Last couple of years I am trying to learn more about the tech-scene in Africa. Asian press tends to ignore the development in this vast and fast changing continent and we see very few events that facilitate Asia-Africa information exchange.
I feel we need to pay more attention to the stuff happening in Africa as there are ample learning opportunities and scope for collaboration. For example, mobile payment is a reality in Kenya while most of South East Asia we are still struggling to find a good mobile payment mechanism.
Interesting projects in Africa
Africa wide blog aggregation – Afrigator | http://afrigator.com/
Want to know what is the most popular online content in Africa at the moment,? Go to Afrigator.com. This was one of the first social media aggregator for content published in Africa and still remains the most popular.
Afrigator also provides a javascript badge that you can embed in your blog. You can then monitor visitor stats and link love via rich graphs.
In 2008 a South African publishing firm acquired a stake in Afrigator.
Here is an early review of Afrigator.
http://www.bandwidthblog.com/2007/11/28/afrigator-beta-launched/Ushahidi :: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information (FOSS) | http://www.ushahidi.com/
Ushahidi (testimony in Swahili) started as a citizen reporting tool where Kenyans could inform each other of the violence after the post-election chaos in early 2008. Crisis information is collected via SMS, MMS, email or web and mapped in real time. The developers of the platform are based in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Ghana, Canada, the Netherlands and the US.
Appfrica Labs is an incubator active in Uganda. Appfrica labs enables student, young entrepreneurs and developers to build produces by supporting with tech infrastructure and mentoring. I am very interested in this model as for a while I have been looking at ideas for seeding local tech projects in South East Asia.
A good example of a locally relevant project is OhmSMS developed by Appfrica Labs mobile developer Dennis Senyonjo. Kampala, not unlike many cities in the developing world suffers from irregular power supply. Getting instant information on when you have power at your home or business is important as you can get back and finish chores that need power supply.
This is Dennis Senyonjo, the developer of OhmSMS (image from Appfrica.net). Dennis developed that Symbian app that could be installed on an inexpensive mobile phone. The mobile phone is plugged to its charger and connected to the mains. The app will monitor the charging and alert another phone on the current power situation if the power goes off or comes back on.
See Appfrica for more information on OhmSMS:
http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/1815Also check out Appfrica lab's other project that tries to bring internet to communities that do not have access to the internet.
http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/56
MXit (pronounced "mix it") is a mobile application that provides connection to IM services such as MSN, ICW and Google Talk. It also provides chat rooms and other social networking features on a mobile phone. As of earlier this year MXit had 11 million subscribers and most of them are based in South Africa.
The application runs over mobile data network and sending a message over MXit costs less than SMS. MXit has its own currency "Moola" and moolas can be used to purchase music tracks and other services.
MXit's wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MXitUpcoming Events
Accra will be hosting the first ever Maker Faire in Africa. (Maker Faire are events where people gather to show technology and arts projects and share ideas). According to their website, Maker Faire Africa is a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention, and will take place August 14-16 at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Ghana's capital, Accra. This event is free to the general public
Barcamps were also held in Madagascar, Ghana, Nigeria and Swaziland in the last one year.
Where to learn more about African tech scene
The White African blog lists 30 Great African Tech Blogs
http://whiteafrican.com/2009/02/09/30-great-african-tech-blogs/I have added some more to this list and created a Netvibes page at
http://www.netvibes.com/preetamrai#Africa_TechJon Gossier from Appfrica Labs runs a podcast featuring tech pioneers in the region.
http://appfrica.net/blog/appfricast