Extending Mobile Applications in Africa - Tanzania (COSTECH)

The objective is to bring together infoDev's experience with ICT-enabled innovation and entrepreneurship, in particular its African network of business incubators, with Nokia's expertise on mobile applications in emerging markets in order to extend mobile applications in Africa.The expected impact is to increase the number of mobile applications entrepreneurs in Africa. The expected intermediate results are the hosting of events (around 30 in four cities in the first 18 months of the project) to promote innovation in the mobile sphere, targeting around 1000 participants from 400 or so companies, NGOs, government agencies and other organizations that would participate in the online and offline activities, and promoting the visibility of the African chapters at a global level, for instance through a dedicated webspace and competitions with winners to gain entry to international events, such as infoDev's Global Forum for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Helsinki (May/June 2011).The main knowledge output of this activity will be inputs to the Mobile Flagship Report (GLO 1 under TF071399) to evaluate lessons learned from this experiment in social networking and to show the development potential of mobile applications.