Web Stuff – Page 37 – WhiteAfrican

Category: Web Stuff (page 37 of 45)

African Technology Powerhouses

April 3, 2006 / HASH / 8 Comments

There are three main areas of web technology innovation in Africa, three regions that define it. They are split geographically, have different focuses and are the recognized technology leaders in their region. All three contain a strong sense of identity and a continued drive to change the continent.

These three countries are Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. They represent the power nexus of Africas technological future. (note: other countries also show technological innovation, these ones just keep popping up more than the others)

Let’s take a look at them in closer detail. A few examples of what I see, which I’m sure many readers can augment with products, projects and businesses that I haven’t heard of.

Kenya

A 20 Gigabit underwater fibre optic cable will arrive in 2007 (EASsy)
Mobile for Good pilots and proves that Kenyans will pay for news and job information by SMS phones

Ghana

Chinery-Hesse of Soft Tribe in Ghana
Ashesi University, started by Patrick Awuah
eCare, creating a link between eCommerce and energy
The space-to-space phenomenon in Ghana

South Africa

25 Million mobile phone subscribers (the most on the continent)
Ubuntu, Linux-based open source alternative to Windows by Mark Shuttleworth
Jonga, a search engine for South Africa by Alistair Carruthers

Obviously, there are many more in each of these countries, and many other countries that also have a great deal of innovation (So, all you Nigerians don’t get too upset, I know you’re doing some big things there too).

It will be interesting to see the development of technology in each of these regions. South Africa has stronger ties to the West and a better infrastructure for development. Kenya has a great deal of innovative ideas coming out of it, and also seems to be the testing ground for many different projects. Ghana continually proves that despite a lack of infrastructure, that Africans can design and innovate around it through harnessing technology.

[Note: I’m already being set right by my Nigerian friends. 🙂 Please keep sending emailing, or commenting on what’s happening in your country and I’ll add you to the list. I’ll append the map later.]

Nigeria

The Solo project, computers made for Africa and made in Africa

technorati tags: african digerati, kenya, african, technology, ghana, south africa,

Vote for the African Technology Manifesto!

March 21, 2006 / HASH / 13 Comments

White African needs your help. Since so many people have taken an interest in my paper A Technology Idea for Africa, I decided to try and see what would happen if it was put on an even bigger platform. ChangeThis is just such a website:

ChangeThis is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread. We’re on a mission to spread important ideas and change minds. Read more…

As some of you know, I started off my web career in marketing. I figured since I’m being self-promotional here, that I might as well go all the way and create a full viral marketing push. I’ll need 300 votes to be allowed to publish to ChangeThis, so give me a hand and vote if you think others should have a chance to read it. Tell your friends too!

Here are some banner ads, with the corresponding code underneath it, to place them on your blog or in an email:

<a href="http://www.changethis.com/proposals/655"><img src="http://www.zungu.com/images/vote_for_the_africa_network.jpg" width="169" height="49" alt="Vote for the African Technology Manifesto!" title="Vote for the African Technology Manifesto!" /></a>

<a href="http://www.changethis.com/proposals/655"><img src="http://www.zungu.com/images/vote_now_banner.jpg" width="400" height="60" alt="Vote for the African Technology Manifesto!" title="Vote for the African Technology Manifesto!" /></a>

<a href="http://www.changethis.com/proposals/655"><img src="http://www.zungu.com/images/vote_now_md.jpg" width="169" height="216" alt="Vote for the African Technology Manifesto!" title="Vote for the African Technology Manifesto!" /></a>

Thanks!

< / end shameless self-promotion >

NOTE: The African user-submitted news aggregator site (Muti) that I frequent just had a hilarious and somewhat misleading title for my manifesto submission at ChangeThis titled, “Digital freedom fighter about to rescue Africa from itself.” I’m not sure what to say about it really – it sounds so dramatic…

technorati tags: african digerati, mobile, african, changethis

Joga: A Football Social Network Site

March 20, 2006 / HASH / 5 Comments

Nike and Google have quietly launched Joga, which is an invitation-only website for soccer fans. Users can upload videos and photo albums, and create a “Starting 11” team. The term Joga stands for “joga bonito,” portuguese for “play beautiful.”

It’s interesting to see Google trying to get into the whole social networking game. They’ve tried (and pretty much failed) with Orkut, so it looks like they’re trying a different approach by teaming up with big marketing companies.

If anyone has an invite, I’d love to get it.

(via Micropersuasion)

Technology vs Tribal Languages in Africa

March 15, 2006 / HASH / 4 Comments

Is it really technology vs tribal languages, or is it technology supporting tribal languages? There have been some really good comments and emails to me about my technology idea for Africa that concern language. I grew up within a family of linguists, language translators, so this is one of the areas that I find the most challenging, promising and interesting.

One commentor noted that though people are all from one country, they still would rather listen to the radio or read in their “emotional” language – usually their tribal language or diatect. So, the question becomes: how can we leverage technology to both unite people together as a large community while still allowing them to fragment into familiar groups?

Danah Boyd at ETech spoke to this in her G/Localization session. Her point was that though the web allows you to get global, most people still use it to connect with people that they are familiar grouping with. So, a perfect example is my blog. I am global with it, but I choose to be a part of the Kenyan community online, because that’s what I’m comfortable with.

If that’s the case both offline and online, then the technology used should allow for local variations of language. In fact, it should expressly support and encourage the use of local dialects to be used at the local and district-levels of the application. this should directly affect all three areas of my Africa Network idea: news, community and search (though search would be the hardest to implement).

However, when a news item or community gets larger than local or district size, it should take on the larger language group that it is a part of. For example, a hot news item in a tribal dialect would be elevated to district-level, but in order for it to show up on the regional or country-level news, it should be in the national language (usually English, French, or Arabic in Africa).

ETech: Space Issues

March 9, 2006 / HASH / 2 Comments

Ever heard the saying, “Trying to fit 10 lbs of crap in a 5 lbs bag?”

That’s ETech today. For some reason the hotel was double booked with another conference and we got booted to the 3rd floor. Unfortunately for everyone here, it’s the same number of people but with 1/2 the space. Each session seems to be standing-room only.

Still, there have been some very good sessions, including Carsten Bormann (German) and Steve Yen (TrimPath/NumSum) talking about disconnected-from-the-Web applications (more on this later). Bradley Horowitz from Yahoo! had a really interesting talk about where Yahoo! is headed with social search and mashup applications. Chris Messina just showed some of the new stuff you’re able to do in Flock, which I’ve been testing for while, and it keeps looking better and better.

Where Africa and Technology Collide!

Category: Web Stuff (page 37 of 45)