Adekemi Sijuwade

Africa Maker is a website for and about African inventors and creative technologists in Africa and the Diaspora.

Description

Africans throughout the continent are making incredible technology, and creating solutions to cope with the ‘nuances’ of living in Africa. At the same time, Africans in the Diaspora feel that the narrative of the technology they are creating is not well represented in the media, in data sets and in artificial intelligence algorithms.

Africa Maker is a narrative-driven platform that seeks to showcase emerging African and African Diaspora technologists.

Large and small scale solutions to power outages, food preservation, waste disposal, fake pharmaceutical detection — have been created. Who are these people? Where are their projects? How can I promote, propagate and provide them with resources?

I stumbled upon this idea of creating an online space for current African innovators just by browsing social media feeds. I watched, read and listened to stories of new projects created as a means to dealing with some distinctive African circumstance. I became passionate about the idea of devoting myself to empowering these burgeoning technologists.

Africa Maker will begin as a website with feature articles about some African creative technologists in the New York area. In addition, the website will have resources that can be shared by other content publishers.

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Thesis