A Vision of the Present
Radoslav Zilinsky’s 2007 enchanting painting “The World” depicts a distant future where enormous prosperity is accompanied by enormous disparity. Funny because his future looks a lot like the present, at least to many of us living in Africa, South America, or most of Asia. via LongNowBlog
U.S. State Department’s Conversation with African Innovators
Last week representatives from the U.S. State Department Elana Berkowitz and Bruce Wharton reached out directly to innovators in East Africa to discuss the Apps 4 Africa contest, and the role software developers play in solving civil society issues in their countries. They are funding this contest which is being organized and facilitated by Appfrica … Read more
Google Developer Days Coming to Kenya, Uganda
Google is hosting two events in September to teach the use of Google technologies and products in Africa… Google is dedicated to making the Internet relevant and useful to Africans, and to developing meaningful products for Africa. We realize fully, we can not do this alone. We believe that tech entrepreneurs and developers have the … Read more
TED Recap: A Fornication of Ideas Pt. 1
TED Global 2010 wrapped up last week in Oxford, UK. As a TED Senior Fellow, I’m lucky in that I’ve now attended three TED events and I’ll also go to the next three. To be totally honest I’m hooked, so even after my Fellowship is over I’ll continue to fork over the $6,000 per ticket … Read more
A Fragmented Africa
When people think of Africa being fragmented, they usually think of things like politics, tribalism, and nepotism. They don’t tend to think about geology:
Great African Singularities
The singularity is defined by futurist Ray Kurzweil as being the point at which technological advancement exceeds human capacity to control and fully understand it. It’s the point where artificial intelligence and replication converge and machines can strategically produce other machines without human direction. Movies like TERMINATOR and THE MATRIX are all about the horrible … Read more
Capacity Versus Competency
This is a lesson in hiring software developers in Africa where, for the past two years I’ve run an incubator/software company called Appfrica Labs. As a social venture, the blended model was designed to give East African graduates jobs in tech and allowing them experience the ‘real world’ of development. The secondary goal was to … Read more
Rules of April 1st Engagement
I had quite a bit of fun with this year’s April Fools Day. Once again, I’m shocked at the number of people who simply glaze over items they read on the internet and accept them as truth. I mean a Zombie Outbreak? I actually got emails about this, come on guys. My own jokes were … Read more
Ushahidi stops Earthquakes, Global Warming
The most famous white African since Charlize Theron is hard at work on a revolutionary software platform called Ushahidi. Ushahidi shot to fame and funding in early 2008 following the Kenyan Election violence when they created a platform that allowed any person to report what was occurring around them using their mobile phones. Since then … Read more
