be urban young adults. However, they found out it was rural users, usually older in aged(!). “The consumer tends to be ahead of the technology – even us as an agile young company, we are trying to keep up with our customers.”

Merchants
These are the people and business entities looking to provide services and get paid in this ecosystem. This ranges from the big power and water organizations who use mobile phone payments for millions, but it’s also the video store across the street who has 2000 customers that needs payment solutions too (the long tail). We have to find solutions for these types of smaller merchant-customers.

Maker Faire Africa (MFA), a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention, will take place August 13-15 at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Ghana’s capital, Accra.

As one of the contributing editors of AfriGadget, I am incredibly happy to see this event come together. When I started pitching in afew articles on Afrigadget, it was partly because I really liked Emeka Okafor’s idea of ‘A Make Philosophy for Africa’

A MAKE for Africa will be a non-limited set of values and practical ideas that evolve, germinate, propagate and replicate with informed nudges…

The upcoming event is Ghana is one giant nudge, that I hope you can support either by spreading the word – grab a badge here, or by donating a small sum towards making Make Faire Africa happen.

The Goal & MFA Supporters so far

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Spotted October 2008 at Moyo Lake Gift shop in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Unrelated PS: Architecture enthusiasts, particularly those interested in Nairobi, help us out with this mystery on flickr? We used to play a game we called ‘Wapi?’ which means ‘where’ in Swahili. I think we started this game in 2006, we’d post a picture on our blogs and have everyone guess as to the location. Steve had the most difficult ones, JKE and Mental too. Might be time to revive the game? *off to go look for an image to stump y’all with*

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Via the website:

We are building a network of innovative education entrepreneurs who are focused on improving the learning of African students. We are looking for entrepreneurial African educators and organizations who are working to ensure that pupils in Africa are learning the reading, writing, math, and critical thinking skills that they need to succeed. If you are a successful and innovative teacher, administrator, or education organization, we invite you to apply.

We are focused on learning and effectiveness. We are also looking for models that can help improve national educational systems. If you use unique instructional methods, materials, or curricula, we want to know about it. And we will encourage you to take your work to the next level, to reach more students with your innovative methods.

CC licensed photo by Leo Reynolds on Flickr

The 3 SAT3 countries of South Africa, Egypt and Senegal could be said to have fibre optic connections to the rest of the world or what others may call ‘true broadband’, the rest of the countries in Africa have to contend with VSAT connections or have their internet traffic routed through the above named SAT3 countries.

In the case of Kenya, fibre has been laid by companies such as Kenya Data Networks for communication within the country. The problem has been connecting Kenya to the rest of the world. That is where the bottleneck has been. The government of Kenya has been laying cable in many parts of the country, so is just a matter of time before high speed internet access is made available to urban areas and even smaller towns.

Do note the VSAT connections can have broadband-like speeds, so what we should look at is the connection costs and amount of bandwidth available.
For example, an E1 line (equivalent to the American T1) of 2 Mbps to ISPs costs 4000 USD in Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, 7000 USD in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, 32,000 USD in Cameroon, 25,000 USD in SA.

In residential access Telkom Orange charges about 5990 Ksh (approx. 75 dollars) for home access line of 256 kpbs downloads and 128 kpbs uploads per month. Many people use the Huawei wireless modems E220, E160 particularly in Nairobi with the 3G connections, utilizing a pay-as-you-go plan. Kenyan readers, how much do you pay for your internet access? what kind of speed do you get? Do you have a preferred service provider?

By and large, broadband access is very expensive. There are also other projects like TEAMS and EASSY (Quasi-Govt. consortium: Telkom Kenya/Orange is a member, as is Safaricom and Econet) that plan to connect parts of Africa to the rest of the world by Fibre optic Cable. So far SEACOM has arrived first and the prospect of having more competition could result in the cost coming down. Though that may indeed take time. For now, companies herald the arrival of SEACOM’s fibre optic line because it would mean an increase in productivity for businesses that depend on the internet. For example, there is a young businessman in Nairobi with an IT outsourcing company, with his relatively decent connection, he still has to wait for more than 5 minutes to download a 26MB file. In a few months with the SEACOM cable reaching Nairobi, the same download could take less than a minute and he can move on to other tasks. He has employees who often have to upload files via ftp to servers in the US. With the faster speeds it will make their jobs that much easier. He is not even too concerned about the cost right now, the overarching benefit is well…broadband.

CC licensed photo by Wesley Fryer on flickr

There are other factors such as open access, latency, and reliability, but talking about that would be tantamount to counting chicks before they hatch no?

As always, feel free to chime in with your thoughts in the comments or via twitter if you prefer to be pithy.

PS: To keep up with the African Telecommunications Union conference, Becky Wanjiku is live blogging from Port Louis, Mauritius.

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It’s great to see Time magazine present some trends that are not obvious, well-worn, are already over. They take a chance in this list of ‘10 Ideas Changing The World Right Now.‘ The line up includes not your usual suspects. With any list like this, there is no telling which are likely, but they are at least plausible. Two extra points for a positive African scenario. The ten trends are featured in the pic below; details at the link.

”

(Via KK Lifestream.)

In the back of my mind I couldn’t help but wonder…what of the global economic crisis? Wouldn’t that put a dent in this positive outlook? Oz has a great run down of how the global crisis affects Africa.

Blurb:

1. A slump in external demand affects exports and remittances.
2. A slump in external demand lowers commodity prices. Oil producing nations such as Nigeria are particularly vulnerable.
3. Lack of credit is stifling capital inflows and trade finance in the more advanced markets – such as Nigeria, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
4 The region is not immune to financial problems of its own. Credit has ballooned in many countries. Banks’ loan books are often concentrated in commodity-related industries.
5. Some retail investors borrowed heavily to punt on local stock markets.

You can also follow OZ on twitter.

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Last October I excitedly proclaimed just how much I loved Nokia because they had a data gathering app for E71’s, which they were making available for NGO’s to test out. Please forgive me for not blogging about it. but you can find more info on the mobile active wiki, or watch this 2 minute you-tube clip on tracking the Dengue fever in Brazil.

This brings me to the latest news from FrontlineSMS. FrontlineSMS forms provides a killer functionality of basically using SMS as the data carrying pigeon. This is how it works. The person running the FrontlineSMS hub creates forms with questions for the person in the field to fill in with information. The field agent only needs to have downloaded the forms client from [forms.frontlinesms.com] , this will work on any Java enabled phone, which is preety much a whole lotta phones. They can then receive a form from the hub via sms, fill it in and send it back again via SMS. Hmm I like my data-pigeon metaphor! This eliminates the need for a GPRS connection. If the person is entering the data at a place with no mobile signal, the information is still saved in ‘offline’ mode until the phone has a mobile signal. I do have to point out that with o/ forms you do not require an E71 or high end PDA like with the Nokia data gathering tool. I still heart Nokia, and would highly recommend the E71 if you need a smartphone.

Read more about it over at Ken’s blog, Erik’s thoughts on the Ushahidi blog and Jon Thompson’s coverage on Aid Worker Daily.

This functionality adds more fuel to the mobile => Cloud paradigm that I feel will redefine the participation and engagement with communities in rural areas. Once the information gets back to the hub, it can sync with a web app like Ushahidi or any other web enabled implementation that takes input from the Frontline SMS hub. The pretty graphs and visualizations are best presented on the web IMO. Personally, I am looking forward to using FrontlineSMS o/ forms to plan a kick-ass tree planting party!

PS: For o/ users in Kenya, do note that FrontlineSMS works with the Safaricom E220 modem. If it works with the new USB stick version E160? kindly leave a comment.

When I met Ken during the Plan International workshop in Kenya, he said something that I cant help but pass along.
“Do not ask for permission, ask for forgiveness” Keep doing whatever it is you love to do, and do not be afraid to try something new. I think Tonee and I co-opted that for our new-years motto. Seriously though, if you have ideas for using o/ in your work, check out [www.frontlinesms.com] . Ken and his team have built a very useful data gathering tool that could give your project even more reach. Plus, the folks in the forums are super-nice. Really.

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I was just going through Ken Banks’ flickr stream when I stumbled upon these two mobile recharging stations which I had seen earlier (it’s up since ~2 years) but only now I just realized that SOMEONE urgently needs to convert this into an AfriGadget/-Biashara and combine it with lockers for e.g. shoes and other facilities.

(source: Ken Banks, kiwanja.net)

Those of you who have been to cities like Nairobi know that a lot of people actually carry two pairs of shoes around - one for the road and one for the office. While working in Nbo, I often wondered why there are almost no public lockers available downtown that could be rented and used by commuters to deposit stuff they usually carry to the city on a daily basis for the lack of secure alternatives. Yes, there are some alternatives available, but these are(afaik) often only connected to supermarkets which means no 24h/7/365 availability of such services.

While these mobile recharging towers may work in the UK or the US in such secured places (like airports), I am wondering if this would also work in Nairobi if someone invests some money on a mobile charging cubicle with extra lockers for shoes and other office clothes, maybe also additionally secured by a watchman or someone running a kiosk.

What would it require? And how much would it cost? And what kind of licences would it require from the local institutions?

For some reasons, David Kuria’s ecotact.org website is unfortunately offline right now (so I can’t really show you what I am talking about), but it would be nice to have much more Ikotoilets all over Nairobi. While I believe that ecological sanitation projects always require a demand for fertilizers from farmers in semi-urban areas, the Ikotoilet as a 50% ecosan toilet could be one of those ideal locations for such storage facilities.

After all, it’s nice that consumers can buy airtime credit almost everywhere in the country, but there are hardly any places - even in cities - where one can take a shower after work, have a decent nature’s call or even use extra services like such lockers and mobile chargers.

There obviously is a great demand for such services / facilities - but how much would you be willing to spend on it as a customer and what’s the ROI rate for potential investors? I hope to find some answers to these questions one day…

In places where you just can’t go to the next hardware store and buy a ready-made solution, an AfriGadget is such an attempt for a working alternative.

I would even go as far as saying that Germany, for instance, is a very modular country (with many regulations & technical norms) and consequently offers many ready-made solutions that can just be purchased and instantly used. Spare parts for cars, houses, technical equipment - you name it, there’s a norm on it and a place where you can buy it.

Erik of WhiteAfrican recently argued that “If it Works in Africa, It will Work Anywhere”.

You may or may not agree with this provocative thesis, but it also shows that we are still consuming many products in the “developed” countries which were actually made for our consumer behaviour. And these things are also exported to Africa.

Anyone in the diaspora who has ever exported his older laptop for members of the extended family back home also knows that it may probably be broken once he/she returns during the next holiday.

Most conventional laptops are just too fragile to withstand the heat, dust, unstable power supply, malware and other threats the relatively rough life on “the dark continent” has to offer. And battery runtime with an average of max. 2h is often below par.

Netbooks are different.

Netbooks are simple, often light-weight small computers with a simple (but modern) CPU, enough RAM, a harddisk, a small screen (7″-10″), 2-3 USB ports, a sound card, WLAN connection and a card reader. They sometimes even come with an internal Bluetooth adapter so you can connect your mobile or other Bluetooth-enabled equipment to such a little machine. Oh, and it also has a webcam which is neat.

Most importantly though, many current netbooks are quite durable and even survive rough conditions.

Take my netbook, for example. I’ve purchased this used Asus eee PC 901 a month ago - and while I am still struggling with it’s tiny keyboard layout - I just can’t stop thinking that it could or should actually be THE killer device for use in many developing countries.

My netbook doesn’t have a conventional magnetic (rotating) hard disk, but instead comes with (slow) SSD flash memory. Like the one found on USB memory keys. 12 GB for the operating system, programs and some private data. Battery runtime is beyond 5h on this little baby - which means that it’ll even survive the next power failure. And since the tiny CPU inside doesn’t consume too much power, it could also work from the electricity generated via solar panels (a technology that’s already quite popular in many rural areas).

And here’s the bonus: most future netbooks will be sold with an internal UMTS modem, so you just insert your SIM card and go online. From anywhere where there’s network coverage. (I am actually saving on an Asus eee 1000H Go which has a 10,2″ screen, a better keyboard and an internal 3G modem).

The term “netbook” may be a bit irritating though (besides of this legal battle) as we all know that Internet broadband connectivity is still very limited and expensive in many developing countries. Instead, these little computers are much more than just very mobile computers with very good battery runtime: they are sufficient for most needs.

I’d say that at least 90% of your average tasks can be done on such a machine. Surfing the www, checking your e-mails, writing texts, spreadsheets, games - you name it, it does it. The only thing it doesn’t have is an internal DVD player, so your illegal DVDs purchased at that junction downtown probably won’t play - unless of course you connect an external DVD player via USB.

As long as the iPhone or maybe also some new Google Android phones are the only mobiles with a decent web browser (@Nokia: the S60 browser is NOT a decent solution), netbooks may be the perfect alternative platform and substitute the missing alternative.

“If it works in Africa….”….no, if it works anywhere else, it will also work in Africa.

“70% of Netbook sales so far have been in Europe“ - where they are often only used as second computers or desktop alternatives to those who just want to surf the net from their couch.

In many developing countries though, Netbooks could imho be the entry platform and substitute the otherwise missing or broken (older) computer system. Why? Because they are cheaper, more durable, come with their own power supply and are mobile enough to be shared by many different members of a family or local community.

And that’s why I consider netbooks to be real AfriGadgets. A solution to a problem we have in the past often tried to cure with mobile phones and their still ailing browser software.

Police Viol

KP readers, this statement by Philip Alston, the UN’s Special Rappoteur on Extra-Judicial Killings is a MUST READ.

Alston has just wrapped up his fact finding mission in Kenya.

Of course, the KNCHR has been on this issue for a while.

But it is still startling to see how pervasive the problem is ranging from killings because you pissed a cop in a bar to executions during the post-election violence.

Other key points:
- Wako being the epitome of impunity in Kenya
- The lack of an internal affairs unit in the Kenyan Police, so police who are culpable are expected to investigate themselves
- The shameless don’t care attitude of Ali
- The fact that the police have detailed reports of what was looted in Nyanza during the PEV but nothing on the 82 people who were killed by police bullets.

Why should you care?

Because these are the very people who are supposed to protect us. Next time the violence flares up, and at the rate Kenya is going, possibilities are it will. Will these people still be in charge?
Because these tactics are now being used to suppress peaceful protests (see my earlier posts this week).
Because, at the very least because the very next time you unknowingly pick a fight with a cop you stand a high chance of being “Mungiki’d”.

Whenever I think about technology and Africa, the importance of localization really sticks out in my mind. I harken back to the posts by Ethan Zuckerman and Koranteng Ofusu Amaah to revisit this issue. Ever had problems with images you uploaded to flickr?

As a software designer, Koranteng understands how hard it is to get the details of localization right - full support for different character sets and text that reads right to left instead of left to right. But he’s also interested in the cultural details of software design, which can be so subtle that you’re unlikely to detect them unless you’re directly effected by them:

Koranteng wrote:

The first thing I very quickly noticed: somehow all the photos that I uploaded to Yahoo Photos turned out darker than on Flickr (the services both resize uploaded photos). The photo-resizing algorithm used by Yahoo Photos was giving worse results. This was noticeable to me because a large number of photos featured darker-skinned people such as myself. The originals were fine and where there were lighter skin tones everything looked good, but with darker skintones, the resized photos were not so good.

Ethan noted that Koranteng found similar problems with Flickr’s flash plug-in and slideshow feature, as well as with Adobe Photoshops “Quick Fix” and “Auto Correct” options. Has anything changed since 2005 when Ethan wrote about this? I do not think so, but correct me if i am wrong.

Localization matters because cultural sensitivity in technology is paramount to designing products that work as well as possible for all communities.

Localization matters because, as this African technologist’s said…
“if it’s meant to be local, it should be locally developed” - Paa Kwesi Imbeah

So where are we today in terms of localization of software in Africa?

The most successful story that illustrates what opportunities there are in solving African (sw localization) problems with African solutions is that of Ted Kidane of Feedelix. Feedelix is currently providing products that allow SMS editing in Hindi, Chinese and Ethiopic. Software made by an African and now providing products to the world.

Another organization to watch and take note of is Kasahorow in Ghana. These guys are doing some incredibly cool stuff.

Kasahorow has been working on the Africa keyboards to aid in writing African content, in African languages. They are doing this for all the major operating systems. More info can be found here, including a downloadable package that you can try out. If your main language is Akan, Gaa, Gbe, Hausa, Igbo, Kikuyu, Luo, Swahili, Tswana and Youruba be sure to download that package.

Kasahorow is working on the ANLoc Project; a partnership with other organizations to address the issue of localization by creating locales, building tools, terminologies, standards, etc. More info about ANLoc can be found on African localisation dot net. Gotta love their tag line ‘The African Network for Localization’

There is a firefox add-on that Kasahorow released: Ladies and gentlemen, the Akan Dictionary for Firefox 3.0. Dare I say, cool stuff indeed.

Localization matters because it is empowering.
If ANLOC can succeed in its mission to enable Africans to participate in the digital age by making it easier for people to use technology in the language they are comfortable with, this only bodes well for the preservation of African languages and even fostering innovation. Ideas expressed in many ways, not just in English. (Yes, i do enjoy pointing out the obvious sometimes)

Like Jeremy Clarke of Global Voices put it simply: English != Global. The GV Lingua project, translates GV content from English to 15 languages, with Swahili and Polish translations having been added recently. Translations work best when the person has cultural context to allow for expressions in slang and language structures that are difficult to build into machine language. This is another example of localization + aggregation of content. Dare i say again, cool stuff indeed.

Another site to keep an eye on is AppAfrica, If i am not mistaken, there will be a project to translate tutorials from English to Swahili on their code repository.

On a global level, the ubiquity (firefox) experiment from Mozilla labs seeks to empower users and lusers heh heh to control the web browser with language based instruction. They want to make this available in more than 60 languages. Check it out here, and contribute to it if you can.
Watch this clip of Aza Raskin showing how ubiquity works.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

All in all, in real estate they always say location, location, location…when it comes to African tech i would categorically say localization, localisation, localization. (thank the Brits and Americans for the spelling differences). I would like to hear your thoughts on localization, if you have other examples, and of course more on the mobile web, which I did not touch on on this post.

PS: I am currently in Geneva Switzerland for the Lift Conference. The tag to follow on twitter, flickr and blogs is lift09.

An International Workshop on Small Scale wind energy For Developing Countries will be held
September 14-16, 2009, Nairobi, Kenya
The workshop will cover the following main themes:

• Wind energy technologies, their perspectives and applications in developing countries,

• Reliability of wind turbines, lifetime and strength of wind turbine components,

• Low cost and natural materials for wind turbines,

• Case studies, social and economic aspects of wind energy in developing countries.

Abstract Submission

Please submit a two-page abstract (700-800 words, in MS Word format) by e-mail to haqi [at] risoe[dot]dtu[dot]dk no later than March 15, 2008. Authors will be notified of the Committee’s
decisions shortly thereafter.

Registration

All participants are requested to register before March 20, 2009. The registration fee is 200 EURO
for participants from developed countries, and 1200 Kenyan shillings for the participants from
developing countries. After March 21, 2009, the registration fee increases to 350 EURO (developed
countries) and 3000 Kenyan shillings (developing countries), respectively. The payment of the
registration fee should be made either by credit card (Euro, Master or Visa), or by bank transfer.
Finally, after June 15, 2009, we take additionally late-registration fee of 70 EURO and 1000
shillings, for developed and developing countries respectively. The registration includes the access
to the sessions, coffee/refreshment and lunch/dinner.

Download the Workshop2009.pdf here.

PS: please stop laughing at the logo. My explanation, a lion was standing near a wind turbine, it farted a lightbulb or had a brilliant idea.

The Opera Mini mobile web browser is gaining popularity even in my household (ahem Nokia E71), and the latest numbers from the State of the mobile web indicate the stats for SA. I did not find any stats on Kenyan usage, i suspect its still not a ‘critical mass’ to warrant inclusion in SMW. Would be curious if anyone has mobile web stats from Kenya, please share, because Tim Berners Lee said so!

Download SMW PDF here and read a summary with highlights and pretty graphs here.

From the report:

In 2008, we saw strong growth in Opera Mini usage all over the world, in both developed and developing countries. Social networks and search engines were competitive, as Opera Mini users determined their preferences.

emphasis is mine
I would not be surprised if traffic from the developing world eclipses that of the developed world in the coming years. If over 80% of BBC mobile site’s traffic comes from Africa…we are likely to see more dominance of mobile web usage by my fellow Africans.
I heard this bbc stat last year and cant for the life of me find the document it was mentioned in. Halp?!

Snapshot: South Africa (# of unique users)

• Live is back on the list after a six month absence.

• In December, neither Gmail no webmail.co.za are on South Africa’s top ten list.

Top 10 sites in South Africa (# of unique users)

1) facebook.com

2) google.com

3) wikipedia.org

4) yahoo.com (up from 5)

5) gamejump.com (down from 4)

6) my.opera.com

7) mxit.co.za

8. youtube.com

9) waptrick.com (up from 10)

10) live.com (back on the list)

Top social networks in 2008 South Africa
• Facebook was the preferred social networking site for South Africans in 2008.

Web site Growth rate in 2008 (users)

facebook.com 187.48%

peperonity.com 66.44%

mocospace.com 189.98%

hi5.com 59.84%

I am shocked, who are these people using hi5?!!
It is quite likely that the stats for Kenya would indicate Facebook as the top site, would love to see how Zuqka is fairing on. @kahenya i am sure the TOS for Zuqka would definitely trump FB’s current heavy handedness?

Global Voices had a wonderful meme that I marginally partipated in. I say marginally, because i did not exactly teach someone how to blog, though i added my 2 cents to a question posed about twitter, and was so glad to know that my input was helpful, and even more elated that the person I sorta ‘taught’ how to micro blog is an inspiration to many African women including me.

Pic of Bola at TED Global Arusha

I was fortunate to meet Bola Olabisi of GWIIN (Global Women Inventors & Innovators network) in Long Beach during TED 2009. She is one extraordinary person. If you were at TEDGlobal 2007 in Arusha, you may remember her talk about women entrepreneurs and innovators. If not, click here for my post and here for Ethan Zuckerman’s blogging awesomeness.
I wrote of her TED talk:

Hers was a very inspiring talk because she exemplifies action. She saw something that wasn’t being done and just got on with making change happen.

To get updated on her organization’s work check out GWIIN. It will have a blog in future. Meanwhile, follow her on twitter. She is [twitter.com] Tweeps, please welcome her.

So her statement about twitter was ‘I am still trying to figure out twitter’
This was my brief response, keeping in mind that she has an E71/s60 Nokia phone, and I hope its also helpful to others reading this blog.

1. Only follow people you are interested in. To message someone, type @ afromusing and short message following. This will be seen by all your followers. to direct message (without all your followers seeing d afromusing…

2. You can download an app for your e71 twibble so you can see your twitter stream on your cell phone. (this uses your data connection, so be sure you have a data package or a wifi-capable phone)

3. For a desktop client, use http://www.twhirl.org/ this allows you to share links, which you can shorten or [www.feedalizr.com] which can aggregate all your other social networks (plus it is an app made in Capetown SA)

4. I have intentionally omitted the section on updating your twitter using SMS because I think that functionality was disabled for countries other than US.

5. You can tie your twitter acct to your facebook account with the app [apps.facebook.com] such that when you update your twitter it updates your FB status too.

Happy tweeting…and a belated Happy Valentines! Add more tips in comments.

Read more here.

Name one thing you would like Barak Obama to do once he is president of the United States of America. This is the question, or variations of it, that I have been asked, mainly by the international media, over and over again these past couple of weeks. They are eager for “the view from the Kenyan street” you see.

As the day when Obama does become president has drawn closer my answer has changed a couple of times. From the philosophical – Obama does not need to do anything more, what he has achieved so far is revolutionary. The vaguely idealist – a deal on trade would be brilliant. To humouring my inner conspiracy theorist – Obama needs to tell us the truth about the American lab where the AIDS virus was invented.

As today, Inauguration Day, got closer my mind kept going back to my good friend and blogger extraordinaire Sami Ben Gharbia and a Twitter update he posted on Oct 9th, 2008. Sami’s Tweet said:

I’m sick of the Obama’s myth of change and of the dream that the US will finally stop its support for “soft” dictators

I agree completely. Soft dictators – those who are convenient allies to the powers that be on the international scene while destroying liberty at home (see Mubarak, H; Zenawi, M; arap Moi, D) are the scourge of the Continent. If Obama’s administration drops the United State’s moral, financial and military support for soft dictators then we’d know the man is serious about change (and I’d be able to convince Sami that having a Kenyan in the White House is a good thing).

Prayer

Barak Obama must be the most prayed for politician ever. Throughout the past two years all over Kenya there have been prayer for Obama. My Nigerian and Ghanaian friends tell me that the same has been happening in their countries. Many African American churches and the wider evangelical movement have had frequent days of prayers for Obama.

When the announcement came through on the international news networks that he had secured enough Electoral College votes to win the US presidency I could hear Christian songs of praise, sung by the West African women who had been having an all night prayer virgil as the results were coming in, flowing from the flat above. Not to be outdone Kenyan MPs decided to hold a prayer meeting in Uhuru Park in the middle of Nairobi.

Even those who do not like Obama very much, for example bitter right wing bloggers, have been busy urging prayers for Obama (although their prayers seem to be of the sour-grapes-he-better-not-mess-up-all-the-good-work-Bush43-has-done variety, but they still count.) When you have Kenyan MPs and bitter rightwing bloggers all praying for you then you are probably the most prayed for politician ever.

The prayers did not stop with electoral victory. Since he ascended from being a candidate for the presidency to President-Elect the prayers – at least in Kenya – seem to have intensified.

Before the election the prayers were for electoral victory, immediately following the election the prayers were of thanksgiving for the victory. The intense prayers that have taken over since then are prayers of safety. Over and over again I hear passionate almost desperate prayers for Obama’s safety. That those who want to physical hurt and even kill him, his wife, their children and extended family do not succeed.

There is a sense of real and immediate danger on behalf of Obama flowing through Africa and when Africans feel danger they pray! Most of the questions I have fielded on issues surrounding Obama in the past few weeks have focused on the Secret Service because people are interested in who is protecting him and how good they are. (Very bleeding good, is my standard reply, I wouldn’t mess around with the USSS if I were you.)

This fear for the safety of Obama is strange in that it seems to have an expiry date. There seems a conviction that once he takes the oath of office he will be fine and no one would be allowed to kill him. But while he is just President-Elect he is still in danger! That is one reason some people have taken the afternoon off today in Kenya today – not just to watch the build up to the inauguration which is at 20.00 local time – but to pray for Obama’s safety in these final moments before he raises his hand and takes that oath.

Asides

Aside 1: If, as rumoured, the Boys Choir of Kenya included Jambo Bwana in their repertoire during International Conservation Caucus Foundation Inauguration Gala as threatened, I will personally cancel all their passports! Please no no no. Not Jambo Bwana. Please! Hopefully it was just a bad rumour!

Aside 2: You would think that with all the Obama parties taking place across Kenya today someone would have hosted one of these, “No Bush Left Behind” bashes somewhere. Instead all we have are boring drinks with “traditional” food (a.k.a Nyam Chom na Tusker). Shave the Date would have been a lot more interesting.

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(Le compositeur DIANGIENDA WABASOLELE Armand) “DWA, en autodidacte, étudie le solfège jusqu’à maîtriser la composition en musique classique. Il a hissé l’Orchestre au niveau d’une grande formation dont la renommée dépasse largement les frontières d’Afrique. De plus en plus il établit les ponts entre son orchestre et d’autres orchestres du genre à l’étranger.” (source)

Pretty amazing!

Or as one member of the orchestra says in this short clip: “When I am sick and I listen to the music, it gives me strength.”

[via]

Read more from Mukoma wa Ngugi here.

Late last year, I wrote about the film Milking The Rhino, and promised to update once a screening of the film is confirmed in Nairobi.

I am pleased to invite you to the premiere film screening of Milking The Rhino

Tuesday January 13th 2009 at 5 p.m

Goethe Institut - Corner of Loita/Monrovia Street Maendeleo House
Nairobi.

Cost: Free

The film will run for 85 minutes and there will be time for discussion following the screening. Some special guests featured in the film will likely be in attendance, Dr. Helen Gichohi, President of the African Wildlife Society in Nairobi and if possible, a representative of the Lewa Conservancy. Do join us for a discussion on community conservation, environment and film.

I will have some cool MTR buttons to hand out, and believe me, it would be well worth your evening to attend this screening.

You can RSVP on the facebook event page if you will be there.

January 28th 2009 - Accra, Ghana

EcoLab Conference
Hosted by The Society for Conservation Biology and Ecological Lab Unit of University of Ghana. MTR will be screening with a reception to follow.

*Many thanks to KikuyuMoja, Barbara Reich of Goethe Institute, Xan Aranda of Kartemquin films, William Deed of the Mara Conservancy and last but not least Jeannie Magill the executive producer of MTR for making this happen.

Do come and milk the rhino!

For info on other screenings in US and the rest of the world, please check the MTR website.

First, I have been accused of hating on the Iphone a bit too much and being a Nokia fan girl. Those accusing me of this may be on to something. Here is why. I have previously wagged my finger at Apple for tying their beautiful device to a crappy provider like AT&T and ranted about my misgivings with the 1st gen Iphone.You see, i have had first hand experience with this monstrosity of a telco named AT&T. When I became blinded by the 3G speeds and the GPS on the new Iphone, i succumbed to the hype, the hipster call of duty and got the 16GB model of Iphone. First, the process of activating the phone at the Apple store did not go well, plus the ‘genius’ who was assigned to me was saying rather daft things like ‘i am required by Apple and AT & T to ask you whether you will be traveling out of the continental US’ and some other drivel all culminating in her telling me that I would have to get my phone activated by AT&T. After this that and the other, i finally got the phone activated and after even more drama that i shall save you the pain of reading and weeping, i was able to port my old phone number from T-Mobile. Let me just warn anyone reading this. Learn from my ginormous error people, do NOT for a moment think of switching from T-mobile to AT&T not even for the Jesus phone, Buddha phone or ‘There-is-no-deity’ phone. T-mobile is a far better company to deal with than AT&T, so save yourself the headache. I am glad to be back in the T-mobile fold thank you very much. Lets not even talk about unlocking your phone so you can use it when you travel, that would just be rehashing my old rant on this very point. Again, i learned first hand why I have unkind words for AT&T. In order for you to get decent rates when roaming, you have to sign up for a monthly roaming service where you pay an addition $5.99 so you can save a few cents on a pre-existing exorbitant roaming charge. So if you were to receive calls in say…Finland, if you had the roaming service it would cost you $1.19 per minute, if not, it would be $1.99 per minute or something close to that. Same applies if someone leaves you voicemail. You would still get charged at the roaming rate. T-mobile does not charge you a ‘roaming service’ fee. Data roaming is also very expensive. Do not dare get lost and use your Iphone maps for directions. You will flail, cry and quite likely faint when you receive your bill.

This pairing of a beautiful device with a crap company had me all worried when Apple announced that they would be making inroads into various parts of the world including Kenya. In the case of Kenya, Orange Telcom is the carrier of choice. Rebecca wrote about this in Network world August’08. Please be warned the following quote is plain and simple self promotion…But do I say?

Telkom Kenya will start selling the iPhone in Kenya next month after launching the Orange mobile phone service.
Orange entered into a contract with Apple that gave it the right to sell the iPhone in Kenya and the sale will commence once the service rolls out, said Njeri Rionge, chief commercial and marketing officer at Telkom.”My concern with the iPhone is the return to the old telecom hegemony where you are tied to one carrier because of a contract (since the telecom subsidizes the hardware), this system can be very annoying especially with the freedom that Kenyans have enjoyed in terms of their ability to switch carriers easily,” said Juliana Rotich, a Kenyan technologist.

Did you buy an Iphone in Kenya? What was your experience with Telkom like? Inquiring minds would like to know.
Ahem. moving along..

Second, the authoritarianism of the walled garden approach taken by Apple, particularly with DRMed songs on Itunes irks me to no end. I try to buy songs from Amazon MP3 store and would encourage all who believe in freedom, truth and chocolate to do the same. Yes hyperbolical of me, but dude, i wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when you use up your ‘authorizations’ from Apple because you switched between one too many computers/iphones. Lets not even talk about Apple yanking useful apps like Tether that would help you make the most out of that 3G data speed you are paying an arm, leg and pancreas on your Iphone data plan. Yes you can jailbreak it using Pawnage and get apps on cydia, but I digress.

All this brings me to my new device of choice.The Nokia E71, and my new device of drool and gadget lust, the N97

*cc licensed pic by JKE on flickr

Just so you know I am seriously getting rid of my Iphone. Yes, i will miss the nice lines and one touch ease of interfacing with the web, the sleek simplicity of apps like Twinkle, Brightkite and even FB for Iphone. I will be content with Twibble and locr. I never got comfortable typing on the Iphone, sometimes I still pine for my old Q with the wide QWERTY keyboard, so E71 with its slimmer frame is a good compromise. The E71 is a phone that truly gives you wings…(sorry Redbull) You can travel with it, stick a local sim card and get talking, emailing, fringing, tagging photos with locr, mapping your way with the super fast GPS all the while having the freedom of having whatever blinking ringtone you want on it. I know you do not care, but I am indulging today aren’t I? My current ringtone is the song Gongo Aso by 9ice. I have the freedom to change it Moloko’s ‘Fun for me’ or Morcheeba’s Enjoy The Ride (Silver Saver Mix). Try doing that on the Iphone…you would have to pay Apple to create a simple ringtone?!! When Wired’s gadget lab proclaimed this phone ‘Best of Test’ I wholeheartedly agreed then and still do. On the podcast I think the guy said ‘This phone is not for everyone. It is for people who want a higher level engagement with their phone’ I haven’t even touched on the barcode reader! You know what, just head on over to Juergen’s for a complete rundown of E71 awesomeness if you haven’t already.

The Nokia N97

CC licensed pic by Inky on flickr

From the looks of it, this could be THE phone that combines the best of ALL worlds, at least while the Morph concept phone remains just that. A concept.The N97 has a full QWERTY keyboard, touch screen, Micro SD slot and generous memory - 32GB onboard memory, you can add 16GB on the Micro SD card slot. For more spec-goodies see the Data_Sheet_Nokia N97.pdf. I care about the 32GB memory because if you truly want an Ipod replacement such that you would have one device to rule them all, and have access to your substantial collection of music, space matters. If for some odd reason you’d want to listen to Longomba’s ‘Vuta Pumzi’ while you recall the good times circa 2005-’06, or early 2000s Kenyan rap that sounds rather bad right now, yet at the time you were bobbing your head going…’oh this is nice’ well you’d have the freedom to. Wings from Nokia i tell ya. Wiiings! Caveat: The N97 does not have a flashlight. Readers of this blog know that i have this thing for Nokia phones with flashlights, and believe that it is The.Best.Feature.Ever! so on this one point, i am going to ding the N97 just a peg. If someone can hack the Dual LED camera flash to act like a flashlight when i type a combination of keys…well it is quite possible that I would sign over an IOU stating my infinite adoration to the person who hacks this. Yes oh yes, BET ON NOKIA.

I am looking forward to being in a country where i can switch mobile companies vuka/unvuka as I darn well please. Kenya, see you in a bit.

So here is the question that Théophile Kouamouo came up with.

Why do you blog about Africa? Do we blog for the diaspora and for the world at large, cut off from our contemporary on the continent? Is blogging about Africa done in the same way as blogging about Europe or Asia? Does the African-oriented blogosphere have something specific to offer to the world version 2.0?

I blog about Africa because it is fascinating, fantastically diverse culturally, beautiful and cool. Like other Kenyans who grew up watching URTNA on the one TV channel (gosh I am old!), I am fascinated by the different types of music from Cameroon (Zangalewa!! eh eh eh - Kibe Zangalewa!), the chilled romantic grooves of Madagascar, Tabu Ley of the country then known as Zaire, Jolie Detta of Congo -even though I thought that was only music for my parents, to my current obsession with Kizomba music from Angola. I really could say more, but i will be brief Being an Afrophile is musically, intellectually and artistically very interesting. There is so much to learn! Not only from the past, but also from the present, how we are innovating and reshaping our continent positively. I touched on this awhile back in the post ‘Memes, Markets, Africa’. Without further ado, I tag:

Forota

Sci-Culturist

Mweshi

Rafiq

So why do you blog about Africa?

*Image by Warren Rohner
From AfriWea

There is an opportunity for African authors in the RE field to contribute to the World Wind Energy Association yearbook:2009/2010

WWEA is accepting contributions from the African continent, with a goal of creating comprehensive country reports and project examples of wind energy.

The yearbook will include special reports in the following areas:
1. Policies
2. Community Power Approaches and Social Acceptance
3. Industrial Trends
4. Financing
5. Grid Connected Systems and Wind Farms Onshore and Offshore
6. Integrating Renewable Energies
7. Small Scale Wind and Hybrid Systems
8. Wind Assessment and Prediction
9. Education and Training
10. Research and Development of Technology.

Dates, Deadlines and Information
- Final abstract deadline: 11 December 2008
- Final paper deadline: 15 January 2009
- Abstract and paper format: Word-Format (unformatted)
- Final paper maximum size: Five pages A 4

Please send your abstract, further requests and the paper to:
WWEA Head Office, Frank Rehmet, Chief Editor
Tel. +49-228-369 40 80 Fax: +49-228-369 40 84
E-Mail: fr [at] wwindea [dot] org

This film left an big impression on me. Long time readers of this blog know that I do have granola-head, green thumb, renewable-energy obsession, tree-huggery tendencies, so no surprise there eh.
Without giving too much away…the film opened my eyes to the link between Kenya’s history and our attitudes towards conservation. Before the British came, Kenyan communities had traditions around hunting wild animals (These traditions and folklore still persist - I visited Samburu in 2006 and learned a wee bit about this). I would posit that it was sustainable, because there was some balance between the hunting that was done and the populations of wildlife. When laws were enacted to forbid Kenyans from hunting…something they had been doing for millennia, that relationship with the natural world was broken. Why would one want to protect something that they are not benefitting from? Wildlife started to be seen as a nuisance. Granted that there is demand for ‘exotic’ skins, tusks, and bone from wild animals particularly in Asia; one of the factors behind poaching in the parks, there are instances of communities killing wildlife because their crops were destroyed by animals such as Elephants. Still, our attitudes towards conservation and environment bear some reflection.

The film profiles two communities, one in Kenya, at the Il Ngwesi lodge and the Lewa Conservancy, and another in Namibia. The narration is brilliantly voiced by a Kenyan Munyikombo Bukusi, a very talented guy. This film had me making plans to visit Il Ngwesi Group Ranch, if you need a place to get away and relax your cares away…Il Ngwesi lodge looks like just the place to go.

The blurb from the film’s site gives you a glimpse into the documentary…

A ferocious kill on the Serengeti… warnings about endangered species…
These clichés of nature documentaries ignore a key landscape feature: villagers just off-camera, who navigate the dangers and costs of living with wildlife.
The Maasai of Kenya and Namibia’s Himba – two of Earth’s oldest cattle cultures – are in the midst of upheaval. After a century of “white man conservation,” which displaced them and fueled resentment towards wildlife, they are vying to share the wildlife-tourism pie.
Community-based conservation, which tries to balance the needs of wildlife and people, has been touted by environmentalists as “win-win.” The reality is more complex. Charting the collision of ancient ways with Western expectations, MILKING THE RHINO tells intimate, hopeful and heartbreaking stories of people facing deep cultural change.

The film will premiere on PBS Spring 2009, hosted by Terence Howard (the famous actor - Crash, Hustle & Flow etc)
Till then, the following festivals and screenings are your best chance of watching it. If you cannot wait, you can purchase the DVD for $25.00 from Kartemquin films, just contact Xan. I would highly recommend the DVD.

Screenings:

November 2nd 2008 3pm: Chicago Humanities FestivalChicago Cultural Center

International Premiere
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)
November 2008

Washington, D.C. Premiere : D.C. Environmental Film Festival
March 11 - 22, 2009

*I will update this post if there will be screenings in Kenya. (I am asking about this and hoping we can arrange one soon)

The best part for me is that in a recording I can make sure I don’t forget any lines and I can add more images into the slideshow. I know I had to cut out a section of the talk in the live event as I was running out of time. Either way, I hope you enjoy it, as it’s a mixture of my history that explains a little of my present occupation.

A special round of thanks goes out to the following people for going the extra mile and getting this done:

• Jason Mule (PHP)
• Henry Addo (PHP)
• Soyapi Mumba (Javascript)
• Wilfred Mworia (API)
• Caleb Bell (admin design)
• Jared Pervis (front-side design)

It’s really looking good too, in no small thanks to Caleb and Jared. Check out the demo for yourself. More on it at the Ushahidi blog.

Of course, there are bugs that need to be found and squashed. Many bugs, legions of them I’m sure, as this is just the alpha. Send all of your errors, bugs and failures to bugs.ushahidi.com - Thanks!

The partying isn’t even done, but it’s time to finalize features and start building in the new ones. Check out the task list at http://wiki.ushahididev.com/doku.php?id=october_tasklist_2 if you want to get started.

Ken Banks, who I’ve become even better friends with since we roomed together for the PopTech Fellows program, spoke today about FrontlineSMS. With his British accent, talk of Daleks from Dr. Who, and witty comments he won over the room.

Two of my favorite speakers were in the first session of the day, Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody) and Chris Anderson (The Long Tail). Just read their books, it’s probably the best advice I can give you.

From the PopTech Blog:

“In Zulu, the word masiluleke means “lend a helping hand” and “give wise counsel” - a concept at the heart of a new project announced this morning at Pop!Tech. Project Masiluleke, which spun out of a talk by HIV campaigner Zinny Thabethe at Pop!Tech 2006, is attempting to wrestle back some initiative in the HIV-Aids crisis in Africa.”

When the team who worked on this went through the numbers, the impact and the process created to attack the issue of HIV in South Africa, it was incredibly emotional. Robert Fabricant of Frog Design worked on this, and I’ve learned first-hand how this man can laser in on strategic design challenges - and they did the same for this project.

Really, this was an all-star team, Gustav Praekelt - one of the most knowledgeable mobile phone specialists in Africa - is helping to run the program. It’s done using the 120 character free space in “Please Call Me” SMS system that’s used in South Africa. They tack on messages to get people to come to get HIV treatment in private, so that they don’t have to worry about what stigma attached to that treatment.

Update: Here is another picture from January 18th 2008 - Gives you another view.

Wherever I go in Africa, one of the consistent comments that I hear from young entrepreneurs in the technology space is that there is no way to get started. There is little seed capital and very few angel investors to be found. That’s a problem - and it’s true in East Africa as well as South Africa.

In a conversation with John Balen, General Manager of Canaan Partners - a top tier Bay Area venture capital firm, over breakfast this morning at PopTech Fellows we discussed a few of these challenges. Canaan has operations and offices in India, Israel and the US, which means that they have some experience working in areas with non-traditional VC ecosystems.

It turns out that one of the main problems in places like Africa, which is somewhat similar to places in India, is that the investors have to be educated first. Seed capital and early venture funding is a high risk proposition. There are few investors who care about technology, and those that do are interested in the later stages of investing.

A common problem in Africa is finding young entrepreneurs with a good idea, generally technical in nature, and they need about $5000-$10,000 to handle operations and build out of their technology in the first 6 months to a year. If they can find a local funder, that person generally wants an inordinate amount of equity in the operation - anywhere from 40-80%.

Some serious education in the investor circles in Africa needs to take place.

Lastly, there should be some recognition that a lot of the young entrepreneurs need some help. Beyond the funding, just giving some help in learning how to set up and grow a real business is hugely important. Introducing potential partners, helping broker deals and giving advice on how to hire employees are ways that investors grow into being a true partner - and African entrepreneurs badly need this too.

I’m interested in seeing some Y-Combinator style venture funding companies AND communities developing around different regions in Africa. Groups that only fund the very early stages of development ($5000 - $15000) for very short periods of time (3-6 months).

I know there are some individuals doing just that, but let’s talk about communities around this space. What I think would be interesting would be to see these individuals band together and create real communities that connect with and plug in to the community in much closer ways. Become part of the local technology ecosystem and really learn how to find promising individuals and foster them to greatness - and make a lot of money along the way.

As John Balen said, “It’s hard for large VC funds to invest in small enterprises.” This is especially true in Africa, so why not figure out a way to foster earlier stage investments as a community of smaller investors?

Blogging about the environment is a multi-faceted endeavor, because it is such a broad topic. This was reflected in the concerns brought to the table by bloggers, and when you visit their blogs, you will see that each of them writes about the environment with a different style, and that they have varying concerns. From Green building techniques and green-tech on Carbon Smart, to reviews of eateries and films on Relax with Dax…The South African bloggers have passion for the environment and are part of the ‘green movement’ happening world wide. The question I was asked was, how come the bloggers in South Africa are the most active African writing about the environment? Part of the reason is the digital divide. The internet penetration rate in South Africa is relatively higher compared to other Sub Saharan countries. We have not seen more ‘green bloggers’ emerge in other parts of Africa in as big a way as they have in South Africa (particularly Cape town) I am no social scientist, but I do hope that as internet penetration rates increase in Africa, that we have more people writing about issues relating to the environment.

We discussed the business of blogging briefly, particularly whether to accept advertising on your site, particularly whether you can do this effectively without compromising your ‘voice’. For example if you do not condone the actions of a multinational company, yet when you have google ads, their ad could appear on your site. How do you manage that effectively? This remained an open question, though Wanda of UrbanSprout suggested having control over which ads can appear on your site with whichever method of ad service you pick.

Another issue was brought up by Rafaela of greenflavour, about using blogs for environmental activism. The resulting actions such as cease and desist letters from companies that try to sue you for stating an opinion. I did mention Eff.org as a resource, and checking the Berkman Center for Internet and Society on guidance in terms of law and free speech online.

Rory of Carbonsmart challenged all of us that we need to show transformation, to show that the environmental movement is happening, and that people are thinking about their impact on the environment and doing something about it. To this end, Rory has began a mapping project called ‘Greening Africa’. The map was mentioned on an earlier post on GV enviro.

Glen of Urbansprout is considering creating a map of the information contained in the exhaustive directory of green businesses. He and Wanda created the directory from scratch and it is currently part of the Urbansprout site. It is a good resource for the many football fans flocking to South Africa in 2010 for the the world cup. Do bookmark Greenstay.co.za, as he gets this project together.

There were so many other great conversations, but the consensus was that this was the first of many such gatherings for bloggers who share a concern for the environment to meet, exchange ideas and collaborate on various initiatives. I would like to thank each and every one of the bloggers who attended. I hope that this is but the beginning of many more meetups. I left encouraged, and inspired by the environment bloggers of the Mother City.

Links to their blogs are listed here (in no particular order).

Rory Carbon Smart

Dax Relax with Dax

Glen urbansprout

Wanda Urbansprout

Cecile Dream in Green

Candice Aspirant Locavore

Raffaella Green Flavour

Tracy Capetown Oracle and EcoStreet

Update: One more link…Ian ‘GreenMan’, I have been reading his blog for years and can’t believe I forgot to include a link.

The wiki is available for future meetups and as always if there is a blogger interested in joining the Global voices team for enviro-bloggers, please let me know.

Pictures of Capetown are posted on the flickr set ‘I love Capetown’. Thanks again to the enviro-bloggers in South Africa for their time and for their hospitality.

InSTEDD has a number of ongoing projects, generally thinking about ways to use technology to help organizations collaborate better in some of the harshest disaster environments in the world. You’ll find their tech guys everywhere, from Cambodia to hurricane Ike. Their Mesh4x and SMS GeoChat technology is incredibly important, and I foresee it being used in many applications in the future.

UNICEF has two interesting skunkworks-like projects (among many more) that they talked about today. The Bee, which allows communication, connectivity and data access in field conditions where such technologies are often difficult or impossible to use (video of the old version of the Bee). Christopher also talked about RapidSMS, an SMS and voice data gathering tool that is currently being used in Northern Uganda.

It was interesting to hear each of us talk about our projects and how we each have an immense amount of respect for what each of the other groups is doing. Ushahidi’s focus is on gathering distributed data from civilians for visualization, InSTEDD is focused on collaboration, and UNICEF is trying to figure out how that works within groups and communities.

One consistent message is this: every crisis situation differs, so we need to build tools that are open and free for anyone to access. It’s a little like all of us creating different Lego pieces that go into the Lego box for everyone else to use.

Ushahidi needs to figure out how to incorporate both RapidSMS and SMS GeoChat. UNICEF’s Bee needs to get Mesh4x embedded in their device - which has both open source hardware and software. There are other tools, like Sahana, that we need to learn how to incorporate into our systems as well - or at the least make possible to interface between when people need that specific mix of tools in their particular situation.

Lastly, but probably most importantly, we all see that developing within the context of the areas of the world where these disaster or crisis situations are happening is vital. UNICEF has developers in a couple different African countries. InSTEDD’s devs are training local devs in all of the countries that they go to. Ushahidi has 85% of our dev team in Africa. It’s a trend, and a good one - making sure that the people build the tools using the devices and limitations in which they will be used.

Look for big things stemming from this meet up soon.

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.

The questions we debated.

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...]

Farmers were tired of waking up at odd hours to irrigate their farms, so one of them created a mobile app that allows remote control of water pumps
Jan notes that there is a commercial version, called Nano Ganesh.

The impact of this, particularly when combined with cheap and reliable services like Village Connection should not be underestimated.

Indeed. This hack reminded me of the brilliant Morris Mbetsa from Kenya who made an anti theft device that is controlled remotely via mobile phone. When the technology platform allows for people to write localized applications, amazing things happen. This is another reason I like the Nokia S60, because it allows for anyone to create hacks such as this. Now that is transformative technology.

I am currently reading Jonathan Zittrain’s book ‘The future of the Internet and how to stop it’ In the first few chapters he mentions ‘generativity’ and how it is part of the internet. To paraphrase, it is the ability for 3rd parties to create and innovate on top of a platform. In light of the S60 Nokia platform and the open source nature of the Symbian and Android…perhaps the mobile world is set to have platforms that encourage innovation around the world. Just like the story from India and Kenya are interesting, I think there is definitely more to come.

PS: I am currently at Mobile Active 08 ; a conference bringing together many of the people using mobiles for social change. You can follow the proceedings on http://twitter.com/mobileactive

My friend, former colleague and fellow blogger Christian created this lovely site with Drupal on behalf of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC (& UNCDF, gtz, ILO + USAID).

Christian actually tested his design on me and others some time ago, using Silverback and directly implemented our feedback to improve this site (Silverback & Evernote are some of those reasons why I am sometimes longing for a combination of a MacBookPro and an iPhone…).

The LEDNA website aims to pool “local economic development knowledge” and “engage in community-networks to build the knowledge hub”. In other words: the LEDNA website shall provide a community of networked activists who are active in the field of local economic development and want to exchange experiences and opportunities with each other. I see it as an independent online resources that helps pooling different experiences from and for Africa by Africans. Hence the name “Network OF Africa” (instead of for).

Given the unstable internet connectivity in many African countries and a missing incentive for stakeholders (= How can I benefit of this network as a local planer?), the website itself isn’t the best solution for gathering knowledge - but it sure provides a step in the right direction and it now only depends on how it will be marketed and sold to those knowledge providers who are supposed to contribute content. After all, what really matters (I think) aren’t studies and political papers only, but real experience from the ground that provides a clear picture of what worked and what didn’t.

I really hope that this site takes off and turns into a vivid network of real-life experiences - and doesn’t only cover positive news (= what donors want to hear). As for the website itself - kudos to Christian for this wonderful setup so far!

I had a professor at university who was given many important international awards, even some under the Bush-administration - but at home his fellow colleagues made fun of him whenever he wasn’t around. Working as a member of the faculty council and being his student, I often had to defend his unordinary actions because his fellow colleagues never understood his scope of work and genius mind.

Talking about taking financial risks, my impression is that there’s a different culture in the US that almost pushes people forward and provides them with some financial backup to put their ideas in place. Not so in Europe, where you will either have to convince as a person & your reputation or have a very very tight business plan & idea of what you’re going to do. Meaning, the willingness to carry a risk is so much higher in the US than in Europe. I may be wrong on this, but that’s my impression so far.

Take the US election campaigns, for instance. With the involvement of the new media channels and blogosphere, the individual is approached at his point of interest and guided into a wonderland full of emotions, nationalism/honour and some private tidbits of the candidates.

Whenever I watch these campaign videos online, I think: well - would this work in Germany? Would such emotional campaigns also work in Europe?

Yes. Voters wouldn’t be used to that, but the majority is the same all over the world and that’s why I think what makes a strong leader isn’t lipstick, but a positive charisma that may be sold to the masses.

I am a sceptic 1/2German who does not believe the hype, but at the same time I so often wish my fellow countrymen would at least sometimes be more open to new ideas, take more risks and ease up some bureaucratic processes.

——

I tried to follow the BarCampAfrica event last night that took place at Google’s Mountain View Headquarters in the US, with streaming & recorded video sessions from Kenya, SA, Nigeria and Ghana. A quite interesting networking event. From what I heard during the panel discussions, I can only assume that the Ayittey/Shikwati approach of “less help, more trade” still needs to reach even more open minds in the US and elsewhere, and that there are indeed some countries on the African continent that are already capable of providing IT work.

attendees at the BarCampAfrica (picture by Maneno.org)

This is exactly why I endorsed the BarCampAfrica actually taking place in the US - to reach those who still need to understand that we’re not (only) talking about water pumps, proper sanitation, food security or health issues, but instead about Africa as a market. I strongly believe that the creation of such business opportunities is the only way forward as all other approaches aren’t sustainable enough.

I am currently in the process of writing my diploma thesis (Dipl-Ing.) on “sanitation as a business in Africa”, and the basic concept is to promote (public) sanitation facilities as a business and combine that with a reuse concept. A reuse of nutrients contained within the different waste streams.

So, even though I am coming from this green/environmental engineering background, I do not follow the “…Africans need proper watsan/food/health supply before anything else”-approach. Instead, I believe that even such fundamental issues will be resolved by proper markets - not because they represent such a fair system, but because they do work and are sustainable. You may not agree on this, but then pls show me a sustainable project that has been build up with outside help and has grown into a full business.

Next we’ll need to have such a BarCampAfrica event in Europe. The only similar events I’ve seen so far were invitations on behalf of a local Chamber of Commerce that invited some permanent secretaries from African nations and key investors from Europe - where the aim clearly was to attract investment in Africa and to create a network of potential investors who would pressure local governments on opening up their trade policies. A BarCamp is different as everyone is free to join. And that’s exactly the spirit I’d like to see in Europe much more often. Take the risk, meet new people, share your ideas (for a better world, *cough cough*) and feel the “Yes we can” spirit. After all, most of the now much celebrated Web 2.0 projects started off as small 3day hacks - so even small ideas have the potential to work out and prosper.

The video transmissions via ustream.tv at one point later in the night broke off, but conversations continued on Twitter & Co. even until Sunday, so I take it that the BarCampAfrica was a real success - and much needed.

*mobile phone project: a WAP-based dictionary that would also have an sms-based frontend.

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.

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.

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]

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:

• Paul Cook of Thornhill Associates
• Ismail Dhorat of Startup Africa
• JP Viljoen
• Teddy Ruge of Project Diaspora

I can’t actually view the video, but if I could it would be at this link: Barcamp Jozi panel

(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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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)

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.

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.

In the next two weeks we have 8 events covering 6 countries:

• Barcamp Madagascar
• ** Skunkworks@Innovation - Nairobi, Kenya
• Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation - Nigeria
• * Barcamp Africa - Googleplex, USA
• ** Barcamp Johannesburg - South Africa
• ** MobileActive ‘08 - Johannesburg, South Africa
• Capacity - Capetown, South Africa
• Facebook Developers Garage - Kampala, Uganda

** 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]

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:

^[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

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

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.

• 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

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.

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.

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. )

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

For years, Microsoft and others have attempted without much success to shake Apple’s tight grip on the digital music scene. From subscription services to the Zune, companies have searched for the winning alternative to the iTunes, iPod bundle. Analysts now believe Finland’s Nokia may have a good shot of chipping away at Apple’s dominance.

More than 80 percent of people would pay for Nokia’s ‘Comes with Music’ service - particularly when it feels like they are getting tunes for free. Nokia says it will launch the handsets Oct. 17 in Britain.

Strategy Analytics said cost and selection trump brand - even ones so tightly woven as Apple, iPod and iTunes.

‘Nokia Comes With Music effectively bundles a year’s subscription of music downloads (PC and mobile) into the price of a handset,’ analyst Pitesh Patel told Cult of Mac.

 

Patel said Nokia - the largest handset maker - could overwhelm Apple’s iPhone.

‘Nokia’s strong distribution and handset marketshare means that it currently sells more music playing devices than Apple,’ the Strategy Analytics wireless analyst said.

….

‘It turns out that brand is irrelevant,’ said Patel.

“

(Via Cult of Mac.)

I often tell my friends to ‘Bet on Nokia’, and it seems like this is another reason to continue to do just that. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, though I would expect Nokia to continue its world dominance, and expansion in emerging markets. If Nokia can grab some of the Digital music market share, even better.
Why am I rooting for Nokia over Apple? Because Apple, with its DRM and charging 99cents to create a ringtone( and only from songs bought on itunes) smacks of authoritarianism. Let alone the complete handset lockdown of the Iphone, with threats to turn it into an ibrick if you unlock the device then install a sw update. Sigh* With Nokia, you get an unlocked phone that affords you much freedom. You can use whatever song you want as the ringtone (at least that is the case with the E71), you can use your phone as modem, tether it to your laptop. This is particularly important when you are not in broadband rich areas, but are in a wireless-signal-rich locale.
Speaking of the E71 do check out JKE’s series of E71 reviews. 1 mobile blogging, 2, 3 pics , 4, and stay tuned because the man is not done reviewing this phone.

I often have to remind myself to buy music from the Amazon mp3 store instead of Itunes, because I believe DRM (Digital Rights Management) that Itunes still saddles on music is just plain wrong-headed. I am not about to be left in a lurch like the Yahoos who bought tunes from the Yahoo store (forgive me…I couldn’t resist!) To be fair, Itunes does provide DRM free music, but good luck finding the ‘itunes plus’ versions of the songs you want.
So in conclusion…AFM recommends you Bet on Nokia and buy your music on Amazon mp3 download/or other DRM free service. You do reserve the right to ogle at Iphones, but only John Oliver, Anthony Bourdain and Joseph Kabila reserve the right to be awesome.

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.]

I am looking for Physics students who are interested in Masters and PhD
studies in the field of renewable energy technologies, ICT and/or material
science (building materials). I have lucrative bursaries for the students of
up to R100 000pa for Masters and R150 000pa for PhD for the period of 2
years at masters and 3 years at PhD. The bursary will increase annually
based on certain deliverables from the student. There is also an opportunity
for them to do contract work for Eskom with us and top up their annual
bursaries to above R250 000 for PhD and above R150 000 for Masters. I am
trying to get some people from previously disadvantaged groups but I do not
know anyone there, so if you know someone who might benefit from this
lucrative offers, even if its not someone from previously disadvantaged
groups, give them my contact details below.

This is a very urgent call because the money is lying somewhere and we need
to provide proof of students registration to get it to our account.

I will appreciate your assistance.
Cheers
Sampson Mamphweli
Researcher (Renewable Energy)
Fort Hare Institute of Technology
Tel: +2740 602 2311
Fax: +27866659221
Mobile: +27822140367

Usual disclaimer: I am just passing the information along, please do your own due diligence when contacting the person.

Update: The Acumen fund fellowship program is accepting applications, the deadline for that is October 20th 2008. For more info, click here.

“Earth Day was the model when I founded OneWebDay in 2006,” says Susan Crawford, a professor of law specializing in Internet issues at the University of Michigan. “In 1969, one man asked the people to do what their elected representatives would not: take the future of the environment into their own hands.” By 1972, the United States had a federal agency devoted to protecting the environment, the E.P.A., and today a worldwide citizens’ movement has put the environment front and center politically. According to Crawford, “peoples’ lives now are as dependent on the Internet as they are on the basics like roads, energy supplies and running water. We can no longer take that for granted and we must advocate for the Internet politically, and support its vitality personally.”

The Internet has also become the means by which citizens around the world build movements to hold their elected leaders accountable and support those who represent their interests; it is also increasingly the medium through which citizens interact with their governments. The theme of this year’s OneWebDay is online participation in democracy, coinciding with the U.S. elections.

The online hub for OneWebDay 2008 is www.onewebday.org. There, anyone can: plan or find out about activities in their community; learn ten things individuals can do to support the web; contribute their own stories; read posts from 100 OneWebDay ambassadors; and learn about Internet advocacy groups.

I know its late notice, but perhaps the good folks at Skunkworks can organize something in Nairobi so we can be on the map too? More info on how to get things going on this link. There is a list of 10 things you can do for the web, one of the first is to use a standards compliant web browser like Firefox or Opera. Who is still using IE and why? I grit my teeth each time I am forced to use it.
Grab the button for your blog/site here.

As African bloggers what do you think we should do on One Web Day(complementary to the 10 suggested ideas)? You know we need better internet Infrastructure like yesterday…

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.

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!

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!

The world bank has a call for submissions of short 2-5 minute documentaries that show the social effects or aspects of climate change. The deadline for the competition is October 24th 2008. They would like submissions from developing countries (particularly from the youth), covering any of the following categories.

- Conflict: As climate change results in scarcity of resources and economic and, in many cases, political instability, how may it lead to social unrest and armed conflict?

- Migration: Are there any links between climate change and population migration?

- Social Policy: How do governments prepare effective social policy to meet climate change challenges?

- Drylands: What is the social response in drylands related to climate change?

- Urban Space: How do climate change adaptation measures take into account the needs of the poor in the urban environment?

- Rural Institutions: How do local level institutions in agrarian societies build capacity to handle risks associated to climate change and deliver solutions?

- Indigenous Peoples: How are Indigenous Peoples responding and adapting to the impacts of climate change?

- Gender: Are there different implications of climate change for men and women, boys and girls? How or where can instances of this be seen?

- Governance: How can social accountability be promoted in climate action?

- Forests: What are the threats and opportunities for local communities in efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation?

- Human Rights: What are the human rights implications of climate change?
More information about the competition is available here.
Below is the call for submissions video.

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.

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 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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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)

Ndiyo tunaweza’ - swahili

DNA of Soulfege
In Ga “Ehh, wo ba nye!”
in Akwapim Twi “Yiu, ye be Tumi!” en Anglais: YES WE CAN!

Kaysha
french:”Oui nous pouvons” lingala:”e, to koki” portuguese:”sim podemos”

Kui/MJY/MamaJunkyard
‘we fit do am’ -Pidgin English for Yes We Can. The ‘t’ is silent.

There are 2 t-shirt designs that my twitter friends and designers came up with…
Kaysha designed this

and the venerable David Kobia designed this one.

click on the respective images to buy the t-shirts. I recommend wearing both, just because you can

Please chime in comments with more translations of ‘Yes We Can’ in whatever language you speak.

Ory Okolloh is not only a blogger, founder of Mzalendo.com, co-founder of Ushahidi and colleague, she is also an inspiration to all of us. Below is the video of her talk at TEDGlobal 2007 - Arusha Tanzania.

The making of an African Activist

Ory, we are sambazaing this whether you want to hide or not

Pamoja is brand new, and just starting to get going. That hasn’t stopped them from gathering an impressive list of publishers with a total of 10 million impressions dedicated and another 10 million more confirmed impressions if ad inventory is filled. That’s impressive, but more interesting is to see some of the names on their list of publishers, including: Mail & Guardian (South Africa), the Daily Nation (Kenya), Modern Ghana and Stock Market Nigeria.

Other publishers are welcome to apply, as long as they meet the following requirements:

• Be focused on Africa, or the African diaspora
• An Alexa ranking of 250,000 or better
• Have a minimum of 2000 pageviews per day
• Be aesthetically pleasing (or at least not embarassing)

as whoever has been involved in this knows, getting publishers on board is the easy part. Everyone of them is happy to go with the media outfit that will provide them with a solid amount of advertising income. Getting advertisers is the hard part, and that’s where Pamoja Media is focusing their work now that they have the initial 20 million impressions. Current advertisers include Pingo, PoaPay, Accents Telecom and Zain.

Advertisers joining so far have come in because they’ve seen the brand name portals available through the network. Pamoja can get them on board at a better rate for a smaller advertiser than if they go to the Nation or M&G themselves, because they do a bulk buy with multiple advertisers. As the network grows with other large portals giving up excess inventory, Pamoja will become even more attractive than it already is.

Joshua Wanyama and Benin Mwangi of Pamoja Media
(I happened to take this about 1.5 years ago on a chance meet up)

Pamoja is onto something here. One of Pamoja’s really big focuses is to get advertisers to start looking and buying advertising on websites built for African readers in Africa. That means they need to continue looking for partners who can extend the value of the African network in Europe and Africa - people and agencies who already have connections. It will be crucial for those relationships to come together in order for more brandname advertisers to come on board and give even greater credibility to the network.

Pamoja is new, so like any other startup they have to prove themselves before the bigger advertisers come to the table. Right now they’re attracting small- to medium-sized advertisers (outside of Zain) through providing value added consulting and design services. With that capability, and time and proof of success, the network should be able to increase their margins and possibly roll out additional business units.

I think a lot about the fact that most Africans aren’t online reading websites in Africa - the penetration just isn’t there yet. That means this is a perfect time to grow a business and grow a name in a space with little to know other competition. As it the market grows, so will Pamoja.

Closely related to that last point is the fact that there’s a wide open space in the mobile market in this space too, and I hope that Joshua and Benin are thinking strategically about how they will incorporate mobile advertising in their network in the near future.

The Climate of Innovation Around Information Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa
Ghanaian internet entrepreneur and researcher Eric Osiakwan and the Berkman Center’s Ethan Zuckerman will discuss the climate for innovation around information technology in Sub-Saharan Africa. Eric and Ethan will talk about projects to improve connectivity to the continent and the business models these projects are pioneering, novel uses for mobile phone networks and the use of citizen media as a political force on the continent.

Q: What do you do?

Jon: I’m a glorified computer geek who works as a self-employed web developer and social media consultant in East Africa.

Q: What inspires you?

Jon: I’m a big fan of what’s going with the internet right now, specifically all the theory and development related to the semantic web (microformats, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics and dataparsing) where all that is heading. Simply put, technology inspires me.

Q: How did you get interested in Africa? Why Uganda?

Jon: I’m in Africa because of my girlfriend. She (also from the United States) works for an NGO called Water For People and they hired her as the African Regional Manager to supervise the launch of new offices in Rwanda, Malawi and Uganda over the next three years. At the time, I was spending a lot of time in San Francisco trying to find funding for various start-up ideas. It became clear to me that Silicon Valley VC space was becoming very insular, people were funding social networks built around other social networks and web apps for tasks like sorting email. My work was more social entrepreneurial and the response in the Valley was lukewarm at best. So I decided I’d go to Africa with her and execute my own ideas.

Q: Appfrica.net sprung onto the scene earlier this year. Where do you see that going, and how will you utilize it as a platform while in Africa?

Jon: App+frica is an initiative that facilitates African software developers and internet entrepreneurs. It’s entirely self-funded. Unfortunately, there aren’t many organizations outside of Africa that see the benefit of mentoring students and entrepreneurs in technology.

Appfrica also organizes events and workshops for local developers. Things like the Facebook Developer Workshop (18 October 2008) and Kampala Barcamp (19 August 2008), the upcoming µganda (Mobile Apps Uganda) and App+Asia. I also do hands on workshops where I’m teaching young developers programming and web development skills that will make them more competitive in the world market. You can read more at Appfrica.org.

The blog is Appfrica.net. Essentially it’s about innovation, development, social media and the internet as it all relates to Africa. There’s been some pretty healthy discussions around the content and Although I currently write everything, I’ve reached out to some local people who are considering joining the staff.

code.appfrica.net is a software repository that hosts and facilitates African developers. You might call it an Amazon S3-like service for Africa. Because there is no easy way to purchase things via the web in Africa (because many financial institutions don’t offer credit cards), something that many people don’t really have is access to is personal space on web servers outside of school. An even bigger problem is that there are very few local servers here and using anything hosted outside of the continent can be incredibly slow. It’s my goal to offer free, local server space to developers so that they can learn from each other, communicate freely and share. The site consists of a forum for African programmers, a subversion (SVN) server and a web version control system (TRACS). It also offers distributed file storage for developers like S3.

Beyond that, I try my best to help reshape misconceptions about Africa in the west by participating in technology conferences around the world. Even in the age of information people are surprisingly ignorant about Africa…especially when it comes to technology. When I mention Africa to people in the western business world, they overwhelmingly start asking questions about Darfur, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabi. It’s especially difficult to get technology conferences to let anyone in to even represent Africa or African technology companies.

The people of Africa account for over 14% of the worlds population and despite the AIDS epidemic, that number is growing (according to the C.I.A’s World Factbook). Why do people to often look the other way when it comes to technology and business here? Are businesses really afraid or do they just not understand the African market enough to care? The blog has largely become a way to get people in the West noticing all the wonderful things going on in the IT space here while also reporting the latest tech news for Africans.

Q: What is Question Box and what are your plans for that project?

Jon: QuestionBox.org is a project launched by Rose Shuman who lives in Los Angeles, CA in the United States. Her idea was to essentially allow people in rural areas around the world to use the internet via their mobile phones. It works like this: people in rural areas call or SMS the service with their question. A local operator consults a database (which also includes web searches) to discover the answer to those questions. The operator then responds in the local language.

My role as Chief Technical Officer is to build the software backend and to help direct growth and scalability. The service will allow for use via mobile device, the web or phone. For the SMS portion we’re integrating a micro-messaging application. When people SMS in their questions, we can index them and add them to a database that can be searched quickly offline. We can also publish the database online for the benefit of researchers or people using the web. Since internet connections aren’t as reliable as they are in the West, the service is built to work offline and only crawls the internet when it has a connection.

This allows people in rural, developing areas to get access to relevant information without the need for computers which are often not an option. What is an option, often already available, is mobile devices which have very high penetration numbers in the African market.

It’s our goal to democratize information in emerging markets using technology. So far the pilot programs have been huge regional successes. QuestionBox ran pilot programs in India last year and it encouraged her to expand to other areas of India as well as Africa starting with rural Uganda.

Q: You’ve been on the ground in Uganda for a couple weeks. First impressions?

Jon: One month exactly and we’ll be here for the next three years. We just got a house in the suburbs of the capital city Kampala. Getting reliable internet has been a huge chore, but that could be expected. I love it so far. Kampala is great, it’s very diverse and friendly. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Africa. I’ve got meetings next month in Rwanda and Tanzania and I’m working on going to Kenya and Egypt which are among the leaders of ICT development in the region.

BlogDay 2008 - August 31
I really like BlogDay as it’s a chance to show a little love to some bloggers that are new, really good or unique. I always tend to find at least a couple new blogs that I didn’t know existed before. All you need to do is pick 5 blogs and write a quick blurb about them with a link to their site. Simple. Easy. Effective. (I’ve already got my 5 picked out, and the post written!)

Blog Action Day - October 15
Blog Action Day focuses on a specific global issue and asks bloggers the world over to focus on that for one day. Last year 20,000 bloggers wrote with a laser focus about the environment - we did a post on AfriGadget for it. This year the conversation is focused on poverty.

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

See you Monday.

I’m guessing that at least half of this blog’s readers are wondering why they should even care about this news. After all, it sounds like some new trendy mobile/web app has failed to expand outside of North America - how is that news for Africa?

Twitter represents a change in communication. By acting as a global gateway for updates via SMS (or the web), that then updates all of your followers, Twitter succeeded in breaking ground in one-to-many messaging. There have been a couple times over the past year where Twitter was used in Africa to get news out that wasn’t possible in any other format.

Two examples come to mind, specifically addressing humanitarian uses; first, there’s the case of it being used in Egypt to help a jailed user, and second was when Juliana used it during the Kenyan post-election violence to update about events in Western Kenya in lieu of a blog post.

Soyapi wrote a post a couple months back talking about the potential for Twitter in Africa. In areas like Africa where mobile phone penetration far outstrips internet penetration, Twitter ends up being an incredibly good way to update friends, family - or in the case of businesses and government, the general public - about things that are happening.

“Realizing that a lot of people in the developing world have migrated from their home villages to cities both within and outside their countries and continents, they still need to some updates about the goings-on in their home towns.”

In our globally connected world, if your service can’t cover the globe, then you need to open it up for communication between similar services. What we really need is a platform that allows Twitter-like applications to “talk” to each other globally. If I set up a similar platform in West Africa then there should be a way for Twitter users in the US to also accept my updates. Closed gardens in this case create single points of failure. (I’m interested in the less restrictive Identi.ca platform.)

This global contraction by Twitter creates opportunities for others. Jaiku, recently purchased by Google, now has the ability to grow deeper into other regional markets. And, if nothing else, Twitter has done us all a favor by launching a global pilot project that proves out the usefulness of this type of service. Launching country- or region-specific clones of this same type of service is now a real option.

Ethan Zuckerman is using Google Insight to look at what is most important in some African countries. Including the fact that one of the most searched for term in Nigeria is for email spam software. It’s not just Nigeria, but a strong focus in West Africa.

Oluniyi David Ajao talks about Automated Thieving Machines (ATMs) in Lagos, Nigeria.

The Washington Post writes about Reverse Brain Drain in Nigeria, where opportunity and money are drawing back the young businessmen and entrepreneurs from the West.

Due to that connection with Guy Kawasaki, the next thing I knew I was being asked for a list of potential blogs and news services to be a part of a new Africa category on Alltop.com - Guy Kawasaki’s news aggregation site. Being a technology blogger first, most of my contributions were in that field. Many of them taken directly from my RSS feed reader, as there hasn’t been a blogroll here in years (due to a glitch in my sidebar that I never fixed…).

Few other people I know had access to, or cared enough, about Africa to get Guy to create the new Africa.Alltop.com. However, Ellen has a strong desire to see increased innovation and change happen, and she is particularly well connected and knowledgeable in technology. Her connection to Africa was solidified as she and her son were caught in Western Kenya during the post-election violence in Kenya earlier this year (an amazing story that I hope everyone gets to read sometime). She comes directly out of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point“, I’m just not sure which category she fits in yet.

I’ll be interested in seeing how the list on Alltop grows and morphs over time. For the time being I’ll use it as a supplement for my daily Africa news. I’m just happy that African news and bloggers are gaining additional attention outside of the traditional African blog echo chamber.

If you think there is a good pan-African blog that was missed, or just a really good African blog with a wide readership, make sure you suggest it.

As is increasingly true, the best place to follow each of these individuals/events is on Twitter at:

Twitter.com/chep2m - Ellen
Twitter.com/ksjhalla - Kaushal
Twitter.com/guykawasaki - Guy
Twitter.com/barcampafrica - Barcamp Africa

“The division between the ICT ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ now runs through the heart of the continent, geographically and generationally. While young urban Kenyans and Nigerians feel at home messaging one another on social-networking sites, the elders in the rural landlocked hinterlands have yet to send an email, and many have never made a phone call. Tunisia and Morocco compete furiously with one another in the business process outsourcing (BPO) market for francophone call centres, but most businesses in the Sahel have never heard of doing their accounts on Excel spreadsheets.

While it’s good to talk about mobile phone penetration, I was a lot more interested in seeing the discussion going on around mobile broadband internet and how that is the next big move in Africa for the operators. Passing data, not just voice, is the battleground of the future in Africa - and all the carriers are fighting to position themselves to win.

I saw this happening in my most recent trip to Kenya where the local ISPs are very much aware of their dongle-toting SIM card competition (see image below) found in Safaricom and Celtel. As voice services begin to erode for mobile carriers in Africa, they have to find new ways to compete. Of course, this means more and increasingly cheaper options for consumers around the continent.

With new carriers still entering into the fray, older ones having to change their business strategies, and ISPs who are also getting better international bandwidth connections the real battle for the internet in Africa is just beginning. It’s very much of a “wild west” atmosphere with huge stakes at both the country and regional levels.

[download the extract of this article here, a 772Kb PDF)

The topic of conversation usually turns to this; what type of web or mobile application can you build to make some serious money in Africa? Though there are many answers to that question, as I believe there are many options for successful web and mobile companies in Africa, there are only a few that I think of as “sure things”.

Any entrepreneur is looking to either a) create a company with solid cash flow and grow it, or b) create a solid company with value and then sell it (or have an IPO). On the web that takes some well-known paths, and the most common is option “b” where the entrepreneur’s sell their company to a larger web entity (Amazon, Google, eBay, Nokia…etc).

Create a Jabber-based chat application that works on the mobile phone and the web, grow it to a 1-2 million users within a region, sell to Google.

Why does this work?
You build your chat application with Jabber since it can interface with Google’s GTalk. Jabber is free, and also happens to be the what a couple other major applications are built on (see South Africa’s Mxit). Google is trying to grow in Africa, and I assume would be extremely happy to pay a very healthy amount of money to acquire an application with millions of active users that is built on the same protocol as their own chat system.

The formula for this particular idea is built on two premises. First, that you can actually get a couple million users within an African region using your chat application. Second, that Google wants more users on their platform(s).

The first challenge is born from the fact most mobile phone users in Africa don’t use data enabled phones, so they can’t run a Jabber application on their phone. Mxit’s answer to this in South Africa was to show that for 10% of the cost of a normal SMS, you could send a message through their system (which happens to be a highly bastardized customized Jabber app). Your goal is to get people who don’t have a data enabled phone to upgrade to one.

The second challenge is beyond your control. You’ll never know if Google wants to buy you out until they come knocking. However, if let’s just say you shouldn’t have to many problems monetizing a system that has 1-2 million users on it anyway…

Your goals to overcome these challenges is found in tapping into communities and spreading your app virally to gain critical mass with speed. Once it spreads, the first application like this to reach a decent amount of saturation will be the winner, even if it has some faults (see Twitter).

Though chat is the core of your application, that is both web and mobile phone accessible, it’s not the only value added service that you can provide. With some creativity, you can add services that allow more people to tap into, including locally relevant events, news, marketplaces, personals, jobs, etc…

On top of these services, you’ve got the advantage of building on an open source platform that other services use as their core.

Lastly, and most importantly. If you were to reach even 500,000 users you would have an incredibly viable opportunity for advertising revenue. The ability to target specific advertisements, or sponsorships, through the platform make it a marketers dream. Basically, you might not need, nor want, a buy out after all.

Is it really a “sure thing”? No, every business move has inherent risk and depends on execution of the strategy.

Is it a good basic idea that could be built into a real product with a solid exit strategy? Yes, undoubtedly so.

We’ve already seen the booming success of Mxit in South Africa. There’s no reason to believe that you couldn’t have a margin of that same success in East, West or North Africa with the same type of service. If you build it with an end-goal of Google integration in it at the end, you also set yourself up for a real possibility of a buy out.

Chapter 13: Silence, worth a thousand words

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He also goes over his life story, which personifies courage and endurance in the face of difficult circumstances.
If you are not able to view the video, you can read a summary by EthanZ.

We don’t have a large budget, but I will pay for this work. Pass it on to your friends who are good illustrators.

If you know who did the above work, I’d love to talk to him/her. Contact me here. Thanks!

Ndanka ndanka…also is a running gag between my colleague Abdoulaye and me - and it somehow describes my pleasant anticipation for the really good stuff out there on the internet: passionate music collectors (aka connaisseur de l’art) that have somehow managed to share their secret passion for the good old & rare tunes with a much bigger audience through regularly updated blogs & even full documentaries. Actually, this is what collecting music is all about.  Sharing & enjoying all those stories behind artists who never really made it to the *official* (mainstream?) Hall of Fame.

(via)

Frank actually reminds me of Duncan Brooker - another crazy DJs who spents his life chasing old “plates”. If you like sites like VoodooFunk, AwesomeTapes from Africa, Benn loxo du taccu, AfroFunkForum, Akwaaba Sound System and Analoge Africa (to name just a few popular ones) and if music ethnology is part of your various interests, then these films are just for you. Enjoy!

” In some cases I’m the first person to talk to these guys about their music in thirty years … I’ve seen incredible things, heard extraordinary  stories. In one instance I heard about people looking for a place to live be cause things have gotten so shitty in some of these places , that they would just go into the vaults of recording studios and just  grab all the tapes, and pressing plates and old acetates and just burn it all just to make room for a place to sleep.  It began to dawn on me  that if I didn’t try to save this music no one would. I decided to build an archive and rather that just bootleg the music,  like others often do, I’d start trying to get the license and see what more I could discover.”
- Duncan Brooker

THANK YOU, FRANK & DUNCAN!

(I’ve mentioned Legends of Afrobeat three years ago and am still hoping for a release soon. Ndanka ndanka…)

And finally, another interesting documentary, this time on (contemporary) musicians in Kinshasa:

“It’s all here…this (cultural) wealth”. - But do I say? :-)

Africa Telcom News has released a free report, called the African Mobile Factbook, that gives all of the major numbers on subscribers, penetration rates, profitability and growth potential for every African carrier and country. As anyone who is tries to do research in this space knows, it can be difficult to get some of these mobile phone statistics for Africa, so this is a welcome source for information.

• Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt are the fastest growing markets
• Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 100% to 30%
• Pre-paid subscriptions account for nearly 95 percent of total mobile subscriptions in the region
• Most of the mobile operators are home-grown. In 2005, the continent’s seven largest investors controlled 53% of the African mobile market
• Across most of Africa, SMS is likely to be the only non-voice value-added service to gain mass market popularity in the immediate future
• East Africans pay taxes of between 25% and 30% on mobile phone services, compared with an average of 17% across Africa
• African states with less than 600,000 subscribers and includes Burundi, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Comoros (Union of the), Djibouti, Equitorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gambia (The), Lesotho, Liberia, Mayotte, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Somalia, Swaziland and Rwanda.

At the end of 2007 there were 280.7 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4%. The chart below shows the historical numbers up until 2007, with projected growth and penetration rates through 2012.

Even more interesting, when you look at the major African markets, is to see the huge growth potential for areas that are already very profitable. As can be seen Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt have the greatest growth potential.

There are (or will be) a staggering 11 mobile phone operators in Nigeria, with 4 in Kenya and South Africa, and 3 in egypt and Morocco.

“MTN dominates the African market with over 73.9 million subscribers in the region as of 4Q 2007 followed by Vodacom (33.4 million), Orascom (32.4 million), Zain (30.6 million) and Orange (27.7 million), respectively.”

Size doesn’t mean everything though, Millicom has the highest growth in revenues, and Orascom has the highest EBITDA margin, primarily due to its strategy of investing in the emerging mobile markets.

The chart below shows five of the leading mobile network operators in Africa in terms of their subscriber base (size of the bubble), revenue growth rate and EBITDA margin for the latest completed financial year.

The growth rate in Africa over the last couple of years has been phenomenal, and will likely continue for the next 3-5 years. Major drivers of increased growth include:

• Subsidization of handsets
• Pre-paid offerings
• Continued liberalization of the telcom sector
• Low penetration rates
• Expected uptake of 3G services

Growth inhibitors include:

• Taxation - especially in East Africa
• Low income across the continent hampers growth
• Widespread illiteracy decreases the growth of value added services, even SMS
• Unreliable electricity supplies
• Corruption

I’m curious to see the uptake of both data services (3G and EDGE) as well as the increased number of low-cost handsets. Just yesterday I read a report of a Malaysian company setting up a mobile phone manufacturing plant in Mozambique, so there very well might be some super low-end phones available soon.

I had the chance to speak at TTI Vanguard early this month and my topic of discussion was Innovation in Africa[pdf pg 10 and 11]. I gave a brief overview of the tech landscape in Africa, and engaged mostly in conversations around what is happening now. Since then, the article ‘Inside Nairobi, the Next Palo Alto?’ by G. Pascal Zachary in the NY times became the 7th most emailed article in the NYT world business section, spurring some discussion around the theme of Innovation, ‘light tech’ and localization of technology in Kenya.

As we all know there is this persisting perception of Africa as this sort of backward mess. Ethan Zuckerman has been writing for a few years about ‘rebranding Africa’ and more recently he wrote about David Weinberger’s Ninja Gap. Do read the whole piece, the bit that is relevant to this post is in part…

Context matters, Galtung argues. If we’ve got a mental image of Africa as a backwards and technically retrograde place, we’re likely to miss stories about innovation in mobile commerce (see the lead story in issue 407…) or success in venture capital. Galtung’s fifth maxim is closely linked to the idea of cognitive dissonance - it’s uncomfortable to attempt to resolve new information that conflicts with existing perceptions, beliefs and behaviors.

Well, its quite an experience to have an encounter with someone who clearly brings this cognitive dissonance to light…I wont go there though. Suffice to say Africa, we have a long way to go. The overarching meme about Africa is still one of poverty, corruption, despots, famine and stunning sunsets…yeah, you know. Oh perhaps the stunning sunsets meme is one I would totally agree to and actively propagate, but I digress.This is with no small thanks to foreign correspondents who cover African news with the aforementioned brushstrokes.

So, while we African bloggers and digerati wrestle with not quite so positive images of Africa, debate Aid Vs Trade, couple that with our current reality of immense potential that is muffled by worrisome politics, rising inflation, environmental degradation and many other factors; I am
trying to think of the bigger picture, a way to wrap my mind around things.

Years ago, my friends’ mom told me about a ‘bad-good-shot’. When you swing that golf club and you know that you missed the green by considerable measure, yet the ball hits a tree and deflects onto a reasonable section of the course, then you get to make a better than expected shot. There are some projects and tech that arise out of challenges like dearth of broadband, and in reaction to the bad choices our leaders make. In Africa, we get some of those really bad shots, sometimes, something good arises out it and perhaps we can position ourselves for a much better shot at prosperity. I do not know if we can, but we can definitely aspire to it.

I think TEDGlobal Arusha had started that rebranding process, by bringing to Africa a mix of intellectuals, scientists, technologists…you name it; to experience an alternate African reality of sorts. Last monday, I was reminded by Sean to not underestimate the value in bringing prospective investors to Africa, so they can have a different context, and perhaps get over that ‘cognitive dissonance’. As I look back to TEDGlobal, I remember that I was in awe of my fellow Africans, I was inspired by them, and felt that we had just gotten to the ‘jumping off point’. I am still inspired by their talks as they are released on TED.com. Well, December 30th 2007 came, when the meme of ‘Kenya’s potential’ suffered quite a blow. It will take awhile to rebuild that confidence in my mind, let alone the minds of others. I think other countries in Africa have a positive meme attached to them and boy, am I envious. My Ghanaian friends, please guard the positive meme of Ghana with all you’ve got. As a Kenyan, and also as an African I still believe that we can redefine/ we are redefining what it means to be African.

When it comes to markets and the potential in disruptive technology, I would strongly suggest you subscribe to Sean Park’s blog, and Bankelele’s too. These guys give you the meat and potatoes when it comes to evaluating not only the economics but the potential in mobile banking and other sectors of African/Kenyan economies. Because aspirations are well, good and awesome (really!), but at the end of the day, fundamentals of investing should always be rock solid.

So there is the perception problem, but that can be tackled by hard data. Speaking of market data, AfriMonitor launched earlier this month.

It will be a great resource as the bid to rebrand Africa continues. Various conferences will be happening throughout the year, and will be invaluable in bringing together many of you who see this alternate African technological reality. I am still bummed that I did not make it to Barcamp Nairobi in June, but I am making every effort to make sure I do not miss the next one. Last but not least, I just want to salute Wilfred Mworia, all the geeks and volunteers at Ushahidi, Josiah Mugambi, Dorcas Muthoni of Linux chix Africa, Riyaz, all the Skunkworks geeks, Kasahorow crew, JAB, techies in Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and other African countries. Here is to not just the next Palo Alto, but the next Nairobi, Accra, Abuja, Capetown, Johannesburg, Lusaka etc.

Thank you Hash for the cool graphics, they are based on one I found on Memehuffer

A good example of a deployment in Africa, and the reasons behind it, is Wireless Africa’s Mpumulanga deployment in South Africa. Here they answer, “what problem is being addressed?“:

“The main thrust is to connect the clinic to its community hospice and thus allow them to extend their computer facilities to the hospice (practise management software and statistics gathering). This is most easily achieved through a wireless network and more specifically a mesh because of the terrain.

A mesh network requires a number of nodes in areas not owned by the clinic but that are part of the commuity: schools and farmers. The main thrust of the research question is to implement the network in such a way that the firstly the clinic and secondly the community have taken ownership of the network. That they have created systems that ensure that the infrastructure is maintained and expanded by the users of the network.”

A DIY Wireless Mesh Guide (3.2Mb PDF) based on Freifunk was put out by Wireless Africa late last year.

I’m still looking for cases of successful wireless mesh networks in Africa. If you have heard of one, please comment below, or use the contact form.

I realize that there have been some larger, industrial strength, deployments by the likes of KDN in Kenya with their Butterfly Network (though I haven’t heard to many stories of people actually getting online with it). But what I’m more interested in right now is examples of use in the more rural areas of Africa.

Wireless Lab Website
Open Mesh - open source mesh
Meraki Mesh - business solution
Mesh Dynamics
Wire.Less.DK
Older, but good, conversation on O’Reilly Net
MIT’s Roofnet

For the diaspora folks in Washington DC, if Jay-Z makes you ‘get that dirt off your shoulder’, if you like John Legend, Youssou Ndour, Alek Wek, Tyson Beckford and other gorgeous African stars, check out the Africa Rising concert at the Kennedy center.

Enjoy…

Netherland’s based AfricaNews has been a pioneer in this space, starting last year with their “Voices of Africa” section of their site. I’ve been continually impressed with how they find, train and equip their journalists all over Africa. My one problem with what they do is that they don’t allow for the proliferation of their reporters work around the web by hamstringing the ability to share by embedding the reports in other websites.

Colin Daniels is the Publisher for Times Online in South Africa, arguably one of the better newspapers and always on the cutting edge of news sites online globally. A couple weeks ago he posted on his personal blog about a new initiative in where Nokia is testing mobile journalism through local universities using the Nokia/Reuter’s mobile newskit. He says,

“This has all been made possible by constant technological breakthroughs and the portability and immediacy of connected mobile devices; it is becoming increasingly feasible for journalists to replace their pens and dictaphones for converged smart phones with exceptional audio/visual capabilities such as the Nokia N95. Add a keyboard, tripod, and an external microphone and all of a sudden you have a portable newsroom and studio in one…”

A true, and exciting statement that applies to mainstream journalism and blogging. Colin refers to the N95 “Mojo” toolkit (pictured above) that Reuters uses as well. The value here is that as mainstream news sources put more resources towards mobile journalism the tools get better for everyone (amateur and professional).

All of this optimism has to be tempered with some real-world examples of how it’s still a difficult field to work in and how the technology is still not quite there for full-fledged real-time news feeds. David Axe, a war journalist, wrote a fascinating article for Wired on the failures of his mobile phone trials in Chad matching up a Nokia N95 with streaming mobile news service Qik.

It should be noted the problem was not with the phone, but with the web service Qik and the poor mobile data network in Chad. This can be a real problem for anyone using MMS or any other GSM service. Though some parts of Africa have strong networks, many others are home to the worst in the world. Of course, this makes Africa one of the great testing grounds for any new device or service, so there is a silver lining to every cloud.

“…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. With that function alone, I could’ve filed scores of fascinating videos about refugee camps, peacekeepers and urban combat.”

A simple solution, utilizing SD card memory could have made his trial a success. David’s quote above serves to underscore one other incredibly important point; web and mobile services need to at least test in Africa, if not have a small development shop there to truly create robust applications. After all, if it can work in Africa, it can work anywhere.

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It’s a good read on why Kenya, even after the violence in January and February, is still a tech hub in Africa. Between Skunkworks, Google Kenya and an active (and creative) coding community you have the makings of a great place to do web and mobile development in Africa.

Here’s the excerpt on Wilfred, who is building the Ushahidi iPhone application. He’s also using my old MacBook Pro and, assuming everything goes right, he’ll have an iPhone to play with later on this year.

“Consider Wilfred Mworia, a 22-year-old engineering student and freelance code writer in Nairobi, Kenya. In the four weeks leading up to Apple’s much-anticipated release of a new iPhone on July 11, Mr. Mworia created an application for the phone that shows where events in Nairobi are happening and allows people to add details about them.

Mr. Mworia’s desire to develop an application for the iPhone is not unusual: many designers around the world are writing programs for the device. But his location posed some daunting obstacles: the iPhone doesn’t work in Nairobi, and Mr. Mworia doesn’t even own one. He wrote his program on an iPhone simulator.

“Even if I don’t have an iPhone,” Mr. Mworia says defiantly, “I can still have a world market for my work.”

It’s really good to see the Kenyan tech community get this high profile piece. Riyaz, Josiah and Eric have been the steady center-pieces of the growing Skunkworks crowd. Chris and Joe are doing great things at Google Kenya.

Oh, and Nairobi is a small town after all… Most don’t know that Josiah (Skunkworks) and Chris (Google Kenya) are old classmates from Starehe. A lot of old connections just like that tend to be the glue that keeps everything together.

I’m a big fan of WordPress and all the customization and businesses that can grow out of it. A couple South African guys have been working in this space for a while, and have a great premium (meaning you pay money for them) themes offered at the new website WooThemes. (Adii, Mark, Magnus and Elliot have a great eye for detail, a boatload of experience with WordPress, and continue to impress on the international level.)

Joe, head of Google Kenya, launched the Google Africa Blog last week. I’m sure all of us will be watching it with interest. No comments allowed though, which is kind of lame.

“The primary purpose of an IXP is to allow networks to interconnect directly, via the exchange, rather than through one or more 3rd party networks. The advantages of the direct interconnection are numerous, but the primary reasons are cost, latency, and bandwidth. Traffic passing through an exchange is typically not billed by any party, whereas traffic to an ISP’s upstream provider is.”

There are 18 IXPs in Africa in 15 countries (I stated 17 last week). A map of those countries is below (click on it to be taken to the interactive version):

Most of these are found in the capital of the country, but not always. For instance, iBiX is located in Ibadan, Nigeria not Abuja and Tanzania has two IXPs, one in Arusha and one in Dar es Salaam.

In list form, they are:

• Angola: IXP-ang
• Botswana: BINX
• Cote D’Ivoire: CI-IXP
• Dem. Rep. of Congo: KINIX
• Egypt: CR-IX and GPX
• Ghana: GIX
• Kenya: KIXP
• Nigeria: iBiX
• Mozambique: Moz-ix
• Rwanda: RINEX
• South Africa: JINX and GINX
• Swaziland: SZIXP
• Tanzania: TIX and AIXP
• Uganda: UiXP
• Zimbabwe: ZINX

There seems to be a definite advantage to having an IXP located in your country. Why then do so many African countries not have one? From my understanding, it isn’t cost prohibitive to create an IXP or to maintain it. Why would so many African nations, who all have local ISPs, not have a local IXP?

[Update: Michuki Mwangi, one of the godfather's of Kenyan tech (I believe he's responsible for getting Kenya's TLD: yourdomain.co.ke), responded with the following answers to my question.]

“Most of the reasons that countries dont have IXPs are non-technical and are either policy or politics. For instance in Senegal, Sonatel the Senegalese Telco operates in a monopolistic environment. There are almost no ISPs that exist there and those that do just resell ADSL links for the telco. In such a case, they own no infrastructure or services outside what the telco provides. Therefore, there’s been no need/demand for such. A similar case exists in Ethiopia.

In other countries like Nigeria, its getting the players to agree and look beyond the mistrust and competitive advantages that others have to form one. That takes a while.

In other countries its purely a regulatory policy issue that does not permit the existence of an IXP - its as a way of protecting the incumbent telco’s.”

If you are interested in finding out more about Africa’s IXPs, here are some resources:

AfrISPA - African Internet Server Provider Association
AfNOG - African Network Operators Group
EP.net - Africa - List of African IXPs with links
Packet Clearing House (PCH) - for information, statistics and locations
AfriNIC - African Internet Numbers Registry IP Addresses (IPv6)

One of the benefits (most of the time) of working so closely with people is that you tend to get to know them pretty well. Ryan ends up being one of those quiet and unassuming individuals who has a great depth of knowledge pertaining to Africa’s capital markets. As he states:

“…there is another side of Africa that gets a lot less press. It is a place full of hopeful and enterprising people who are confident of a better future. This is the Africa that I believe is home to some of the most attractive potential investments in the world today.”

At Investing in Africa, Ryan profiles companies and gives monthly detailed reports on his insights into local markets. So far his library includes annual reports, announcements, and financial results for more than 350 companies spanning 16 markets.

A few last changes are on the way, and a few bugs to be worked out. However, it’s up and ready to use, so take a look, sign-up for access to company reports, and definitely subscribe to his monthly newsletter ($49 annually). Below is a sample:

Investing in Africa: Sample Report, May 2008

I found out a couple of interesting points that make the Google Kenya office even more interesting than before. It turns out that there are 3 offices in Africa; Kenya, South Africa and Egypt. However, the office in Kenya is neither a sales office nor an engineering office, which makes it unique globally. In fact, it is the only “deployment office” worldwide. This means that the Kenya office can be used as a launch point for new ideas and is the central focal point for Google’s Africa strategy.

It came down to a choice between Senegal and Kenya - one French-speaking and one English-speaking, and both with a fairly well developed technology sector. Senegal had a direct transatlantic cable, but Kenya had the right people available. At Google it seems, finding the right personnel usually trumps about everything else.

Speaking of which, they’re still looking for the right people, not only in Senegal, but also in Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Unfortunately, Google HR seems to be geographically challenged, as jobs in Egypt are somehow not in Africa…

The Google Global Cache (GGC) was announced in May at the African Network Operators Group (AFNOG) conference in Morocco. In lieu of data centers in Africa, Google has created a strategy that is housed at major exchange points to serve Africa at the edge of Google’s network. Internal tests suggested at least 20% performance increase in high latency links, like East Africa.

[The top cycle (1,2,3 & 4) is how things normally work. The bottom cycle (5,6 &7) is where the changes are.]

It works like this. Once anyone within that exchange point’s sphere visits a webpage, the information is cached and it becomes much faster for anyone else visiting that website to access it. Pre-fetching of data also that improves performance over time, even for dynamic content.

This is an interesting strategy. It’s a win for ISP’s (less international traffic means lower costs), a win for end users (pages load faster), and a win for Google (faster, better usage).

The pilot in Africa was turned on in Kenya just 2 weeks ago. There are 17 international exchange points (IXP) in 15 African nations, so with a positive pilot in Kenya, this could soon be seen continent-wide.

Keep your ears open, there are hints of even more interesting stuff coming out of the Google Kenya office.

East Africa is one of the last major regions in the world to not have true international broadband (aka: “fat pipes”). Having just returned from a 3-week stint in Nairobi, I can tell you that these cables will make a huge impact on the local market.

Uploading video, watching video, uploading images, sending emails with images, receiving images, downloading applications, uploading zip files, FTP, VoIP calls… and more. All that stuff is painfully slow or impractical to do right now. You don’t realize how much you use these types of service in the rest of the world, until you’re forced to do without for an extended period of time.

I, for one, will continue to pray to the undersea cable gods that East Africa will see this cable by this time next year.

[Sidenote: I know a certain individual is interning at Google doing a paper on how the lack of bandwidth has crippled web business in East Africa. I'm looking forward to seeing it.]

Let me start with the Kenya ICT Board. The meeting was basically about legislation and the fact that ecommerce would be good for Kenya. Of course it is, anything that lowers transaction costs for both buyers and sellers greases the wheels of commerce and increases the amount of trade across all industries and sectors. That’s a given.

But how? See, that’s the big sticking point that I’ve been banging my head against the wall over for 2 years now. It’s not enough that you can buy and sell with a Visa or Mastercard in Kenya. As long as you continue to ignore the wananchi (average person), then you’ll only help the wealthy and not see the real gains and advantages of a level playing field.

Which brings me to Brian talking about Mpesa, the mobile phone payment system in Kenya. For, in Mpesa, we have the beginnings of a payment system that can be used by everyone. He’s right about that. What’s wrong is that it’s mobile phone carrier dependent (Safaricom).

Let’s go back to our “average person” again and talk about banks. They are generally unbanked (thus the use of Mpesa), or if they are, they have only a couple thousand shillings (less than $100) in the bank. The transaction costs for them having to keep their money in these aging institutions is often impractical. They have no, or very limited, opportunities to borrow money and they have no realistic way of getting any type of credit.

So, as can be seen, tying money, credit and debt to banks is not practical.

Now, let’s talk about why it needs to be carrier agnostic. This is even easier to understand. In Kenya there are two carriers; Safaricom (Mpesa) and Celtel (me2u). By the end of the year, there will be four. The barriers to use of a system that relies on one carrier is as ridiculous as requiring any payment system on the web to only go through one ISP. Sure, it makes sense if you’re that company to control that monopoly, but it’s bad for everyone else.

The upsides of a carrier and bank agnostic payment system is high. Not only would a system like this be used for the obvious domestic transactions (Kenya-to-Kenya) and external transactions (Kenya-to-world), but all of the sudden we have the ability to create real micro-loans and a new system to create credit scores for unbanked people over time. That’s wealth building, and it would transform Kenya.

Well, first off, let those who have the funds to do so, start building the right type of payment gateway. Start in Kenya and grow regionally, then continent-wide. It’s a semi-heavy investment (relative to who you are of course), but the return is absolutely insane. In fact, it’s ridiculous that after this long no one has done anything beyond build monopolies in this space.

[Note: My first post on this from 2 years ago]

“We want to be the go-to network for the diaspora.”

I thought Jamati was new. It isn’t. In fact, it was first launched in 2001, relaunched in 2005, and then relaunched again in 2007. The fact that I finally heard about it last year is proof that Elias finally has found the right mix to make it work.

Elias is Kenyan, with an American mother, and has no Kenyan accent at all (interestingly, a lot like a certain political candidate in the US). An unlikely background in Economics, time at the World Bank and Congressional Black Caucus wasn’t what I was expecting to hear as the background to his entrepreneurial drive into online entertainment. However, he saw a niche needing to be filled and, over 7 years, has continued to try to crack it open.

One of the things that Elias said struck me as very important for this type of pan-African portal play. That is, his seven-person team is made up of individuals from Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Everyone in this space knows that it’s a lot easier to be regional than continental, but a team makeup like this means it’s easier to do. Those connections back into each major region are already there.

Competitively, two other new publishers,AfricanPath and African Loft, would seem to be the most logical comparison. However, knowing a little about both companies, I think they’re all doing different things (right now, but there will be greater overlap as they grow).

• AfricanPath is about African news, business and politics.
• African Loft is about African diaspora community and African news.
• Jamati is about African lifestyle and entertainment.

All bridge two worlds, with heavy readership percentages from the diaspora. It will be interesting to see which can grow as time passes, and more importantly, which can attract enough eyeballs for advertisers to start funding more growth.

This is an invitation for a bid for the provision and distribution of ‘knowledge’ for the implementing partners of the ISSUE programme for a period ending on December 31, 2010. …Interested parties who have the pre-requisite experience in running and managing Knowledge Centres are requested to submit technical and financial proposals and any other supporting documentation not later than 1 August 2008.

Why is this interesting?

1. “Countries specifically asked to respond are: India, Vietnam, Benin, Kenya or Tanzania, Malawi or Zambia”
   Please note the “or”. As in: “one regional office will do.” Kenya vs Tanzania. Obviously, an opportunity for Kenyan experts.
2. You may probably know that I am an admin at the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (website, whose link i will not repeat because our website is currently being relaunched and still too shabby to be shown around…*cough* *cough*) and we or at least I quite frequently come across ppl who are willing to do something but are lacking the adequate funding and/or don’t know how to apply for funds. Neither do I! However, what I do know is that funds - as limited as they are - will be made available once there are suitable local partners. So, what is actually required (I think!) are much more local networks that will help those funding agencies to approach a local market. And with “funding agencies” I am not only talking about the usual suspects aka dev aid orgs who make a living out of “helping” the poor. Instead, think of businesses from abroad, companies from the US and Europe who would like to invest into an African market and often don’t know whom to approach at first hand. Such a “knowledge centre” for the reproduction and dissemination of knowledge could be a perfect incubator (ok, now that is vc lingua already) for healthy businesses.
3. The assignments runs from 2008 till 2010, the end of the ISSUE
   programme. The total budget (3 years) for each KEN will be approximately:
   Latin America (Costa Rica):   235000 Euro
   South East Asia (Vietnam):   170000 Euro
   South Asia (India):  145000 Euro
   West Africa (Benin):  145000 Euro
   East Africa (Kenya or Tanzania):  170000 Euro
   Southern Africa (Zambia or Malawi  140000 Euro

Guys, what I am talking about is this upcoming market of sustainable toilet facilities that will rock communities across the globe in future. Just think of the Adopt-A-Light initiative (and what the GoK did to them once they realized there’s money to be made).
“Knowledge Centres”  - to me - are local networks that provide much more than just a nice budget for a two years period. Hence this open tender is a first qualification programme to see who will be able to pool other consultants/manufacturers in and who will prepare the market for the future.

In other words: THERE’S MONEY TO BE MADE FROM “WASTE”. Think about it next time you toss out stuff out of your car window or go to toilet.

(disclaimer: “sanitation as a business” is my favourite subject ….pole :-)

AOB: Link of the week - PicLens - an advanced image viewer plugin for FF that will provide you with a “haiiaaaaaa”-effect. Try it!

Pictures
Can be found on Picasa, Flickr and Facebook (you’ll have to friend John Wesonga for the Facebook ones).

Videos
I’m working on uploading a couple videos from Barcamp Nairobi. There were some really good conversations started, not all of which I was able to get on video, or even be in the room for. Hopefully, we’ll get some blog posts and videos from others who were there as well.

• The guys from LightingupKenya.org showed up to talk about ICT and rural energy
• Stella, of Fahamu, encourages women bloggers to begin blogging
• Daudi and I show the room and discuss the attendee numbers
• Ken speaks about response to his blogging for cash talk
• Kahenya Kamunyu, of Virn.net, talks about how he finances young web companies in Kenya
• Permanent Secretary of Information, Dr. Ndemo, gives the closing talk

I’ll continue uploading additional videos throughout the week on YouTube.

Barcamp Nairobi Bloggers (let me know if I missed you):

O’Reilly Radar (Programming Languages Survey)
Al Kags (gov’t perspective)
Rob Rooker
The Deeper Meaning of Life (Liz)
John Wesonga
Wilfred Mworia
Josiah Mugambi
Clement “Omesa” Ongera
Peperuka
Frontline Interactive
69mb (poster) (post #2)
Louder than Swahili (post #2)
Startup Africa
Notes from the Road (on Ndemo)
SportsKenya
Tech Talk (NY Times columnist)
Girl in the Meadow
The Gitts Zone
Brian Longwe
Kenyan Poet
Open Source Africa
Do Good Well
Business in Focus
Odyssean
Network World

It’s the “Tusker” Safari Sevens, but I guess they don’t sponsor it well enough to also sponsor the team - they are sponsored by Virgin. In fact, I hear that it might not be called the Tusker Safari Sevens that much longer - too bad. I like that name, Kenyan beer and an internationally recognized Kenyan tournament, it’ll be sad to see it go.

This year brought in the world champion 7’s team from Fiji, as well as the French team. The emerging ‘Boks (South Africa’s team) were there as well, and they’ve won the last 3 years. Kenya ended up having to beat Fiji (which rumor says, each player would get 50,000/= shillings if they did).

Kenya won narrow, and hard fought, games against Fiji and Zimbabwe to get to the final. Meanwhile, the Emerging Boks smeared their competition on their way to meet Kenya. Honestly, I thought Kenya would have a hard time in this game. Instead, they blew the doors off with 2 quick tries, and never looked back as they won 31-12.

Of course, the crowd was rowdy as ever, singing familiar Kenyan rugby chants and getting drunker by the hour. Prime Minister Raila Odinga showed up mid-afternoon, to much fan fair and noise - a politically savvy move. All in all, it was a fabulously good time that I hope to see again next year.

(Note: I took over 1000 pictures, a couple dozen can be found here)

I’ve finally been able to upload some video, you can find more on my YouTube channel. Here is a shot of the last try by Kenya vs South Africa:

Barcamp Nairobi ‘08 pictures can be found on Flickr using the search tag, “barcampnairobi“.

My images are going up on this set.

Below, NY Times journalist G. Pascal Zachary, showed up and we had a great chat on the local tech makeup, opportunities and economy. Steve Mutinda tells his story of making mobile phone applications.

TAG for blogging, Twitter and Flickr: barcampnairobi

My Barcamp pictures are going up to this set on Flickr.

First up is:

• Where are the devs? - Riyaz Bachani talks about the increasing bandwidth options in Nairobi, but asks where are the online entrepreneurs?
• Google Maps as Platform - Mark from Google Kenya talks about using Google Maps in detail.
• BugLabs - Brian Muita gives an overview of hacking the BUGbundle, showing his new accelerometer game, then opening up the device for hacking by devs today.

Second group:

• Ubuntu - Mzungu talks about using Ubuntu, LTSP server, and running applications on the server instead of the workstation.
• Plone (cms) -
• Jahazi - Mugambi talks about his app.

I’ll be going up in the third session, talking about “blogging tips and tricks”.

AfriGadget makes the Time.com list of “Top 50 Websites of 2008“. Completely unexpected, and thrilling to see. Thanks to all the editors like Steve, Juliana and JKE too.

Met up with an incredibly talented mobile phone application creator, Steve Mutinda, (J2ME) with two very cool mobile phone apps. Full video interviews on him too, and have just posted the first article.

Got together with some local Kenyan tech guys and we’re hacking away on a BugLabs BUGbundle, trying to get a cool app up and running on it by Barcamp Nairobi this weekend. Posting pictures on that soon.

Met up with a ton of local guys, with some really interesting projects and ideas that I’ll be blogging about soon. Including big thinker Al Kags of the ICT Board, talented designer Fadz of Ark, Matere Lutische with a really cool idea, and many more…

Redid the Ushahidi wireframes, and meeting with some local developers to help build version 2 with us. Got some neat stuff up our sleeves, and one big surprise for Saturday’s Barcamp.

Went and watched a lot of rugby (Pictures are up at Flickr), including Quins vs KCB, RVA vs Mang’u and the Safari Sevens veterans. I love rugby season, only wish I could play too.

Finally, the windup to tomorrow’s Barcamp Nairobi is at an end. Thanks to Google Kenya, Strategiclee, the Kenya ICT Board and Ushahidi for sponsoring it. We’re all set and ready to roll at the Jacaranda Hotel (Pizza Garden side). Should be a blast, and there will be a lot of pictures and posts to come.

It’s amazing how simple visuals can take a bunch of data and make it real. Above is a chart showing the mayhem, broken down by type. It’s a sick story, but one that can be told in almost real-time because of our current technology.

This is why mapping and other visualizations are so important. Sokwanele is simply collecting the news reports then archiving and parsing them for information. When those stories come in ones and twos throughout the week, it’s easier to ignore. When they’re put forward as a body of evidence using visuals to show their aggregate statistics, it becomes damning and impossible to ignore.

That’s a busy map above. In fact, so busy that you’ll be surprised to know that it’s just the violence that has been perpetrated since the elections at the end of March. Anyone remember the “old” map, from way back then, 3 months ago? I do, and have the screenshot below:

By the way, both of those maps only show a small sample of what is being done. Not everything is reported to news organizations or directly to Sokwanele.

Some people might ask, “But, does Sokwanele’s map help at all?” I’m guessing that it doesn’t directly. However, what it does do is proved fodder for organizations inside and out to make an even stronger case against this repressive regime.

[Note: if you can handle graphically violent images, check out Sokwanele's Flickr stream.]

On a Personal Note
Those of us on the Ushahidi team think on this stuff a lot. We’re not off trying to win mashup competitions and raise funding for further development because we think it’s a fun startup idea. No, we’re doing this because it matters and we believe our tool will help raise awareness and empower organizations to understand and activate against wrongs.

If anything, I’m compelled more than ever to figure out how technology can continue to create change in truly screwed up places.

My take is that Africa needs a mobile payment system, akin to PayPal, that is both carrier and bank agnostic.

We’ll see if my definition of what it takes for eCommerce to work is the same as theirs.

NOTES from the meeting after the jump (long)

The private sector
Kevit Desai, Director of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance and the Kenya ICT Federation, starts off by reminding us that eCommerce effects all industries in Kenya, from health care to agriculture.

Marcel Werner, Chairman of KIF, steps up to state that eCommere will add 1% to Kenya’s GDP. Kenya is a champion in many areas, but not in eCommerce. There aren’t a lot of nations in Africa working in this area, except Rwanda, and he believes that Kenya should win that race. He states that eCommerce spurs entrepreneurship and innovation.

One of the great opportunities is in tourism, one of Kenya’s staples. However, eCommerce isn’t only for external forces and the export market, but also for domestic trade. Listing; rural B2C, B2B and G2C, also agricultural trade, healthcare, domestic trade, utilities, etc…

Gaps in the current legislation include the bills being light on fraud, the fact that liability ISPs aren’t defined and express support for eGovernment transactions. Beyond legislation though, which international affiliations should Kenya have? How does Kenya organize for arbitration?

Marcel talks a little about “transport”, as it relates to order fulfillment. It’s easy to sell things online, it’s hard to fulfill and deliver those orders. (I agree, fulfillment is a big deal. However, I also think that the private sector tends to figure this out pretty well, no matter the environment. Now, I don’t agree that it’s particularly easy to buy things online in Kenya right now though - not for the average person anyway.)

Kenya Law as it applies to eCommerce
Michael Murungi, Advocate Asst Editor of Kenya Law Reports. Defining eCommerce: Any form of business transaction in which the parties interact electronically rather than by physical exchanges or direct physical contact.

Why legislate? To legalize, facilitate or control/regulate eCommerce? Michael states that the primary reason for legislation is to facilitate better eCommerce and to protect parties doing transactions. Examples are the need for laws that help with personal privacy. Believes that we don’t need multiple regulators for this industry either, but just a single one for efficiency. However, that governing body needs to be split up between administrative and regulatory areas.

He wonders if the provisions that Kenya is thinking of putting into place don’t foreclose on future developments in e-cash. Examples include Chipknip in the Netherlands and the Octopus card in Hong Kong.

Michael talks about the need for ISP immunity - as it’s crucial to the ICT industry. ISPs should have no general obligation to monitor data traffic, unless the ISP becomes aware of illegal activity. Limitation of liability for transmitting, cacheing, hosting and third-party linking.

Finally, there is a need for prosecution for electronic crime and security.

Paul Kukubo, CEO of the Kenya ICT Board, has come up to talk about both the ICT Board’s mandate and how eCommerce applies to it. Four long term goals:

1. Establish and market Kenya as a leading ICT country in Africa
2. Promote ICT industries in Kenya
3. Promote ICT institutions (ex: ICT Board, KIF, etc.)
4. Widen the services of ICTs for all Kenyans

The web plays a very large part in ICT in this space. Paul has had a great deal of experience implementing eCommerce in the private sector (previously at 3Mice). eCommerce legislation is important in order to increase the amount of transactions that could be taking place in Kenya. We don’t see enough eCommerce activity in Kenya… yet. Part of the ICT Boards responsibility is to raise awareness of eCommerce in the country.

A lot of the eCommerce activities will take place over the mobile phone. We must recognize that as the medium for the future for Kenya. I wouldn’t be surprised if MPesa does more transactions than some small banks. We must be aware of how our population is accessing goods and services through technologies.

Paul breaks into some thoughts on digitizing of forms and documents. Right now there is a propensity to store these documents in hard copy, and not digitally. Paul believes that they might be more secure saved digitally rather than in paper. Example given of a land deed contrasted to a banking/sale transaction for that property.

People are looking for goods and services that simplify their lives. So, what should the exclusions be in the laws? What are the principals behind them, rather than just the exclusions themselves? We see a world in which every record will be a digital record - in 10 years. So these are serious questions.

For international business, it’s incredibly important that we have legislation for data protection and privacy. If business process outsourcing (BPO) is one of the larger initiatives that we’re looking to do, then we must understand that the right legislation to attract international business is critical.

Dr. Juma Oketch, head of the e-government secretariat in the Office of the President - directly connected to the Ministry of information through the Kenya ICT Board.

In brief, LiveQuotes let’s you track the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) from your GPRS enabled phone.

The NSE updates their data every time a trade happens, and that information can be downloaded as a CSV. Steve has it setup so that he checks it every minute, allowing you to have near real-time access to the exchange, and a scrolling ticker for your selected portfolio. Want to see how your stock has done over time? No problem, there is a basic line chart showing how your shares have done historically.

Steve started this about 3 months ago, soft-launching it to a few friends as he worked on new features and fixed things up. So far there are 200 users. I would expect that to change soon. 800,000 Kenyans have just bought into the Safaricom IPO was his inspiration, and a good one because it means there are hundreds of thousands of new stock owners in Kenya.

While it’s fee right now, plans are to charge 30/= Kenya Shillings per week ($0.50 cents) per user. Anyone can receive the application through a simple SMS with a link to the URL, and then registering on the spot. Safaricom or Celtel (depending on which carrier the end user has) will act as middleman for transactions, paying Steve on a monthly basis.

A little math will tell you that by getting just 10,000 users he will make about 300,000/= per week ($4,665). $18,000/month is a nice salary by almost anyone’s standards. I’ll be asking for a loan from him soon, I hope.

What else is in the future? Uganda and Tanzania for one, possibly the rest of Africa if things go well. On the technology side, look for some type of API that will allow others to access the same pre-parsed information.

See it in action in the video below:

Brian Muita and Wilfred Mworia had their first chance to play with the BUGbundle, a device that you can hack about 10 ways from Sunday. So far we’re understanding the device, and are working on getting a premade working app on it. Needless to say, we’ll likely be in the BugLabs forums quite a lot this week so we can get it working in time for Saturday’s Barcamp Nairobi. (update: Brian got it to work!)

Eric Magutu, Laban Mwangi and Steve Mutinda were all there to brainstorm a cool application that would allow them to utilize some of the neat features available in the Sony Ericsson SDK that had been showcased at Skunkworks last week.

First, because it’s being installed in Upper Hill, my old neighborhood. I just don’t recognize this place anymore with all of the new commercial buildings.

Second, and probably more interesting to everyone else, is that this dish is aimed directly at the mass market in Kenya and stands to drastically lower the costs of bandwidth to the home. Wananchi will be offering 512k broadband to the home for 3000 shillings ($). Compare that to the next best offerings by Safaricom with their new 3G service for 2000/= (700Mb) or 4000/= (2Gb), and Access Kenya with 256k at 6000 shillings.

From here, it looks like anyone wanting to stay untethered and who doesn’t have that high of bandwidth consumption would likely choose Safaricom (700Mb isn’t a lot). However, if you’re going to spend more than a modicum of your time on the internet, then Wananchi’s new service is the most attractive.

Wananchi’s towers also have fiber pumped directly into them, so more speed and reliability out of the gate. To manage their large 100 tower rollout in the Nairobi area, they’re piggybacking cell towers with Celtel, and hope to be done by around October. Certain towers, with service off of this new dish, will go live by the beginning of July.

All told, I have to say I’m impressed. Not just by Wananchi’s offering, which will come as great news for the public, but that the communications industry is moving along so quickly. Thought international fiber is still a dream in Kenya, local connectivity is booming.

So, where’s the local version of WordPress MU setup for local bloggers? Where are the local web services by local software guys for local companies? That we shall find out shortly, this weekend at Barcamp Nairobi.

(Update: Full-sized images on Flickr)

Nigeria places a distant second, while 2 more Central/East African countries are heavily in their drink too (Rwanda and Burundi). Can’t say I know why there’s such an abundance of pombe in that region…

That’s from a neat data visualization tool called Many Eyes. Again showing the importance of data visualization for understanding large amounts of data easily.

I read, or heard, someone say that data visualizations are there, “to help the ignorant understand complex issues”. That’s about as accurate as it gets. Not ignorant in a bad way, but not everyone can be a statistician, a specific field specialist, or have the time to crunch numbers.

A bonus visualization showing mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people throughout sub-Saharan Africa:

(hat tip Ethan)

Upcoming events to watch (chronological):

West & Central Africom - “The premier meeting place for communications decision-makers to discuss the key issues facing the market.”
Dates: June 18-19, 2008
Location: Abuja Int’l Conference Center in Abuja, Nigeria

Barcamp Nairobi ‘08 - A local “unconference” for Kenyan techies, web designers and bloggers. (disclosure: I’m part of this)
Dates: June 21, 2008
Location: Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya

APPFRICA - a new technology conference and thinktank.
Dates: July 31, 2008
Location: Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda

WordCamp SA - For all bloggers in and around South Africa.
Dates: August 23, 2008
Location: TBD, in Cape Town, South Africa

Barcamp Kampala - Another unconference pops up for Uganda - looking forward to hearing about this one.
Dates: August 29, 2008
Location: TBD, Kampala, Uganda

MobileActive ‘08 - A conference on mobile technology for social impact.
Dates: October 13-15, 2008
Location: TBD in Johannesburg, South Africa

[If you have a good tech conference coming up, let me know.]

I thought I’d leave everyone with some links to stories that I’ve enjoyed over the last week.

• Mobiles in Africa - one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time on the mobile phone in Africa, by Ken Banks.
• Few people can write long interesting articles, but some have the skill to do it. Ethan Zuckerman writes another thought provoking post on the architecture of Serendipity.
• Find a job in Kenya using SMS on Kazi560:
  
• myKRO - A new blog about the world of microfinance. They’re looking for contributors, especially from the field in Africa.
• A nice article on how to get the most out of your thumbdrive from Freelance Switch.
• 50 Questions asked and answered about Android on ZDnet.
• Through Mobimii, MXit users are no longer bound to the MXit service. Breaking news by Charl Norman for Mxit users in South Africa.

More in a day or two, once I land…

Above is the map of the, “iPhone conquest of the world” shown at Apple’s WWDC keynote today. 15 African nations are getting in on the game now that is is 3G and more affordable. Honestly, I wonder how many of the local networks can handle the data load, but that’s another conversation. Orange will be the carrier for Africa (as well as the Middle East and Europe).

The iPhone will be released in many countries on July 11th. However, the full index of countries, including all of the African nations (save South Africa), won’t see the iPhone until later in the year.

The 15 countries are:

Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, South Africa.

The iPhone in Africa. Really?
Many people will say that the iPhone will never be of any consequence in Africa. Possibly true. Outside of Egypt and South Africa, the number of people who can afford post-paid data plans are fairly limited. The second problem is the data networks themselves, many of them aren’t ready for the stress that iPhone users will apply (as AT&T wasn’t in the US).

I reserve judgment. Blackberry’s, N95s and other smart phones can be made to work in Africa quite well. However, I don’t think what we’re seeing is “just another smart phone”. It’s a new operating system that changes the paradigm of the mobile phone/web. (I think Android is similar in many ways too - just more open).

What will happen is those who can afford the iPhone and the requisite post-paid plan will rush out and buy it. The data networks will become stronger to support it, and local developers will start building for apps (not to mention the secondary and tertiary applications and APIs that are needed).

Years from now, when the idea of the mobile web isn’t so flashy and unknown in Africa, we’ll look back and say our thanks to the iPhone as one of the catalysts that pushed development forward.

Gruber gets it right:

“The physical phone is not the story. A year from now, the iPhone 3G will be replaced by another new model. The platform is the story. Platforms have staying power, and, once entrenched, are very hard to displace.”

[image courtesy of Engadget, and full notes from keynote. Full video on Apple.com]

If you’re in Nairobi on June 21st, mark your calendar! We’ll be meeting at Jacaranda Hotel, going from 10am-5pm for Barcamp Nairobi ‘08.

What is a Barcamp?

“BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.”

All you need to know is this: it beats the hell out of a normal conference.

There is no pre-planned schedule of events, or speakers. There are set timeframes and rooms for anyone who comes in to sign-up for a time to speak in. You attend the ones you find the most interesting. It’s also less speaking than it is conversation and discussion around a specific topic.

Ideas for Barcamp Nairobi ‘08
I’m sure you’ll come up with plenty of other items that are well worth having a discussion about. Here are some of the things on my mind that I hope to hear and/or talk about:

• Local mapping (Open Streetmap, Green Map, etc.)
• Blogging tools and trends
• Mobile phone apps (Android in Africa, FrontlineSMS and RapidSMS)
• Using Google’s App Engine for building web and mobile services
• I’d love to hear from some of the EPROM guys that worked with Nathan Eagle
• OS curriculum for universities
• Studying users (mobile and web)
• Building into social networks

Of course, I’ll do a talk on Ushahidi. Not just Ushahidi though, but some of the really interesting and open areas surrounding the crowdsourcing of content in Africa using mobile devices. Then, augmenting that content with web services like Google Maps, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

Oh, I didn’t mention that Ushahidi will be providing free t-shirts for attendees. You have to be signed up on the Barcamp wiki to get one, so head on over!

Sponsored by Ushahidi, Yahoo and O’Reilly so far, get in touch with me if you’d like to sponsor as well. We could use a few more shillings to cover some of the expenses. And schwag, attendees can’t get enough schwag…

You can also RSVP on the Facebook event page, but know that for the t-shirts you need to be registered on the wiki.

Bongoza is a new search engine for Tanzania. I’m intrigued by this idea of a niche search engine by country. Usually I would think that the big search engines would do an adequate job for any area, however it might be different if there’s a human helping to index uniquely Tanzanian content, especially as much of it is in Swahili.

The sites in the index are mostly sites that end in the .tz TLD. But since most companies in Tanzania have .com’s, he searches on the internet for hosting companies in Tanzania and gets a list of websites that they host and index them accordingly.

Ali Damji is the gentleman behind the Bongoza. He also created the Tanzania Startpage, which is a useful index of interesting Tanzanian websites, and and Mshikaji (which appears to be down). I love seeing this kind of online entrepreneurship and will make sure to watch this space for more from Tanzania.

EA Collective is a new blog that aims to showcase Kenyan designers. I hope that Barbara Muriungi takes their name seriously though and broadens the scope to web designers from Uganda and Tanzania as well. I know I’ll be paying attention, as I’m always looking for top-notch web designers and developers from Africa.

If you’re a web designer from East Africa, you should consider getting your work in front of Barbara for her to post to the EA Collective blog at bkagwiria [at] gmail.com.

Buy 1 litre of Volvic naturelle water and they (Volvic) will pay the equivalent of 10 litres in form of financial aid to UNICEF - who are said to be drilling boreholes in the Amhara region of Ethiopia.

Wow.

What a perfect way to improve your public image.

Nothing new though, the project has been up and running since 2005 now, and there’s a credible (German) journalist doing his “research” on the ground to see every donation is properly used.

Now, before I delve into the usual criticism when it comes to dev aid, lemme get this straight:

People in Europe WANT to help other - poorer - people and they want this aid to arrive as a 100% sum. Obviously, it’s a noble idea.

See that screenshot above? It comes from the Volvic fuer Unicef website and informs visitors about recent activities, tells them where Ethiopia is, which region will benefit and even - and that’s a bit strange, I think - provides us with a gallery of donors that have already logged in on that site and donated for this cause.

Now, those 92 boreholes/wells may not be such a huge figure to the groundwater discharge problem, but as far as I am informed, “water is in abundant supply on the world’s poorest continent” and “poorly managed”.

Poorly managed, oh yes indeed.

So what do you - dear readers - think about such an intiative, considering various complex aspects such as

a) the usage of a mismanaged, but proud and rich country like Ethiopia to highlight some burning Millenium Developement Goals?

b) private companies trying to raise their sales & creating a positive product image by donating a certain amount for an x quantity of sold goods?

c) consumer’s desires to share their relative wealth with other, less fortunate people on this planet in a politically correct way?

As for me, I am bit undecided. It always freaks me out when I see this kind of advertisement (Africa = poor = help needed) - as already seen the other day.
Even IF we share 1 Euro/pp with another nation of our choice - will things improve? And is it only a matter of financial aid?
What about poor management? What about those young academics who are educated abroad and then have to settle for a 300,- EUR/month job with a governmental institution once they come back? Are they going to be the Cheetah generation? Or are they rather going to stick to the rules and manage to climb the institutional job ladder in order to support their families and continue managing the mismanagement they’ve inherited from the retiring Hippos?

I think that Ethiopia does not really need this help. Sure, it’s a nice gift and comes for free + provides further income, but is this the way to help?

How do you feel about this?

(Photo by Schipulites)

More important than the money for us though is the validation that we got from the community at large for our mission. It’s the Kenyan and African community that got us here, and the NetSquared community that voted for us to win. A special thank you to NetSquared for making this possible.

To everyone who has supported us, a BIG thank you.

We’re not done with you yet though. We hope that you will continue to be a part of the greater Ushahidi community. Helping us develop the platform further. Helping us spread the word. Most of all, helping us implement it in crisis situations.

Stay connected with us:

Ushahidi Facebook group
Ushahidi Twitter

Want to help? Here are a few of the items that we’re looking for help on:

• Increase/ensure Geo-coding accuracy of incidents
• Build a verification process that can be based on technical information gathered in the the reporting of the information (geo-location of incident submission) or it can be based on a verification process where a verifier confirms the details of the incident.
• Heat mapping based on category type, location and number of incidents
• Plugin and extension capabilities in the core architecture
• SMS handling process (similar to FrontlineSMS or RapidSMS) including a call back/verification process
• Customization for NGO’s to track incidents, and to report on assistance provided to alleviate a situation
• Missing person’s index
• Volunteer feature on the mashup showing locations for volunteers, and also links to online donation sites active in a specific location
• ‘Lens View’ visualization of the data, for example a multimedia ‘lens’ to filter the content for the public or press.

[update: A couple people have asked for the presentation loop that we had running at our table. It is now up at Slideshare.net (I'll try to get an audio dub over it soon).]

| View | Upload your own

Short interview at NetSquared of me. I’ll add the one of David when it is posted.(video)

Ushahidi covered on the TED Blog

(image by Manny Hernandez founder of Tudiabetes
and Estudiabetes, two communities for people
touched by diabetes. On the right is Vam Makam, our new friend and local expert from Adobe.)

After the NetSquared event last night, David and I took off for the WordPress party where we met up with Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress.

Mobile Phone Posts
One of my favorite bloggers has written a piece on South African mobile banking options.

A write up by Katrin of Mobile Active on the “Say no to Xenophobia” campaign being run by Cell-Life in South Africa. I hope their campaign starts coordinating with the United for Africa campaign soon, it only makes sense.

Jan Chipchase on, “Understanding Non-Literacy as a Barrier to Mobile Phone Communication“, part of a larger publication.

Sent here to protect soldiers with big egos
Of these men and pain this child knows

Come here to serve instead turmoil follows
The sickness of human nature this child knows

That one promises food laughing with his fellows
A full stomach won’t stop the ache this child knows

Viciously abused as if something she owes
Her life has forever been altered this child knows

Not a soul to save her when her blood flows
There will be no-one to turn to this child knows

Swaggering like earth owners and heroes
Nothing will happen to them this child knows

She wishes to fly far away from her woes
Nothing will ever change this child knows

Peacekeepers ‘abusing children’

For UN spokesman Nick Birnback to say that it “was impossible to ensure “zero incidents” within an organisation that has up to 200,000 personnel serving around the world” is a just a load of old cobblers.

This abuse of human rights is happening because the survivors are “orphans, children separated from their parents and families, and children in families dependent on humanitarian assistance”, according to the report by Save the Children (.pdf file) . In other words, voiceless people.

The very people that organisations such as the UN and Save the Children are meant to be supporting and caring for.

The poet, W. H. Auden wrote, “Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table”. How true.

ShareThis

As I mentioned in my last blog post, we were sidetracked from our preparations a little bit this last week by an even more important event/crisis - the xenophobic attacks happening in South Africa. The Ushahidi engine is being used there now at UnitedforAfrica.co.za.

We’re also unveiling our new logo today, designed by David. Watch the flash presentation to see why we chose it.

Ushahidi is now a registered non-profit in Florida, jumping all the hoops to become a 501c3, with Ory, myself, Juliana and David as part of the team. Get in touch if you’d like to be part of the growing Ushahidi community.

Quirk, a web marketing agency in Cape Town is leading this charge, with Tim Shier, Rafiq and David Kobia all pulling VERY late nights last night to make this come together. Quirk will act as administrators on this build, and the Ushahidi team will step away from it as soon as the build is done.

The most important part of this type of campaign is to get the word out. SMS, email, call your friends and family all over South Africa and get them to tell their friends so that more reports come in. The more that come in, the better the tool.

A couple resources for this crisis in South Africa:

• A list of organizations that can/are helping in this situation
• Afrigator’s xenophobia page aggregating blog posts and news articles on the crisis
• BizCommunity’s aggregation of online coverage of xenophobia attacks
• The Times “Flames of Hate” video
• Recent Google News results

So, what’s up with this “Ushahidi engine”?
As you might/might not be aware, we’ve worked up a plan for a new version of Ushahidi (v2) that would replace what we’ve done as a free and open source tool for crowdsourcing crisis information and then visualizing that on a map. We’ll be presenting that idea next week at the NetSquared challenge in California, and are already building the basic architecture for that. This collaboration with the guys in South Africa ends up being a perfect example of the need for a rapid deployment tool like Ushahidi.

What we could use is more developers from around the world to help us. We already have a good dozen who have committed to helping in some way or other, ranging from the Bay area in California to Kenya to South Africa and Malawi. If you’d like to take part, please get in touch!

One of the social networks that Charl created was Blueworld, a social networking site for (younger) South Africans. Recently 24.com acquired a controlling stake in Blueworld for an undisclosed amount. That’s a big success story for a little startup, and one that gives Charl enough money to go do even more exciting things.

Blueworld is a social community where anyone can join and create a profile so your friends can find you online, upload an unlimited number of photos, share videos, write your own blogs, support your peers with groups, send text messages to any network for free, discover new people and connect with friends.

I remember when Blueworld first came out a couple years ago. Like many social networks, it was fairly simple and bare-bones. Looking at the most recent version though, you can see major changes. There are a lot more people using it, and the site is more robust.

Like any other social network, once you gain enough users you have critical mass and the site grows on its own. With 137,000 registered users by March of this year, Blueworld is becoming quite a force in the web space in South Africa. By any measure, Blueworld is a resounding success story for Africa.

Find out more about Charl at his blog, but also check out some of his other work:

Bandwidth Blog (SA web startup news)
BlogBuzz (a mini SA blog aggregator)
Carblog
GayPeers (social network for gays/lesbians in SA)
NetBuzz (a mini SA news aggregator)
Powerloss (focused on power/energy issues in SA)
SA Rugby Blog
Zoopedup (automotive social network)

I hope they can get this to work in 2009.

Here’s the email from TED curator Chris Anderson:

Dear Friends of TED,

Regretfully, we’re having to suspend plans for our TEDAfrica event scheduled for the end of September 2008 in Cape Town.

As you may know, we sought to launch this event under the control of a local team, operating under a license. The goal was to build on the full impact and quality of the TED conference held in Tanzania last year. But after reviewing progress with our licensees, we have mutually agreed that that is not going to be achievable in the available time. Our licensees did all they could to deliver on an ambitious plan, and I commend their efforts.

We apologize to those of you who are disappointed or inconvenienced. TED remains 100% committed to continuing to serve its growing and passionate African community. We are considering a number of options, including holding an event in 2009, and expect to make a further announcement soon.

If you have any specific questions or concerns, please write to my colleague jane@ted.com. Meanwhile we will continue to promote content from the Arusha conference online and to work on Neil Turok’s amazing TED Prize wish: that the next Einstein should come from Africa. Please take a look at the nexteinstein.org website just launched by TED partners Avenue A/Razorfish, as well as this recent TEDBlog post celebrating the new AIMS Research Centre in South Africa.

Sincerely,

Chris Anderson
TED Curator

If you’re looking to take part in another conference in Cape Town, Gareth Knight is putting on Tech4Africa, which was supposed to be right after TED Africa.

I’m not sure how useful those images are without the context of me speaking to them. Since I generally type out my notes, I’ve added those below after the “more” button. The notes are not verbatim what I said, but will give you a general indication of what I talked about.

More after the jump! (warning, this is long as it’s a 20 minute talk)

This is my transcript for the talk, follow along as you can…

Where 2.0 Talk on Mapping and Digital Activism

Intro
I’m here to talk to you about real-world usage of your work. Specifically, in the world of causes and issues, where (usually) unpaid civilians use your tools to further their causes: Activists.

My name is Erik Hersman. A short intro on me that will help you understand some of my personal history and motivations will give you some context before you hear about what I did a little later in this talk. I grew up as the son of linguistic missionaries in Sudan and Kenya, only moving back to the US to go to college. I write two blogs, White African is my personal blog where I like to talk about high-tech mobile, web and PC issues pertaining to Africa. AfriGaget is a group blog that I started a couple years ago that focuses on low-tech ingenuity in Africa.

First off, since I’m the last speaker, and since I’m one of those tech guys on the far end of the spectrum that Jesse Robbins talked about earlier, I want to cover some of the really cool things that I saw here that could be hacked/simplified and used in crisis, disaster, and relief scenarios.

Things I’m excited about!
Geotate - imagine this kind of device used by bloggers/reporters in a hot zone
AfricaMap open source project by Harvard
Bug Labs device
DIY Drones - think what you could do with cheap UAVs in a post-disaster scenario.

The tools you create, and the work you do to map the world digitally, are incredibly useful. The world is only now beginning to wake up to the power of the digital, social and living map.

Okay, on to my real talk!

The Ushahidi Story (Summarized)
So, the reason I’m here is due to the fact that I stood up and did something during a time that I wish had never happened. Some of you might be aware that in January of this year in Kenya there was a disputed election where the incumbent (President Mwai Kibaki) claimed a win. There were some gross irregularities, and the opposition (Raila Odinga) refused to accept the questionable results.

What started out as a political fracas quickly devolved down ethnic lines where Raila’s supporters displaced and killed many of Kibaki’s tribe (Kikuyu), while the same happened in Kibaki’s area and the ethnic groups around that area (Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin).

Government forces and civilians battled it out in the urban slums and rural Kenya. It was crazy, somewhat unexpected, and few were ready to report what was happening. Speaking of reporting, as soon as Kibaki swore himself in to a second term, he simultaneously created a media blackout. The only way to get news now was via non-traditional news sources, like blogs. Internally, though there was only old TV and radio show reruns, though rumors and messages were still flying via SMS.

In the midst of it were a couple members of what would soon become the Ushahidi team. Juliana was upcountry and used her blog, Twitter and Flickr to get news out. Ory was in Nairobi, and her blog quickly became the focal point for the international Kenyan diaspora as they tried to get information about what was happening back home. Ory was hearing stories and reports that were not being told outside of Kenya, and many not being reported at all. On one blog post she said,

[Quote slide by Ory]

When I read that, I quickly contacted my Kenyan tech friends.

Our goals were to:

1. Create a way for ordinary Kenyans to report in what they saw
2. Create an archive of news and reports
3. Visualize what’s happening on a macro level, and then drill into the details

Building Ushahidi

• Detailed geospatial data is hard to come by in Africa
• How much should be web-based in a mobile phone culture?
• Mobile phones - getting a full report in 140 characters is not easy
• What data points do we need?

[Ushahidi Calendar]

A loose affiliation of Kenyan technologists and bloggers banded together to create this tool, with the initial goal of aggregating citizen and news reports of violence in real time. 4 days later we had Ushahidi.

It was a way for everyday Kenyans to report in incidences of violence via SMS, email or the web. It was very simple, but it worked, and that was what was important. The Kenyan diaspora, especially the blogging community, rallied around this cause and made people take notice. It ended up being a community action that led to whatever success Ushahidi had.

[Main page] - Demo the site live

[Report detail page]

[Timeline feature]

Let me give you just a few examples from an active day on Ushahidi during the crisis. On January 17th the following things happened:

“Protesters gathered in groups and attempted to walk into the town centre; police fired live shots and tear gas canisters to disperse them. Three protesters were seriously injured and one shot dead.”

“Police battled youths who set fire to roadblocks; the police shot indiscriminately, “targeting anyone on sight”; one man was shot in the stomach as he stood in front of his house.”

“A 13-year old boy was laid to rest next to his uncle´s house; the burial was attended by hundreds of residents who wailed and lit up bonfires.”

What we realized was that we were receiving a lot of information, but we didn’t have a way to track what happened afterwards. We heard anecdotally about how the information was used for good, but we had no way of knowing all of the time.

Results
Lessons Learned

• The importance of mapping accuracy
• Data poisoning - what happens when your antagonist starts using it?
• Verification and authentication are difficult
• Clarify why it was created and make sure that is inescapably obvious
• Create a feedback loop back to end users
• Know why you built it. Is it for advocacy, security, monitoring or information gathering? (we did it for information gathering at Ushahidi)

An Enemy Around Every Corner (Really?)
Thoughts on this issue evolved out of discussions I had with a gentleman in meeting we both attended about tools for digital activists. Ushahidi was still fresh, and up until that point we had been so focused on just getting the site up and getting the word out about the project that we hadn’t thought about things such as security of our information, how it could be used by “bad guys”, or how we could verify all reports.

Map Accuracy
- How do you deal with this in a relatively unmapped regions?
- How important is accuracy when raising awareness vs using that data for human rights violations?

Verification
- Is the source trusted?
- Data poisoning

What we learned after development was that data sources and accuracy are very important. What you do with your data, the verification process, and how accurate the data is represented on the map all play a huge role in credibility. More so, how that tool is used by friendly and non-friendly organizations has large repercussions for both the tool and the people you are trying to help.

What’s next
Ushahidi ended up being a prototype that we’ve learned a lot from, and which opened the door for us to learn what organizations and everyday people are looking for when trying to share their data in a map-based setting during a crisis. We were approached, about creating an easy tool that can be used in early warning or conflict mapping scenarios by the public. We think we’ve learned a thing or two about that, but still have a long way to go on it.

We finally incorporated Ushahidi as a US-based non-profit last month. We have some initial funders, which will allow us to create a simple, useful and powerful tool for activists and NGOs around the world. It’s an Open Source project, with over a dozen international developer volunteers so far. If you’d like to know more about this, talk to me afterwards.

On Activism
Activism is a funny thing, because what you care enough to be active about might seem mundane, stupid or even like enemy actions. It covers the gamut - political, societal, land rights, environmental, etc…

It also turns out that activism is very subjective. Your idea of who an activist is and what they do can span the spectrum.

- Bra burning women of the 1960’s (fact or fiction?)
- Anonymous (vs Scientology)
- G-8 protesters
- Support Your Local Brewery!
- Minutemen on the US border (for & against)

As seen in the last example, there’s always an “enemy”, due to the fact that on the other side of an activist’s issue is another person. For better or for worse, they’re the antagonist.

Activists are just a cross section of society, so they’re not always technologically proficient. If you ask yourself later why ever single example I show you of activist mapping is using Google Maps or Google Earth, I can tell you that it’s most likely due to the simplicity of just getting something to work quickly.

Examples of activists using maps around the world:
I’d like to end by giving you a speed-run through other examples of maps being used in creative ways around the world by activists. You can find much more on their individual websites, and I will have the whole presentation available for download on my blog (white african) and it should be available on the Where 2.0 site after the conference as well.

• Crisis in Darfur (USHMM and Amnesty Int’l)
• Sudan ICC war criminals
• Global Voices “Access Denied” monitors areas of government censorship of the web
• Tunisia prison map
• Bahrain - Land rights (PDF)
• Chicago Idealist Network
• Zimbabwe’s “Operation Murambatsvina” land redistribution images
• Sokwanele All Breaches Map in Zimbabwe
• Great Whale Trail
• Planet Action (Using mapping to show different environmental projects worldwide)
• I Love Mountains (end mountain coal mining)

A few points to end with.

1. Mapping for human rights violations vs mapping for activists are different things. Activist are not the authority.
2. What can you do? How can your skills be used to impact issues that are important to you?

Finally, a digitally connected world not only grants us a front row seat to the rest of the world, but also the power to influence events and create change in a way that was impossible just a few short decades ago. So that events that may occur thousands of miles away are in fact - quite literally - in our digital backyard. Which makes it a lot harder to just sit back and watch.

It should be noted that the point of the laptop project was not to give children access to the Internet, or to word processors, or even so that they could learn to touch-type. The idea was to provide children with an open-ended system with which they could tinker and explore — and through that exploration, learn. Papert long referred to computers as “the children’s machine,” because it offers children the chance to learn by creating and sharing, two key elements of Papert’s educational theory known as “constructionism.”

At the end of the day, I just want more computers in the hands of kids in Africa. It’s only by younger generations gaining access to technology that we see major change happen.

Of course, this begs the question about mobile phones. Is it possible to program for mobile phones on mobile phones? If so, maybe we can skip some of this PC paradigm altogether…

I’m continually impressed with Nokia. They seem to really care about making money by doing things right. That’s easy enough for any large multinational to say, but much harder to practice. However, a couple new stories popped up recently that prove this out.

First off, you should go read what Jan Chipchase is writing about Nokia’s Open Studios. They’re working in shanty towns from Ghana to India actively listening to their target audience in the developing world. One of the initiatives that they just ran was a competition to design your ideal future phone”. Below is just one of the designs, see the rest in at BusinessWeek.

Nokia Civilian Police: Designed by a 17-year-old living in a Liberian refugee settlement, this phone is designed to help the user record daily life in the camp. This way he can share his experiences with others. It also helps fight crime by including two separate cameras. This also ensures that both he and his brother have access to a camera.

Beyond the ethnographic and discovery stages of what Nokia does are the actual phones. Juliana writes about Nokia’s new mobile phones for emerging markets. This is where all the work by people like Jan and Younghee come to fruition.

Lastly, everyone should be aware of Nokia’s Beta Labs, which is full of news and information on what they’re doing in markets around the world. It’s their skunkworks and R&D center (the stuff that they share anyway), and it’s just one more touch point to see how Nokia is innovating around the world.

Startups Nigeria Blog
I’m really digging this new blog by a Nigerian named Loy. He’s covering some cool new apps by Nigerians, including CVCrib, which I plan on reviewing myself soon.

Techpreneurs in Kenya
A PDF document by Business Daily that discusses some of the brilliant young entrepreneurs and their ideas in Kenya. Here’s the PDF for download

“Why Africa May Never Produce a Microsoft, Google, Yahoo or Facebook”
An interesting article that discusses the challenge that young college-level entrepreneurs face in Africa.

The decision you have to make when deciding to create a technology business, a web or mobile application in Africa, is whether it’s something for the local market or international. Very few companies are solving for both. In my examples you’ll see Mxit, a company solving for a local problem, and Synthasite, a company solving for an international problem.

For those who don’t know, Mxit created a java-enabled chat application for mobile phones that decreases the cost per message compared by ~90% of a normal SMS message. They have over 7.5 million users after just a few years in action, and are the staple communication system for young mobile users in South Africa. It’s a phenomenon, and they’re looking to expand internationally.

Synthasite is the free web site creator and publishing platform, designed and created in the mold of any Web 2.0 app coming out of the Silicon Valley. Vinny, the founder, tells me that they have over 70k users and are increasing that by 1000 each day - which puts them as one of the top 3 services like this in the world. They have just moved 1/3 of their operations to San Francisco, with 2/3 of the company still in Cape Town.

Both of these companies had completely different strategies: local and global. These companies serve to prove that any developer in Africa with a good idea that solves a problem, and has the drive to see it through, can be incredibly successful. It’s inspiring, and I hope that more of Africa’s web developers will see the opportunities all around them.

[Image courtesy of Rafiq via Flickr]

During the course of our discussion, we talked about mobile phones and the web. An interesting point that Kaushal brought up was the fact that only a certain layer of society really has access to the web, and the rest only have access to simple communications through their mobile phone.

That little insight gets pretty interesting when you start applying some real project concepts to that thought. One of Kaushal’s ideas was to create a job platform that had two different levels and forms of interaction (using some of the same ideas behind Babajob in India).

• Those hiring would interact on the web level first, and also the mobile at some point.
• Job seekers would only need to ever interact through their mobile phone.

This allows those without access to high bandwidth technology to bypass the normal flaws (in a Western ideology) in the technology loop that generally break the cycle in Africa.

The Technology Gap in Africa
UNCTAD defines the technology gap:

“There is a wide gap between those who have access to technology and use it effectively and those who do not. The technology gap exists between those who can create and innovate to produce new technologies and those who cannot. It also exists between those who can access, adapt, master and use existing technologies and those who cannot.”

In Africa, the world thinks of the technology gap as the lack of bandwidth, low access to computers and non-data enabled mobile phones. This is all true, these deficiencies do cause a technology gap to grow. African income levels just won’t allow the same type of consumer behavior towards all technologies as we see in the West.

The average African is not the same type of technology user as the average European or American. Information flows differently, African’s don’t drink from the fire-hose of data that we do. They do use technology though, almost everyone has the minimal level of access to a mobile phone.

What if the technology gap that we see is not as big as we think?
In the UNCTAD definition, we can agree that there is a difference of levels between access and use. However, the gap between creation and innovation is less clear. It gets downright blurry when talking about adaptation and mastering of technologies.

You see, most Africans have a better understanding of the abilities and limitations of their mobile phones that most Americans. There is more modding and hacking of hardware happening in Africa than almost anywhere in Europe.

Summarizing these many thoughts…
What Kaushal is getting at with his ideas on using technology is really about adapting cultural and technological norms to everyday problems. Like any entrepreneurial thought, it’s about finding a challenge and creatively solving it. Ignoring the status quo way of thinking finding another way to make it work.

The R&D that goes into solving technical problems doesn’t always happen in the traditional form in Africa. It happens on the street level with little fan fair, it’s not always flashy and it doesn’t always conform to the way that Westerners would like to see a problem solved.

More high school and university programs should be in place to train technologists, but what is really needed is more businesses being created by solving African technology and communication problems. African government organizations generally do a poor job of marshaling their resources to foster growth in the technology sector - so more businesses pressuring their leaders to pay attention to this industry would be welcome as well.

The lack of any cost-effective traditional money transfer service has also played a part in the creation of this financial back-channel. Africans in the diaspora can buy (or send) a wide variety of goods and services including; airtime minutes, flowers, cakes, school fees, shopping vouchers, etc… the list goes on.

Below are a couple of these websites and their respective country:

iCare - Uganda

Happysend - Cameroon

Akyedie - Ghana

MamaMikes - Kenya

Zimbuyer - Zimbabwe

I’m sure there will be more innovation and interesting sites building out in this place throughout the continent. In fact, I’m sure I’ve missed a great deal of the sites that are already out there. If there is a site that you think I have missed, add it to the comment area below.

The 45-second video embedded below are their results.

If this type of data interests you, you should read their full report titled, Scientific Measure of Africa’s Connectivity (PDF - .64Mb). It’s an incredibly interesting report on their methods and findings.

The new millennium is beginning to see significant advances in Africa’s quest for greater connectivity. Nevertheless, although a substantial increase in the rate of expansion of networks is taking place, the ITU statistics on teledensity show that although there are 57.3 Internet users per 100 inhabitants in Sweden, 57 in the United States, and 34.7 in Italy, there are just 0.5 in Mali and 0.2 in Niger. The Internet tariff for the same type of connection is 1.1% of the Gross National Income in Sweden and in the United States and 1% in Italy, whereas it is 289% in Mali and 683% in Niger. The same differences are reflected by the Internet performance.

One other organization to pay attention to is AfrISPA (African Internet Service Provider Associations), run by Eric Osiakwan. They have been hard at work trying to build relationships between ISPs in different African nations, building an association big and strong enough to make serious change happen.

(hat tip Riyaz and Brough)

Throughout the year as I continued to interact with Tanzanian bloggers I came to learn that a significant number of them (Tanzanian bloggers) do not have much confidence in Kikwete and many of them view his presidency, to put it politely, as a disaster, especially when they reflected on his economic policies.

This raised a number of questions in my mind.

Firstly, if these Tanzanian bloggers are not at all impressed with Kikwete’s presidency why did they take such strong exception to an insult lobbed his way by an insignificant and inarticulate Kenyan blogger?

Secondly, why did the Kenyan blogosphere find it so hard to understand why the Tanzanian bloggers were outraged by an insult to their president?

Is it because Kenyans have thicker skin, are mentally stronger and are used to verbal sparing and thus can roll with the punches?

Perhaps.

Is it because Tanzanians are more eloquent, more mature and civilised and thus will not stand for insults?

Perhaps.

My understanding of why these two siblings, Kenyans and Tanzanians, could disagree so fundamentally on this issue can be summed up in one word.

Statesmanship.

In a sentence: the history and tradition of statesmanship within the Tanzanian ruling elite, and the complete lack of statesmanship within the Kenyan ruling elite.

At the risk of launching a Platonic argument of gigantic dimensions let me define it thus (quoting Wikipedia);

To rule or have political power called for a specialized knowledge. The statesman was one who possesses this special knowledge of how to rule justly and well and to have the best interests of the citizens at heart.

As Kenyans I believe we find it hard to understand the notion of statesmanship, as it implies that those in the political elite in Kenya should be driven to implement policies that have the best interests of the citizens of Kenya at heart.

How can we understand this when the Kibaki government claimed it did not have enough money to build the 500,000 homes it promised in its election manifesto of 2002 yet somehow managed to find USD 12m to spend on new cars (enough to send 25,000 children to school for eight years)?

How can we understand this when the Moi regime fleeced the country of at least US $600 million in less than three years in what we now call the Goldenberg Scandal?

How can we understand this when the extended Kenyatta family alone owns an estimated 500,000 acres — approximately the size of Nyanza Province — according to estimates by independent surveyors and Ministry of Lands officials, making them the senior members of what Michael Mundia Kamau, inspirationally, calls the KenMoiKib Farm?

Our three presidents to date have failed the statesmanship test and failed it badly. Even Jomo Kenyatta, whom increasingly seems to be loved more by non-Kenyans than Kenyans in much the same way that love for THE Emperor seems to grow the further you get away from Ethiopia, is no longer spared. I can even go as far as stating that if you stand on any street corner in central Nairobi and shouted in a loud voice, “Kibaki/Moi/Kenyatta is a dumb-ass bitch” you would be ignored at the worst but probably be applauded by one or two people. Now imagine standing at the corner of a street in Dar-es-salaam and shouting “Nyerere is a dumb-ass bitch”. If you managed to get out alive and made it to Nairobi I would probably finish you off myself and I am Kenyan. Why?

Nyerere was a Statesman.

True his economic policies may not have been the best but here was a man who was big enough to know that the presidency in itself did not make him who he was. Here was a man big enough to walk away into retirement to sit under his tree in his shamba and enjoy his family. Here was a man who understood that the most powerful thing he could do was to give up power.

The greatest disservice Kenyatta did to Kenya was dying in office, during the election of 1975 when it was clear he was no longer the force he used to be he could have choose to step aside and step into greatness. He did not, 3 years later he was dead, and this in turn gave birth to the president-for-life syndrome which manifests itself today in Moi still aching for power after 25 years in StateHouse and which made Kibaki think he would be failure if he had lost his presidency in the general election 3 months ago despite a career in politics of over 40 years.

How can you be a megalomaniac in Tanzania when Nyerere was not? How can you claim the presidency as your birth right in Tanzania when the father of the nation walked away for it to give room to others?

This is what the Kenyan blogosphere failed to understand at the time. That while Tanzanians may not be too impressed with their current president, they are VERY proud of their institution of Presidency.

Of course statesmanship is not restricted to men. One of the most enduring images of the Kenyan post-election crisis was of Grace Machel during a tour of Internal Displaced People camps hugging a woman closely, whispering words of comfort as the woman wept and wept. Here was Grace Machel, the freedom fighter, former minister, and campaigner for children and for human rights, reaching out and bringing some humanity to IDP camps. Where was Kenya’s grossly overpaid First Lady at the time? Busy slapping Members of Parliament who had the audacity to suggest that her husband should get serious about sharing power. There are many things you can call Lucy Kibaki but not even the most rabid Kibaki supporter would call her a statesman. On the other side of the coin, you just try calling Graca Machel a dumb-ass bitch and see where that leaves you.

While the eyes of the nation were focused to Kofi Annan who lead the team of Eminent Person conducting the mediation in Kenya following the post election violence, the rest of team of eminent persons was often over looked, Graca Machel and Benjamin Mkapa. Mkapa is a Tanzanian diplomat and like Nyerere a former Tanzanian president. You see people; there IS life after Statehouse. Here is man who was President for 10 years, handed over at the end of his term and is now a Statesman who helped us resolve our election disputes, happy to sit in the background and immerse himself in the nitty gritty while the world’s media focused on Annan. That is an example that our political elite should be following. How many countries do you think would welcome Kibaki or Moi to help mediate their election disputes? Not many, unless they were planning on, “doing a Kibaki”.

On Sunday before Kibaki read out the list of his new bloated and grossly immoral cabinet he had the audacity, the AUDACITY, to stand there and brag to Kenyans about the “statesmanship and sacrifice” the political elite had displayed. Kibaki seriously needs to be reconnected with reality. Shuttling between Statehouse and State Lodges, hiding behind his security detail, and pushing Kenya to the edge is NOT statesmanship leave alone sacrifice. He also said the new cabinet, “underscores our nation’s leadership to put the collective needs of the country above everything else.” Is there anyone who thinks a bloated government and expensive cabinet is what our country needs? Mwalimu Mati writes on exactly why this is a disaster.

As Kenyans we have to address this issues quickly. Statesmanship is not an option. Statesmanship is vital for a healthy African society. Statesmanship is African to its very core. Without Statesmen we will not progress.

© Mentalacrobatics for Mentalacrobatics, 2008. | Permalink | 8 comments

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Unfortunately for me, I woke up to only about 20% voice usability. I could barely talk. After drinking gallons of hot water, with lemon and honey, I was able to croak well enough for my panel session on early warning systems.

Sitting on the panel listening to my fellow panelists was actually one of the best parts. Jan Chipchase of Nokia, who writes the wonderful Future Perfect blog, had some incredibly good thoughts on mobile phones and their real-world usage. In honor of how he takes photos of random things he sees around the world, I’ve added the image below of his Moleskin notebook.

One of the great examples he brought up was the how people were being incentivized to take their medications in some developing nations. They were given a piece of paper that when urinated on would show a specific code that needed to be SMS’d in to the health clinic. If it was right, that person would receive top-up minutes for their phone. Just brilliant.

The other panelist was Mark Smolinski, Director of the Predict and Prevent Initiative at Google.org. Again, another class-act with more experience covering health-related crisis in his pinky finger than I have in my whole body. He covered some thoughts on getting “two steps to the left“, thoughts on how hyper-early warning in epidemics can drastically reduce the impact of a pandemic. Fascinating and an infinitely difficult task to perform.

After the panel I was approached to take part in some digital strategy discussions with The Elders - a group of “retired” politicians and high-profile individuals who work to ease human suffering. A prime example of this was when Elders Kofi Annan and Graça Machel went to Kenya for 5 weeks to help resolve the post-election dispute. Needless to say, it was somewhat surreal sitting next to Peter Gabriel while talking with people like Mary Robinson.

Before the night was over, we were treated to a talk about doing something around the HIV/AIDS “genocide” in Africa, and a few songs by Annie Lennox. Her new campaign on AIDS in Africa is called Sing.

We ended the night with a stage discussion with Richard Branson, where he talked about being one of the founders of The Elders and how he uses his business success for global good. He made some polarizing statements about Mbeki and Zuma in South Africa, followed by some thoughts on letting Mugabe walk away in Zimbabwe. In the question and answer session he was called to task by some of the audience.

What I wanted to ask him, but didn’t have the voice for, was his thoughts what he likes to call crisis “war rooms”. He has big ideas on these for both epidemic crisis in Africa and the climate crisis globally. What I wanted to know was why he doesn’t throw a third one in to his collection - a crisis “war room” for human rights and mass atrocities so we’re more prepared for events like Kenya and Zimbabwe.

I’m praying that I get my voice back by tomorrow.

…it is an informal settlement, not an illegal.

We had approached the mayor with a detailed baseline study of all problems, sorted to their priority and asked him for help. He replied that “it’s an illegal settlement”. - “No”, I then replied, “it is not, it’s just informal. Sir, you always use this explanation as an excuse, yet when it comes to the elections, you go to these piipoll in the informal settlement and ask for the votes”.

We then collected money in the community and registered the settlement so that progress isn’t stopped by such bureaucratic hurdles.

- my colleague Obed Kawange from Zambia on his work back home

It’s always nice to see how piipoll react when you show them this video. :-)

I think all of these barriers to data are holding back innovation at a scale that few people realize. The most important part of an environment that encourages innovation is low barriers to entry. The moment a contract and lawyers are involved, you inherently restrict the set of people who can work on a problem to well-funded companies with a profitable product. Likewise, companies that sell data have to protect their investments, so permitted uses for the data are almost always explicitly enumerated in contracts. The entire system is designed to restrict the data to be used in product categories that already exist.

Interesting, but how does this apply to Africa?
Depending on how you look at it, this is a great opportunity or a serious problem. For instance, it’s a problem for us on the Ushahidi project because it is difficult to get some of the detailed mapping data that we need in a usable format. However, if you’re an enterprising businessman you would realize how much un-digitized data is in Africa and would start doing something to create data sets and license that out.

Of course, you licensing that data out puts us all in the same quandry that Bret outlines in his post… That by it not being open and free, the barriers to entry are high(er) and only larger organizations with access to a lot of resources can utilize it. A catch-22 if ever there was one.

It only make sense to give up data, or collect data and give it away for free of the relative cost of doing that for each person is minimal. Anytime you need to use a lot of resources to collect data, then you deserve to charge a fair market price for it. So, while I’d love to have more free data available, I know that the challenges to getting there are quite steep.

A few sources of open and free data:

Twine - Misc.
OpenStreetMap - Geographical data
Freebase - Open shared database
OpenTick - Financial data
Numbrary - Numbers
DBpedia - Structured data from Wikipedia
Swivel - Misc and nice visuals
Jigsaw - business contacts
InfoChimps - Misc free data sets
NumberZoom - Phone numbers

It’s got a ton of great information and food for thought. Enjoy!

The Carnival consists of interesting, moving and sometimes funny articles, poems and vidoes by people affected by HIV/AIDs. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I did.

Forward to the Carnival,

We begin in Africa. Nata, in Botswana, is a village of 5000 people located on the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans. Unfortunately, HIV/AIDS is having a devastating effect on the people of this small village. Botswana has the second highest HIV infection rate in Africa. Melody and Martha write entertainingly, and with lots of pictures, about the day the AIDS Fair came to Nata! posted at The Nata village blog. Melody and Martha also celebrate their blog’s 2nd anniversary. The Nata village blog is dedicated to the people of Nata who despite enormous losses and challenges still have the courage and determination to fight the ravages of this pandemic.

Giles Crouch, Slimconomy, writes about the many wild and weird claims made by people (unscrupulous and/or misguided) regarding the cure for HIV/AIDs and highlights the fact that the Internet has become the place where people can make declarations that have yet to be officially approved and especially with regard to herbal cures. “The Web means anything can be published. Any claims made. When people are suffering from a fatal disease, certainly any option will be investigated, herbs included”, he writes.

Steve Schalchlin is a songwriter, singer, pianist, actor, proto-blogger and internet legend amongst his many accomplishments. He writes about his recent performance in Chicago and writes that the group he performed for were “from the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, and I always love singing for medical students to remind them that patients are real people”. He hopes the students will remember ”we are vulnerable and we are scared and we usually feel helpless when caught up in the system. It’s hard enough to survive when you’re healthy in this world”.

Yerom presents a very funny video on Safer Sex. Rather risqué (be careful where you watch it) but hilarious, YouTube - AIDS/SIDA | L’avion (The Plane). In English, the text basically reads: “At least they had safe sex…”

“A recent study revealed that more than 30 percent of people living with HIV in New York City are 50 years old or older. Most have been infected for decades. But what’s worrying is the older adults who’re getting new infections”. Supermansaga presents a news report which highlights the worrying rise of HIV/AIDs among older people.

Deb Serani, Dr. Deb, presents a beautiful video - Love is Love is Love which shows us that there is no difference when it comes to love.

I love reading about road trips i.e. something going wrong with the car, the pit stops, the traveling companions etc and Shawn Decker in his blog entitled My Pet Virus does not disappoint. Shawn, who lives positively, writes about traveling with his wife Gwenn to “Milford, PA, to speak for the Pike County AIDS Awareness Day, and the 6-hour trek took close to 10 hours, delayed by traffic, rain and fog”. Despite the ups and down and the minor irritations, the trip is a success. Shawn writes “Gwenn and I spend a lot of time educating about HIV/AIDS and explaining that, by and large, we lead a pretty normal life with my pet virus”.

“I can honestly say that after 24 years of living with HIV I have been angry at it more than once. I have been angry for many reasons and I have been angry because HIV didn’t take me like it did so many others”, writes Mike in a very moving post. There is some hope, however. ”I know that some of my anger will diminish once the first signs of spring appear but some of them just don’t go away at the changing of the season. I can only hope that on most days the anger is balanced out with hope and dreams of what tomorrow may bring”.

Moffie tells it like it is in a post entitled: The HIV Closet. “If you are HIV + and not comfortable with your new state of health, you need to read this and absorb its content to your life…I don’t care if you are a Gay person, a Straight woman or Straight man: it is a part of you and a part of who you are. You might deny it, but to do so is not only futile, but is also very damaging to your own psyche. In the same way, HIV is now part of who you are. It will be with you until you die, and that is just the way it is.”

Brian Diggs of BlackAIDS.org writes about a presentation by Julian Bond, the NAACP Chairman speaking out on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS. “A veteran civil rights advocate and former Georgia state representative and senator, Bond, 68, said he’s motivated to advocate on behalf of people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS because many of them are rendered silent by the stigma attached to the disease and “suffer alone” as a result.”

And on cue, the British Columbia People with AIDS Society write on HIV/AIDs stigma and calls for its end. ”Stigmatization is a social practice that brands an individual or group as disgraceful and devalues them because of some actual or perceived characteristic. It is a powerful force that negatively influences not only the way an individual or group is viewed, but also often the individual or group’s self-perception and self-image”.

The Alliance of AIDS Services, Carolina, is organising an AIDSWalk + Ride, Raleigh, NC, USA on Saturday May 8 to raise funds to support programs and services for persons living with HIV/AIDS in the region. Further information can be found on Ron’s blog, 2sides2ron.

Paul Kidd presents a video, We are the world posted at buggery.org.

Wille J. Phillips, talented author, artist and rap artist, debuts and guest writes over at 2sides2ron in a post which is the first in a series of chapters of Willie’s science-fiction martial arts novel, Godfist Legend: Zero7. Willie’s work is not HIV-related and offers a brief respite from the norm.

Bill Mann, poet also debuts and guests and presents a lovely poem at 2sides2ron. The poem is entitled “Resurrection of Renewal” and includes the following lines:

Coming of Spring
Revels a new call
Of awakening
A powerful resurrection.

The wonderfully named, Shadowstar ex Machina, aka, Willie J. Phillips guests also at 2sides2ron and presents a poem “Sometimes Forget”.

On his blog, dropdeadhappy, Mark Kokocki presents an article on shame written by guest writer, M. Dewayne Benson, comedian, poet, writer and POZ speaker. “What echoes in my ear is that everyone seems to feel shame on some level. Why is this? Certainly shame devalues us and our self esteem…As adults we should learn to accept and love who we are and what we have done! Otherwise we only hold ourselves back from change and/or progress in this life”.

Last but not least, Gug, GayUganda, writes about the complexity and strengths of the extended family in Africa. In the story of his uncle, who is terminally ill, Gug shows how differently people deal with death. Of his uncle he writes, “He is sick, and dying, and knows it. He has fallen back to his extended family, and they surround him. Reconciled to death’s appointment, he can even afford to crack morbid jokes, alarming and embarrassing the relatives who are distraught and fearful. But he is ready, and I hope when mine comes, I am as ready!”.

Gug also writes about Lesbians and HIV in Africa and the problems ‘of a hidden, closeted society…A society of the shadows”, where HIV prevention campaigns fail to address gay people because of “official inertia and homophobia”.

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You can download the much larger and more detailed 6Mb PDF of the map here, or you can click on the image above to see a larger jpg of it.

[via War & Health and Humanitarian.info]

Be it in Europe, Africa or the US - in most cases we (we as in “the computer guys”) aren’t always around so what we’ll often do is giving them a Windows XP machine with basic software - hoping that they’ll be responsible enough not to click on any strange e-mail attachments. But then, malware may even enter a healthy system through swapable media drives, such as USB flash memory sticks. With a growing popularity of these memory drives, a system is quickly infected and delays productivity or even renders it useless. But what can we do instead?

A year ago, I gave my old desktop computer to my mum and left her with that WinXP installation. She was a complete computer newbie back then and I knew that she would also attend some computer training courses where they would teach her how to write an MS Office Word document, handle MS Excel or even just write an email, using MS Outlook (Express).

Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to help her when I am not around, I initially had some doubts about this setup and asked myself if I shouldnt have gone for a Linux distro instead - also since she was completely new to computers. Why Linux? Well, it’s much more secure and I wouldnt have to worry about any malware infecting the system.

Earlier last week, I’d paid her a visit and repaired the computer - reinstalling Windows XP because I didn’t have enough time teaching her how to use Linux (Ubuntu/Freespire with an XPDE desktop ) instead and setting it up to work with all external devices.

And this is exactely where the problem is: what kind of operating system (OS) would / will / have YOU installed on those machines you’ve left with your loved ones? Yes?

Zakayo @ work in his office (hey, you’ve just been blogged, dude :-)

Take my colleague Abdoulaye, for instance. He stays in Paris, France, works as a consultant in Frankfurt during the week and made the tragic mistake of buying a desktop-laptop three years ago. “Desktop-laptop”? Well, it’s an Asus Z8100 which comes with the same parts as a desktop computer, including the battery-eating cpu, a very loud fan, a horrible battery life and heavy weight. You wouldnt want to carry this machine around with you. Alas, this is exactly what he has done in the past. So we are in the process of getting him a better machine @ smaller size and made up plans how to set up his Asus Z8100 for use with his parents in (The) Senegal .

So there you are: an older computer at your hands that will be given to the extended family back home and the quest for a better operating system which *just* works.

With (a french version of) WinXP, we’ll sure find enough guys back home who’ll provide assistance in case of emergency and it will also be possible to connect a mobile phone to the computer (= inet access) with PC Suites that are available online from Nokia, Sony Ericsson and so on.

But then - there SURE will be someone unintentionally infecting the machine with malware and/or or things happening that will quickly kill productivity on this machine. The alternative?

The alternative could be a free and open (alternative) operating system - such as Ubuntu - but it lacks this out-of-box-experience to support a mobile phone and/or provide instant internet access. Also, it will be harder to find some local assistance in case of problems.

You see, there are currently many different Linux distros out there that all do a nice job of providing an interesting alternative - but which one of them provides this out-of-the-box-experience so that any average dude or dudette out there may just download a fresh copy, burn it to a CD, take an older computer, install it and give it to his/her family back home?

Something that will automatically setup a mobile phone to the machine (given that mobile phones / GPRS modems often are the only reliable way of accessing the inet in rural or peri-urban areas - provided that the area is covered with a wireless/gsm network); something that will automatically support most common desktop printers; something that will just work and provide a maximum connectivity and security even during power failures (no unstable file systems, that is).

This is why I think that initiatives like Ubuntu and or the general promotion of Free Open Source Software (FOSS) are much more important than giving out dedicated hardware to users because it’s the software that makes the difference, not hardware. And yes, the OLPC initiative is also nice + my understanding is that it was also developed to create some reverse-engineering spirit with the kids. But then - it’s still an investment whereby we - as end users - could just as well hand out normal hardware with an alternative OS. Think of your old laptop from 1999 and a copy of Edubuntu …

So…if YOU know of any free and open operating system that provides this flexibility and “Luser” -compatibility, pls feel free to drop a comment here so that we can all benefit. Thank you! :-)

Academic understanding of language barriers becomes real-life frustration for me as I try and cover the web and mobile space in Africa. For instance, I’d love to know more about, and do a write-up on the following:

• Ivoire Blog - The new blogging platform for Cote D’Ivoire
• Akopo - A social media and blogging platform for Cameroonians
• Mboasu - A new West African mobile remittance product

However, it’s hard for me to track, contact and write about services like these that are popping up in Francophone or Arabic-speaking Africa, simply because I lack the language skills.

Sometimes I come across what looks to be an interesting blog - usually due to visuals since I can’t read it. I then filter that blog through a tool like Google’s Translation service and get back a nicely garbled bunching of English words that I then work towards deciphering into usable chunks.

(did you know that approximately 50% of the African continent speaks French?)

PALDO - An African Language Initiative
These types of thoughts were running through my head, when I got an email about an upcoming meeting (April 2, 2008) and initiative called The Pan-African Living Dictionary Online (PALDO). They are attempting to create an interlinked multilingual dictionary for African languages. It is being built upon the foundation of the well-known Kamusi Project, which developed a useful online Swahili/English dictionary.

PALDO is particularly hoping for participation from programmers, linguists, database experts, lexicographers and past users with experience in other online dictionaries.

It’s encouraging to see that this is in partnership with Kasahorow, who is working to solve the problem of localized computer input methods for languages. Basically, create a keyboard that works for multiple language clusters.

A couple years ago I wrote a post about technology versus tribal languages in Africa. It’s a HUGE hurdle to overcome when creating web and mobile platforms that you would like to take to the whole African market. It’s why so many companies do great stuff in their local market, maybe even their region, but fail getting pan-African adoption.

It’s unclear how PALDO will solve some of these issues. However, I’m always interested in seeing how aggregation and visualization of data can be used to create better products, or bring insight into areas where things are so confused.

One thing is for sure though, PALDO won’t solve my personal communications issues - what I need to do is go learn French and re-learn Arabic.

A gallery of images showcasing Populi’s Mobile Researcher product in action, on mobile phones and computer interfaces:

Question: What about pricing? How do you charge for Mobile Researcher?
As we roll out additional products on the platform (Populi), we hope to develop a multitude of billing models (including free models whereby revenue could be generated through advertising, opt-in marketing, permission-based data mining or context-sensitive search for example). We’d obviously need to drive volumes for that to work effectively.

For the current Mobile Researcher product which focuses on organisations who deploy fieldworkers to conduct research, we have implemented a transactional billing model whereby the organisation conducting the research purchases credit allowing them to process responses. We took this decision for several reasons:

• The prepaid credit model has worked exceptionally well in Africa so far (e.g. airtime).
• The cost of submitting responses is borne predominantly by the organisation receiving the data (not by the respondent although there are tiny airtime charges for data), thus centralising costs.
• The barrier to entry and risk is very low as we don’t require organisations to buy expensive licenses or software. They purchase credit (even a few hundred dollars worth to start) and don’t need to commit to anything.
• Transactional billing is fair since the organisation is only billed for the service when it is used.
• Many organisations are looking for a hosted solution as they do not wish to or cannot support the hardware and personnel required to manage their own systems.

When an organisation signs up, a ‘Research Console’ (essentially a web portal) is created for them which centralises research-related activity (such as survey design, data export, reporting and fieldworker management). From here they may design surveys which consist of fields (questions) which need to be answered and logic which links them together (such as ‘If response = yes, skip to Q11′).

Surveys are then deployed to fieldworkers who conduct the them on their phones using a mobile application, WAP, Web or SMS (each ‘channel’ has its advantages and limitations). When a completed survey is uploaded from a fieldworker’s phone, the system calculates an amount to deduct from the available prepaid credit for the corresponding organisation based on the number of fields actually submitted in that response.

The baseline cost is approximately $0.01 per field (we work in South African Rands so it’s exchange rate specific). Thus, if 10 questions were posed, the total cost per response would be approx $0.10. If, for some reason, such as skip logic, only 5 questions were posed in the survey, an amount of approx $0.05 would be deducted. Airtime costs (rendered by the relevant network operators) are dependent on the package the fieldworker is on, but even in worst case scenarios are usually in the order of fractions of a cent per survey.

We also negotiate volume discounts in cases where an organisation wishes to purchase a large amount of credit.

Question: Why does Mobile Researcher matter in the African context?
Our goals for Mobile Researcher are to improve the quality, quantity and speed of data being collected. Bad decisions, policy and life choices are the result of poor quality, insufficient or outdated information. In Africa, where these problems are all-too-common, the prevalence of the mobile phone in the absence of other technologies makes it an excellent tool to help improve the situation. Traditionally, paper-based data collection techniques have been expensive, difficult to manage and have taken so long to be processed that the data may be may no longer be accurate or relevant.

To highlight the benefits, Health Systems Trust (an NGO in South Africa I have close ties with) is currently evaluating rural clinics using Mobile Researcher where there aren’t even computers in some cases. They receive the information back in near real-time as opposed to months later and it is stored securely and without the need for additional data capture. The possibility of building a near real-time Health Information System based on Mobile Researcher is a very real one. This could allow outbreaks to be rapidly identified, patients to be more effectively treated and monitored, and so on. As with any new technology however, it takes some time to educate and convince the naysayers.

Question: Who are the competitors and what are their advantages/disadvantages?
There are of course many companies who offer PDA solutions but we believe one of the core differentiators of our solution is that it leverages low cost and existing mobile phones and the internet.

Two companies offering similar solutions in the UK who we’ve found on the internet but haven’t had direct contact with are listed below. There are others but to limit the brevity of this email, I’ve kept to these two.

• Embrace Mobile (www.embracemobile.com)
• Bluetrail (www.bluetrail.co.uk)

Of course we’d like to believe that technically our solution is better (but that is up to the public to decide!). We have extensive experience in both mobile and web development and believe that the simplicity and usability of our solution underpins its elegance.

Africa’s unusual technology profile makes it the ideal place to build and market mobile-driven service delivery and information exchange mechanisms. While sending out fieldworkers to conduct research is critical (particularly in Africa where monitoring and evaluation of intervention efforts is so important), the real power will come when the end user is empowered to retrieve and feedback information. We are working hard to make this a reality. We have direct access to these markets (we’ve been focusing closest to home to start of course). Even in South Africa, there are enormous challenges of poverty and lack of physical infrastructure. But mobile phones can help overcome these challenges - a platform to leverage them is what is missing. I recently read your paper on The Africa Network in which you make similar observations.

In addition to our geographic positioning, we also believe that our high level vision will differentiate us. As I mentioned, eventually we’d like to see the end user being able to submit and request information with almost an unlimited number of interactions (for research purposes but also for a variety of other things such as trade, incident reporting, health information, remote diagnoses, etc.). Most of our competitors’ visions end at research.

We already have good connections with some of the biggest research organisations in South Africa (specifically in the health sector), such as the Medical Research Council of South Africa (www.mrc.ac.za), Health Systems Trust (www.hst.org.za), Human Sciences Research Council (www.hsrc.ac.za), University of KwaZulu-Natal (www.ukzn.ac.za), University of Cape Town (www.uct.ac.za), University of Witswatersrand (www.wits.ac.za), Statistics South Africa (www.statssa.gov.za), and others. It will take time for this technology (or rather the use of it in this way) to become mainstream. It will also take money and high level talks with network operators and manufacturers to be widely successful. It is our belief that we need to build a strong business first to be able to spearhead this.

Another South African NGO called Cell-Life (www.cell-life.org.za) has been working on an Open Source mobile data capture project. I have met with them before and will be meeting with them again this week at their request to discuss areas for collaboration. Of course our strategies are different: they are funded by donations where we are trying to build a sustainable business model but our intentions are similar.

Over the last few months, what we have seen of Africans (mainly Kenyans and occasionally Zimbabweans) on the BBC have been people in extreme situations. The images have either been of people dying or dead, people running away from vigilante groups or the police, people demonstrating or people (and especially and worryingly, children) looting and burning. Sometimes the images have been of people doing all the above, all at the same time.

Watching the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency based in Botswana on the BBC the other night was a relief as the story featured Africans getting on with their daily lives. Fancy that. The drama/comedy, gentle and funny, featured the utterly lovely Jill Scott as Mma Ramotswe, the detective and was lovingly directed by Anthony Minghella who unfortunately died a few weeks ago.

Credit must also go to the cinematographer who managed to capture the heat, dust, bright, vivid colours and the complex beauty of Africa. It was almost possible to taste this dust and feel the heat in far away (and wintry) London.

The story dealt with difficult issues including domestic violence and superstition from Mma Ramotswe’s point of view and here, the issue was all about Jill Scott’s amazing talent and the strength she brought to the character. Jill Scott had the Botswanian accent down to perfection and looked the part (being of ‘traditional build’). She was authentic and everything focused around her (the camera certainly loves her).

My only gripe was Jill Scott only sung once. She should have sung around the house, while driving, etc. Any excuse to hear Jill Scott sing.

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Even though that is only 4-5% of the global remittance market, it is still no small amount of money. In fact, it constitutes a huge opportunity for both the middleman helping to transfer the funds, and the countries receiving the capital inflows. What I’d like to focus in on is the middleman.

Why is the cost for sending money back to Africa so exorbitant? Compared to other developing nations, Africans abroad are being fined for being African. You’ll pay two times as much to send money from the US to Uganda ($20) than you would to Mexico ($10).

Why does it cost so much?
First, volume. The amount of money being sent back to Africa, and the competition to handle those transactions are smaller than they are to places like Mexico, parts of Asia and South America. So, simple economies of scale weigh in to the equation.

Second, you have to look at the available options for anyone wishing to send money back to their home country in Africa. Ever since the September 11 attacks in the US, there has been a lot more rules and regulations surrounding any type of capital flow, which has made it harder to operate in this field.

The two largest global companies are Western Union and MoneyGram. Bank-to-bank transfers are a less expensive option for some, unfortunately most Africans don’t have a bank account, so that’s not always feasible.

In the past couple of years, we’ve seen voucher-based companies spring up that provide a third option, allowing Africans abroad to buy vouchers over the internet for their families back home. It’s a very interesting field, examples of this include MamaMikes in Kenya and Zimbuyer in Zimbabwe.

Finally, the third way that we’re starting to see money being transferred is through mobile phone credits. WIZZIT and MTN Mobile Moneyin South Africa; M-Pesa in Kenya; Celpay in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are leading the charge, and we’re likely to see more innovation in this area soon.

Increasing Competition and African Governments
The only true way to drive down costs will be increased competition within the African remittance industry. We’re starting to see that with mobile payment options and voucher-based remittances.

What I also expect to see is more African governments finding ways to make this capital inflow easier. We saw this last year when the Kenyan Minister of Finance, Kimunya, came to the US to talk to the Kenyan diaspora.

This is just too much money to have such a high fee places on transfers. It’s large enough that global and local player will continue to compete and drive the costs down over time.

Other Articles and Resources on African Remittances

• Tracy over at Project Diaspora has an interesting post about remittances to Somalia.
• Ethan Zuckerman on the big business of sending money home.
• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on making remittances work for Africa.
• UN report on Resource Flows to Africa: An Update on Statistical Trends.
• IFAD remittance forum.
• World Bank report on Remittances: Transaction Costs, Determinants and Informal Flows.
• Report on Migrant Labor Remittances in Africa [PDF]

This machine is based on the eBox-2300SX “Mini Green PC” and has - in my opinion - just been equipped with some sexy marketing keywords (Africa, rural, internet, power supply, solar, etc.), although these guys behind Aleutia have indeed found the right arguments to promote their product.

So….no matter what technology you prefer (given the many different systems we have been blogging about during the last two years), my question is:
would YOU buy this for your folks back home @ shaggs*?

Yes?

My other question is: IF these computers are so much better - how come they are never bought by dev aid agencies who are supposed to know the disadvantages and unreliability of a MS-Win machine in most office environments all over the world and who actually have the political and economical power to stir such purchases in this direction?
I know that in most cases, money is just given to someone who then arranges a deal with a local HP, DELL, IBM representative + WinXP + the usual setup. So instead of talking about sexier computer solutions that may be more reliable in unstable working conditions (power supply, heat, dust, many users, malware, etc.), how about some political will from top-down that directly promotes the purchase of such computers in future?

(*i think that most ppl will just have an older MS WinXP laptop which is then forwarded to younger members of the extended family and which will presumably die after the first half year in use due to an unstable power supply, some heat problems or malware and/or missing WinXP recovery CDs…now IF i was much more into IT and an unemployed graduate of any varsity, I’d buy these used computers from KTs and refurbish them with a stable X release and then sell them to folks upcountry. but hey - that’s just me thinking loud…)

Learning about Living being tested on a Classmate

What I find the most interesting about this program is how the NGO behind it, Butterfly Works, is working to make it compatible with normal computers, the trendy new OLPC and Classmate, and also for the mobile phones. I’m curious to see how it works on a mobile phone, but it’s a good sign when an organization works to make their software available on the platforms that their users actually use.

Though the program has been tested on the OLPC and, it is made for secondary school children, whereas the OLPC is aimed at primary students. They have plans to develop a primary school version just in case the Nigerian government decides to buy into the OLPC program.

Ineke Aquarius, Program Director for Butterfly Works, informs me that they are working to make the program accessible by other African countries that have bought into the OLPC. First target: Ethiopia, who purchased 50,000 OLPC’s.

[Update: Great article on OLPC and Classmate at ZD Net]

One of the benefits of being a consultant is that I get to make more of my own hours. This afternoon I carved out some time to spend with one of my daughters to build this contraption on wheels.

I’m not sure how to describe it, but it was fun to build…

We took a kit for a “make your own design” car with some wood, screws, axles and wheels. Then, I used an airplane engine that runs off a battery to give it forward motion. Why get all messy with glue? Just use rubber bands!

I’ve also taken to collecting Lego kits and building them with the girls. I know it doesn’t fit the mold for “girl stuff”, but it’s something that we can spend time together on and we all have a lot of fun doing it.

On May 10, 2008 - Pangea Day - Jehane’s wish will come to fruition as sites in New York City, Rio, London, Dharamsala, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Kigali will be video-conferenced live to produce a 4-hour program of powerful films - supplemented by visionary speakers, and global musicians. The purpose: to use the power of film to promote better understanding of our common humanity. A global audience will watch through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones.

Submit a video from your life in Africa and become a part of something big!

View Jehane Noujaim’s TED Prize Talk

These exchanges highlight the differences in the cultures involved and the different understandings of what initially looks like a very simple situation. When the Africans tell the colonialists that this land does not belong to anybody, the colonialists would take that to mean that the land is unoccupied. “It does not belong to anyone” is taken to mean it is ownerless. That was a misunderstanding of what they had been told. For when the African said, “This land does not belong to anyone”, what they mean is this land does not belong to any single person or family. This land is the property of the community under the stewardship of those who currently occupy it. The Elesi of Odogbolu, a Nigerian chief, told the West African land commission in 1912, that he “conceived that land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living and countless yet unborn”. In other words, “this land does not belong to anyone” meant this land belongs to everyone. It is occupied by us, but we do not own it, we are merely the current stewards holding it for future generations.

In my talk during the Digital Citizen Indaba I touched upon the issue of the African blogosphere and ownership asking, “Who owns the African blogosphere”? I used the above example of our ancestors’ attitude to land as the basis of my understanding. In my opinion the internet is a space through which discussion takes place and blogs are the tool through which we utilise that space for discussion. In other words this space we have carved on the internet is our land and bloggers are the occupiers of that land. Like our ancestors I believe that this land does not belong to any of us, it belongs to all of us.

Why is this important? First of all this space belonging to all of us means that there is room for all of us and for all our opinions in that space and we all have an equal right to it. For example those who feel unrepresented in the main stream media can use this space to get their message across. Those who feel left out of the national conversation can use this space to get their message across. Ndesanjo in his keynote address emphasised this highlighting that several Africans who happen to be gay had used this space to express themselves through blogs, several Africans who happen to be white or of Asian origin had used this space to express themselves through their blogs.

Another example, last year during the time of the first DCI there was a passionate, and at times, heated debate about whether a blogging conference organised largely by South Africans, who happened to be white, and held at a university named after Rhodes, had the right to call itself African. I felt then as I do now that, yes, they had the right to call it a conference of African bloggers. I feel no one has the right to stop other bloggers from organising themselves in a way they feel fit. Once you start putting restrictions on how bloggers organise themselves then you are on the slippery slope that ends up with putting restrictions on what bloggers can write about. For if you think that these guys do not have the right to organise a conference for African bloggers do they have the right to write about African bloggers or as African bloggers?

I should clarify the difference between those who objected to the content of the conference and those who object to the very notion of the conference. The DCI crew never claimed to be organising a perfect conference and gave us the opportunity to give our feedback on what they did right and what they could do better. This year you can see they took the suggestions on board. A big issue last year was the DCI venue did not have wireless internet access, this year we had wireless internet access. Last year we raised the issue of representation amongst the speakers in terms of geographical location and content. This year we have spent a lot of time examining the role of language which was led by Tanzanian bloggers with their central role in the Kiswahili blogosphere. We also looked at cyber activism is Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as well v-blogging, photo-blogging and open source. Space to give feedback and raise issues about the content of a conference should always be available. Feedback I have no problem with. What I object to is those who feel that the conference itself had no right to exist in any form.

That is not to say that all bloggers must agree with all other bloggers all the time or even most of the time. In fact we do not have to agree at all! I hope that having disagreements and differences of opinion does not mean we can not sit down together at the end of the debate and appreciate each other. But if that is not the case, the good thing about this space we are carving on the internet is that it is basically limitless. If you do not like the way people are doing things you can start your own thing. Just do not try to stop people from doing what they are doing by placing artificial restrictions based on your opinion of what is and isn’t for they have as much right to this space as you do.

digital citizen indaba | highway africa

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I spoke with on the Democratization of the Digital Citizen in the morning session on Fractured Identities. I shared the floor with my Tanzanian brother Ansbert Ngurumo. Our panel was chaired by Professor Guy Berger.

Check out the DCI wiki which is updated regularly throughout the day for a summary of all the talks, the DCI flickr stream for evidence that bloggers are the best looking people around!

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4 African bloggers from there have united on a project to make a difference. They aren’t just talking, they are doing something. Their goal is to focus on one village in the Southeastern region of Madagascar, with one of their goals being to help save their forests, you can follow it on their new site called Foko. In their own words:

The project is multi-pronged with emphases on tackling environmental issues that directly affects the villagers, building sustainable infrastructures, empowering the villagers to seek manageable solutions, especially the women and providing an efficient health care program.

The underlying philosophy behind the project is that all programs initiated in the village will be able to self-sustain in the long run because emphasis will be put on an effective cost-revenue strategy.

It’s great to see bloggers networking and getting together to do things. It’s the power of the web at work - the ability to communicate easily. Of course, I believe that this culminates in offline interaction, which is exactly what Foko is.

The bloggers:

Andriankoto Ratozamanana (Harinjaka)
Joan Razafimaharo (the Purple Corner)
Lova Rakotomalala (the Malagasy Dwarf Hippo)
Mialy A. (Windows on the new World of SipaKV)

Afrigator was the only African website mentioned in a CNN/Business 2.0 piece about the hottest web 2.0 startups from around the world.

Jim Forster is the distinguished engineer at Cisco, the veritable maker of routers and switches that form the backbone of the internet, amongst other products and services. He is also one of the contributors to the invaluable free resource “Wireless Networking in the Developing World” - An in depth guide to planning and building low cost telecom infrastructure.

In his 3 minute presentation at TEDGlobal he talked about the current state of telecom, likening it to a railroad system where everyone is a customer but it doesn’t reach all the areas ‘last mile’ as it were. The model that we should be considering is one that is composed of many private networks, similar to the model of the internet, or a ‘network of networks’. We need to encourage our governments to support the idea of many networks that are run either privately or as businesses providing network access to others. Please click on the graphic below to download the presentation that he has made available.

There is also more information available on the site Network The World.

While on the topic of wireless networks, Riyaz of skunkworks pointed me to Meraki’s june announcement of the first solar powered outdoor wifi access kit.

Priced at just $99, Meraki Outdoor can send a signal up to 700 feet. Paired with Meraki’s existing indoor $49 Mini, the Meraki Outdoor repeater can power access for dozens of households sharing one high speed connection. Meraki Outdoor can be easily installed on a wall or even a pole outside the house. It marks another step forward in Meraki’s efforts to change the economics of Wi-Fi access, driving the cost per household of high speed connections to $1 to $2 a month.

Adding the Meraki Solar accessory kit will allow the repeater to broadcast a signal without being connected to any electrical source, making it an ideal solution for any community, even emerging markets where electricity is scant or unreliable.

The skunkworks crew and other wireless networking experts, you are very welcome to comment on whether you see any private networks being set up in Nairobi or other parts of Africa that utilize the ideas alluded to above. Meanwhile…no whining!

Image from the internet superstar - Hugh Mcleod.

**Tangential Digression - Weird Cell behavior on the border.

On crossing the border from Tanzania into Kenya and vice versa, i got the following text message on my safaricom line…from Celtel. It stated “Welcome to Kenya & thank you for choosing Celtel.International access code is 000 or +.The tourist help line is +254733617499.Celtel. Making life better.”. Worrisome to say the least. Is celtel just broadcasting a signal to all and sundry? How did they get the safaricom number? What expectation of privacy should safaricom customers have? I later found out that everyone gets that sms whether they are on a celtel line or safaricom. I mentioned it to Mr. Forster and he pointed out that some networks do play nice and share infrastructure even base stations. Its quite curious…Do chime in if you’ve experienced something similar, even weirder, or if you can shed light on how and why this occurs. Does the same thing happen on crossing into Uganda?

She was a few months old when she was raped. Defiled. Mangled.
The horror of what happened to this little baby is indescribable. I only ask that you look at this picture of her,

and think of what good we can all do to counter the evil that could befall her.

She is being cared for by the wonderful caretakers at The Nest Home in Limuru. Please keep her in your thoughts and if you have the means please donate to the Nest.

Bank Account in Kenya:
The Nest Home Charitable Trust
Kenya Commercial Bank-Village Market
Account No. 260760292
Swift Code : KCBLKENX 011

or by sending a check to

The Nest
P.O. Box 605 - 00621
Nairobi/Kenya
Director:
Irene Baumgartner in Kenya - Tel: +254 (0)721-437893

Whenever you are in Kenya, please visit her and the other wonderful children at the Nest.

As she grows, may she be able to dance and sing with the other children like this.

We can counter the bad in our world, one person, one blog, one link at a time.

To see an overview of the Nest Home compound, please click here for a video taken by JKE (who told us about the nest home)

Thank you kindly, on behalf of Afrigadget authors.

The wind continues to blow…

From Refocus - International Renewable Energy Magazine (Print version),

South Africa’s first commercial wind farm is being built in Darling, near Cape Town. It will have capacity of 5.2 MW, and slated to supply Cape Town. A partnership between SA government’s Central Energy Fund, Development Bank of SA, Darling Independent Power Producer and the Danish Development Agency (DANCED).

And now for a different kind of wind
From Timbuktu Chronicles

The pioneering work of Olatubosun Adeleke (Obayomi) in Nigeria, in creating a household scale biogas production system, which you can read about and see great pictures here.

-Oprah and George Clooney

- Don Cheadle and Iman

-Oprah, Bill and Melinda Gates.

Of these, the only one i can dispense with is the cover of Oprah and George Clooney, sorry George, Don Cheadle and Bono are just waay too hot for me to give up. This aside, i have been reading the criticism of Bono’s work on this issue. I would urge you to go beyond the cover. Some of the content is superb, really it is, i enjoyed it. In the VF issue, I found pictures of people who were at TED Global in Arusha; if this issue had been on newsstands before June 4^th when the conference started, it would have been perfect airline reading on the way there. It is still a wonderful read for the rest of the month in my opinion, and I think Bono did a great job on editing it.
Some of the people in the magazine were in TED Global Arusha, and the criticism that Bono should have included Africans on the cover, well, he hadn’t met the Cheetahs before TED Global and the editing of the Vanity fair issue. There is room for improvement as Ethan pointed out, but please allow me to be utterly shallow and point out some of the sections that might get lost in all the Bono bashing going on.

I choose to see this as an opportunity (thanks to TED bringing people together) for cover ideas like Erik Osiakwan and Bono as Ethan proposed. I would add that Andrew Dosunmu should do the photography since Annie Leibovitz had this issue how about Andrew doing a spread for Vanity fair? - Hey, do comment with which pairings would be neat. Ory Okolloh and Obama would be just wonderful wouldn’t it! She can whisper ‘Mzalendo‘ into Obama’s ear like Iman appears to Don Cheadle. (Eric Mwangi with Mrs Obama to make things even )

Ok, back to the VF issue… I will use some pics from TED Global to illustrate that Bono did include notable Africans in the VF issue.

Update: Everyone, please start on page 84

Binyavanga Wainaina has an awesome piece on ‘Generation Kenya’. (Could VF hurry up and make a link available online? please?) I am tempted to pluck the last line out of the piece, but that wouldnt be good, as you need to read the whole article, every single word of it.

Photo by Mweshi

Girls, start with page 184 for a spread of the gorgeous, sexy, African filmmakers including Newton Aduaka.

Photo by Andrew Heavens

Page 124, Uzodinma Iweala Acclaimed author of ‘Beasts of No Nation’

Photo by Jen Brea

Page 180, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Photo by Andrew Heavens

Rokia Traore is mentioned on page 174 by Youssou Ndour whose playlist you can check out here.

Picture by Soyapi

Other pages you could jump to…

Page 187, Picture of John Githongo and text by Parsalelo Kantai. (I have to inject the classic Kenyan tongue twister here. Kantai is pronounced phonetically like ‘can tie’. So - If Kantai can tie and untie a tie why cant I tie and untie a tie like Kantai can tie and untie a tie?! Try it!)

page 194 for the very photogenic networkers of the Africa Channel.

Guys, quickly turn to page 149 for a seductive photo of Terry Pheto the actress from Tsotsi.

Page 152 for comic relief from Chris Rock in the form of a diary from his last trip in Africa, asking Nelson Mandela whether he saw Richard Pryor when he was in Jail.

At the very least, this ought to be interesting, and serve as an alternative ‘table of contents’ to the notorious July VF Issue.

Caveat: The fact that Bono gave me a hug when in Arusha during the DATA tour of Kaloleni Primary School has absolutely nothing to do with this post. Nada, Zilch… the fact that he kissed me on my forehead does, just a wee bit.

However, we need to accept, Africa, that the largest impediment to our development is our cultural outlook - not the traditions and customs but the way we do business and our openness to new concepts. I recently had a meeting with a government official with regard to accessing some of the records that they have, digitizing it at my own cost and sharing the digital data with them for them to develop its use by wider sharing it. Amazingly, his first reaction was "absolutely not." Why? Because it is not done in government. When we got over that, we found that there is a huge fear with regard to what the information will be used for.

Dr. Larry Brilliant Executive Director of Google.org, President of Tanzania Jakayo Kikwete and Bruce McNamer CEO of Technoserve.

June 7th 2007 launch of Believe-Begin-Become program in Tanzania.
Bloggers were invited into the press conference. Ethan Z has an excellent summary, Ndesanjo wrote about the press conference in Swahili, and I took a few photos.

The programs’ goal is to support the youth in entrepreneurial pursuits by providing training, networking, and mentoring through technoserve and in partnership with the government. The plans they are looking for through business plan competitions in Tanzania, ought to be fundable and workable. For more on the program please click here.For Tanzania specific information, please click here. The site includes FAQ’s, rules and more information.
President Jakaya Kikwete’s comments during the press conference and also during the TED global address showed that he is a leader with an open mind, engaging and committed to market liberalization. He struck me as a new breed of African leader, who engenders progressive ideals.

Update:June 9th. Link to All Africa story.

In fact, one entity has launched the “Triple B Fund” in Ghana that has $20 million earmarked to be used in funding the winners of the Believe, Begin, Become competition.

There are so many Africans with an entrepreneurial spirit. This “Cheetah Generation” has a lot of constraints; managerial skills and access to funding just to name a few. President Kikwete expresses his thanks and excitement for putting this competition into place here in Tanzania.

Best quote of the event:

Mkia wa mbuzi unafagia pale alipokaa
(A goat’s tail only reaches so far, but a cow’s reaches to the hooves)

As one African blogger told me, “Next time I’m at a conference, I’m going to be asking them why they only have one type of free beer available!?”

On top of how well it’s been run, the amazing internet connectivity speed, food and logistics, they spoiled us even more. All of the TED Fellowship attendees have been given a free Mac or PC, donated by Google and AMD, and a new satellite radio by Worldspace.

I’ll be picking a Mac.

He stated the reasons for what he believes Africa has been left behind. His theory is that there are “hunted” and “hunter” nations. Some countries are positioned as places to go and grow businesses, others are positioned as the places to go and take resources from.

Herman stated one thing that I think will rub some in the diaspora the wrong way, but he uses his own life as an example:

It is not dignified for an African to live their whole lives overseas.

Now, the most exciting part to me. Herman went on to announce his new mobile payment system that will be rolling out sometime this year.

• It’s phone carrier agnostic
• It’s bank agnostic
• It’s based on text messaging
• It’s distribution is through merchants (just like how phone cards are sold here)

I’ve been beating my drum on this for some time, and I’m absolutely thrilled that such a leader in the IT space in Africa is leading this charge. This is the “missing link” for so many things in Africa, from eCommerce to remittances, this is is GREAT news!

Many of the African bloggers here had lunch together, and that was enjoyable, just to see so many faces that I had only known virtually, sitting down all in one place together.

The “Tales of Invention” session, which I did my talk in, was really outstanding. The speakers were engaging and really reminded everyone of the great opportunities and innovation seen around Africa. Bola Olabisi, started off with a stirring talk of her work showcasing women inventors in Africa and around the world.

I was fortunate to be sitting next to the final speaker of the innovation session, Dr. Seyi Oyesola. Talk about a dynamic and talented individual! His talk about reaching back into Nigeria to do open heart surgery in abysmal conditions moved everyone. He then finished, showcasing CompactOR - which, by it’s name, you can tell is a very compact and complete operating room in a small trolley.

Though tales of invention was my favorite due to its focus on technology, the last session of the day was much more moving. “The Campfire” showcased story tellers. Franco Saachi gave a great overview of “Nollywood”, Nigeria’s movie empire, the third largest in the world with over 2000 films released each year. Look for the documentary soon.

Writers Chris Abani and Binyavanga Wainaina were the final speaker. Wow! These guys are storytellers for good reason. Chris Abani gave a soul stirring talk about

African Blogger, Harinjaka talks about Madagascar

Google Trends is an interesting tool for looking at the most popular search terms on the net, relative to other search terms. For example, searching for Africa in google trends yields some interesting information.

Regions and cities associated with the search term africa.

The first 5 cities are in South Africa, which has high internet connectivity, followed closely by Nairobi Kenya.

Its also a great tool for bloggers to see the related search terms similar to those that bring them lots of traffic.

*Many thanks to Anetto from google for telling me about google trends, its an awesome tool.

William Kamkwamba was 14 when he found a tattered old book that taught how to build a windmill. This was a big deal, seeing as his small village in Malawi had no electricity. The generator, made from old bicycle parts and PVC piping powers his families lights and radios. (original coverage on AfriGadget with images)

Moussa Keita is staying at my hotel, so I’ve had the pleasure of spending a good deal of time with him. Moussa worked with Geekcorps on a project building a CanTV in Mali. (see original coverage on Geekcorps, and watch the video)

(more images of TEDGlobal on Flickr)

This picture sums up TEDGlobal to me.

Two of the most famous people, with somewhat differing views on how to reach Africa’s future. Bono represents the part that states development aid is needed. Ayittey represents the side that claims private equity is the answer to Africa’s problem.

Why it sums up TEDGlobal so well, is because these two individuals with differing views were laughing and talking with eachother. That’s what this is all about; ideas and discussions.

This is great news for East Africa and Google. They’re getting one of the true leaders in the ISP space, and someone who has a great deal of experience navigating the many difficult situations that arise in the African IT sector.

Below is a picture of Joseph talking with Russell Southwood (who writes the excellent Balancing Act emails)

(more pictures on Flickr)

Congratulations Joseph!

(Note: This is Google’s first sub-Saharan Africa employee, not counting a couple sales guys in SA)

She switched from Chemical engineering to computing where she started by selling hardware and training professionals in Nigeria. Keep doing what you are doing she says. In 1988 Omatek was incorporated and soon her company became a premier partner with Compaq and IBM [>$7mil in sales]. In 1991, she visited Asia she saw the supply chain and noticed the Chinese tech was developed in house. She came back to Nigeria, started Omatek Computers. Despite the ‘clone’ tag attached to her company, she ploughed on. People used to call the Chinese copy cats, see where those companies are now.

The idea of ‘designing down’ does not sit well with Florence, she believes that African computers can be made locally and at high quality. Buying computers for resale can get challenging because of minimum orders to the tune of $700,000. This is a major stumbling block and thus the imperative is for Africans to create their own supply chains.

Challenge 2: Financing from banks who do not see the opportunity.
Challenge 3: Electricity problem in Nigeria. This ties back to the talk by Idris Mohammed that the next big opportunity is in providing power in Africa.
Needed.

- Lots of SME’s can help with bridging the digital divide.

- Continued Govt support for locally made products.

She took the risk of starting the business and well…what a trailblazer for all women!

ALIEUH CONTEH - Founder of Vodafone Congo

–govt was not helpful at all when it comes to licensing, it was a challenge. besides the lack of infrastructure, it cost so much in capital expenditure. The metaphor would be ‘getting stuck in the mud’ figuratively and literally since the trucks would get stuck in the mud and things were just harder to get going.
He put forth all his savings and built the network over the years, even as the war continued. He had to negotiate with the govt and the rebels. CWN Started out with 30,000 subscribers and grew to 3 million subscribers growing by 1.5 to 2 million a year. Current valuation of the company is $1.5 Billion.

Ainea Kinaro - 3 minute talk on Organic Waste - The ignored Resource. He showed pictures of the Human waste is being collected into huge systems to produce methane gas. The other by product is fertilizer which is used in rwandan coffee farms. He reviewed the benefits of using renewable energy, especially something as abundant as human waste.

You can find more over at Ethans’ my battery is done for.

Opinion: Spoke shortly with Tom Rielly the Director of TED partnerships. “TEDGlobal is the kind of conference Africa deserves” Indeed!

Fractals, Design and Africa

!! Indeed !!

Design cornrows using transformational geometry. Click here.
Ron Eglash spoke on looking at fractals in African architecture and design. For non comp sci people, fractals make for some of the most beautiful designs. For African geeks, egm and mathematicians, get the book.
TED Global 2007 feels like a seminal moment in Africa.

Russell Southwood: Balancing Act Africa
Looking at cities and ‘real news’ about Africa, he sees an affluent Africa emerging. A picture of modern looking Abuja and cultural expression in Nollywood.

Favourite quote - “What is an Ipod? Its a hard disk with hot pants.”

Chris Anderson to African designers “Please do not copy the west”. I like that. Could we have the kenyan rappers heed his  call please?

Artemisia is a plant with a sweet smell that provides raw material for malaria treatment drugs like cotexcin (also marketed in french countries as cotexa). It is a plant that is indigenous to china but grows very well in East Africa. I had not heard of Artemisia before but had seen the cotexin drugs at the pharmacies in kenya. The tour was very informative and eye opening. We began with visiting the nursery which was in the valley. It had rich dark loam soil that is perfect for Artemisia growth The small plant pictured here is an artemisia seedling, the leaves look like those of carrots or cilantro.

Mr and Mrs Loshie told us about how they irrigate the seed beds and ensure that the seedlings get enough water by having pipes utilize gravity to get the water close to the seedbeds. Mr. Loshie pointed out that he had to hire some manual labour to do the work as he and his wife cannot do it all themselves. In April they had about 400,000 seedlings. They supply the seedlings to other farmers in the area who pay after selling their leaves. As you can already tell, cultivation of this crop generates employment in the community and other farmers also intercrop it into their fields (planting artemisia between other plants like bananas and coffee)

Mr Loshie was asked about the benefit of planting Artemisia vs Maize, he said that he makes 4X more by planting artemisia, and can earn Tsh 15000 from 5 bags. It does take alot of manual labor to harvest, dry and bag the leaves. Once the leaves are bagged and ready, they are bought at he price of 750 Tsh per kilo and transported to Athi River processing plant in Kenya where the ingredient arteminisin is extracted into a crystal form.It takes 1 tonne of artemisia leaves to extract 10kg of crystals. This goes to Novartis in Switzerland where the final product of Cotexcin tabs are made. The TZ country director Tom Lennox explained that the arteminisin content of leaves from EA is very high, and EA can compete with China and Vietnam which have approx 70% of market share processing artemisia. The EA region currently commands 20% of that market. I asked Bruce McNamer the CEO of Technoserve (The company that set up this business in East Africa) if there are any plans to have the tablets made in Kenya or TZ instead of switzerland, especially since the tabs are used in Africa for malaria treatment. He said that the process for certification from the WHO in order to make this a reality is a stumbling block to making this happen. It takes a really long time to get the certification for drug processing.

Artemisia cultivation is a real market opportunity with room for growth and better yet, a platform for EA to compete with China on a cash crop.

More Pics posted here…[Bono was there. He is a sweetheart, a rock star one at that]

I am sitting next to Jen Brea, she blogs about China’s involvement in Africa.

Ndesanjo is liveblogging TED in swahili here.

The Cheetah Generation - made up of the youth, specifically the TED Fellows present here, the saviors of Africa who are not going to wait for government and aid organizations to do things for them.
The Hippo Generation - the current political and business leaders who are happy to wallow in their water holes, complaining about colonialism and poverty, but doing nothing about it.

Ayittey pulls no punches. He compares well-meaning international aid organizations who don’t understand Africa as the “Blind leading the clueless.”

Here are some of my notes:

He reminds us that 40% of the wealth crated in Africa is taken out of Africa, that “Africa’s begging bowl is leaking horribly”. Examples:

• Africa loses $148 billion to corruption each year
• Africa loses $80 billion to capital flight each year
• Africa loses $20 billion to food imports each year (when it used to be a food exporter)

Since 1960 we’ve had 204 African heads of state - name me just 20 good leaders! Most can’t even get 15. Even 20 out of 204 is still a failure of government. The slate of post-colonial leaders is a far cry from the leaders Africa had known for centuries.

Sometimes we think there is something called a government in Africa that cares about the people, and represents the people. What you and I understand as the government doesn’t exist in any African country. They suck the economic vitality out of the people. It’s a vampire state. The richest people in Africa are politicians - the chief bandits are the presidents.

An American says, “I am because I am”. An African says, “I am because we are”.

There’s a big issue that Idris brought up, he askes, “Why is it so difficult to raise private equity in Africa, yet we have billions of dollars going towards aid?” He suggests that maybe the G8 should divert some of those funds towards private equity markets in Africa.

I agree. I understand that the perception of risk is what holds many foreign investors back. However, the reality of the situation on the ground in Africa is a far cry from what is generally talked about in the media. In my travels, talking to technologists and entrepreneurs in South and East Africa, I’m continually struck by how much opportunity and growth potential there is here. While many investors sleep on these opportunities, a few will become millionaires and billionaires.

George Ayittey, author of Africa Unchained, has just walked on the stage… Wow!

I won’t do a session by session blow of what is happening on stage. For that I suggest you read Ethan’s blog. Ethan must be running a dual core processor brain. The man sits in the hall and blogs in real time like an episode of 24 taking in the talk, digesting it and laying out coherent blog posts all at the same time. Go there for a blow by blow account of what is happening. White African also has good posts on the sessions, with photos. If only all my roommates in life were this helpful eh, doing all the work while I sit there engrossed on what is happening on the stage.

Instead I will attempt to share a variety of titbits from around the conference.

Rokia Traore kicked things off with a song of welcome from Mali. Rokia has a fantastic, powerful and moving voice and set the tone for a wonderful conference. African, confident, powerful, human.

Euvin Naidoo quotes the philosopher who said, “The only dark thing about Africa is our perception of Africa.” This is a theme that is to remain central throughout the day.

Carol Pineau of Africa Open for Business fame, continues this theme as she shares with the stories of entrepreneurs across the continent. One of those featured in Carol’s talk is Mohammed Olan the CEO of Somali airline Diallo Airlines. This guy is happy that Somali doesn’t have a government because he doesn’t have to deal with government corruption. What I found most interesting about Carol’s talk was two tag clouds she shared with us. One showed what people in the west thought Africans wanted, and the second one showed what people in Africa want for themselves. I’ll try to find them and post them later.

Zeray Alemseged a palaeontologist from Ethiopia responsible for finding Selam a 3.3 million year old 3 year old girl. (Yes that sentence makes sense). He shared that the key thing as far as he was concern was to, “promote a positive African attitude towards Africa”. It is just like your parents used to tell you, you have to love yourself before anyone else will love you.

I am not much of cinema and movie person but Newton Aduaka blew me away with the short clips he showed of his films. Maybe I am a movie person and I’ve just been watching the wrong films. He has film coming out called Ezra about child soldiers in Sierra Leone that looks brilliant. Andrew Dosunmu shared some interesting clips as well.

But a conference isn’t a conference without some controversy and on Day One of TEDGlobal it was Andrew Mwenda – v – Bono. Andrew is a Uganda journalist and free speech activist that has seen jail time in Uganda for his beliefs. Andrew is against foreign aid in a big way. He feels makes Africa governments lazy as they do not have to invest in their entrepreneurs. If there was no aid and governments had to pay their way they would show a lot more interest in the people in their countries trying to generate wealth. As a Kenya trying to set up a business I can relate to that oh to well.

Bono on the other hand spends a lot of time campaign for aid to Africa to be increased. He also campaigns for debt cancellation and fair trade. Bono likes to stress the links between Africa and Ireland. Well.

It made for a lively session to say the least.

Youssou N’dour didn’t make it unfortunately but we did not have a chance to miss him as Rokia came back with her band and blew us away. My goodness, that woman’s voice, style and substance is unbelievable.

TEDGlobal2007 | TEDGlobal

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Our little conference overlaps with the G8 meeting in Germany, where there will be some substantial discussions on Africa. So, we sit here - business giants, philosophists and thought leaders - making the case for changing Africa. Changing the way the world sees Africa, changing the way Africa sees itself, and most of all, changing the way money flows and operates in Africa.

That’s pretty heavy stuff actually. We’re talking about the differences between development aid and capital investment throughout the second largest continent in the world. Bono and Mwenda have already squared off over it, and it’s a discussion worth having.

The two questions I have:

1. Will the policy makers of the developed and developing nations hear and act upon the idea that businesses should be leading the charge for change in Africa?
2. Will the TEDGlobal conference be dominated by this one theme of aid vs. trade, or will there be room for more thoughts and discussion on other ideas?

(NOTE: More great coverage of Bono vs Mwenda at Ethan Zuckerman’s blog)

(NOTE 2: I’ve started uploading pictures to Flickr)

In the first session we’ve had Euvin Naidoo ask us to start thinking about Africa differently - reminding us that it has had the best ROI in the world right now as far as capital markets are concerned. One of my favorite quotes was when he stated that “the problems of Africa should be seen as opportunities”.

Andrew Dosunmu, a film maker tells us that we need to change the world’s perception of Africa by changing the visual images that they see. It’s not all about war, famine and corruption. An absolutely fabulous photographer and videographer, the quality is stunning.

Africa Ready for Business is a film by Carol Pineau. She showcased some of the short stories from that film, reiterating that there are entrepreneurs all over Africa. In fact, “the entreprenuerial spirit is alive everywhere in Africa”, bringing up the example of Daallo Airlines in governmentless Somalia. Carol will soon be releasing her new documentary on business opportunities in Africa, called “Africa Investment Horizons”.

Finally, Andrew Mwenda ended the session with a resounding 18 minute talk on getting Aid out of Africa, but only investment.

Bono has just gotten on stage and coined the term “the Mwenda Plan” as opposed to the Marshall Plan. He’s talking about how/why aid is still important, that though corruption in African governments is the reason, we still need to be a part of the fix. He also cautioned against living in a fairy tale.

Some images…

Emeka Okafor, TEDGlobal Director and Chris Anderson, TED Curator

Emeka Okafor is the director of TEDGlobal, since I’ve always been a fan of Timbuktu Chronicles, it was great to finally meet face-to-face. That goes the same for Nii Simmonds of eNubia, Eric Osiakwan and David McQueen.

David McQueen and Kelly Stoetzel

Eric Osiakwan

The registration and setup here is outstanding. In a short conversation with Emeka, he told me about how helpful the Tanzanian government has been, but also compared directing this conference to directing a NASA space shuttle launch. A South African team came up just to do A/V and lighting, they’ve completely redesigned the whole hall.

This is just the beginning, more on the conference as we start tomorrow.

[NOTE: New AfriGadget post on home made welding machines made in Kenya.]

Among those present were bloggers Steve Mugiri from the Ntwiga blog, Juliana from Afromusing, Daudi Were from Mental Acrobatics. Riyaz Bachani, who organizes Skunkworks and the last BarCamp Kenya with Josiah Mugambi also came.

We had a great time over drinks and some Nyama Choma (beef and goat). A couple of us are off to a nearby orphanage today, then off to TED tomorrow.

Here’s a few pictures:

some of us early in the evening

Me and Mental

AfroMusing and Jacob a local developer)

Ntwiga and Me

Our first order of the day was to declare what the Mobile Toolkit would NOT be, followed by defining who the target user should be, say what we hope to achieve and finally come up with a vision statement. The results were surprisingly good, I think this can be attributed to there being some incredibly smart people present, as well as the fact that people came from all different backgrounds.

Here are some of the results.

“It’s not all about technology”

“It’s not about the best technology, it’s about the most appropriate technology”

“It’s not about science fiction, but it is about the future”

What we hope the toolbox will achieve:

• That it will help people select the right tool for their campaign
• Inspire creativity and imagination
• That it will cut operational costs
• As a catalyst for positive change

Joe Kasonde, from Zambia, came up with what I thought was a brilliant vision statement:

“That all communities have access to information and tools, which enables them to use mobile technology to achieve their goals”

He was in my small group, so we had a chance to discuss some of the reasons behind the terms used. My primary goal was to make sure that people realized that it was beyond our control to say what the Mobile Toolkit would be used for. Just like any other basic application (examples being Google Apps, Gmail or Microsoft Word), all types of organizations and people will use it for whatever their needs are if they find value in it. With that in mind, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with whether it is only used by advocates, but provide a tool that can be used by them.

I’m looking forward to when the final product is completed. With the individuals present in the room working on it, I’m convinced that the final Mobile Toolkit will be exceptional.

The first 3 days were taken up with examples and stories of how mobile technology is being used as an effective tool within NGO’s that have a focus on human rights and social advocacy. A typical question at these sessions would be, ” What do you need to make your work with mobiles more effective?”

A few of the answers:

• Access to service reports (SMS)
• User-friendly software
• Tables with the list of providers that are able to send messages to other providers
• Alternative power (solar power, charging and energy saving techniques)
• A glossary of the technical jargon
• Text-to-voice techniques
• Mobile-to-blog techniques

Tomorrow, just the tech guys will remain and we will discuss what tools and information will be included in the “Mobile Toolkit” so that future programs will have a starting point to reference for their projects. The first three days of hearing what is being done, and what is needed, is critical if a toolkit is to be developed that is both useful and informative. A typical question here would be, “What is the toolkit going to look like?”

A few of the answers:

• It should have a web presence
• It should be a package with a clear guide on how to use it and a navigation system with links to other users
• It should include CDs
• A book (multi language)
• It should be downloadable

While here I’ve had a chance to meet two blog/email acquaintances too, Sokari Ekine of Black Looks and Ken Banks of Kiwanja.net. They’re both experts in their fields, and it’s been great getting to know them on a face-to-face level. Sokari works at Fahamu and has been a social activist for quite some time. She has a particular focus on women’s rights, as can be seen on her blog. Ken Banks is a technologist who developed Frontline SMS, the system used to monitor the Nigerian elections amongst others.

Among those present were Riyaz Bachani and Josiah Mugambi, two of the BarCamp Kenya organizers. I also had the chance to meet Mugambi Kimathi, creator of Jahazi (covered earlier). Jean-Antoine Bord, behind Pajama Nation, was also present. So, it was fun to talk to some of these guys who are at the “center of the storm” of web development in Kenya.

The topic for last evening’s discussion was the creation of a Linux Professional’s Association of Kenya, the positioning of Linux within the public and private sectors, and discussions on how to educate people about the benefits of open source operating systems and software. After having a long discussion with Heather Ford, Director of iCommons, which is based in South Africa, I can’t help but think that there is so much that can be done between these two groups.

At the end of the meeting, the consensus seemed to be that people in government, SME’s and even big business don’t really care about what the operating system is, so long as it works. If they can save money and run their business more profitably because of the decisions that their IT consultants make, then that’s a big extra. Having a local open source association that can provide success stories of companies and parastatals that have successfully implemented open source software will be a big help for further growth in this area.

Overall it was a great meeting that I really enjoyed sitting in on. The tech community in Nairobi was well represented and you can tell how passionate everyone is about creating a better tech sector in Kenya.

Pictures

Dave Duarte, the MC, asked if I would be willing to give a presentation. I agreed, but it was somewhat tough trying to figure out what to talk about. You see, this type of meeting brings out the best developers and the best bloggers in the area. You can’t teach anyone anything, and you had better be right about what you say since there’s bound to be someone there that knows more than you do about any given subject.

I finally decided to discuss mobile applications and opportunities in Africa. Specifically, I wanted to discuss how developers could leverage open source tools that are already out there to layer services on top of and create something that truly bridges the web/mobile gap. It ended up being a 30,000-foot overview of how you could integrate Jabber into current applications, or create new ones that worked with it.

Neville Newey, of Muti, was kind enough to throw together a great demo of how to mashup 2 services, in this case Muti (a place to link to great stories on Africa around the web) and MXit (the 4 million-strong mobile phone chat service here in South Africa). MXit is based on Jabber, an open java protocol that allows anyone to create a server and client. Some pretty big names use it, including Google Talk. It’s useable on your computer or your phone.

If you have an account with Jabber, Google Talk or Mxit you can access this mashup (and each other) by texting the words “hot” or “new” to muti@jabber.org. Muti will shoot back to you the top 5 stories for each respective area. You can then vote these results up or down.

An example:
You want to vote result #4 up.
You would type “v4u” (to vote down, it would be “v4d”

It’s simple and it opens up Muti to millions of new possible users. The next step, of course, will be for Neville to allow MXit and other Jabber client users the ability to submit stories through their mobile phone or PC client.

For those who are interested, the full presentation is available here as a video:

(Download it as a 5Mb PDF)

I’ve just setup a way for people to buy AfriGadget and Muti t-shirts through a store on Goodstorm. There is only a $1 markup on the shirts right now. If any money comes through the sale of these shirts, I will put it towards an African project that I deem worthy. It will go to an entrepreneur that is doing something AfriGadget-worthy. If you have ideas for who that might be, send me their story and info.

Neville has given me a couple of Muti shirts to hand out, and I brought along a few BarCamp Kenya shirts for people who attended that in Nairobi. If you’re interested, let me know. I’ll hand them out to you if you’re at the 27 Dinner in Johannesburg, or the Skunkworks/Blogger meetup on June 1 in Nairobi.

Afrigator has 10 t-shirts that they’re trying to get rid of (and some iPods). Contact them and see if they will ship outside of South Africa - if you win one and are in Kenya or Tanzania, I’ll bring it for you myself.

Why I chose Goodstorm
Goodstorm uses quality shirts and offers their shirts without a massive markup, which you tend to see from other shirt providers. On top of that, customer service at Goodstorm will bend over backwards to help you. When they heard that I had ordered some shirts and it was going to be close on whether I got them in time for this trip, they worked to make sure my orders were pushed to the front of the line. GREAT customer service!

This conference is unlike any I have ever been to before in that I have no idea, absolutely NO IDEA, what kind of conference to expect. There is a wealth of information on the conference but it just highlights that I should expect the unexpected.

One thing I do know for sure is that I will be rooming with one crazy dude called Hash a.k.a White African. Now really it does not get any crazier than that. I wonder what TEDGlobal Program Director Emeka Okafor will do once he realises that he has put two techie and blogging members of the Front Row Union in the same room. (Hash, I hope you play tight head because, bruv, I’m a loose head!) If we don’t blow up something while trying to plug in all our gear into the one wall socket in the room, we’ll probably be busy forcing encouraging all kind of interesting people to talk to us. I notice that Yvonne Chaka Chaka has stopped organising her calendar to take in my conference dates instead Youssou N’Dour will be doing his thing.

Other KBWers who are representing are:

• Afromusing
• Bankelele
• Kenyan Pundit
• Ndesanjo

Any others out there (I’m sure they’ll be a couple attending chini ya maji a.k.a undercover)

I’ll post some more details on the proposed Madaraka Day (June 1st) KBW, Tedsters, Skunkworkers, techies, wanainchi, anybody, everybody meet up over the weekend. Come one, come all.

(Isn’t it interesting how many of the people who branded us traitors/sell outs/neo-colonial appeasists for going to the Digital Indaba in South Africa in September last year because it was “white” are happily gobbling up all that TEDGlobal can throw at them with not even a little sense of irony? Hmm the contradictions, the contradictions )

Tags: TEDGlobal

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