African Tech-Entrepreneurs Take On the World!

Byline: Kui Kinyanjui and Samantha Spooner

As a teenager, one of Simunza Muyangana's favourite shows was a series that featured children who used a computer to solve crimes."I had never seen or touched a computer, but the thought that a machine could solve problems excited me," said the 35-year-old entrepreneur.

So when the British Council in Lusaka donated computer books to his school library, Muyangana promptly booked them out for the next three years, scribbling notes on basic programming in his exercise books.

After his high school, Muyangana's father brought home a new device that would change the way the teenager looked at the world forever.

The Sinclair ZX 81 had to be hooked up to a television screen and used a tape deck to store data. However, it allowed Muyangana the opportunity to put his theoretical knowledge to the test. "I believe in pushing past theory - classrooms, lectures, seminars and workshops - we need to practice and implement," says the owner of Digital ICE Interactive Media, a four-month old Lusaka start-up.

Now Digital ICE is using technology to push solutions to the Zambian market, with plans to export its expertise to the rest of Africa, bolstered by a boom in the sue of mobile phones and computers on the continent.

Mr Muyangana's story encapsulates many of the challenges that software developers on the continent seek to overcome on a daily basis.The stereotypes. Africa has started to free itself from the stereotypes that have shackled it. Technology is transforming the continent.

IT has become the aim of many young Africans and we are now seeing the emergence of the tech-entrepreneur generations, whose stories are nothing but inspirational. There are those who have come from backgrounds where touching a computer was an elusive dream, to those who …