Throw your hands up in the air, the World’s first USSD App store Hewani.co.ke launches in Kenya

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Hewani.co.ke Apps for the whole family

Back in May 2010 I wrote a blog post “Why Zain/Bharti should launch an App Store“. It was my belief that creating a mobile app economy in Kenya could catalyse the growth of software for export in East Africa especially for young mobile developer like myself. At that time many of us (developers) were pushing Safaricom to open up the MPesa API or create an app store where we could upload our mobile applications and presumably directly access their huge subscriber base.

The problem was, though developers such as James Mwai of AroundMe were getting thousands upon thousands of downloads on app stores such as the Nokia Ovi store it was quite a challenge to monetize the applications and therefore there was no incentive for developers to publish applications.

Well a lot has changed a year later developers now have various methods of monetizing applications through platforms such as InMobi and Google Admob which provide local facilities for integrating Ads as well as integration with offline mobile payment solutions like PesaPay(@CrowdPesa).

Things got much better when Virtual City Ltd winners of last year 1 million dollar Nokia Challenge launched among many other things their Hewani Life App store www.Hewani.co.ke. During their live launch event at the Fox Theatres in Sarit Center C.E.O John Waibochi unleashed  the platform with a suite of 400 applications that will change the way we live.

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This is a good move as its bound to localize this lucrative and untapped market and lower the barrier to entry for upcoming developers.

You can follow HewaniLife on @HewaniLife on Twitter.

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About John Karanja

John Karanja is the Founder of Whive.com which is a Mobile and Web social media platform where people interact using different forms of media. Whive.com has over 120,000 members across East Africa and was a Winner at the Pivot 25 Mobile Technology Competition in 2011. John is also a Co-Founder of Crowdpesa.com a Location Based mobile application which provides a market place for African Merchants and Businesses. Crowdpesa has been listed as one of the 40 startups to watch in Africa and appeared at the first DEMO Africa in 2012. John has a Masters degree in Political Sociology from the University of Oxford, England and a Bachelor of Business and Information Technology from Strathmore University, Kenya. John has been awarded the Vision2030 ICT Award 2011 for Innovation in Youth and Gender Sector by the Kenyan Government. He is also the First African Winner of the Nokia Open Screen Fund in 2009 as well as a nominee for the Tech4Africa Innovation Award 2011.