Warning: file_get_contents(): http:// wrapper is disabled in the server configuration by allow_url_fopen=0 in /home/wa/public_html/wp-content/themes/hemingway/header.php on line 15

Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.localroot.net/store/read.php?url=www.whiteafrican.com): failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/wa/public_html/wp-content/themes/hemingway/header.php on line 15

WhiteAfrican

Where Africa and Technology Collide!

Author: HASH (page 4 of 106)

2013 Kenya Tech Community Survey Results

It’s interesting to see where the Kenyan tech community went to school, what years we graduated, where we work and what age we first started using computers regularly. As I did in 2010, here are the survey results for 2013, with 627 responses.

The live survey link.

[Kenya Tech Community 2013 Survey Base Excel File]

What age did you first start using a computer regularly?

2013 survey - Age Kenyan tech community started to use computers regularly

2013 survey – Age Kenyan tech community started to use computers regularly

You can see that we tend to get on computers when we are older, at 17+ (that’s 42% of us). There’s a definite need to get more computers into classroom settings, or homes, at a younger age.

Another view of the same age chart:
2013-Kenyan-age-on-computers-pie-chart

  • 32 People got onto computers at 8 years or younger
  • 51 People got onto computers at 9-10 years old
  • 62 People got onto computers at 11-12 years old
  • 89 People got onto computers at 13-14 years old
  • 128 People got onto computers at 15-16 years old
  • 264 People got onto computers at 17 years or older

Years that the Kenyan tech community graduated from secondary school

Year Kenyan techies graduated from secondary school

Year Kenyan techies graduated from secondary school

Which schools did we graduate from?

The schools were across the spectrum. I don’t have the locations of each one, but it would be interesting for someone with the ability to pinpoint them, to do a heatmap of the country based on the school graduates from each location.

1980 – 1
1981 – 0
1982 – 0
1983 – 0
1984 – 1
1985 – 0
1986 – 0
1987 – 6
1988 – 2
1989 – 1
1990 – 4
1991 – 6
1992 – 6
1993 – 7
1994 – 11
1995 – 8
1996 – 17
1997 – 14
1998 – 18
1999 – 21
2000 – 27
2001 – 31
2002 – 34
2003 – 44
2004 – 54
2005 – 46
2006 – 66
2007 – 56
2008 – 67
2009 – 42
2010 – 23
2011 – 8
2012 – 4
2013 – 1

Here are the top 6 girls schools (I had a hard time knowing which were strictly girls schools):

  1. 9 Moi Girls Nairobi
  2. 6 Kianda Girls
  3. 4 Pangani Grils HS
  4. 4 St. George’s Girls HS
  5. 3 Alliance Girls HS
  6. 3 Limuru Girls

Here are the top 12 boys schools (I think some might be mixed, like Kabarak):

  1. 29 Starehe Boys
  2. 19 Alliance HS
  3. 17 Nairobi School
  4. 16 Mang’u HS
  5. 14 Lenana
  6. 12 Strathmore
  7. 10 Moi Forces Academy
  8. 10 Moi HS Kabarak
  9. 9 Friends School Kamusinga
  10. 9 Highway Secondary School
  11. 9 Kagumo HS
  12. 9 Upper Hill HS

Where do we work?

The short answer, is all over the Kenyan tech sector, plus many other areas of government, NGOs and private companies. By far and away, most of the people on the list were either students or freelancer/self-employed. Some of the companies that stood out were; Kenya Power, Cellulant, FrontlineSMS, MobiDev, Safaricom, IBM, Kopo Kopo, Ushahidi, Stripe and Google.

Mobile and Internet Numbers for East Africa (2013 edition)

iHub Research continues to put out great research for clients. They also take time to put together the numbers for everyone else as far as what’s going on in our part of Africa.

Mobile & Internet Stats for East Africa

The most recent stats for East Africa’s mobile and internet usage have been put into an new infographic.

Mobile and Internet use in East Africa, an infographic by iHub Research

Mobile and Internet use in East Africa, an infographic by iHub Research

Here is a dump of the data used for this infographic:

Kenya Mobile Statistics
(Population: 44,037,656 July 2013 estimate)
30,429,351 mobile subscribers
16,236,583 (41%) Internet users
3.6 billion outgoing & incoming SMS
251,567 fixed lines
78% teledensity

Tanzania Mobile Statistics
(Population: 48,261,942 July 2013 estimate)
27,395,650 mobile subscribers
5,308,814(11%) Internet users
4.3 billion outgoing & incoming SMS
176,367 fixed lines
61% teledensity
7,662,504,921 voice traffic

Uganda Mobile Statistics
(Population: 34,758,809 July 2013 estimate)
18,300,000 mobile subscribers
4,800,000 (3.2%) Internet users
520 million outgoing & incoming SMS
464,849 fixed lines
52% teledensity
215,110,452 voice traffic

Rwanda Mobile Statistics
(Population: 12,012,589 July 2013 estimate)
6,039,615 mobile subscribers
903,964 Internet users
26 million outgoing & incoming SMS
42,323 fixed lines
57% teledensity
1,470,290,068 voice traffic

Burundi Mobile Statistics
(Population: 10,888,321 July 2013 estimate)
2,995,000 mobile subscribers
157,800 Internet users
80,039 fixed lines
2% teledensity
157,800 voice traffic

Sources:
http://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2013/03/19/u-com-burundi-adds-mobile-banking-to-drive-customer-growth/
http://www.independent.co.ug/business/business-news/7748-airtel-warid-merger-shakes-market
http://www.independent.co.ug/news/news-analysis/7332-telecoms-gear-for-turf-wars-in-2013
http://www.independent.co.ug/business/business-news/7748-airtel-warid-merger-shakes-market
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/22/ozabs-econet-burundi-subscribers-idAFJOE76L0EY20110722
http://www.cio.co.ke/news/top-stories/Africell-buys-Tigo-to-expand-in-Sierra-Leone
http://dlca.logcluster.org/BDI/logistics-services/index.html
CIA World Factbook

2011/2012 Stats and Infographic

Here’s the 2011/2012 numbers for all of the countries in East Africa, plus some bonus numbers around mobile money at that time.

2011 and 2012 East Africa mobile and internet statistics infographic by iHub Research

2011 and 2012 East Africa mobile and internet statistics infographic by iHub Research

See the old ones from 2011 in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. You can also see the some 2012 numbers on the iHub that they put together as well.

How I Instagram


(This is my daughter at Lake Naivasha at sunrise)

Enough people have asked me about how I Instagram that I thought it might be worth creating a post on it. I take a lot of pictures as I travel as it gives me something to do along the way, so there are a lot of pictures in my stream from all over the world. I’m a hobbyist, with no pretensions of being a pro.

You can find me at @White_African on Instagram.

I’m starting a tag game with this, now hitting @Truthslinger with #HowIInstagram to see how he does it.

Hardware

iPhone only (I’m on an iPhone 5 these days). I’d guess that 80% of my shots are taken with just the camera and no extra hardware. However, sometimes I mod it with the following items.

These are the hardware mods that I use for iPhone Instagramming: Olloclip + Lifeproof + Joby

These are the hardware mods that I use for iPhone Instagramming: Olloclip + Lifeproof + Joby

An Olloclip lens ($70): which gives me a wide-angle, fisheye and macro-lens all in a small form that I can fit in my pocket. It’s fantastic. Here are 3 examples of it.

Olloclip macro

Olloclip fisheye

Olloclip wide

Underwater Lifeproof case: I don’t have this on all the time, only when I’m specifically going out for underwater or am in a boat taking crazy angle shots. Another great add-on that let’s you take some cool shots.

Lifefproof underwater

Joby GripTight Microstand (Tripod) ($30): I hardly ever use it, but when taking some macro pictures it comes in very useful as I just can’t hold my hand steady enough to get the shot.

Something I’d like to get is a good telephoto lens for the iPhone.

Software

Camera+ ($1.99): This is my most basic quick-edit app, since I can do multiple shots quickly and it does a good job with clarity and quick filters. I tend to tone down most of the filter choices.

Snapseed (free): When I really want to edit an image, a special one that needs a lot of extra attention to detail, I use Snapseed. If you’re an Android user, they have it for you as well.

ProHDR ($1.99): I like color, so to really make colors pop I’ll use an ProHDR to do it properly. A lot of good in-app controls. My favorite picture from last year was taken with it:


(A tree in a park in Camden, Maine during the Fall)

Over ($1.99): If you like to put text over your images, there is no better iPhone app for it than Over. Many awards and also made by my friend @AaronMarshall.

Other apps that I use either randomly or rarely:

  • NoIMGdata ($0.99): wipe all the sensitive EXIF data from the picture for privacy
  • SlowShutter ($0.99): a great app for light trails or low light
  • Reduce ($1.99): for when the image size needs to be smaller

10 of my favorite shots


(Boats near the harbor in Camden, Maine)


(Making sun tea in Diani, Kenya coast)


(A quiet pool and shady trees in rural England)


(At Yale University, USA)


(Mark and Tosh relaxing on Diani Beach, Kenya)


(The iHub team at Diani Beach, Kenya)


(Satellite, the only way to get internet at a ranch near Tsavo, Kenya)


(Emmanuel doing a summersault off a dhow near Lamu, Kenya)


(Olloclip macro lens on a burning candle)


(Jumpshot at Strathmore high school, Kenya)

The Kenya365 Project

In September 2012, we started a #Kenya365 project for anyone in Kenya to take a picture a day and tag it with that hashtag. The amazing @Truthslinger runs it, and we have weekly themes that he sets up. Take a look to see some great shots from around Kenya, and join in. The only rule is that you can only tag one picture per day with #Kenya365 on it.

Designing a Kenya Shilling Symbol

I make no bones about my admiration for the team at Ark Africa, who I think are possibly the best design house in East Africa. They tend to take on projects of their own, just to think through the problems and come up with something that’s truly useful. Other examples of this are when the building of the new Thika road was going on and there were no signs, they created the signage for it. They’ve also taken the Kenya coat of arms and re-touched them as a screen-friendly version for smaller devices and very small prints.

ARK | Kenya Shilling Symbol

ARK | Kenya Shilling Symbol

In possibly my favorite Ark project to date, they’ve decided to design a Kenya Shilling symbol. We have this problem where we don’t have a simple symbol (such as $, £, €, ¥, etc) to use, nor do we have a clear way of writing it. We use “Kes” or “Ksh” both interchangeably.

This is one idea that I hope gets traction with the right people. The government, if it had thought to do this, would have paid a company a lot of money to get to this same point. I hope they take the gift given to them here.

Report: Accelerating Entrepreneurship in Africa

A couple months back Omidyar Network released a report (with an exhaustively long title, like all reports tend to have), “Accelerating Entrepreneurship in Africa: Understanding Africa’s Challenges to Creating Opportunity-driven Entrepreneurship.“. If you’re interested in this space at all, in even a minor way, it’s well worth a read.

Get the full 2.5Mb download of the report here: (ON Africa Report).

The gaps they see are familiar to many. We all know that part of the problem is the education system isn’t setup for problem solving, it’s about rote learning.

“Students are not afforded clear paths for cultivating competencies related to practical thinking and creative problem-solving—skills needed to successfully build and manage a business.”

African entrepreneurs aren’t helped by government policies and regulations, in fact they’re better served by doing it informally first, as seen in the responses on this to the question:

African entrepreneurs prefer starting off informally

African entrepreneurs prefer starting off informally

Another great quote about the cultural pressure not to do a startup:

“Parents and guardians pressure their wards into studying more professional courses rather than entrepreneurial or creative ones, sometimes even tagging them as ‘crazy’ when students make the decision to work in start-up companies or develop their own businesses.”

There’s also a gap in where companies find seed funding:
Africa-entrepreneurs-funding

The survey focused on four areas of the entrepreneurial environment:

  • Entrepreneurship assets: Financing, skills and talent, and infrastructure
  • Business support: Government programs and incubation.
  • Policy accelerators: Legislation and administrative burdens.
  • Motivations and mindset: Legitimacy, attitudes, and culture.

There are a lot of recommendations for each of these four areas that the report covers, enough for anyone running a tech hub, incubator, university and especially the government to think through.

Africa’s Cowboy Capitalists

I’ve been following Ian Cox via Twitter for some time now. I had no idea there was a video done by Vice about his hustling up in South Sudan and then following him on a treck where he takes 11 vehicles from South Africa to South Sudan (5,000km) in 30 days. You can find Ian’s vehicle business at Lorry Boys

It comes in 3 parts (links to 1, 2 and 3):

Part 1/3

Part 2/3

Part 3/3

It’s a great story, well documented, which I highly suggest watching.

The Problem with Hardware in Africa

Recently I wrote about the making of the BRCK here in Nairobi, and I alluded to some of the issues around doing hardware in Africa.

“Making things is hard. It’s harder in Africa. I can’t overnight an order of processors, boards or 3d printing filament here. There aren’t an over abundance of local fabrication facilities or tools, and the milling machine you find might be in disrepair and take you two days to calibrate. We’ve got our work cut out to create the right spaces for prototyping and small-scale fabrication on the continent.”

I just had another experience that underscores the difficulties.

FedEx called me with the news that a package we were waiting for had arrived. The true value of the components was listed on the package at $230. These were new plastic cases for the BRCK, as well as a couple modem and router components. The Kenya Revenue Authority decided that it actually should be valued at $300, and then charged 100% duty. To clear the package, we have to pay $300 (26,000 Ksh).

Kenya Revenue Authority

Before I go any further, I’ll state that I think it’s imperative that you build hardware like the BRCK, or Kahenya‘s new Able Wireless device, where it will be used. You need to build it close to the ground, where the working conditions, and the real pain of the problem is part of the product team’s life. For both Kahenya and the BRCK team, that means here in Kenya.

It’s hard to get the components that you need. Kahenya and I did backflips trying to getting 5 Raspberry Pi’s and cases ordered and delivered to Kenya. Similarly, we have issues with anything we need for the BRCK. The ripple effects on your business for this delay in time can be a big issue, it carries a lot of friction. If you want an Arduino kit or simpler components that you can’t purchase in Kenya, then your two options are; a) someone is coming from that country and can bring them in for you in their luggage, or b) you’re willing to pay a lot of money for FedEx or DHL to ship it in, then pay even more on duty.

This is the very earliest prototype of the BRCK. It's made up of components that aren't all found easily in Kenya.

This is the very earliest prototype of the BRCK. It’s made up of components that aren’t all found easily in Kenya.

So, not only is it hard to get the parts you need, the government has set up its regulation in a way that discourages local prototyping and even local manufacturing. The revenue authorities would rather make quick money off of a component import than more money later off of a manufacturing industry. I’d rather set up an assembly factory here in Kenya than one in another country, but that isn’t possible if component import isn’t changed.

ICT Ministers of Africa should note that in this rapidly changing world of tech, that the regulatory system needs to keep pace. If it doesn’t, it can produce a tech ecosystem that strangles innovation at the expense of short-term tax and duty.

If Kenya wants to pretend it can get to Vision 2030 without some changes in regulation for local companies, there will be some surprises coming.

Reports on m:lab and Umati

This week two reports have come out of the iHub community.

m:lab East Africa after 2 years

The study which was conducted between April and May 2013 focused on 3 key activity areas at the m:lab namely:

  • Mobile entrepreneurship training
  • Pivot East regional pitching competition
  • The incubation program

The highlights are found on the iHub blog for now, the full report to be downloadable as soon as it is formatted.

Umati: monitoring dangerous speech in Kenya

The Umati project sought to identify and understand the use of dangerous speech in the Kenyan online space in the run-up to the Kenya general elections. Apart from monitoring online content in English, a unique aspect of the Umati project was its focus on locally spoken vernacular language; online blogs, groups, pages and forums in Kikuyu, Luhya, Kalenjin, Luo, Kiswahili, Sheng/Slang and Somali were monitored.

umati-dangerous-speech-kenya2

Download the full Umati report (PDF)

O3b Satellite Internet (Finally) Launches

5 years ago I wrote about the news that Google had invested, along with others, in this new internet connectivity via medium-orbit satellites for the parts of the world that were hard to reach with terrestrial cable or even mobile phone towers, called O3b Networks.

Last week O3b finally launched.

A Russian Soyuz-STB rocket launched from Kourou in French Guiana today, 25th June 2013 at 19:27 UTC.

The rocket carried the first four satellites of the O3b Constellation. O3b will provide internet access for hard to reach parts of the world. 8 more O3b satellites will launch in a further two launches later this year and then in 2014.

Who are the first users?
First is Telecom Cook Islands, who will receive the first commercial signals across the network this summer and then Maju Nusa, soon to roll out a state of the art 3G backhaul network in Malaysia built on O3b’s low latency capacity.

The plans originally were to have these over Africa as well, let’s see if that happens.

Arrogance or Laziness

Last year for Pivot East, we flew in one of the top trainers in presentation design in the world from Duarte Design to spend two days with the 25 companies who would go on stage. The first day was a general training for all hands. The second day was one-on-one sessions. Only half decided they needed to do the personal session.

IBM decided to open up its new research arm in Kenya, these are well paying internships for university students to understudy with some of the world’s top researchers. 100+ students applied, 20 were shortlisted for interviews. 11 showed up for their interview.

These types of responses by members of the tech community point towards either arrogance or laziness.

Why?

Older posts Newer posts

© 2024 WhiteAfrican

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑

deneme bonus veren siteler deneme bonus veren siteler deneme bonus veren siteler