Today for me marks four years of post-college work.
I’ve been from one end of this country (Kilifi) to the other (Kisumu), working for various organizations that, basically, do good. Some of those organizations try (and somewhat succeed) at charging a fair price for a reasonable product. And others brave through thousand-page manuals of big-donor regulations as a necessary evil.
Planting my first eucalyptus
And I’ve been building technology systems where it’s kind of hard to do so. From mobile survey tools on basic feature phones to support rural tree farmers with KOMAZA, to applications to run schools in some of Kenya’s most challenging slums with Bridge. And of course, web and mobile logistics to tackle rural supply chain distribution IPA/DSW.
I’ve also been a strong part of the tech community in Kenya. With Akirachix, I’ve organized country-wide tech workshops to teach students app development. I’ve also taken part in, won, and even judged some of the ubiquitous app competitions so notorious in this region.
So now I’m packing up, and preparing to begin a new chapter in my life at business school. As I look back on the past four years, and think about how I’ll use the next two, a couple things stand out for me:
- I want to stay in technology. It’s in my blood, it’s my passion, and it’s what is transforming Africa (despite the Kenyan government doing stupid things like kicking out the man who brought Kenyan tech forward by leaps and bounds).
- I want to do good. I don’t want to just sell widgets and increase dividends for fat-cat shareholders. However, non-profit or profit-making is irrelevant. After all, one could argue that Safaricom is the biggest social enterprise in Kenya.
- The technology scene in EA is missing something. Too many techies and not enough salesmen, marketers, financiers. Too many app challenges and not enough businesses. When I was at iHub Research trying to find businesses to interview for the Mobile BoP study, we were hard pressed to find many successful (i.e. profitable) mid-sized tech businesses (that were born in this recent tech-boom). Most entrepreneurs we talked to were still in pilot, launch or idea mode.
These thoughts will guide my next two years. I’ll be in the mecca of technology, Stanford and Silicon Valley, and I can’t wait to figure out first-hand how these techies turned their ideas into useful (indispensable) products into profits. Because that’s what the Kenyan economy needs and is poised for. And I’m very excited.
africatech 