Today the 2oth of November 2017 kicked off the KUTechTour as we choose to call it haha. Basically, it’s a tour of the Kenyan and Ugandan tech ecosystem. This is in a bid to understand “how it works here” and “make it work better”. Our first stop? Kenya!
East-Africa as a region is thousands of miles away from West-Africa, it’s only normal to have some sort of cultural difference between countries in both regions. During the tour, we aim at understanding these differences and “carving” out ways countries in both regions can collaborate on tech. Also as social developers traveling, we don’t undermine the importance of community involvement anywhere in the world and we would like to foster this during our journey.
It’s no news that together as a community we are stronger. Therefore we are aimed at encouraging community involvement both at the individual level and the organizational level. Last but not the least, we’ll also be on the lookout for raw tech talents that would be nurtured by the general tech community (can’t be the nanny alone lol).
The Dojo
The dojo as it is fondly called is the home of Andela in Kenya. Everyone knows Andela yeah? lol. Already having a strong base in Nigeria, awesome organization and huge involvement in the tech community in Nigeria, our expectations were fully met when we got here.
Basically, Andela provides organizations with world-class talents. They nurture talents, teach them to become world-class and in that vain, they put out great value to organizations building world-class products and change the world too.
The Tour
On getting to Andela, the usual “home air” could be felt, more than it’s felt at the EPIC tower in Lagos I must say. Maybe it’s because of the homely setting of the building, the welcoming people, cats and obviously dojo the dog! We had a tour of the offices, game room, admin offices, really cool board-room, a personalized meeting space called “the container” where I found Joy Warugu, lastly, Rotimi Okungbaye’s backyard “the Cafeteria” lol.
We had the amazing opportunity to meet so many really smart people and Jeremy, the CEO of Andela. I must say he is a really cool person and we spoke to him about our goal in Kenya and he thinks it’s cool stuff we are doing and also appreciated our efforts put to growing the tech community(felt like a million bucks!).
The community involvement of Andela is so huge in Kenya just as is in Nigeria. As of when we got there, severally we got asked casually “are you going to Kisumu?” There is a GDG Devfest going down there, there are a couple of guys attending and I think it’s going to be awesome. For Nigerians, you can get a flight to Kisumu, I mean anything is possible lol. Heard it’s a beautiful place too.
In all, we met so many amazing people, had an amazing time and felt more at home but without pepper, and so many people got really nice hair, where is Jacky Kimani? Thanks to Kariuki, Joy Warugu, Nganga, Stephanie, Jacky, the cats, dojo and everyone that made our visit even more awesome.
Also thanks to the team for making this even more amazing, Christian Nwamba, Ayeni Olusegun, Prosper Otemuyiwa and lorna maria you guys rock!
There is so much value coming out of Andela Kenya.
Had to write that in a line of its own. Follow me to see more of the tour or follow the hashtag on twitter #KUTechTour. Also, leave feedback and suggestions if any.
Kwaheri, for now.
