About

My name is Erik Hersman and I grew up in Kenya and Sudan, went to the US for university, and now I live back in Kenya. I’m happily married and have 3 beautiful daughters that keep me on my toes. White African, is my personal blog where I write about high-tech mobile and web technology change in Africa.

Official Bio

Erik Hersman is an entrepreneur and technologist focused on advancing the use of technology in Africa. He is the CEO of BRCK which creates software and hardware solutions for connectivity in frontier markets.  In 2010 he founded the iHub, Nairobi’s innovation hub for the technology community, bringing together entrepreneurs, hackers, designers and the investment community. He is also a co-founder of Ushahidi, the free and open source software for crowdsourcing crisis information.

Erik is also a general partner in the Savannah Fund, and sits on the boards of Gearbox, Akirachix, the Kijabe Forest Trust, the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative (WPDI), and he was the founding board chair of AfriLabs. He is a TED Senior Fellow and PopTech Fellow

You can find him on Twitter at @WhiteAfrican, and on Instagram at White_African.

Other Miscellany

This personal blog is a place where I throw ideas out and hope that they will influence others in some small way. The African blogging community has been very welcoming and I’ve been particularly grateful to be a part of the Kenyan blogging family, which has a fantastic history and group of bloggers in it. I also started AfriGadget as a team blog a couple years ago, where we talk about low-tech ingenuity and microentrepreneurs in Africa (though I don’t get to do much on it anymore and JKE has taken over editor responsibilities).

Hash
I’ve been writing under the pseudonym “hash” for over a while now, and have no plans of changing that. I originally wrote under that name because I didn’t want people to know who I was. Then in 2006 I came to the realization that I don’t really care if people know who I am, but have continued using the name anyway.

You can also find me on:
Twitter @whiteafrican
Flickr
Vimeo
YouTube

[Image by friend and amazing photographer Jon Shuler]