Category Posts: Startups

Last night, ForgetMeNot Africa launched the eTXT Apps Challenge in Harare at a JumpStart event attended by developers, tech entreprenuers and journalists. While the highlight of the night was the launch of the challenge itself (read more about the challenge here) , we found the presentation by ForgetMeNot Software Founder and Director of Technology, John Carroll, quite inspiring.

We got pointed a few days ago to some biNu usage statistics that have been released by mobile platform Australian startup. The stats show the top 10 countries by usage on biNu as well as the top 10 apps in those countries.

Almost a month ago, the Zimbabwe All Media and Products Survey (Zamps) released the results of a quarterly newspaper readership survey that the organisation carries out. The results are the for the last quarter of 2011 and according to reports in the media, the survey results showed that print news readership in Zimbabwe has started to decline. While reports refer to the decline as ‘modest’, the writing on the wall is clear, news consumption as we know it has changed.

Jason Njoku’s one and a half year old outfit has raised the bar for Sub Saharan African startups. Iroko Partners is charging ahead with its vision to put Nigerian entertainment online. Pando Daily published a post yesterday, revealing that the Lagos based startup had bolstered its war chest by way of two $4 million rounds. The funding came from Silicon Valley and emerging market stalwarts, Tiger Global.

Microsoft held it’s much awaited Developer Day two days ago on at the Harare International Conference Centre. It was quite impressive how they catered for techies and non-techies who seemed to be the majority of the attendants. One of the strongest remarks made in the early moments of the event was “In Africa, the challenges we are facing are our biggest advantages”.

Paul Graham, Founder of the Y Combinator incubation hub once spoke of the ingredients required to create Silicon Valley. He summed it up as a combination of:

Rich people (angel or VC investors) + Nerds (talent)

I recently attended the NEPAD Business Foundation Implementing ICT Projects in Africa Workshop and the Zimbabwe Investment and Trade Conference. It was interesting to note that the message on ICT had a common theme.

You’ve probably used eTXT a number of times. If not you then at least someone you chat with on Facebook, on Gtalk or just someone you exchange emails with has used the service from a basic SMS only (no internet) … Continue reading →

About 2 weeks ago a new Internet Access Provider called Aptics started advertising VoIP telephony and ‘4G’ services in the local newspapers. We have tried the Aptics broadband internet before for our primary connection at the office, but then, the company was still providing services primarily through ISPs ZOL and Yo Africa. The company is now going to market directly in addition to the partnerships. We visited them a few days ago to get the full story on what the company is offering and what you the reader should expect and indeed if you should be excited.

If you have visited eatout.co.zw in the last two weeks, you probably noticed that the website is spotting a fresh new look. The website has been redesigned, again. We can’t remember the exact number but the website must have gone through about 4 design changes in the last few years.

So what are you meant to think when you start a business with your brother in 2007 and at the start of 2012, you are part of a committed team of 25 employees that close a $ 4 million deal with three world class international fund. Seriously, (four million dollars, thirty two million rand, twenty billion kwacha) for an “African/Zambian” IT start up business

Crowdsourcing in recent years has gained significant traction around the globe. The premise behind it is the concept of maximizing or utilising masses of individuals to solve a large problem. The most visible and popular application of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia; the free collaborative online encyclopedia which relies on volunteers all around the world and now has over 20 million articles in English in the encyclopedia.

In 2011 Sarah Lacy, who was working at Techcrunch at the time but is now running a new tech blog known as Pandodaily, did the unthinkable by travelling to Nigeria on a mission to unravel its startup scene.

We first got information about Mimiboard from the Umuntu founder, Johan Nel, some 9 days ago. Nel was to later announce the new service which at the just ended Mobile Web East Africa in Nairobi. Nel says they’ve had developers working for 7 months, to come up with the product , which he say is going to be “a game changer in the African market.”

Ghanaian based mobile agri-business service platform startup Esoko, is seeking partners in Zimbabwe to extend its services to the country. In a request for tender published in Zimbabwe’s newspapers over the last several days, Esoko has invited local companies to apply to run Esoko in the country as ‘Prime Licensees’.