via @whiteafrican

I used to think PlayPumps were awesome. I was wrong. But here's how we can do better.

"The new meme of Africa is unfolding in front of us. Technologically and culturally the future of Africa is absolutely refreshing."

Exactly.

"Attention can be gauged in many ways: investment dollars, number of organizations, or even by bandwidth. Curious to see how well-represented individual African nations are in the ICT progress game, I, however, turned to Google News for a quick analysis."

"As trained observers of how people in a society live, ethnographers can help companies figure out what people need and then work with designers to meet those needs with new (or more often tweaked) products and services. In a world in which ever more people are using technology products on a daily basis, such skills are increasingly in demand."

Ugandans using phones to track crop diseases

Appfrica Labs has been getting a lot of play in the NYT lately -- kudos to them

"It was scary, it was fun, it was deadly, it was beautiful. It was in essence, a coming of age. We were seeing technology in Uganda rise up to fill a gaping void and empower social change. It was the start of something wonderful, amazing, and big."

amazing story of/fantastic interview with a GV translator from Mali

"What do they call ICT4D in developing countries? ICT?"

thoughts on twitter, africa, and refurbished computers

"There is a man who said that Africa was sleep when The West was revolutionizing the machinery and mechanization industry and that Africa should not be sleep again with this new revolution in ICT. This is really a great thinking but there still much a lot to change for achieving this kind of dream."

Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there.

"technology transfer is much more complicated than bringing tools to people who previously lacked them"

pretty sweet example of what can be done with a little bit of cell phone technology