27 months

The compilation album “Music for Saharan Cellphones” is an incredible collection of tracks scraped (and later remixed) from the memory cards of mobile phones in Ivory Coast, Mali, Algeria and Niger. In much of West Africa, cellphones are used as all-purpose multimedia devices. In lieu of PCs and high speed internet, knockoff mobile handsets store portable music collections, playback songs on tiny built-in speakers and swap files in a very literal peer-to-peer Bluetooth wireless transfer.

The impetus for the project began in 2010 when Chris Kirkley returned from his travels in Mali and Mauritania and presented the rough cut album. The music on the compilation was collected from mobiles in the remote northern Malian town of Kidal. The songs from Kidal range from DIY Tuareg guitar, auto-tuned Moroccan chaabi, Malian coupé décalé and fruityloop hip hop.
 Originally released as a limited run cassette tape, the cassette was ripped onto the internet and has circulated around the world, featured in the The Guardian, BBC World Service, Pitchfork as well as a number of other blogs. The tracks quickly became a viral source of new and inspiring sounds, but have never had an official release until now.

The songs chosen for the compilation are some of the highlights—music that is immensely popular on the unofficial MP3/cellphone network from Abidjan to Bamako to Algiers, but have limited or no commercial release. They’re also songs that tend towards this new world of self production—home studios, DIY, synthesizers and autotune.

Following a hugely successful Kickstarter fundraising, a 17 track remix of the album is now available for free download (with optional donation) and via cassette, vinyl…and microSD memory card, of course. The vinyl release is a chance for the artists in the compilation to get paid and be properly credited. If you enjoy this album half as much as I do, consider chipping in a few bucks to support the artists and encourage future releases.

Edit: These are two separate and unique releases. The Boomarm Nation album is a remix of the original material sourced by Chris Kirkley.

May 14th marked the first official Google Android Developer Challenge Sub-Saharan Africa event in Cameroon. The week prior, a Google delegation arrived in Douala to plan next month’s inaugural G-Cameroon event, discuss the latest happenings at ActivSpaces and rub elbows with local entrepreneurs at the first VC4Africa Cameroon meetup in Douala.

With a short timeframe to organize the event, Rebecca Enonchong and Eric Niat of AppsTech offered to host the launch at their Douala office in central Akwa. Just three days before the event, the local tech community generated some buzz online and hoped for the best. It was thought that up to 15 developers might show up for the launch. More than 50 techies from around Douala, Buea and Yaoundé arrived with laptops and handsets at the ready.

View all photos in set.

With the AppsTech conference room filled beyond capacity, groups were split out into adjoining offices and work areas. Presentations were led by local dev Alex Drahon and assorted Android schwag was distributed to the top participants. By the day’s end, attendees had an overview of the Android platform and SDK, as well as the judging criteria and prizes for the challenge:

Judges will consider each entry under the following equally-weighted judging criteria: Originality of Concept, Effective Use of the Android Platform, Polish and Appeal, and Indispensability. All teams that make it to the final round in each category in each region (West/Central, East and Southern Africa) will be awarded Android phones. The 1st prize in each category across all regions will receive $25,000 USD and the chance to attend a Google developer event. Teams can be no more than 3 people. All applications in each region and category will be evaluated and ranked by a team of Google-selected judges. At the end of the judging period, on September 12th, finalists will be announced.

With this kind of cash on the table, competition within regions and categories is bound to heat up (Cameroon’s finest are up against heavyweight techies in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal). Regardless of which teams take home Android phones and cash, it’s great to see the local developer community in Cameroon galvanize around events such as these.

Miniature versions of vehicles are as popular with kids in Cameroon as anywhere else. Adult craftsmen across the continent use materials such as wire, beads and recycled cans to create toy bicycles, trucks and airplanes—many of which transcend the level of children’s toys and are nothing short of art objects. Indeed, some of these creations are produced for corporate clients and international buyers.

No less ingenious and fascinating are toys created by and for kids themselves, usually from the simplest of materials and tools. This includes items like toy tractors (Kenya) and SUVs (Uganda) made from recycled plastic bottles.

In Cameroon, one such popular toy crafted by kids is a ‘remote controlled’ car or ATV. These are often built from discarded flip-flops (slippers), sardine tins, bamboo or raffia palm, electrical conduit (pipe), rubber and bits of string. Steve blogged a design in Bamenda that incorporates a split bamboo steering column and a full-sized wire steering wheel.

It’s not difficult to spot toy cars like this being piloted by kids in Cameroon—the trick is usually being able to catch up with them to photograph one :). A big advantage of this design is its ability to handle rough terrain when being driven at speed. The bamboo frame, chunky tires and rubber fasteners suck up bumps in the road like a 4WD Toyota. The proud builder of this R/C all-terrain vehicle paused long enough to demonstrate his creation for me.

Twitter and MTN Cameroon have announced a partnership that enables MTN subscribers in Cameroon to send and receive tweets from their mobile phones using SMS. Users access the service by texting “START” to 8711 on MTN’s network. Standard messaging rates apply for sending SMS updates, but tweets may be received at no cost. The announcement was made by Jessica Verrilli, Director of Strategic Initiatives & Corporate Development at Twitter during the Africa Media Leaders Forum in Yaoundé.

Jessica blogged about the partnership recently and includes a video interview on the launch and Twitter’s involvement with #AMLF.

By striking this deal with MTN, Cameroon joins a select few African countries with short code access to Twitter’s service. For the moment, this includes neighboring internet giant Nigeria and Madagascar. This is big news for Cameroon where smart phone adoption and internet penetration remains relatively low.

Why it matters
The Twitter-MTN Cameroon deal is significant on several levels. While perhaps not the paradigm shift of Facebook Zero, Twitter mobile is already showing signs of being a strong driver of ICT usage and innovation in its own right. How? While everyone is eager to get their hands on low-cost smart phones like the Android-powered IDEOS that debuted in Kenya, at USD $100 it still isn’t that cheap, nor are the data plans. Twitter’s service is made for the low-end handsets that dominate the mobile market in Cameroon and elsewhere in Africa. By setting the cost of receiving updates to zero, you create an instant medium for a new form of communication. This leads to increased efficiencies, better access to market data, propagation of memes, new ideas and most importantly—opens the door for innovation. It has the potential to democratize information flow between the internet-haves and have-nots.

Rural farmers in Cameroon using Twitter?
Twitter’s deal with MTN Cameroon is already being seen a boon for cost-conscious startups. Among the biggest barriers for those building mobile information services is the prohibitive cost of SMS, currently priced at 50 francs (10 cents) for sending an out of network SMS. Even at bulk SMS gateway rates, these costs can quickly add up to the majority of a lean startup’s burn rate. Many enterprising techies have already begun exploring ways to use Twitter as a no-cost group SMS platform. Paul Graham would love this, since one of his three tenets of creating a startup is to spend as little money as possible. One early entrant in this space is Agro-Hub, an ActivSpaces social business that aims to quickly build a user base by delivering market data, news and sustainable farming tips at no cost. Until recently, the bulk of their costs have gone into paying for SMS:

Agro-Hub realizes that their target audience—smallholder farmers in Cameroon—aren’t willing to pay for an unproven SMS service, so their model is based on providing free updates. After farmers follow Agro-Hub:Informer on Twitter with their mobiles, Agro-Hub:Trader aims to earn revenue from nominal fees collected when goods are sold directly to the end consumer. Farmers benefit from economies of scale by organizing into cooperatives and bypassing exploitative middlemen, while consumers get local produce at reduced costs.

This model stands in contrast to Google’s innovative SMS offering that launched with fanfare to serve Uganda’s poor only to see usage plummet when mobile operators started charging a premium for the SMSs.

Final thoughts
A Twitter-MTN Cameroon partnership raises the bar for everyone. Twitter gains an early foothold in a growing market, innovators get a no-cost group SMS platform and MTN subscribers connect with one another and consume mobile content like never before. Meanwhile, the operator continues to make its ridiculously high profits as usual. In the long run, Twitter’s entry into Cameroon increases the base on which innovation can occur. While Google has missed the boat on the cost of access issue, Twitter and Facebook are poised to make their mark with messaging platforms that transcend borders and connect Africans globally.

Last month we soft launched ActivSpaces, a new open collaboration space, innovation hub and startup incubator in Cameroon. The comparison to Limbe Labs, an entity I co-founded last year, should immediately be apparent. It’s essentially the same model transplanted to a new location with some refinements and a fresh new brand. Why the change? Limbe was initially attractive for several reasons. Among them are good infrastructure and public services relative to office lease costs. Douala—a city of 3 million inhabitants and Cameroon’s economic capital—was recently ranked the most expensive city in Africa and in the top 40 worldwide. By contrast, Limbe had ample commercial space at a fraction of Douala’s rates, no traffic jams and one noteworthy fringe benefit; access to some of the best beaches on the coast of West Africa.

Many of the young entrepreneurs who visited Limbe Labs commuted from Buea, a buzzing university town situated 20 minutes away by car. Over time, the message became clear: they were happy to come to Limbe, but we needed a presence in Buea. Recently, we had an opportunity to acquire a lease in Fakoship Plaza, an upscale commercial building at the foot of Mt. Cameroon, so we jumped on it. At a breezy elevation of 1,000 meters air conditioning is needless (the A/Cs in Limbe ran continuously when they weren’t being serviced). More importantly, as predicted the space swiftly became a magnet for techies.

Starting with a new identity, it made sense to reexamine our organizational structure. For its size, we felt that Limbe Labs was top-heavy and didn’t reflect a strong sense of community ownership. The first decision we made was that this space would be wholly owned and managed by the local tech community, rather than officers of a commercial entity. With this as our foundation, the rest were details; what criteria do we use to process new member requests? How many membership levels do we need? What percentage of invoiced commercial projects go toward funding the space? And so on.

Finally, we considered the brand. I entertained the notion of holding onto the name I’d nurtured for over a year. A separate entity, Sanaga Ventures (named for a river in Cameroon), handles investments and directs commercial projects to the space. Limbe Labs was tied to a specific geographic location. We could iterate the “Labs” brand by prepending the name of a town or city, but this lacked originality. Since we’re managed by a community board, we put it to a vote. Our members settled on ActivSpaces. The acronym ACTIV had a lot of appeal (read about it here) and “spaces” suggests a plurality that was found lacking in Limbe Labs. Who am I to argue with our members? :)

The irony is Buea is a place I lived and worked for the better part of three years. So in many ways it was an easy move to make. I was returning to my roots, as it were.

We couldn’t be happier with the new space and the name. If you’re in Buea, stop in for a visit. Follow @activspaces on Twitter and please drop by our new home on the web.