Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Jon Gosier,  the CEO of Appfrica, where he incubates and invests in East African entrepreneurs. Through my work with CrisisCommons, I was introduced to Swift River, the open source application which can be used to filter crowdsourcing information from sites such as Ushahidi.  Jon is part of the Swift River development team.

However, it is the contribution back to the development community which Jon is spearheading, that inspired me to make a connection via LinkedIn and to invite Jon to be a guest on the podcast.  Marc Lepage, a previous guest on Open Tech Exchange, had mentioned the work that Appfrica was doing in Uganda.

An example of a 'Made in Africa' application is a practical mobile app that was developed by Dennis Senyonjo of Appfrica, is where the mobile device sends a SMS to the owner if their power is out, and then SMSes again when the power is back on, saving needless trips back and forth to the office by small business owners & professionals, to see if the power has been restored.  For people who have spent time in Africa, you can appreciate how this simple utility can be so helpful.

Over time, the management team at Appfrica realized that most of the staff were able to work remotely from the office and the space was not being utilized as much.  It was decided to donate the office space and its resources to the local Ugandan development community, and Hive CoLab was created.  Hive is a co-working space which has a number of community stakeholders who have invested in its success.

On July 1st, the Apps 4 Africa contest was announced in cooperation with iHub Nairobi. the purpose of the contest is to support the bright young minds out there to work on ideas which would improve the quality of life in African countries through the use of software.  The US state department has endorsed the contest, and until Aug 31st, citizens are encouraged to submit ideas which technology can solve, which developers will then take up the challenge to build tools to address the needs.

The software company I work with has benefited from a tech incubator while we were in our growth stage, Calgary Technologies Inc  is a not-for-profit organization which helps entrepreneurs accelerate their success, offers programs, services and resources for business incubation.  As well, they generously provided space for the Haiti CrisisCamp which took place in February.

On a final note, I really enjoyed my conversation with Jon, as his philosophy and approach strongly align with my belief that regions such as Africa can become exporters of technologies instead of importers. 

The interview can be downloaded here