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In the interview, Chimamanda talks about what it felt like getting international acclaim, her passion for writing and her advice for Nigeria’s new generation of writers.

Watch the interview below.

Zain Verjee speaks with author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the inspiration behind her book “Half of a Yellow Sun.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on receiving praise from her inspiration, legendary Nigerian storyteller Chinua Achebe.

The post Video – CNN interviews Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about her novel, “Americanah” and her literary career appeared first on Celebrating Progress Africa.

The startup was incubated at Ghana’s Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST), home to Saya Mobile, another Ghanaian startup that took the tech world by storm last year at Techcrunch Disrupt.

So what’s so special about a company that provides a contact widget to small businesses? The truth is that they are providing a really simple solution for a big pain point for SMBs. Enterprise companies have Salesforce.com for business to business sales leads management. Dropifi aims to eventually become the Salesforce.com for SMBs.

We caught up with Dropifi’s CEO, David Osei to share his vision with us and what it’s been like to be part of 500 Startups latest accelerator class. Check out the interview below and share with your network.

The team – From L to R
Kamil Nabong, David Osei, Philips Effah

CP-Africa: In mid May, news broke that Dropifi was part of 500 Startups’ latest batch of companies. How has the experience been so far?

David Osei: 500 so far has been one of the best experiences for me as an entrepreneur. We are exposed to over 200 mentors who have loads of experience to share. Also being in the heart of Silicon Valley, we’re open to lots of opportunity and people. The great thing is, everywhere you are in Silicon Valley, be it in a train, a bar or restaurant, you are doing business. It has been a great experience so far and we have even greater expectations.

CP-Africa: How did you first hear of your selection? How did you and your team feel when you found out you made it into the spring batch?

DO: After we pitched to Dave McClure in Rio, one of his venture partners followed up with a Skype interview. Without any hint of what was to come, I woke up one morning to see 500’s offer in my inbox. This totally blew me away! That same morning, I quickly called Effah and Kamil for preparations to begin towards moving to Silicon Valley.

with the 500 Startups class

It was a mixed feeling of surprised and intense happiness especially looking at the fact that we are the first African startup to join 500 and the opportunities that will be created for us.

CP-Africa: How has being a part of 500 Startups helped accelerate Dropifi’s growth?

with Dave McClure of 500 Startups

DO: We’ve been in 500 for just a month and so growth have not really changed much. We are however building on the relationships and mentorship at 500 to grow our partnerships, distribution channels and to fundraise.

CP-Africa: How did you first come up with the idea for Dropifi?

DO: The original conception for Dropifi came as a result of an encounter I had with a business executive. I requested for his business card and the piles of cards he had to wade through were enormous. He was looking for his card amongst that of others. I figured out then that collection, organization and storing of business cards must truly be a huge task. I conceptualized a mobile app that will help people to share, store and organize business cards better. This was way back in 2006. I pitched the idea to an investor / technology entrepreneur the same year, the project wasn’t able to be executed for so many reasons, one being that I wasn’t a developer and secondly, I had to focus on my first year courses at the University. Fast forwarding to 2011, the original idea went through evolutions and is now fundamentally a messaging platform to enable businesses easily take and respond to requests and inquiries through their websites.

CP-Africa: How were you able to acquire your first 5,000 users without any marketing?

DO: Being a startup with budgeting constraints, we figured out quite early that, getting cheap ways to acquire customers was our best bet. My team and I developed a distribution strategy that pushed Dropifi to some major shopping cart and content management platforms within our target markets. We also eliminated all barriers to the installation of Dropifi on all these platforms hence it became so seamless that, my mother could install it on WordPress or Shopify and get started engaging customers. This was one of the winning point for us and took us from 0 to over 5,000 users with a $0 marketing budget.

CP-Africa: Tell us more about the MEST program in Ghana. How did MEST prepare you and your team to become the entrepreneurs you are today? What makes MEST tick?

David Osei with Rackspace’s Robert Scoble recently

DO: The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) provide training, investment and mentoring for aspiring Ghanaian software entrepreneurs with the goal of creating globally successful companies that will eventually create wealth and jobs locally in Africa. I call MEST the MIT of Ghana although the MEST recruitment process is the most rigorous process I’ve ever had or gone through. Top tier talents are put together in the same environment and exposed to an international business environment and you can imagine what happens when the best graduates from the top universities in Ghana are put together to think and act on projects. MEST ticks essentially because it has figured out a way to dig out talent and groom them internationally. My team and I were part of the third batch of entrepreneurs-in-training. The unique thing about us is, we schooled at MEST for only three months instead of the normal two years and got fast tracked to the MEST incubator.

CP-Africa: Tell us more about the Dropifi opportunity. Why is lead generation online currently such a pain point for small businesses?

DO: Businesses currently generate leads through different ways. In recent times however, 80% of the world’s businesses have websites and their contact forms serve as their basic unit of lead generation. However, contact forms have remained unchanged for decades even though online visitor behaviors are fast evolving. The long-known contact forms have therefore rather become detrimental to lead generation because they are too long and require too much information. This is a pain for many small businesses. Dropifi therefore replaces this with an intelligent widget which takes requires just an email address and a message from the site visitor. Our over 5k users are generating 69% more leads, effectively engaging their customers and gaining enormous customer insights with Dropifi.

CP-Africa: Who are some of your global competitors in the space? How is Dropifi differentiating itself?

DO: Our main competitors are contactme.com, Webengage.com, Uservoice and Snap Engage. We have however differentiated ourselves with the level of business insight that we deliver with just a customer’s email address and message. Also, for small businesses, nothing is more important to them than simplicity and that is another thing that has set us apart from our competitors.

CP-Africa: Where do you see Dropifi in the next 2-3 years?

DO: In the next two to three years, I see Dropifi being the Salesforce for small businesses. A global company which offers businesses a multi-channel and social request handling system so businesses can completely virtualize and automate the way their agents handle requests. I also see Dropifi offering a better and wide range of business analytics intelligence to aid small businesses derive real value out of interactions with customers and prospects. In recent times, the demand for analytics is unquenchable. The era of analytics has come to stay; it is the present and the future as well. Dropifi seeks to make the world a better place using this new trend.

CP-Africa: What advice do you have for African tech entrepreneurs looking to start globally successful technology companies?

DO: I believe there are three key things that define a successful startup, the team, the idea/execution and the market. To start a globally successful startup you need to build a team that can compete globally (remember investors fund teams not ideas), the idea you are working upon should be relevant in your local market as well as the international market and finally you need to build a solution for your customer and the ever-changing target market of your business.

Most importantly you have to remember that horses are prepared for battle but success comes from the Lord.

In case you missed it, check out their journey via the infographic below:

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“Ory is a well-established leader in the technology and transparency communities,” said Omidyar Network Partner Stephen King.  “She will help spur Omidyar Network’s growth and impact by lending her voice and considerable experience in Africa.”

Okolloh will join a growing team in Omidyar Network’s Johannesburg office.

“We are delighted to have Ory lend her insights and expertise to our efforts in Africa,” said Malik Fal , managing director, Africafor Omidyar Network.  “She will bring a unique blend of experience, and her collaboration will be of tremendous value to all of our work on the continent.”

Okolloh was also a co-founder of Mzalendo and a Chayes Fellow at the World Bank’s Department of Institutional Integrity.  She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and sits on the board of the Africa Media Initiative.  Okolloh is a frequent speaker at leading conferences such as TED, the World Economic Forum, Poptech, the Clinton Global Initiative, Techonomy, Mobile Web Africa and the Monaco Media.  She graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Pittsburgh and with a law degree from Harvard Law School .

ABOUT OMIDYAR NETWORK
Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $611 million to for-profit companies and non-profit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including entrepreneurship, financial inclusion, government transparency, property rights, and consumer Internet and mobile. To learn more, visit www.omidyar.com.

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During the interview, she stressed the need for Africans and African governments to devise unique solutions to the continent’s problems. She cited the African Unions’ African Risk Capacity, a unique multilateral solution to mitigating the risk of environmental disasters on African economies as an example of how African governments are implementing innovative, home grown solutions. Typically, African countries are put under international spotlight during climate disaster situations depicting Africans as hungry and destitute.

The African Risk Capacity acts as an insurance agency by African nations for their fellow African countries that will ensure that African countries can fund African climate and environmental disasters instead on depending on aid from the international community.

Just like insurance companies work in the corporate world, member African countries pay a premium to the African Risk Capacity, such that when participating countries get a flood or drought, they are able to get insurance payments. For instance, if a country pays a premium of $3 million, during a disaster event, the country can get up to $30 million in insurance payments. The program provides weather based insurance mitigation for African countries. At present, 22 countries have signed up for the program.
Also, speaking on her long-term strategy for her country, Nigeria’s future economic success, the Minister emphasized the need for Nigeria to ensure that the country benefits from its demographic dividend by providing jobs for young people in sectors such as agriculture, a sector from which the administration aims to produce over 20 million metric tonnes of food by 2015. Nigeria is notably one of the largest importers of rice in the world despite the country’s capacity to produce all the rice it needs.

Watch the video below and share it with your network.

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CNN is set to profile celebrated Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on its latest edition of its weekly show, African voices.

African Voices, a weekly show that examines the diversity, dynamism and global influence of Africa’s people and culture; and highlights Africa’s most engaging personalities within and in the Diaspora will be spotlighting the Nigerian literary star.

Cheerfully pioneering the way for a new wave of Nigerian writers, renowned Nigerian Author, Adichie, narrates her award winning novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, as it tells a human story of a brutal and controversial civil war which took place in her homeland, Nigeria, in the late 60’s.

Highly influenced by her Mother, Ifeoma Adichie, who became the first female Registrar of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Adichie is bold, vivacious, candid; a story teller living her truth. And that fulfilment translates into Award winning novels.

Describing her development as a writer, between her books Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americana, Adichie says ‘they are such different books, and I think I wrote them from very different places in my life, emotionally.’

According to her ‘For Purple Hibiscus, I was very homesick, I was in the US. Suddenly I was romantisizing the hibiscus flowers in our front yard and I wrote this book, about missing home, nostalgia. Half of a Yellow Sun was so different. I knew I was writing about this very intense, contested history and I did so much research, and I cried a lot when I was writing it. My grandfathers died in Biafra, and here I was kind of mining the pain of my family.’

‘Then Americana, I laughed a lot writing it. It’s just very different, I don’t so much see it as a kind of linear progression – the books. It’s sort of more just like occupying different parallel spaces,’ Adichie concluded.

From uncovering historical atrocities to playing a role in shaping her country, Nigeria’s future, Adichie has also considered a career in politics.

Watch out for Chimamanda’s CNN interview on Saturday at 03:30pm; Sunday at 09:00am and 06:30pm; Monday 10:30am and 05:30pm; and Tuesday 05:30am.

Spread the word.

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Though the social network is far less popular than Facebook and Twitter on the continent, the platform is rapidly gaining traction among white collar working class professionals in Africa’s largest cities.

The countries with the fastest growing number of users on the platform include South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda,  Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Morocco and Cameroon.

Here is a CP-Africa infographic of Africa’s LinkedIn statistics:

The post Infographic: Over 7.5 million Africans on LinkedIn; South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt account for over 60% of users appeared first on Celebrating Progress Africa.

The GSMA has opened its African headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, as the organisation seeks more cooperation with the sector stakeholders in the continent. The office will be located at the iHub, Nairobi, Kenya.

The association says the decision to open a point of presence in the African continent was to give support to.the burgeoning telecoms market in sub-saharan Africa.

According to the director general Anne Bouverot the sector also holds huge potential in tackling unemployment in the region and boost regional economies.

The rapid pace of mobile adoption has delivered an explosion of innovation and huge economic benefits in the region, directly contributing US$ 32 billion to the Sub-Saharan African economy, or 4.4 per cent of GDP.
With necessary spectrum allocations and transparent regulation, the mobile industry could also fuel the creation of 14.9 million new jobs in the region between 2015 and 2020, she said in a statement on the GSMA website.

The region has also amongst the highest growths in mobile connections, with Nigeria and Zimbabwe recording the highest mobile connections and internet use in the region.

The association is projecting a 50 per cent growth in the next five years, with connections reaching 750 million from the current 500 million mark surpassed in the first quarter of 2013.

The GSMA warns this growth will require more harmonised spectrum for mobile or the continent risks undermining its broadband and development goals as the amounts of allocated spectrum among the lowest in the world.

It says the delivery of mobile broadband to rural populations should be a priority.

A positive and supportive regulatory environment and sufficient spectrum allocation is critical to the further growth of mobile in Africa. I am confident that now that we have a physical presence in Africa, we will be able to
work together with our members to put the conditions in place that will facilitate the expansion of mobile, bringing important connectivity and services to all in the region, said Bouverot.

In Africa the GSMA mostly focuses on regulatory, environmental, and roaming issues, with the GSMA Africa secretariat overseeing research on taxation, spectrum and other issues of particular relevance to the African mobile industry.

iHub is Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community, which is an open space for the technologists, investors, tech companies and hackers in the area. This space is a tech community facility with a focus on young entrepreneurs, web and mobile phone
programmers, designers and researchers.

The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and
utilities.

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Read and share your thoughts

African Outtake

From Diary of a Very Bad Year

n+1: Did you travel to Africa a lot?

HFM: I did. Quite a few times.

And the countries are all different. You go to South Africa and it has many aspects of a developed market. You go to Nigeria and it’s weird. Lagos looked to me like a city where aliens had come and built the city and then left, and then just sort of let it decay. People kind of wandered in from the outskirts, squatted in the city. So you had this strange juxtaposition of what was clearly modern infrastructure that had just been kind of abandoned to decay—and then total squalor. You’d go one block off a main thoroughfare and the road is dirt. You go to a nice neighborhood, all the houses are behind walls and outside the walls there’s somebody cooking on a garbage fire, right outside the walls of some big house. It’s like nothing I’ve seen anywhere else.

n+1 And yet they had a lively banking sector?

HFM: If you went there it would be clear to you that there’s no way that those banks could deploy the kinds of capital that was being pushed in.

On the other hand, there’s something very attractive from an investment standpoint of going to a place like Lagos. You’d go to an office building or a hotel and in the course of the day the power goes out six times and the generator kicks on to power the building, and that generator is powered by diesel, and you see all these fuel trucks all over the place that have to bring diesel to fuel the generator, and the generators are noisy and loud. You’re like, “Wow, there’s an obvious opportunity here. Somebody should build a reliable power plant! It would just be tremendous, a tremendous economic efficiency, because you wouldn’t need all these diesel trucks zooming around, you wouldn’t need all these generators, and by the way Nigeria has all this natural gas that’s just being flared so if you burn that in a power plant you’re using a resource that’s just being flared!”

Or you drive in the city and there’s one bridge from the mainland to Victoria Island; everyday it’s backed up for hours. It’s like, “You know what? I could build another bridge next to this bridge, I could charge a huge toll!” This is a country that needs everything. There’s so many obvious opportunities to invest and really increase efficiency. Physically invest. I’m not talking about the ability for a country to absorb capital institutionally, but like physically.

n+1: But?

HFM: But then you realize that it’s not like they can’t figure this out. It’s not like they don’t get the fact that it’s pretty annoying that the power goes out six times a day and it’s pretty annoying to have six fuel generators humming all the time. The reason investment doesn’t happen is because it’s in some powerful person’s interest that it not happen. There’s some guy who controls the diesel trucks who makes tons of money from being a diesel distributor, and there’s a guy with all these generators who would be out of business if power plants were built, and he stands in the way. There are people there, there are corrupt government officials who know how much value can be created by a power plant, but they want to extract it for themselves. That’s why the country needs everything.

n+1: What were the difficulties, when you say there were difficulties in getting involved in the market—

HFM: It was just like mechanical difficulties. This wasn’t like going on Fidelity and saying, “Enter the six-month T-bill auction in Gabon.” There were times where to participate in an auction you’d have to get a whole like packet of documents together, signatures and everything and fax them to the central bank of the country. Sounds simple, right? Well the phone lines don’t work there half the time. So you have to fax between this hour and this hour to be eligible, but you just couldn’t even get the fax machine to pick up, or your fax transmission would be halfway through and you’d get cut off. Sometimes you have to get special approval as a foreigner to invest in these markets, and we’re navigating a big bureaucracy. So we would do all that, but once we do that, then we’d have permission to participate in the market, and it was worth it.

n+1: What would you do when there was a fax crisis?

HFM: A fax crisis wasn’t an option, because you know you couldn’t not get a fax. You’d call and try and find somebody, you know, “Could you see if the fax is working? Give me another fax number.” And it was kind of silly. But then that’s why the returns are there. How many people are going to put up with that nonsense?

When they finally improved their systems and you could email things or do things electronically or there were investments banks that would alleviate those trades for you, the opportunity disappeared.

n+1: Couldn’t you just fly there and delivery the papers?

HFM: Well you wouldn’t know, you wouldn’t know until you tried if the fax machine was going to work or not.

n+1: That’s true.

HFM: These are the kinds of trades I love. Where the success or failure is determined by whether the fax machine works, not whether the guy you just hired’s a crook.

n+1: Is this Nigeria you’re mostly talking about?

HFM: No, that’s some other countries we had this issue with, smaller countries.

n+1: What other places did you go that were interesting?

HFM: You name the country in sub-Saharan African, we either did some small trades there or looked into doing some small trade there. We were pretty promiscuous. By the time the bull market came around, we only had some small investment in Nigeria and Ghana.

n+1: How was Ghana?

HFM: That particular investment did not work out so well. As an economy overall it’s hard to say. It was less corrupt than Nigeria, more democratic than a lot of places we operated, but it was still Africa, right? The economy was still a little bit chaotic, statistics were poorly kept, transparency was poor and the economy’s subject to a lot of volatility. There was a thing at the end of last year where there was a devaluation of the currency. There was an election and the campaign spending went out of control, the incumbent tried to buy victory for his party’s candidate. He was unable to. So I mean, it’s Africa.

n+1: Of all the places you’ve dealt with, Africa was just the least developed, is that the main thing?

HFM: It’s the most chaotic. People talk about corruption, but like really effective corruption requires something like organization. Like Argentina. It’s organized, it’s very organized corruption. Even a lot of Russia, to a certain extent. Very organized corruption. Africa is certainly corrupt. But it’s more that it was chaotic. The infrastructure is poor, volatility is high. Whereas in Argentina you can predict that you will be screwed. You just know it. In Africa, anything can happen.

Like one day you’re trying to transfer funds out of out of the country and suddenly they say, “Oh, sorry there are no dollars available.” And you know if somebody said that to you in Argentina, it would be like, “Because I want you to buy the permission or whatever.” In Africa they are just, “No, there are no dollars today,” and the next day they’ll call you up, “Oh yeah there are dollars now.” There are things that happen there that in other places I would chalk up to an attempt to shake me down. There, it was often just chaos and disorganization.

n+1: You were the only ones willing to sit on the fax?

HFM: No, in Angola we had to get literally a presidential decree.

n+1: [Laughs.] How did you get that?

HFM: It took us lobbying for like two years.

n+1: You would, how would you—

HFM: When they would come to the UN or World Bank meetings, you’d meet with them, we met the ambassador, we were like, “Look, we want to invest in your country, but we want to get started with something simple so we want to be able to buy T-bills. Don’t worry, we’re not hot money, we’ll keep the money in for a long time.” Which we did. They let us in, they gave us a very small capacity, but we were involved in their T-bill market for like two years.

n+1: And that’s considered a considered a long time?

HFM: Yeah, that’s a pretty long time.

n+1: And they love you? They love you in Angola?

HFM: I don’t think they remember us anymore. It was a long time ago. Actually the ambassador that we—was it the ambassador or the finance minister?—one time we went to the ambassador or the finance minister and then the finance minister at that time was later arrested.

n+1: Why wouldn’t they let you in?

HFM: That’s the thing, it was just chaos. They’re just like “What’s the upside?” They’re just kind of suspicious. And like, “What’s a hedge fund? And if something goes wrong I’m going to get in trouble.”

n+1: Uh huh.

HFM: “Yeah, it could be good for the country to have foreign capital involved but there’s nothing in it for me, so why should I exert myself?”

n+1: Couldn’t you have bribed them?

HFM: It’s illegal!

n+1: Where?

HFM: It’s illegal under U.S. law for a U.S. citizen to pay bribes to a foreign officials.

n+1: [Scoffing chuckle.] Even if you’re over there?

HFM: Wherever you are. The government is very strict about that and we are very strict about that.

n+1: Are there places that aren’t?

HFM:

n+1: Does that put you at a disadvantage?

HFM: Theoretically. But if my business were based on paying bribes I wouldn’t want to be in it.

n+1: Did you sense that they were expecting bribes—

HFM:

n+1: They’d be like, “You should contribute to my charity fund,” or how?

HFM: It’s kind of like, “Well what’s in it for me?” “Do you mean, ‘What’s in it for your country?’” “No, what’s in it for me?”

n+1: How do you ignore that?

HFM: You say, “It’s a very good thing for your country if this investment goes forward.”

The post A foreign investor’s view on investing in “Africa” – Thoughts? appeared first on Celebrating Progress Africa.

Lagos’ economy is significant to that of Ghana and is the heart of Nigeria’s $284 billion GDP economy.

“We base our analysis on states’ internally generated revenue, which make up 15 per cent of state government revenue, and consumption data, as proxies for state income.

“Lagos State produces about 12 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP, which is equivalent to $32 billion by 2013 ending. Post rebasing, which we now expect in early 2014, we estimate a 40 per cent upward revision in the country’s national income.

“By our estimates, the Lagos State economy will become Africa’s 13th biggest economy in 2014 at approximately $45 billion – equivalent to that of Ghana,” said RenCap.

“Lagos is among the states with the smallest household sizes – (4.9 people). Given that Lagos State is the most densely populated state in Nigeria, and its average household size is relatively small, the implication is that property prices (per square metre) must be expensive compared with those in other states,” RenCap further stated.

RenCap also further revealed that Lagos has the highest net primary school completion ratio in Nigeria at 70.6 per cent.

“The most educated workforce in coming years will also be apparent in the south and south-west, where at least 60 per cent of the children complete secondary school.

“We think education levels in the south and south west are likely to spur even faster growth, as we have seen in emerging markets globally,” the company said.

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The language widely spoken in Western Nigeria, West Africa to some part of central and southern Americas is now available for iOS devices as featured on the Nigerian Apple’s app store.

Oluko Asa (culture tutor), the takes users on a quest to get acquainted with the Yorùbá language using a combination of illustrations, text, voice and games, allowing users to get speaking their first words in minutes following through with Oluko Asa tested guidance to aid learning.

Yoruba101 is structured with an assumption that the user has no prior understanding of the language. Each module builds on the other providing the user with increased knowledge of the language. There is also an inbuilt feature that allows users monitor progress across every module.

The lead developer, Adebayo Adegbembo said the android version of the app has been available on Google Play since December 2012. The iOS version goes for $0.99 and is compatible with iPad and requires iOS 4.3 or higher. Download the app here.

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Cameroonian tech entrepreneur and businesswomen, Rebecca Enonchong discusses technology and innovation in West Africa.

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TaxiPark helps Lagosians book a taxi within Lagos via their PC or via their mobile phones and it works. Its rave reviews online and offline from its first group of customers attest to its usefulness. Given Lagos’ notorious traffic congestion, it is clear the world of difference TaxiPark makes to its few hundred early group of customers.

We caught up with TaxiPark’s CEO, Rodney Jackson Cole to learn more about the service.

Q&A with Rodney Jackson Cole, C.E.O., TaxiPark

CP-Africa: Welcome to CP-Africa Rodney! Can you tell us more about TaxiPark…

Rodney Jackson Cole: TaxiPark is a mobile/web application that allows passengers to conveniently book affordable taxi rides within a city (currently in Lagos). It has an algorithm that helps users get the best taxi rates. TaxiPark also helps taxi operators run more effectively by managing daily transactions and drivers (fleet management).

CP-Africa: How did the idea come to life? Who came up with it/what inspired its founding?

RJC: We were brainstorming over new ideas & services in the Christmas of 2011, our awesome CTO (Ugochi N. Ugbomeh) brought up the suggestion to build a Taxi app for Lagos. She had a terrible experience trying to get a taxi for an important appointment in Lagos.

CP-Africa: Who are the members of your founding team and what are their backgrounds?

RJC: I am a Lead developer at Interactive Shack and worked on a couple projects before TaxiPark. I did the UI/UX and everything awesome about TaxiPark’s apps (web and mobile) and I currently lives in Lagos..

Ugochi N. Ugbomeh – Graduated with a BSc. Geology (2009). She always had interest for IT so she decided for her MSc she was going to switch from Earth sciences to Information Technology. She moved to Scotland, studied in the University of Glasgow and earned a degree in MSc. Information Technology. She currently works as a Performance Analyst in Glasgow. She plans on moving back home by the end of 2013 and focus on TaxiPark fully.

Timi Omai leads the graphic design team at Interactive Shack. He studied Information and Communication Technology in Ghana. He designed the TaxiPark and iShack logos and also some of the company’s early ad campaigns. He currently lives in Lagos.

CP-Africa: What unique problem is Taxi Park trying to solve?

RJC: We are trying to make the booking experience as easy and as convenient as possible (accessibility on any device; mobile and web, less time consumption, access to a wider range of taxi companies). We are also trying to change the general idea behind the taxi booking rates and services. We want to get taxi companies to compete and beat the price down to make it affordable for the average Nigerian.

In addition, we want to help Taxi drivers get more jobs as well as help taxi companies monitor and monetise their taxis

CP-Africa: What kind of adoption have you seen from Lagosians?

RJC: They have embraced it…they love it. We have gotten great feedback from all our users (existing and new), good reviews on Google play and a lot of positive tweets, blog posts, emails and Facebook posts

CP-Africa: How do you make money?

RJC: Taxi drivers buy prepaid booking credits. A booking credit is charged when a taxi ride is completed.

CP-Africa: How attractive do you think the market opportunity is?

RJC: We are very optimistic. Even though we are in our early days, we now complete hundreds of bookings monthly.

CP-Africa: Which other Nigerian cities are you already in or plan to launch in?

RJC: We currently run in Lagos, but we’ll soon kick start operations in Abuja and Port Harcourt

CP-Africa: What are some of the challenges you have faced running the startup?

 RJC: It’s been an exciting adventure; a lot of surprises, a lot of tweaks and legwork to get to where we are now.

CP-Africa: Have you raised a seed round or venture capital? 

RJC: We got some seed funding in our early days and at the moment have our fingers crossed as we may be getting some VC funds soon

CP-Africa: What are some of the more rewarding aspects about running the company?

RJC: Watching and building an idea to life, that’s always exciting and of course each time a ride is successful. That’s one satisfied passenger and a customer for life

CP-Africa: Where do you see Taxi Park in the next 2-3 years?

RJC: Six countries across Africa and 4000 drivers signed on the service.

Thanks for joining us Rodney! To our readers in Lagos, check out TaxiPark.com.ng. Don’t forget to spread the word.

The post Q&A: Introducing Taxi Park, Nigeria’s first online taxi booking service – Interview with TaxiPark’s C.E.O, Rodney Jackson Cole appeared first on Celebrating Progress Africa.

Humanitarian campaigner and wife of Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel gave the keynote address and talk show host Felicia Suttle charismatically presented the event.

The WIE (Women: Inspiration and Enterprise) Africa Symposium, hosted by WIE founder Dee Poku in conjunction with Toyin Saraki, founder of the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, was the first women’s conference on the African continent to bring together female leaders from the worlds of politics, business, philanthropy, media, fashion, entertainment and the arts to empower and inspire the next generation.

The event was packed full of panels and workshops on topics such as role of technology in media, tackling social perceptions of African women, entrepreneurship and the influx of western brands to the continent.

In addition, more than fifty women made a pledge to invest in other young women before the next conference.

Toyin Saraki who is also a supporter of the UN Secretary General’s Every Woman Every Child Effort said:

“It’s been an honour and privilege for the Wellbeing Foundation Africa to partner with Dee Poku to make this WIE Symposium a reality. It has been quite a journey since Dee and I first talked about bringing WIE to this beautiful continent.”

“I remember getting home after attending my first WIE Symposium in New York two years ago, and being so energised by all the people that I had listened to and met, that all I wanted to do was share the experience with others. Iʼm sure the women that attended went back home with the same feeling.”

WIE’s CEO Dee Poku is thrilled at the outcome of the conference:

“WIE Africa exceeded my wildest expectations. Women leaders across the continent have been working diligently for years to improve the situation of the female population but WIE Africa brought them together.”

She added, “Individually these women were a powerful force but together we are unstoppable. My profound hope is that all the WIE attendees will make good on their pledge to invest in at least five women over the next 12 months.”

Jane Wales, President and CEO of the Global Philanthropy Forum spoke on a panel named “Innovation In Health And Education Post Millenium Development Goals” which was moderated by Mrs Saraki. She said:

“WIE Africa was an opportunity for women of accomplishment and creativity to come together, learn from one another, and contribute to one another’s success. It was both an honour and a joy to be among such warm, smart, talented and giving leaders. I hope that this was the first of an annual event.”

Next generation trailblazers such as serial entrepreneur Ndidi Nwuneli founder of LEAP Africa, and Isis Nyongo, Managing Director of InMobi which is the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network, also spoke on panels. Both are named on the 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa list by Forbes.

WIE and Toyin Saraki hosted a fundraising dinner on the Monday evening, to benefit the Graca Machel Trust which was founded in 2010 to promote women’s leadership and children’s rights.

WIE Africa was timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum Africa and showcased women taking a central role in shaping the Africa of tomorrow. The pan-African event will occur in a different African city annually.

WIE has been hosting annual events in New York and London since 2010 and has brought together women like Alex Wek, Queen Rania, Donna Karan, Melinda Gates, Arianna Huffington and Cherie Blair.

The post At the 2013 Women: Inspiration and Enterprise (WIE) conference, Africa’s most inspiring women leaders pledge to invest in other young women appeared first on Celebrating Progress Africa.