In his article “Why does being in Africa make you untrustworthy?“, Erik Hersman points out to the fact that Africans are generally suspects by default to the eyes of global corporations, which often put the continent off their radar.

Africa could be a continent of contrasts, but with lots of potentiality too. If only the world stopped making easy generalizations and looked closer to realize that.

One of the key factors for any business is to assess and be real about the context and the market in which operates. Thus, more accurate solutions can be provided to address specific needs, what improves the chance of success. If the context is problematic, that means there are needs to be fulfilled, and therefore that could be seen as an opportunity.

An example of this could be Hersman’s own enterprise, Ushahidi, a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008, and which now it has become a platform with global reach.

Ushahidi is a world-class technology service, but owes its roots to providing a solution to the very African need of transparency, which turns out to be a global issue.
The organization’s technology is open source, and it is often used by Internet writer Clay Shirky as an example of a successful crowdsourcing movement.

Other entrepreneurs and businesses are also working to provide services tied up to specific regional socio-cultural and economic facts, as were seen at Tech4Africa 2010. Services like PesaPal (a mobile payments company in Nairobi, Kenya) or mPedigree (allows consumers to verify with a free text message if their medicines are safe), are proving to be on the right track when addressing local needs via the most used and available technology in their target markets.

Many other startup services in Africa are choosing to use SMS as their trading platform, among other things, due to the scarce Internet connectivity and the broader use of the cell phone in many areas of the continent. And companies are focusing on that too, such is the case of Zain Nigeria, which is offering its customers access to Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo via SMS.

Nevertheless, whether focused on local, regional or global needs, African technology startups and companies must build their products based on the highest standards, and for that it’s important to keep in touch with the world’s latest developments and practices, if the continent wants to get into the world’s radar and export its innovative products or play globally.

All in all, one of the ways to bootstrap Africa to the spotlight might be what the aforementioned African organizations are already doing; which is, as Erik Hersman put it in his article: “to come up with our own business solutions that work here first, and then interact with other global systems.”

Do you agree this could be a solution? Should Africans see the problems or the opportunities?

Photo courtesy of @whiteafrican via Flickr/Creative Commons

“Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” ~ African Proverb

That proverb has been used to sum up the continent’s state (or fate) for a long time. And what’s become more apparent is that in some cases, you need to point out which Africa you are referring to, South Africa or the rest of Africa. Given that we’re now seeing the kind of innovative web & technology startups coming from Nigeria and Kenya, the Tech4Africa conference put a lot into perspective.

South Africa has always been one of the main doors into the continent. A leading economy no doubt with a vibrant entrepreneurial space with the likes of Naspers showing how powerful an emerging market this is. However, even as the crown jewel of the continent, with we’re beginning to see a balance play out with the South, East & West shifting as each develops not on a linear path, one after the other, but each on its own tangent, converging and diverging with time.

Take Kenya for instance, who recently trumped South Africa in broadband thanks to services like Wananchi Online & Cisco’s Zuku which brings fiber-to-the-home and an uncapped service of 1 MBps as well as 100 television channels. Crisis mapping and visualisation platform Ushahidi was the centre of attention at Tech4Africa, from cofounder Erik Hersman sharing their missteps, challenges and shortfalls in “failing spectacularly.” Even to mentions from Clay Shirky at Tech4Africa and his most recent TED Talk where he shares how it began, and how it fits in with his thoughts on collaboration and cognitive surplus. Or in West Africa, where Bright Simons and mPedigree are changing the pharmaceutical landscape by allowing consumers to verify via SMS the authenticity and safety of their medicines.

Leila Janah, keynote speaker at T4A, spoke about her non-profit Samasource, who’ve created a network of 800 women, youth and refugees across the world in developing countries and empowering them with digital work and resources to make better livelihoods. Her keynote showed the scale, reach and impact of Samasource’s efforts as well as their plans and challenges. It’s certainly clear that East and West Africa are learning from South Africa and now more than ever, the continent’s developing three pillars to build on.

Any pan African approach will present very unique challenges in comparison with what works in South Africa and Tech4Africa’s ability to share between tried and tested practice in the Southern part of Africa, with input from The East and West and an international perspective is what differentiated it for me.

Whether it was debating approaches for the mobile marketing arena shared or the insightful tips and tricks behind the proposed redesign of Payfine.co.za or Andy Budd’s entire session at that. The value in creating simple, relevant user experiences may inadvertently not be at the top of many priority lists across the continent but from what the principles behind it are, what they unlock can be the difference between success and failure. We can expect that with time, these user experience and interaction principles will adapt and be tailored to fit the African context in new ways.

The inspiration and vision to shift perceptions about Africa and those in Africans about the possibilities for great things when it comes to technology are what struck me about Gareth and his remarkable team. Gareth Knight, the man who returned to South Africa bearing the Tech4Africa vision has been the one brave enough to take the first step. And if one African proverb proves true then as Gareth leads this generation to plant the seeds, we’ll wait to how the next generation of Africans use the shade.

It was certainly an honour to witness this beginning.

Mark Kaigwa

http://ukwelii.wordpress.com

@mkaigwa

News from the conference room: this is a series of blog posts in which blogging experts briefly review key Tech4Africa 2010 talks and panels from Day 1 and 2.

Day 1

It’s not often in SA that you get to hear a group of developers chew the fat. Well, you get it all the time. But not these developers. Tech4Africa 2010 offered an “Intimate Q&A” panel with Andy Budd (Clear Left), Dustin Diaz (Twitter, previously Google/Gmail), Joe Stump (SimplyGeo, previously Digg), John Resig (Mozilla Foundation (jQuery), Jonathan Snook (Yahoo!). These are guys that are at the coalface of the biggest, most successful Web development projects in the world.

It was a lively, and very funny discussion. First up were some general words of wisdom from Joe Stump, developer extraordinaire (see separate post on his presentation on scaling Web environments to global audience). He’s from the Valley… and he says his greatest asset there is his network. Many great developers, many great companies, many great brains, all sharing information and supporting others. Being commercial competitors doesn’t mean technology people shouldn’t help each other. Developers in Africa should build their networks, build their connections, and don’t be shy to ask for help and to share. Right. Enough serious stuff.

Some great quotable quotes:

* Can we ban the use of the word “Cloud”? Can we maybe use the word “Internet”?

* Question: Are frameworks stopping people investigating the depths of jscript? Answer: No-one wants to investigate the depths of jscript.

* Question: Will Flash be killed by HTML5?
Answer 1: Flash is the Cobol of the Internet.
Answer 2: It won’t go away for a long time, particularly for video.

* There are so many security holes in Flash, and people are driving buses through them.

* We’re getting clients saying, “Can you HTML5 our site?” and I think, “What the hell are you talking about?”

* The website is not the service, its just a gateway to the service.

* In the future, the browser is going to have more direct access to the hardware. The browser will become the OS, with more power and features.
(Ed’s note: What happens when the browser is so powerful and hardware-connected it will replace the OS. Will we then need a small, lightweight browser in the big fat OS-browser?)

* To go global you have to work on a baseline User Interface – don’t just develop for latest browsers, computers and phones.

Roger Hislop
www.sentientbeing.co.za
@d0dja

A few last things about the conference, before things become totally manic.

We’ve got around 65 speakers over 2 days. I’m really excited about the depth of knowledge and experience that folks like Andy Budd (Clearleft), Alex Hunter, Erin Caton (Apple), Joe Stump (SimpleGeo), Jonathan Snook (Yahoo!) and Dustin Diaz (Twitter), will bring to Tech4Africa. These guys are really amazing at what they do, and are also awesome people, so anyone at the conference is in for a treat. Take 5 minutes to checkout the full line-up if you haven’t done so.

I think you’ll agree it’s a great line-up, which represents a good mix of business and technical people, and offers great content to delegates. More than anything, this is a first in Africa, and it’s largely down to your willingness to be a part of it. For that, I thank you. I hope you can spend the two days of the conference learning, absorbing, and enjoying. There is a team of 19 full time people working on Tech4Africa, to make it the event we’d all want to go to.

We’re now working pretty much 24/7 to make this event something that we would aspire to attend.
I’m not saying that lightly. Like you, I’ve been to my fair share of conferences, and in general I find most of them bland and uninteresting, with too many exhibitors.
So, I’ve tried really hard to make this one the conference that I would want to go to. My litmus test is: would I spend my hard earned cash and go to Tech4Africa? Would my friends do the same? I’m happy to say that right now the answer is yes, and I hope that once you’re there and you’ve experienced it for yourselves, the hard work and attention to detail will be apparent, and you’ll feel the same way. Ultimately though, all we can do is provide the right environment for the speakers to shine.

The focus is on interaction, discussion, engagement, debate and learning. The focus is on you.
Unlike a lot of conferences where you go listen to someone stand behind a lectern and run through powerpoint slides, essentially giving a lecture, we’re creating an environment where everyone will either be standing, or sitting on a couch with a bunch of other people. Our focus is 100% around delegate value, and this comes through real discussion and if needs be real arguments. It also comes through the audience feeling like they’re there being engaged with, and not lectured in a one-way environment.

As a quick reminder, online registration and payment for conference tickets closes at 1pm on Tues 10th August. If you would like to register after that, then please do so on site. Registration will be open at the venue from 1pm on the 11th of August (badge collection and/or registration). Please note that we will not accept cash, and that when the venue is full, we’ll have to turn people away. For conference registrations go here.

There is a conference “after party”, which will be on Friday night (August 13th), so please book that in your calendars, get the babysitters in, bring your significant other, and join us for some fun! RSVP on the event’s Facebook page.

And lastly, expect the “unconference”: don’t wear ties, don’t wear suits, bring your sense of humour, and enjoy yourself!

It’s going to be an awesome event, and I can’t wait to see you there

Regards,
Gareth Knight

Tech4Africa organizer
MD, Technovated