This post is from Mobile Monday .Original article/post can be found here  http://goo.gl/3t7Ke

The annual Innovation Africa Digital Summit, held in Kenya March 22 – 24th, gathered c-level industry leaders for 3-full days of panel discussions, networking and business opportunities, see agenda here. We were honored to participate again this year along with other supporting organizations, industry leaders, policy regulators and government representative agencies who presented case studies, conducted workshops and provided related materials supporting senior executive delegates with insight and valuable connections for building ICT in Africa.

Organized by Extensia, this platform continues to serve as a perfect opportunity for MobileMonday to learn – first hand – about the important developments across this region and make key contacts in order to assess how our global community can best serve the interests of this unique marketplace. Several MoMo founders were on the panel sessions and we released the 2011 version of our popularMobile Africa Research Report. Many thanks to all for a fantastic visit at the Leisure Lodge Resort!

also see 2010.pdf and 2009.pdf

A collection of views from some of the most relevant people that are working within an African/mobile/tech context and that can bring some realistic views of trends for this decade on the continent

Last evening we had by far our largest Mobile Monday meet up at the ihub. The meet up was facilitated by Samsung who came in strong and showed us why they are a force to reckon with in the mobile industry. As always the meet up was characterised with a lot of excitement and very good participation and turnout from the mobile community. MoMoK had earlier promised on our twitter stream @mobilemondayke that we would have “goodies” for application developers, believe me we didn’t disappoint!!

We were privileged when Samsung chose Mobile Monday to launch their app developer competition and show case their platform Bada. Developers have the opportunity to win up to Kshs200,000 ($USD 2500) in prize money plus get their apps pushed on to the Samsung Bada apps store where they can continue to make money from the revenues the app generates- “With a Samsung, it’s not that hard to imagine”. Update: More information about the competition can be found here.

Verviant, a kenyan technology company was also represented at the meet up, with Mark Mwongela MD doing his best to show case some of the work that Verviant has done in developing applications on the Samsung Bada platform.

Also present was someone from Mxit.

MoMo-Kenya is growing fast, and this works to the benefit of the developer community. We want to make it bigger and better during each event.

A big thank you goes to our partners- iHub Nairobi who always manage to give us a superb venue plus team to help us arrange things, Virtual City- our premium sponsor, Pete the Barista- the coffee,beverages and food go a long way and of course the MoMo-Kenya team.

Follow on Twitter using #momoke, the live stream is here – http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mobile-monday-kenya-meet-up

The team at Nokia is really committed at promoting local talent. At a previous event when they were announcing the results from the Nokia Innovation Competition, they were challenged to at least mention the some of the Kenyan developers who made it to the top 20. This they did and went a step further.

After looking through the top 20 list, they selected two young developers with whom they worked with to refine their service and even offered marketing support. AfroHot or Not and Wazzup were taken to market with good results. AfroHot has a user-base of 6,000 across East and Central Africa.

Word is…more cool stuff is coming from the various collaborations Nokia is spearheading with local developers. Watch this space.

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Kenya Postel Directories has launched a new short messaging service (SMS) that makes the telephone directory accessible on mobile phone handsets.

By sending a message with the name of the company one is looking for to 5991 (on all networks), a customer will receive the contacts as well as a physical address of the company for Sh10.

Kenya Postel Managing Director Jose Saldanha said the new platform is aimed at connecting listed businesses directly with clients.

Mr Saldanha explained that with close to 20 million mobile users, the SMS service has the potential to reach a wide range of new customers.

“Postel Directories is excited about the technological developments in the ICT sector. Using this new platform, we can now extend the reach of our directory information to all Kenyans,” Mr Saldanha said.

Currently, Kenya Postel only distributes directories to customers who have contracts with Telkom Kenya and it is expected this latest move will help increase its penetration especially in rural areas.

And with mobile phones becoming increasingly popular especially for Internet use, the company has introduced an online directory on www.yell.co.ke  for use on mobile phones. The online directory includes the address and available maps to the desired location for people who may want to visit the required office.

“We have now fulfilled a need that has been expressed by our customers – to access their directories whilst on the move. The Postel SMS service is a first to benefit our current telephone directory customers, whose contacts are now also accessible at a touch of a button,” he said.

The online directory aims at incorporating mobile phone contacts, which are currently not listed for all companies.

“Our new services can accommodate all these customers. These businesses can now list their contacts online by posting their details via the websites or via the Kenya Postel Directories’ contacts listed in our directories,” he said.

Postel publishes the Kenya Telephone and Fax Directories, incorporating the official Yellow Pages and distributed free to all Telkom Kenya customers. The company also publishes the pocket size Kenya Tourism Guide now in its fifth edition.

Freedom Fone – in a nutshell

Freedom Fone is an information and communication tool, which marries the mobile phone with Interactive Voice Response (IVR), for citizen benefit.  It provides information activists, service organisations and NGO’s with widely usable telephony applications, to deliver vital information to communities who need it most. (more…)