Chembe

Chembe Ventures joined Google Africa and eTranzact in sponsoring the 2nd ever BarCamp Abidjan held in the Ivory Coast capital on March 5-7th.

The marathon event was organized by Akendewa and featured lively panel discussions on subjects from, ‘Funding, Finding and Facilitating Web Entrepreneurs’ to ‘Using the Web to Showcase Local Music and Cultural Content’.

The mantra of the “Babi” event was “local content” and many of the BarCamp workshops dealt with tools and strategies to create and promote new content. Two of the best attended sessions were Maxime Tiran’s workshop on Google Apps and Google Chrome Extensions and a presentation on cost effective site promotion by photographer and web entrepreneur, Paul Sika.

Other speakers included Okolou Euclid (Okibourse.com), Omar Assan Sylla and William Kouassi (Abidjanshow.com), and teams from Critic Afric, Abidjan.net and Maneno.org.

During the closing comments Akendewa and Maneno announced that the first ever pan-African BarCamp would be held in Abidjan on June 4-7, 2010. Watch this space…

A panel discussion on local content. Left to right: Tidjane
Deme (Google Africa), Sean Murphy (Chembe Ventures), Maxime
Tiran (Google France), Elia Varela Serra (Maneno.org)

Jean-Patrick Ehouman (left), President of Akendewa, discusses
3D modeling with Kan Hermann Godrin-Kouadi.

Relaxing during a break with Google Kenya and Google Senegal
on the groovy chairs of Hollywood Boulevard