On the Ground: A Hunger to Learn

Time is short, stories need telling, and could I ask you to tweet, FB and email friends with our link, please?  Once we publish the first ten episodes, I plan to find, film and help fund more innovators to inspire and continue the cycle. Stories change lives, says the Rwandan agency who wants to help us.

One of the teachers of the AITI course in July’s KIST boot camp (Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, see http://AITI.mit.edu) says that 4-5 teams are ready to launch new enterprises already. There’s a hunger to learn new technolgy which is changing the game in East Africa. Our HeHe team CEO Clarisse was invited to speak to a national gathering of students about the hardwon lessons of teamwork she’s learned in just nine months of operation. She’s going to Uganda in September after winning another pitch competition.

In Kenya I met with a large newspaper editor who will assign a writer to tell some of the stories I’m following — for general readers and for the diplomatic scene. Telling these stories in print and video, for web, phone and live audiences, will get their news into the hands of potential funders and build new enterprises.

Introducing Kenya’s “Just A Band” – The Sound of Young World Inventors!

We’re very excited here in the editing room about a new collaboration with “Just A Band,” who recently agreed to have their music appear in our videos.  “Just A Band” hails from Kenya and is a creation of Jim Chuchu, Dan Muli, and Bill “Blinky” Sellanga.  Young World Inventors is very happy to have them on board as they provide us with an eclectic mix of sounds and styles to color our videos with.  “We’ve been called a boy band, a rock band (really?), a house outfit, an Afro-electro-pop band,” the group states on their website, “we don’t have any one genre we can classify ourselves in. We like hip-hop, we like rock, we like house, some of us like country and drum and bass – and (hopefully) you’ll find influences of all that in our music.”  Check out their music video for “Ha-He” and meet Makmende, Kenya’s first viral internet sensation:

Interview with Will Mworia of Afrinnovator.com at iHub in Nairobi, Kenya

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ5zkc_RLBc

Diane Hendrix sat down in January 2011 for an interview with Will Mworia, co-founder of Afrinnovator.com.   Afrinnovator.com is Mworia’s outlet for sharing tech news and stories of innovation coming out of Africa.  Mworia himself is a visionary and an optimist, confident that advances in computer technology will empower African communities to unprecedented levels.  He discusses his views in an inspiring essay titled Dear Africa:

“Africa has been a great puzzle for the entire world.  The continent’s history has been riddled with all sorts of troubles from slavery to colonialism to post colonial troubles in many of the countries.  Some have thought Africa to be accursed while others have given up hope on the continent completely.  So is there hope for Africa in this new continent?  Living in Africa, it is very interesting to witness the newly rising interest in Africa.  There seems to be another wave of interest coming up, one that is hopefully going to benefit the continent more, and one that is driven by technology and the Internet.  Perhaps for the first time ever, there is actually an equal playing field for Africans to engage in!”  Read more here.