Net Prophet 2010 – A Rising Tide: Tech Entrepreneurs in Africa (By Erik Hersman)
Erik Hersman is the co-founder of Ushahidi (which means “testimony” in Swahili), a web application created to map the reported incidents of violence happening during the post-election crisis in Kenya. Currently, he is working with a team of mostly-African programmers to continue development of this new free and open source platform that makes it easier to crowd-source crisis information and visualise data.
“[In Africa] there are a few good success stories, but not enough.”
“Kenya is proving more lucrative per subscriber than South Africa.” – Mobile advertising network
A summary of Erik’s presentation:
- Africa is an untapped market for online business.
- Mobile tech in Africa is far below what upper-class SA techies are used to.
- 40% of mobile users in Kenya do not keep a credit balance on their phone – they rely on others getting in touch with them.
- Entrepreneurs in Africa are creating systems for leveraging the current state of technology that predominates most of Africa. These entrepreneurs have a greater understanding of the context and African culture than most other people, and the systems which they are developing will seldom be used by the upper-class societies in countries like South Africa, for example iYam.mobi
- Rural vs Urban is the main reason for the mobile tech divide rather than Rich vs Poor
- iHub is a hub for corporates to invest in promising tech entrepreneurs
- Conclusion: We are witnessing a rising tide of technology in countries like Kenya, and an even higher rising tide of entrepreneurs to meet that need.
Category: Net Prophet 2010
One of the most difficult things for tech entrepreneurs tapping into markets they are disconnected from is that we live in different worlds and most of us never venture into the worlds we need to be understanding.
Time for us to get out of our comfort zones and network in places we’ve never been before understanding problems which may not apply directly to City Dwellers