
Kenyan Women Create Their Own 'Geek Culture' - JasonFruit
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/12/24/167961947/kenyan-women-create-their-own-geek-cuture
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aclimatt
I see huge opportunities here. There are people all over the world solving the
same local problems, shared across disparate areas. Furthermore, there are
resources, ideas, talent, and real solutions being developed in certain areas
(even the US and Europe) which I feel should be collaborating with groups like
this to better understand their needs and great a more global technology
community. Likewise, there are no doubt some incredible, innovative solutions
coming out of lesser-known technology centers with which the right
localization could make a huge impact here in the Western World.

I'd be very interested to see a group acting as a "liaison" between these
communities to help solve problems more efficiently. Example: You're
developing a sensor network to measure rain levels across cell phone towers? I
have an algorithm that can measure this data effectively and correct for error
so you don't have to. We already do this today with the overload of SaaS
startups -- you're building some monitoring platform? Use Librato to capture
the metrics. You need a disaster response application that can aggregate data
and display the most severely affected areas? Use Parse for the backend and
OpenStreetMaps for the geo -- no need to do it yourself. If you're solving a
problem, there is a 70% chance that somebody either solved it already, is
currently trying to, and/or has a good idea about how to solve it. Increase
the collaboration to a more personal, local level, and you've got something
big.

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charleshaanel
Man, the tenacity (on the part of both parties) demonstrated in this statement
is amazing: "When he came home for the holidays, he would haul his entire
workstation in the car back with him — the monitor, the CPU, the keyboard, the
mouse — and set it up in Oguya's living room. Oguya was 15."

~~~
quit
Bah, we routinely did this for our lan parties.

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noonespecial
I'm guessing you didn't drive on dirt roads or carry all of the fuel for the
trip with you in jugs, all while hoping you had enough bribe money for anyone
who might turn up with a rusty AK-47 and a barricade to keep them from taking
said computer from you along the way.

~~~
rweba
Not sure if you are kidding but I am pretty sure Kenya wasn't THAT bad. It's
actually a fairly stable country, even with the high level corruption scandals
and occasional election violence.

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noonespecial
This would likely have been around 10 years ago. Perhaps longer. Today's Kenya
is less violent but according to the New York Times corruption index, its
still one of the most corrupt nations on earth.

The point is that throwing your Alien-Ware in the back of your Volvo to go to
a lan party across town is a ridiculous (to the point of being non sequitur)
comparison.

~~~
msbarnett
If anything the country was _more_ peaceful ten years ago, not less.

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lubujackson
Kenya is a fascinating place - incredible hardships, but such a will to
persevere. I love that they aren't satisfied getting jobs freelancing or
anything like that, they are solving their people's issues where no one else
will bother. Awesome to see.

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keithpeter
Complete with what looks like a Kanban board on the wall. There is going to be
_plenty_ of competition in a decade or so! But then there are plenty of local
problems to solve...

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jakek
Fantastic story. I would love to hear some first-hand accounts / comments from
any Kenyans on HN. Is there anyone here currently in Kenya and involved in
startups?

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okal
I'm Kenyan. The scene mostly revolves around the incubators in Nairobi, the
iHub, Nailabs and the 88mph Garage being the most vibrant. The iHub is closer
to a typical hackerspace than the others, which are more concerned with
startups actively seeking investment than meetups and such. I'd wager that
half of all Kenyan startups are building mobile apps of some sort. The stack
is quite varied. SMS is king here, but J2ME, Symbian and Android are also
fairly popular. Some of the more interesting startups I've interacted with:

<http://wezatele.com> \- I interned there early this year.
<http://mfarm.co.ke> <http://kopokopo.com> <http://frontlinesms.com> \- I did
some work there last year. <http://ushahidi.com> \- nonprofit, so I'm not sure
it qualifies, but one of our better known exports. <http://pesapal.com> \- I
dislike the obvious play on PayPal, but they're an awesome team

There are many more, but those are the ones that immediately came to mind.

There's something of a running joke that every second startup is an
M-something, presumably due to the runaway success of mpesa, a mobile money
service by one of the telcos, Safaricom.

Some more established players, not startups in any sense, are Craft Silicon
and Seven Seas technologies.

~~~
marquis
I've seen Ushahidi in practise in a disaster area, extremely impressive.

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steeve
Projects like this make me hopeful :)

~~~
georgemcbay
Projects like this make me hopeful for the world, but fretful for America. Not
because of the increased competition or outsourcing or anything like that, but
because by and large we've created a political climate where large
infrastructure developments are nearly impossible to implement. We eschew any
sort of tax-funded large digital infrastructure projects while at the same
time we do our best to keep regional ISP monopolies in place, killing any
meaningful competition.

The fact that Kenya now has hundreds of miles of fiber optic cable is
_awesome_. The fact that most of the internet I use in the USA ends up last-
mile-ing over coaxial lines laid in the 1970s is terrible and unlikely to
change in the next 10 years.

(Of course, our non-digital infrastructure is crumbling for largely the same
reasons, so that's even more stuff to worry about).

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sliverstorm
First, we have _tons_ of fiber. _Tons_.

Second, are coaxial lines really that bad? You do need literally bundles of
fiber for backbone activity, but last-mile? DOCSIS 3.0 is 42Mbit/channel, with
as many channels as the endpoints can support. Comcast has already offered
305Mbit. We will need fiber last-mile one day, but not nearly any time soon.

I suspect the real limitation is a grab-bag of things like:

\- Increasing speeds highlights damaged coax, which would then require repair

\- Slowing the growth in speed means they can continue to charge a lot for
service that is easy to provide

\- The true bottleneck is probably somewhere in the ISP, for example routing
infrastructure, which would need to be upgraded

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john626
Stories like this can give you a lot of hope for the developing world.

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ph0rque
I _so_ wish I could invest in some of these companies...

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Choppen5
I agree - we need more oportunistas to invest in businesses in developing
countries.

I invested in this African company:
<http://unreasonableinstitute.org/profile/mwilkerson/>

It was a little easier as the founder was from the US and I met him here, and
then he returned to Africa to continue running the operation. Wish more
African founders had the opportunity to raise money here.

~~~
1123581321
If your sentiment is common, then there is an opportunity for someone to
arrange introductions and bring African entrepreneurs to the United States for
fundraising.

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aclimatt
I believe that instead, the opportunity is to guide US investors to invest in
African companies. An organization to vouch for the reputability and asses the
risks of these companies to allow for greater, less risky foreign investment.

I personally would love to start such an organization.

~~~
1123581321
I understand the difference. Either way, though, personal connections and
legwork would have to be done both in the US and in Africa.

It's been on my mind since I made the comment; if you've interest I wouldn't
mind discussing it with you if you'd like to e-mail me at the address in my
profile.

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iso-8859-1
What does M-Farm do?

~~~
muriithi
<http://mfarm.co.ke/>

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Spoygg
Beautiful :)

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charleshaanel
BTW, thanks for posting that OP

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nacker
Let's get Alexander McCall Smith on this right away!

Perhaps a whole new series of novels based on the concept of the "The No. 1
Ladies' Geek Startup" ?

