On the Ground: Updates from Rwanda & Tanzania

I just left Kigali after a busy time videotaping HeHe Ltd, a mobile phone app provider team that started business just  nine months ago.  They told me about challenges like losing a major client and losing a team member.  They’ve been asked to talk about teamwork challenges to an international student group in Kigali organized by Cambridge University, U.K. They have riveting insights about how a team stays creative and bonded.

I also got to talk with a government agency in Kigali who are eager to take story episodes of this young HeHe team to inspire others in rural areas to start their own enterprises in high tech projects!  We will do some planning via Skpe in August and think about radio, web and live events to tell insider story segments about Clarisse, Amiri, Diane and Richard who competed at the Pivot25 mobile developer conference in June and had more twitter traffic than any of the other teams. It was Richard’s first trip out of Rwanda and he plans to be first in the next competition.

I also got to meet a Frenchman at the airport who’s doing development work in Sudan.  He thinks stories of young innovators should be easy to fund and wants to help!

Tomorrow I will follow Jodie Wu around Dar Es Salaam in meetings about funding, websites and advice for Global Cycle Solutions. Then we travel by bus to Morogoro to talk to sales reps for GCS.

Jodie is eager to get into the field to see how products are being received and she’s developing another side business in Arusha to provide affordable housing to visitors like me and the fellow who’s coming from the US to shoot a story about what makes an enterpreneur tick — for an ebook written by an educator at harvard. I’ll meet with him in August to learn more.

Invitation to Young World Inventors Twitter Chat #socent

We are thrilled to announce a Twitter Chat on July 29, 11am for fans of Just a BandKuweni Serious,iHub, AfrinnovatorNaiLab, and Media Focus on Africa, to expand audience for YoungWorldInventors.com and web stories of young innovators.We need your ideas, questions and links! We will coordinate the discussion at Media Focus, new partners for YWI.

Goals:

We are building audience support for webisodes of 3+ minutes about African innovators that inspire and provide how-to guidance – how to develop ideas, organize teams, find mentorship, etc. We need wisdom from the fans of the groups above to guide us.

Diane Hendrix of YoungWorldInventors.com is telling stories of Innovators working across cultures in Africa and the US. Our audiences are young innovators on both continents. We plan to show videos in live and online audiences in Africa and America to trigger more high and low tech solutions to social problems. Do you think stories can trigger innovation?

So join us for a Twitter Chat on July 29th, 11 am to discuss the Qs below:

  1. What social innovation or start-ups have impressed you? best aspects?
  2. What are the biggest challenges to starting a sustainable enterprise?
  3. What resources do you know about (or stories) for mentorship, incubation, team building and $upport?
  4. How might we connect with more individuals who are interested in becoming social innovators?

Use hashtag  #socent after each tweet, so we can post a summary of the discussion.

Just a Band agreed to do music for Young World Inventors. YWI is raising funds from US investors and our Kickstarter campaign. You can help by donating ($1 or more) and passing the word along. Thanks for sharing ideas!  Let us know if you want to do this again, and we’ll try to make it happen, across continents.