StartupBus Africa – from Harare to Cape Town

From the 17th to 21st of November the StartupBus Africa is happening. It’s another project that might be intersting for developers, designers and startup people.

StartupBus is an annual entrepreneurial road trip, during which the ‘buspreneurs’ conceive, build, and launch their startup.
The goal is to support entrepreneurs in Africa, help international entrepreneurs understand the African market and create lasting ties between both – and finally, of course, the founding of new startups in the areas of interest.
The hackathon is taking place for the first time in Africa this year and brings together 40 experienced entrepreneurs (hacker, softwaredeveloper, business and design thinkers) half from Africa and half from the rest of the world with industry representatives from the fields of mobile/ healthcare/ energy to conceive and develop apps via rapid prototyping and present the best ones at the Global Entrepreneurship Week in Cape Town in front of a jury of VCs, BAs and established entrepreneurs.

If you’re interested, head over and apply for a seat. Also please consider supporting their indiegogo campaign.

KampaBits

On our last day in Kampala we visited KampaBits, a school teaching underprivileged youths web design, print design and web development. It was incredibly inspiring to see how motivated and ambitious the students are. Most of them haven’t even used a computer or a smartphone before they started the class. After some training they are able to design posters and business cards and design simple web pages coding HTML and CSS. Advanced classes include web development with PHP and Drupal, animations, etc. Everybody we talked to was eager to start their own business, looking forward to making a living through ICT.

When interviewing them for the AfricaHackTrip documentary movie we found the youths to be very self-conscious and proud of what they already achieved. It was apparent that they feel the power they gained by being able to create things. We got a lot of questions about our professions like how designers and developers should work together and how to start a successful business as a freelancer.

Notably, almost half of the students are girls.

KampaBits is an NGO and a franchise of NairoBits in Kenya and is funded by various donors. Most teachers are volunteers. They are looking for more donors and also teachers. We really like the concept and with a 60% success rate it is obvious they’re doing it right.

It was a pleasure to visit KampaBits and we are very happy that the kids also had a good time as you can tell by this message we got the next day:

Nairobi Hackathon

After the barcamp got us all excited, hackathon day was also one of those really good ones! We feel like a network for continuous exchange is really evolving. People brought their own projects to the table, and it was a super diverse range of topics, which still all fell under the broader theme Hack & Design Together. And so we did just that. Here’s a little something on the projects.

Doze Poa :)

All groups seemed to be having a good time, but most giggles came from team “Doze poa” – a phrasebook app with which you learn to speak Swahili like a local. “Doze poa” means “Sleep well” which we so far had always translated as “Lala salama”, until we were now told that that is actually boring schoolbook Swahili. We still love the sound. Lala salama – could it mean anything else than “sleep well”?

Before the coding of “Doze Poa” began, there was thus quite some debate on content. What exactly is the difference between “Mambo” and “Sasa”, etc? They are both colloquial and much more commonly used versions of the schoolbook Swahili greeting phrase “Hujambo”. But when to use which? It seems totally clear to the Swahili-speakers, but it is quite hard to get across to us, who don’t even hear the difference between “Ndiaje” (Hello) and “Ndiache” (Leave me alone). So here is the difference: You say “sasa” in passing, and “mambo” to actually start a conversation about how the other one is doing. Which makes “sasa” quite the revolutionary term, the linguist in me thinks, and the Swahili speakers agree.

Most important: Pick-up lines! You say “Mambo m-super” (“Hey there, gorgeous!”) when you try to pick up a girl, but never when trying to pick up a man! Men are “m-handsome” – funny how they’re not (to be called) super in Kenya, much like they’re not (to be called) sweet or cute in Germany, isn’t it?

Really cool app! Despite or because of the fun they had, team “Doze Poa” got the app built and running on FirefoxOS, including the Geeksphone Keons we have with us, till the evening – check out the app here and it’s progress in GitHub here. Please feel free to contribute! We hope that we and our Kenyan hacker friends will continue working on it, maybe together with some Ugandans, Rwandans or Tanzanians!

Arduino / Raspberry Pi

In addition to software hacks, one group tinkered with a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino-board – the outcome being a rangefinder, which the makers Michael, Charles and Harriet suggest should be used by drivers in Nairobi to keep a distance from each other.

 

MatatuChat / MatatuViz

Drivers that could definitely do with a rangefinder are the Matatu drivers in Nairobi, as the Europeans are to learn during the day. Zab proposed the group build a crowdsourcing service quality ratings of the Matatus – the local buses - basically a chat in which people can rate Matatus and report incidents of reckless driving, sexist drivers, or other dangers and annoyances.

Before the actual coding starts, there is some need for discussion in this group as well: Which problems do occur, which routes are the worst, who has which experiences, and how can the problems actually be tackled? Instead of organizing a round table with government, union and citizens, the group starts searching the web for similar apps – and actually find two that do pretty much exactly what MatatuChat had aspired to do: Nduru App and Ma3Route. After some more research, it turned out that the developers of both are located in the same building as iHub, and when invited to contribute to the session, they actually agreed and joined in. Serendipity rocks!

After that, the aim of the group somewhat changed, as now data was less of an issue than visualization. By the end of the hackathon, Nduru App and MatatuViz had agreed to collaborate to visualize the existing data in a better way and keep on making both better.

URL shortener

Phil, Neville and Beverlyn hack a URL shortener written in PHP with a JavaScript frontend, not just as a tool, but also for brand recognition. They are a very focused group, and only after the Hackathon does Phil ask us to check out the Ugandan hacker scene for him, so he can decide whether he may want to go and work there for a while. This is exactly what we had hoped for! Yay!

PingApp

Another really great and more seriously needed app that got worked on was PingApp. After the Westgate siege, the Ushahidi team had gotten together to talk about what this meant to them and what they could contribute to make the situation better. Ping is a binary, multichannel check-in tool for groups. It’s an easy way for small groups, families and companies to quickly check in with each other. The basic idea is probably best described by this great #AHT13 Nairobi Hackathon Design: PingApp

PingApp

You can also find PingApp on GitHub - it’s all open-source, please feel free to work on it! We are happy that we could contribute to making terrible situations a little easier for people. Also, it was really great to see a Designer from Nigeria working on this project next to a Frontend Developer from Switzerland next to a Designer from Poland next to a Developer from Britain who currently lives in Kenya!

Here are @udezekene @gr2m @bytebandit and Alex hacking on the new Ping app for group checkins for emergencies #AHT13 http://t.co/ljFGMnBI1A

— Erik Hersman (@whiteafrican) September 27, 2013

 

Nairobi.js

Later that night, the first meeting of the Nairobi.js usergroup is held – Thanks for taking ownership of that, Vicky!

Feedback

We have gotten really helpful and mostly positive feedback from the attendees – Thanks again to them! We will properly evaluate and publish it at a later date – we’re kind of busy at the moment, so please bear with us. Right now, we would like to highlight just a few points: Nairobi hackers wants more barcamps and hackathons, and they are prepared to organize them. And we have made lots of connections which will turn into a network of African and European hackers – watch out for EuroHackTrip!

Kampala Barcamp at Outbox


The first half of the barcamp day at Outbox is already over. Similar to the Nairobi about 50 people have gathered to discuss a broad range of internet related topics.

  • General Overview about embedded Systems
  • The future of the web in Uganda and the Mozilla Community
  • OpenStreetMap and GEO
  • Social Media in Uganda
  • Linux and OpenSource
  • Where is my data? – about data privacy
  • Kampala.js – founding of the monthly Kampala JavaScript meetup
  • Cross Continent Collaboration / Creating the AfricaHackTrip community
  • What is Bitcoin

I guess one of the highlights so far was the session about the future of the web and the Mozilla Community in Uganda. The Community here is huge and they do a great job in pushing the web into a more open and accessible future. Make sure to read their blog and follow them on twitter.

Thank you, outbox community for hosting us! And make sure to come to hive colab for the hackathon tomorrow.

What a Week

It’s been only a week since most of us Hack Trippers arrived in Africa. We’re just done with chapter one out of four but our impressions and experiences are already enough for a whole trip.

We started organizing our events right away, checking out iHub and discussing details of the concept and schedule. Getting some feedback on our ideas from people like Alex from Mozilla also led to our first interviews. We found the iHub to be a really cool place to work and meet people and everybody was really supportive and made us feel very welcome.

The events were a huge success. I think all of us share the feeling that things worked out even better than we dared to hope when we started the project. There was this moment when everybody was asked to introduce them and name a few “tags” that describe their interests best and we realized that we really were a big group of hackers – Africans and Europeans – passionate about the same things. Sweet!

I enjoyed the Barcamp a lot because in every session the participants instantly started talking, discussing and exchanging views and ideas. I didn’t feel any gap between cultures, just talking technology and design, no matter what level of expertise. We were hoping that this trip could also help connecting African communities more and this definitely happens. For example in the session “JavaScript for App Development” a fine group of passionate developers gathered of which most didn’t know each other before and as a result the user group Nairobi.js will be started!

On the Hackathon the next day many people from the Barcamp showed up again and everybody obviously enjoyed working together. Some really cool projects got started or were even finished.

The feedback for our events made us really happy and showed us that we are doing it right. Many participants pointed out that they enjoyed the collaboration and asked for more events of that kind. The approach of self-organized community events doesn’t seem to be so common here and we hope that members of the community step up and continue this exchange. It feels so rewarding that our format is greeted with so much enthusiasm.

Connecting through the events is actually happening. We are sharing Twitter handles and email addresses to keep in touch and continue working on the projects we started. We visited impressing initiatives like the Nairobi Dev School which is providing a full-time web development class completely run by the community that will also soon start an OpenTechSchool chapter in Nairobi!

Oh, and we climbed a volcano and some of us saw giraffes in the wild.

One thing is for sure: There’s developers and designers with the same skills and attitude like us. We call them hackers. We found them. We even have the first Africans actually talking about a EuroHackTrip and planning from both sides already began. This is amazing! Our wildest hopes might actually become true!

Do that more often

The first week lies behind us, and we are really overwhelmed what a success the barcamp and hackathon has been. One thing we saw in the participants’ feedback is that they liked the format and that they want us to do such events more often.

Asking for this is a great compliment and a good indicator that we did everything right. But as we from the AfricaHackTrip are seeing our goal in establishing connections between Africa and Europe, we encourage the local community to do those events on their own.

So here is our call: Organize barcamps and hackathons, build user groups and exchange experience. We would love to see that!

Barcamp & Hackathon in Kigali

Kigali BarCamp & Hackathon

Exchange knowledge and experience, collaborate and work on interesting projects on a 2-day event on the 18th and 19th of October 2013 in Kigali. It’s the third of its kind, after a great event in Nairobi that took place last week, and one taken place this Friday & Saturday in Kampala.

AfricaHackTrip is a group of developers and designers from Europe who are curious about the emerging tech scene in East Africa and visiting Kigali in October 2013. The main interests and skills of this group ranging from UX design, web technology, mobile devices to open source and hardware hacking.

The events are hosted at The Office. With GitHub as a sponsor, there will be free catering on both days. Also Firefox OS devices are generously donated by Geeksphone for developing and testing apps, and a few Arduino kits will be there for hardware hacking.

On the first day, the focus will be on getting to know each other, discussions and community bonding. The second day will be all about hacking together on projects which are important to the participants.

If you like to attend, please register at the event page on Lanyrd or with the form below.

We would love to hear about topics and ideas upfront so get in touch! You can reach out the the team of the AfricaHackTrip on the Facebook Event pages (Barcamp / Hackathon) or via

Barcamp & Hackathon in Dar es Salaam

Dar_es_Salaam

Exchange knowledge and experience, collaborate and work on interesting projects and establish connections to the people from AfricaHackTrip on a 2-day event on the 18th and 19th of October 2013 in Dar es Salaam.

AfricaHackTrip is a group of developers and designers from Europe who are curious about the emerging tech scene in East Africa and visiting Dar es Salaam in October 2013. The main interests and skills of this group ranging from UX design, web technology, mobile devices to open source and hardware hacking.

The events are hosted together with TANZICT and take place at BUNI. With GitHub as a sponsor, there will be free catering on both days. Also Firefox OS devices are generously donated by Geeksphone for developing and testing apps, and a few Arduino kits will be there for hardware hacking.

On the first day, the focus will be on getting to know each other, discussions and community bonding. The second day, will be all about hacking together on projects which are important to the participants.

If you like to attend, please register at the event page on Lanyrd or with the form below.

We would love to hear about topics and ideas upfront so get in touch! You can reach out the the team of the AfricaHackTrip via