Techies showcase projects at innovation meetup

An international electronic token system, a school timetable, an electronic payment gateway and Oracle training analysis were some of the projects showcased at Saturday's Skunkworks@innovation meeting in Nairobi.

The meeting attracted more than 400 techies from around Kenya who had the chance to direct questions to Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication; Dominique Saint-Jean, Telkom Kenya CEO; and Paul Kukubo, CEO of the Kenya ICT Board.

Meeting participants expressed their concerns over the government's apparent failure to protect them by ensuring that all jobs go to talented locals, bemoaning that such jobs are only available to outsiders when no skills are available locally.

"The government plays by the rules set out by the World Trade Organization," Ndemo said, emphasizing that the government does not want to be seen to be employing protectionist policies contrary to world practices.

Ndemo challenged the techies to participate in policy making processes to ensure that the government takes their plight into consideration.

Meanwhile, Saint-Jean asked the techies to send proposals of their best projects for consideration and partnership with Orange, Telkom Kenya's newly launched mobile brand.

"It is sad that company executives did not attend in big numbers," Saint-Jean said of the Skunkworks meeting. "If this was in Silicon Valley, company heads would be lining up to fund the remaining aspects of the projects and launch the products."

"I promise to convene a meeting between Skunkworks and leading CEOs so that they can see what you are doing," Kukubo added in his address to meeting participants.

During the meeting, Sam Kitanye and Victor Murage showcased the innovative Kikwe application that allows one to send mobile phone airtime anywhere in the world. The application uses an electronic inventory that bypasses the need to keep inventory of physical vouchers.

Kenneth Mwangi presented his new Web and mobile payment application called Tulipe, "Let's Pay" in Swahili, which mirrors PayPal but uses mobile phone airtime, as credit cards are not common in Africa.

Bonn Ndegwa presented the Time Tabler software, which caters to the needs of schools by combining schedules for classes and teachers.

Kukubo urged the techies to develop applications that can help generate local content and take advantage of the US$4 million grant established by the government and the World Bank.

"Projects will be rewarded for their commercial viability and not novelty," he said. "It is important to address the business aspect of technology and how it will contribute to economic growth."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.