‘Techpreneurs’ find niche in development of phone software

With his neat haircut, simple T-shirt and heavy back-pack, Amos Gichamba looks like any other university student.

But unlike many of his peers, the 20-something year-old student has been interviewed by media giant CNN, who came calling last year to find out more about what the young man is carrying in his pocket.

CNN was attracted by Mr Gichamba’s software creation dubbed ‘M-Kulima’, which targets co-operative societies and milk processors and is used for monitoring dairy farmers’ deliveries and payments.

It runs on mobile phones, and gives dairies the ability to monitor the amount of milk delivered by individual farmers at collection points.

From the program, daily, weekly, monthly or annual reports can be retrieved showing deliveries to specific collection centres or the total amount of milk collected by a SACCO or milk processor.

Mr Gichamba is currently fine-tuning the application for use in the tea and coffee sectors.

“The development of mobile applications is a niche which has the potential to contribute to the economic growth of Kenya. With support, many Kenyans will benefit from brilliant and locally made mobile applications, which address all sectors of our economy including agriculture, manufacturing, education, entertainment and other key services,” Mr Gichamba said.

Globally, the development of mobile phone applications has become a $6.8 billion business.

In 2009 alone, a total of 7 billion application downloads were done globally.

The undisputed leader of the pack was Apple which, with over 4 billion downloads to date, commands 90 per cent of the application market share .

However, new players are rapidly entering the market, as the increasing uptake and usability of phone devices boosts the mobile application market further.

Research house Gartner estimates the global mobile application market will be worth $24.4 billion in the next five years, growing at a annual rate of 64 per cent from 2009 to 2015.

In East Africa there are 50 million mobile phone subscribers and at least 15 million mobile web users.

Across the region, the number of IT graduates and tech entrepreneurs is exploding, providing new opportunities to foster social and economic growth.

In Kenya, where mobiles are accessible to 60 per cent of the population, the high uptake of the technology is pushing a growing number of local software developers to create solutions to tap into the global growth.