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White African

November 28, 2007
19:10
Measuring the African Blogosphere
» ‎ White African

Tags: Web Tools

If you’re an African blogger, and you’re not yet a part of Afrigator, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Afrigator is an African blog aggregator that keeps you up to date with bloggers across Africa, but beyond that it’s a valuable tool. They provide analytics that allow you to see how many people are visiting your site and from where.

Afrigator Gets Even Better
They have just released their new beta of their service, completely redesigned and with added functionality. I’m extremely impressed with how polished it seems, but that’s to be expected from the guys working on it. There’s no reason for me to do another review of all the changes, those have been covered well by Charl and Marshall.

So How Many Bloggers are There in Africa Anyway?

That’s a question that I keep asking, and one that’s hard to measure. Afrigator might give us the best start in finding that answer.

I asked Justin Hartman if he would mind sharing what their numbers are by country. He graciously obliged, and you can see them at right.

Because Afrigator is developed (and marketed most) by South Africans the blog count is heavily tilted that direction. However, the rest of the countries are fairly accurate relative to each other. We know that Kenya does indeed have one of the largest populations of bloggers in Africa as does Nigeria. I do notice that there is a lack of North African countries, and I know that there are a lot of bloggers from there.

What I’d like to see is a true representation across all of the African blogosphere. With some intelligent spidering, I would think that Afrigator is best positioned to tackle this challenge.

What we can all do is help spread the word to our other African blogger counterparts and get them signed up on Afrigator, helping to legitimize our region by organization and ease of finding good bloggers in any country.
November 26, 2007
13:14
TED Africa in Cape Town, 2008
» ‎ White African

Tags: Conferences

I just got an email from TED stating that TED Africa will be taking place in Cape Town, South Africa from September 29 to October 1, 2008. Great news for everyone in SA!

Here’s the email:

TEDAfrica will be held in Cape Town, South Africa on September 29-October 1, 2008 (save the date!), and will follow the format of this year’s event in Arusha, Tanzania.

The conference will be organized by a wonderful local team with whom we have just signed a license agreement. The four-person team includes TED Fellow Kelo Kubu and the conference will be operated out of a new South Africa-based non-profit organization devoted to promoting a better future for the continent, the “TED Africa Foundation”.

We will be supporting the foundation both financially and logistically to help ensure that the event maintains and builds on the quality and success of the Arusha event.

Initially we had intended that conference to be a one-off, but we received such enthusiastic feedback that we had to find a way to bring it back and in the summer we invited groups to apply for a license to host the conference. Kelo’s team were one of several who submitted bid and we were stunned by the quality of the proposals. The winning bid included several brilliant ideas to make TED Africa even better, and also featured a strong plan to ensure the event’s financial success and long-term sustainability. We therefore have enormous confidence that the next TED will every bit as exciting as Arusha was.

The organizers have already begun feverish preparations and when registration for the event formally opens, we will put out another note. Meanwhile, if you want to suggest a speaker, discuss sponsorship, or offer other help, you can write to contact@tedafrica.org. A new website promoting the conference will eventually be launched at www.tedafrica.org.

Kelo wanted us to forward the following note:

“It has been an honor and a privilege to be part of the TED Africa process . The team is naturally excited to be hosting TEDAfrica 2008, and we look forward to the challenge of generating the usual TED cocktail of inspiration and magic. The task is undoubtedly a daunting one but Africa provides the perfect platform, and Cape Town the ideal location for yet another memorable event.

We look forward to welcoming the world to the southern most tip of Africa to share, spread and nurture groundbreaking ideas that could open new possibilities to growth and prosperity on the continent.”

Our congratulations to her and her team. We hope to see you in Cape Town!

Very best,

Chris Anderson
Emeka Okafor

I hope to be there, let’s see what the next evolution of TED looks like in Africa!
9:08
Nigerian eLearning Program for OLPC & Classmate
» ‎ White African

Tags: Africa

Peter Vlam of Africa News put me onto an interesting story regarding education and technology. Learning About Living is a new eLearning program to teach children in Nigeria about sexual health, HIV/AIDS, maternal mortality and gender violence. Young people in Lagos, Cross Rivers State and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja will be piloting the project, which is specifically designed for the OLPC, Classmate and government computer programs.

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]
November 24, 2007
8:41
Kenya’s Second BarCamp
» ‎ White African

Tags: Business
I’ve been impressed to see the developers and bloggers from Kenya and South Africa taking the time to create gatherings where they can pass on knowledge - everyone ends up profiting from the experience. The techies in Nairobi have just concluded their 2nd BarCamp this year (the first was in March).

Brian Muita organized the whole thing, with a great setup at Strathmore and David Kiani doing an excellent job of moderating. Reports coming into me tell me that it was really well done, had good sponsorship and most of all there was great discussions. Some of the topics covered:
- Wesley talking about his game, and what it took to create
- Edgar talking about some engineering he does in the middle of the night - apps to analyse traffic, a sound mixer for DJs
- Alex Gakuru talked about patenting and protection of ideas (a big issue in Kenya, where a lot of people think their ideas will be stolen, so don’t want to share openly)
- Nathan Eagle talked about HDR photography, having a local craigslist in Africa on mobile/voice platform, and Reality Mining
- We had an asterisk demo by Valentine and a team from Smoothtel
- Michuki and Edgar talked a bit about local content & what their thoughts on innovation were - the drivers. This broke down into a reportedly energetic debate about entrepreneurship that pitted “passion” vs “making money“.
I’m sure that Daudi (Mental Acrobatics) will end up having a lot more to say - he was actually there. I’ve heard he will have video and better pictures too, so check his blog out. Also, I just found Wilfred Moria’s blog who was there as well, check it out for a good recap.

Above is an image of Mickuki, talking about local content. That image looks eerily familiar…
November 21, 2007
8:27
Africa’s Web 2.0 Sites (with links)
» ‎ White African

Tags: mobile

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Africa’s Web 2.0 Sites (updated), originally uploaded by whiteafrican.
I was challenged by Riyaz and Sokari to come up with a list of “Web 2.0″ sites for Africa and make a collage. I chose to define that term rather loosely, so if the line is blurred it’s entirely my fault.

I’m sure I missed some, so leave a comment with the link if I did. I’ll add it in the next iteration.

You can see the larger sizes of this image on Flickr, where each logo has the link to the webite.

The “To Be Added” list:

MyVideo
TWAC
iJol
MyGenius
Helule
Blog247
YesNoMayB
employmint
ZoopedUp
Digspot
Vrinne
Student Village
LitNet
MobiMii
Wibble
Startpage
Share Surf
Blogs 24
Bongo5
Blog TZ
November 18, 2007
12:43
South Africa’s Synthasite Raises $5 Million in Funding
» ‎ White African

Tags: Business

It’s not that often that one of Africa’s new web companies makes a big international splash. Synthasite has done just that, just announcing a $5 million round of financing from Swiss-based Columbus Venture Capital. That’s big money no matter where you’re at, and I’m interested in seeing what Synthasite does with it.

Synthasite is a free Web 2.0 Publishing Platform that allows users to construct a website without any knowledge of HTML or programming, using drag & drop along with configurable dialog windows. The Company recently launched its AJAX based platform into Beta and has attracted nearly 10,000 users so far. Synthasite also plans to open it’s platform to third party developers next year, in order to allow them to create widgets, templates & other plugins for the platform.

I’ve been particularly impressed watching Vinny Lingham’s hard work and determination to make Synthasite into something bigger - something global. When he sent me the press release, I was really happy to hear the news, because it shows that firms in Africa have the possibility of building global software/websites and can play at the same level as their counterparts around the world.

They’ll be using part of this money to create a larger footprint outside of South Africa. Vinny will be opening an office in California, so will have part of his team in the US and the other still in Africa. This is a really important move actually - those who are in this space realize how hard it is to be taken seriously amongst the web intelligentsia if you’re not located in their own back yard.

Giving it a Test Run
I haven’t tested Synthasite since last year, so I got to work creating a simple site to test out what is possible. First off, it is SO much easier to use than the previous version. I remember how hard of a time I had on the first version - and I know what I’m doing on the web, and this new version is so much better that I think the only thing that remains the same is the name of the product.

The basic design templates look outstanding and seem to work well with the editing. Adding images and text was a breeze, as was adding more pages.

[The Website Editor - You can see what I built here]

One of my favorite features is that you can download your whole website as a zip file. Doing something like this allows you to use their editor to build your site, but you can still host it on your own server if you like. Nice addition!

There seems to be a lack of widgets, the one thing that the old Synthasite had a lot of. Before, you could build Yahoo and Amazon affiliate widgets into your site quite easily, I didn’t see that option at all anymore. Hopefully they’ll see some real 3rd-party development as I’d like to see a full widget library for people to use.

Summary
If you’re in Africa, why should you care about Synthasite? Well, it’s a free website builder offering free hosting - given the internet costs in Africa - this should appeal to many people. It’s a good product, that’s easy to use and will allow novices to build a good looking site easily.
November 16, 2007
16:18
Bear Gets a Ride
» ‎ White African

Tags: Africa

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Bear Gets a Ride, originally uploaded by whiteafrican.
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.
November 14, 2007
17:10
The TED Computers Ship
» ‎ White African

Tags: Conferences

TEDGlobal in Tanzania this year was a real eye-opener. I had never, and likely won’t ever again, see a conference put on at that level. Everything was done top notch, no expense was spared - and everyone went away charged up from the atmosphere that was created. (I wrote about getting spoiled previously)

Well, once again, TED and their sponsors have pulled through. Google and AMD promised all of us TED Fellows a Mac or PC, and I just received my confirmation receipt from Apple today (also confirmed with TED). My new 15″ MacBook Pro is in the mail, and should be here this weekend. I’m stoked!

Once again, they didn’t stint on the gift. They easily could have given us the smaller, cheaper version - instead we get the top-of-the-line computer that does everything we need.

[update: Tom sent an email stating, “Since you waited so long, we upgraded everyone to MacBook Pros and you’ll get Leopard for free.”]

Thanks Google. Thanks AMD. Thanks TED.

In the spirit of this gift, I too will be gifting my current computer to someone else.
15:07
African Stock Market Opportunities Online
» ‎ White African

Tags: Business

The stock markets in Africa have shown incredible growth over the last few years. There are a lot of investors around the world interested in both information and analysis of the stocks, companies and countries where the exchanges are located. Invariably, entrepreneurs flock to where the money is and you start seeing some interesting websites show up.

The List of African Stock Exchanges
Wikipedia has full list of the current African stock exhanges. There appears to be coverage in 37 countries, with one regional stock exchange, the Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières (BRVM), which serves 8 countries; Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea Bissau, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. You can also take a look at Mbendi, that has a somewhat dated list, with links and contact information for each exchange.

The Opportunities
Quite obviously, the web is the best place to play with information and make it available worldwide. When a developer looks at the opportunity in this space, he sees a mountain of data - the key ingredient to a successful web application. A smart developer sees this as the beginning, knowing that he has to harness both data AND people in order to make the website a hit. It’s a virtual playground - literally and figuratively.

As an investor, the perfect type of website for you would be a website that allows you to find all the historical information about a specific stock and/or company, see analysis, communicate with other investors and possibly manage transactions as well.

If you play your cards right, you can create the go-to site for information around stocks for a country. If you’re ambitious, you could do it on a continent-wide level.

I wanted to see if consumer sites like Google Finance and Yahoo Finance were tracking stocks in Africa. Google does follow the stocks, but without much more than some cursory company data, financials and news feeds. Yahoo doesn’t track anything besides indexes outside of the US (as far as I could tell).

The Caveat
Each country has it’s own rules regulating how information is passed with regards to stocks. It gets even more interesting when you throw in the ability to actually buy and sell stocks online. Anyone who gets into this space needs to be hyper-aware of the laws that regulate what they can/cannot do.
November 12, 2007
20:13
Mobile App Challenge by Google: Win $25k Minimum
» ‎ White African

Tags: mobile

Google has just announced their $10 million Android Developer Challenge. If you develop one of the top 50 applications, you win $25,000. That gets you into the round to find the best 20 of those 50, which will be divided for into ten $275,000 awards and ten $100,000 awards.

If you’re a developer in Africa, this is a GREAT opportunity for you. Submissions for the first phase of the challenge will be accepted from Jan. 2 through March 3, 2008.
November 08, 2007
7:51
OLPC and The Bobs
» ‎ White African

Tags: Gadgets
Two quick updates.

OLPC
First, the One Laptop Per Child project is finally in production. Better yet, if you would like one yourself, starting next week (Nov 12) you can get one yourself through their “Give 1 Get 1” initiative. I actually think I’ll be doing this.

The BOBs
This is your last week to vote on “The Best of Blogs“. It looks like there’s a number of African blogs in there now too, so it’s good to see that there was a lot of activity over the last month.

The nominated blogs include two from Africa:
- Actualités de la République Démocratique du Congo in the best Weblog category
- Diário de um Sociólogo from Mozambique in best Portuguese blog
November 05, 2007
12:34
Google’s Mobile Nexus
» ‎ White African

Tags: Business

Google has been on a spree this last few weeks. First it was their foray into becoming the hub for social networks through OpenSocial. Today, it’s their launch of the Open Handset Alliance and Android.

Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation. We have developed Android in cooperation with the Open Handset Alliance, which consists of more than 30 technology and mobile leaders including Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile. Through deep partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform.

Basically, their mobile play looks very similar to their social networking play: become the nexus.

As Dean Takahashi mentioned, “Google’s approach is to create a “stack,” or set of applications that sit on top of each other and work with each other.”

This is similar to what I spoke about when in South Africa in May. I used the example of mashing up Mxit and Muti, and spoke about how you create layers of other services that all talk to each other. It’s about using open source tools to create your platform, this allows others to build on them easily. Best of all, it makes the end-user experience better.

If you weren’t on board before, now you should be. You can build right into the future of mobile. Sure, Android won’t be everything, but it’s a surefire way to get into the game.