Facebook went public on the Nasdaq exchange Friday, raising $16 billion by selling 421.2 million shares. This IPO, the third-largest in US history, values Facebook at $104.2 billion. Not too shabby for a company founded only 8 years ago. In terms of anticipation, demand and volume of shares traded, Facebook was the hottest IPO to [...]
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Fostering the growth of the VC4Africa community is central to the daily work that Ben and I do. In our travels and interactions with entrepreneurs in all corners of the continent, we’re also acutely aware of the need for early stage venture finance. Increasingly, new funds, niche firms and angels are testing the waters of [...]
The compilation album “Music for Saharan Cellphones” is an incredible collection of tracks scraped from the memory cards of mobile phones in Ivory Coast, Mali, Algeria and Niger. In much of West Africa, cellphones are used as all-purpose multimedia devices. In lieu of PCs and high speed internet, knockoff mobile handsets store portable music collections, [...]
May 14th marked the first official Google Android Developer Challenge Sub-Saharan Africa event in Cameroon. The week prior, a Google delegation arrived in Douala to plan next month’s inaugural G-Cameroon event, discuss the latest happenings at ActivSpaces and rub elbows with local entrepreneurs at the first VC4Africa Cameroon meetup in Douala. With a short timeframe [...]
Miniature versions of vehicles are as popular with kids in Cameroon as anywhere else. Adult craftsmen across the continent use materials such as wire, beads and recycled cans to create toy bicycles, trucks and airplanes—many of which transcend the level of children’s toys and are nothing short of art objects. Indeed, some of these creations [...]
Twitter and MTN Cameroon have announced a partnership that enables MTN subscribers in Cameroon to send and receive tweets from their mobile phones using SMS. Users access the service by texting “START” to 8711 on MTN’s network. Standard messaging rates apply for sending SMS updates, but tweets may be received at no cost. The announcement [...]
Last month we soft launched ActivSpaces, a new open collaboration space, innovation hub and startup incubator in Cameroon. The comparison to Limbe Labs, an entity I co-founded last year, should immediately be apparent. It’s essentially the same model transplanted to a new location with some refinements and a fresh new brand. Why the change? Limbe [...]
On the outskirts of Maroua, the capital of the Extreme North of Cameroon, is a place quite unlike any other in the country. Here a community of les forgerons—blacksmiths, or metalworkers—practice their craft in the relative cool of a tree grove. Several dozen men with specialized skills are gathered here for a single purpose: to [...]
I wrapped up a month of travel last week, including a visit to Washington DC to attend Africa Gathering, a conference highlighting innovation and entrepreneurship focused on the continent, to share my experience of operating a startup incubator in Cameroon. Many thanks to the organizers, Mariéme Jamme and Ed Scotcher, who were kind enough [...]
Last week I attended the much anticipated iHub Nairobi launch, as well as participated in a pre-launch gathering of African tech hub pioneers (more on the latter in a follow-up post). A number of bloggers in Kenya and elsewhere have already covered the iHub event much better than I could have. The event [...]
I had an opportunity to stop by the 2009 South West Regional Agro-Pastoral Show, an annual exhibition for local farmers and craftsmen, here in Limbe this afternoon. The event was held on a community field ringed by exhibition booths overflowing with every imaginable vegetable, fruit and live animal cultivated and raised in the southwest region [...]
It’s not every day one hears about cyber-activism and government website hacking in Cameroon, but that’s precisely what happened this week. Ingenieris, a Cameroonian tech pundit, received an email from a hacker using the name “The Killer” who claimed to have hacked the website of the University of Yaounde. Translated from the original story [...]
The Extreme North of Cameroon is aptly named for a variety of reasons, apart from being the remote northern terminus of the country. It is, in many respects, a land of extremes with a vastly different character from the Grand South. Situated at the edge of Sahelian Africa, the climate is typically hot [...]
We’re counting down the final hours to Cameroon’s first BarCamp! The event is sold out with more than 200 attendees registered. If you’re unable to attend in person, don’t worry. We’ll live blog the presentations here and on the official blog with CoverItLive, so you won’t miss a minute of this watershed IT event. [...]
With a population of around one million inhabitants, Kibera is widely known as Africa’s largest slum and counted among the biggest on earth. It’s also one of the most studied slums in Africa, given its close proximity to the center of a modern city, Nairobi, and the headquarters of UN-HABITAT, the United Nations’ agency for [...]
The first complete, free and open map project of Kibera, Nairobi using OpenStreetMap, off-the-shelf GPS units & digitized satellite imagery.
Global Voices on ICTs and the spread of indigenous knowledge with a related link in comments to Maneno’s Community Content portal.
The political economy of plastic bag litter in Africa. Proposed solutions to the problem include green [...]
On a decidedly non-techie bent, I thought I’d amplify an outstanding guest post on one of my favorite cycling blogs, Bikejuju. I haven’t blogged about bikes in quite awhile. This post from a Nigerian cyclist named Tolu provided me with the inspiration I needed. He’s built up a sweet fixed gear bike (which I’m sure [...]
Most people are familiar with the concept behind the 80/20 rule or Pareto Principle. It generally states that 20% of a population consumes 80% of the resources. It’s attributed to a 19th century Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, who realized that 80% of the wealth in a given population was concentrated in the hands [...]
From NASA’s Earth Observatory website:
Season after season, year after year, people set fire to African landscapes to create and maintain farmland and grazing areas. People use fire to keep less desirable plants from invading crop or rangeland, to drive grazing animals away from areas more desirable for farming, to remove crop stubble and return nutrients [...]
The 9,800 km Glo-1 fiber optic submarine cable made its landing over the weekend at Alfa Beach in Lagos, Nigeria. The cable originates in England and connects Nigeria to the UK, Spain, Portugal and the rest of West Africa with 16 branching units to cities along its route. The cable is expected to drive down [...]
Cameroon’s first BarCamp, a technology “unconference” centered around open, participatory workshops, has just announced a date and venue. The event will take place on Saturday, November 7th at the College Libermann in Douala. Mark your calendars!
The organizers, which include Cameroonian technology professionals both at home and abroad, are encouraging others to get involved [...]
OpenStreetMap, the free and open collaborative map of the world, just got a major boost with some very capable routing directions across Africa. This is demonstrated with driving directions from Cape Town to Ethiopia using CloudMade, a service that provides access to tools and APIs for building mobile- and web-based applications using OpenStreetMap data. [...]
Throughout the week I make note of interesting news pieces, blog posts, online debates and trending topics with a focus on technology and Africa. This is an experiment in sharing some of these items, filtered by yours truly, in a blog post. Wherever possible I’ll try to include appropriate links to the people [...]
During a recent visit to OpenTech ’09 in London, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Quentin Stafford-Fraser who together with self-described übergeek Dr. Michael Dales form the engineering might behind the not-for-profit, Cambridge-based Ndiyo (the Swahili word for “yes”).
We had a lengthy chat with Quentin and Michael following their presentation, where I learned that [...]
There’s been a lot of buzz in African tech circles lately about Naijaborn.com, a web community for Nigerian residents and diasporans, which entered its public beta on June 1st. The self-funded startup is a partnership between Francis Omokhape Oghuma of Qubestreet (Nigeria and South Africa) and Mambe Nanje Churchill of AfroVisioN Group (Cameroon). Churchill [...]
BarCamp Swaziland is one day “unconference” to provide a platform for technology practitioners in Swaziland to share and learn in an open environment. The event—the first of its kind for the country—is scheduled for Saturday, June 27th in Mbabane, Swaziland. The organizers hope to attract young people to the gathering, with a particular focus [...]
It’s no secret that mobile phones are firmly entrenched as the predominant mode of telephony in almost every African nation. In a continent of one billion people, the number of African mobile subscribers today is estimated to be around 300 million, representing a penetration rate of roughly 30%, according to the Africa Telecom News [...]
Essayist, poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson had this to say on the subject of beauty:
We ascribe beauty to that which is simple;
which has no superfluous parts;
which exactly answers its end;
which stands related to all things;
which is the mean of many extremes.
- The Conduct of Life, Chapter VIII, Beauty (via TinyApps blog)
Doug McIlroy, one of [...]
I’ve been mulling over this topic in my head for quite awhile. Yesterday, Dibussi provided the inspiration I needed when he tweeted a story about the impact a community radio station has had on a remote village in Cameroon’s North West province. London-based social enterprise RadioActive worked with the local council to build [...]
Yesterday the Mount Cameroon Race of Hope was held here in Buea, an event braved by runners every February since 1973. This was the third race I’ve witnessed since living in Cameroon. The mountain race is an incredible display of human will and endurance that attracts participants and spectators from all over the [...]
Recently, Kiva announced the official launch of the Kiva API and a new developer website, build.kiva.org. This is a smart move for them, as freely opening up their micro-lending database both increases data interoperability with their partners and fosters the creation of useful and compelling third party add-ons. This extends the reach of [...]
We’ve been hard at work for the past couple of months laying the groundwork for an ambitious new free and open source software (FOSS) initiative. I alluded to this in an earlier post, Gearing Up for an Offline Application.
Around October of last year Roland Musi, the director of the Link-Up Development Group, mentioned his [...]
Sometimes, it’s the small successes that make everything worthwhile. This isn’t a story about a Gates Foundation grant, a fabulous new software project, African tech startup, or a microfinance program designed to serve the needs of thousands. Rather, it’s the story of a single young Cameroonian who through his own grit, determination, talent, [...]
I’m posting this in the offhand chance that someone, perhaps in Kenya, might have crossed paths with Colin MacNeill in his travels, or know someone who has. Colin has been bicycle touring since September 2005 and spent much of this time cycling Africa. Here’s a map of the route he’s taken through the [...]
Google Alerts is a great service that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. This is probably due to it being overshadowed by Reader and Gmail among Google’s expansive suite of web applications. If you’re not using them already, here’s 5 Great Ways to Use Google Alerts to get you started.
This question [...]
There’s been a veritable bevy of blog posts and rebuttals lately debating what went wrong with the OLPC and what sort of device should follow in its wake. Like a lot of other technology devotees, I’ve watched from the start the meteoric rise and much-publicized decline of the project, which once promised so [...]
This is the result of an experiment to put a topo map of Mt. Cameroon on my iPod nano. I’m hardwired with a fascination for maps of all kinds (my post Crowdsource Mapping Cameroon is but one example) so you might say this was inevitable. The 4GB video nano replaced my trusty 60GB [...]
We’re in the early stages of building a web application with a big requirement: the ability to work seamlessly in an offline and online mode. The Internet and cloud computing are great, but you can’t always be plugged into them. Connectivity is a big limitation in much of Sub-Saharan Africa where our [...]
This began as a post specifically about TiddlyWiki, but seeing as many bloggers do retrospective “year in review” posts around this time, I thought I’d chip in my own. I may yet reprise the TiddlyWiki how-to I started around the holidays, simply because it’s become such an essential personal productivity tool.
The term “tool” is [...]
Reddit.com, social bookmarking site par excellence, is putting a creative spin on online donations during the holiday season. Rather than asking for monetary donations, they’re encouraging people to donate their time instead. Interested volunteers provide information about their skills which is entered into their aptly named “Database of Awesome.” Volunteers are then [...]
A new meme is making the rounds in the African francophone blogopshere and is now gradually spreading through the anglophone zone. It was begun by Théo Kouamouo, a blogger based in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire). Théo asked bloggers to reflect on why they blog about Africa and tagged a few friends to get the [...]
This post was largely inspired by the views of Ken Banks, the man behind FrontlineSMS and Kiwanja. I only recently discovered him via Twitter, and feel that I’ve met a kindred spirit. His essay on anthropology’s “technology-driven Renaissance” is something everyone engaged in development should read, whether or not your interest lies in [...]
This post was inspired by Steve Jackson’s “Journey to Work” Flickr video that he posted last week. He encouraged others to participate, so this is my contribution.
The place I call home, Buea, is a scenic mountain town sandwiched between Mt. Cameroon and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s unique for many reasons, not the least of [...]
This is a follow-up photo post to my previous entry How to Light An African Village. I’m enthusiastic about the innovations my housemates from Green Step observed in their recent foray into the village, so I wanted to highlight some of their discoveries. They completed a trip from Dschang to Bafoussam, Bamenda, Kumbo [...]
My housemates Connie and Johannes of Greenstep are getting involved in some very cool project work these days. After spending most days behind a computer, I find myself a bit envious of their trips to the remote village of M’muock (just getting there is an off-road adventure in itself) and of the time Johannes [...]
For the second interview of this series, I had a chat with Mambe Nanje Churchill, the young CEO of the AfroVisioN group here in Buea. In the short time AfroVisioN has been in business, they’ve put together an impressive portfolio that includes an outsourced project for a Swiss company.
Besides his strong grasp of current [...]
When one thinks of ICT (information and communications technology) leadership in Africa, it’s often the established hubs in Kenya, Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria that spring to mind. There’s no denying that a healthy mix of talent, ideas, infrastructure, market opportunity and favorable business climates exist in these regions. A casual stroll around [...]
I spent the night of November 4th like most Americans abroad—and indeed much of the world with cable TV, I suspect—watching the election results trickle in until dawn. We were a mix of Americans, Cameroonians and a token Canadian. Just after the networks projected Obama to be the president-elect, I began receiving congratulatory [...]
On the eve of this historic presidential election, I thought I’d post an entry about the lengths to which an expat goes to get his ballot counted—and of the people who proved to be indispensable along the way.
Awhile back I requested an absentee ballot online from the King County, Washington elections office. I wasn’t [...]
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