WhiteAfrican – where Africa and technology collide

I have been wanting to write about the WhiteAfrican ever since I started this blog in the beginning of this year. 

Only I am so much in awe about this blog that I find it very difficult to present it… It will be hard to do justice to a technology blog which is so well written, so deep in knowledge and so beautifully set up that I got hooked at once – despite the fact that I do not understand anything about technology!

The author of WhiteAfrican is Erik Hersman, a technologist and blogger who lives in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes two blogs. WhiteAfrican is his personal blog where he writes about high-tech mobile and web technology change in Africa. The second is the lovely AfriGadget, which I presented in my previous blog. (a team blog about low-tech ingenuity and microentrepreneurs in Africa.)

Hersman is an advocate of change brought about through the smart use of technology. He is also an advocate of Africa, the continents real possibilities, beautiful ingenuity and brilliant ideas. Hersman is a Ted Senior fellow and a wanted speaker in various high-level conferences around the globe. He was in Helsinki just last month. http://whiteafrican.com/2011/05/31/local-innovation-and-entrepreneurs/

TED names him ”a key member of the African blog revolution”. And though Hersman could surely choose to live anywhere in the world, he feels most at home in Africa. (and I do not imply that this is a bad choice at all :-)

 

It is difficult to SEE

Did you know that a mobile phone can be the first and the only (technologically and financially) feasible connection to the world for a remote African village? And by the way, these phones are not the cutting edge technology but the low-priced old realiable Nokias. Very basic mobile phones change the world much more than the new models that we get so excited about.


Knowledge is power. If you are a farmer living in a remote village where a buyer comes once a year to buy your crop, he can tell you the price he wants. But if there is a mobile phone in your village and you have subscribed to get the information about market prices, you have the power to negotiate a better price!

Simple solutions can be really helpful and can really bring about change.
Information about business, weather warnings and forecasts as well as important personal information can start to flow. Look at e.g. this: http://mfarm.co.ke/

And watch this great and very informative video: 

(http://whiteafrican.com/2011/02/21/phone-and-internet-mesh-for-african-villages/)

 “What’s difficult for people to do is see. It’s hard to look through another set of lenses and appreciate the inventiveness that got something so far. It’s a challenge to understand the needs of a culture that you don’t share and then create a product for it. This is why so many of the platforms and products designed in the West fail in Africa. It’s not that they’re not well designed, they’re just not designed by people who truly understand the needs of the customers in Africa.

It’s why rugged and efficient seed planting devices will be created in rural Ghana. It’s why Ushahidi and Mpesa had to come from a place like Kenya. It’s why South Africa’s Mxit has 35m users.

Finally, it’s why we should continue to invest in local inventors and entrepreneurs – instead of importing foreign solutions, let’s grow our own. “

Hawala

I would like to share one more WhiteAfrican blog post which is a post about the hawala form of money transfer in Somalia. Fascinating. Reading the post made me think, once again, that the world we live in is just so diverse and there are so so many things that I do not know about… The discussion that followed the post is also interesting. 

Hersman writes that his interest in Somalia is twofold

"First, I’m interested in watching how the international community tries to force central government on a society that clearly abhors it and functions without it. Second, Somalia is a fascinating study for anyone watching the African tech and business scene. Out of one of Africa’s harshest environments, entrepreneur’s thrive."

"Somalia, per capita, has one of the largest diaspora populations in the world. One in eight Somali’s live abroad. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the remittances they send make up approximately 40% of urban household income ..."

The money moves via the havala.



My next blog will tell how technology can help in a catastrophy.

Though I love writing this blog, it has been so hard to find the time. My job wants my time, my kids want my time, and my back is killing me for sitting in front of the computer. So now I head off to do some yoga. Summer is finally in Finland, the office is quieter and, as my boss is on a work trip, I am acting as her substitute.  

So,
Greetings from Ulla, head of communications