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Africa
What gaps need to be plugged in the African startup ecosystem?
Africa's startup ecosystem is in a state of flux. These are the formative days, the few million years post big-bang, if you would. So there are many questions and many gaps that need to be filled as we seek to learn from other innovation centers around the world, while at the same time setting the rules that will work best for our context all while actually building this thing.In a sense, it’s like setting about building a structure while ...Umbono Alpha Beta: Beer, pizza and startups, the Google way
Umbono Alpha Beta is a Google event at which you can have as much free beer and pizza as you want, as long as you love startups.Memeburn was invited to watch as six startups -- three teams at the end of their six month Umbono program (last year's winners) and three who are just beginning -- presented their products and businesses to a packed (and we do mean packed) room.Umbono launched last year as a trial startup incubation project exclusive to ...Amazon Web Services opening developer support office in South Africa
On the heels of Amazon's successful launch of its South African customer service centre, comes the news today that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is launching a new AWS Developer Support office in Cape Town.AWS is a collection of remote (cloud) computing services, the most popular ones being EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and S3 (Simple Storage Service). AWS Developer Support provides technical assistance for these services and others to its customers around the world as they build applications on top ...8 Things to consider when building a digital strategy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Africa has the fastest growing internet usage in the world
Internet growth has increased at over 2 500% between 2000 and 2011, largely driven by incredible growth in mobile phone use (695-million mobile subscriptions in Africa, according to the latest GSMA statistics). But with around 12% penetration, Sub-Saharan countries still have some of the lowest internet penetrations in the world and internet growth is likely to continue growing fast, particularly with smarter, more affordable and more intuitive phones becoming more accessible ...4 Factors shaping social impact investment in Africa’s tech scene
I recently took part in a panel discussion focused on “investing in tech in Africa”. It was a good session, as it was very much a discussion between the audience and ourselves.There were a number of points that came up illustrating both the current difficulties and future opportunities when it comes to investing in the African tech space.Using what's thereThere are a number of tech hubs and labs coming up across the continent, and each have a different ...What kind of disruption does Africa’s tech scene really need?
What is it really to disrupt, or what is a disruptive innovation? And to put it in the African context, what does ‘disruption’ mean for the continent and what are the opportunities to disrupt?A dictionary definition of the term ‘disrupt‘ is:to throw into turmoil or disorder
to interrupt the progress of (a movement, meeting, etc.)
to break or split (something) apartDisruptive innovation is NOT making a good product betterClayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who coined the term and came up ...A geek at the helm: Memeburn’s interview with Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys
It’s not often that a geek rises to the top of a multi-billion dollar company. These are spots frequently filled by accountants or lawyers. But times are changing. In a technology-driven world, the geeks are rising to the top.We know Microsoft was run by a geek (possibly the geekiest CEO of all time?) and Steve Jobs was somewhat of a geek (more a design-obsessed geek than anything else). In the startup world, technology investors frequently refuse to put their money ...30 brilliant African tech startups
The methodology behind this list of startups had two simple directives. First, the startup had to have African roots and secondly it had to be brilliant.More specifically, we were looking for that type of brilliance that exudes intelligence, talent, quality or simply, something fresh. Of course brilliance, like most things in life, is subjective, so we went into this journey with an open mind. Tabula rasa if you will and we hoped to recognise brilliance when we saw it. We ...How M-Pesa disrupts entire economies
Back in 2011, I was asked to give my thoughts on what I thought would trend in mobile within between then and 2020. One of my predictions was that: “Mobile money will shift economies on a large-scale and across borders.”It came as an interesting discovery to learn therefore that according to recent Africa Development Bank (AfDB) research, increased uptake of M-Pesa, which is the literal mother of mobile money, is said to be contributing to inflation in Kenya. Inflation was ...Fabrication and manufacturing: The future of African hardware innovation
Across Africa there is a vibrant culture of people creating things. Hardware products. It’s rarely glamorous as our inventors and micro-entrepreneurs innovate on products due to necessity -- there simply aren’t enough jobs and they need to feed their families.Regardless of the reasons why they do it, what this has created is a culture of innovation.When you have a problem in Africa, there isn’t another option, you either improvise, adapt and overcome, or you die. You don’t give up, you ...
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Memeburn focuses on web and innovation technologies. It has a particular interest in startup news and technology trends in emerging markets. More about us hereCopyright © 2011 memeburn. All rights reserved. No article may be published or reproduced without prior written permission from Memeburn.
