Founder of Afrinnovator.com

Website: http://afrinnovator.com

Twitter: @afrinnovator

We continue with Grace’s story of her successful use of the Internet and social media in running a successful SME Stories such as that of Grace Murugi and her Cakes.co.ke business not only inspire, but also shed a light on the opportunities available to African businesses if we embrace Internet and Mobile technology, be it in operations or in Marketing. “If Online Payment could be more embraced locally, my work would be so much easier” In early 2011, Grace integrated online payment into...Read Full Post

Africa is undergoing a wonderful renaissance, driven by Internet and Mobile Technology. In just 10 years we have leaped from a 0.4% internet penetration rate to 13.5% internet penetration rate, according to Internet World Stats. We have embraced mobile technology, making it a part of our day to day business, at times setting the pace in innovation such as is the case with Mobile Money. True, we have a long way to go. 90% of African businesses do not have online presence, and only 2% of Global online...Read Full Post

 The Missing Middle While capital has flowed rapidly to satisfy the needs of the largest and — thanks to the microfinance boom – the smallest African companies, SMEs have fallen into a “missing middle.” SMEs in the missing middle are starving for capital. They are too large for micro-finance institutions, too small for main-stream private equity and not serviced by commercial banks, which prefer to focus on high-value, low risk corporate clients. – From Open Capital Advisors, “The...Read Full Post

Back in 2011,  Erik Hersman, Ken Banks & Rudy De Waele curated a presentation dubbed “Mobile Trends 2020 Africa“, a collaborative outlook. Essentially they sought the views of different people across the continent who are players in one way or another in mobile on what they thought the future of mobile in Africa held and what it would be like in 2020. I was honoured to give my 5 thoughts on what I thought would trend in mobile within this period. One of my predictions was that:...Read Full Post

In talking about the efforts to promote technology and innovation in Africa, we tend to focus a lot of attention on private initiatives such as innovation hubs and the like. It is clear, however, that without a supportive, forward thinking government, it would be very difficult to move things forward. Ultimately a generally stable government creating the right environment for business and investment is critical for tech, innovation and startups to take off. More specifically though, it is imperative...Read Full Post

In a rapidly changing technology world, it’s not only important that one understands how to do your current job/technology well but also be exposed to new ones, particularly in open source and cloud computing and mobile development technologies that may not have originated from the enterprise segment or the 10 year old technology used by your bank. – Mbwana Alliy In a previous article looking at doing tech business in Africa, we found that Africa’s youthful population is where it’s...Read Full Post

Very recently Portland Communications released some data from research carried to find out about the usage of Twitter in Africa. The report was received quite well and received some notable attention across the web. Much of what has been written has looked mostly at just the implications of the research on primarily social media and it’s use and growth in Africa. But I’d like to take a different turn and perhaps use some of the insights from this research to shed light on the subject...Read Full Post

It is interesting that sometimes it’s not the most robust and well designed solutions that get picked up by consumers. Great design of course is something of great importance when designing a piece of software, an app or a website. And clients will gravitate to well designed (graphically, not in terms of user experience), well tested and robust services. But sometimes, it seems, it’s enough that something simply works! Africa is a bit of a late-comer to the internet. Since the .com boom...Read Full Post

Weza Tele is a visionary firm that leverages on technologies such as, USSD, Mobile Web, and SMS to provide order management, distribution, tracking, circulation and validation solutions. Weza Tele also offers reliable customer service, support and maintenance to its clients. Myorder Enterprise provides a tailored, deployed solution that automates order management, tracking and validation across the enterprise. At its center is a dashboard where distributors and customers, manage inventory, generate...Read Full Post

Originally from the Appfrica blog Appfrica is the organizer and facilitator of the second annual Apps4Africa competition which rewards African technologists for developing creative solutions to some of the continent’s most challenging issues. 2011 was the second year we’ve done Apps4Africa, the first year culminated with this congratulatory message from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton: Last year the theme of the competition was Climate Challenge, which means all the entrants...Read Full Post