AkiraChix Training Program 2012 has begun!

Technology is one of the key factors driving Africa’s projected economic rise. At the moment, there is a large gender gap in both the academic and professional arenas of technology. As such, there is enormous opportunity to develop women as technology professionals. This is where the AkiraChix Training program comes in. In line with our mission of training, AkiraChix embarked on training young ladies from socio-economically challenged areas in August 2010.

This time last year, the first set of students, from Dandora, Waruku and Kibera, were four months away from graduation. On August 6th, 2011, 17 young ladies, and 1 young gentleman graduated from that initial program. More than half of the students are either employed, or on attachment with various IT firms within and outside of the *iHub. One of them, Janice Wangari, is currently interning with AkiraChix.

Determined to learn from our past experiences from running the 2010 – 2011 program, AkiraChix applied for a grant and won funding from Google RISE in January 2012 . A strategy meeting was held to plan the next training class as well. Recruitment was done in Kawangware, Deep Sea and Satellite, and about 60 young ladies were interviewed at the end of February 2012. As much as we would have loved to have all the 60 young ladies attend our classes, the training program can only accomodate 20, and it is from this pool of 60 that we selected 20 ladies, with unique and touching stories, and promising futures ahead of them.

We are therefore pleased to announce that the 2nd AkiraChix Training program began on 19th March 2012.

Training program students during orientation

The year long course, which revolves around computer literacy, programming, design, and entrepreneurship, is being held at SODNET offices from Monday to Friday between 9 a.m and 12 p.m.

Linda and Marie welcoming the girls to class

This year, our pool of trainers consists of the following amazing and talented individuals:-

• Anthony Njoroge
• Anthony Mwangi
• Bernard Owuor
• Gideon Thande
• James Muendo
• Salim Mohammed
• Susan Mwange
• Jepchumba

Many thanks to the Consolata Shrine Parish office, which helped distribute application letters to prospective students, and Philip and Kip of SODNET for their continued support of AkiraChix and generosity by giving us free space to conduct our classes at their offices. We are forever indebted to you.

If you are interested in participating or contributing to this training program, or have any questions, please send an email to info@akirachix.com .

LinuxChix Mentorship Workshop

AkiraChix was privileged to be part of the LinuxChix Annual Computing & Mentorship workshop for High School girls. The aim of this event is to expose the girls to careers in tech, to women who are enjoying their careers in tech and to encourage the girls to pursue careers in tech or to incorporate technology in whatever career they choose to pursue. This year’s event attracted at least 300 students from different high schools in Kenya namely: Precious Blood, Kenya High School, Kiriaini girls, Sacho High School, Alliance girls, Nembu High school and others. We also heard from various women in the field of technology and engineering these are Dorcas Muthoni founder of both LinuxChix Africa and Openworld Ltd, Eng. Njiriani Mwende from Communication Commission of Kenya, Dr. Genevieve Mwayuli Dean faculty of Science and Judith Owigar of Akirachix.

Eng. Njiraini Mwende from Communcations Commission of Kenya

To summarize the talks the girls were encourage to expose themselves to technology and any new developments they hear of, to experiment on technologies and programming languages, and to seek mentorship from people they admire. They were also encouraged to be mentors to the ladies who come after them, to be examples worth emulating.

The students in attendance

Students from Kiriaini High School with the computer they won

In every LinuxChix event they give a free computer, donated by Computer for Schools, to a high school. This year Kiriani Secondary School was the beneficiary. The school was the winner of the essay competion. Also note worthy was Sacho High School from Baringo that left their School at 1:00 a.m. in order to be at Catholic University, where the event was being held, by 7:00 a.m. If that is not passion and determination what is?

The Computer teacher from Sacho High School

Members of LinuxChix

Fireside Chat with Marissa Mayer

Last evening, a large number of members from the *iHub Community had the¬†privilege¬†of listening to Google’s Vice President of Location and Local services, Marissa Mayer. She was hosted by the *iHub for a fireside chat, moderated by Ushahidi Co-founder, *iHub founder and AfriGadget founder Erik Hersman.

Marissa was accompanied by 32 Associate Product Managers. These are fresh graduates who are enrolled in the two year program with Google to work on product engineering and design. Marissa and the APMs are in Kenya on a tour of google offices around the world. They have already been to Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hyderabad.

The chat started off with Marissa, one of the first female engineers at google, giving an overview of her early experiences in the job market. It was interesting to hear her describe her first job as a grocery store clerk at the age of 16, up till her point of joining google as it started up. She talked of being grilled by all members of the small google team(at that time), as well as explaining why she chose to work in a start-up as opposed to accepting one of the numerous job offers from other well established tech companies.  She realized that she would learn alot more from actively participating in the decision making process as the company grew as opposed to consulting and giving advice. She also gave insights on the growth of google to date,  pointing out the various challenges the company faced in its start up years, and how she slowly moved from engineering to product management in the organisation.

On her experience as being the first female engineer at Google, which she termed as a technology and product driven company, and her experience in the workplace in general, her¬†answer¬†was “At google, i’m not a woman, i’m a geek” . She attributed passion to being a gender neutralizing force. She also pointed out that she doesn’t think that there are enough Computer Scientists being produced, irrespective of gender.

She also had the opportunity to talk about the newest product Google has rolled out, Google+, highlighting the differences between it and Facebook and Twitter.

Her advice for tech startups: Make sure you have broad reach. The mobile element is really important. Micro payments can make a very big difference.

Her parting words: start more companies, take risks- fail fast.

As the fireside chat came to an end, all 32 APMs introduced themselves, gave their email addresses(they were too many of them to remember . But you can look for Linda Kamau who recorded the “email giving session” ), as well as three words each to describe their experience at google. Some of the words I can remember from the top of my head include Organised Chaos, fun, collaborative, problems as opportunities and speed.

If you missed out on the event, you can take a look at the hashtag for the event, which was #firechat, and make sure you follow Marissa on twitter .

Photos coming soon .

Women in Tech Cocktail at the iHub

Women @Google Africa together with AkiraChix will be hosting a Women in Tech Cocktail at the iHub on 28th June 17:00- 19:00. Apart from the food, the event will include a Heart to Heart talk on what it means to be a woman engineer and how to stay on top of the game. The event will be graced by :-
The very first woman engineer for the Google Africa team

• Margaret Lisowiec, Before Google she worked in USA, mostly in startups, several of them. she has an expertise in a real time programming, telco signaling and networking,¬†GPS¬†based navigation systems and distributed architectures in general. At Google she learned Python, Java and large scale programming.
• Google freshly minted Country Manager Kenya Olga Arara (she is actually an engineer with business acumen)
• Susan Wyche is acomputing Innovation Fellow(CI Fellow) at Virginia Tech’s center for Human Intereaction. Her research focuses on human-computer interaction, design and cultural studies of technology. In her dissertation, Wyche used religion as a lens to understand how alternative worldviews can inform design. She has explored how Muslims in Atlanta, Charismatic Pentecostals in S√£o Paulo, and Protestant Christians in Nairobi, use mobile phones, computers, and the Internet to support their religious practices. Each study has resulted in a publication at top-tier conference in her field, multiple design concepts, and in one case, a mobile phone application available for download at Apple Inc.’s “App Store.”¬†Among Others.

The event will be held at the ihub 4th floor of the Bishop Magua Centre on Ngong Rd., directly opposite the Uchumi Hyper.

on 28th June 17:00- 19:00

To attend the event register  here

#PIVOT25

Pivot25 is an mlab initiative to bring focus on the Mobile developer and entrepreneur community in East Africa.m:lab East Africa is a consortium of four organizations aiming to be a leader in identifying, nurturing and helping to build sustainable enterprises in the knowledge economy.

Pivot25  held a mobile Apps & Developer conference at Ole Sereni Hotel along Mombasa road on the 14^th and 15^th, June. The conference started off with a fireside chat with Equity bank’s Dr. James Mwangi. This was followed by the first session

session 1 – Applications in Mobile Payments/Commerce

1. Kopokopo which allows aggregation of mobile payment services for traders. Includes integration with point of sale infrastructure. It is built on software-as-a-service model.
2. Then followed Bizito’s premium SMS that allows users to start their own SMS content service and people to monetize the expertise they already have.
3. Jamobi which is an application  to help small trades with book keeping.
4. Kariuki Gathitu pitched the M-Payer app that shortens workaround time from 72 hours in transactions to real-time.
5. mShop took stage next with the pitch starting with an engrossing love story that earned quite an applause. The essence of mShop is – market wa mkono bringing the people to the market and the market to the people.

After all the pitching Ken Oyolla from GM Nokia East Africa spoke on monetizing mobile networks with Nokia and also Tune wiki.

Session 2 – Applications in Mobile Gaming, Entertainment and Utilities
Presenting Companies

1. EatOut started off the second session after a break by presenting it’s beta mobile service.
2. Wesley Kirinya presented My Social Web.
3. Tuvitu’s Steve Mutinda pitched about a customizable widget platform.Tuvitu was much likened to Snaptu.
4. Whive’s John Karanja  pitched  an app that  sends SMS free and had the support of three languages namely French,English,Swahili and most recently a Swahili and Nairobi slang “Sheng’’.Then it was finally lunch break….yeeiy

people grabbing some goodies during the break

Soon after lunch Kamal of Craft Silicon made a  presentation  on Elma which is a mobile processing system that  is robust and has a solid SDK for third party developments. With Elma you can get the stock market prices from #NSE, Forex exchange. Then followed what was most probably the highlight for  the AkiraChix, :-

Fireside Chat – Role Women in ICT

It was a lengthy discussion on why women are shying away from Tech and some of the reasons given were like their social inclination and also perception. It was brought to light that Education and Mentor-ship would help and improve¬† the number of women in the ICT field. Our very own Maria Langat really represented us and made them aware of our website. Akirachix Were satisfyingly commended and really adequately mentioned in the positive light……..TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

The team of ladies in ICT on stage during the fireside chat

Shikoh Gitau from Google confessed she’s a geek and asked every woman in tech in the room to stand up. Applause!! The panel ¬†comprised of Isis Nyongo, Njeri Rionge,¬† Agatha Gikunda, Juliana Rotich . Njeri Rionge said she is starting a business incubator called the Business Lounge where they’ll help start-ups retool to create a great go-to-market strategy.

Session 3 – Applications in Business and Enterprise

After tea break we had the

1. Nikohapa pitch By Benard Adongo which worked brilliantly and was very simple. The QR code and sms app that allows customers to check-in at retail locations and without GPS.
2. Then came  Tanzanian Pivot25 finalist with  Bongo live an SMS advert service for small businesses.
3. Easy packing who intended to partner with city council of Nairobi. It is an “open table reservation system for parking slots”.
4. Uhasibu presented by Michael Pedersen its a  cloud based accounting system for small & medium companies in East Africa. It helps in generating KRA format VAT reports, petty cash management and other financial management features.

Day one came to a close with a presentation from Dr Tim Kelly of Infodev making his presentation on m:Lab.

Day2

After the sizzling thrill of the day that went down previous day came day2,

Session 4 – Applications in Govt. – Agriculture and Education
Participating Companies

1. M-farm opened session 4 on this Chilly morning with their  market transparency tool for farmers. Kenyan farmers simply SMS the number 3535 to get information pertaining to the retail price of their products, to buy their farm inputs directly from manufacturers at favorable prices, and to find buyers for their produce.
2. Then came School SMS Premium who had a target of 300 schools by the end of this year and aim to send parents students’ grades via SMS.
3. Rwandas Gahunda team pitched about their platform for public service delivery in  Rwanda.
4. Then came Angie with Campus 101 which is to give the students a good way to interact without going to physical notice board, also included is payment information for the students.
5. AI-Dev group from Makerere University pitched the crop surveillance app that remotely diagnoses crop disease.

Jamilla during her presentation on on that chilly morning

The morning session came to an end in a high note after an impressive presentation by Makerere University. People were Clearly psyched up for the fireside chat with the Heavy Hitters!!! The panel ¬†comprised of Bitange Ndemo, Mike Macharia, Kamal Buddhabati, John Staley. (don‚Äôt u agree?? J ) and of course the regulator, Larry Madowo. Topic on the ground was “Role of government in ICT.” Mr. Ndemo also said that very soon we will have Public Kenya data released, possibly at the end of the month.

He also said “We’re forcing the telcos to share infrastructure under an open access platform e.g. in deployment of LTE (4G) meaning you can compete better as an industry.” (better access to SSID) . A person from the audience shot the panel a question on what are the companies represented on the panel doing to ensure there’s a generation that comes after them and to support it? Also a very catchy question was ‚Äúis Internet access going to become a basic right for Kenyans?‚Äù 70% of Kenyans do not have access to data enabled high end phones, and the telcos control the SIM, something has to change.

The P.S during the fireside talk

Session 5 – Applications in Mobile Health
Presenting Companies
After a break we had mobile Health presentations kicked off by

1. m-Vac which was tackling immunization. The revenue of M-Vac would come from the implementation, training and maintenance as well as Software-as-a-service (SaaS).
2. Then came M-ARV with a rocky nervous start but a healthy round of applause at the end presented An application that runs in the background of a mobile phone and reminds users to take Anti Retro Viral drugs at critical times for people living with HIV and AIDS.
3. M-chanjo took to stage and presented their app to help with child immunization adherence.
4. Kusanya for Data Collection was pitched which is a fast and efficient data collection app. But the question of the day for them was how would they make money?.
5. Then Medkenya took to stage and pitched awesomely with loads of confidence and was quick on his toes to answer the questions shot at him.Medkenya is platform that provides symptom checkers, first-aid information, doctor & hospital directories as well as relevant alert services. The service aims to make healthcare information affordable and accessible to Kenyans.Health is a universal need that forms part of Vision 2030 and the Millenium Development Goals. Its a collaboration between Gruppo Potente and Shimba.

And Lunch came calling!!!!!!

Linda of Akirachix showing people out to lunch
The afternoon session

SmartShopper pitch-, if you buy weekly shopping, this app makes it easy to budget and plan as well as create a list and compare prices from super markets in Kenya. Something made popular by TV anchor at Citizen TV Julie Gichuru in her weekly news segment. The final of the fireside chat with Larry Madowo on The State Of venture Capital came next. “There’s no such thing as social impact investment. It doesn’t make sense, it goes against everything VCs stand for ” Richard Bell. John Waibochi disagreed. Said, there’s more social impact investment here than venture funds. A person in this instance is the idea/business they stand for. Investors will not just fund an idea without knowing who is behind it. In Kenya most companies which we popularly call start-ups are still in very early stages development, actually most of them are still in the idea stages. The VC‚Äôs are looking at companies which are already have direction and not those which are still in the idea stages. I agree with Richard Bell when he says that we put more emphasis on the Silicon Valley while the dynamics are completely different.

Ken Mwenda of eMobilis spoke thereafter explaining eMobilis.

Thus the curtain closed on #Pivot25 with an after party/award ceremony.
(pictures Got from Daudi Were’s photostream)