Ghana, Africa’s Emerging Tech Hub

With all the talk over Africa (which, mind you, is not a country, but is home to almost 60 sovereign nations) and its future economic development, most of the focus has been on international development organizations and exhuming its massive amount of natural resources.

But now a group of ambitious entrepreneurs wants to turn the capital of Ghana, Accra (pictured), into a startup hub.  And why not?  The city is already a center for telecommunications and finance.  The trick is developing products for the local population, most of whom access the web from their mobile phones.  But most apps do not work on basic mobile phones, and few are available in local languages.  According to Zak Stone, editor of the Daily GOOD:

While mobile phones have become ubiquitous in Ghana and other African countries, very few programs and apps cater to local communities, and securing seed money is difficult. The Web Foundation, whose mission is to "promote the Web as an agent of human empowerment," is spending a million dollars over three years to lay the groundwork in Ghana and expanding to Nairobi, where they recently launched a sister program, mLab East Africa, to work with Kenyan entrepreneurs.

Organizations involved include Mobile Web Ghana and the World Wide Web Foundation.

Read the full article here.