“The only time Apple caused to much attention around here it
was when Adam seduced by Eve to go against God’s will and the time you found
the company” the joke about the late Steve Jobbs being asked by an angel about
his company’s success after his death with an image of iGrave . The late Jobbs
used to say “innovation is what distinguishes between leaders and followers”
but the theory isn’t working in Africa. Most of the time we have great ideas
but they fail to be implemented, not because they can’t compete in the tough
market out there but just because they can’t even reach there to compete.
Recently I saw an article written about Kenya with heading
entitled “Kenya: Why It's So Hard for Software Developers to Get Loans” written
by an author Andrea Bohnstedt he said “Kenya is sitting relatively pretty on
the continent: high mobile penetration rates, a wildly successful mobile money
service, a relatively well educated population, and several fibreoptic cables.
Foundations and donors have jumped on the IHub-style incubator model, and there
are more VC competitions than you can shake a stick at. But still: Is a mobile
app necessarily a business? Is a smart young developer really necessarily an
entrepreneur? Is the focus on incubation and VC pitches the best way to nurture
this industry? Yes, Facebook is a developer's wildest dream, but what about
attachments, internships, jobs, mentors, angel investors? Less hype, more
bricks and mortar?” What touches me was the question that “is a smart young developer
really necessarily an entrepreneur?”
Believe me it is too hard in Africa to fund and develop an
Idea, more hard even compared on finding the Idea itself while it is vice versa
somewhere in the world but that is the truth in our side. The value of the
ideas is not yet recognized with our authorities’ especially financial institutions
since most of them they just don’t believe in investing into ideas. Down here
if you can’t fund your own idea then it’s gone, dead and buried. It is the time
the banks and investment companies give more opportunity to the people in the
tech industry as per individual.
If we want changes in the industry don’t let the tools of
those changes “the developers” disappear on the air and vanish. We should
cultivate in what they have and give them opportunity to do more. Oh yes we
have the hubs but what about people outside the hubs who didn’t get the chance
to be funded. It is the time our decision makers look at this with different
approach. If you can’t cash in to the project how to do you expect the project
to survive and that is what facing us now. Most of the projects were done
without enough research and funding hence the outcome where chaotic they didn’t
even reaches half of the expectation.
Speaking out of experience, projects which are well funded or
supervised with individuals with money on the pocket have proven to be
successful. For example in Tanzania the USSD SMS application used for
advertisement and social services have been very successful and making a lot of
money since the individuals owning the companies they already have something in
their pockets compared to young developers who want to put something into the
market. If we don’t do something to combat the situation then the East Africa
tech industry will just be for people from rich families and good economic
backgrounds while some best and useful ideas would be vanish on air just
because owners didn’t get enough money for advertisement