1. Social Venture Acquisitions
It happens in every industry, A few companies are breakout successes and everyone wants piece. In this case Clean Tech and Social Ventures ‘doing good’ will increasingly be targeted by larger corporate entities with deep pockets. Think General Motors buying Optimal Energy (the alternative energy car-maker) or Microsoft buying a group like [...]

What are the geekiest uses of Twitter? Appfrica’s compiled a round up of ’strange things tweeting’ that includes a House, a Space Shuttle, a plant and even an unborn child…

Plants. Botanicall’s DIY kit allows anyone to allow their plant to talk to them using Twitter.

sample tweet: Ease off, buddy. You over-watered me.

A Fetus. [...]

2008 has been a year of change in South Africa, and people have been using Google to keep abreast of the most interesting news and trends as well as their favourite websites. Some of the most popular searches included Load Shedding and of course the FIFA 2010 World Cup. This year’s Zeitgeist also reflects important [...]

It seems the world is moving away from a U.S. centric web…

For past two years, I have been pointing towards a subtle but important shift that has started to take place - the globalization of the Internet. Thanks to a broadband boom in Europe, Asia and in new emerging economies such as Brazil [...]

Google Friend Connect is the latest in a trend of big media companies who are ‘opening up their users data’ to help make the web more social. Facebook recently scored big by securing a deal that would allow Digg, Hulu and Discovery users to sign up and authenticate using their existing accounts. This is huge [...]

“This Week in Appfrica” is a weekly digest highlighting articles and stories from the previous week. If you’re interested in becoming an advertiser on this blog, head over the sponsor page for details on how.
Appfrica Archives | Contact | Twitter | Weekly Digest | Subscribe via E-mail

It’s been another busy week. Appfrica launched [...]

Designer Toby Ng used statistics to re-imagine the world as a village of 100 people and came up with the unique images to visualize each fact. For instance “If the world were a village of 100 people, 76 would have electricity while 24 percent would not.” The result is a series of very clever, interesting [...]

How does a tech news blog in a developing country stay on top of current events? Here’s a list of all the applications that I use on a daily basis, why I use them, and how they improve my workflow as a blogger. For some applications I’ve listed a Linux and Windows alternative. [...]

Prospect Magazine recently looked at the world’s internet traffic to debunk the myth that it would be full of porn sites. The good news was that in the Top 100, only two were adult sites, which hopefully means people are
turning to the web for information and not their more carnal vices.
A brief note for [...]

Apparently, Africans have been information starved for facts about Barrack Obama and they’ve been turning to Google for that info. According to Google Insights, the top ten countries currently searching for the query “Obama” are Haiti, Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda, Ethiopia, the U.S., Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Senegal as the image below illustrates.

All Africa recently reported similar [...]