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Africa: off the tech map?

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Re: Africa: off the tech map?

#21

Post by junklight »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #12
junklight wrote: post #2

So yes - the western consumer machine has not penetrated so well. But that does not mean they are not on the map at all - if you saw any of the recent "Africa" season on BBC 4 in the uk it was clear that mobile phone usage is high, there are big cities (like Lagos) with loads going on, film industry, music industry. It all seems a bit chaotic to my western eyes but its clearly vibrant and resourceful and there is a h…

> if you saw any of the recent "Africa" season on BBC 4 in the uk could you pass a long a link for that program? I tried to do a search but nothing relevant came up.

iplayer irritatingly only has stuff on for 6 days after transmission. BBC 4 does repeat their material pretty regularly. It will say on this pages when it does:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s3vdm

(in fact it looks like it was already repeated on BBC 2 from that page but it will come up again).

Would also highly recommend:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/music/features/african-rock.sht...

Fascinating stuff on people like Youssou N'Dour (to pick one of many examples) who have gone back to Africa after western success and are now building Africa labels for African artists.

Re: Africa: off the tech map?

#22

Post by bradhe »

Note that there is a Google data center in Uganda. When I was there a few years ago, uplinks back to the US were incredibly slow; however, any time I wanted to hit Google, it was pretty damn fast (considering it was a 64k shared DSL line that served an entire business park).

Re: Africa: off the tech map?

#23

Post by bradhe »

houseabsolute wrote: post #19

Africa has bigger problems than not being able to influence the future of the internet.

Perhaps if it was able to influence the future of the internet, some of it's other problems would be solved?

I would argue that Africa actually will influence the future of the internet. Considering there's about 15% of the worlds population there, that's over 1 billion potential customers!

Re: Africa: off the tech map?

#24

Post by Maktab »

Africa's an awfully big place to make generalisations about. Some cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town for instance, are near first world in their sophistication and living standards and have well-established tech industries, quite different from the stereotypical villages without running water, electricity or any tech whatsoever.

Making blanket statements and offering one-size-fits-all solutions for the entire continent are as silly as pretending that the US and Western Europe share the same problems and need the same solutions as the poorest corner of Madagascar. The problems Johannesburg faces and the solutions it needs are closer to that of any major Western city and are light years removed from the problems and solutions of your average rural village.

South Africa more than 2 million Facebook users, its own Google search, YouTube, Maps, Street View (launching Tuesday) domains and services, its own Apple AppStore, its start-up industry is growing and has produced at various points the 3rd largest payment processing software supplier and 2nd largest Certificate Authority and Amazon's EC2 was developed mostly at its Development Centre in Cape Town. I recently did some work for a local team that wrote and maintains pretty much the entire software infrastructure for a large British retailer, a product they're now expanding to other international retailers. Not hugely impressive by most standards, I'll admit, but surely its evidence that Africans are definitely on the tech map. And that's not even taking into account the thriving tech communities in places like Kampala and Nairobi or other tech-related industries in Africa.

Point being, I think some of the people commenting missed the point of the article because of their misconception about what Africa is about.

Re: Africa: off the tech map?

#25

Post by Maktab »

maxklein wrote: post #6

One problem may also be this - the links between African countries is weak. For example, if I have an office in Singapore, I am basically covering all of South East Asian very effectively. I can move people and resources across SE Asia from this office. If you have an office in Lagos, your reach is limited to Nigeria, Ghana and a few other West African countries. The link between Nigeria and Cameroun is weak, and Nig…

Great point. For historical reasons, many African countries established better links between themselves and their former Colonial rulers than they did between themselves, with inter-country links being neglected.

Immediately after independence this made sense, as those links back to Europe were already well-established and they were to countries with far higher trading capacities than neighbouring African countries, but in the long-run it retarded the growth of African trading regions and the diversification of industry in many parts of the continent.

Re: Africa: off the tech map?

#26

Post by elblanco »

anamax wrote: post #8

According to Max Seybold (cherrypal), over the years, there have been lots of "bring technology to Africa" efforts which resulted lots of unused equipment. However, it's starting to get used, especially as locals figure out how to make money from it. He tells of one guy who makes a living sending e-mail for his village. During the week, said e-mail is entered into his laptop. He then walks to a bigger town, uploads a…

It's like sending a telegram in the old days.

Re: Africa: off the tech map?

#27

Post by richardw »

tlack wrote: post #17
richardw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty boring by African standards - born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Lived in various parts of the country, visited Zimbabwe, Tanzania (climbing Kilimanjaro), Mozambique (scuba diving), Lesotho (cycling trip). Taste of the kili trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/richard.watson/Kilimanjaro South Africa has really transformed, but still a long way to go. I think the really interesting places are those that are emerg…

How's the tech scene in South Africa? I would imagine it has its share of startups and investors, etc.

Development here is mostly focused around consuming & adding to technology - e.g. CRUD apps, although there is a small population of startups. Cape Town has the Silicon Cape initiative and there are a couple of incubators in other cities, e.g. http://www.theinnovationhub.com/

I have no idea how many developers-in-garages there are. I've watched the Business of Software forum, ASP and a couple others, but haven't sensed many other South Africans (or Africans). There is some interest in the social media area, like Afrigator.com and a few service-oriented companies. During the .com era, there was something called First Tuesday, which mirrored an overseas initiative of the same name. Meetups of ideas/money/services first Tuesday of every month.

In terms of bigger names...hmm. Alon Musk was born here but not sure when he left. Mark Shuttleworth started here. There's a make-a-site-easily company that is doing well but whose name I forget (edit: yola.com), and they're now in California.

Ah - here's an index: http://www.sastartupindex.co.za/

Maybe there's a startup idea in there :) /adds to list

Re: Africa: off the tech map?

#28

Post by richardw »

kilps wrote: post #20
tlack wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's the tech scene in South Africa? I would imagine it has its share of startups and investors, etc.

There is some info at http://www.siliconcape.com/ (Cape Town focused).

I've known about it for ages, but assumed it was very CT-focused so only now really dug into the site and registered. It does look like the go-to place for local startupy types, thanks!
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