Young Entrepreneur Brings Openmoko to Africa

A young entrepreneur in South Africa has teamed up with Openmoko to distribute the Neo Freerunner to Africa.

Nyasha Mutsekwa spoke to Biz-News.com at the sidelines of Mobile Web Africa conference in Johannesburg of his mission.

Mutsekwa believes that the biggest challenge in Africa is not short of skills but lack of latest technologies that can be harnessed to empower people.

“In Africa I think its not skills shortage but rather lack of access to latest technologies, this is why we are going all out to bring all the technologies available to Africa,” he said

The Neo Freerunner is an open-source phone, which allows developers and enthuasists alike access to the source code and hardware schematics to customize the device to their hearts content.

Nyasha Mutsekwa

Mutsekwa through his company Engineering Ideas is optimistic of their business venture across the continent saying they have received favourable response in countries that they have a footprint.

Openmoko is a project dedicated to delivering mobile phones with an open source software stack. This technology allows the users to freely choose to run any operating system on their Openmoko smartphone.

Besides running the Openmoko software and applications, users can also run the following distributions: Qt Extended Improved, Debian, Gentoo, Google Android, Hackable: 1, neovento.

“With this smartphone user have the ability to create their own African Mobile environments using a tried and tested open source platform,” Mutsekwa added.

Mutsekwa, who previously worked for Oracle Africa as the e-School Business Development Manager teamed up with friends in 2008 to start Engineering Ideas, a private limited company serving the technology and intellectual capital needs of small to medium size business clients in Africa.

Speaking about the regulatory environment on the continent, Mutsekwa said that his company hasn’t faced much challenges as there is an identical regulatory environment within their sphere of operation.