Which mobile apps would you want to use in Kenya and why?

Both

No kenyan apps?

Not some, most!

I have a Citizen one and DSTv. I wouldn't mind one that gives live NSE stock prices. Ama free local tv and/or radio

There is an NSE app for android. Cant remember the name though. Personal data could be anything on your phone. File lock app sounds interesting.

Safaricom with a customer base of 19.2m has decided that to drop feature phones and embrace smartphones.The market leader has moved. Hopefully they'll focus on android phones. Now we need APIs!

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Seen the links and I agree with Safaricom's move. Data is where the future is and what better way to prepare for that than to skew the market towards smart phones. They've become pretty cheap these days and will only continue to become cheaper. People who really need feature phones can get them from regular phone shops anyway.

Having said that, Safaricom now ought to use its influence to lobby aggressively for accessible app payment mechanisms. Even if Google allows us to put out paid apps on Play and expect Kenyans to pay for them via credit cards, penetration will still be low and developers will not be motivated. Africa is a completely different context from the west and Google ought to appreciate that fact.

As for Kenyan developers, we need to invest in the requisite skills and creativity to produce professional applications. Simple things like app UI design and the icons you use make a huge impact on how users perceive your application. Of course it has to have some useful functionality to back up its beauty. And note that I say useful - not complicated or out of this world - just useful. Who will stand up to be counted?

@ChessMaster, I just recently got interested in Android development and I am liking it. As you say, it's really just Java and XML and if you have experience in those things from wherever then Android programming is a breeze. That has been my experience and I am having fun developing my first (hopefully useful) Android app. I intend to offer it for free on Google Play - just to test the waters.

But the tech capacity to develop an app is one thing. Good ideas to implement, great user experience and getting the economics right is a completely different kettle of fish. And I think here in Kenya that's the bigger gap.

I haven't keenly followed the app competitions although going forward I am very interested in them. But I think they have a big role to play in piquing developers' interest. I have also heard about the Safaricom Academy in collaboration with Strathmore but haven't investigated it much. But I think we both agree that there's huge potential here for Kenyan developers if we're willing to rise to the occasion and expand our skill set beyond hardcore technical know-how and include the other things I talked about.

I like your idea of asking people here for apps they would want to use although you don't seem to be getting many replies. In a sense that's expected. In my experience, users often tend to know better what they do not want than what they want. And even then only after you've built it and presented it to them. In a sense, putting out an application is like telling a joke. Regardless of what you make of your joke you only get to know if it's funny once you tell it. And so asking people for app ideas is not much unlike asking an audience what jokes they'd love to hear. They may not know. But when you tell 'em a good joke they say to themselves, "Wow! That was hilarious.". No prizes for guessing what happens when you tell 'em a lousy one!