The South Africans and Kenyans have already built a strong technology scene, so really it's not far fetched. The market is already there and still pretty much open for most products. The talent is available to kick start the industry, a lot of computer science graduates lying around doing nothing. All that is left is for the government,the corporate world and other stakeholders to take advantage of this opportunity. I would also like to point out that telecommunications companies like Econet and MTN have also contributed a lot to their countries' GDP. While the drawbacks you mentioned are significant; they can be solved if everyone involved can share the same vision.
One huge disadvantage also is that many Africans don't have access or the ability to get credit cards and so it locks them out of the ability to pay for hosting and cloud services. If someone can figure out how to connect the local SMS payment infrastructures that most countries have to Amazon AWS, then there could be some serious dough gained from the developer community. I learned this the hard way when I did a presentation on deploying Python Apps to Amazon at klab.rw in Rwanda. Everyone loved it but no one could actually try it out because even for the Free Tier AWS requires a CC.
Well that's a huge disadvantage; I had to ask someone to pay for my domain. Telecommunication companies are in a position to offer such a solution. I heard Telecel,Zimbabwe has been working on such a solution .
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The South Africans and Kenyans have already built a strong technology scene, so really it's not far fetched. The market is already there and still pretty much open for most products. The talent is available to kick start the industry, a lot of computer science graduates lying around doing nothing. All that is left is for the government,the corporate world and other stakeholders to take advantage of this opportunity. I would also like to point out that telecommunications companies like Econet and MTN have also contributed a lot to their countries' GDP. While the drawbacks you mentioned are significant; they can be solved if everyone involved can share the same vision.
One huge disadvantage also is that many Africans don't have access or the ability to get credit cards and so it locks them out of the ability to pay for hosting and cloud services. If someone can figure out how to connect the local SMS payment infrastructures that most countries have to Amazon AWS, then there could be some serious dough gained from the developer community. I learned this the hard way when I did a presentation on deploying Python Apps to Amazon at klab.rw in Rwanda. Everyone loved it but no one could actually try it out because even for the Free Tier AWS requires a CC.
Well that's a huge disadvantage; I had to ask someone to pay for my domain. Telecommunication companies are in a position to offer such a solution. I heard Telecel,Zimbabwe has been working on such a solution .