Pls the mtn reception at eastern region is very bad especially Akyem-Hemang area near Osino but the people there ,i can say, most of them use mtn. Pls do something about it for us. Thank u.
Pls the mtn reception at eastern region is very bad especially Akyem-Hemang area near Osino but the people there ,i can say, most of them use mtn. Pls do something about it for us. Thank u.
From a book by Andrew Mugoya
----------------------------------------
Andrew Mugoya: ‘African app developers have to forge a niche in the global marketplace’
By Bertil van Vugt on November 2, 2011
Although the n ... read full comment
From a book by Andrew Mugoya
----------------------------------------
Andrew Mugoya: ‘African app developers have to forge a niche in the global marketplace’
By Bertil van Vugt on November 2, 2011
Although the newly published E-book ‘African Apps in a Global Marketplace’ by Andrew Mugoya is aimed at software developers, it contains useful advice for every starting entrepreneur around the globe. VC4Africa spoke to Andrew about his book and the upcoming African app industry.
Why did you write this book?
“I wrote the book after noticing several trends on our website Afriapps.com. I thought I’d share my ideas, observations, tips and gripes about the industry in general, but also offer developers a guide in going from app to business. It’s about being competitive.
I’m a partner at Asilia – a Creative Agency based in London, UK and Nairobi, Kenya. I previously worked as a developer and project manager at several financial institutions in London. Afriapps is an Asilia in-house initiative to showcase great African apps. The website was launched in November 2010, so this month is our one-year anniversary.”
What are your main recommendations in the book?
“The book is full of useful recommendations for both the industry in Africa and individual developers. The main take-away for developers would be to focus on the user and the user experience. Design and the user experience are what app development is mainly about. Not fancy technology or features. Due to open source software and standardized frameworks, the technology is rarely unique. What is unique is the developer’s and designer’s creativity in using technology to make the user experience simple, enjoyable and functional.
Tekonline.org 10 years ago
African apps boost business growth
By Louise Greenwood
BBC Africa Business Report, Nairobi
Africa is the world's fastest growing telecoms market and mobile phones have transformed the lives of Africans everywhere.
Now ... read full comment
African apps boost business growth
By Louise Greenwood
BBC Africa Business Report, Nairobi
Africa is the world's fastest growing telecoms market and mobile phones have transformed the lives of Africans everywhere.
Now a host of new mobile phone applications, developed by software designers across the continent, are promising to boost development and business growth.
On the tranquil, leafy campus of Nairobi University, IT graduate and software designer Kariuki Gathitu opens his laptop and proudly displays the details of his most ambitious project to date.
"M-Payer" is a mobile phone application enabling businesses to make and receive real-time money transfers.
Twenty-seven-year-old Mr Gathitu, the founder of Zege Technologies, is one of a new breed of African entrepreneurs, using telecoms and IT technology to tackle some of Africa's most intractable business problems.
He told Africa Business Report, "[M-Payer] has come into the mobile money scene to solve a huge challenge, and this challenge is basically the interoperability, aggregation and integration of mobile money."
The apps backup website shows how subscribers can pay bills, receive cash and transfer funds with just a few taps on a mobile, and cash will clear in minutes, not hours or days.
"M-Payer" claims it can end the "cheque-in-post" culture that has ruined many small African firms, often operating on tiny margins, with little or no access to bank credit.
Health check
On the other side of the continent in Ghana, customers queuing at a pharmacy in central Accra wait for their medication.
The World Health Organization has estimated that up to 30% of medicines sold in Africa are counterfeit, and the trade in fake drugs is putting millions of lives at risk every year. Getting hold of safe reliable treatments has always been a hit-and-miss affair.
"M-Pedigree" is the mobile phone app that's been developed to tackle the problem. Customers buying any medicine are asked to scratch off a verification strip on the packaging which reveals a numeric code. A quick text to M-Pedigree will confirm with the manufacturer if the goods are genuine or not.
Selorm Branttie of M-Pedigree hopes the mobile app will help curb the illegal trade in fake medicines.
"The drug industry in Ghana is worth about $750m a year," he says. "Assuming about 10% of those are counterfeit drugs, we are talking about $75m a year going into the wrong hands, being invested into the wrong industries."
The wider hope is that mobile phone applications could dramatically change the prospects of some of Africa's poorest and most downtrodden workers.
Crop of apps
"M-Farm" is another Kenyan initiative that aims to give rural farmers a fairer deal when selling their produce.
A non-subscription based mobile app, it gives real-time market prices for crops and matches up farmers with buyers, cutting out costly brokers and middle-men. Some Kenyan farmers report that their profits have risen by half since subscribing to M-Farm.
With its aspiration to become a middle-income country by 2030, the government want to transform Kenya into an information-rich society and nurturing IT talent and tech business start-ups is central to these aims.
Just opened this year, with the help of World Bank funding, is "M:Lab", East Africa's new business incubator purely devoted to firms developing mobile phone applications.
John Kileti, manager of M:Lab East Africa, says Kenya is now becoming a world hub for mobile telecom development, precisely because of its position as a low-income, relatively underdeveloped economy.
"[The mobile] is much cheaper to get, plus it can be used outside where there is no infrastructure like power. Essentially the mobile is going to be huge for us in terms of innovation, much more than the PC was a few years ago."
Tekonline.org 10 years ago
Cow farming program wins Apps 4 Africa competition
An application which tracks the fertility of cows has won the first ever Apps 4 Africa competition to find new talent as smartphones become increasingly popular in Africa. ... read full comment
Cow farming program wins Apps 4 Africa competition
An application which tracks the fertility of cows has won the first ever Apps 4 Africa competition to find new talent as smartphones become increasingly popular in Africa.
Offering a prize fund of $5,000, the competition asked developers in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania to come up with a mobile application that is widely accessible, easy to use and simple.
The competition, funded by the United States government, hoped to unite the brightest African developers with people who could benefit most from innovate mobile technology.
Launched back in July in Nairobi, the competition attracted 20 entrants - each offering a unique approach to improving life in the region.
Moo-bile innovation
The winner, announced this week, was iCow - an application that helps cow farmers maximise breeding potential by tracking the fertility cycle of their animals.
"It's a voice-based application, meaning they don't have to have a special smart-phone," explained Charles Kithika, the app's creator.
"[They] just need an ordinary phone and then dial in a toll-free number."
Mr Kithika said the rise in popularity of mobile apps in Africa is partly down to M-PESA, software which facilitates the transfer of money.
Runner-up in the competition was Kleptocracy Fighters, an app which helps users combat instances of government corruption.
Features include the ability to upload audio, video and text to the web quickly - acting as evidence of bribery or other wrong-doing.
All the competition entrants were praised by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said that the apps "solved real problems".
"The ideas generated from this competition will help doctors monitor the growth and nutrition of young patients, will help expand trade by translating prices and quantities into local languages, will hold public officials accountable by reporting election violations and tracking public expenditures.
"I want to thank you for lending your innovative spirit and creativity to the enterprise of building a better future for your communities."
Posted: Friday, June 28, 2013
Author PhotoBy Chukwuemeka Afigbo, Outreach Program Manager, Sub-Saharan Africa
Developers play a crucial role in making the Internet relevant ... read full comment
More innovation from African developers
Posted: Friday, June 28, 2013
Author PhotoBy Chukwuemeka Afigbo, Outreach Program Manager, Sub-Saharan Africa
Developers play a crucial role in making the Internet relevant for Africans. This is why fostering a vibrant African developer ecosystem is very important to Google. Developers and tech entrepreneurs from across the continent joined thousands of their peers from all over the world to explore the latest tech innovations at Google I/O 2013 in San Francisco. Several of them were members of the Google Developer Groups in countries such as Algeria, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Kenya, Republic of Congo, Togo and Uganda.
Hassan Nsubuga, Lead for GDG Mbale,Uganda with Google SVP Vic Gundotra at Google I/O
Luckily, participation was not limited to those who could make it to San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Developers back home were also able to get in on the action with more than 67 I/O Extended parties hosted by Google Developer Groups and Google Student Ambassadors across the continent where talks were streamed live to an excited audience.
Away from the excitement of I/O ‘13, it has been a busy year for many African developers and tech startups. We added six new apps to our African case studies page:
Maji Dashboards and Virtual Kenya from Upande: websites that utilize the power of Google’s Geo tools to make information about Kenya readily accessible for better decision making, development planning, and education.
ReadyCash from Parkway Projects: a home grown mobile money service from Nigeria with an app that leverages the power of the Android platform to integrate a unique QR code based payment system.
Matatu is an Android version of a local card game from Uganda.
ASiM, developed by Olivine Technology, is a real time inventory management solution with an Android client and App Engine backend.
Asa: an Android tablet app by Nigeria’s Genii Games that brings the magic of African folktales to children of all ages.
Asa (African Folktales)
Flashback!
Remember AfriNolly – winner of 2011 Android developer competition? The app by Fans Connect Online now has over 2 million downloads across several platforms, with a new Android version support for 11 languages launched in May 2013. The Fans Connect Online team also ran a contest for African short films and created a radio show focused on the African film industry.
Tekonline.org 10 years ago
Innovation in Africa
Upwardly mobile
Kenya’s technology start-up scene is about to take off
That’s another pedestrian dodged
VISITORS to Kenya’s capital are often horrified by the homicidal minibuses called mata ... read full comment
Innovation in Africa
Upwardly mobile
Kenya’s technology start-up scene is about to take off
That’s another pedestrian dodged
VISITORS to Kenya’s capital are often horrified by the homicidal minibuses called matatu. They swerve around potholes, seldom signal and use their iffy brakes only at the last second. They are therefore an ideal subject for a video game, which is why Planet Rackus, a Nairobi start-up, released “Ma3Racer” last year. Each player uses his mobile phone to steer a matatu down the street. The (unrealistic) goal is to avoid pedestrians. Within a month, a quarter of a million people in 169 countries had downloaded the game.
Planet Rackus is one of hundreds of start-ups that have sprung up in Nairobi over the past couple of years. They are part of a quiet tech boom in Kenya, a country better known for coffee and safaris. In 2002 Kenya’s exports of technology-related services were a piffling $16m. By 2010 that had exploded to $360m. To its boosters, Nairobi is “Silicon Savannah”.
However, it differs from its silicon sisters in one crucial regard. From the start, its tech firms have designed their products for mobile phones rather than computers. Kenya is still a poor country; few of its people own laptops. But there are 74 mobile phones for every 100 Kenyans, well above the African average of 65. And nearly 99% of internet subscriptions in Kenya are on mobile phones.
Investors are piling in. Nailab, a working space for technology professionals, opened on Nairobi’s Ngong Road in 2011. Down the street is 88mph, a seed fund and incubator that launched earlier this year. Innovation 4 Africa, a similar outfit, shares the space. Two others, Savannah Fund and GrowthHub, started operations in May. Kenya’s biggest bank, Equity Bank, wants a piece of the action. It will also open an “innovation centre” by the end of the year. Most of these funds focus on mobile technology. GSMA, a global association of mobile operators, is about to open an Africa office, also on Ngong Road.
A shilling for your thoughts
Incubators provide start-ups with advice and cheap spaces to work, in exchange for a stake. In Nairobi they have plenty of talent to choose from. In June 25 teams of young men and women pitched their ideas to a panel of investors at Pivot East, an annual contest for start-ups seeking funds. Some 200 teams applied for a spot.
Three factors helped Nairobi to become an African tech hub. The first is a supportive government. In 2005, when Bitange Ndemo was appointed as permanent secretary to the ministry of information and communications technology (ICT), Kenya was a technological backwater. Access to the internet was available only through satellite connections and was wallet-sappingly expensive. In 2009 Mr Ndemo brought the first of four undersea internet cables to the Kenyan coast. Prices plummeted and bandwidth exploded. Just under 12m of the country’s roughly 40m people now use the internet, a number that has trebled since 2009.
Second, Kenya has undergone a revolution since 2007, when M-PESA, a mobile-payments system operated by Safaricom, a phone company, was launched (see chart). Many start-ups at Pivot East use it as a base for their business. One team streamlined the payment of school fees through the service by helping institutions and parents keep track of upcoming and late deposits. Another offered an electronic version of Kenya’s popular informal savings groups. M-PESA has also inspired others. In May Google launched Beba, a pre-paid card for commuters using Nairobi’s local buses. Insiders say that this is a test run for a much larger cashless-payment system.
Third, since 2010 Nairobi has had a place, called the iHub, for local techies to get together and exchange ideas. The iHub has expanded to include a consulting arm, a research department and an incubation space called m:lab, which supports start-ups developing mobile applications. Erik Hersman, who founded the iHub, is also a partner in Savannah Fund.
Investors are not the only people putting money into Nairobi’s start-ups. The city is brimming with aid agencies, development funds and foreign NGOs eager to shell out shillings. For many young entrepreneurs, seemingly free money beats having to give up a stake in their companies to venture capitalists. But cash from grants comes with strings attached, often in the form of abstract “goals”.
At Pivot East, Paul Kukubo, the boss of Kenya’s ICT board, a government body that champions high tech, beseeched the audience to take more risks. “If we continue to make the sector grant-dependent, we will stop entrepreneurs,” he said. Incubators hope that start-ups will see surrendering equity as a fair price for the contacts and training they provide.
Will Nairobi then compete with other emerging tech hubs such as Bangalore and Tel Aviv? Not at once, says Joe Mucheru, head of Google in Kenya. Nairobi has exported two notable innovations: M-PESA (which began life in London) and Ushahidi, a non-profit platform for crowdsourcing information during disasters. But most Kenyan tech firms are coming up with solutions to local problems. A team at Pivot East has built a service to help poultry farmers, who waste hours sitting around watching their chickens, keep track of their brood with text-message alerts. “We need to solve the nitty-gritty first and then we can invent new things,” says Mr Mucheru.
Yet this may ultimately be the key to Kenya’s success. “We have so many problems that can also be opportunities,” says Mr Ndemo. M-Farm, a service that gives farmers access to market prices for the cost of a text message and allows them to group together to buy and sell products, has won several supporters and awards. It is the sort of thing Kenya could export to other poor countries. “You can create mobile apps from anywhere in the world,” says Chris Locke of GSMA, citing the success of Angry Birds, a Finnish phenomenon. Angry matatu drivers could be next.
From the print edition: Business
GHFUO, BE SERIOUS NOT PRIDEFUL! 10 years ago
TECH INNOVATIONS IN NAIJA
1. NAIJA ONLINE TAXI BOOKING SERVICE BY MOBILE..TAXIPARK
2.LAGOS GETS ITS MONOPOLY GAME
3.MH INTERNET LAUNCHES PRICE CHECK COMPARISONS SITE
4.ONLINE TICKET COMPANIES LIKE: WAKANOW, TIKETMOBILE, E ... read full comment
TECH INNOVATIONS IN NAIJA
1. NAIJA ONLINE TAXI BOOKING SERVICE BY MOBILE..TAXIPARK
2.LAGOS GETS ITS MONOPOLY GAME
3.MH INTERNET LAUNCHES PRICE CHECK COMPARISONS SITE
4.ONLINE TICKET COMPANIES LIKE: WAKANOW, TIKETMOBILE, EVENTSRAIL, AFRICTICKETS.
5.Efiko.com.ng is a mobile-only self-assessment platform designed to enhance the secondary school education experience in Nigeria.
GH, WAT ARE WE DOING? ARE WE GOING TO SIT THERE FOR THESE LAZY, 419 NAIJA PPL TO DISGRACE US?
I THINK NOT, I THINK NOT!
In Ghana, gold, bauxite, manganese, cocoa, among others are also exported without much value addition.
Leaders in the communities told Ghanaian journalists about the support they receive from the government of Tanzania, which ensures that resources benefited the locals and how
out of their own ingenuity, make business sense of the opportunity.
Pls the mtn reception at eastern region is very bad especially Akyem-Hemang area near Osino but the people there ,i can say, most of them use mtn. Pls do something about it for us. Thank u.
afritorial.com/top-10-mobile-phone-apps-in-africa/
From a book by Andrew Mugoya
----------------------------------------
Andrew Mugoya: ‘African app developers have to forge a niche in the global marketplace’
By Bertil van Vugt on November 2, 2011
Although the n ...
read full comment
African apps boost business growth
By Louise Greenwood
BBC Africa Business Report, Nairobi
Africa is the world's fastest growing telecoms market and mobile phones have transformed the lives of Africans everywhere.
Now ...
read full comment
Cow farming program wins Apps 4 Africa competition
An application which tracks the fertility of cows has won the first ever Apps 4 Africa competition to find new talent as smartphones become increasingly popular in Africa. ...
read full comment
thenextweb.com/africa/2012/02/24/watch-this-space-african-apps-gain-global-recognition/
More innovation from African developers
Posted: Friday, June 28, 2013
Author PhotoBy Chukwuemeka Afigbo, Outreach Program Manager, Sub-Saharan Africa
Developers play a crucial role in making the Internet relevant ...
read full comment
Innovation in Africa
Upwardly mobile
Kenya’s technology start-up scene is about to take off
That’s another pedestrian dodged
VISITORS to Kenya’s capital are often horrified by the homicidal minibuses called mata ...
read full comment
TECH INNOVATIONS IN NAIJA
1. NAIJA ONLINE TAXI BOOKING SERVICE BY MOBILE..TAXIPARK
2.LAGOS GETS ITS MONOPOLY GAME
3.MH INTERNET LAUNCHES PRICE CHECK COMPARISONS SITE
4.ONLINE TICKET COMPANIES LIKE: WAKANOW, TIKETMOBILE, E ...
read full comment