More Tech Salons About entrepreneurship
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We all talk about encouraging entrepreneurship in developing countries. Yet how many of us have launched our own business, or spun off an initiative from our employer into its own organization? The startup life is hard, despite all the hype about venture capital funding and million-dollar exits. In the USA, only 50% of startups survive…
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TechSoup recently hosted a Technology Salon asking What is the True Potential of Global Impact Investing? with 30 social impact leaders from diverse backgrounds in the corporate, philanthropic, and nonprofit sectors. We discussed what impact investing means for nonprofits, philanthropists, and investors and for our ability to make change together. It was a unique chance…
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An increase in the number of tech entrepreneurs in the countries in which we work represents a huge opportunity to work with local talent to tackle important barriers from growth and economic opportunity, to financial access and healthcare. However, recognising that around 80% – 90% of start-ups fail in their first year, we need to…
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Let us start with the classic (borderline cliché) development proverb: if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if he is taught how to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. It was this analogy that got conversation started at the latest Technology Salon, “Are Mobile Money Cash Transfers the…
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Over the past 5 years Nairobi, or the ‘Silicon Savanah,’ has blossomed into a global hub and a regional role model for cultivating innovation. mPesa, Safaricom’s mobile money platform, has led the globe in electronic payments serving emerging markets and base of the pyramid. Nairobi is home to the first tech incubator in Africa, the…
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At the Technology Salon on “How Can We Create Digital Jobs for African Youth?” our discussion was led by Lauren Dawes, who leads the GSMA’s Mobiles for Employment team, and Lillian Chege from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Digital Jobs Africa program. The GSMA will release a study on Mobiles for Youth Employment in July, and Rockefeller…
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At the recent Technology Salon on African-Led Mobile Innovation in Congo Brazzaville, we welcomed Verone Mankou, the head of VMK, a company in Congo Brazzaville that designs and produces the Way-C Tablet and the Elikia smart phone. The event was graciously hosted by ThoughtWorks, and Verone’s US trip was organized by Senam Beheton of EtriLabs.
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Local Internet Service Providers woefully under served rural communities in Haiti before the 2010 earthquake. ISPs said that broadband infrastructure was too expensive to deploy and there were too few customers to make the investment profitable. Using traditional sales models and technology, they were right. Then the earthquake happened. During the humanitarian relief phase, Inveneo…