By Chukwuemeka Afigbo, Program Manager, Sub-Saharan Africa
Cross-posted from the Google
Africa Blog Creating
applications and services that use Google platforms to make the internet more relevant to
Africans is a big part of Google’s vision in Africa. This is why we are always excited
whenever we come across individuals or companies whose efforts are in line with this vision.
Here are a few of the interesting applications we have seen in recent
months.
Battabox, co founded
by Christian
Purefoy and Yemisi Ilo, is
an online social television platform developed in Nigeria that aims to provide everything
Nigerian from music, film, street-life to news, comedy and cooking using the YouTube platform.
Crowdsourcing videos is an important part of the Battabox strategy and they were able to
achieve this using YouTube
Direct running on Google App
Engine integrated into their website.
They also provided an Android App that enables users to upload videos directly from their
Android phones.
Battabox website
screenshot
There are many other examples from further afield. In
South Africa we met Nomanini who have a
Google App Engine backend for Lula, their airtime vending device, which promises to change the way
airtime is distributed in the region. Envaya SMS is an amazing application that turns your Android phone into an
SMS gateway and has been used by many NGOs in East Africa. SAF
SMS is a school management solution
built with Google Web
Toolkit that has been
adopted in more than 100 schools in Nigeria. We also met Serengeti
Advisers, a consultancy firm
in Tanzania that uses Google Chart
Tools to create interactive reports on
their website.
Nomanini’s Lula terminal communicates with a
backend powered by Google App Engine
As part of our drive to meet and interact with app
developers in Africa, our Android Developer Relations team also recently hosted the developers
of AfriNolly and the
Nigerian
Constitution Android app on their
weekly Android DevRel office hours hangout on
Google+ for Europe, Middle East and Africa. At the hangout, these African developers shared information about their apps
with other Android developers.
You can follow the exploits of these and more developers
in Sub Saharan Africa as they continue to make things happen with Google APIs and platforms by
keeping an eye on our case studies
page.
Do you feel your app should be featured here?
Let us
know!
Chukwuemeka
Afigbo is a Program Manager in the Sub-Saharan Africa Outreach Team. He is an avid
football (soccer) fan.
By Chukwuemeka Afigbo, Program Manager, Sub-Saharan Africa