Somaliland,Addis Ababa and Tech Hubs in Africa

I first want to apologize to anyone I have not e-mailed back in a long while. Time is not money in Somaliland but rather extremely precious because more often than not it is easily wasted. As most of my students know by biggest pet peeve is wasted time. So don’t worry I haven’t been twiddling my thumbs trying to alienate myself from the rest of the world. I have had no excuse not to blog other than that I’ve been extremely busy in the past few months. To summarize to the best that I can, life here has been challenging, rewarding and exciting.

Since I’ve the last post I’ve been to Ethiopia twice and Abaarso School (formerly Abaarso Tech we’ve changed the name) has gotten 12+ students scholarships (more to come) at boarding schools/universities in the U.S including one acceptance into MIT. The school has come a long way since it began four years ago. With the threat of being shut down numerous times by the government it is amazing the accomplishments the school has obtained in the past few months.

As we approach our third term I’m still not entirely sure what my plans for next year are just yet. I just got back from Addis Ababa and am highly considering trying to find work there for next year. I’ve come to realize that not only is Africa a difficult place to live but a very difficult place to find work. When talking to the folks at Inveneo last year they weren’t lying when they said developing world experience is a must for their line of work. I can certainly now see why. To put it frank, Africa is an extremely gnarly place to live. I could give you all sorts of anecdotes and explanations pulling from all the common clichés of a white boy travelling to Africa, but there is no way I’ll ever be able to convey what it’s like here. The only thing I can say is come see it for yourself!

Lastly, before I post some photos from the past few months, I want to take a moment to thank and give a huge props to the guys at iceaddis. While in Addis Ababa last week I went searching for technology hubs in the city. These sort of open work spaces are the latest craze when it comes to sharing and working on new innovative technology projects. Hubs are popping up all over the world (I worked in one last year) and now all over Africa. The most famous one in Africa being the ihub in Nairobi. I had such an incredible experience working in a tech hub last year that I would like to find a similar space to work in Africa. The guys at iceaddis were nice enough to invite me to come down and check out their space on the campus of Ethiopian Institute of Architecture. The building as you can see in my photos below is made up of trash containers. The plans for the structure are made available online through a creative commons license so anyone start their own “ice” work space. Currently there is an icecairo another ice space in Germany and plans for many more. I had an excellent conversation with Markos and Oliver the two co-founders about everything from their current projects to the barely existent hopefully emerging tech scene in Ethiopia.

Like Somaliland Ethiopia suffers from extremely expensive inconsistent and slow internet (were talking $300+ a month). However, luckily in Somaliland we do not have to worry about a government run monopoly telecommunications company that censors the internet and refuses to open the market to competition. In many obvious ways this is very harmful to journalists/activists in Ethiopia and to its citizens. What really concerns me though is with such high prices for connectivity and 85 percent of the Ethiopian population living in rural areas it might be quite some time before the entire population of Ethiopia is “connected.”

I gotta say though that Ethiopia itself is a wonderful country that still has many regions left for me to explore. I have strong hopes that with Ethiopia’s strong concurrent rising GDP the country will only continue to flourish. I can definitely foresee a future with Addis Ababa becoming a large player in the technology scene in Africa. I will definitely be stopping back in Addis in July at the end of the school year. With that said, I hope everyone is doing well wherever they might be across the planet. I hope to see all of you soon inshallah.

For Now

Rainy Season has begun in Abaarso!

The XC Team ran 18km from Abaarso to Somaliland’s capitol Hargaesa..I bought the team drinks after which mainly consisted of coke and 1 liter cartons of milk