Turning the rift valley into silicon valley: Mobile phones and African entrepreneurship

Nathan Eagle, a research scientist at MIT, has shared his experience regarding mobile phones and African Entrepreneurship among graduate students in the Silicon Valley. Mobile phone programming is being introduced to African computer science students with the help of corporate sponsors such as Nokia. This has helped in teaching several Kenyan and Ethiopian students computer programs such as Java, Python, and SMS-based mobile application development. The investment into infrastructure and ICT within Africa have created a similar entrepreneurial projects concerning the development of mobile phone applications specifically for the African market. Students are also becoming increasingly eager to play a leading role uncovering the ICT opportunities with their own countries as the flow of investments into Africa continues. One of the most satisfying experiences of Eagle also has been to equip these students with the skills they need to take advantage of their own burgeoning Silicon Valley.