A peep at Africa’s hottest techies!

Erik Hersman

(Nairobi, Kenya)

Mr Hersman describes himself as an international technology influencer with a keen eye on the impact of web and mobile advancements and technology innovation across Africa. He has a B.Sc degree in Business Management from Florida State University.

In 2008, he was among the founding partners of Ushahidi, a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.

The website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country, based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phone. The initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, and has since been used to map other disasters around the world, including the Haiti earthquake and in the Gaza Strip.

Jessica Colaco
(Nairobi, Kenya)

Ms Calaco, 27, first broke into the application world when she started work on her university thesis. She later discovered that there was a severe lack of maps available for the region.

After failing to find useable maps of the region that would meet her needs, Ms Colaco developed her own system that allows a mobile phone user to view detailed street maps of Nairobi as well as access to her user generated point-of-interest (POI) database.

The project attracted the attention of Google, who were keen to develop their regional Google Maps system, and who have since incorporated some of her findings in their product.
Since then, Ms Colaco has been instrumental in uniting young students in Kenyan universities with multi-nationals.

She was instrumental in organising the first-ever Nairobi Facebook Developer Garage in March 2008, an event which served as a forum for students from different universities and professional software developers in Kenya to learn about the Facebook Platform.

Ms Colaco was also involved in conducting a baseline and follow-up survey for World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) in July – August 2008, working with nine SACCOs across the region to establish the facts on the ground with regards to the income and level of education of their members.

Ms Colaco also organised the Kenya's first-ever Mobile Boot Camp, which served as a forum for students from different universities and professional software developers to learn about the mobile phone world and its infrastructure, various mobile development platforms, seek technical support from experts, share ideas and build collaboration.

After a stint as the research lead at SRCC, Ms Colaco has used her position to spearhead and manage the research projects within the company even as she continues to court international firms to adopt Kenyan-made solutions – a main mandate of her position at the iHub.

Simunza Muyangana
(Lusaka, Zambia)

Simunza is also involved with bringing back BHMagazine.com, an online lifestyle magazine that he started with some friends 1999, and there are also three more web properties that he is hoping to introduce to the market before the end of the year; ‘Student Life’, a "free expression and debate" blog platform and a b2b tool.

Simunza’s interest in computing began in his high school years after watching a television series based on a group of friends who would solve crimes in their city. The ‘nerdy’ one among them would use his computer. Two years later, Simunza jumped at the chance to read up on computers when the British Council donated books to his school. Among them was an introductory book to computers - he booked out for the next three years. During this entire period, he had yet to see, let alone touch, a computer.

In 1998, Simunza finally got his chance to major in Information Technology whilst studying Commerce at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa. However, he was unable to afford to stay in university and dropped out. In a way, it gave him a great opportunity. He joined VWV Interactive as an HTML developer since he had taught himself how to develop websites with HTML during his year at Wits. He even set up his own website on Geocities, a free website hosting solution that was later bought out by Yahoo, which closed last year.

Over the next nine years, Simunza worked mostly in the advertising and communications sector of South Africa as a computer programmer and eventually moved towards management.
He returned to Zambia in 2008 after a short stint in Nigeria, working with Inspire Africa on the TV production 'Moments with Mo'. In 2009, he joined a local internet service provider, Africonnect Zambia Ltd, as head of their website development and sms aggregation units.

He eventually left Africonnect in March 2010 with his new ambition – setting up Digital ICE.

Simunza hopes that Digital ICE will be able to help business in the region gain an advantage for their services and products in the global market. As well as providing an arena for free thought and discussion. If anything, this is what he believes is key to Africa’s ‘IT’ future. It is necessary to move past the theory and into a space where individuals can practice and implement.

Linda Kamau
(Nairobi, Kenya)

Linda, 24, is a web and mobile applications developer with a passion for software development. She’s a PHP freak with a degree in Business Information Technology from Limkokwing University of Creative Technology.

Linda is the lead developer for Ushahidi and is also leading the development of the Java application for the Ushahidi platform. Ushahidi is a non-profit tech company that specialises in developing free and open source software for information collection, visualisation and interactive mapping in Kenya. She is also currently working on http://uchaguzi.co.ke. Uchaguzi is a technology platform that allows citizens and civil society to monitor and report incidences around the electoral process. It provides web and mobile-based channels for citizens and civil society to report on electoral offences such as intimidation, hate speech, vote buying, polling clerk bias and voting mis-information. The reports are then sent to the electoral authorities or security personnel for action.

Linda took computer studies in high school. As per the curriculum she had to work on a project which had to involve a high level language. She got fascinated by the fact that one could come up with a system in a language other than the usual English or Kiswahili. With this, a seed was planted and for it to grow, she pursued a computing course in college where she did a lot of reading, research and networking with people already in the IT industry.

In the future, Linda is determined to build systems that are scalable worldwide, just like Ushahidi, without re-inventing the wheel and may be sometime in the future even re-write PHP code!

In order for Africa to position itself to become a part of the global software development market, Linda believes it all boils down to the quality of applications and services. There is a need to develop products and fresh ideas that can compete with those from developed countries. Essentially killing the thought that ‘imported’ is better than 'home-made'.

Applications like Ushahidi are a testimony that African innovations can be used anywhere in the world. Developers also need to utilise facilities like the ihub, Nairobi’s innovation hub, where they can network with other like-minded developers and tech-preneurs.

Rafiq Philips
(Cape Town, South Africa)

Rafiq is a search engine optimisation (SEO) specialist and runs a popular South African blog known as Web Addicts. He is currently working as an SEO specialist at Naspers (www.mihswat.com), consulting for some of the largest Internet companies throughout the developing world during the day, while at night, he works on hiswww.idrive.co.za project, which connects learner drivers with the best driving schools in South Africa.

Rafiq has always had an interest in computers and technology and joined the computer club at school when he was just 11. A few years later, when he first dialed-up to the internet, he became a Web Addict!

Rafiq is impressed with the way technology has been used to solve problems in Africa. One South African example is Reconstructed Living Labs http://www.rlabs.org/, who are using a host of technologies to battle drug abuse, gangsterism and raise HIV/Aids awareness.

Profile: ZEGE TECHNOLOGIES
(Nairobi, Kenya)

The company faces a few challenges, being a new and small start-up in a market dominated by giants of the corporate world, but their strength is that what they have is a very unique and effective product, which will help many organisations to manage huge headaches that they have had with MPESA transactions.

When asked about where they see Africa heading, one of the brains behind Zege Technologies, Kariuki Gathitu, said that Africa has so much in terms of intellectual resources that we have no excuse to be languishing in ‘backwardness.’ He believes that Africa has already positioned itself to be in the global software market as user-ship of technology and mobile phones.
The building of applications for the global market is Africa’s ticket out of the poverty stereotype.

Mike Stopforth
(South Africa)

Mike is a man with his fingers in many pots! His main project is Cerebra (www.cerebra.co.za), a social media agency that provides a range of services to brands across the globe. He is also involved with www.afrigator.com, a true African Web 2.0 startup that focuses on aggregating and measuring the best African content on the Web in one place. Mike also runs the 27dinner social networking events (27dinners.com) that have grown substantially in popularity over the last few years.

Growing up, Mike was interested in many fields. After finishing school, he decided to study Industrial Psychology, a degree which eventually changed to film, which he never got to finish. He quit university and held a range of jobs, from being a youth pastor to selling welding machines. In doing, so he discovered a real passion for communication, marketing and people - which led to a deep interest on how the Web affects these dynamics.

His transition into the ‘techie’ world can be described in two words: “by accident” and he describes himself as a 'translator' between the 'techie' and 'non-techie' worlds. His aim is to help companies, brands and individuals, who are not technologically-orientated, to understand the benefit of social media and Web-based communications.

Mike’s ultimate ambition is to achieve a level of freedom to do the things he wants to do, be they personal or business-related. He also hopes to help people to make money, do better work or have fun in the course of doing so.

In relation to how the Africa is doing in the global software development market, the continent has already made its mark and improved infrastructure and resources can only further this. He believes there is no lack of talent and ambition and that if anything is holding the continent back, it is the perceptions the world has of Africa and Africans - that they are 'behind' the curve. “It's time to acknowledge our potential.”