Kenya’s techies linking up to prove power of home-grown talent

Jessica Colaço is the manager of iHub, a Nairobi hangout where 'techies' can find plenty of bandwidth and help build up the local tech community. Dominic Nahr / Getty

Matt Brown, Foreign Correspondent

NAIROBI — Jessica Colaço, a computer programmer and self-described techie, rolls into work at about 11 in the morning wearing sandals, jeans and a T-shirt depicting various Marvel Comic superheroes. Her laid-back demeanour and nerd-chic attire would be well-suited for any dotcom campus in the Silicon Valley.

Instead, Ms Colaço, 27, is on the bleeding edge of the tech community here in Nairobi. The Kenyan capital is in the midst of an explosion of technological innovation and is vying to become Africa’s Silicon Valley.

Ms Colaço is the manager of iHub, the recently named “idea factory” for Nairobi’s 1,000-strong community of programmers, website designers, computer engineers, hackers, gamers and geeks.

The space in a suburban Nairobi office building is outfitted with the bare essentials: bean bag chairs, a football table and a giant server pumping out 20Mbps wireless internet. When the place is fully functioning in a few weeks, it will have a coffee bar, a chill-out lounge with Japanese-style floor mats and a conference room where Nairobi’s brightest tech minds can meet.

“It is a physical nexus point where like-minded people can meet and share ideas,” Ms Colaço said. “It’s extremely vital to the flourishing tech community in Nairobi.”

Alongside Nairobi, Johannesburg, Lagos, Nigeria, and Accra, Ghana, are leading Africa’s tech revolution. The east-African hub is poised to see rapid growth in the sector with new undersea fibre optic broadband cables linking the country to the rest of the world and an initiative to extend internet access to rural areas.

There has also been recent investment in Kenya’s tech industry. Three years ago, Google chose Nairobi for its first office in Africa. The company set up a Kenya-specific web portal and soon mapped the country adding key locations to its popular Google Maps application.

Nairobi is also home to a Nokia Research Centre, one of 11 in the world and the only one in Africa. The centre develops mobile technologies to meet the needs of Africans, who have adopted mobile phones at exponential rates.

Facebook recently launched a version in Kiswahili, the lingua franca here, and Wikipedia, too, has a Kiswahili presence.

The backbone of the Nairobi tech community is still the home-grown talent. Young code writers, bloggers and web designers have formed a group called Skunk Works, which meets regularly to share ideas and hold workshops.

Perhaps one of the most innovative tech tools to come out of the Kenyan, both locally and in the diaspora, is Ushahidi, an open-source program allowing people in disasters to communicate their needs and location via text message. Emergency workers using the tool can locate and aid distressed people quickly.

Ory Okolloh, one of the founders of Ushahidi, which means “witness” in Kiswahili, said: “It can provide access to real-time information about what people need on the ground, especially in those first few hours after a crisis when the relief workers are not in place.”

The project was hatched in 2008 as Kenya was embroiled in post-election violence that eventually killed 1,300 people. Media organisations could not cover the whole country, so people used Ushahidi to relay eye-witness accounts from the crisis.

The team has since set up the program and passed it off to locals in Haiti and Chile after recent earthquakes there. Al Jazeera used the tool during last year’s war in Gaza, and election monitors have used it in India, Mexico, Afghanistan and Togo, according to Erik Hersman, an American who grew up in Kenya and is a co-founder of Ushahidi.

“We are a grass-roots organisation,” said Mr Hersman, 34, who also blogs about the Kenyan tech community. “We really care about ordinary people and how they can get their message heard.”

Nairobi is full of up-and-coming innovators such as Wilfred Mworia, 24, a code writer and entrepreneur. Mr Mworia started African Pixel, a software company that creates applications for mobile devices such as the iPhone. “It’s an exciting time to be a techie around here,” he said.

The iHub will be free for members to use. Members must be sponsored by someone within the tech community. In other words: serious techies only.

The community is constantly growing thanks to a large number of computer training schools in Nairobi. There is still no world-class tech university in Kenya, but the government is supporting the community through its ICT Board.

Techies have already started to flock to the iHub to work on projects, share ideas and blog in praise for the local tech community.

“Demand for ICT skills in Nairobi is pretty huge,” Ms Colaço said. “We need to let the world know that we have the talent right here.”

Source: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100404/FOREIGN/704039906/1017/NEWS