Kenya

Large parts of Africa lack accurate real-time accurate weather data...The BRCK is a device that can be plugged into the weather station and used as an on-ramp for the Internet of Things (IoT)...

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Kenya is in the middle of a technology revolution. It is bustling with innovations driven by the strong entrepreneurial spirit of people hoping to replicate the successes of the revolutionary M-Pesa service or Ushahidi technology company. Read More »

Joshua Cohen, Professor of Political Science, Philosophy and Law at Stanford University, began the first session of this quarter's Seminar on Liberation Technologies by posing a big question: are information and communication technologies able to advance human well-being for development? Read More »

The Text message is the most basic form of technological communication, possible on even the oldest mobile phone. This makes it open to virtually anyone, anywhere in the world. FrontlineSMS is the Open Source software which enables users to turn any laptop into a hub for sending, receiving and managing SMS over a mobile network. Read More »

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 »

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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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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