One of the things that hinders private-sector engagement in sub-Saharan Africa is that banks offer very little in the way of credit systems. This means there is no PayPal, no oDesk, and no eLance. So even if you're the smartest, most talented developer in the East African community, your options for making money are limited to groups you can physically interact with to receive payment. Meanwhile, most of the money coming into the region from developmental programs goes to government groups and often doesn't end up in the hands of the people it's intended to help. This creates a vacuum for entrepreneurs who have no sources of private funding, no source of government funding, and few ways to engage the outside world.

After the clinic was held, I caught up with Charlie and Leila to ask them about their experiences and views on the East African development scene.

Charlie Cheever, Facebook

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background at Facebook?

Charlie: Right now, I oversee platform engineering at Facebook, which encompasses our developer platform and Facebook Connect and some parts of the facebook.com website. I studied computer science in college, then worked at Amazon.com for a few years before joining Facebook.

You've mentioned that although Facebook covered all the costs of the actual Developers Garage, it wouldn't sponsor your travel expenses. What inspired you to use your own money and resources to get here?

Charlie: Facebook's been really supportive of our developer community. I wanted to make this trip to see Africa, and it worked out that you and Leila were able to set up a Dev Garage here.

Did your perception of Africa change after arriving here?

Charlie: Somewhat. The things that surprised me most were how knowledgable people were about American politics. One of our guides out in the national forest quoted McCain's concession speech -- and he didn't seem unusual or anything. The cities here are more modern than you see in most movies or documentaries, but the villages can be pretty poor, and there's not much infrastructure here outside of Kampala.

What were some of the challenges of running a session about developing for the web here? How did you overcome them?

Charlie: Most of the challenges here stem from the spotty connectivity. If you're doing regular old web programming, you can just run things locally, and the connectivity isn't too much of an issue. But when you're making a Facebook app, there's no way to get around the need for connectivity to Facebook. A related challenge is hosting. You want your server to be close to your end users and also to Facebook's servers, and that's tough to do in Africa.

What I ended up doing was making a Facebook app that the garage participants could type code into that would run on the hosting service I use. For the more advanced developers who wanted to make full apps, we used AppJet, which is a really cool free hosting service that uses server-side JavaScript. Things worked out pretty well, I thought.

One of the questions that came up a lot from the developers was about Facebook Connect: it's still pretty early, but how is Facebook Connect changing things at Facebook?

Charlie: I think the biggest reason that so many people are excited about Connect is that now you can really start to see how Facebook and things like it are going to be a part of everything we do. Soon, I think we'll have things like airlines adopting Connect and showing you people you know who are on the same flight as you and where they're sitting. Today, we expect every business and service today to have a website; in a few years, we'll expect everyone to integrate with Facebook and other web services.

Do you see Facebook playing a big role in changing the state of developing countries, either as an economic platform or as a way for people to communicate?

Charlie: As a way to communicate, definitely. What's really cool is how small the gap is between the developing world and the US on this. Even outside of the event we put on, I saw a bunch of people using Facebook in Africa -- and Facebook hasn't even reached everyone in America yet and has only been around for 4 years. If you compare that to other game-chaning communication mechanisms, like landline phones, which have been wired up in America for decades but never really happened in most of the developing world, or even cell phones, for which the developing world has good connectivity but most people use pretty old school phones, it's really cool to see how things are so similar in America and Uganda. The biggest reason for this is that the new wave of communication platforms, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, etc., are software-based, and it's actually easier and cheaper to distribute the same software to everyone in the world, whereas with things requiring physical infrastructure, that isn't true. Facebook is still evolving as an economic platform, and I don't think the full power has been even close to realized yet. When we figure that out more, we'll start to get a better idea of how it might change the economic landscape in the developing world. Right now, its hard to say how that will play out.

There's a group in Egypt using Facebook to mobilize against the oppressive government. A similar group is using Facebook to support activism in Somalia. Is it exciting to see Facebook at the center of real change movements?

Charlie: It is really amazing. I think people have always organized like this, but one great thing about Facebook is that people like you and I can see how people in Egypt and Somalia are organizing as it's happening, and I think with the proliferation of the web and tools like Facebook, these things can happen faster and more efficiently.

The other day I asked you why Facebook hasn't implemented clean URLs, something most other social networks have. I was actually surprised at how much the response made sense. Can you repeat that for ReadWriteWeb readers?

Charlie: The main reason is that we want the Facebook product to be intuitive for everyone in the world, not just for technical people. In real life, most people keep track of their friends by their real names, not usernames like angeldog007, so we've tried to focus the product around using real names as much as possible. I think it makes it easier to find people on the site and also to find one's way around the site. For a few things, like applications [http://apps.facebook.com/appname], we do have pretty URLs, so we do use them when we think it makes sense.

What would be your advice to other developers in the Valley who want to get involved in the African technology scene.

Charlie: The usual stuff: scour the web for anything you can find, read blogs, follow people on Twitter who you find, friend them on Facebook. Once you connect with people in the scene, getting involved is easy. The African tech scene has a few quirks, but overall it's pretty similar to tech communities everywhere else in the world.

What is your advice to "third-world" computer science students who want to work for Facebook?

Charlie: The most important thing I think you can do is find a way to get yourself a great Internet connection and then spend a lot of time building things and teaching yourself stuff -- beyond just doing schoolwork. After that, I'd work on finding a way to physically get to Silicon Valley. Even in today's high-tech connected world, there's really no substitute for proximity.

On page 2, we hear from Leila Chirayath from Samasource

Leila Chirayath, Samasource

Why did you start Samasource?

Leila: I think the biggest tragedy associated with poverty is wasted talent. As a volunteer teacher in Ghana in my late teens, I was struck by how bright my students were and how few opportunities they had to use their skills productively. We have this perception in the US that the world is a reasonably functioning meritocracy -- in fact, it's much more like a lottery.

I became a management consultant after graduating from college, and my first client was a large outsourcing company in Mumbai. I'd walk the halls after work and discovered that many of the staff lived in slum communities around the city and were supporting entire families with their incomes. For young Indians, these jobs offered an entry into global business and a shot at putting their talents to use.

I began thinking about a system that would encourage greater local ownership -- by workers, rather than large multinational companies -- and extend the benefits of outsourcing to skilled workers in the bottom billion.

Can you explain some of the challenges you face in the US in advocating for small businesses in developing countries?

Leila: Where do I begin? Our biggest challenge is convincing people that there is a surplus of skilled talent in very poor regions, particularly Africa. The general response is, "Don't people there need to focus on the basics -- agriculture, health, education -- rather than on trying to build service companies?" Years of development studies have given us the answer to that question: the only sustainable path out of poverty for many poor countries is increased international trade, particularly in industries that rely on human capital.

People tend to irrationally aggregate the countries in Africa, which leads many to believe that doing business anywhere on the continent entails driving through refugee camps or bribing corrupt officials. Potential clients are shocked when we show them videos of our partner firms in Nairobi in modern office buildings, filled with educated young people in suits. We spend a good deal of time repairing Africa's public image and convincing clients that doing business with small, locally owned service companies in places like Uganda is a win-win: they can lower their costs while contributing to sustainable economic development.

What kind of support does Samasource have already, and what kind of support would help you sustain your model?

Leila: Samasource was a second-place winner in the global Business in Development Challenge in December 2007 [a $22,000 award] and the Stanford Social Enterprise Challenge in April 2008 [a $12,000 award], which funded our feasibility study and the launch of our pilot earlier this year. We have received countless hours of volunteer support to build our initial website and sales team.

The nice thing about our model is that we're sustainable: Samasource makes a commission on work we broker for the providers in our global network. We're trying to raise about $350,000 to build out the organization, and after that we plan to run our organization largely on earned income.

Is the world financial crisis affecting any of the small firms you work with?

Leila: We have eight small firms in our network: in Kenya, rural India, and Nepal. The biggest hit our firms took was during the Kenyan elections crisis earlier this year. Many US companies left Kenya immediately, though there were few actual service interruptions.

The global financial crisis may make it harder for our firms in developing countries to raise capital for expansion, but it will likely have a positive impact on sales. Outsourcing tends to grow when client companies are pressed for cash.

What did you think about the Kampala Dev Garage? You've done these in Ghana and Kenya. How did Uganda compare?

Leila: We were lucky to have Charlie attend in person. In Nairobi, we were only able to patch in Silicon Valley coaches via online chatrooms. With the spotty Internet connection we had there, it was very challenging to coordinate 80 people in chat rooms at once. I think having someone attend from Facebook was also really exciting for students. Silicon Valley engineers rarely spend much time in sub-Saharan Africa. Charlie also had a chance to learn what the local technology scene was like and will transfer that knowledge to his peers in the Valley.

This interview is a follow-up to an audio interview I conducted with Charlie and Leila on Appfricast. I also conducted an interview with three attendees (one Peace Corps volunteer, one local student, and one successful East African entrepreneur) to see if they thought the workshop was relevant and how it would directly impact their lives. You can listen to that podcast here.

Appfricast is a weekly podcast about the African technology scene. Appfrica Labs is an incubation program for software entrepreneurs in East Africa modeled on Paul Graham's YCombinator. Photos by TMS Ruge, Leila Chirayath, and various attendees. You can find the Kampala Facebook Developers groups here. More photos from the day here.

Disclosure: it was mentioned at the top of this post, but to reiterate that the author Jonathan Gosier's company Appfrica Labs was one of the 3 organizers of the event described here. Jonathan Gosier is a web developer and social entrepreneur living and working in Kampala, Uganda.

A number of web and mobile applications are undermining the efforts of dictators and totalitarian governments, allowing them to be more readily be held accountable for their actions. In this post we profile some of them.

When the Ethiopian government instituted an SMS filtering service to censor mobile communication, the developers behind Feedelix responded swiftly. They created their product Feedlix, a java-based client that supports Amharic, Chinese and Hindi characters. The application then uses GPRS, through internet protocols, to mimic SMS and bypass the censoring filter put in place by the government.

Sokwanele is a civic action support group campaigning for freedom and democracy in Zimbabwe. Their website includes an 'election violence map' that provides detailed information related to localized occurrences of violence related to the election. During the most recent crisis in Zimbabwe, Sokwanele was used to get information out of the country when the government began restricting communication.

Mzalendo is an aggregation platform for tracking the actions, activities and communication of Kenya's Parliament. For people who want to make sure their elected officials are staying on task, it's invaluable.

When Moroccan blogger Mohamed Erraj was jailed for disparaging the government in his online magazine, Hespress, it was through the efforts of other bloggers (like the writers at GlobalVoicesOnline) and people using applications like Twitter that his story made international news. The added pressure of having the whole world paying attention is perhaps what convinced the Moroccan government to let him free where traditionally his actions could have resulted in much harsher punishment.

Rethinking Africa

In conclusion, Africa is producing some very unique and innovative technologies. There's more to the continent than the things you see on TV - something people, especially in the tech industry, seem to forget. Where most other markets in the world are incredibly saturated, Africa offers the opportunity to start afresh: new ideas and a billion new people to use them.

It's a big place; nearly one billion people and a land mass where the sum is greater than that of China and the United States combined. For social entrepreneurs and investors, the innovation occurring here is a huge sign of progress that could potentially change the continent's world standing forever. The most exciting aspect for me, however, is the decreased reliance on developmental aid and foreign groups to provide these solutions. The number of African developers who are beginning to create applications that offer solutions for their own communities is increasing and that, more than anything else, will shape the future of Africa.

"If Africa is surprising, then you're not paying enough attention." Ethan Zuckerman at PICNIC08

You can read more articles by Jon Gosier at Appfrica.net.

See also: Social Media in Africa, Part 1
and Social Media in Africa, Part 2: Mobile Innovations

In this post we look at the state of the fast-growing mobile industry in Africa. This is the second post in our series on Africa's Web (Part 1 is here).

The tough conditions developers face in the continent provide some challenges but overcoming them offers something greater. According to Ushahidi co-founder Erik Hersman:

"The challenges brought about by bad governance, poverty, low bandwidth (all the negative things you associate with Africa) also provide an incredible opportunity. The developers who are coming up with solutions in the continent, the ones who are writing software or hacking hardware, are creating for some of the harshest environments and use-cases in the world. If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere."

Perhaps this thought is what motivated Google to invest in O3B Networks earlier this month. O3B Networks is an ambitious attempt to bring three billion people in the developing world (mainly in parts of Asia and Africa) online by launching sixteen inexpensive, low-orbit satellites. The potential benefits for Google are obvious. This is three billion new internet users, who will more than likely use Google to search, and who will potentially click-through Adsense links and use other Google products. An indicator that Google may be anticipating as much is their move into Africa last year. They've since opened offices and hired people in both South Africa and Kenya with plans to eventually operate out of all sub-Saharan African countries.

Mobile Penetration Statistics from Africa

• At the end of 2007 there were over 280 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa, representing a penetration rate of 30.4%
• Africa has become the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration in the region ranging from 30% to 100% from country to country.
• Fastest growing markets are in Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt
• Increased competition as more operators come online in each country (11 in Nigeria, 4 in Kenya and SA, 3 in Egypt and Morocco)
• Pre-paid subscriptions account for nearly 95 percent of total mobile subscriptions in the region.
• The Democratic Republic of Congo, population 60 million, has 10,000 fixed telephones but more than a million mobile phone subscribers.
• In Chad, the fifth-least developed country, mobile phone usage jumped from 10,000 to 200,000 in three years.

via PICNIC2008

African Innovations in Mobile

A broad look at some of the tech being produced for the mobile industry by the continent...

Micro-payments and Mobile Banking

In Africa, until recently, there's been no easy way for consumers to purchase things other than with cash. Most financial institutions on the continent don't offer credit credit cards, and those that do have trouble finding other institutions that will accept them. This has lead to an incredible amount of innovation in the areas of micro-payments and mobile banking. MPESA by Safaricom (micro-payments) and Wizzit (mobile banking) are examples.

Mobile News Reporting

Because of the lack of basic infrastructure, getting information from one place to another quickly is often extremely difficult. A number of organizations have tackled this problem using Mobile devices. mPedigree offers a way to authenticate pharmaceutical drugs and prescriptions using SMS. Winafrique tackles issues with communication and power by offering wind powered cellular towers. QuestionBox.org collects data from and distributes it to rural areas using a SMS/web/voice platform. Ushahidi allows people to report and geolocate incidents of violence and incident using SMS.

Mobile Application Developers

Kenya's Mobile Planet made news in August when Google announced that they'd be investing in the mobile application start-up. Mobile Planet specializes in the development of wireless voice & data applications for mobile devices in Kenya, with a special focus on SMS-based products and services. Meanwhile, independent developers like Moris Mbetsa have repurposed mobile technology for all sorts of solutions like this anti-theft and tracking system for vehicles.

See also: Social Media in Africa, Part 1

The point of this series is to highlight African contributions to social media and, in turn, reveal how social media is changing Africa.

Things aren't perfect; the continent still suffers from disproportionate amounts of poverty, the vast majority of people remain without reliable electricity and the spread of AIDS claimed about 1.6 million African lives in 2006. Historically, that's all the world has known about Africa - but the facts are changing and other aspects of the continent deserve attention. For one, Africans are embracing the web and all things associated.

The Web Community in Africa

Technology unconferences and Barcamps have sprung up all over the continent, everywhere from Kenya to Nairobi to Madagascar to Uganda and Senegal. Although terrestrial broadband infrastructure is still a problem, VSat has provided internet connectivity in areas that don't even have electricity. There were a number of protests from the continent when Twitter shut down it's international services.

It's no wonder, then, that a number of companies, investors and entrepreneurs have taken a second look at the continent. Google especially seems to have taken an interest in supporting the burgeoning tech renaissance in Africa. They recently agreed to facilitate Barcamp Africa at their world headquarters at GooglePlex in Mountain View, CA, U.S.A. Beyond that, they've launched a blog to document their operations in sub-Saharan Africa and a complimentary forum.

African Social Media Leaders

The three biggest success stories of independent social media projects taking off in Africa are Afrigator (a South African aggregator of African blogs and news), Zoopy (a YouTube/Flickr like service also out of South Africa) and Ushahidi (an SMS crisis reporting and mapping engine from Kenya). All three have drawn international attention which resulted in a major investment for Zoopy and Afrigator's acquisition (ReadWriteWeb's coverage). Meanwhile Ushahidi has successfully raised several rounds of funding after winning the Net² Mashup Compeition prize of $25,000.

Afrigator

Afrigator defines itself as "a social media aggregator and directory built especially for African digital citizens who publish and consume content on the web." They made a big splash in the social media space when Marshall Kirkpatrick reviewed their site here on ReadWriteWeb last year. Afrigator adopted the XFN microformat standard very early on allowing their users to use their blog rolls to import friends. Afrigator makes heavy use of a proprietary filter based on an algorithm that uses page rank, incoming links and the site's overall traffic to determine what's "hot". Afrigator was created by Justin Hartman, Stii Pretorius, Mike Stopforth and Mark Forrester.

Zoopy.com

Zoopy is a South African social media tool created by Jason Elk that allows users to upload videos, podcasts, and pictures and share them on the web. Although, it can be used by anyone, it targets the niche local market of South Africa. Zoopy also uses XFN to import friends from the aforementioned Afrigator. Zoopy recently attended the Web 2.0 Expo 2008 in New York where they showcased their platform.

Ushahidi

Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, was built in the aftermath of the Kenyan 2008 elections. When violence erupted, Erik Hersman, Ory Okolloh, Daudi Were, Segeni Ng'ethe and Juliana Chebet used their collective talents to create Ushahidi, a web app that maps SMS reports of violence by location. Ushahidi relies heavily upon GoogleMaps, which it uses for mapping reports of incidents. It's built on the Zend framework for PHP and uses a number of different protocols for SMS, GPRS and mapping data.

African Social Application Round-Up

Although these three standout applications are the most well-known home grown social media projects from Africans, there are an increasing number of social media websites coming from the continent. Here's a round-up of several. If something gets overlooked, please add it as a comment along with a description.

I've deliberately only included applications that I know were created by people from Africa. In Part Three I'll list social applications created by foreigners and nonprofit groups.

• Muti.co.za (a Digg-like South African news site)
• Sokwanele.com (an SMS/mapping application similar to Ushahidi)
• Amatomou (a South African news and social media aggregator)
• BlogSpirit (a Ugandan blog aggregator based on the open source Gregarious)
• Mzalendo (portal for tracking the actions of Kenya's Parliament)

Top image: whiteafrican