This Week in Appfrica [May 3 - 9, 2009]

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This week I spent some time highliting the achievements and applications of the people working Appfrica Labs. We took several of our ideas public this week to give everyone some idea of the types of innovation coming out of our incubator. Not to mention the fact that I think my staff are brilliant and deserving of the spotlight for a while.

Spotlight on Appfrica Labs

Life As a Software Developer in Uganda
It all started last week with the most recent Appfricast. Featuring nearly thw whole team, developers here offer insigh as to what they need, why they work here and what they hope to accomplish.

What is Question Box?
Question Box is an initiative I’ve been rooting for ever since I heard of it. Luckily for me, I got to join the project very early. Here’s some background on the project, and examples of how Ugandans are creating the software solutions to solve their own problems.

Answerbird Flies High
Felix Kitaka’s Answerbird attempts to crowdsource questions and answers in Uganda using the social network everyone here already knows… Facebook. It’s not hard to see how effective a tool it might be if interfaced with something like Questionbox!

Status.ug: Tell The World What’s Up!
A local mobile portal for Facebook also developed by Felix Kitaka.

Deploying OhmSMS in Uganda
An application so simple that it could be deployed anywhere in the world and be just as relevant, and useful.

Editorials

How to Save Money As An African Startup
It’s not cheap to startup a business here, how can you save capital? Find out.

Web 2.0 Shutting Out Developing Countries
Developing nations are apparently hard to monetize and difficult to scale. I say it’s because some companies refuse to look at the obvious solutions.

Microsfot Validates Ushahidi, Invalidates Vine
Vine is a great tool that could very well change the world. Unfortunately Micrsoft has destroyed nearly all of the potential usefulness by making it proprietary.

Appfrica Around the Web

Ben White profiles my staff members Emmanuel Oluka and Jerry Opolot