Looking North: Investigating Technology Innovation & Entrepreneurship in North Africa

Much of our focus in the past has centered around Sub-Saharan Africa and in particularly key ?hubs? in the region ? Nigeria in Western Africa, Kenya in Eastern Africa and South Africa in Southern Africa.

However, it goes without saying that though these areas are much discussed and have received a lot of attention for their progress in terms of tech and innovation, there are other countries that deserve to be highlighted on. In future, we?re aiming at canvassing more of the continent and investigating other countries that normally do not pop up by default when hear about ?tech in Africa?.

For example, at the recently concluded DEMO Africa event, I had a chat with Jon Gosier, founder of Appfrica who enlightened me on some of their efforts around the continent. Part of their activities involve running an annual developer contest (Apps4Africa), as part of this they hold developer events in several nations across Africa, I was amazed to learn that some of their highest turnouts were in countries that do not feature in hyped up conversations about tech in Africa.

In this article, I?d like to turn our attention to the northern part of Africa, a region that has received wide attention particularly following the Arab Spring ? but what does the technology innovation and entrepreneurship landscape look like in Northern Africa? We can consider the cases of Egypt and Tunisia:

Basic statistics

The following data is based on indicators published by the Egyptian Ministry of ICT (MICT), specifically the March 2012 ICT Indicators Bulletin and August 2012 ICT Indicators in Brief

Telecommunications & Mobile: In July 2011, Egypt recorded 77.76 million mobile subscriptions, that number jumped to 92.64 million in July 2012, recording an annual growth rate of approximately 19%.

Internet, Web & Social: In July 2011 there were 26.54 million internet users in Egypt of whom 9.95 million were mobile internet users (37.49%), as at July 2012 this number stood at 31.03% (approx. 17% increase) of whom 10.87 million were mobile internet users. The internet penetration rising from 32.96% to 27.79% in the respective periods.

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By Will Mutua

Source: http://www.afronline.org/?p=27512&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=looking-north-investigating-technology-innovation-entrepreneurship-in-north-africa

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