jwesonga

So I'm finally back in Nairobi after almost 9 months away. It's good to be back and to touch base with my friends and colleagues on the ground, I still have many people to see and I'm hoping that some of those meetings yield some good projects. Kahenya tells me the industry is ripe for business but I'm skeptical as I walk around, the fibre optic cable is finally here and with it much optimism for the ICT industry, only time will tell. I had a good meeting with the CEO of DataDyne, a company that's doing some amazing work with mobile technology specifically in the area of data collection in the health industry. This was the 3rd meeting I was having with professionals in the area of mobile technology and health, a real eye opener when one of them mentioned that the U.S. government is spending $15bn a year on health in Africa.

So now I'm using my voice sim card to surf the net, a bad idea, but one I hope to change very soon as I ponder which data provider I should go with, Zain is out of the question since they screwed me over last year with hidden international roaming charges and the famous FUCK YOU!! clause which basically locks you into a one year contract, if you do decide to break the contract you pay the remaining months even if you wont be online.

I'm also trying to finish up my last project at UNICEF, an android application to be used in child registration, the project has been plagued with problems from the get go with my developer's machine crashing during the dev process, and now my new developer who happens to be a university student is at the receiving end of a university strike that's obviously messing with his ability to get the work done as fast as possible. Nevertheless the progress has been good with just one part missing which I'm hoping we will finish within the next few days.

More to come later.