East Africa
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A Kenyan Startup is Showing Global Businesses How to Talk to Their Customers
A florist chain in Argentina, a food delivery service in Hong Kong, and a Singaporean travel agency—these are a few of the companies relying on a Kenyan startup to help them talk to their customers on WhatsApp, WeChat, and other messaging apps. Ongair, a Nairobi-based startup, says instant messaging could and should replace the traditional channels of customer service—frustrating phone calls, inefficient e-mail exchanges, online chats that don’t work well on a smartphone, or SMS messages that costs businesses per text...
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Africa’s Tech Edge
How the continent's many obstacles, from widespread poverty to failed states, allowed African entrepreneurs to beat the West at reinventing money for the mobile age
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District Health Information System 2 (DHIS2)
District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) is a free and open source health management data platform used by multiple organizations, including the European Union (EU), and governments worldwide. It is currently being deployed in 54 countries. DHIS2 is a development project by the Health Information Systems Program (HISP) and is used for aggregate statistical data collection, validation, analysis, management, and presentation...
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How "Open Source" Seed Producers from the U.S. to India Are Changing Global Food Production
Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space. For nearly 20 years, Morton’s work was limited only by his imagination and by how many different kinds of lettuce he could get his hands on. But in the early 2000s, he started noticing more and more lettuces were patented, meaning he would not be able to use them for breeding...
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How African Hospitals Can Be Helped Through Open Source ERP and EHR Software
The daily management and operation of a hospital requires enormous effort. These days, most hospitals utilize Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to centralize facility operations including inventory, budgets, invoicing, and employee management.Any hospital administrator will tell you that ERP software is essential to efficiently managing their hospital as the software lowers inventory costs and improves efficiencies and quality.
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How Praekelt.org and Open Source Provide Critical Services to Enable Social Change
In Eastern and Southern Africa, women are still dying unnecessarily during the basic, natural act of giving life. According to Unicef, “In 2010, close to 58,000 women lost their lives during pregnancy and childbirth, accounting for more than one fifth of all such deaths in the world.” Gustav Praekelt, founder of the South African design and development firm Praekelt.com, was deeply affected by the high maternal mortality rate in his country and realized in 2007 that open source software and mobile phones could help provide critical information and services to combat poverty and maternal mortality rates -- among other social issues -- across the continent and potentially around the world.
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Open Source Space Academy Opens in Nairobi
Nairobi's Tunapanda Institute has been using open source tools to provide technology, design, and business training in East Africa since its inception in 2013. Next year the school will launch a "space academy" to inspire young people to think about some of the most critical challenges facing humanity on this planet and beyond. Tunapanda's founders believe that everyone should have the opportunity to help shape the future, and in order for that to happen there must be learning materials and tools that are open, shareable, and unrestricted so that anyone, no matter their financial or educational background, can learn and be inspired.
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The East African “Miracle Grain” That Could Become The Next Quinoa
There’s a huge business opportunity hiding in the fields of East Africa. Teff, a golden, wheat-like grain, has quinoa-like potential. It’s gluten-free, and boasts all kinds of highly marketable health traits that have made quinoa such a hit in countries like the United States: high in calcium, protein, iron, and amino acids. [...] Read More »
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The Innovative Use of Mobile Application in East Africa
The key questions that this report seeks to answer are therefore; what hinders the take off of m-applications for development in East Africa and what role can donors play in this process? Through mobile phones, farmers get access to market prices, young urban citizens can transfer money back to their home villages, health workers can give diagnoses and collect data, family and friends can easily connect and communicate, news can be spread and read in crisis situations, citizens can build opinion and mobilise.
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