Category: Startups
Press release: StartupBus Africa: Five-Day Hackathon from Harare to Cape Town
First the US, then Europe and now for the first time a StartupBus tours in Africa Interested entrepreneurs can apply until October 15th Crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to boost financing Berlin, September 19th 2013 – From 17th to 21st November the first StartupBus tours in Africa, departing in Zimbabwe and setting off to Cape Town, […]
ZOL Startup Challenge battle tips #TechzimSurge
7 days are left before Techzim Surge and the epic Zol Startup Challenge. The visual below has 5 tips we believe are important for contestants and even for startups that will not be pitching. Over time, we’ve come to realise that the most important factor for any startup to focus on is preparation. All the best! […]
Zim startup launches mobile money management desktop app, Capu
A local startup has launched a desktop based mobile money management tool called Capu (short for Cash Application: Universal). Universal in that the tool can be used to manage transactions any mobile money service locally. The app, which is Windows based, so far allows users to manage their Textacash and EcoCash transactions more conveniently.
Zimbabwe apps review: C2 Media’s TelOne directory
C2 Media has made some serious strides in the area of mobile applications. They have developed applications for iOS, Android and biNu in addition to other custom software design & development. They have a noticeably long track record of some renowned corporates and small companies that they have worked with.
Techzim now has a store!
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the official opening ceremony of our store! Witty, relevant and plain cool t-shirts are something techies the world over hold dearly ($100 for anyone who’s ever seen Limbikani wearing a suit). In light of this pertinent truth, we embarked on an epic mission of an industrial scale. The brief to […]
Hivos, US Government, Indigo Trust, provide US $280k for tech hub in Harare
Indigo Trust, a UK based grant making foundation, announced today that they, the US government and Hivos, have granted at least $280,000 to Hypercube, an organisation we wrote about here last month. The money is for the organisation to establish a technology hub in Harare. The hub, according to the announcement, will support tech entrepreneurs working on […]
SSL Certificates for dummies: A primer.
This is an SSL certificate primer for dummies, it is not intended to be exhaustive or turn you into an expert, it is merely an initiation.Feel free to add tips you feel are important in the comments section however.
Local startup, Frontrowzim, pioneers Zimbabwe schools sport news online
When Chenjerai Katanda made the Zimbabwe Schools Rugby Sevens team that traveled to Kenya for a tournament in 2009, he recalls that he Naively thought anyone who represented Zimbabwe in such a capacity deserved mention in the media. “Boy was I wrong. Schools sport was not ‘important’ or as they say ‘it does not sell’”.
Nigeria’s Spark incubator raises 2 million to invest in local startups
One of the few locally owned and NGO-free incubators on the African continent, Spark, announced last Friday that they have raised $2 million to invest in Nigerian startups. The incubator, which the co-founder – iROKOtv founder Jason Njoku – actually says is more a conglomerate of companies than a traditional companies invests amounts $50,000 and $250,000 in startups which are then “incubated” as part of the Spark companies.
Mobile App Market: How you throw the net where the fish is
This is a follow up to the previous article, Mobile App Market: Joining the gold rush. In this article we will be giving some tips on how you can make relevant apps and possibly start making some cash. Your first major project Why are we giving these tips – because there is more to benefiting […]
What happened at the RHoK Hackathon, part 2 of 3
Day 2 was the BlackBerry Challenge We started off with an intensive 40 minute bootcamp which consisted on Tutorials on how to develop BlackBerry 10 applications by leveraging on the Skills we have been using all along to develop for other mobile platforms. Presentations in this bootcamp were made by Shaun Benjamin, Tafadzwa Moyo and […]
Mobile Application Market. A potential gold mine for the Zimbabwean programmer
Introduction 210 million smartphones were sold in the first three months of this year, this is according to Gartner’s Q1 figures for mobile handset sales. There are already 1.08 billion smartphone users in the world and the number continues to grow. This growth plus the adoption of tablets (which is also growing at a blistering […]
We are now a billion dollar company, says clone factory Rocket Internet
Germany headquartered Rocket Internet, notorious for shamelessly cloning successful startups, announced today via a press release that they are are now a billion dollar company. The release says the company has, since May 2012, managed to raise a total of $500 million from Investment AB Kinnevik and Access Industries.
Bulawayo based startup, Avelgood, releases measurement tools Nokia app
To have your app downloaded more than a million times is a dream come true for any developer anywhere in the world. Whether they make lots of any money from it or not, it’s massive validation of the need and therefore market for a solution. What if we tell you that a local startup has had such success?
What went on at RHoK Harare – Part 1 of 3
We’ve participated in a few hackathons the last couple of years. We’ve even been a winner in one of them. This year when we decided to host our own hackathon, we chose to do things a little different.
More of the Afrocoin money transfer solution: the website screenshot
Last month, we wrote about a money transfer service set to launch soon called Afrocoin. With scanty information gleaned from their Crunchbase profile and website holding page, we were not sure of the details of the product it is. We are still not sure about many things, but an image sent to our tips email this afternoon gives more insight into at least their web presence.
WeChat: With 195m active monthly users, the WhatsApp rival looks to Africa
WhatsApp is the king app of smartphone messaging. There’s no disputing that right now. Globally. But this is something Chinese rival, WeChat wants to change or, at the very least, get a huge piece of that pie, and Africa is strategic to that vision.
Event: Random Hacks of Kindness – hacking against corruption
Have you ever wanted to know how to develop mobile applications but don’t know where to start? Have you ever gotten frustrated by not being able to do anything about problems that are going on around us? Corruption for instance?
Why Tengesa failed. Startup founder shares with us
In October 2011 a new local classifieds service, Tengesa.com, launched. The service was designed to target primarily mobile web users, a part of the market largely ignored by other marketplace services like the popular classifieds.co.zw. About a year later though, the service was shut down.
Afrocoin to compete with Mukuru, Western Union, EcoCash in remittances
A new startup, Afrocoin Mobile Money, is set to launch in the coming months (or weeks,no idea right now) as a new player in the remittances and mobile money transfer market.
New Zim and US eCommerce site, KhayaShopping, launches
Without any widely adopted internet payments platform, despite the existence of Vpayments, and some EcoCash internet payment trials, eCommerce in Zimbabwe is struggling to take off. But there are startups that are moving in early regardless, positioning themselves for when the Zimbabwean will rely on the internet to shop.
biNu rebuilds Android app to improve user experience
If you’re one of the more than 100,000 people that have downloaded biNu’s Android app, you were probably only pleased with the app page load speeds, processing etc.. but likely disappointed with an un-smartphone like feel.
iDrive introduces a web based provisional driver’s test app
It’s quiz applications season! Over the past two months we covered two startups that have built quiz type web and desktop applications.
More than 3,100 hours of movies coming to Wabona
Last week, when we posted an article about Wabona’s new flat monthly subscription based model for their internet movie startup, we speculated that there may be issues getting content (or rights to put it on the net) for the startup as there still seems not much content on the site.
Lifestyle holdings launches dial-a-delivery ‘virtual shop’. It’s not an online shop
Reading through the Sunday Mail newspaper today we were met with an advert that, for second we believed was the launch of TN’s online shops. Finally, we thought.
Thou shalt not form a startup
I still remember the ZOL startup of 2010 like it was yesterday. A room filled to the with young and ambitious talent that wanted to make a difference and bring back their country from out of the cold limbo of the just past decade long crisis. Fast forward to today and many of those startups are gone, long forgotten and the few that have made it can only have their successes chalked up as modest.
Startup lessons from Culture Shift Zimbabwe
I’ve been meaning to post this since the Culture Shift Zimbabwe hacking event a few weeks ago. It’s a lessons learnt post to just note the things that tech entrepreneurs, developers and other such tech people should not keep in mind when coming up with new solutions.
C2 Media launches Zweely, a network of local sites & mobile apps
C2 Media, a local digital design & development company, has launched Zwee.ly a network of local web and mobile properties. From information on the Zweely website, a common feature of the properties will be an emphasis on mobile and social. There’s also clear emphasis on appealing design (to us at least), something C2 clearly excels at.
Culture Shift Zimbabwe – the winning teams
Today was the final day of the Culture Shift Zimbabwe challenge. After a two day long hackathon of refining their ideas, writing code and finally pitching their ideas this morning, 3 out of the participating 6 teams were selected winners and will be further developing their solutions with the assistance of the British Council.
Wabona and the internet opportunity for pay-per-view video streaming in Africa
We were recently in touch with Simukayi Mukuna, one of the two co-founders of a new pay-per-view video streaming service called Wabona. The service was launched in beta in November last year, and the Wabona team has since been accepted into a 88mph startup incubator in South Africa. it was great opportunity therefore for us to hear out their perspectives and plans withe the service.