Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

2018's last in-studio taping of the African Tech Roundup podcast is a two-part affair which guest features the force of nature that is Viola Llewellyn. Viola is the UK-born, Cameroonian Co-founder and President of an award-winning fintech platform called Ovamba. Ovamba relies on proprietary technologies to connect African SMEs to sources of short‐term capital to fund their growth. Viola has spent over 15 years working in the management consulting, technology and alternative finance sectors at firms like of IBM, Unisys, KPMG and Preston Gates Ellis. She currently serves on the Boards of Directors of ActivSpaces, AH Partners, the European Women in Payment Network and the International Women’s Think Tank. In this, the first part of Episode 125, Viola joins Andile Masuku and Musa Kalenga as they start to factor in on a “hype vs. reality” themed conversation about the development of Africa’s fintech landscape in 2018. Listen in to hear Viola's candid take on the unfortunate current state-of-play in Cameroon’s Anglophone region. Topics discussed in this episode: Nigeria plans to build an additional 18,000km of fibre infrastructure [41:33] Ashish Thakkar of Mara Group announces plans to launch a smartphone brand called Maraphone [46:50] Tanzania vs. journalists [51:29] Anglophone Cameroon crisis update [53:29] Resources referenced in this episode: Nigeria's National Broadband Plan 2013-2018 | Nigerian Presidential Committee on Broadband (http://bit.ly/NigeriaBroadbandPlan2013) A new model of microfinance for Africa, and beyond | TED Institute (http://bit.ly/ViolaLlewellynTEDTalk) The Democratisation of Financial Services | SLUSH (http://bit.ly/ViolaLlewellynSLUSH) 26 Women of Colour Diversifying Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, Media and Beyond | Vanity Fair (http://bit.ly/BlackWomenVanityFair)

The week, Eric, John, and Thomas discuss

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• Facebook hired GOP oppo firm to smear protesters by linking them to George Soros, an anti-Semitic trope: NYT / Boing Boing

Lee Naik is the CEO of TransUnion Africa, a subsidiary of the giant American consumer credit reporting agency, TransUnion, that’s listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Prior to joining TransUnion Africa, Lee spent 18 years at Accenture, where he served as Managing Director of Accenture Digital in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since signing up to lead TransUnion Africa in January 2017, he’s been tasked with shaping the company’s continental growth strategy— a process that’s so far necessitated the recruitment of key senior talent, the orchestration of major tech platform updates, and the expansion of the firm’s range of information solutions. In this conversation with Andile Masuku - which forms part African Tech Roundup’s podcast miniseries on digital assets (http://bit.ly/atrudigitalassets) - Lee offers insight into how data-led legacy corporates like TransUnion Africa are grappling with the prospect of a future led by democratised technologies and open source collaboration. Editorial Disclaimer: Raise (https://getraise.io) is the presenting sponsor of this podcast, which is part of an African Tech Roundup miniseries focused on digital assets. Raise is a founding member of the African Digital Asset Framework - ADAF (http://adaf.io). African Tech Roundup retains full editorial control over all published content. Opinions expressed by the host, Andile Masuku, and his guests, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the presenting sponsor, Raise.

Topics covered in this episode:

• [play:1:32] Colorizing and Restoring Old Images with Deep Learning
• [play:4:25] PlatformIO IDE for VSCode
• [play:7:35] Python Data Visualization 2018: Why So Many Libraries?
• [play: 11:21] coder.com - VS Code in the cloud
• [play:14:20] By Welcoming Women, Python’s Founder Overcomes Closed Minds In Open Source
• [play:19:40] Machine Learning Basics
• Extras
• Joke

See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/105

The third and last episode of African Tech Roundup's (https://africantechroundup.com) miniseries (http://bit.ly/atrudigitalassets) on digital assets features Viola Llewellyn, the UK-born, Cameroonian Co-founder and President of an award-winning fintech platform called Ovamba. Ovamba leverages proprietary technologies to connect African SMEs to sources of short‐term capital to fund their growth. Viola has spent over 15 years working in the management consulting, technology and alternative finance sectors at firms like of IBM, Unisys, KPMG and Preston Gates Ellis. She currently serves on the Boards of Directors of ActivSpaces, AH Partners, the European Women in Payment Network and the International Women’s Think Tank. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Viola speaks on the importance of finding smart ways to ensure that Africa secures its unique and invaluable IP, touches on the overlooked advantages of adopting Pan-African digital standards for the establishment and trade of assets in various sectors, and sketches the role that Africa’s financial services industry needs to play in helping us all thrive in an increasingly digital world. Editorial Disclaimer: Raise (https://getraise.io) is the presenting sponsor of this podcast, which is part of an African Tech Roundup miniseries focused on digital assets. Raise is a founding member of the African Digital Asset Framework (http://adaf.io). African Tech Roundup retains full editorial control over all published content. Opinions expressed by the host, Andile Masuku, and his guests, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the presenting sponsor, Raise.

Topics covered in this episode:

• [play:4:32] wily: A Python application for tracking, reporting on timing and complexity in tests and applications.
• [play:8:00] Latest VS Code has Juypter support
• [play:11:17] API Evolution the Right Way
• [play:16:10] PySimpleGUI now on Qt
• [play:19:57] Comparison of the 7 governance PEPs
• [play:23:54] Shiboken (from Qt for Python project)
• Extras
• Joke

See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/104