“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”
-Anne Frank

When I first came to Buea to join ActivSpaces, a night walk through the suburban residential areas revealed one outstanding insight: the paths stretched out into total darkness. It was only a matter of time before I heard the accounts of accidents, outright robbery, and other mishaps due to the absence of adequate street lighting in the small town. Identifying this problem, I took it straight to the African Center for Technology Innovation & Ventures where I was already involved in a real estate project.

Nurturing Ideas & Collaborating
My first idea was to write up a project for the erection of light poles around residential areas. These would have a display panel affixed to them which could generate advertising revenue to keep the lighting solution sustainable. While theoretically feasible, Sebastian Prengel, a member of ActivSpaces and one of best engineers I know, cautioned me on several difficulties with this approach, the most pertinent being finance.

Sebastian and I debated until we hatched out a smaller version of the original plan, where we would build an innovative lighting unit that could be attached to public infrastructure as opposed to setting up entire light poles. The main objective would still be reached and even better, this was a project we could easily set up in the lab.

The “Rebirth” of Bisou
Sebastian and I set to work gathering the material needed to build the first model of the street lighting unit. After a few days of purchasing and assembling pieces, we had a working prototype ready for testing. It was however on this fateful day that Sebastian’s cat, Bisou, who had kept him company during all the tinkering, tragically passed away. As homage to his cat, we named our street lighting device “Bright Illumination & Sound Unit” – Bisou.

The Kiss of Light

Bisou is effective, cost efficient and an easy hardware hack. We connected a lamp with a motion sensor to a pair of speakers and an MP3 player. The lamp only comes on when there is motion to minimize consumption. Once the lights are triggered they are accompanied by audio media which can run a message such as “This light is sponsored by ActivSpaces“. Our 2nd Bisou prototype featured an encasement to protect the unit against weathering and to facilitate secure installment on outdoor structures.

Moving On
After test-running Bisou in a student residential area and recording positive results, we applied to the town council for the approval to operate the project in Buea. The Mayor of Buea, Charles Mbella Moki, was delighted with the initiative and being formally employed at AES-SONEL (the national power utility company), he pledged to support the necessary negotiations that would need to be established with them. With the mayor’s endorsement, we knocked at AES-SONEL’s door to forge the final alliance we would need to make the project work.

After dozens of meetings, presentations, field studies and technical assessments, AES-SONEL finally validated the street lighting project for Buea and authorized deployment of Bisou units in January 2012.

24 Hour Action
On the 15^th and 16^th of December, the 1% Club is hosting their annual 24 Hour Action and the Bisou team at ActivSpaces is a participating action group. For our launch, we are inviting the whole community to ActivSpaces to donate to the street lighting effort, record their own audio messages and hear them played across the streets of Buea when we deploy our solution with AES-SONEL in January.

In the domestically popular suburban slang of Francophone Cameroon, the term “djoss” is often used to describe chatter or small talk. Last week, a few Douala-based Cameroonian techies launched a web application designed specifically for the purpose of chit-chat around television programs – Djoss.tv.

Djoss.tv stands out because it joins the ranks of the daring minority of African projects that are focusing on pop culture and entertainment (Afrinolly, Kmerblagues & Rumors to name a few) as opposed to non-profit or problem-oriented ventures. We caught up with Patrick Ndjientcheu of Djoss.tv to give us a little more insight into the startup.

Patrick Ndjientcheu

Twitter: @tchenpat
Location: Douala, Cameroon

Project: Djoss.tv
Founded: September 2011

Djoss.tv is a platform that lets you check TV programs you’re watching and share your emotions and impressions with your friends and other people watching the same TV program as you.

The Teammates:

1. Hervé DJIA, a passionate software developer who built NoBakChich, an android application aiming to provide people with administrative procedures and let them report bribes.
2. Eloge FOKEM, software developer at DotCom, a company building state-of-the-art websites.
3.Kouotou Aboubakar Sidiki aka kasbig, webmaster in a company in Douala and social media passionate.

The inspiration for Djoss.tv
“Well, I used to express my thoughts on Twitter and Facebook while watching games of my favorite team Manchester United. Sometimes, I feel the need to discuss live with other people watching ManU games and also share my joy with my friends when ManU scores. And you know, they score all the time :)

“On Twitter, people used the “#nowwatching” tag. I just thought that it would be great if they can comment on those TV programs without having to use tags and share their comments with anybody watching the program, be them on Twitter or not.”

Djoss.tv was built and launched in two weeks
“Well, I’m a fervent ‘Getting Real‘ practitioner since my first public project: Koutchoumi.com. So, this time, I just wanted to challenge myself to go from concept to implementation in one week… My teammates bought the challenge. It was very exciting. Unfortunately, we failed to deliver after 1 week but we managed to deliver one week later.

I must say I was lucky to find people ready to embrace the ‘Getting Real‘ philosophy so easily. In 1 hour, we agreed on what we were going to build.”

–

The Future
The Djoss.tv team assures us that the “best is yet to come”. They plan to deliver a new feature to Djoss.tv every week and so far are delivering on that promise. With the announcement of the results for the 2011 Cameroon presidential elections, there’s going to be a lot of Djossing today. The Djoss.tv team were early applicants to ActivSpaces Douala; follow @djosstv on Twitter to keep up with the project’s progress.

It’s a Video Game!
Before you think we’re training firebrands and rebels at ActivSpaces, the technological fight against corruption is going to be a Scratch-based video game created by Scratch Club Buea. During the last session on Saturday, the kids decided they wanted to do a joint project and they went forth to come up with themes and structure a game-play model. The Scratch kids will develop this game entirely on their own, but will follow project management techniques provided to them by ActivSpaces.

The Plot & The Plan
The protagonist of the game is a covert operative from an anti-corruption organization who is sent on secret missions to capture evidence of bribery and corruption in order to take down a crooked government syndicate of a fictional African country. The kids are still looking at the timeline for the creation of the game and they plan to host it on a private website where other Scratch projects they are working on will be embedded. When I asked them about some of the more sophisticated functionality in the game-play, Eugene-Bleck, team leader answered, “We’ve already started.”

Follow @ActivSpaces on Twitter to keep up with their progress. This is definitely two thumbs-up for the role of technology in education.

Think Innovatively, Act Locally & Connect Globally
Harambe Cameroon, an organization promoting social entrepreneurship, recently held its first National Problem-Solvers’ business plan competition in Yaounde. 40 proposals had initially been submitted from university students countrywide but the top 5 were systematically selected. The teams behind them were in the capital city for 24 hours of incubation and a final live presentation before a public audience and a panel of jurists. ActivSpaces was present and impressed by the enthusiasm of the Cameroonian youth to undertake projects geared towards development of the motherland and the continent at large.

“If Not Now, When?”
Contestants in the business plan competition proved the capability of young forward-thinkers to make real impact in Cameroonian society. In the words of Nfinyo Mabu, CEO of Fresh Investment Corporation and one of the jurists at the competition:

“You [the youth] are not the leaders of tomorrow, you are the leaders of today.”

Youth4Change - Winners of National Problem-Solvers' Competition 2011

Harambe Cameroon represents a call-to-action; a push to seize the moment with initiatives despite roadblocks. The contestants all presented daring ideas in the spirit of “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. Getting into activity now is also the driving force behind what we do at ActivSpaces. Community-based entrepreneurs should not wait for times to get better, they should make better times.

“If Not Here, Where?”
The theme of a “national problem-solvers” competition is heartwarming to ActivSpacers who live and breathe to build bridges across divides. Harambe grasps the reality that every obstacle presents a possibility.

“Our mission is to inspire a new generation of young leaders and entrepreneurs who see problems as opportunities in need of solutions.”

The contestants observed issues like poor healthcare services, malnutrition, pollution, and transformed those into healthcare tools, nutrition control systems and recycling agencies, demonstrating innovative thinking of the first class. Here, where we have a multitude of problems, we equally have a myriad of opportunities.

Olivia Mukam - 3rd from the right

“If Not You, Who?”
If you’re waiting for a champion to fight for your cause, the student-contestants, thoroughly drilled by Harambe Cameroon, will tell you that they found that champion within themselves.

The Wii.FM Frequency
In her closing speech, Olivia Mukam, President & Founder of Harambe Cameroon, humorously mentioned that it seems everybody is tuned in to Wii.FM — “What’s in it for me?” Where several fail to find an answer that satisfies them, ActivSpaces immediately sees the potential to mobilize the youth towards fostering a better today and a brighter tomorrow for everyone. We commend Harambe Cameroon and look forward to working on collaborative projects in the interest of social entrepreneurship and ICT4D. Stay tuned ;)

At the Yaoundé Conference Center from July 14^th – 15^th, the World Bank hosted the finals of the Development Marketplace, a competitive program which had as objective to select and fund innovative projects with high potential for development impact.  From 230 project proposals that had been submitted by civil society organizations covering the 10 regions of Cameroon, 30 initiatives had been selected for the finals. Out of these, 10 to 15 finalists would be selected by a jury to receive funding. $320,000 was allocated for the winners.

ActivSpaces was present on the 15^th to participate in the ICT & Governance forum that was taking place alongside the Development Marketplace. We had the opportunity of mingling with the project leaders and getting to hear first-hand the experiences they had in the Cameroonian marketplace and what their approach was to solving the problems they came across.

Applicants were expected to propose projects that could increase community participation and transparency in the management of educational, health, and forestry institutions. There were too many reports of mismanagement and misappropriation of resources in these sectors especially from the interior areas of Cameroon that are less accessed by government auditors.

It was interesting to see the various strategies that these projects were looking to employ to tackle the problems of corruption and misappropriation that they faced in their various sectors. However, as ActivSpaces, we couldn’t help but notice the lack of information technology that was being included in the plans towards community participation and transparency.

We repeatedly found ourselves asking one question to the project leaders: “How do you think you can leverage information technology to help out with this situation?”

A few of the projects had information technology incorporated into their solutions but the majority did not. At ActivSpaces, we believe that almost every venture can benefit in one form or the other from information technology in their set-up. After all, when it comes to community participation and transparency, an ICT platform will probably best serve the purpose. The question we asked those project leaders are questions that we ask ourselves everyday looking at the scope of the entire marketplace.

Yesterday, after a 3-day training course with CRS (Catholic Relief Services), the winners of the Development Marketplace program officially started implementation of their projects. These projects will be implemented over the course of one year and in September, 2012, the results will be presented during a public event.

ActivSpaces is wishing the Development Marketplace winners the best during their implementation programs and inciting them all to join us in the ICT4D movement by including ICT in their organizations.

*Pictures from the event