M-Pesa
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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 Goes Hi-tech: But Where Are All Those Keen Investors?
They say necessity is the mother of invention and they talk about “Mother Africa”. Therefore, the tech revolution had to take root in inventive ways here, changing outsider perceptions of the continent. Investors, though, have been slow to tap into Africa’s tech boom. Read More »
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Africa’s Age Of Innovation Could Make Continent A Major Economic Power
Over the past few days, tech experts and global authorities have urged African countries to embrace innovation and technology in order to transform the entire continent into a global, economic powerhouse. Thanks to a new wave of tech startups and government investments into these new businesses, experts believe Africa could be on the verge of an age of great innovation...
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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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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Releases Open-Source Software to Support Efforts that Expand Access to Financial Services in Developing Countries
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today released a new open-source software for creating payment platforms that will help unbanked people around the world access digital financial services. The software is designed to provide a reference model for payment interoperability between banks and other providers across a country’s economy. It is available now, free-of-cost, for software developers to adapt and banks, financial service providers and companies to implement. Information on the code can be found at mojaloop.io...
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FrontlineSMS Case Study Featured In New Rockefeller Foundation Report: Learning From Experimentation
The Rockefeller Foundation recently launched a new website, Capacity to Innovate.org, which examines lessons from a number of organizations including Ushahidi and Internews, and encapsulates them in three short reports which are well worth a read. FrontlineSMS is featured in the ‘Learning From Experimentation’ report, available from the website. Read More »
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Google’s Boss Eric Schmidt Projects Kenya As Africa’s Tech Leader
After a week’s visit to sub-Saharan Africa that included meetings in Lagos and Nairobi, Executive Chairman and former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt has labelled Nairobi as the ‘maybe’ silicon valley of Africa. Read More »
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In Kenya, Microfinance Is Going Mobile – Part 1
This blog has been written with the support of Tonny Omwansa, co-author of Money, Real Quick: The story of M-Pesa. We want to thank David James, CEO of Musoni and Sharon Langevin, Project Director of FrontlineSMS:Credit. Read Part 2 here. Read More »
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In Kenya, Microfinance Is Going Mobile – Part 2
This blog has been written with the support of Tonny Omwansa, co-author of Money, Real Quick: The story of M-Pesa. We want to thank David James, CEO of Musoni and Sharon Langevin, Project Director of FrontlineSMS: Credit. Read Part 1 here. Read More »
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Kenya Pushes Technology Into Overdrive
The country that gave the world two groundbreaking innovations in technology: M-Pesa, a mobile banking system, and Ushahidi, a platform for crowdsourcing information during disasters, is now taking its technological talents to new heights. The East African nation of Kenya has just started construction on a 5,000-acres piece of land in Konza... Read More »
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Kenya's Startup Boom
But step inside, and it feels as if you've been transported to a Silicon Valley startup. Dozens of twentysomethings toil away on laptops; a few blow off steam at a foosball table; Pete's coffee bar (not to be confused with Peet's of the United States) doles out cappuccinos, milk shakes, and slabs of banana bread. This is a business incubator called iHub, the fruit of a homegrown information technology culture that had its coming-of-age moment in December 2007.
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Kenyan Tech Star Ushahidi Makes Major Design Updates
Ushahidi, one of the earliest Kenyan tech success stories, has unveiled a major redesign of its key features and its look-and-feel. Launched in December 2008 during the violence that followed the disputed Kenyan elections, Ushahidi (which means “witness” in Swahili) is ranked with M-Pesa as one of Kenya’s greatest start-up successes. US President Barack Obama praised Kenya’s tech entrepreneurs during a visit to the country his father was born in last July: “This continent needs to be a future hub of global growth, not just African growth”...
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SA losing to Kenya in tech race
South Africa appears to be losing its status as the preferred investment destination on the continent for international technology companies. By Duncan McLeod. Read More »
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Silicon Valley, Meet Innovation From Great Rift Valley
Across Africa, an innovation culture is starting to emerge. In Kenya, PesaPal piggybacks on the popular M-PESA mobile payments service, enabling Kenyans to buy and sell on the Internet. Tanzania's Techno Brain is selling software for managing businesses in 13 countries. And South Africa's Cobi Interactive... is developing popular applications for smart phones. Read More »
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South Africa losing to Kenya in tech race
South Africa appears to be losing its status as the preferred investment destination on the continent for international technology companies. That honour, increasingly, is going to Kenya, which may be on the cusp of a technology-fuelled era of economic growth. Read More »
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