Article By: Stephanie Vermeulen

Photos by: Jaap van ‘t Kruis

Published: Wednesday, April 7, 2010 21:42 on Depers.NL

Nairobi buzzes. A new generation of Internet innovators to attract the continent out of the gutter. “Without the Web, we were still stuck in that dark hole.”

“The light has entered,” said Aly-Khan Satchu, founder of the online financial architecture Rich in Kenya. “Long was dark. Then came the mobile phone and the Internet to Kenya. The revolution began. “

The last five years, the number of mobile phone owners in Kenya has grown from 15,000 to 17.4 million.

He can not only make calls and send text messages but also important, sometimes life-saving information to obtain, blogging, make friends, trade, banking, pressure on authorities. And, perhaps most importantly, inspiration to include online services and applications to design and create.

As the social networking site Whive. Founder John Samson Karanja wanted more than just a meeting place created for Africans. “We are hungry for information. On Whive (read: we-hyve) I want to encourage visitors to ask questions and sharing answers. “

Karanja, who with his Whive the first winner of the Innovation Fund of Nokia (Nokia Open Screen Fund), will be the web host visitors also in several local languages of independent information provided on various issues such as health issues, veeprijzen, or where and how a new company can register.

“Many people in rural areas not now know that if you fold a towel and a water filter used, the risk of cholera greatly reduced,” says Karanja. “In my mobile application they know that later.”

Karanja is a real cheetah.

In 2007 all Ghanaian economist George Ayittey spoke of the emerging young African cheetah generation, who find new solutions to old problems. Unlike the older generation hippopotamus, still muttering to colonialism and imperialism, cheetahs take matters into their own hands.

With the Internet, they have finally found a way to pull Africa out of the gutter. They devise innovative and creative applications that they run the world as hard as in the West.

They seek each other out in brand new reception, like the iHub and iLab, where you can get help and advice for your innovative idea into a business. They are encouraged to establish partnerships and encourage others to also participate.

It is true that social thought that cheetahs of Kenya unites in a strong, homogeneous group, which together with lifts to new Internet applications to find solutions to poverty.

There is MapKibera, the largest slum in Africa online maps, or Shujaaz, a free comic that mobile phone provider Safaricom is distributed and where the reader is urged to SMS solutions to problems such as racial hatred.

But perhaps the most successful initiative so far is Nairobits that young people between 17 and 24 years from Kibera learn to design and develop websites.

Web designers and developers are very popular in Kenya since its creation in 2000, Nairobits hundreds of young people from the slum through the course at a paid job helped. “Without the Internet we are still stuck in that dark hole,” says director of cheetah Nairobits Mark Kamau, who himself grew up in Kibera. “We had no prospect of something even came close to a career.”

The Internet, the distance between the slum dwellers and the suits and Mercedes cars from downtown Nairobi virtually eliminated. It transforms from a disadvantaged African continent where everything goes slow, to a continent that joins the online revolution. Or, as Aly-Khan Satchu of Rich says: “Suddenly we drive a Ferrari. It is our moment, and it comes only once.

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Kenya Technology Scene Buzzing

Read more about Stefanie’s and Jaap’s work in Africa in their website TriplePMedia.nl