I’d like to cordially invite you to the Techno-Trend 2012 ICT Expo to be held this Thursday and Friday at Kenyatta University.
Do pass by our table and meet us in person. Check out our new SMS gateway and hear what else we have been up to.
More details on the event can be seen here. I look forward to meeting you in person!
Last week I was part of a team of ICT experts that went to Nzoia Sugar Company Ltd. We went to train the board of directors and senior management on how ICT can facilitate the running of the parastatal.
I must say I was impressed by the turnout and commitment. The entire board and senior management was present. The board chairman, Mr. Lawrence Sifuna, is an ex-MP of the area.
The training was held under the auspices of the Computer Society of Kenya (CSK). The CSK chairman, Dr Waudo Siganga, was also present.
If a board and management of a sugar company can summon ICT professionals and listen to them for a whole 2 days, then we must be going somewhere as a country. And I thought it would be death-by-powerpoint type of meetups but they were actually rapt and had a lot of questions after each presentation.
Manufacturing and agricultural industry tend to be late adopters of technology but not so with Nzoia Sugar! See the slides, photos and videos on our Slideshare, Facebook and Youtube accounts respectively.
Come visit our stand today and tomorrow at the Plugged digital expo in Sarit Centre, Nairobi. Event is running from 9am to 6pm on both days.
I will be speaking this afternoon at the AITEC ICT Conference. Topic will be: “Mobisoko: An App Store for Africa.” All are welcome. Venue is Visa Oshwal Centre, Parklands, Nairobi.
Greetings folks. It has been a while since I posted on our mailing list but now intend to do so more regularly.
A lot has been happening on the local and international scene. In the diaspora we have seen the acquisition of Motorola by Google, the Windows 8 BUILD conference and the exit of Carol Bartz from Yahoo! and Leo Apotheker from HP. The “Kenyans for Kenya” campaign was very successful and goes to show that the solutions for Africa’s problems lie in Africa. The shilling has slid against the dollar in a big way and we want our economy restored – “Haki Yetu”
Some of the activities we have had since I last blogged include:
* Setting up to be a Premium Rate Services Provider (PRSP) with Airtel Kenya and Safaricom Kenya. This means we are now offering short code, bulk SMS, USSD and IVR services with the mentioned operators. With your Safaricom line, you can send any message to the short code 2024 and will get an automated response from us. The cost is KES 5/- and we will not subscribe you to any services;
* I facilitated the module ‘Mobile Web’ at the Safaricom Academy this July and August;
* We have been applying for various grant requests and competitions including the Kenya ICT Board Grant Round 2, the Enablis Business Plan Competition 2011 and the Ashoka Changemakers More Health Competition. This Friday is the deadline for the Orange African Social Venture Prize and the 2012 Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA);
* We were at a training for Safaricom Content Providers this August as we are set up to provide them with mobile apps. I must say kudos to their efforts on creating a content management platform. Am prodding them to release it as soon as they can so that apps can be a big phenomenon here;
* As usual working with business partners and seeking collaboration with universities and other institutions.
Some of the commercial activities we are now undertaking include:
* Revamping our website and social networks to expose our products, activities and social events;
* Building up our product dubbed the Shujaa SMS Gateway. This will be our management system for SMS services. Some of the features will be an HTTP API to send and receive SMS, reporting through graphs and email briefs, documentation, SLA and other legals. It will allow you to set up your code to call our API to trigger and receive SMS through the local operators;
* We have just formed an exciting team to put out a fully fledged app store under the Mobisoko flagship. The focus is Kenya and then Africa. An app store concept that we developed last year can be seen by clicking this link: http://appstore.shujaa.mobi. With the experiences learnt from this initiative I believe we are well placed to contribute a lot. More details coming soon.
On the community side, some upcoming activities include:
* I will be a mentor for the Garage48 event this Saturday here in Nairobi;
* We are putting out the M-Ganga healthcare project which aims to conserve traditional medicine in our country. We will request for volunteers to use our mobile app to take interviews and photos of medicine men and herbs and submit to the database. This project is inspired by Shikoh Gitau who is now working in Google Kenya.
* We will be doing some interviews with players in the tech industry and putting them on our Youtube page. Essentially just to get a feel of the local scene from people in different areas including SME, large corporate and government.
Our quote for this month is from Archimedes, a Greek mathematician and inventor (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC): “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world”. I believe IT is our lever for this task and we are standing here in Kenya
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