The greatest financial hurdles to open a computer cybercafe in Africa have been Line 1 on the Capex – Computers, and Line 1 on the Opex – Internet Access. Africa has the highest fees for Internet access in the world. What a lousy business – great demand, but expensive machines and expensive Internet in rural areas that are hard to service. Mobile phones and mobile data at first seems a great competition to the Internet cafe.
Last week at Tech4Africa in Johannesburg I gave a short talk. It was meant to be much longer but I got confused on how much time I had, so apologies to the T4A people. Anyways, the topic of the presentation was The 5 Most Disruptive Innovations I’ve Seen and it discusses industries and concepts which Readmore
Whitespace in business is defined as a place, where rules are vague, authority is fuzzy, budgets are nonexistent, and strategy is unclear It’s the space between the organizational chart, where the real innovation happens. It’s also a great definition for what we see in Africa, and it’s the reason why it’s one of the most [...]
A guest post by @KKaria after a visit to the land of the Dodo a pan-fried flat bread served with various spicy curries. Food in Mauritius is as varied as it’s ethnic mix, derived from a population that is 60% Hindu 22% Christian 1% Franco Mauritians 3% Chinese and 13% Muslim.Expect lots of spices, curries, chutneys, mutton, chicken, vegetables and of course seafood. Make sure you try the millionaires salad made from palm hearts. Yummy! Smoked
This is a short summary of progress and learning from the first couple of months since launching AfTerFibre, a project to map terrestrial fibre projects in Africa. From the beginning AfTerFibre has been designed as an open project both from the point of view of transparency and from the point of view of participation. So [...] [...]
var addthis_config = {“data_track_clickback”:true}; The word failure has always held a negative connotation. It makes sense. Failure represents effort, time, and money that did not produce results: a largely negative return on investment. No individual or group ever wants to feel that work has been wasted. But why do we have to view failure as a waste of effort, time, and money? Failure brings to light some glaring faults in project planning and implementation, and taking
For the past two years I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with some of the most inspirational, talented social innovators (aka Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellows). This year, good friend Erik Hersman and I returned to Camden, Maine to work with the 2011 Class. Sharing our own experiences of 2008 when we were both Fellows [...]
Beth Coleman presents some of her recent research on the protests in Tahrir square, and a broader theory of how social networks and activism in the physical world work together today at the Berkman Center. With her is Mike Ananny, her coauthor and researcher in danah boyd’s lab at Microsoft Research. The presentation, Tweeting the [...]
En Français
After the pilot launch in Uganda and the exciting launch in Ghana, we are excited to announce the launch of Google Trader in Kenya. Google Trader is a free classifieds service that allows people to buy and sell products and services, se…
The environment is rich in phenomena that has been observed, analyzed, commoditized and, in many cases, exploited. But much like the precious mineral and natural gas resources of the continent, for local societies, the tools for extraction are sparse or absent. In this context we aren’t talking about refineries, we’re talking about the capacity to Readmore
En Français(cross-posted from the Google Books blog)Last Wednesday, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee stopped by Google to discuss her new memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War (Beast Books, 2011). W…
The member meeting at the Media Lab features speakers from within the lab, like César Hidalgo and Joi Ito, and outside speakers in that latter case, the invited speakers reflect César’s wonderfully idiosyncratic take on networks. One of his major collaborators is Ricardo Hausmann, director of Harvard’s Center for International Development and former Minister [...]
Joi Ito follows César Hidalgo’s talk on knowledge networks to offer thoughts on how networked knowledge is transforming the lab. When he accepted the job as director of the MIT Media Lab, Joi tells us, Nicholas Negroponte warned him, Don’t ever assume that you run the lab don’t try to give orders. This wasn’t [...]
Bay Point Trading aka SEO that Works are what we in the SEO industry would like to call aggressive marketers who follow the same technique used by the mobile phone companies that try to sell you a cell phone contract.snake oil salesman. I had the opportunity to interact with one of their cold callers and [...]
