Comments on: Re-framing Brand Africa (Tech)

By: PeaceNicole (Nicole Hunter)

PeaceNicole (Nicole Hunter) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:43:53 +0000

Reading “Reframing Brand-Africa (Tech)” by whiteafrican on his blog: http://whiteafrican.com/2008/10/06/re-framing-brand-africa-tech/

By: PeaceNicole (Nicole Hunter)

PeaceNicole (Nicole Hunter) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:43:21 +0000

Reading “Reframing Brand-Africa (Tech) by whiteafrican on his blog: http://whiteafrican.com/2008/10/06/re-framing-brand-africa-tech/

By: Thomas Bjelkeman-Pettersson

Thomas Bjelkeman-Pettersson — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:57:06 +0000

Completely agree. I would be very interested in suggestions out how a small open source services team engages with African developers. We are looking to extend our platform to mobile devices and we think that Africa is the place to make it work. Talk to us! – Thomas, akvo.org

By: Eebrah

Eebrah — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:04:00 +0000

Great post man!
Think that it is time us africans started thinking up appropriate tech for ourselves instead of just apeing western tech.
We don’t have the broadband penetration that they do nor the years of using the net, but we need this tech, we do not have the luxury of choice.
More mobile net, more community based projects and less dependance on goverments to do it for us

By: Tech advances rev up in Africa | Worldfocus

Tech advances rev up in Africa | Worldfocus — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:43:39 +0000

[…] “White African” blog discussesÂ why African technology matters, including why Africa is a great place to test technology and gain a competitive edge in world […]

By: Chuck Floyd

Chuck Floyd — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:08:29 +0000

Thanks for highlighting the powerful competitive and revenue generation advantage of proving technologies in Africa.

By: Charl van Niekerk

Charl van Niekerk — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:25:42 +0000

Regarding Fring – I believe that is actually an Israeli startup. I originally thought that was form South Africa too but I think I got mixed up; we have a local Fring blogger Simon Botes that happens to live not to far from me but I don’t believe it is a local startup; rather look at Yeigo and mxit instead.

By: Test your software in Africa « The Manticore blog

Test your software in Africa « The Manticore blog — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:58:45 +0000

[…] your software in Africa Erik Hersman makes an interesting comment about branding Africa for software development: there is a real competitive advantage to developing and testing software in Africa. After all, if […]

By: Neil Blakey-Milner

Neil Blakey-Milner — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:06:02 +0000

Calling Ubuntu a product of South Africa is a bit inaccurate. Sure, there’s a South African at the lead of it, but not doing so from SA and it has had very few South Africans involved, and I’d be surprised if even 1% of Ubuntu Dapper (let alone Hardy) was done by South Africans.

There’s almost no mention of South Africa’s connection to Fring around – nothing on their web site, nothing on their Wikipedia page. Any good pointers on exactly who does what with Fring in South Africa?

By: John Fereira

John Fereira — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:49:34 +0000

The article about Qik brought to mind a device that I was shown while at a workshop in Zambia last year. It was developed by a woman named Revi Sterling that used to work at Microsoft many years.

She had found that the rural African women farmers were having a difficult time having a voice about the specific issues they were encountering and that the “solution” was to provide them with cell phones. However, it turned out that in many cases soon after they received them, their husbands took them and sold them (probably on ebay).

So the device that Ms. Sterling developed addressed the issue by going low tech. It’s essentially a plain looking box with a button and microphone. Pressing the button they can record up to 30 seconds of audio with is stored on a mini-SD card. The device also has a wireless networking adapter that uses a Mesh network to store and forward the message to the next closest device to a community radio station for broadcast. It apparently is very tolerant to non-persistent networks.