Sharing Advice and Tips for Entrepreneurs
The most common mistakes most young or first-time entrepreneurs make are completely avoidable – if only they knew what to avoid. Obviously, this is the role that advisors and mentors play to young companies. By sharing their experiences, these mentors help save entrepreneurs the time, the stress, and the money that it would otherwise take … Read more
Apps Let Africans Take Matters Into their Own Hands
My interview with Radio Netherlands about mobile apps, Africa, Abayima, and supporting the continent’s nascent innovators… “A revolution is taking place in Africa,” according to the Fill the Gap organizers. And it’s “driven by mobile technology and rapidly growing access to the mobile which is the key to smart entrepreneurship and citizen participation.” What does … Read more
Mobile Innovation Echo Chamber
Jonathan Gosier, founder of Appfrica speaks about examples of good mobile technology initiatives in Africa at Fill the Gap 9 in NEMO, Amsterdam. Moving ‘beyond the mobile hype’ requires asking different questions about what we do and what we’re trying to accomplish. Moving forward we should consider not just the effects of technology projects but … Read more
Why Investors, Philanthropists, and the Diaspora Fail at African Business
Investors Don’t Get African Opportunities – here’s why. The Business of VCs Very quietly, over the past few weeks the word ‘bubble’ has crept back into the English language as it relates to the investment/silicon valley/tech scene. This is because there have been some staggering valuations, startling exits, and incredible hype for companies that seem … Read more
…to Redistribute the Future
Last week at Tech4Africa in Johannesburg I gave a short talk. It was meant to be much longer but I got confused on how much time I had, so apologies to the T4A people. Anyways, the topic of the presentation was “The 5 Most Disruptive Innovations I’ve Seen” and it discusses industries and concepts which … Read more
Tech4Africa Is This Month!
I’m really excited to be one of the keynote speakers at Tech4Africa this year in South Africa. I’ll be there discussing Apps4Africa among other things. If you’re interested in going but are intimidated by the price of admission, here are a few different options for tickets… Tech4Africa runs from 27-28 October 2011 at The Forum … Read more
Zero to Sixty: Setting Up an African Venture
The other day I responded to a student who was seeking advice on relocating to start a venture in East Africa. I thought I’d share the email here since it’s likely relevant to others. The first thing I’d recommend when starting a new business out of the country is to try to find a local … Read more
AfriLabs Update
Last March (almost a year ago) I mentioned that a group of the various Labs in East Africa were forming a loose association of networked hubs that would serve two purposes: to pool resources, knowledge and lessons learned for entrepreneurs and to ultimately build a rotating fund that will be invested in East African tech … Read more
Appfrica in 2011
This blog has been uncharacteristically quiet over the past few months. Not without reason, I’ve been all over the world running SwiftRiver for Ushahidi, getting married, relocating to Washington, D.C., and with projects like Hive Colab and Apps4Africa. 2010 was a really good year for everything but it didn’t come without it’s challenges and hurdles. … Read more
Ushahidi Founder is Google's New Policy Manager for Africa
The success of Ushahidi as both an activist organization and as a technology startup is one that is widely recognized as Africa’s first big ‘garage’ startup success story. The organization was born out of the 2007 post-election unrest in Kenya when a Ory put out a call to map citizen reports of violence. Erik Hersman, … Read more
