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White African
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19:36
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Jon Gosier and Paul Engulu of Appfrica has just launched Afridex, an index of African tech startups. Anyone can submit their website or mobile application and be added to the index. What an excellent idea, and really well executed as well!
It’s still brand new, but I think it has a lot of potential - we should see a lot of mobile and web companies adding themselves to the index pretty quickly. As it grows, it becomes more valuable as a resource, thus feeding itself ad infinitum.
Why is it useful?
- Persistent Search queries a search engine in combination with select keywords to track mentions of your company around the web as they occur. When any new information about a group appears online it appears here.
- Blogstream syndicates the ten most recent posts from a company blog. People can also use to follow company blogs by subscribing to the RSS feed.
- Comments allows consumer feedback and comments about a group or organization. Get instant feedback from your customers, crowd source a product review, or offer public customer service.
- Brand Watch is a feature that allows users to monitor mentions of a company across various social networks, blogs and websites. Like persistent search, Brand Watch scans all the popular web portals in africa and abroad for mentions of a company name.
- Embed allows users to export standards compliant code that will allow them to embed information related to a company in their profile. This allows data from the Afridex to be portable. This information can be used as a quick citation tool for blogs, news articles, email and reports.
If you click on any company’s name, you will be taken to the detail page on them. On that page you will find a bunch of publicly available information, including everything from contact information to blog and Twitter posts. It’s really quite impressive.
In the lower-right corner you’ll notice the “embed” code that will allow you to add a widget to the sidebar of any website with basic information about that company. The one for Node Six looks like this:
#afridex { font-family:helvetica; font-size:1em; border:1px solid #ccc; padding:5px 5px 5px 5px; margin:5px 5px 5px 5px: color:#333; line-height:1.1em; display:block; width:350px; }
#afridex img { border:3px solid #333; }
#afridex h1 { font-size:1.35em; font-weight:strong; }
#afridex a { color:#71000; }
#afridex a:active { color:#71000; text-decoration:underline; }
#afridex p { text-align:justify; font-size:75%; }
NodeSix
[Map]
URL - [www.nodesix.com]
Email - sales@nodesix.com
Node Six began life as a division of Elemental Edge, a leading multi-media and visual communications solutions provider in Kampala, Uganda.
Information Provided by the Afridex
Summary
The only problem that I’ve found so far is that I can’t find a way to either “get listed” (it’s currently a dead link), or create a login so that I can submit a couple companies. I’m sure this is because it’s so brand new, and I’m sure Jon or Paul will leave a note here when that works.
I’m not surprised that this excellent idea came from Jon Gossier, I’m starting to expect this type of top-class work from him. I’m sure we’re going to see even more of this in the future. Brilliant.
Want to help out with this cool project? Get involved on the Afridex wiki
 
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4:54
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
(This is from my talk on mobile phones in Africa, at the Picnic conference in Amsterdam this morning.)
Africa is brimming with innovative people, projects and organizations. The fact that I’m standing here today proves this out - you see, I’ve been writing about those stories for the past 3 years.
Some of you are already familiar with Africa’s mobile stats, but not everyone is. Let’s run through some numbers, and take a minute to really appreciate the staggering growth of just one industry on our continent.
Mobile Phones in Africa - PICNIC 08
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: mobile phone)
Statistics
- At the end of 2007 there were over 280 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4%
- Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 30% to 100%
- Look at the diversity in penetration rates among countries, just in Africa. It’s good to remember that when we speak about “mobile phones in Africa” that not all are created equal.
- Fastest growing markets are in Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt
- Increased competition as more operators come online in each country (11 in Nigeria, 4 in Kenya and SA, 3 in Egypt and Morocco)
- Pre-paid subscriptions account for nearly 95 percent of total mobile subscriptions in the region
How fast has it grown?
- The Democratic Republic of Congo, population 60 million, has 10,000 fixed telephones but more than a million mobile phone subscribers.
- In Chad, the fifth-least developed country, mobile phone usage jumped from 10,000 to 200,000 in three years.
What sectors does this touch? All, of course, but mobile’s have proven especially effective in:Transport, Micro-commerce, Finance, Healthcare, Governance, Education, Infotainment
Examples of innovative services
Mobile payments and mobile banking
- MPESA - This is what happens when the rest of the world ignores your need for a payment system. One of the golden children of Africa’s mobile revolution, when anyone brings up a successful mobile service in Africa. It works, and we’re all extremely happy to have the idea of mobile micro payments piloted and tested by Safaricom, but it also promotes a carrier monopoly in an industry AND continent that is crying for a real payment solution.
- Wizzit - Mobile banking in South Africa
- Celpay - Zambia - An innovative payment solution that allows consumers and businesses to complete cash transactions from their mobile phones. CelPay eliminates the problems that accompany dealing in cash visits to the bank, waiting in lines, counting and recounting money, fear of theft, and forgone interest payments. Instead, consumers with CelPay can use their mobile phone to do anything they would with cash, thanks to a payment system that works like a bank account.
Africa News Mobile Reporters
The Dutch group behind Africanews.com has put together a fleet of reporters around Africa using high end mobile phones, equipped with video and camera, to report short interviews and events from the field. Nokia/Reuter’s mobile newskit - Nokia N71
Ushahidi - Citizen reporting during a crisis (now an open source project).
mPedigree
Ashifi Gogo created a way to use SMS to authenticate drugs in Ghana, a system that simplifies and decreases the cost of doing this and that can be replicated anywhere in the world.
Winafrique’s Wind-powered cellular towers
Hybrid wind and diesel turbine systems for powering cell phone base stations.
Agricultural markets
Tradenet
A free service for farmers in West Africa to see local agricultural market prices around their region. It enables farmers and traders in agricultural commodities in Africa to conduct business through the use of SMS.
Manobi
Senegalese company Manobi, which operates online systems for businesses in the developing world, first launched the trading platform for farmers and fishermen in the west African nation, and says it has signed up 40,000 customers there. Farmers can access the information on a web-based trading platform via Internet-enabled phones, or can request prices and make trades via SMS, or text message.
How is it being used?
Projects, products and services created as secondary services by individuals and organizations all over the continent.
Restricted mobility
A cell phone operator in a remote African village where competition is tough, offers his customers some privacy, by allowing them to try out a cell phone, tethered to a long wire.
Steve Mutinda’s 3 java applications
Shows an individual using his free time, and trying to create applications that are value added and will make him money. He epitomizes the smart, young entrepreneurs of the continent.
Morris Mbetsa - “Block & Track” auto anti-theft system
Feedelix, dealing with government censorship (Ethiopia)
The Ethiopian government instituted SMS filtering services, which caused some enterprising Ethiopians to launch Feedelix, which is an SMS-like client that supports Amharic characters. The Java application then uses the ability of many phones to transmit data via GPRS through internet protocols to mimic SMS.
Ethioblog - Literacy and/or linguistic challenges
There are challenges to in Africa too, where there are higher rates of non-literacy, or where they don’t speak the language available on their handset. Last year in Ethiopia, some guys got together and developed 200 Amharic language characters that they used to develop a phone book, message and phone settings in Amharic.
Mobile phone equipped bicycles - Bodaphone (Kiwanja), Wheelchair bikes equipped (Ruud Elmendorp)
Phone charging stations/businesses
Most of the time this takes the simple form of a car battery, but you’ll also find enterprising people using other methods (legal and illegal) to run business that only do this.
In Summary
The truth is that there are some very interesting, and surprising, developments coming out of Africa. Every culture modifies use or the device itself to meet local needs - this is no different in Africa, and we’re seeing that evolution happen right before our eyes.
The default device in Africa is the mobile phone.
Here’s one more compelling thought. The challenges brought about by bad governance, poverty, low bandwidth (all the negative things you associate with Africa) also provide an incredible opportunity. The developers who are coming up with solutions in the continent, the ones who are writing software or hacking hardware, are creating for some of the harshest environments and use-cases in the world. If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.
(Africa News has the video up already - video’d through their mobile phone of course. )
 
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11:00
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
…Then you’re not paying enough attention.” - Ethan Zuckerman at Picnic ‘08
Ethan has just finished giving an excellent 20 minute talk on why people need to start paying attention to Africa. Not for Africa’s good alone, but for their own good as well.
One of the comments made was that the African reaspora will be the ones who rebuild Africa. Those are the Africans who have left and are now coming back with money, purpose and drive to see change happen. Binyavanga Wainaina and Helen Omwando represent that group, and are up on stage having a conversation with Ethan, discussing what is really going on.
“The default form of organization in Africa is a tribe.”
- Binyavanga Wainaina
“When you force people to use Western Union, you’re basically saying, ‘go rob this guy’.”
- Ethan explaining how having such a high profile, undistributed means of transferring money sets up the receiver of the funds as a target.
More tomorrow at the day-long event on Africa - I go on stage at 10:30 and will be talking about how mobiles are being used in Africa.
 
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15:07
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I’m really excited to be almost on the airplane today as I’m heading to Picnic to take part in the festival. I’ll be speaking on Friday, the day focused on “Surprising Africa” (as in, you’d be surprised at what type of innovation is coming out of Africa).
If you take a look a the lineup of speakers it’s rather impressive. In fact, it’s a little depressing realizing that I have to go on stage right after the incomparable Binyavanga Wainaina. I had the pleasure of seeing him talk at TED Global last year in Tanzania, and he was even better there than in his normal writing. Besides Binyavanga, I’m also looking forward to hearing Ethan, Gisel Hiscock from Google, and Younghee Jung of Nokia.
Afrophile Meetup
Tomorrow evening (Wed, 24th at 6pm) a couple of us involved with tech in Africa are getting together for an Ethiopian dinner at the Abyssinia restaurant. If you’re free and want to come hang out for a couple hours, we’d love to have you.
 
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10:52
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
My good friend Josiah Mugambi in Nairobi was at the Kenya chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) exhibition in Nairobi last weekend. This is where students showcase their innovation in engineering, ICT, mobile application and renewable energy. He did me a great favor by sharing some pictures and research that he did on some of the really interesting students he came across.
1. MPESA Online Shopping
By Denis Ndwiga Nyaga
Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph was especially interested in this one for obvious reasons. Denis called it ‘nakupesi‘, Naku for Nakumatt (the local mega-store). nakupesi is an online shopping mall, with payment based on MPESA. One would need to be registered on MPESA to be able to pay for items online via MPESA. One thing that is possibly lacking is delivery to one’s residence or office after purchase. This shouldn’t be too hard to incorporate though.
2. Green Tree Markets - a Business Intelligence tool for farmers
By Andrew Owuor
This looked quite interesting - A business intelligence tool that allows a farmer to choose where to sell his produce based on price, and location. Some of the obstacles that the developer Andrew Owuor mentioned include the need for real time market data from markets round the country, for the system to be of use. This isn’t a completely new idea, but it’ll be interesting to see what local twists are created for East Africa.
3 more…
3. Automatic headlight dimming for two approaching vehicles - By Jemimah Wachenje
Jemimah has developed a system that automatically dips two vehicles head lights when approaching each other at night. Josiah has ranted about headlights before, and I agree, it would be very useful and potential could reduce some accidents on those dark lightless roads around Kenya.
4. Energy harvesting using piezos to charge mobile phones - by Richard Assanga Otolo and Gilbert Barasa
Very interesting, yet practical.
5. Synchronous Solar Heliostat - by Samuel Njoroge
Sammy Njoroge’s demostration of a synchronous solar heliostat used to track the sun, and orient a solar panel accordingly thus improving the efficiency of solar panels. Automatic tracking of the sun to increase the efficiency of solar panels, Makes economic sense. Innovation runs in the family it seems.
 
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23:31
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I’ve finally gotten around to adding a simple calendar of African technology events that are upcoming focused around the continent and abroad. The astute amongst you would notice it in the navigation above. It is meant to be a resource for others to find (and tell others of) conferences that they are interested in.
If you have an upcoming tech event, contact me and let me know the following information:
- Name
- Dates
- Venue
- City, Country
- Website
- Short summary of event
I know there are some Barcamps and local tech events upcoming around East and West Africa. Get them to me to add to the calendar. It seems like it’s all South Africa at the moment.
[sidebar: yes, I know it's not pretty yet, I'll get to that as I can... I'm using Dan's Gigs Calendar WP plugin for this.]
 
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13:17
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
If you follow a lot of web startups, you see that many have a hard time reaching critical mass. Even more have a hard time staying in business, so “time alive” becomes an important measuring stick. Zoopy, a web video hosting site, has gone from strength-to-strength ever since they first launched in two years ago. They have done this by working very hard, and by focusing on their niche: South Africa.
Zoopy Upgrades
A recent investment partnership by Vodacom put them in a position to announce some major new upgrades this week.
- Local South Africa hosting - This allows for much faster speeds, particularly important when dealing with video and images.
- Doubled file sizes - Users can now upload 200Mb files, as opposed to the old 100Mb limit.
- A new video player - A spiffed up and much more usable video player.
The Importance of Being Local
I’m particularly impressed with the move to local servers for their content. Besides local goodwill issues, South Africans are very patriotic and like to see stuff succeed in-country. International hosting is cheaper, but the user experience is eroded due to lag. However, as Jason mentions in a comment,
“The biggest question here for us was: how could we afford NOT to move in this direction for the South African online community at Zoopy? Our users deserve more, and we’re happy to deliver.”
Right now, Jason Elk and some of the Zoopy team are in New York at the Web 2.0 Expo, measuring their product against the competition, and learning from their peers.
I’m a big fan of Zoopy, enough so that we’ve moved to Zoopy as AfriGadget’s video hosting site as of this Summer. Congrats guys, and keep up the great work!
 
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7:09
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Please jump on over to the Ushahidi blog for some background history, to study the mockups, and let us know what we can do better, or what should change.
The dev team on this is really looking forward to getting some constructive criticism. Thanks!
 
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13:04
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I spent this Saturday morning listening to some pretty smart bloggers at IZEAfest in Orlando (Merlin Mann, Loren Feldman, etc.). This afternoon I’m on a panel talking about blogging tools. Below are my notes and slides for that short talk.
Blogging Tools
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blogging api)
Simplify & Streamline It
If you’re like me, you don’t blog for a living, but you’re trying to blog while you’re living. I need tools and features that simplify my life and make it easy for me to be more effective as I’m doing the day-to-day things that actually run my life. That means I mainly want tools to work in the background, or I want a system coordinated in such a way as to make the work I have to do a lot easier and streamlined. So, it’s a little bit about making things easier and being productive while going about it.
All Things in Moderation
My next consideration is how cluttered additional items make the site look. Your mileage may vary - and it will depending upon your readership, but I like to keep my sidebar clean. Not empty, but with items that are relevant. So, I’m extremely careful about adding a new sidebar item. For me, this rule also applies to the posts themselves, so I’m careful not to add too much before or after the main text as well.
- The cluttered look itself
- Slow page load
- Ads - Takes away from things that are making you money
- Most readers don’t care! (about your Technorati or Alexa rank, about the local weather in your area, etc…)
The Tools
Okay, so let’s dig into a few of the tools that I use, and I’ll explain why I use them and why you might want to use them to. I’ve broken these down into a couple categories: 3rd party tools and plugins.
First off, I want to run down the “must haves”, then I’ll give you a list of items that are also worth looking into.
Email signup (Feedburner or Zookoda) (3rd party)
Most people don’t know what RSS is, make it easy on them and allow them to get a simple email whenever you post something new. By the way, I’ve seen this happen on to many blogs to think it an accident - most blogger’s feeds double when they install this. Oh, and talk about a secondary way for ads to be delivered too…
Subscribe to comments (WordPress plugin)
Want people coming back for more? For many readers, this is the best way to stay involved in a conversation that was started on your blog post. They don’t need to keep checking to see if anyone responded to their comment, they can just get it in their email box.
Contact Form or Page (cforms) (WordPress plugin)
Please, please, put a simple contact form on your blog. There’s no excuse for not providing a way for readers, old friends and potential advertisers from getting in touch with you this way. This has the additional impact of not putting your email address (however mangled) onto the website. Simple and it can be done really easily with plugins.
Integrating 3rd party tools
One of the easiest ways to be a little more productive is to integrate blogging with other third party tools and websites that you use. For instance, I like to take pictures, so I make sure that I can easily blog straight from Flickr as needed. The same rule applies to YouTube, or any of the other video or image hosting sites like Picasa.
Plugins
I’m a big WordPress fan, though I have used Blogger before, so I apologize in advance to any Typepad users when I start talking plugins - I just don’t know much outside of the WP plugin world. I don’t use a ton of plugins myself, usually between 5-7 of them is all that I really need, here are my favorites:
- Akismet
- Contact form (cforms)
- Subscribe to comments
- Feedburner feed replacement
- Role manager (more than one author)
- WP database backup
- WP Super Cache
- Recent Posts
- Related Posts
Tools for Tracking and/or Better Content
All of the previously mentioned tools are good and useful, but beyond the tools directly used in your blog you should also think about some of these others that will help you manage your content and track what readers really like.
- Twitter - using either Monitter or Twitter Search
- Your RSS reader - being informed is a very important part of the blogging process, plus it really helps with blogger’s block
- Moleskine notebook - For all those ideas that you get in the strangest of places
- Google Alerts - track yourself, your blog, or important words
- Technorati - see who’s linking to you
 
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16:43
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
I admit, I’m a little confused.
Yesterday Google, HSBC bank and Liberty Global cable company launched O3b Networks (which stands for “other 3 billion”), a satellite service to bring high-speed low-cost internet connections to the world’s poorest people starting in 2010 - many of them in Africa.
On the Google Africa blog, they state:
O3b plans to deliver fiber-like Internet backhaul service using a constellation of medium-orbit satellites. This means data can be quickly transmitted to and from even the most remote locations such as inland Africa or small Pacific islands. The O3b satellite constellation will provide high-speed, low-latency backhaul services at speeds reaching into the gigabits per second.
The Good
This is the type of technology chess move that makes me sit back and truly laugh out loud. It bypasses inefficient, greedy or corrupt government bureaucracies and gives power to the local people. I’m absolutely thrilled with it and wish them the best of luck - hoping that they can execute on the deployment.
The Confusion…
The founder of O3b is a certain Greg Wyler. You know, the guy behind the big “wiring of Rwanda” initiative with his company Terracom. Well, his record hasn’t been stellar, and so I wonder why he is leading this whole initiative?
It might very well be that they’ve learned their lessons from Rwanda. I’d rather have a guy who has tried and failed and LEARNED from it, than some wide-eyed idealist. Let’s hope that’s the case here.
 
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8:39
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
There has been a lot of talk in the Kenyan tech backchannels over the upcoming Barcamp Africa. Kahenya has a posted the email thread from the Skunkworks email list into his blog for further reading - it’s worth reading for context alone.
The two biggest points of contention seem to be over the name “Barcamp Africa”, with the conference being held in the US, and the fact that Google has agreed to sponsor the facility for it to take place in.
On the Name
The first thing I’d say is, don’t get caught up in the nomenclature on this one. Barcamp Africa happening in Silicon Valley is being put on by a couple people who are from Africa, or have a vested interest in what happens here.
From what I understand, it’s really only about drawing attention to African projects and initiatives in the world’s largest tech mecca: Silicon Valley. Could one/should one be held in Africa? Of course, but at a local, level like we already see in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, etc. I’d also be interested in seeing one at a continental level, but so far haven’t seen anyone step up to take charge on that idea.
I know for a fact that Kaushal and Ellen specifically didn’t want to be the “owners” of Barcamp Africa as a name. From my conversations, they are hoping that other Barcamp Africa’s happen around the world (inside and outside of Africa). In fact, they wouldn’t even spend the $10 on registering the domain name, so I did that in their stead to make sure that no squatter would jump on it (it’s available to anyone who wants to use it).
On Google Sponsorship
As anyone who has put on a Barcamp knows, it does take having a couple sponsors to put on a free conference. They’ve been talking to almost every tech company in the Silicon Valley trying to get them to sponsor the event - by either providing facilities or money for food, etc. After a lot of work, Google finally came on board to sponsor the facility (and they’ve got one of the best facilities around), so it’s a big win.
Speaking of Google sponsorship of free tech events outside of the US, it should be noted that they happily sponsored our own Barcamp Nairobi in June, and showed up to participate in Barcamp Kampala in August. If anything, it should be the African tech companies who should be ashamed for not sponsoring their own local talent at these events.
On Africans in Africa Taking Part
I’ve added my two cents in with the Barcamp Africa team of creating some way for people from around the African continent to take part. One of those ideas would be to set up a live stream of what they’re doing, but that’s not truly interactive. What would be even better is for them to setup one of the rooms where people from Kenya (or elsewhere) could signup for a 20-30 minute spot to address everyone in the US. Then, when your slot came up you could give a Barcamp talk just like everyone else. It would require a certain amount of bandwidth of course, but might be just the type of thing to get everyone involved.
 
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6:33
From: White African
Read This Entry & More At White African
Most of June I spent in Kenya, much of that time talking to developers and getting ready for the next big Ushahidi push. During that time there was a new article about Ushahidi being one of the “Ten Startups to Watch” in the Technology Review, which was exciting for us to say the least!
July and August have been spent working hard on getting the application rebuilt, the site redesigned and creating partnerships with other organizations. September is about launching the NEW Ushahidi.
A New Website
Now we’re off and running with a new website design, live today, that shows how our goals and focus have changed since things blew up in Kenya. (get a new Ushahidi button for your site.)
Funding
I’m very happy to announce that we’ve secured more than the $25,000 prize money from NetSquared (which has allowed us to do so much already). We have also just secured a grant of $200,000 from Humanity United!
 Humanity United is an independent grantmaking organization committed to building a world where modern-day slavery and mass atrocities are no longer possible. They support efforts that empower affected communities and address the root causes of conflict and modern-day slavery to build lasting peace.
There is an obvious fit between Humanity United and Ushahidi, after all, we were founded on the same beliefs back in January in Kenya. Though we’re creating the Ushahidi engine as an open source project, our goal remains to see it used to better understand, give warning of, and recover from mass atrocities.
The Vision
Ushahidi is moving from being a one-time mashup covering the post-election violence in Kenya to something bigger. We are setting out to create an engine that will allow anyone to do what we did. A free and open source tool that will help in the crowdsourcing of information - with our personal focus on crisis and early warning information.
We see this tool being used in two ways:
- First, to crowdsource crisis information by creating an online space that allows “everyday” people all over the world to report what they see during a crisis situation, and whose reports are generally overlooked or under reported by most media and governments.
- Second, make that software engine free and available to the world, so that others can benefit from a tool that allows distributed data gathering and data visualizations.
We’re aiming to release an alpha version of it in just a few weeks for internal testing, and for alpha testing with pre-screened pilot organizations.
Volunteer Devs, Designers and Others
One of the reasons Ory and I were in Kenya was to talk to developers about helping with Ushahidi. We were overwhelmed with the amount of interest and the quality of the people who stepped up. So far we have a team working on mobile phones, a designers group, and a number of PHP experts. Go ahead and take a look at the development wiki as well.
If you’d like to play a part, get in touch and we’ll see where you can best fit in. You don’t have to be a developer or designer either.
[Credits: Richard “Ochie” Flores for the excellent design, Kwame Nyong’o for the beautiful illustrations, and Ivan Bernat for the spotless HTML/CSS markup.)
Press Release: Ushahidi Funding & New Website (PDF)
 
Read the complete article at White African
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