Silicon Savannah

Tarnoff, Ben. 2017. “Tech’s Push to Teach Coding Isn’t about Kids’ Success – It’s about Cutting Wages.” The Guardian, September 21, 2017, sec. Technology.

AO: This is an important article to read together with much of the mainstream discourse about African techies and the proliferation of new programs to train them (e.g. "Africa is the future of AI Research").Read more

Perry, A. (2011, June 30). Silicon Savanna: Mobile Phones Transform Africa. Time.

AO: This article was written about the iHub in its "early days" and was one of the first big mainstream articles about it. I remember my manager at the iHub was very excited about it and on my trip to the US before I officially started my job, I picked up a couple of nice frames from IKEA so...Read more

Nzekwe, H. (2020, August 17). Kenya Hunts Foreign-Owned Tech Startups With 30% Local Ownership Law. Wee Tracker.

This blog post builds on ongoing discussions in the Nairobi tech space where race-based privilege is being increasingly articulated to describe the unequal playing ground that black Kenyan founders and white expatriate founders face when looking for start-up capital. This post focuses on the 30...Read more

Kabari, A. (2019, January 7). Don’t raise your voice here. Medium.

This is the public post published in July 20, 2017 by Angela Kabari, the woman who went public with the allegation of sexual harassment against the Ushahidi Executive Director. The post includes detailed documentation including a transcript of the sexual harassment and her statement on the...Read more

Strachan Matranga, H., Bhattacharyya, B., & Baird, R. (2017). Breaking the Pattern: Getting Digital Financial Services Entrepreneurs to Scale in India and East Africa. Village Capital.

AO: This 2017 report has been particularly influential in the Kenyan technology space and continues to be cited in conversations regarding race, tech capital and privilege. The key finding that created a big buzz and is primarily what is referred to when people mention "The Village Capital...Read more

Friederici, N., Wahome, M., & Graham, M. (2020). Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa: How a Continent Is Escaping Silicon Valley’s Long Shadow. The MIT Press.

AO: This recent Open Access monograph publication by Friederici et al. is particularly relevant for the macro and nano chapters in that they describe Nairobi's technology ecosystem and the entrepreneurs who work...Read more

Learning from Nairobi

Something Kim said - about Nairobi being an important site to learn from given that many in the US may be forced to go into the more informal economy, etc. - reminded me of a twist of that point...Read more
Okolloh, O. (2017, July 11). No Sacred Cows. Medium.

This brief Medium post was written by an influential leader in the Nairobi tech space, Ory Okolloh, who was a former co-founder of Ushahidi. In the post, she raises several points including that "we as a tech community must examine the series of events that led us to a point where an...Read more

Subscribe to Silicon Savannah