“To the women doing this, there’s no female brain and male brain, we are all persons not just gender. Career and professions don’t have gender. It’s about your ability, not your gender. So if there is something you can do, you don’t have to look at who is in there. They are a human being just like you.”

— Anne Amuzu, CEO Nandi Mobile

In an industry where men outnumber women, the tech scene in Ghana has seen some tremendous growth over the years. From software development, training, influencing, blogging, engineering, to leadership roles with top global I.T giants, these women are blazing the trail for women in this space here in Ghana. They are influencers and role models not just for young women aspiring for a career and impact in the tech space but any young person aspiring to reach the skies in tech here in Ghana.

Here are women influencing tech.

Lucy Quist is an international business leader and the CEO of Airtel – one of Ghana’s largest telecommunications companies and industry leader in data and digital innovation. She passionately believes in harnessing the potential of people to deliver outstanding results in business to improve society.

At Airtel she has grown customer market share for both voice and data transformed Airtel into the most loved telecom brand in the daily lives of Ghanaians. This transformation has been recognized repeatedly with the company winning over 20 major awards during her tenure.

Her vast business experience has seen her work in the UK and Portugal as well as in West, Central and East Africa. Lucy is a great advocate for STEM encouraging greater student participation in STEM to accelerate development.

She is an accomplished speaker on many subjects in business leadership and technology. She has been on platforms such as TEDxEUSTON, the Leadership and Ethics Conference at Columbia Business School and the African Development Investment Convention in Zurich. She was featured on BBC’s Power Women series http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38033551

Lucy serves on several international and local Boards including the International Board for African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Petra Trust Company Ltd, the Business Environment Enabling Programme under UKAID, the Industry Advisory Board for Ashesi University and The Exploratory – an initiative of the African Women Advocacy project.

She is a founding member of the Executive Women Network, a non-profit organization of women in senior management and executive positions committed to inspiring, empowering and supporting women executives to succeed.

She holds a first class degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of East London and is a Chartered Engineer with the Institute of Engineering and Technology, UK. She also holds an MBA from INSEAD in France.

Ethel D. Cofie. Named one of the top 5 women impacting I.T in Africa, Ethel is the CEO and Founder of EDEL Technology Consulting- I.T Consulting Company in West Africa and Europe (I.T Consulting Firm of the Year-Ghana Telecoms and I.T Awards) and founder of Women in Tech Africa (Africa’s Largest Tech Group) with members in over 30 African countries and in the diaspora and growing.

Ethel also created Women In Tech Week, a global event which started in 2016 which impacts over 10,000 women globally. She’s been featured on BBC and have had her opinion pieces published on CNN on topics of technology in emerging markets, and women leadership. When Ethel is not running EDEL or Women in Tech Africa, she advises and consults on technology growth in emerging markets. She sits on a number of boards across the continent.

Former U.S first lady, Michelle Obama believes, “Ethel is a blessing to her generation.”

Regina Honu is a Ghanaian Social Entrepreneur, software developer and founder of Soronko Solutions, a software development company in Ghana. She has just opened Soronko Academy, the first coding and Human-centered design school for children and young adults in West Africa. As one of the few women making significant contributions to Africa’s development through innovative technological solutions, Regina has received multiple awards for her tireless efforts, including being named by CNN as one of the one the 12 inspirational women who rock STEM. She was also named as one of the six women making an impact in Tech in Africa and one of the ten female entrepreneurs to watch in emerging economies.

Her success has garnered international attention with features on platforms such as CNN African Voices, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Aljazeera as well as the Impatient Optimist blog by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

She was unveiled as the 2016 Vlisco Brand Ambassador. In an interview with the CNN’s African Start-Up she is described as a Ghanaian tech guru who wants to develop the next generation of women in technology.

Regina’s story was also published in Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In book.

Regina started Tech Needs Girls Ghana movement which aims to train and educate more Ghanaian girls into studying technology related courses. The movement is well noted for teaching girls how to code.

Dr. Kajsa Hallberg Adu is an interdisciplinary academic with a strong foundation in research, liberal arts, and community involvement. She joined Ashesi University College in 2009 as a lecturer, and teaches social theory, leadership as well as leads the work with our writing courses.

Kajsa is the founder of BloggingGhana, an organization for social media influencers in Ghana. She is herself a successful blogger on kajsaha.com and tweets @kajsaha, BloggingGhana has influenced blogging in Ghana since its inception.

Roshi Motman is the first woman to become the Chief Executive Officer of Tigo, Ghana. She studied Electrical Engineering and Business Development at Chalmers University in Goteborg, Sweden.

She has about ten years’ experience working with various companies in the Kinnevik Group, a key investor in Millicom. She occupied the roles of Product management, Sales and Customer Operations at Tele2 in Sweden. At Tele2, she was also responsible for development of mobile entertainment at Modern Times Group, parent company of TV channel Viasat. She is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Tigo, Ghana.

Roshi won the 2015 COM World Series AfricanCom Awards for CEO of the year in 2015. She was also recognized as a trailblazer at the 5th Ghana Telecom Awards in May 2015. She was also named second on the Sweden’s list of 75 young and promising women.

Estelle Akofio-Sowah. Currently the Country Lead of Google Ghana, Estelle is a highly motivated individual, committed to the social and economic development of Ghana. Previously the Managing Director of BusyInternet, Africa’s hugely successful internet startup, highlights of her leadership there include launching an ISP which went on to be awarded ISP of the year 2008, winning a World Bank Incubator SME program grant and successfully raising the finances required to open two additional cafe outlets serving an average of 1000 clients per day. In 2008, Estelle was awarded Top African ICT Business Woman by the ForgeAhead African ICT Achievers Award Program in South Africa.

A 2008 Class Fellow of the West African Leadership initiative (Aspen, Colorado), Estelle has a degree in Economics and Development Studies from the University of Sussex. Other work experience includes being the Conference and Banqueting Manager at La-Palm Royal Beach Hotel (Ghana’s only 5-star hotel) and Project Manager of the National Poverty Reduction Program at ProNet (local NGO partner to WaterAid UK). From her twelve years work experience in Ghana, Estelle has a broad understanding of local conditions, politics, social dynamics and the ICT community

Specialties: Being a woman, working with IT, loving Ghana, Africa

Anne Amuzu co-founded Nandimobile Ltd in 2010 and has been its Technical Development Lead since 2010. Ms. Amuzu has extensive knowledge and experience in software development, and in leading development teams. She holds a BSc in Computer Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

Amuzu along with two partners, Michael Dakwa and Edward Amartey-Tagoe, launched Nandi Mobile after competing together as part of The Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology entrepreneurship program for startups. For Amuzu and her team, their success building Nandi Mobile’s first application, Infoline, involved lots of listening and a willingness to embrace change.

Amuzu was also part of the #ILookLikeanEngineer campaign which has been trending on social media and helped to bring greater attention to gender disparity in the tech industry. Along with being Nandi Mobile’s CEO and promoting diversity in tech through social media, Amuzu also makes time to teach young Ghanaians how to write code. She said there is start-up potential in everyone.

Nandi Mobile – Infoline mobile services

Infoline service allows local hospitals, churches, NGOs and other businesses to track customer comments, send bulk messages to members using SMS or market specific elements of their organization to potential clients.

Farida obtained her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom from 2004 to 2005. She later acquired a certificate in Project Management in 2009 from Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) in Ghana.

She has written a novel titled: Definition of a miracle. She has also created the gKudi micro-finance platform, a clouded banking system that allows small scale loans within Ghana.

Farida Bedwei. Farida, the Head of the Technical Department (CTO) of Logiciel is a Ghanaian software architect with over 15 years’ experience in the development and implementation of mobile and enterprise software. She has developed payroll, human resource and other information management systems for a number of clients within Ghana and the West African sub-region

Farida has an incredible story of overcoming cerebral palsy to become one of the top software engineers in Ghana. Cerebral palsy refers to a family of neurological disorders that appear in infancy or early childhood and permanently affect body movement, posture and muscle coordination.

Founded and launched by Aina Temitayo on the 14th of February 2017, Spacebook is a platform that allows users book event venues online, across several cities in Nigeria.

Spacebook claims to have about 766 event centres listed across 200 cities in Nigeria, all in a bid to provide that ease and efficiency that should accompany a booking process.

From art galleries, lofts and warehouses to banquet halls, rooftop bars and conference centres, Spacebook assures of all kind of spaces on its platform.

Aware that they are not alone in the venue booking industry, with established players like OgaVenue and Venue-Compass already commanding a strong influence in the market, Spacebook is confident that their culture of putting space owners first — in everything — will be decisive in swaying engagement to their platform.

To this end, their services are directed towards winning clients over through improved monetary returns as incentives for listing venues on their platform. The biggest advantage of this approach is that it gives Spacebook access to a pool of listed verified space owners.

Full information of each listing can be found on their website.

Asides the photo competition, users can share their photos to the audience — probably with the aim of making it go viral — and also share live fights. According to Daniel, Dipitize serves as a richer to hashtag competitions that go on daily on Instagram and Facebook.

Although the platform is recent, the team doesn’t fail to acknowledge potential competition like photo sharing and sport betting applications. Despite that, the founders are confident that their full gamification features and giving users the opportunity to monetise their photo places them above.

As fun-filled as Dipitize sounds, it is obvious that it appeals to a specific demography. Nonetheless, if Dipitize interest you, visit the Google PlayStore to download.

It’s proprietary cloud support services enables message histories to be stored on the cloud (for free), which supports the sharing of unlimited number of photos, large videos, audio files and documents (doc, pdf, xls exe, ppt, zip, mp3, mp4 etc.) of any type up to 1.5GB between users.

The app, which was launched on the 20th of March, 2015, has since garnered considerable downloads on the Google Play Store and Amazon App Store.

To get Wetin Dey and find out more about its features, all you need do is download it from the Google Playstore.


IMAGE credit: pexels

In partnership with Oxygen Startup, UK, the British Council has launched the Business Acceleration Bootcamp for early stage entrepreneurs in Nigeria.

Oxygen Startup helps entrepreneurs around the world to grow their businesses from any stage to an investable stage. At the Business Acceleration Bootcamp, they plan to provide support and expertise to early stage business owners, seeking to scale their ideas/businesses into successful high growth businesses. The Bootcamp will also include interactive workshops and mentorship sessions led by Oxygen Startup, UK.

Successful applicants will have the opportunity to learn and be mentored by UK and Nigeria based entrepreneurs, as well as increase their capacity to build more sustainable and scalable enterprises. In addition to these, attendees will get a better understanding of approaches to funding opportunities and investor requirements.

All applicants must:

Note: Only one person per enterprise will be accepted to participate in the Bootcamp

Entries close on Wednesday, 7th June 2017. Visit the registration portal to apply.

Launched on the 7th of March 2017 by Clinton Nwadiukor, Cube is a hub for designers and lovers of art to showcase their artwork to the world and increase their chances of getting hired.

The platform is host to various designers in major design categories such as pencil sketches, cartoons, illustrations, 3D models, architecture, web design, paints, concepts and branding.

Designers upload their work and users can like and comment on them. Both users and designers get notified via email when someone else comments on their thread.

Cube also gives employers the opportunity to access great talent on a global scale. Employers looking to hire a designer can search by entering a location they want to hire from. They go through designer’s portfolio and contact them on the platform. This is intended to reduce the cost and time taken to hire a designer.

There is also a store for comic book artists where they are able to sell their works directly and make some money for themselves.

The creativity industry in Nigeria is evidently on the rise. The fact that Cube is joining similar platforms already in the business of exposing hidden talent is testimony to this.

However, one thing that will count for this ubiquity is a long-standing relevance that is needed to give the creative industry the necessary push. Hopefully, Cube can justify their emergence by leaving a lasting impression in this industry.

If you find Cube interesting, you can check out their website.

mobile Coldroom is an online/mobile vendor, established to supply a variety of frozen foods to various food service organisations. Some of these organisations include restaurants, hotels, schools, catering services, healthcare institutions, non-governmental organisations, grocery stores and so on.

This business initiative was developed by Runsewe Opeoluwa who officially launched it on February 15, 2017.

According to Opeoluwa, their services are “aimed at ensuring superior customer value creation and optimum customer satisfaction”. This, of course, would be achieved through the wide range of nutritious and quality frozen food products produced by them.

At this stage, the founder recognises no local competition. Despite this, she affirms their passion and commitment towards satisfying their customers.

You can check out mobile Coldroom by visiting their website.

For those operating a bitcoin exchange — where people can buy cryptocoins — you’d imagine that the current surge in value for bitcoin and others like Ethereum’s ether coin is a dream come true. The answer is yes and no.

Coinbase, the world’s most funded bitcoin exchange, was dragged offline by the massive increase in interest in the space. Users have reported issues with various aspects of the service this week, and things reached a head on Thursday when the Coinbase website and mobile apps were unavailable to users for hours due to “unprecedented” levels of trading and traffic, the company said.

Bitcoin crossed the $2,000 mark for the first time this past weekend, and the charge continued this week until yesterday when, after reaching a new high of $2,805 on the Coinbase exchange, the valuation fell to $2,307. The currency has since stabilized, but its current value of $2,475.23 represents a $116.41 drop over the last 24 hours.

“The market cap of digital currencies has increased ~50 percent to $91 billion in the past week. As a result, Coinbase has seen a dramatic increase in traffic and trading volume,” the company told TechCrunch in a statement.

“The Coinbase engineering and support teams have been working round the clock to keep up with this unprecedented volume. However, Coinbase.com has suffered a few outages including degraded performance and deposit/withdrawal delays for some users. We are actively working on resolving these issues and restoring our site to normal performance,” it added.

Things seem more stable today, with the Coinbase website and app functioning as usual. Having said that, at the time of writing, there are some minor issues with certain debit and credit cards, according to the company’s own status report.

According to Crunchbase, Coinbase has raised over $117 million from investors that include Bank Of Tokyo – Mitsubishi UFJ, the New York Stock Exchange, Union Square Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Andreessen Horowitz. Its $75 million Series C in 2015 was a record funding round for any bitcoin-focused startup.

HITHOOD displays items in various cities in both Nigeria and Ghana. Intending users have to choose their country before browsing the platform. Once that is done, the website automatically detects user’s city/current location, through your browsing IP or geo-location, and as one would quickly find out while surfing through the site, the products and services are grouped in basic categories to optimise user experience.

While there is still room for many more players in the eCommerce space, most new entrants struggle to gain a considerable hold of the market due to the presence of the established players. Perhaps HITHOOD could just give them a run for their money.

All the same, if you are burning to try out something new, you can check out the website.

Hence, Delivery Science was birthed to provide Software as a Service (SaaS) enterprise solution to help companies in the areas of proof-of-delivery, fleet management among others.

The founders are responsible for a bulk of the funding. Delivery Science also has a couple of investments from angel investors who believe and understand the startup’s ability to use big data to meet enterprise needs, one of which is the startup that’s investing in startups, the Africa Angels Network.

• Proof-of-Delivery: a cloud-based solution that gives enterprises real time access to the location of their goods, applicable schedules, and the activities of their field operators or staff involved in handling, using GPS via an Android phone. The end goal is significant reduction in losses attributable to leakages among others.
• Inventory Management Solution: a stock-taking solution for warehouse operators to manage the inflow and outflow of stocks as well as the staff involved in the process.
• Health Manager System Pro (HMS Pro): a public health management solution that works as an automated system of recording and managing cases, locations, and resource allocation in times of public health emergencies. With HMS Pro, the startup aims to help concerned institutions make substantial leaps in the ability to response to and contain health crises.
• Bespoke Software Solutions: software development for specific clients

Culture

The organisational culture in place at Delivery Science encourages developers to develop based on standard. Every member of the team also maintains self-policing.

Challenges

Going back in time

• Getting more in the face of more clients earlier within a short pace
• Won’t bother cutting off the consultancy service totally at an earlier stage

The Team

A little more than a football team, the company boasts of a 14-happy-geek team working in an environment that allows the full showcasing of their ‘geekiness.’ Everyone on the team is an hard-core programmer with years of experiences in different programming languages, and having worked on different startups.

There’s a great opportunity for everyone on the team to further improve on his or her skills and abilities and, according to Lanre, every member of the team is a stakeholder.