10 AFRICANS MAKING WAVES IN TECHNOLOGY

Here are ten of the up-and-coming entrepreneurs who are making some serious waves in the technology space – either by reimagining established products or services, expanding radically into new areas, or developing better solutions for Africa.

Bankole Cardoso, Co-founder and CEO of Easy Taxi Nigeria (image: file)

1. Bankole Cardoso, CEO of EasyTaxi Nigeria

Born in Nigeria, Cardoso attended Boston College in the USA to study Accounting and Business Management, after which he moved to New York City to work as an associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), where he earned a Certified Public Accountant qualification. After a brief period at The Carlyle Group, he moved back to Nigeria as an entrepreneur. Easy Taxi is one of the world’s largest taxi booking apps, and Cardoso was offered the CEO position after he returned from the US. The Nigerian branch recently teamed up with Samsung to offer its services to even more customers across Nigeria. The Easy Taxi app will be pre-installed on all new Samsung Galaxy S5 devices as part of the Galaxy Gift Exchange.

Rebecca Enonchong, founder and CEO of AppsTech. (Image source: Google/tech360ng.com)

2. Rebecca Enonchong, CEO of AppsTech

Tech entrepreneur Rebecca Enonchong is the founder and CEO of AppsTech, a global provider of enterprise application solutions. The Company, established in 1999, is reported to have a client base that includes 50 countries over three continents – Africa, Europe and North America.Enonchong has been selected as one of the 2013 WIE Africa Power Women in the Business and Technology category.AppsTech’s value proposition is the provision of enterprise software, service and support to international clients. Enonchong is also serving as a mentor and advisor to several African-based technology startups and sits on the board of VC4Africa, as well as serving as the director of the award winning Salesforce.com Foundation.

Clarisse Iribagize from Rwanda. (Image source:

3. Clarisse Iribagiza, CEO of HeHe Limited

Italian think tank LSDP (Lo Spazio della Politica) has listed Clarisse Iribagiza, a young Rwandan tech entrepreneur, among their top 100 global thinkers. LSDP explained that Iribagiza was added to the global list, as “she is one of the faces of a communicative and technological revolution in Africa.” Iribagiza is the founder and chief executive of Rwanda’s Hehe Ltd, a start-up tech firm that majors in software development among other services. According to The New Times, “she was placed 32nd coming behind Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in a list that included political leaders, businessmen, scientists, academics, journalists and intellectual leaders selected from across the globe.”

FACEBOOK'S MARK ZUCKERBERG NOW EARNING $1 SALARY

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now the company’s lowest-paid employee, according to its latest proxy filing. Zuckerberg — worth $27.8 billion mostly in Facebook stock —  requested an annual wage of $1 in 2013, joining the ranks of a handful of other very wealthy CEOs who take a symbolically negligible base pay.

Zuckerberg, who earned $770,000 in combined salary and bonus in 2012, is now in good company among giants of the tech sector. Google's GOOG +1.83% Sergey Brin and Larry Page, worth roughly $30 billion a piece, have been drawing a $1 salary for a decade now.


“The dollar salary really for them is meant to signify that they have large stakes in their company. The value they’re going to receive – the compensation they’ll earn – is coming solely from their stock,” says Aaron Boyd, director of governance for Equilar, a company that researches executive compensation. “You’re not going to question whether or not Larry Page is interested in growing a company’s stock as a shareholder. As one of the largest shareholders, he’s all in.”

Hewlett-Packard’s Meg Whitman (net worth $2 billion) and Oracle’s Larry Ellison (net worth $51.5 billion) also take just a buck in base pay. But unlike Zuckerberg, Brin and Page, the H-P and Oracle head honchos earn significant compensation in other ways. Whitman actually earned $17.6 million in stock and other performance-based awards in 2013, while Ellison was paid $79.6 million almost entirely in stock options — a dip from the $96 million he hauled in in 2012.  Dividends paid on the Oracle shares Ellison owns added  another $255 million to his annual take (before taxes).

Boyd says for somebody like Whitman, who isn’t a founder and was brought in to turn the company around, her compensation is tied directly to her performance — she earns her compensation if H-P meets its goals.

“She would need to achieve success with the company to earn returns from the stock,” he said.

Silicon Valley doesn’t hold the patent on $1 salaries, though. Richard Hayne, CEO of Urban Outfitters, is another billionaire in the $1 salary club — though he did draw a whopping $5,000 bonus in 2013. Oil and gas baron Richard Kinder, worth $9.3 billion, reaps $1 in total compensation from his energy company Kinder Morgan. In the biotech world, Robert Duggan, CEO of anti-cancer drug maker Pharmacyclics, thinks even $1 is a bit too rich. He takes no compensation whatsoever from the company, though he does have a $1.5 billion fortune comprised mostly of Pharmacyclics stock.

Although Zuckerberg will only hit up his social networking company for a $1 salary henceforth, Facebook is still ponying up for airfare and personal security. The company installed and maintains Zuckerberg’s security detail and also covered chartered flights for him and his guests for a total of $653,165 in 2013 — down from $1.2 million the previous year.

5 EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES EVERY OFFICE WILL HAVE IN 2020

Back in 1975, while most desks were still furnished with manual typewriters, technology pundits were making their predictions on the future of computers in the workplace. Computers showed tremendous potential for word processing and automation, they said, but would they really ever be user-friendly enough for general use?

Despite ominous forecasts from typewriter executives, we all know how this story ends. And a slew of other innovations have followed: the Internet, email, smartphones, Wi-Fi, GPS, and many more.


What revolutionary technologies are on the radar today? Here are five technologies that today’s experts are discussing and could very well be commonplace in offices by 2020.

Remote Workers as Robots

Yahoo YHOO +0.39%’s CEO Marissa Mayer caused a media frenzy earlier this year when she declared that employees would no longer be allowed to work remotely. But in 2020, advances in the speed of Internet connections and mobile phone networks are expected to lead to an increase in telecommuting, and technology will need to keep pace.

That’s where technologies like Suitable Technologies Beam telepresence robot play a part. The 5-foot robot has a screen that will beam a video-stream of a remote worker. The remote worker can even control the robot to move around the office, and microphones and cameras on the robot keep them in the loop of everything happening closeby.

OAU STUDENT BUILDS SOLAR POWERED CAR

OYEYIOLA SEGUN, a Part 5 student of the Electronic and Electrical Department of Obafemi Awolowo University. He was interviewed by OAU Peeps.

Excerpt:

OAU Peeps: Can we meet you sir?
Segun: Okay, I am Oyeyiola Segun, a part 5 student of Elect-Elect., OAU

OAU Peeps: We learnt you built this lovely car. Was it a joint project or you did it yourself?
Segun: I did it only. This is not a day’s job, I have been working on it for some months now.

OAU Peeps: So how does the car work?
Segun: Basically it depends on Wind and Solar energy. All the energy derived for these two sources were converted to run the simple car. There are different means of obtaining energy from these two sources but I picked the one that is cool for my car.

OAU Peeps: From what you just said, you can either use the Wind or Solar Energy to power the car’s engine?
Segun: Not either energy, rather both energies are used to power the car.

OAU Peeps: Cool… that differentiates your production from the usual vehicles we see around us I suppose?
Segun: Yes, you are very correct.

OAU Peeps: Could you share with us what actually provoked your innovation? I mean what you thought before coming up with this lovely engine?
Segun: Basically, it is because of the climate change we experience due to the combustion of fuel and you know cars also contribute to that change. So I thought of running a car that will not use fuel for its locomotion. After series of thinking and research work, I came up with the simple method that gave birth to this. So that is the basic reason for the car. Another concern of mine is to produce a car that will function effectively at a reduced cost of maintenance. I believe you know the price of fuel in this country is almost going beyond the reach of a common man?