Hunting (Developers) in Kenya

I'm currently in Kenya working with NDI's Somalia program* spinning up a communications platform to better link Somalis split between various regions of their country, living as refugees in Kenya, or having traveled to join the diaspora around the world.** Being so fragmented creates a huge problem with silos; while Somalis are an incredibly communicative group with a very oral culture, they have few places where they can talk together or even see the same information. We hope to mitigate that a bit. It's very exciting to be here in Nairobi, hub of Africa's tech revolution - if someone hasn't yet coined the term Silicon Rift Valley, I'm trademarking it. I've spent the last few days working closely the NDI Somalia program officer behind this concept; one of the strengths of NDI is that you can pair one person who has deep knowledge of the local context together with another with deep knowledge of technology for development. (Unfortunately, she wasn't available, so they sent me instead.) For the last week we've been interviewing local Kenyan and international developers who might be able to take on a project like this. There have been a lot of impressive ones. It's really exciting to see so much local talent in the field of web application development. We're opening the process to big international firms, but I don't see how they can possibly be competitive on price - and the local skills are just as good. Beyond that, as I've mentioned before, NDI sees putting money into local technology companies as a great way to help strengthen local economies and scrappy tech teams while solving local problems. Pragmatically, it's also easier to get software support from someone across town than across the globe. For us on the NDItech team being out in the field is a critical chance to build relationships with local staff, understand the cultural context, and see the issues we're trying to improve first hand. I've learned a lot about Somalia in the last week thanks to our staff, many of whom were born and raised in the country. For example, I had no idea Somalia has excellent mobile networks and very high access to inexpensive cell phone services. Apparently the regulation-free, anarchically Hobbsean style of regulation-free capitalism in Somalia has spawned a vibrant if competitive*** environment. Facebook has expanded from 0 to a significant percentage of internet-connected Somali youth in the last 6 months. 70% of Somalis are under 18. Somalis almost uniquely use a social system called PalTalk. And so on. Tomorrow I'm off to visit iHub, a really impressive community of techies that gets creative local developers and international experts together under one roof. I'll keep you posted. * For obvious reasons it is very difficult to work in Somalia directly. This is an ongoing source of deep frustration. ** Prominently including my favorite city Minneapolis, home to the largest group of Somalis outside of Africa. *** Think guns, not price wars.