O:9:"MagpieRSS":19:{s:6:"parser";i:0;s:12:"current_item";a:0:{}s:5:"items";a:10:{i:0;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:40:"Africans Bloggers Make Noise with Kelele";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/427187234/745";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/745#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:39:58 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:36:"ConferencesIndustry Newsafricakelele";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=745";s:11:"description";s:305:"Kelele was announced to a room of well over two hundred people at BarCamp Africa a few days ago.  It&#8217;s big news as it&#8217;s the first time anyone has attempted to organize a pan-African conference aimed at web 2.0, mobile, and new media.  The date is scheduled for August 13, 2009 which puts [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2326:"<p><center><a href="http://www.kelele.org/"><img src="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/logo-300x107.png" alt="" title="logo" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-746" height="107" width="300"></a></center></p>
<p><a href="http://www.kelele.org/">Kelele</a> was announced to a room of well over <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/maneno/2931877805/">two hundred people</a> at <a href="http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2008/10/18/barcamp-africa/">BarCamp Africa</a> a few days ago.  It&#8217;s big news as it&#8217;s the first time anyone has attempted to organize a pan-African conference aimed at web 2.0, mobile, and new media.  The date is scheduled for August 13, 2009 which puts it nearly a year away but when it comes to organizing conferences of this scale, that&#8217;s no time at all, and it will be here before we realize it!  Here&#8217;s how the organizers describe it:</p>
<p><em>Kelele is an annual African bloggers’ conference held in a different African city each year and run by an organizing committee in that city. Kelele will be held for the first time in August 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.</em></p>
<p>In Europe, America and all around the world events like this are commonplace and happen very frequently.  What Kelele represents, and why it&#8217;s so tremendously positive, is an initiative to launch a homegrown conference that has the world&#8217;s attention.  It&#8217;s not a Barcamp, it&#8217;s not a TED event, it&#8217;s not an O&#8217;Reilly event; this is Africa celebrating Africa&#8217;s contributions to the social web.  While it&#8217;s true that all of the aforementioned events have taken place on African soil, it&#8217;s important for the African continent to do more than just participate with the world development community; it has to contribute.  Kelele is just the sum of many of those contributions and has all the potential to become every bit as influential as conferences like <a href="http://futureofwebapps.com">Future of Web Apps</a> or <a href="http://en.oreilly.com/where2009/">Where 2.0</a>.  </p>
<p>I know I&#8217;m getting ahead of myself here, but I wonder how they&#8217;ll decide what city to hold it in 2010?  <sup>(*ahem* Kampala *wink* *wink*)</sup></p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/427187234" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/745/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/745";}s:7:"summary";s:305:"Kelele was announced to a room of well over two hundred people at BarCamp Africa a few days ago.  It&#8217;s big news as it&#8217;s the first time anyone has attempted to organize a pan-African conference aimed at web 2.0, mobile, and new media.  The date is scheduled for August 13, 2009 which puts [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:2326:"<p><center><a href="http://www.kelele.org/"><img src="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/logo-300x107.png" alt="" title="logo" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-746" height="107" width="300"></a></center></p>
<p><a href="http://www.kelele.org/">Kelele</a> was announced to a room of well over <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/maneno/2931877805/">two hundred people</a> at <a href="http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2008/10/18/barcamp-africa/">BarCamp Africa</a> a few days ago.  It&#8217;s big news as it&#8217;s the first time anyone has attempted to organize a pan-African conference aimed at web 2.0, mobile, and new media.  The date is scheduled for August 13, 2009 which puts it nearly a year away but when it comes to organizing conferences of this scale, that&#8217;s no time at all, and it will be here before we realize it!  Here&#8217;s how the organizers describe it:</p>
<p><em>Kelele is an annual African bloggers’ conference held in a different African city each year and run by an organizing committee in that city. Kelele will be held for the first time in August 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.</em></p>
<p>In Europe, America and all around the world events like this are commonplace and happen very frequently.  What Kelele represents, and why it&#8217;s so tremendously positive, is an initiative to launch a homegrown conference that has the world&#8217;s attention.  It&#8217;s not a Barcamp, it&#8217;s not a TED event, it&#8217;s not an O&#8217;Reilly event; this is Africa celebrating Africa&#8217;s contributions to the social web.  While it&#8217;s true that all of the aforementioned events have taken place on African soil, it&#8217;s important for the African continent to do more than just participate with the world development community; it has to contribute.  Kelele is just the sum of many of those contributions and has all the potential to become every bit as influential as conferences like <a href="http://futureofwebapps.com">Future of Web Apps</a> or <a href="http://en.oreilly.com/where2009/">Where 2.0</a>.  </p>
<p>I know I&#8217;m getting ahead of myself here, but I wonder how they&#8217;ll decide what city to hold it in 2010?  <sup>(*ahem* Kampala *wink* *wink*)</sup></p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/427187234" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:1;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:23:"Spotlight on Sturvs.com";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/426135150/738";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/738#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 20 Oct 2008 06:33:15 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:23:"Startupsbookmarkingdigg";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=738";s:11:"description";s:361:"I had the pleasure of meeting Temi Kolawole at Barcamp Africa in Mountain View last week. He recently launched a web start-up called Sturvs which could be described in short as &#8216;Nigeria&#8217;s answer to Digg.com&#8217;.
The word &#8220;sturvs&#8221; is a nigerian slang for &#8220;stuff&#8221;. So basically this is just a place for you to view and [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:5042:"<p><center><img src="http://www.sturvs.com/templates/yget/images/sturvs_logo.gif"></center></p>
<p>I had the pleasure of meeting Temi Kolawole at Barcamp Africa in Mountain View last week. He recently launched a web start-up called <a href="http://sturvs.com">Sturvs</a> which could be described in short as &#8216;Nigeria&#8217;s answer to Digg.com&#8217;.</p>
<blockquote><p>The word &#8220;sturvs&#8221; is a nigerian slang for &#8220;stuff&#8221;. So basically this is just a place for you to view and share all your internet stuff.</p>
<p>Sturvs.com is a Nigerian web 2.0 sharing and voting website where users can share music, videos, articles, read news and also promote events and services. Sturvs can be used to share and also to store your web resources. If you find a really funny video you want your friends (and the rest of the Sturvs community) to see, all you have to do is post it on the website and watch it rise to the front page of Sturvs. You can also email existing &#8220;sturvs&#8221; to your friends and save them to your web bookmarks.</p>
<p>Users are given the ability to vote on stories submitted by other users, and the &#8220;sturvs&#8221; with the highest votes make it to the front page. This means control is given to you, the user, to decide what makes it to the front page. It&#8217;s a web democracy. For the users, by the users.</p></blockquote>
<p><center><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-3.png"><img src="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-3-300x146.png" alt="" title="picture-3" width="300" height="146" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-742" /></a></center></p>
<p>Sturvs is well executed and goes a step beyond the pack by also offering a Firefox toolbar, Facebook app and various embeddable widgets.  Where Sturvs really sets itself apart is through addition of customizable music playlists featuring contemporary Nigerian music and a few chart toppers from around the world&#8230;</p>
<p><center><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-21.png"><img src="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-21-300x241.png" alt="" title="picture-21" width="300" height="241" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-741" /></a></center></p>
<p>Much like Stacks in Digg&#8217;s Labs, Sturvs also features an Ajax based real-time cascading index of all the latest &#8217;sturvs&#8217; as they come in from various users&#8230; </p>
<p><center><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-1.png"><img src="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-1-300x177.png" alt="" title="picture-1" width="300" height="177" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-740" /></a></center></p>
<p>While it&#8217;s still very early for Sturvs, the potential is enormous.  We&#8217;ve already seen the incredible demand for user generated music playlists when <a href="http://muxtape.com">muxtape.com</a> came and then went.  If Sturvs can build on this aspect of the site, I&#8217;m sure that this feature alone will drive use. </p>
<p>There are a few areas where I feel Sturvs should be focusing on setting itself apart, however.  For instance, voting incrementally on news is a model that was perfected by <a href="http://digg.com">Digg</a>, copied by <a href="http://mixx.com">Mixx</a>, overdone by <a href="http://buzz.yahoo.com">Yahoo</a> and open sourced by <a href="http://reddit.com">Reddit</a>. Even in Africa there&#8217;s already the mildly popular <a href="http://muti.co.za">Muti</a>.  The fact of the matter is, web democratic news is done.  There&#8217;s even a whole CMS dedicated to rolling out sites like this called <a href="http://www.pligg.com/">Pligg</a>. I&#8217;d really like to see some innovation with the UI instead of the typical one vote up one vote down iteration that we&#8217;ve seen time and time again.</p>
<p>Also, despite the success of <a href="http://zoopy.com">Zoopy.com</a>, web video in Africa will never take off until the greater issue of bandwidth is solved continent wide.  While it shouldn&#8217;t be ignored entirely, I wouldn&#8217;t spend too many resources on video unless it&#8217;s in new compression techniques that would make video available to people on low-bandwidth connections (the majority of the connected continent).  Again, that alone would be a huge draw for users.</p>
<p>Ultimately, I&#8217;m certain Sturvs will be a success.  After all, it has the potential to become the premier social news hub for a country with a population numbering just under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population">half of that of the United States</a>!  It&#8217;ll be interesting to see how the site scales up to meet that kind of demand.  One area that I can easily see Sturvs expanding into immediately is mobile. The door is wide open, only the future can show what kind of &#8217;stuff&#8217; Sturvs is made of!</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/426135150" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/738/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/738";}s:7:"summary";s:361:"I had the pleasure of meeting Temi Kolawole at Barcamp Africa in Mountain View last week. He recently launched a web start-up called Sturvs which could be described in short as &#8216;Nigeria&#8217;s answer to Digg.com&#8217;.
The word &#8220;sturvs&#8221; is a nigerian slang for &#8220;stuff&#8221;. So basically this is just a place for you to view and [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:5042:"<p><center><img src="http://www.sturvs.com/templates/yget/images/sturvs_logo.gif"></center></p>
<p>I had the pleasure of meeting Temi Kolawole at Barcamp Africa in Mountain View last week. He recently launched a web start-up called <a href="http://sturvs.com">Sturvs</a> which could be described in short as &#8216;Nigeria&#8217;s answer to Digg.com&#8217;.</p>
<blockquote><p>The word &#8220;sturvs&#8221; is a nigerian slang for &#8220;stuff&#8221;. So basically this is just a place for you to view and share all your internet stuff.</p>
<p>Sturvs.com is a Nigerian web 2.0 sharing and voting website where users can share music, videos, articles, read news and also promote events and services. Sturvs can be used to share and also to store your web resources. If you find a really funny video you want your friends (and the rest of the Sturvs community) to see, all you have to do is post it on the website and watch it rise to the front page of Sturvs. You can also email existing &#8220;sturvs&#8221; to your friends and save them to your web bookmarks.</p>
<p>Users are given the ability to vote on stories submitted by other users, and the &#8220;sturvs&#8221; with the highest votes make it to the front page. This means control is given to you, the user, to decide what makes it to the front page. It&#8217;s a web democracy. For the users, by the users.</p></blockquote>
<p><center><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-3.png"><img src="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-3-300x146.png" alt="" title="picture-3" width="300" height="146" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-742" /></a></center></p>
<p>Sturvs is well executed and goes a step beyond the pack by also offering a Firefox toolbar, Facebook app and various embeddable widgets.  Where Sturvs really sets itself apart is through addition of customizable music playlists featuring contemporary Nigerian music and a few chart toppers from around the world&#8230;</p>
<p><center><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-21.png"><img src="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-21-300x241.png" alt="" title="picture-21" width="300" height="241" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-741" /></a></center></p>
<p>Much like Stacks in Digg&#8217;s Labs, Sturvs also features an Ajax based real-time cascading index of all the latest &#8217;sturvs&#8217; as they come in from various users&#8230; </p>
<p><center><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-1.png"><img src="http://appfrica.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/picture-1-300x177.png" alt="" title="picture-1" width="300" height="177" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-740" /></a></center></p>
<p>While it&#8217;s still very early for Sturvs, the potential is enormous.  We&#8217;ve already seen the incredible demand for user generated music playlists when <a href="http://muxtape.com">muxtape.com</a> came and then went.  If Sturvs can build on this aspect of the site, I&#8217;m sure that this feature alone will drive use. </p>
<p>There are a few areas where I feel Sturvs should be focusing on setting itself apart, however.  For instance, voting incrementally on news is a model that was perfected by <a href="http://digg.com">Digg</a>, copied by <a href="http://mixx.com">Mixx</a>, overdone by <a href="http://buzz.yahoo.com">Yahoo</a> and open sourced by <a href="http://reddit.com">Reddit</a>. Even in Africa there&#8217;s already the mildly popular <a href="http://muti.co.za">Muti</a>.  The fact of the matter is, web democratic news is done.  There&#8217;s even a whole CMS dedicated to rolling out sites like this called <a href="http://www.pligg.com/">Pligg</a>. I&#8217;d really like to see some innovation with the UI instead of the typical one vote up one vote down iteration that we&#8217;ve seen time and time again.</p>
<p>Also, despite the success of <a href="http://zoopy.com">Zoopy.com</a>, web video in Africa will never take off until the greater issue of bandwidth is solved continent wide.  While it shouldn&#8217;t be ignored entirely, I wouldn&#8217;t spend too many resources on video unless it&#8217;s in new compression techniques that would make video available to people on low-bandwidth connections (the majority of the connected continent).  Again, that alone would be a huge draw for users.</p>
<p>Ultimately, I&#8217;m certain Sturvs will be a success.  After all, it has the potential to become the premier social news hub for a country with a population numbering just under <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population">half of that of the United States</a>!  It&#8217;ll be interesting to see how the site scales up to meet that kind of demand.  One area that I can easily see Sturvs expanding into immediately is mobile. The door is wide open, only the future can show what kind of &#8217;stuff&#8217; Sturvs is made of!</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/426135150" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:2;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:41:"This Week in Appfrica [Oct 12 - 18, 2008]";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/425304342/735";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/735#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:34:43 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:15:"TWIAdigestrecap";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=735";s:11:"description";s:349:"&#8220;This Week in Appfrica&#8221; is a weekly digest highlighting articles and stories from the previous week.
Appfrica Archives &#124; Contact &#124; Twitter &#124; Weekly Digest &#124; Subscribe via E-mail
If you thought the blog was quiet this week; it was.  I spent two out of seven days in transit (flying from San Francisco, CA, USA to [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2533:"<p><sup>&#8220;This Week in Appfrica&#8221; is a weekly digest highlighting articles and stories from the previous week.<br />
<a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archive/">Appfrica Archives</a> | <a href="mailto:j.gosier@appfrica.org">Contact</a> | <a href="http://twitter.com/appfrica">Twitter</a> | <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/feed/?cat=266">Weekly Digest</a> | <a href="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=2145932&#038;loc=en_US">Subscribe via E-mail</a></sup></p>
<p>If you thought the blog was quiet this week; it was.  I spent two out of seven days in transit (flying from San Francisco, CA, USA to Entebbe, Uganda) and three out the remaining five at the Social Capital Markets (SoCap08) conference, leaving little time to write.  </p>
<h3><u>News</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/701">&#8220;Bandwidth is the new Oil&#8221;</a><br />
The idea that bandwidth is the new commodity that every nation is clamoring after.</p>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/705">SoCap08 Recap</a><br />
My coverage of what took place at Social Capital Markets in Fort Mason.  I also published my <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/720">notes</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/717">Kenya Prepares for Slowdown in IT spending</a><br />
How is the world economic squeeze affecting East Africa&#8217;s leader?</p>
<h3><u>Editorials</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/713">Niche vs Kitsch vs Reach</a><br />
What&#8217;s driving this new interest from tech companies in social entrepreneurship?</p>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/731">Neo Pan-Africanism and the Reaspora</a><br />
Defining a new age in pro-African enthusiasm.</p>
<h3><u>From the Archives</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/211">Moving from Prepay to Subscription</a><br />
Looking at the biggest hinderance to scaling in African markets.</p>
<h3><u>Links to Appfrica</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://socialcapitalmarkets.net/blog/2008/10/socap08-blog-round-up/">Social Capital Markets</a> linked back to my coverage of the conference.<br />
GigaOM&#8217;s <a href="http://www.jonlowder.com/2008/10/blog-action-day.html">WebWorkerDaily</a> nodded to my efforts with Appfrica Labs.<br />
Google&#8217;s <a href="http://google-africa.blogspot.com/2008/10/barcamp-africa.html">East Africa Blog</a> linked back mentioning my participation in BarcampAfrica.</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/425304342" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/735/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/735";}s:7:"summary";s:349:"&#8220;This Week in Appfrica&#8221; is a weekly digest highlighting articles and stories from the previous week.
Appfrica Archives &#124; Contact &#124; Twitter &#124; Weekly Digest &#124; Subscribe via E-mail
If you thought the blog was quiet this week; it was.  I spent two out of seven days in transit (flying from San Francisco, CA, USA to [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:2533:"<p><sup>&#8220;This Week in Appfrica&#8221; is a weekly digest highlighting articles and stories from the previous week.<br />
<a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archive/">Appfrica Archives</a> | <a href="mailto:j.gosier@appfrica.org">Contact</a> | <a href="http://twitter.com/appfrica">Twitter</a> | <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/feed/?cat=266">Weekly Digest</a> | <a href="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=2145932&#038;loc=en_US">Subscribe via E-mail</a></sup></p>
<p>If you thought the blog was quiet this week; it was.  I spent two out of seven days in transit (flying from San Francisco, CA, USA to Entebbe, Uganda) and three out the remaining five at the Social Capital Markets (SoCap08) conference, leaving little time to write.  </p>
<h3><u>News</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/701">&#8220;Bandwidth is the new Oil&#8221;</a><br />
The idea that bandwidth is the new commodity that every nation is clamoring after.</p>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/705">SoCap08 Recap</a><br />
My coverage of what took place at Social Capital Markets in Fort Mason.  I also published my <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/720">notes</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/717">Kenya Prepares for Slowdown in IT spending</a><br />
How is the world economic squeeze affecting East Africa&#8217;s leader?</p>
<h3><u>Editorials</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/713">Niche vs Kitsch vs Reach</a><br />
What&#8217;s driving this new interest from tech companies in social entrepreneurship?</p>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/731">Neo Pan-Africanism and the Reaspora</a><br />
Defining a new age in pro-African enthusiasm.</p>
<h3><u>From the Archives</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/211">Moving from Prepay to Subscription</a><br />
Looking at the biggest hinderance to scaling in African markets.</p>
<h3><u>Links to Appfrica</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://socialcapitalmarkets.net/blog/2008/10/socap08-blog-round-up/">Social Capital Markets</a> linked back to my coverage of the conference.<br />
GigaOM&#8217;s <a href="http://www.jonlowder.com/2008/10/blog-action-day.html">WebWorkerDaily</a> nodded to my efforts with Appfrica Labs.<br />
Google&#8217;s <a href="http://google-africa.blogspot.com/2008/10/barcamp-africa.html">East Africa Blog</a> linked back mentioning my participation in BarcampAfrica.</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/425304342" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:3;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:35:"Neo Pan-Africanism and the Reaspora";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/425028882/731";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/731#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:43:16 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:30:"Editorialbarcampafricareaspora";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=731";s:11:"description";s:359:"When many people around the globe hear expressions like &#8216;Africa for Africans&#8217; and &#8216;Pan-Africanism&#8217;, they tend to associate it with the more militant movements of decades past.  But there&#8217;s a new meme forming that I like to call Neo Pan-Africanism, the idea that Africa&#8217;s peoples have to take a more active role in the [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3114:"<p>When many people around the globe hear expressions like &#8216;Africa for Africans&#8217; and &#8216;Pan-Africanism&#8217;, they tend to associate it with the more militant movements of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_African">decades past</a>.  But there&#8217;s a new meme forming that I like to call <em>Neo Pan-Africanism</em>, the idea that Africa&#8217;s peoples have to take a more active role in the continent&#8217;s future because history has proven that foreign nations and domestic leaders often fail to have her best interests in mind.  </p>
<p>It&#8217;s a philosophy that people like Andrew Mwenda speak of in reaction to <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/403">many years of misspent aid</a>, poor leadership and absent accountability in African governments.  &#8216;Trade not Aid&#8217; is a common catchphrase used to describe the movement.  Why? For one, trade directly supports the middle class and promotes entrepreneurship.  Meanwhile, developmental aid is often accused of undermining both and allows foreign nations to manipulate the policy decisions of African governments.  To have a healthy democracy the faucet that turns money on and off can&#8217;t be solely administrative, that&#8217;s more limiting to a prosperous middle class than anything else (look at Russia and China). Regardless of how foreigners feel, it seems to be mainly Africans themselves who are advocating the later idea.  People here are sick of seeing their leaders profiting at their expense and they&#8217;re sick of being seen as a continent of beggars when more often than not it&#8217;s those same governments leading the charge to ask for more.</p>
<p>The fact that people are fed up is a good thing.  It means things are changing for the better. </p>
<p>At <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/tag/barcampafrica">Barcamp Africa</a> a phrase was tossed about quite a bit referring to the trending of African expatriates returning back home to use their skills and money to better the continent.  This idea of a <em>reaspora</em> is directly associated to neo Pan-Africanism.  No one understands the region like Africans do and no one is inclined to help the region more than Africans.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s important, though, to make a distinction.  Neo Pan-Africanism is a call for social responsibility by Africans to other Africans of the diaspora.  In most cases it has nothing to do with foreigners.  It&#8217;s not about kicking anyone out of the continent or persecuting people for what their ancestors did, it&#8217;s about people from the continent making sure they are most responsible and accountable for it&#8217;s successes and failures.  In other words, by definition it&#8217;s positive and progressive.  In fact, in a perfect world foreign nations would benefit even more from this idea as it would enable the world at large to participate more with the continent; allowing them to share Africa&#8217;s resources and enjoy it&#8217;s incredibly diverse cultures and traditions.</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/425028882" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/731/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/731";}s:7:"summary";s:359:"When many people around the globe hear expressions like &#8216;Africa for Africans&#8217; and &#8216;Pan-Africanism&#8217;, they tend to associate it with the more militant movements of decades past.  But there&#8217;s a new meme forming that I like to call Neo Pan-Africanism, the idea that Africa&#8217;s peoples have to take a more active role in the [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:3114:"<p>When many people around the globe hear expressions like &#8216;Africa for Africans&#8217; and &#8216;Pan-Africanism&#8217;, they tend to associate it with the more militant movements of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_African">decades past</a>.  But there&#8217;s a new meme forming that I like to call <em>Neo Pan-Africanism</em>, the idea that Africa&#8217;s peoples have to take a more active role in the continent&#8217;s future because history has proven that foreign nations and domestic leaders often fail to have her best interests in mind.  </p>
<p>It&#8217;s a philosophy that people like Andrew Mwenda speak of in reaction to <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/403">many years of misspent aid</a>, poor leadership and absent accountability in African governments.  &#8216;Trade not Aid&#8217; is a common catchphrase used to describe the movement.  Why? For one, trade directly supports the middle class and promotes entrepreneurship.  Meanwhile, developmental aid is often accused of undermining both and allows foreign nations to manipulate the policy decisions of African governments.  To have a healthy democracy the faucet that turns money on and off can&#8217;t be solely administrative, that&#8217;s more limiting to a prosperous middle class than anything else (look at Russia and China). Regardless of how foreigners feel, it seems to be mainly Africans themselves who are advocating the later idea.  People here are sick of seeing their leaders profiting at their expense and they&#8217;re sick of being seen as a continent of beggars when more often than not it&#8217;s those same governments leading the charge to ask for more.</p>
<p>The fact that people are fed up is a good thing.  It means things are changing for the better. </p>
<p>At <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/tag/barcampafrica">Barcamp Africa</a> a phrase was tossed about quite a bit referring to the trending of African expatriates returning back home to use their skills and money to better the continent.  This idea of a <em>reaspora</em> is directly associated to neo Pan-Africanism.  No one understands the region like Africans do and no one is inclined to help the region more than Africans.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s important, though, to make a distinction.  Neo Pan-Africanism is a call for social responsibility by Africans to other Africans of the diaspora.  In most cases it has nothing to do with foreigners.  It&#8217;s not about kicking anyone out of the continent or persecuting people for what their ancestors did, it&#8217;s about people from the continent making sure they are most responsible and accountable for it&#8217;s successes and failures.  In other words, by definition it&#8217;s positive and progressive.  In fact, in a perfect world foreign nations would benefit even more from this idea as it would enable the world at large to participate more with the continent; allowing them to share Africa&#8217;s resources and enjoy it&#8217;s incredibly diverse cultures and traditions.</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/425028882" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:4;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:24:"Niche vs Kitsch vs Reach";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/422973775/713";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/713#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:31:01 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:16:"Startupsbusiness";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=713";s:11:"description";s:345:"Being back in the Valley revealed several trends of the tech community when it comes to their motivations for social change initiatives.  The title of this post lays them all out from my perspective&#8230;

Niche-driven
Companies that are trying to segment out a very vertical slice of the market or technology so as to differentiate their [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2569:"<p>Being back in the Valley revealed several trends of the tech community when it comes to their motivations for social change initiatives.  The title of this post lays them all out from my perspective&#8230;</p>
<p><center><img src="http://www.fitbit.com/images/home/wear.png"></center></p>
<p><strong>Niche-driven</strong><br />
Companies that are trying to segment out a very vertical slice of the market or technology so as to differentiate their brand. They might be the best at what they do, but they also may not be the biggest in the market.  Usually the market determines whether or not they remain niche. For example groups like <a href="http://www.fitbit.com/">Fitbit</a> (weight loss), <a href="http://www.ideo.com/">IDEO</a> (social impact through design) and <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/14/innovalight-rakes-in-5m-for-solar-cell-ink/">InnovaLight</a> (Clean energy) are successful start-ups targeting niche aspects of old problems.</p>
<p><strong>Kitsch-driven</strong><br />
Companies that are eying social entrepreneurship or responsibility as a way to validate something (their service or product) among a certain group (&#8217;people who <em>care</em> about a particular cause&#8217;).  In other words, they want to appear to be socially responsible more than they probably want to actually be socially responsible.  <a href="http://ning.com">Ning</a> often bills itself as an empowering tool for non-profits and community groups.  That may be true, but that&#8217;s clearly not the focus of the company.  Rather their real focus is simplifying the process of creating small social networks&#8230;.for any group with almost any motive.</p>
<p><strong>Reach-driven</strong><br />
These tech companies have identified a problem and are attempting to solve it by reaching the most people possible, to have the maximum impact as a solution for an identified problem. This means their efforts are often easily quantifiable (clear goal equals clear results).  I&#8217;d say that <a href="http://kiva.org">Kiva</a> (MFIs), <a href="http://laptop.org">OLPC</a> (low-cost computing) and <a href="http://frontlinesms.org">FrontlineSMS</a> (emergency messaging) are good examples from various groups that are fundamentally maximizing reach. </p>
<p>Certainly many groups are a little bit of all three but of the groups I learned about this week at <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/705">SoCap08</a>, they can all be put into one of these categories.</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/422973775" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/713/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/713";}s:7:"summary";s:345:"Being back in the Valley revealed several trends of the tech community when it comes to their motivations for social change initiatives.  The title of this post lays them all out from my perspective&#8230;

Niche-driven
Companies that are trying to segment out a very vertical slice of the market or technology so as to differentiate their [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:2569:"<p>Being back in the Valley revealed several trends of the tech community when it comes to their motivations for social change initiatives.  The title of this post lays them all out from my perspective&#8230;</p>
<p><center><img src="http://www.fitbit.com/images/home/wear.png"></center></p>
<p><strong>Niche-driven</strong><br />
Companies that are trying to segment out a very vertical slice of the market or technology so as to differentiate their brand. They might be the best at what they do, but they also may not be the biggest in the market.  Usually the market determines whether or not they remain niche. For example groups like <a href="http://www.fitbit.com/">Fitbit</a> (weight loss), <a href="http://www.ideo.com/">IDEO</a> (social impact through design) and <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/14/innovalight-rakes-in-5m-for-solar-cell-ink/">InnovaLight</a> (Clean energy) are successful start-ups targeting niche aspects of old problems.</p>
<p><strong>Kitsch-driven</strong><br />
Companies that are eying social entrepreneurship or responsibility as a way to validate something (their service or product) among a certain group (&#8217;people who <em>care</em> about a particular cause&#8217;).  In other words, they want to appear to be socially responsible more than they probably want to actually be socially responsible.  <a href="http://ning.com">Ning</a> often bills itself as an empowering tool for non-profits and community groups.  That may be true, but that&#8217;s clearly not the focus of the company.  Rather their real focus is simplifying the process of creating small social networks&#8230;.for any group with almost any motive.</p>
<p><strong>Reach-driven</strong><br />
These tech companies have identified a problem and are attempting to solve it by reaching the most people possible, to have the maximum impact as a solution for an identified problem. This means their efforts are often easily quantifiable (clear goal equals clear results).  I&#8217;d say that <a href="http://kiva.org">Kiva</a> (MFIs), <a href="http://laptop.org">OLPC</a> (low-cost computing) and <a href="http://frontlinesms.org">FrontlineSMS</a> (emergency messaging) are good examples from various groups that are fundamentally maximizing reach. </p>
<p>Certainly many groups are a little bit of all three but of the groups I learned about this week at <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/705">SoCap08</a>, they can all be put into one of these categories.</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/422973775" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:5;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:13:"SoCap08 Notes";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/422596549/720";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/720#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:08:10 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:18:"Conferencessocap08";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=720";s:11:"description";s:304:"Panels covered include &#8220;Pitching Your Social Enterprise&#8221;, &#8220;West African SME&#8217;s&#8221;, &#8220;New African Capital&#8221;, &#8220;Money and Meaning&#8221; and &#8220;Building a Business Plan&#8221;
SoCap08 Notes
View SlideShare document or Upload your own. (tags: socap08 social)


";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:1770:"<p>Panels covered include &#8220;Pitching Your Social Enterprise&#8221;, &#8220;West African SME&#8217;s&#8221;, &#8220;New African Capital&#8221;, &#8220;Money and Meaning&#8221; and &#8220;Building a Business Plan&#8221;</p>
<div style="width:477px;text-align:left" id="__ss_662192"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/Appfrica/socap08-notes-presentation?type=document" title="SoCap08 Notes">SoCap08 Notes</a><object style="margin:0px" width="477" height="510"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayerd.swf?doc=socap08notes-1224158556765342-8&#038;stripped_title=socap08-notes-presentation" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayerd.swf?doc=socap08notes-1224158556765342-8&#038;stripped_title=socap08-notes-presentation" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="477" height="510"></embed></object>
<div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View SlideShare <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/Appfrica/socap08-notes-presentation?type=document" title="View SoCap08 Notes on SlideShare">document</a> or <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/upload?type=document">Upload</a> your own. (tags: <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/socap08">socap08</a> <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/social">social</a>)</div>
</div>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/422596549" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/720/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/720";}s:7:"summary";s:304:"Panels covered include &#8220;Pitching Your Social Enterprise&#8221;, &#8220;West African SME&#8217;s&#8221;, &#8220;New African Capital&#8221;, &#8220;Money and Meaning&#8221; and &#8220;Building a Business Plan&#8221;
SoCap08 Notes
View SlideShare document or Upload your own. (tags: socap08 social)


";s:12:"atom_content";s:1770:"<p>Panels covered include &#8220;Pitching Your Social Enterprise&#8221;, &#8220;West African SME&#8217;s&#8221;, &#8220;New African Capital&#8221;, &#8220;Money and Meaning&#8221; and &#8220;Building a Business Plan&#8221;</p>
<div style="width:477px;text-align:left" id="__ss_662192"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/Appfrica/socap08-notes-presentation?type=document" title="SoCap08 Notes">SoCap08 Notes</a><object style="margin:0px" width="477" height="510"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayerd.swf?doc=socap08notes-1224158556765342-8&#038;stripped_title=socap08-notes-presentation" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayerd.swf?doc=socap08notes-1224158556765342-8&#038;stripped_title=socap08-notes-presentation" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="477" height="510"></embed></object>
<div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View SlideShare <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/Appfrica/socap08-notes-presentation?type=document" title="View SoCap08 Notes on SlideShare">document</a> or <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/upload?type=document">Upload</a> your own. (tags: <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/socap08">socap08</a> <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/social">social</a>)</div>
</div>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/422596549" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:6;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:36:"Kenyan IT Sector Braces for Slowdown";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/422479893/717";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/717#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:39:31 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:18:"Industry Newskenya";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=717";s:11:"description";s:366:"How is the world economic &#8217;slowdown&#8217; affecting Africa?  In Kenya it&#8217;s hitting the IT sector hard:
Kenyan Technology firms are bracing for a period of reduced spending on solutions as the global economic crisis continues to claim more casualties among financial firms, who are often the biggest spenders on IT.
In a report today Business Daily [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:1030:"<p>How is the world economic &#8217;slowdown&#8217; affecting Africa?  In Kenya it&#8217;s hitting the IT sector hard:</p>
<blockquote><p>Kenyan Technology firms are bracing for a period of reduced spending on solutions as the global economic crisis continues to claim more casualties among financial firms, who are often the biggest spenders on IT.</p>
<p>In a report today Business Daily Africa said the sector which is often touted as the most efficient method to improve business processes and increase efficiency, companies around the world and in Kenya have been allocating increasing portions of their budgets to IT.</p>
<p>But results released by a number of companies in the sector reveal the downturn is having an impact on IT spend. &#8220;The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Via <a href="http://www.itnewsafrica.com/?p=1469">ITNA</a></p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/422479893" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/717/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/717";}s:7:"summary";s:366:"How is the world economic &#8217;slowdown&#8217; affecting Africa?  In Kenya it&#8217;s hitting the IT sector hard:
Kenyan Technology firms are bracing for a period of reduced spending on solutions as the global economic crisis continues to claim more casualties among financial firms, who are often the biggest spenders on IT.
In a report today Business Daily [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:1030:"<p>How is the world economic &#8217;slowdown&#8217; affecting Africa?  In Kenya it&#8217;s hitting the IT sector hard:</p>
<blockquote><p>Kenyan Technology firms are bracing for a period of reduced spending on solutions as the global economic crisis continues to claim more casualties among financial firms, who are often the biggest spenders on IT.</p>
<p>In a report today Business Daily Africa said the sector which is often touted as the most efficient method to improve business processes and increase efficiency, companies around the world and in Kenya have been allocating increasing portions of their budgets to IT.</p>
<p>But results released by a number of companies in the sector reveal the downturn is having an impact on IT spend. &#8220;The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Via <a href="http://www.itnewsafrica.com/?p=1469">ITNA</a></p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/422479893" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:7;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:42:"SoCap08: Investing in Social Entrepreneurs";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/422276539/705";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/705#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:40:31 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:31:"Conferencesbarcampafricasocap08";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=705";s:11:"description";s:287:"When Google flew me in to represent Appfrica.org at Barcamp Africa I could never have known how much the trip would actually impact my work.  There was a lot of one degree of separation going on while I was in the Bay area.  For instance, I met my business partners in Question Box [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:6446:"<p><center><img src="http://socialcapitalmarkets.net/images/logo-sm.gif"></center></p>
<p>When Google flew me in to represent Appfrica.org at Barcamp Africa I could never have known how much the trip would actually impact my work.  There was a lot of one degree of separation going on while I was in the Bay area.  For instance, I met my business partners in Question Box (Rose Shuman and Ken Banks) for the first time face to face at SoCap.  I met Lila from <a href="http://samasource.org/">Samasource</a> and Emykah from <a href="http://ted.com">TED</a> for the first time after having had conversations with them both via email.   One of the big highlights was finally meeting Nathaniel Whitmore of <a href="http://assetmap.org">Assetmap.org</a>.  I also met six people from six unrelated groups that were all headed to Uganda in the next three weeks!</p>
<p>The fact of the matter Social Entrepreneurship is an incredibly small space with few influential people all sort of defining the conversation.  When you talk about investors that circle gets even smaller.</p>
<p>Ironically Barcamp Africa and SoCap08 (Social Capital Markets 2008) happened only a few days apart and I ran into many of the same faces at both.  This was good.  The general feeling at BCA (which was one day) is that it could have used one more day while the general feeling at SoCap08 (three days) was that it could have used more &#8216;unconferencing&#8217; and less lectures from keynotes.  So a mash-up of the two event-styles would have been perfect.</p>
<p>My observations of what people were interested in at SoCap from various conversations and eavesdropping:</p>
<ul>
<li>Are African tech ventures profitable?</li>
<li>Why is there so much attention on Africa?</li>
<li>What is China&#8217;s stance on Social Entrepreneurship?</li>
<li>Legal loopholes of being a for-profit social enterprise.</li>
<li>Raising money as a social enterprise.</li>
<li>Social investment exit strategies.</li>
</ul>
<p>One very interesting conversation panel I attended about Diversity and Inclusion in Social Capital  literally had a woman (Caucasian) bluntly ask the following:  &#8220;Why are there so many white people here talking to other white people?&#8221;</p>
<p>Her point was that Social Investors and Entrepreneurs run a real risk of making the same mistake a number of development organizations have made for years.  There&#8217;s the potential to unintentionally (or intentionally for that matter) exclude the people who&#8217;s problems you&#8217;re attempting to solve from working with &#8216;the problem solvers&#8217;.  When this happens there isn&#8217;t much distinction between social ventures and colonial movements of the past.  One of the ideas that came out of the following conversation was to make an effort next year to find social entrepreneurs from around the globe and sponsor their attendance next year.  Despite the question I felt SoCap08 was actually quite diverse with a number of interesting social entrepreneurs represented from Beirut to Brazil.</p>
<p>Another interesting panel was Peter Kaminski&#8217;s &#8216;Social Media for Social Entrepreneurs&#8217; which had a lot of talk about how to avoid overwhelming non-early adopters with too much information.  Amy Benziger made some interesting points about aggregating an entire brand on the web versus filtering and delivering only relevant bits to the right people.  Someone else made the point to say a lot of groups don&#8217;t engage social media because it&#8217;s a never ending conversation that they don&#8217;t know how to &#8216;get out of&#8217;.  For those people and groups, that inability to control a conversation is intimidating.</p>
<p>The most relevant panel to what I&#8217;m trying to do with Appfrica Labs was &#8216;New African Capital&#8217; which featured Modibo Camara, Samuel Alemayehu, and Jo-ann Pohl.   Jo-Ann talked about the adverse affects of ineffective social ventures, &#8220;You&#8217;ve got a willing bodies that have a feel good factor but not enough being effective.&#8221; <sup>[<a href="http://twitter.com/appfrica/statuses/959720660">t</a>]</sup> She went on to frame a key difference in business thinking in the region, &#8220;Africa is community driven&#8230;you&#8217;re only as good as your network and your networks network.&#8221; <sup>[<a href="http://twitter.com/appfrica/statuses/959721663">t</a>]</sup> Samuel specifically works in the VC, angel investor, incubator and technology space and advocated that there needs to be more initiatives in Africa by African as well as foreign investors.  </p>
<p>Like most conferences, the best&#8230;most valuable information often came from casual conversations with other attendees.  I met the founder of two technology incubators, one in Beirut and the other in Bangladesh who had particular insight in operating such ventures in non-traditional, high-risk emerging markets.  Rose Shuman did a remarkable job framing our project Question Box for people and found some potential partners.  She and I brainstormed on the idea of using a custom version of Afridex as a CRM for all the business cards we&#8217;ve collected.  We&#8217;ll hire one of the Appfrica Lab participants to do the data entry if they&#8217;re interested in doing it.  If anyone who attended SoCap would like to offer up their contacts I&#8217;ll be happy to give you access as well.  </p>
<p>Lastly, I increased my client/partner network by 200%.  A number of groups are interested in having either me or Appfrica Labs pick up their excess overflow work in web application development.  To be frank, I&#8217;m boot-strapping a start-up company in Uganda and so all of this work is invaluable.  It&#8217;s directly impacting how effective I am on the ground and people are starting to stand that I&#8217;m asking for donations&#8230;.I&#8217;m raising seed capital one way or another (through investments or work).</p>
<p>Also, I should mention that this, for me, was largely a lesson in how to present and how to sell my ideas more effectively.  When you&#8217;re sitting at a table with the deal-makers, people who command thousands (if not millions) of dollars, there&#8217;s an art to making them listen to you.  So if it&#8217;s an art, I&#8217;m still drawing stick figures but it was great to be sitting next to the Rembrandts!</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/422276539" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/705/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/705";}s:7:"summary";s:287:"When Google flew me in to represent Appfrica.org at Barcamp Africa I could never have known how much the trip would actually impact my work.  There was a lot of one degree of separation going on while I was in the Bay area.  For instance, I met my business partners in Question Box [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:6446:"<p><center><img src="http://socialcapitalmarkets.net/images/logo-sm.gif"></center></p>
<p>When Google flew me in to represent Appfrica.org at Barcamp Africa I could never have known how much the trip would actually impact my work.  There was a lot of one degree of separation going on while I was in the Bay area.  For instance, I met my business partners in Question Box (Rose Shuman and Ken Banks) for the first time face to face at SoCap.  I met Lila from <a href="http://samasource.org/">Samasource</a> and Emykah from <a href="http://ted.com">TED</a> for the first time after having had conversations with them both via email.   One of the big highlights was finally meeting Nathaniel Whitmore of <a href="http://assetmap.org">Assetmap.org</a>.  I also met six people from six unrelated groups that were all headed to Uganda in the next three weeks!</p>
<p>The fact of the matter Social Entrepreneurship is an incredibly small space with few influential people all sort of defining the conversation.  When you talk about investors that circle gets even smaller.</p>
<p>Ironically Barcamp Africa and SoCap08 (Social Capital Markets 2008) happened only a few days apart and I ran into many of the same faces at both.  This was good.  The general feeling at BCA (which was one day) is that it could have used one more day while the general feeling at SoCap08 (three days) was that it could have used more &#8216;unconferencing&#8217; and less lectures from keynotes.  So a mash-up of the two event-styles would have been perfect.</p>
<p>My observations of what people were interested in at SoCap from various conversations and eavesdropping:</p>
<ul>
<li>Are African tech ventures profitable?</li>
<li>Why is there so much attention on Africa?</li>
<li>What is China&#8217;s stance on Social Entrepreneurship?</li>
<li>Legal loopholes of being a for-profit social enterprise.</li>
<li>Raising money as a social enterprise.</li>
<li>Social investment exit strategies.</li>
</ul>
<p>One very interesting conversation panel I attended about Diversity and Inclusion in Social Capital  literally had a woman (Caucasian) bluntly ask the following:  &#8220;Why are there so many white people here talking to other white people?&#8221;</p>
<p>Her point was that Social Investors and Entrepreneurs run a real risk of making the same mistake a number of development organizations have made for years.  There&#8217;s the potential to unintentionally (or intentionally for that matter) exclude the people who&#8217;s problems you&#8217;re attempting to solve from working with &#8216;the problem solvers&#8217;.  When this happens there isn&#8217;t much distinction between social ventures and colonial movements of the past.  One of the ideas that came out of the following conversation was to make an effort next year to find social entrepreneurs from around the globe and sponsor their attendance next year.  Despite the question I felt SoCap08 was actually quite diverse with a number of interesting social entrepreneurs represented from Beirut to Brazil.</p>
<p>Another interesting panel was Peter Kaminski&#8217;s &#8216;Social Media for Social Entrepreneurs&#8217; which had a lot of talk about how to avoid overwhelming non-early adopters with too much information.  Amy Benziger made some interesting points about aggregating an entire brand on the web versus filtering and delivering only relevant bits to the right people.  Someone else made the point to say a lot of groups don&#8217;t engage social media because it&#8217;s a never ending conversation that they don&#8217;t know how to &#8216;get out of&#8217;.  For those people and groups, that inability to control a conversation is intimidating.</p>
<p>The most relevant panel to what I&#8217;m trying to do with Appfrica Labs was &#8216;New African Capital&#8217; which featured Modibo Camara, Samuel Alemayehu, and Jo-ann Pohl.   Jo-Ann talked about the adverse affects of ineffective social ventures, &#8220;You&#8217;ve got a willing bodies that have a feel good factor but not enough being effective.&#8221; <sup>[<a href="http://twitter.com/appfrica/statuses/959720660">t</a>]</sup> She went on to frame a key difference in business thinking in the region, &#8220;Africa is community driven&#8230;you&#8217;re only as good as your network and your networks network.&#8221; <sup>[<a href="http://twitter.com/appfrica/statuses/959721663">t</a>]</sup> Samuel specifically works in the VC, angel investor, incubator and technology space and advocated that there needs to be more initiatives in Africa by African as well as foreign investors.  </p>
<p>Like most conferences, the best&#8230;most valuable information often came from casual conversations with other attendees.  I met the founder of two technology incubators, one in Beirut and the other in Bangladesh who had particular insight in operating such ventures in non-traditional, high-risk emerging markets.  Rose Shuman did a remarkable job framing our project Question Box for people and found some potential partners.  She and I brainstormed on the idea of using a custom version of Afridex as a CRM for all the business cards we&#8217;ve collected.  We&#8217;ll hire one of the Appfrica Lab participants to do the data entry if they&#8217;re interested in doing it.  If anyone who attended SoCap would like to offer up their contacts I&#8217;ll be happy to give you access as well.  </p>
<p>Lastly, I increased my client/partner network by 200%.  A number of groups are interested in having either me or Appfrica Labs pick up their excess overflow work in web application development.  To be frank, I&#8217;m boot-strapping a start-up company in Uganda and so all of this work is invaluable.  It&#8217;s directly impacting how effective I am on the ground and people are starting to stand that I&#8217;m asking for donations&#8230;.I&#8217;m raising seed capital one way or another (through investments or work).</p>
<p>Also, I should mention that this, for me, was largely a lesson in how to present and how to sell my ideas more effectively.  When you&#8217;re sitting at a table with the deal-makers, people who command thousands (if not millions) of dollars, there&#8217;s an art to making them listen to you.  So if it&#8217;s an art, I&#8217;m still drawing stick figures but it was great to be sitting next to the Rembrandts!</p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/422276539" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:8;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:31:"“Bandwidth is the new oil.”";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/419481733/701";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/701#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:31:28 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:20:"Notesbandwidthquotes";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=701";s:11:"description";s:336:"AMERICANS today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.
Just as the industrial revolution depended on [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:754:"<blockquote><p>AMERICANS today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.</p>
<p>Just as the industrial revolution depended on oil and other energy sources, the information revolution is fueled by bandwidth. If we aren’t careful, we’re going to repeat the history of the oil industry by creating a bandwidth cartel.</p></blockquote>
<p>- Tim Wu of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/opinion/30wu.html">New York Times</a></p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/419481733" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/701/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/701";}s:7:"summary";s:336:"AMERICANS today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.
Just as the industrial revolution depended on [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:754:"<blockquote><p>AMERICANS today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.</p>
<p>Just as the industrial revolution depended on oil and other energy sources, the information revolution is fueled by bandwidth. If we aren’t careful, we’re going to repeat the history of the oil industry by creating a bandwidth cartel.</p></blockquote>
<p>- Tim Wu of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/opinion/30wu.html">New York Times</a></p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/419481733" height="1" width="1"/>";}i:9;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:40:"This Week in Appfrica [Oct 5 - 11, 2008]";s:4:"link";s:56:"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~3/418759600/698";s:8:"comments";s:46:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/698#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Sun, 12 Oct 2008 18:10:47 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:3:"Jon";}s:8:"category";s:28:"TWIAbarcampafricamtntwia rww";s:4:"guid";s:31:"http://appfrica.net/blog/?p=698";s:11:"description";s:372:"&#8220;This Week in Appfrica&#8221; is a weekly digest highlighting articles and stories from the previous week.
Appfrica Archives &#124; Contact &#124; Twitter &#124; Weekly Digest &#124; Subscribe via E-mail
The bid news in African tech this week was all the conferences going on.  Mobile Active, Barcamp Jozi and of course Barcamp Africa at Google Headquarters in [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3181:"<p><sup>&#8220;This Week in Appfrica&#8221; is a weekly digest highlighting articles and stories from the previous week.<br />
<a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archive/">Appfrica Archives</a> | <a href="mailto:j.gosier@appfrica.org">Contact</a> | <a href="http://twitter.com/appfrica">Twitter</a> | <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/feed/?cat=266">Weekly Digest</a> | <a href="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=2145932&#038;loc=en_US">Subscribe via E-mail</a></sup></p>
<p>The bid news in African tech this week was all the conferences going on.  <a href="http://mobileactive.org/">Mobile Active</a>, <a href="http://barcamp.org/BarCampJohannesburg">Barcamp Jozi</a> and of course <a href="http://barcampafrica.com/">Barcamp Africa</a> at Google Headquarters in the U.S.A all took place on the same day and were big successes.  Thanks to Google&#8217;s flying me in and putting me up, I was able to attend Barcamp Africa which turned out to be really productive.  Hopefully the attention doesn&#8217;t dissipate after it&#8217;s over.  I met some very interesting people from Google and Google.org who really validated my work with Appfrica.  The highlight for me was finally meeting Ken Banks (FrontlineSMS) and David Kobia (Ushahidi).</p>
<h3><u>News</u></h3>
<p><img src="http://admin.chasnote.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/rww-popurls.png" style="width:500px;"></p>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/633">Appfrica on ReadWriteWeb</a><br />
Recently, I was in touch with the staff of ReadWriteWeb (one of the most popular technology blogs in the world with 231,000+ daily readers) and I was asked to write a three part essay on the state of social media and web development in Africa. In some way it’s only fitting that RWW devote more attention to Africa. According to Alexa.com South Africa brings them 3.2% of their readers right after the U.K. (5.6%), India (6.7%), Germany (7.3%) and the U.S. (45.2%).</p>
<h3><u>Interviews</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/636">Interview With Erik van Veen</a><br />
Erik van Veen is the Chief Commercial Officer of MTN Uganda. When it comes to corporate executives, he just might also be one of the most approachable, down-to-earth people ever.</p>
<h3><u>Editorials</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/666">Building an Army With Thumb Drives</a><br />
I&#8217;ve been installing DamnSmallLinux and LAMP on Usb sticks so Ugandan students can work on web apps outside of school</p>
<h3><u>From the Archives</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/326">The Costs of Doing Business in Africa</a><br />
How much capital does a social entrepreneur need to start-up in Africa?</p>
<h3><u>Links to Appfrica</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/socap08_entrepreneur_profiles_jonathan_gosier">Change.org Profile on Jon Gosier</a><br />
<a href="http://www.hudin.com/blog/mobile_tech_at_the_africa_bar_camp/">Hudin Blogs about Barcamp Africa</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/778690">Video of Barcamp Africa</a></p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/418759600" height="1" width="1"/>";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:42:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/698/feed";}s:10:"feedburner";a:1:{s:8:"origlink";s:37:"http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/698";}s:7:"summary";s:372:"&#8220;This Week in Appfrica&#8221; is a weekly digest highlighting articles and stories from the previous week.
Appfrica Archives &#124; Contact &#124; Twitter &#124; Weekly Digest &#124; Subscribe via E-mail
The bid news in African tech this week was all the conferences going on.  Mobile Active, Barcamp Jozi and of course Barcamp Africa at Google Headquarters in [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:3181:"<p><sup>&#8220;This Week in Appfrica&#8221; is a weekly digest highlighting articles and stories from the previous week.<br />
<a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archive/">Appfrica Archives</a> | <a href="mailto:j.gosier@appfrica.org">Contact</a> | <a href="http://twitter.com/appfrica">Twitter</a> | <a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/feed/?cat=266">Weekly Digest</a> | <a href="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=2145932&#038;loc=en_US">Subscribe via E-mail</a></sup></p>
<p>The bid news in African tech this week was all the conferences going on.  <a href="http://mobileactive.org/">Mobile Active</a>, <a href="http://barcamp.org/BarCampJohannesburg">Barcamp Jozi</a> and of course <a href="http://barcampafrica.com/">Barcamp Africa</a> at Google Headquarters in the U.S.A all took place on the same day and were big successes.  Thanks to Google&#8217;s flying me in and putting me up, I was able to attend Barcamp Africa which turned out to be really productive.  Hopefully the attention doesn&#8217;t dissipate after it&#8217;s over.  I met some very interesting people from Google and Google.org who really validated my work with Appfrica.  The highlight for me was finally meeting Ken Banks (FrontlineSMS) and David Kobia (Ushahidi).</p>
<h3><u>News</u></h3>
<p><img src="http://admin.chasnote.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/rww-popurls.png" style="width:500px;"></p>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/633">Appfrica on ReadWriteWeb</a><br />
Recently, I was in touch with the staff of ReadWriteWeb (one of the most popular technology blogs in the world with 231,000+ daily readers) and I was asked to write a three part essay on the state of social media and web development in Africa. In some way it’s only fitting that RWW devote more attention to Africa. According to Alexa.com South Africa brings them 3.2% of their readers right after the U.K. (5.6%), India (6.7%), Germany (7.3%) and the U.S. (45.2%).</p>
<h3><u>Interviews</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/636">Interview With Erik van Veen</a><br />
Erik van Veen is the Chief Commercial Officer of MTN Uganda. When it comes to corporate executives, he just might also be one of the most approachable, down-to-earth people ever.</p>
<h3><u>Editorials</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/666">Building an Army With Thumb Drives</a><br />
I&#8217;ve been installing DamnSmallLinux and LAMP on Usb sticks so Ugandan students can work on web apps outside of school</p>
<h3><u>From the Archives</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://appfrica.net/blog/archives/326">The Costs of Doing Business in Africa</a><br />
How much capital does a social entrepreneur need to start-up in Africa?</p>
<h3><u>Links to Appfrica</u></h3>
<p><a href="http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/socap08_entrepreneur_profiles_jonathan_gosier">Change.org Profile on Jon Gosier</a><br />
<a href="http://www.hudin.com/blog/mobile_tech_at_the_africa_bar_camp/">Hudin Blogs about Barcamp Africa</a><br />
<a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/778690">Video of Barcamp Africa</a></p>

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Appfrica/~4/418759600" height="1" width="1"/>";}}s:7:"channel";a:8:{s:5:"title";s:8:"Appfrica";s:4:"link";s:24:"http://appfrica.net/blog";s:11:"description";s:37:"African Innovation, IT and Technology";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:39:58 +0000";s:9:"generator";s:27:"http://wordpress.org/?v=abc";s:8:"language";s:2:"en";s:10:"feedburner";a:2:{s:14:"emailserviceid";s:7:"2145932";s:18:"feedburnerhostname";s:25:"http://www.feedburner.com";}s:7:"tagline";s:37:"African Innovation, IT and Technology";}s:9:"textinput";a:0:{}s:5:"image";a:0:{}s:9:"feed_type";s:3:"RSS";s:12:"feed_version";s:3:"2.0";s:5:"stack";a:0:{}s:9:"inchannel";b:0;s:6:"initem";b:0;s:9:"incontent";b:0;s:11:"intextinput";b:0;s:7:"inimage";b:0;s:13:"current_field";s:0:"";s:17:"current_namespace";b:0;s:19:"_CONTENT_CONSTRUCTS";a:6:{i:0;s:7:"content";i:1;s:7:"summary";i:2;s:4:"info";i:3;s:5:"title";i:4;s:7:"tagline";i:5;s:9:"copyright";}s:13:"last_modified";s:31:"Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:24:50 GMT
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