“My tech is
black, my laptop is blue” is like my own version of “my president is black and
my lambo is blue”. It is me being proud practicing tech in Africa. I love being
African geek, few years back it was impossible to hear things like labs and
hubs across our continent but wright now we have more than 14 labs in Africa
putting aside other which are unregistered which might make the total number up
to 50 hubs across the continent.
Kageni Wilson: Founder & CEO - ionacloud
The
incubation programmes have been helping African geeks and professionals to
reach their goals and give them the total support they need. The funds have
been accelerating in day in day out and people are committed to these labs to
see things turn out positively. In some days
back the local content in our sites has been among the major challenges but now
people are covering everything happening in the content from social networking
sites, sports sites, music sites, movies sites we just had IrokoTV.com, e-
commerce sites and news sites.
Hint: Tech Business incubators are programs designed to support the
successful development of entrepreneurial tech companies through an array of
business support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by
incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network
of contacts.
In some
African country the coverage have been done in the local language. Almost every
blogger in Tanzania has been blogging in the local language Swahili and in
Rwanda most of the sites are run in the local language Kinyarwanda to reach the
local people and people have been supportive to access their sites in their
local languages. Just recently Google have realized the opportunity that comes
with these languages and their transforming their products to reach the
requirements of the local people in these African communities for example the
Swahili version of Google chrome and Google Plus.
Who could
have sought Africans coming out with their own games? The Maliyo games has just
opened the doors for other Africans to come out and display their gaming
development skills since initially game development was not considered to be
the carrier in Africa. When the founder of Malliyo Games was interview about their
project he said
“Our games ‘Okada Rides’, ‘Mosquito Smasher’ and ‘Adanma’ have far more local
relevance than Mafia wars”. It is all about the local content
and acceptability. Africa has the largest market to be utilized for tech
products.
Currently
tech events have been carried out all over Africa to wake up people and
technology enthusiasts to form unit and be more creative to compete with the
world tech industry. We expect new computer languages to be developed from
Africa in the near future. In Tanzania we were developing our own version of
Linux, Kilinux the project is still in progress although a lot of challenges.
With
opportunity Africa will be the new tech hub of the world and for us stake
holders of the African tech industry that has always been our dream to see
Africa relinquish and become successful in the tech industry and technology
used to overcome different problems facing the continent.