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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This report commissioned by SIDA – Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency, gives an overview of the current state of mobile phone use and services in East Africa. It outlines major trends and main obstacles for increased use as well as key opportunities and potential for scaling-up mobile applications. The report draws on secondary data and statistics as well as field work carried out in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya during 2008 and 2009.

The report identifies relevant applications in an East African context for reaching and empowering the poor and contribute to social and economic development. The identified mobile applications, listed in Appendix 2, range from small pilots to scaled-up initiatives – from simple agricultural, market or health information services to fairly advanced financial and government transaction services. (more…)