Appfrica.org facilitates, mentors and incubates entrepreneurs in software in East Africa and Uganda. It offers a physical space with a solid internet connection, servers, software and computers that allows students and recent graduates a place to develop their ideas in a constructive environment with industry professionals as mentors outside of school. Entrepreneur projects are refined and prepped to help them secure funding and launch sustainable, profitable businesses. This project, loosely modeled after Paul Graham’s Y Combinator, is better known as Appfrica Labs. Appfrica Labs has also started an International Fellows Program which brings developers from all over the world to work alongside local Entrepreneurs as peers and mentors. That program can be learned about here.

We are a for-profit incubator and software development firm currently based out of Kampala, Uganda. The mission is to offer opportunities and work experience for East African software entrepreneurs so that they can then use their talents to bolster the growing local markets by offering products and services. Appfrica picks up where East African colleges leave off by offering hands-on experience in programming languages like Java, C++, C#, Ruby on Rails, Django and Python, CouchDB, PHP, Perl, Kannel and that aren’t often taught in-depth locally at university. These skills are highly valued around the world and professionals in these areas helps to make East Africa a more attractive place to develop software, not only locally, but also for international companies. Appfrica Labs also provides oversight and guidance to the projects that are launched out of the incubator.

appfrica.pbwiki.com is the home for more information on Appfrica including various hands-on workshops, peer networking events and fun activities organized around coding and software development.

Appfrica Media is the publishing arm of Appfrica International. It consists of many web properties, print media and video. The most well known of these is Appfrica.net a web portal for the latest news related to web development, social media, innovation, education and African entrepreneurship in other areas of technology. This also includes our weekly podcast, Appfricast which is available on iTunes.

code.appfrica.net is a code repository for developers who wish to support the adoption of open source technology by African developers for the sake of education, analysis and practical use in applications.

afridex.net is an index of African technology companies and start-ups.

APPFRICA INTERNATIONAL STAFF

Jonathan Gosier is an American software developer, writer, social entrepreneur and the founder of Appfrica.org. Appfrica invests in east African software start-ups to create jobs and prevent brain-drain. He also currently serves as the Chief Technical Officer at QuestionBox.org where he’s working to develop a software platform that will allow disenfranchised people in developing countries without computers to get answers from operators using the internet for them via voice and sms. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he is working on two fronts: to encourage western businesses and investors to engage African entrepreneurs and in developing parts of Africa to encourage the adoption of computers, programming and use of the internet. He is a huge advocate for promoting the ways in which technology will benefit emerging economies throughout the world. Jon Gosier is a TEDGlobal 2009 Fellow.

Jon has written a number of essays about the ways social capital investments affect change in emerging markets including “Social Capital Gains” and “Tales of a Social Capital Startup“. His novel Muxtionary explores a potential future where the world has become a technological utopia but Africa is still very much like it is today.

APPFRICA LABS STAFF

Ivan Kavuma (Project Manager)

Moses Mugisha (Lead Developer)

Barbara Birungi (Administrative Assistant)

Emmanuel Oluka (Junior Developer)

Felix Kitaka (Developer)

APPFRICA BLOG VOLUNTEERS

Jon Gosier’s work with Appfrica has been profiled on a number of websites including Change.org, Blog Herald, WhiteAfrican.com. He’s also guest contributor to a number of other blogs including ReadWriteWeb.

email - j.gosier [at] appfrica [dot] org
skype - j.gosier
social - twitter, friendfeed, claimid

Derrick Kwagala (Writer, Translator) is a Ugandan computer-scientist social entrepreneur and educator. He’s passionate about Information Technology literacy & Professionalism, mobile and Internet accessibility for all on the multilingual-multicultural African Continent.

email - derrick.kwagala [at] gmail [dot] com
social - twitter

Aaron Timothy (Writer, Translator) is a journalist, blogger and new media professional living in Kampala, Uganda.

email - globaleaders [at] gmail [dot] com

Trisha Olsson (Sales, Advertising) handles the placement of ads and the development of partnerships for various Appfrica.net properties.