The story of M-PESA that most of us know usually goes as follows.  The two big players, Vodafone and Safaricom, got together to develop and launch M-PESA. They spent months testing, adjusting, and re-testing the system before it went live. The result—an immensely popular service offering that has radically changed both the financial and telecommunications sectors in developing countries and spawned a lucrative industry for mobile money.

This is not exactly how the story went, at least not in the early days. Vodafone, led by a powerful duo of Nick Hughes and Susie Lonie, was heavily involved from the beginning. While Nick was selling the service idea to the executive staff at Vodafone, Susie was getting her hands dirty, so to speak, and leading the pilot in Kenya. continue reading »

M-masomo, a collaboration between Nation Media Group and ICT Kenya has just been launched is being billed as “your smart tutor in your hand, bringing you a new way to revise for your exams from your phone”

Update: download url for the application comes from Wandflower Education, which points to adaptation or licensing of the same and not in-house dev…not that it matters. continue reading »

A three day international celebration of stories, ideas, writing and contemporary culture through books, storytelling, skits, music, live discussion forums, demonstrations, workshops, open-mike sessions, debates, exhibitions, live performances and competitions.

The festival is modelled on The Hay Festival held in the UK every May in which up to 100,000 people attend – ranging from presidents to authors to fans. The Hay Festival organises several festivals in Europe and South America.  The Storymoja Hay Festival will be an international festival held in Nairobi, organised as a partnership between Storymoja and The Hay Festival.

The event will be held in a temporary ‘tented city’ at the Impala grounds and will include a main stage for live performances and competitions, and twelve themed tents in which multiple one and a half hour-hour events will be held concurrently. The range of 100 or so events are intended to generate public debate around critical issues facing East Africa including Climate Change,  Diversity,  Microfinance, Literature, Entrepreneurship, Gender, IT,  Self-Development, Music, Film and Education. They will be headlined by star guests in each particular field.  Music (our headline act is Seckou Keita) and various competitions will ensure a mixed crowd in celebratory ambiance, and attract extensive, positive local and international media coverage. continue reading »

courtesy of WhiteAfrican

This week Erik Hersman launched a little side project: JOBS.whiteafrican.com It is as a place to connect freelancers and small teams with gigs and project work in the African tech sphere.

Erik has been getting a number of emails lately asking him to connect people in the US, Europe or large organizations in Africa with local (as in “in-Africa”) talent. They’re usually interested in finding a knowledgeable designer, a good blogger or editor, and has had quite a few people ask him to put them in touch with programmers. continue reading »

We want to start highlighting people making a difference in the african tech circle…african or not. To put up their profiles, where possible have interviews with them to see what their vision for africa is, and what they are doing to get us there. From ceo’s who are willing to experiment with technology, government officials adopting tech for increased efficiency at their ministry, developers doing great work, leaders of interesting initiative…the full hog.

Now to track them down and get their stories…done during the 20% hours we will need your help…any guys doing great work that you know of or would like to know more about…just drop us a note.

Over the last year, Symbiotic Media has been working on EasyHisa with Standard Investment Bank to implement the our robust messaging technology and gateway to realize the vast benefits that EasyHisa has to offer including diaspora access to their accounts via sms from their country of residence.

It is great to finally have EasyHisa out. Standard Investment Bank have come out strongly as being forward thinking and early adopters….but most importantly I commend their support of  local talent and competence…they did not import technology from outside our borders but chose to engage local qualified companies and individuals  such as ourselves to make the product a success.

Time and again at different forums I advocate for firms to engage local developers to develop the industry as well as set Kenya apart in the African region for software development.

More importantly, the current extensions under development will see the stock trading business overhauled yet again with real-time bank account access and plugin to all major available money transfer services to allow investors take full advantage of real- time information and trading.

Here is an excerpt from SIB chairman’s speech, more pictures and video to come… continue reading »

While the ICT space has developed a head of steam in some parts of Africa, a “maker philosophy” is yet to occur. [It is imperative that the educated do not perceive technology as what appears before them on a computer screen]. The aim of a Maker Faire-like event is to create a space on the continent where Afrigadget-type innovations, inventions and initiatives can be sought, identified, brought to life, supported, amplified, propagated, etc.

Maker Faire Africa asks the question, “What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?”

Maker Faire Africa will engage on-the-ground breakthrough organizations like Ashesi University and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to sharpen focus on locally-generated, bottom-up prototypes of technologies that solve immediate challenges to development. Specifically, Maker Faire Africa will take an approach that will achieve three principal aims: continue reading »