Infographic: Mobile Web Africa 2012 Visualised including Statistics, Quotes and Insights

This past week, we covered Mobile Web Africa 2012 and we started coverage with 5 reasons to attend as well as live coverage that you can relive Day 1 and 2 here on Afrinnovator.

I got the chance to be … Read More

From Mobile Money to Mobile Finance: Effects of Mobile Money on household, community and national economics

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 … Read More

MFarm Makes Unreasonable Institute Finals: How You Can Help

Kenyan mobile tech startup MFarm, launched at the first IPO48 contest in Nairobi in October 2010 by the all-girl tech team of Jamila, Sue and Linda. The 48 hour “idea-to-business” contest pit them against more than a dozen other contenders … Read More

Why You Must Never Forget About the Humble Feature Phone in Africa

Jonathan Hoehler is Chief Technical Officer and Business Analyst at Starfish Mobile International based out of Johannesburg, South Africa. With over 8 years in the mobile telecoms space in Africa, he’s been an evangelist frequently seen on the conference circuit … Read More

WezaTele's MyOrder Powers Mobile Ordering

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.

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12 predictions for Africa Tech Scene in 2012

It has been a banner year for the Africa technology scene as the world begins to turn to the continent – the Economist Africa rising cover story article was for many, a big validation in the future opportunities as well … Read More

From Open Data to Open Action

“The thing to remember is, Human beings do not socialize in a completely random way. There’s a tangible reason for us being together, that ties us together. Again, that reason is called the Social Object.” Hugh MacLeod

The Open Government Partnership declaration commits members to support civic participation in addition to making data on government activities open to the public.  In Africa, Kenya made history as the first country in sub-Sahara Africa to implement an open data initiative giving citizens unprecedented access to valuable datasets. 40 countries, 5 of them African countries, have since signed up to the OGP and I believe they are at different levels of following through on the spirit of the declaration.

A sign at Fort Jesus in Mombasa, Kenya.

The value of open data to citizens is unquestionable. This year, Kenyan software developers have launched mobile apps that leverage open data to provide services to citizens. They have mostly been in the healthcare and agriculture verticals but services in education and entertainment have begun to emerge. These are very encouraging signals coming out of a country that only a decade or two ago made it almost impossible for citizens to know what the government was doing. These apps may not have been possible without access to the huge amount of data the government holds and is now making available to software developers.

However, we shouldn’t think of only mobile and the web when we talk about leveraging open data. “To turn raw data into ‘edible’ content that citizens can consume and make decisions with” should be the overarching objective for anyone looking to improve citizen participation in governance through open data. This edible bits of content should be easily consumed on the now ubiquitous mobile devices in Africa as well as on old fashioned news print and billboards. Jyri Engestrom refers to social networks as “object-centered sociality” meaning people connect because they have a reason to and that reason is usually an object (in the loose sense of the word). Moving from mere intentions to action may start with little more than an object (physical or otherwise).

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Pivot East – Regional Mobile Apps. Developer Conference to be Held in June 2012

The second edition of East Africa’s regional mobile apps. developer competition and conference will be held on June 5th and 6th in Nairobi. The progression of events dubbed Pivot East will begin in January 2012 with a call for entries … Read More

An East African Mobile Entertainment Overview: Music Discovery, Nano-economics and Mobile Money

Recently, All Amber invited Afrinnovator down to cover and participate in Mobile Entertainment Africa. Below is a summary of that first talk, which painted a snapshot of some trends and key learnings from the East African mobile entertainment scene.

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Visa gets serious: Let the Africa Mobile Payment Wars Begin

A student at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania was asked by a former lead engineer at paypal during a mentoring session almost a year ago “Why are you not using Amazon web services for cloud computing?”, he … Read More