Category Archives: Omidyar

Baraza Media Lab launch

This week saw the launch of the Baraza Media Lab in Nairobi as part of an initiative to foster more collaboration towards a better future for journalists and media to tell their stories.

The Baraza Lab is a $1 million investment that is supported by the Luminate Group which is a spinoff of the governance and citizen engagements funded by the Omidyar Network. Ory Okolloh, the Managing Director, Africa for Luminate said that different media organizations were dealing with their industry problems in their own silos. The new Baraza lab, which is being run in collaboration with Mettā Nairobi, is a place where like-minded creatives could meet, share, and collaborate on the future of media.

At the launch, it was said that no industry has been as disrupted by technology as much as the media, whose business models have been eroded by new advertising platforms. This is also a time when propaganda and fake news divides societies and where personalities had more followers than countries. Yet media remains a necessary arm of inclusive and democratic societies, and organizations such as AmaBhungane and Africa Uncensored were cited as two entities that had done a great deal to expose corruption issues in South Africa and Kenya, respectively.

Media coach and “recovering” journalist Uduak Amimo, who was the keynote speaker at the launch, spoke about the revelations and opportunities brought on by new media in the last few years. As an example of collaboration, she said that the data dumps by Wikileaks had not made much sense until the organization partnered with traditional media houses. But the opportunities for media had been hampered by a focus on profits over purpose, media that shared messages that they had not checked or analyzed, pay discrimination and tolerance of harassment among other factors.

Idea Exchange: Barcamps, Heineken, Nuclear, Authors, Pilots, Blog Awards

New, ongoing, and concluded opportunities.

Acumen Fund is accepting applications for the next class of the Regional Fellows Program in East Africa, in Pakistan, and now India. Deadline is 2 September 2013.

The Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship recognize and award exceptional entrepreneurial leaders who serve as role models to Africa’s aspiring entrepreneurs and demonstrate business excellence, innovation, and profitability. This year there will be prizes for (a) lifetime achievement award,  transformational business, outstanding mature business, outstanding small and growing business, and one for an outstanding social entrepreneur – that will range from $50,000 to $100,000 each.  The Awards are supported by the Omidyar Network, and the deadline is July 18.

The African Business Awards competition is now open and there will be winners ins categories of African Business of the Year, Business Leader of the Year, Award for Good Corporate Governance, Award for Innovation and Outstanding Woman in Business. The deadline is August 5 and more details are here.

Barcamp Nairobi  is set for 24 August, 2013 and more details are here.

East African Breweries Foundation has university scholarships.

Enactus Kenya (formerly SIFE Kenya) stages the 2013 National Business and Entrepreneurship competition on  July 20, 2013, in Nairobi, and will choose a champion who will represent Kenya at the Enactus World Cup in Cancun Mexico.

Advertising, media and risk jobs at Equity Bank.

Heineken is seeking premium distributors in Kenya and entrepreneurs needs to have vehicles, sales person and Kshs 5 million ($60,000) in working capital to be eligible.

Highway Africa 2013 takes place at Rhodes University, South Africa in September and will have new media awards for innovative newsrooms, best African ICT Blog and (most) innovative use of technology for community engagement. Deadline is July 31.

Magadi Soda is seeking graduate engineer trainees and the deadline is 20 July 2013

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation and Global Integrity, who are embarking on a partnership to prepare the African Integrity Indicators (AII) 2013-2014, are seeking teams of journalists, and researchers experts across Africa to conduct original research and gather data that will feed into the Ibrahim Index of African Governance.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation Leadership Fellowship Program which closed on July 16, will place winners to work at African Development Bank offices for 12 months.

Morland Writing Scholarships are grants of £18,000, paid monthly over the course of one year to winners selected who submit published works of between 2,000 and 7,000 words for evaluation. The Scholarship is intended for writers who want to write a full-length book of 80,000 words or more and the deadline for the first series is October 31.

Poland is selling an Embassy property in Nairobi for $3.5 million. The deadline for bids is August 21, 2013.

Rhodes Scholarship Kenya applications are open until August 31.

RwandAir, hiring young and qualified Rwandans to be sent for Pilot training in Ethiopia. Deadline (was) July 15.

Top50at50: The Business Daily Africa newspaper is seeking to recognize the top fifty-year-old leaders in business to coincide with Kenya’s 50th year of independence.

The University of Nairobi has received 15 scholarships from the Kenyan government that will be availed to Kenyans who want to pursue masters degrees in Nuclear Science – and the deadline for applications is July 31.

The University has also partnered with the National Oil Corporation to build capacity in petroleum research and development through a management trainee program.

 The USAID DIV seeks applicants with innovative ideas that address development challenges more efficiently and cost-effectively than the competition, and that have the potential to scale to reach millions of beneficiaries. Deadline is August 15.

The World Bank’s InfoDev mAgri challenge aims to identify entrepreneurs developing innovative mobile agri apps in Africa, and provide them with additional resources to further commercialize their products. Deadline is August 15.

Zara: Fashion Stylists drawn from local media houses will battle on July 28.

Opportunities from Austria, Kofi Annan, Orange, Wellcome, and Georgetown University that were posted earlier are still open and here’s a nice link to other useful opportunities for advancement.

2011 Africa Awards

The award ceremony for the Awards took place in Nairobi on December 8. Sponsored by Legatum and Omidyar, this is the fifth year, and they received 3,300 entries from around Africa. Kenya has had numerous winners (AAR, Bio Deal, Colour Creations, Craft Silicon, Virtual City) , so it was not surprising that of the ten finalists, only one was Kenyan outsider (in financial services). Also it was nice to see and read about small and growing companies from other African countries that are not necessarily in the technology space

Criteria for eligibility consideration was the companies had to have a turnover of $1 – 15 million, a profitable track record of 2 years, at least 10 employees, not be subsidiaries of other companies, among other rules.

The overall prize of $100,000 went to Securico a woman founded security company that has thrived (edit) in inflation wracked Zimbabwe. It is an ISO certified company, with a turnover of $13 million and engage in diverse fields of security a workforce of 3,400 employees

There were six winners of $50,000:
– Chocolate City group which has a record company
– Expand Technology makers of smart card solutions from Mauritius. Their Kenya projects include Kenol cards and KWS Smart cards
– Pepperoni Foods from Nigeria
– SoleRebels from Ethiopia makes shoes, and are now available through Amazon.com
– Unique Solutions of Gambia which has grown from a cyber café to an ISP with reach in rural Gambia
– Victoria Seeds which grows seeds and has developed and trained a network of farmers in Uganda

Other finalists were:
– Cellular Systems of Senegal
– First Atlantic semiconductors from Nigeria
– Investeq Capital Kenya
The Africa Awards website has more info on the finalists.