Problems to Solve

  1. There is so much information on the internet that it is hard to keep track of everything. It gets overwhelming. Refers to Managing My Digital Environment

    • I can have a 'million' tabs open for weeks but I will never take a look at them

    • The problem is too many tabs open.

    • Another problem is too many emails and newsletters

    • There are so many blog posts

    • There are so many videos

      Solution: Have a stash of all this information and have a fun way to go through them. It could be like Stumbleupon but for bookmarks (InfoStash)
      User can organise/summarise and share their stash with other users. (InfoMining)
      Refers to Personal Knowledge Management

  2. Sorting information on my computer can be a headache. Can the files organise themselves? Refers to the Self-Organising File System

  3. Crime in Nairobi is a huge issue, however we can empower communities to report crime hotspots and inform people who are unaware. This is Project CrimeMap

  4. Academic papers have a lot of valuable knowledge but the public rarely gets to read them. What's the best way to get these papers to the masses? Refer to Making Knowledge Useful

  5. I am building a crypto community and I want incentivise them to connect and engage. How can I use crypto to get that going?

    • Why would they participate?
      • They can connect amazing people
      • They can get a token, which means ownership in the community
      • They can learn about blockchain
      • They can grow their wealth by crowdfunding and investing DeFi and NFT products
      • They can build together

  6. Newsletters via email are usually hard to see because I don't use email. Can other platforms be used? Such as WhatsApp. Refers to WhatsApp for more than Messaging

  7. My time and project management skills suck. I need to find a good tool that will help me

  8. I like to journalling and I want a place to get beautiful and affordable journals. Refer to Journalling

  9. How can people benefit from the data that they generate? Slides, documents, journals etc. Refers to Knowledge Management

  10. There are many young tech-savvy people who can get into agriculture. However, there is no online resource for them to learn about it as well as connect with other like-minded peers. Agriculture is being left behind by technology

    • In my view, agriculture will be transformed by young, educated and tech-savvy people, not the existing typical small-scale farmer

  11. Securing the financial futures of tech industry professionals in Africa. This can be done through a Sacco.

    • The idea of the sacco is to build a community for Tech Professionals and help them lobby for their rights, regulation and realise their responsibilities in the nation.
    • In addition, the Sacco can invest in incubators, co-working spaces and studios to build stuff

  12. A database that keeps track of contacts at hiking trails and allows organisers to find the more reputable contacts to make hikes possible and easy to take place. It removes the burden of knowing someone. Refers to Hiking

  13. I write a lot of handwritten notes in my journals and work notebooks. How can I store them and retrieve them in a digital fashion? There is the hassle of carrying notebooks and there is the notion that anything that is written down in a notebook is lost forever. How can we change that? Refers to Turning Handwritten Notes to Digital Notes and the Note-taker's Dilemma

    1. Ways this can take place are:
      1. Scanning my journals using my phone and turn them into a pdf
      2. Reading my journals aloud and recording the audio to convert from voice to text
      3. Using a smart pen that can capture my entries and notes as I write

  14. Making mobile phones have more utility and be less about consumption. Instead of mobile phones, we can call them mobile computers that allow you to do what desktops and laptops do. Refer to Making Mobile Phones have Utility

  15. A Saas company that allows people to plugin wallets to their applications and become fintechs. Refer to Wallet Technology

  16. Have a main digital wallet that allows users to create virtual wallets for specific purposes. They can even create group wallets and invite friends to pool funds and pay for common things. This is especially important when going out as it is hard to split the bill and make everyone pay. Refer to Wallet Technology

  17. A Digital Mind that collects and reminds you about the knowledge you have gathered and processed over time. It can act as a way to understand yourself, discover new knowledge, share your ideas with others and connect with other people.

  18. Connecting smart polymath-like people together to share knowledge, have great conversations, build great things and have fun. This is the Cerebrations by Isaac Asimov

  19. On Managing My Digital Environment, build a system that can aggregate the data and activity about a person's digital life and give reports on how to improve on it. This is the Digital Life Dashboard

  20. A Life Dashboard to keep track of goals and visions. It can aggregate health data, finances, digital activity and so on.

  21. Permissioned Digital Gardens - Permissioned access to hosted digital gardens. Allow for sharing specific notes and ability for collaboration.

  22. Streaming Movies on Torrents - instead of downloading movies from torrents and transferring them to a hard disk, an service can be built to allow people to stream movies and series from torrents.

  23. Restaurant financing - restaurant owners, managers and even service workers can get financial support to start and run their businesses. Idea for Shukran

  24. A community of polymaths and niche-topic lovers who want to talk about ideas, make friends and build cool things. Refer to Cerebrations

  25. Hacker Studio for smart people to build interesting and cool projects around computing and increasing Africa's capacity for ICT, computer knowledge and effective use for business, community and personal life.

  26. Enlightening content creation that educates and entertains the African viewership. Refer to the Africa Knowledge Project

  27. A helping hand for chamas to manage their assets and finances. Chama Manager. Almost similar to a Sacco or Cooperatives

  28. Helping consumer product companies to integrate with delivery apps like Glovo, Jumia Foods and so on to manage their orders and stocks. Especially when their stock can run out.

  29. Building software for new saccos to register users, track deposits and issue loans to their members. It is quite similar to what Shukran is doing now with our sacco software but now as a Saas business. This is what Kwara is doing

  30. Helping small businesses to track their customers by having a call centre setup on their phones and contacts linked to track data about calls and texts made.

  31. A digital language tutor that teaches and preserves African languages using AI language models. It makes you speak and corrects you. It can focus on Swahili and other major African languages

  32. A standardised transaction database that can be used by financial institutions to build financial applications, leveraging on common actions such as transfer of currency, assets and so on. It is almost like distributed ledger technologies like Ripple and so on.

  33. An online marketplace for apartment and estate WhatsApp groups to advertise and sell their goods and services as well as make annoucements. It can be run by management.

    • Create a directory of small businesses in an area that can be located or ordered from. This is for a neighbourhood to support its local businesses.

  34. Have an automated way to both download and stream movies and series for my parents, instead of downloading and copying into a hard disk.

  35. Expanding the Obsidian plugin ecosystem:

    • Tracking your stats in your vault like total words, files, links. Most used words, how they relate to each other. It is almost a graph analysis but going deeper into semantics. A start to the Digital Mind project.
    • Connecting your Obsidian vault with Twitter and Telegram so that you can save stuff from there. Obsidian can have a store of readlater stuff. I think Telegram is good since I save a lot of things there.
    • An easy way to publish notes onto a personal blog. This means that we need to save a great static site with different themes. I have to do it myself first, then build a system that does it for others.
    • A chatbot or voice assistant based on your journal entries and voice that summarises and synthesizes the knowledge of your entries
    • Improving connecting the dots with graph analysis, embedding and other tools to improve connecting knowledge. Tools like Embedbase and AVA.

  36. Getting payments through card or bank accounts to work like Mpesa STK pushes. They can be programmatically called and allow the end user to authorise the transaction using a pin. The Granular, Hands-Free PSP. Very similar to Duara. Paystack is working great so far.

  37. Operations-as-a-service for SMEs. By offering support services to SMEs, they can focus less on the support roles and more on their core business. These services include legal, accounting, finance, web development, videography .etc.

  38. A digital magazine that competes with social media and video sites to provide both engagement, ease of navigation and quick access. It is almost like the flipping of images on Instagram or something. I know it can be interesting what can be done.

  39. Delivering pre-cooked food that can last a week for a subscription. Allow people to order a week-worthy of pre-cooked food that they can store in their fridges and create slowly. This saves them time, they can eat healthy meals and they can do it more affordably than getting takeout. Delivering Weekly Precooked Food

  40. A Foodie App for people who love food and love going out. View the trendy restaurants, get assistance on what restaurant to go to, log the restaurant experience and share with friends. Get recommendations based on experiences and share with the world you foodie level. Invite your friends for night-outs, dinning and eat-outs.

  41. Debt-financing for Farming by using the VC model. Like startups, you can invest in farms and help them build their capacity to scale. In addition, you can allow retails investors like middle-class urban professionals to invest their money and crowdfund to invest in farmers.

  42. Laptop financing service that allows people to get the laptop they want from a manufacturer of their choosing, at an affordable price and with financial support to either save up for it or get a loan to buy it.

  43. Save Now and Buy Later. Instead of getting a loan to purchase a nice to have, you can save for it and buy it when the time comes. The goal to reduce the amount of debt that people incur when buying nice-to-haves and save for them. Things like laptops, motorcycles, holidays and the latest fashion don't need loans to buy.

  44. Subscription-based internet in public spaces and even private ones through a universal service.

  45. A data-labelling company that seeks to provide datasets for the AI-age.

  46. Private repository of your personal information such as KRA pin, ID pictures and so on that can easily be referenced by companies for KYC purposes, personal purposes and so on. Allows quick sharing and providing access to specific things for certain people.

  47. Automated kitchen and bartender

  48. A low-cost, long-distance telecommunications network using LoRa and WiFi technologies to rival traditional telecommunications companies in low-income rural areas.

  49. An AI tool that turns a written essay into a series of slides or a video that is narrated and shows the relevant images, video clips and so on to go with it.

  50. An AI chatbot and research assistant that goes through Kenyan and African datasets and answers questions based on them. I can use OpenChat.ai to upload and go through them and give it out as a service.

  1. A place where academia and entrepreneurs can come together and share great ideas about how to take advantage research in industry and business. It can be a site that makes research papers relevant to business people and entrepreneurs.

  2. A grant writing tool based on AI that helps you use previous grant proposals and applications to write new ones and increase speeds and eliminate writer's block.

  3. A company that collects data from across Africa and allow people to pay and explore this data in a flexible and robust interface. Related to Problems to Solve#^75f403

  4. A game or interactive product that turns the distractive capability of smartphones and the internet into productive and educational tool for children.

  5. Pornography addiction is a taboo to talk about but it affects more people than they are willing to admit. Problems such as loneliness, PED .etc are just the tip of the iceberg. What application, content or programme can be made to solve this issue?

  6. A service that gives you access to pay-only or subscription content like research papers, articles .etc. It can be crowdfunded. It can be pirated. Whichever works.