Facebook Honors These 10 African Startups – Nigeria, Ghana And Kenya Dominate

Facebook celebrated the achievements and products of its growing African developer and partner ecosystem at its annual F8 developer conference  held in San Jose, California, on 18 and 19 April. African developers shared the stage with Facebook and developers from around the world, showcasing innovative products and services they have created for their local communities and the global market.

F8 hosts more than 4000 people in person and hundreds of thousands of people watching via Facebook Live for two days of new products, tools, interactive demos and speakers to help developers build, grow and monetise their apps.

This year Facebook brought F8 to developers around the world through F8 Meetups hosted with tech hubs around the world. In Africa, it hosted F8 Meetups in Nairobi, Lagos, and Cape Town, where participants watched live streams of the sessions in San Francisco.

African developers who featured in F8 sessions include the following:

• Asoriba: A Ghanaian start-up that has built software that enables churches to better manage member engagement, donations, and attendance. The company was featured in the Keynote for its work using Facebook Analytics.
• Rancard, a mobile solutions company based in Ghana. Its Rendezvous, social recommendation system was featured in two sessions at F8.
• Pass.NG is an education start-up from Nigeria that helps students practice for their university entrance exams.
• Truppr  is a social fitness start-up from Nigeria.
• Afrinolly  is an app that allows users to catch up with Nollywood content on their mobile phones. It is one of the first Nigerian companies to build the Facebook Surround 360 camera.
• Quiz.ng , an online quiz platform based out of Nigeria.
• Kudi.ai : Messenger Bot to send money for free to any bank, buy airtime and pay bills; first African bot to be featured on Messenger Blog
• Kangpe : A health service from Nigeria that lets users ask real doctors their health questions.
• Eneza Education: An educational app from Kenya.
• Refunite : A service from Kenya that helps refugees to reunite with their families and loved ones.

African students and developers showcase their talent

In attendance were two representatives each from the winners of Internet.org’s Innovation Challenge in Africa awards. These awards from Facebook’s Internet[dot]org recognised leading examples of ideas, apps, websites and/or online services that provide real value in the categories of education and economic empowerment.

• Economic Empowerment Innovation Challenge Award Winner: Ghana’s Esoko makes it easier for businesses, governments, NGOs and others to connect with farmers through its web and mobile apps.
• Economic Empowerment Impact Award Winner: mPedigree Goldkeys  from Ghana is an anti-counterfeiting, tracking and tracing solution that uses consumers’ mobile phones as a verification tool.
• Economic Empowerment Impact Award Winner: Nigeria’s SaferMom provides pregnant and new mothers with simple tools to help make informed health decisions via sms, voice services and its mobile app.
• Education Innovation Challenge Award Winner: Founded in South Africa, Hyperion Development  is a social enterprise that has built the first online course platform for computer science education.
• Education Impact Award Winner: Launched in Ghana, Mutti by mPharma  is a drug affordability service that enables patients to access high quality medicine at lower prices with flexible payment terms through micro-payments.
• Education Impact Award Winner: Nigeria’s Tuteria  connects people seeking to learn with people around them who can teach.

Facebook also invited four graduate students from Carnegie Melon University Africa in Rwanda to attend after they won the CMU-Africa Messenger Bot Hackathon.

Launch of Developer Circles

At F8, Facebook also announced a new program for developers all over the world to connect, learn, and collaborate with other local developers. Developer Circles is a community-driven program that’s free to join and open to any developer.

Each Developer Circle is led by members of the local community who act as leads for the circle, organising events offline and managing a local online Facebook community. Developer Circles are forums to share knowledge, collaborate, build new ideas and learn about the latest technologies from Facebook and other industry leaders. Lagos, Nigeria was the first place that Facebook piloted this global program and Innocent Amadi, one of the community leads for the Lagos Circle was featured at the Keynote.