Kisumu Ndogo
October 29th, 2010, 01:02 AM
Why Nairobi deserves the ICT innovation hub of Africa crown
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/4950465769_55144c58cf.jpg
Broadband penetration is growing steadily in Nairobi although it is
still very low and outrageously expensive in much of Africa. Photo/FILE ]
Posted Friday, October 29 2010 at 00:00
Your flight is scheduled to leave at 6 a.m tomorrow morning,” Asani answered, as he put his mobile phone back in his shirt pocket. Asani, a local street vendor in Nairobi whom I happened to meet moments ago in a bar, seemed amused by the startled expression on my face when I saw how quickly he managed to get flight info for me.
He quipped with a smile, “we Kenyans are more high-tech than you think.”
Africa’s software developers build global gems from dusty kiosks It was a particularly fitting comment as I neared the end of a week-long trip in Nairobi, a city I discovered is the tech and innovation hub of Africa.
I went to Nairobi last week to represent Mozilla at Maker Faire Africa (MFA) 2010 and lead several Mozilla workshops in and out of the city. My aim was to engage with local web enthusiasts and developers, to get people interested in contributing to Mozilla. I wanted to get a better understanding of how we can best push the Mozilla Project forward in Kenya and in Africa in general.
My trips for Mozilla are always rich and memorable experiences where I spend quality time with Mozillians and developers, meet incredibly smart and talented people, and learn so much about the local culture. My trip to Kenya was no exception. I had heard and read a lot about MFA, especially after our participation last year.
The event brings together inventors and makers from all over Africa to help them showcase their work and celebrate African ingenuity and innovation. I knew it would be the confluence of brainy, quirky inventors from every corner of the continent, but I had not anticipated such fun, energy and interaction. Everywhere you looked, creative and colourful inventions from the automatic sisal weaver to the bike-powered phone charger, surrounded you.
Mozilla had a very colourful booth and was manned by passionate Mozillians, including Kwamena, Raymond, Alex, Atlanta and Jeff. Teeming with curious visitors, the “inventions” we decided to showcase were an eclectic set of Firefox add-ons. For the particularly web-savvy, Kwamena, Raymond and I led short Mozilla workshops throughout the day, covering everything from how to get involved in L10n to how to develop your first add-on.
The response was pretty incredible, with dozens of people walking up to us after to help localise Firefox in their locale and, or, write language packs. Above all, MFA was a great opportunity to meet and raise awareness about Mozilla and the open web to hundreds of students, innovators, movers and shakers from Kenya and beyond.
It was also an important opportunity to meet scores of organisations like Ushahidi, Butterfly Works, IAVI, Village Telco, Nairobits, all passionately involved in leveraging the power of open source software and ICT to reduce poverty and advance social change in Africa.
Chatting with visionaries like Erik Hersman, Emeka Okafor, Emer Beamer and Joy Tang opened my eyes to so many ways Mozilla can get more involved and support their, or similar, projects. I’ll get to that in a bit.
Africa’s software developers build global gems from dusty kiosks
Humbling experience After MFA, Kwamena, Raymond and I stayed on for a few more days in Nairobi to lead workshops in two of the most interesting tech nodes of the city. The first stop was Nairobits, an innovative digital design school that provides education to Nairobi slum youth.
It was another humbling experience to meet all of the school’s professors and trainers, and to be able to talk about the Mozilla Project to so many young web-savvy students who amazed all of us by their advanced knowledge of PHP, Javascript and CSS. We did a show-of-hands and asked the 50 or so students in the room how many used Firefox. All raised their hands. We then asked how many knew that Mozilla was a non-profit organisation and Firefox was an open source project?
Zero hands raised. The exercise was quite telling, particularly since we were talking to relatively web savvy kids. Virtually everyone I met in Nairobi did not know that Mozilla was a non-profit, let alone that Firefox was made possible by an army of passionate volunteers around the world. Realising the true nature of the project, it’s incredible the change in people’s expressions and sudden interest in what we do.
As I said goodbye to the students and left Nairobits, I kept asking myself: how many of these youngsters will become Mozilla contributors one day? So much interest and so much enthusiasm, yet so much more work to be done to raise awareness about the project.The second workshop we led was at iHub, Nairobi’s tech nerve-centre that opened a few months ago.
Source (http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Why%20Nairobi%20deserves%20the%20ICT%20innovation%20hub%20of%20Africa%20crown/-/539546/1042302/-/item/1/-/m0rg0f/-/index.html):
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/4950465769_55144c58cf.jpg
Broadband penetration is growing steadily in Nairobi although it is
still very low and outrageously expensive in much of Africa. Photo/FILE ]
Posted Friday, October 29 2010 at 00:00
Your flight is scheduled to leave at 6 a.m tomorrow morning,” Asani answered, as he put his mobile phone back in his shirt pocket. Asani, a local street vendor in Nairobi whom I happened to meet moments ago in a bar, seemed amused by the startled expression on my face when I saw how quickly he managed to get flight info for me.
He quipped with a smile, “we Kenyans are more high-tech than you think.”
Africa’s software developers build global gems from dusty kiosks It was a particularly fitting comment as I neared the end of a week-long trip in Nairobi, a city I discovered is the tech and innovation hub of Africa.
I went to Nairobi last week to represent Mozilla at Maker Faire Africa (MFA) 2010 and lead several Mozilla workshops in and out of the city. My aim was to engage with local web enthusiasts and developers, to get people interested in contributing to Mozilla. I wanted to get a better understanding of how we can best push the Mozilla Project forward in Kenya and in Africa in general.
My trips for Mozilla are always rich and memorable experiences where I spend quality time with Mozillians and developers, meet incredibly smart and talented people, and learn so much about the local culture. My trip to Kenya was no exception. I had heard and read a lot about MFA, especially after our participation last year.
The event brings together inventors and makers from all over Africa to help them showcase their work and celebrate African ingenuity and innovation. I knew it would be the confluence of brainy, quirky inventors from every corner of the continent, but I had not anticipated such fun, energy and interaction. Everywhere you looked, creative and colourful inventions from the automatic sisal weaver to the bike-powered phone charger, surrounded you.
Mozilla had a very colourful booth and was manned by passionate Mozillians, including Kwamena, Raymond, Alex, Atlanta and Jeff. Teeming with curious visitors, the “inventions” we decided to showcase were an eclectic set of Firefox add-ons. For the particularly web-savvy, Kwamena, Raymond and I led short Mozilla workshops throughout the day, covering everything from how to get involved in L10n to how to develop your first add-on.
The response was pretty incredible, with dozens of people walking up to us after to help localise Firefox in their locale and, or, write language packs. Above all, MFA was a great opportunity to meet and raise awareness about Mozilla and the open web to hundreds of students, innovators, movers and shakers from Kenya and beyond.
It was also an important opportunity to meet scores of organisations like Ushahidi, Butterfly Works, IAVI, Village Telco, Nairobits, all passionately involved in leveraging the power of open source software and ICT to reduce poverty and advance social change in Africa.
Chatting with visionaries like Erik Hersman, Emeka Okafor, Emer Beamer and Joy Tang opened my eyes to so many ways Mozilla can get more involved and support their, or similar, projects. I’ll get to that in a bit.
Africa’s software developers build global gems from dusty kiosks
Humbling experience After MFA, Kwamena, Raymond and I stayed on for a few more days in Nairobi to lead workshops in two of the most interesting tech nodes of the city. The first stop was Nairobits, an innovative digital design school that provides education to Nairobi slum youth.
It was another humbling experience to meet all of the school’s professors and trainers, and to be able to talk about the Mozilla Project to so many young web-savvy students who amazed all of us by their advanced knowledge of PHP, Javascript and CSS. We did a show-of-hands and asked the 50 or so students in the room how many used Firefox. All raised their hands. We then asked how many knew that Mozilla was a non-profit organisation and Firefox was an open source project?
Zero hands raised. The exercise was quite telling, particularly since we were talking to relatively web savvy kids. Virtually everyone I met in Nairobi did not know that Mozilla was a non-profit, let alone that Firefox was made possible by an army of passionate volunteers around the world. Realising the true nature of the project, it’s incredible the change in people’s expressions and sudden interest in what we do.
As I said goodbye to the students and left Nairobits, I kept asking myself: how many of these youngsters will become Mozilla contributors one day? So much interest and so much enthusiasm, yet so much more work to be done to raise awareness about the project.The second workshop we led was at iHub, Nairobi’s tech nerve-centre that opened a few months ago.
Source (http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Why%20Nairobi%20deserves%20the%20ICT%20innovation%20hub%20of%20Africa%20crown/-/539546/1042302/-/item/1/-/m0rg0f/-/index.html):