International Startup Sites – Africa
November 25th, 2008 | By PatrickEver since I started the international startup series, I’ve been hearing bits and pieces about the African startup scene. A few of these sites just kept popping up in blogrolls across the web so it’s been a thrill to finally dig in. These types of sites — these hidden gems — are why I started this international startup series over a month ago. I wanted to see and demonstrate the way that the global startup climate was evolving, or in some cases, being created before our eyes. Well, if I thought the startup sites coming out of the Middle East were amazing, the sites coming out of Africa are just phenomenal.
From where I stand in the U.S., I must admit I rarely hear about African startups. From the looks of things, that is / will be changing soon! Check out some of these great sites:
Startup Africa covers the African technology and startup scene, with a particular focus on startup events. From a glance at the tag cloud, Ismail Dorat’s blog tends to focus largely on events and startups coming out of South Africa. If you’re ever doing an Enter Venture-like startup review, the site’s sidebar is extremely useful with a breakdown of startup news by African countries — there aren’t too many posts outside of South Africa, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Loy Okezie’s blog reviews web startups and web trends specific to Nigeria. This includes everything from Google maps’ Nigeria coverage to Nigerian entrepreneur interviews, Nigerian startup reviews, and even an assessment of the Nigerian VC environment. If you’re looking to brush up on Nigerian web trends, this is the place.
Appfrica is an African developer / entrepreneur’s heaven. The blog covers a wide breadth of African IT news and culture topics. Their Afridex is a Crunchbase-like African startup index. They feature African tech interviews. Web trends. Mobile trends. Conference coverage. A forum. A wiki. Mix in a great, clean design and this site is nearly homepage worthy.
Bandwidth blog is the South African and global internet startup news blog, which means, they cover just about everything and some of their posts happen to be about South Africa. You’re just as likely to find a critique of FriendFeed as you are the latest news about Afrigator. They also have one of the coolest sections on any blog that I’ve seen with their series of office photos from startups all over South Africa..
TechMASAI looks like the most low tech of the African startup blogs with a basic, hosted WordPress theme, but what it lacks in design aesthetic, it makes up for in a devotion to startup profiles. TechMASAI has the most singular focus on startup reviews with roughly 4 of 5 posts focused on profiling new startups.
Also worth checking out are ITNewsAfrica, Startup Kenya, and Timbuktu Chronicles.
