Democratic Development? There's an App for That.

Innovative ideas coming out of the State Department these days.

The Apps4Africa contest is designed to encourage and support African mobile app developers to dream up and build tools that make a difference in the places they’re most needed. Here at ICT Central Control we spend a lot of time thinking about appropriate technology – what is it that the people on the ground actually need and can really use. What seems useful in the US can prove useless or worse in the field.

When you empower people to build their own tech themselves not only are they the ones who know what they need, but it’s the ultimate in sustainability: these new developers will then be able to go off and continue making useful code contributions long after the cash rewards from Apps4Africa have been awarded.

The same idea has taken root in a very different environment at the Pentagon, where a recent apps development contest bypassed overpriced and cumbersome procurement plans and netted enterprising GI Geeks $3K each.

The world of mobile app development tech is fascinating to me; it's reminiscent of the glory days of the 80s, when anyone with sufficient enthusiasm and geekitude were capable of writing software and possibly making their fortune in the process