Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

Mark Zuckerberg’s much-publicised trip to the continent spawned dozens of think-pieces in the blogosphere this past week. Many pundits clearly view Mark’s 'surprise' visit to Nigeria and Kenya as an affirmation of the continent’s importance as a valuable source of under-utilised tech talent, and as a hot-bed of home-grown innovation. Others read it as a pre-cursor to a massive wave of foreign investment that's expected to wash over the continent’s technology industry. We, on the other hand, can’t help sensing the calculated profit motive wrapped up in Mark’s impeccably orchestrated African safari. 'Connecting Africa’ is no doubt a huge priority for Facebook, given the growth of the continent’s increasingly affluent middle class, the availability of relatively cheap labour, and the hundreds of millions of impoverished Africans who are prime for education— read monetisation. Now, on some level Mark Zuckerberg must care about humanity and all, but it is curious how readily many of us have fallen for the man's trademark charm and humility without questioning his obvious self-interest. In this week’s African Tech Round-up episode, Andile Masuku shares more insights gleaned from DEMO Africa 2016. Look out for snippets of conversations he had with the Publisher of CIO East Africa magazine and CEO of DEMO Africa, Harry Hare, the Principal Investment Officer for Africa at Singularity Investments, Lexi Novistke, as well as two promising startup founders who made it to the final pitching phase of this year’s competition (but didn’t win a spot in the top five), Ismael Rachdaoui of nextwi (Morocco), and Brian Ondari of AirKlip (Kenya). Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Show notes: https://github.com/PHPUgly/podcast/blob/master/shows/ep26.md Topics Using Stasis to host composer dependencies We were mentioned on PHPDeveloper.org Dropbox hack leads to dumping of 68m user passwords PHP 7.1 RC1 VueJS v2.0.0-rc.4 Atom.io Qualys SSL Labs Have I been pwned World's Biggest Data Breaches The hosts Eric Van Johnson Twitter / Github / Blog / About.me Tom Rideout Twitter / Github / About.me John Congdon Twitter / Github Follow us on Twitter @PHPUgly Email us at Podacast@phpugly.com

Farouk Jivani is a business consultant-turned angel investor who has invested in a couple of Kenyan startups-- one of them being the music downloads platform, Mdundo.com. In this chat, Farouk describes the allure of African markets to angel investors based abroad, and shares on what it's like to be a hands-on investor in early-stage businesses that have the potential to be the next big thing.

Tsholo Mogotsi in the Director for Economic Development Facilitation at the City of Joburg. In this chat with Andile Masuku Tsholo talks about the City of Joburg's commitment to lead the continent in providing it's citizens with the most advanced web-enabled infrastructure. He also sheds light on the role of public institutions in promoting innovation on the continent.

Amrote Abdella is the Director for Venture Capital & Start-ups and Africa Initiatives (Microsoft 4Afrika) at Microsoft. In this chat with Andile Masuku, Amrote shares what it’s like to be embedded in one of the world’s largest tech companies, and being deployed in arguably the world’s fastest growing tech market(s). Listen in to hear Amrote’s take on how Microsoft is responding to next generation tech biggies like Google and Uber’s disruptive ambitions and what Microsoft might consider their next big play.

Stephen Ozoigbo is the CEO of the African Technology Foundation and the Managing Partner of the US State Department-backed Lions @frica initiative. In this conversation with Andile Masuku, Stephen talks about his journey from investment banking to being one of Africa's foremost tech and innovation evangelists. Stephen's high-profile community-building efforts within the continent's burgeoning tech ecosystem allows him to eloquently address the challenge of keeping up with global innovation faced by African startups, VC's, angel investors, legacy enterprise players, as well as government agencies.

Shownotes: https://github.com/PHPUgly/podcast/blob/master/shows/ep25.md PHPUgly - Episode 25 recorded August 26th, 2016 Topics Getting yelled at by your idol Phil Sturgeon's Talking About Diversity: Conspiracy OPcache Settings/Configuration We got to hang out with the Larachat Live Team Ep13 Laravel 5.3 Released MariaDB Corp announces non-free license Microsoft continues to surprise with open source NPM Breaks the internet..again The hosts Eric Van Johnson Twitter / Github / Blog / About.me Tom Rideout Twitter / Github / About.me John Congdon Twitter / Github Follow us on Twitter @PHPUgly Email us at Podacast@phpugly.com

The gravy train may well be over at Africa’s largest tech company (by market value)— Naspers. Naspers CEO, Koos Bekker, told investors late last week that the coming year is going to be a trying one for the company. At this point, Naspers has only one card up its sleeve, and it’s called Tencent Holdings. After all, Naspers’ 33 percent stake in the Chinese technology company currently accounts for almost half its revenue, and its internet and pay-tv businesses are stalling at a time when they desperately need growth to keep competitors like Google, Facebook and Amazon at bay. Bekker’s cautionary statements led to a 0.3 percent decline in the firm’s share price-- which seems like a tame reaction by the market considering that S&P Global Ratings had already changed its outlook on Naspers' credit rating to BBB-, which is only one step up from junk status. In short, it’s rough in these streets. Last week saw DEMO Africa hosted in Southern Africa for the first time in its five year history. DEMO Africa 2016 went down in Sandton, Johannesburg, and we're pleased to say that it exceeded our expectations in almost every way. The conference brought together 27 startups from across Africa, angel investors, venture capitalists, enterprise representatives and public officials all under one roof to engage in dialogue and witness adjudicated pitching sessions. What was most impressive, though, was the Pan-African crowd and the quality of the engagement that took place. In this episode of the African Tech Round-up, Andile Masuku shares snippets of great conversations he had with power players who are intricately involved with the continent’s tech ecosystem. Tune in for insights from Investor and Founding President of the African Business Angels Network, Tomi Davies, Microsoft’s Director for Venture Capital & Start-ups, Africa Initiatives (Microsoft 4Afrika), Amrote Abdella, the City of Joburg’s Director of Economic Development Facilitation, Tsholo Mogotsi, Angel Investor, Farouk Jivani, and Managing Partner of the Lions @frica initiative, Stephen Ozoigbo. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0