By Clifford Akumu.
When Cynthia Anyango, 19, and her friends first entered Women Hackathon Competition in 2014, they had no idea what it meant to them.
What was required of them at that point was quite clear but needed mastery of software development; to come up with solutions in twenty four hours.
Cynthia had no training on software development but took the gamble.
With fortitude and self belief, they developed Ujirani App a neighbourhood social network platform. The application brings together communities and helps them solve cases of insecurity without exposing their phone numbers.
“During that competition we only came up with a brief concept of two pages that we then called Nyumbakumi(Ten houses in the neighbourhood).We developed and changed the name to Ujirani because the former was already a brand used by the government” recalls Anyango.
That simple competition has now burgeoned into an entrepreneurial start up with a ‘promising future’ and put her in the tech map.
Ujirani App is bringing together up to 500 neighbours from different households in Nairobi County allowing them to communicate on various issues in their hood.
“We want to encourage neighbours to know each other and communicate effectively and freely especially in times of suspicious occurrences in their hood” says Anyango, founder of Ujirani Company.
The new startup incubated at the Nailab leverages login using existing social network like Facebook and google +.
She adds “A user is then required to select their neighbourhood and automatically can view a feed of conversations on that community, all a user has to do is post a message and you will get notifications of replies, very intuitive and beautiful design.”
According to a report by Informa UK smartphone users in Kenya will be about 4.3million by the end of 2013.Africa is also expected to have 61million smartphones, South Africa Leading with 15.07M,Eygpt 11.03M and Nigeria 10.12M.
Currently Kenya has around 4 million smartphone users and the number is expected to rise in 2015 according to the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI).
Born and bred in numerous Nairobi City estates, Cynthia grew up as the second child and the only girl among two boys. Her mother is a freelance caterer who does her services at events, birthday parties.
“I had a very interesting childhood and funnily enough I don’t remember much of it. But I cannot forget every Sunday; since we used to have family time with my parents, we would go to church and after that we could spend the whole evening together” she explains.
After her primary school days at St.Anthony Kakoye in Kakamega in 2009, Cynthia enrolled at Kenya High School until 2013.She later joined Developer School Nairobi in early 2014 to pursue a refresher course in computer programming.
Upon completion, she decided to concentrate and build her software company.
“I have not joined any university yet. I took time off to concentrate in my software developing company but I will be joining this year .” says Anyango.
Anyango’s love for software development dates back to her years in high school.
“During my high school I did computer studies up to form four. I had my eyes set on being a software developer. I thank God; I have been able to realize that dream.” says Anyango.
So when she got wind of the Women Hackathon competition that had been organized by Akirachix and Microsoft in 2014, she had to try her luck.
“Although I did not have the qualifications like other contestants, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to turn my life around.” she says.
That competition gave impetus to Anyango’s childhood dream.
In July 2014, she kicked off her software development journey by starting her own company.
Changing the name from nyumbakumi app to ujirani was timely considering that their aim was to build a community of people who share information and updates about where they lived.
“The name ujirani came up while we were chatting one night with one of my partners. First I liked it because it was Kiswahili word for…‘good neighbour’, ‘being neighbourly’ and that is what we hope to achieve with the mobile app.”explains Anyango.
Cynthia regards every step of the journey that has gone towards building Ujirani Company as a ‘valley of learning new trends in the industry’.
“I watch a lot of series especially around tech and drama to keep up with emerging trends in the industry”
Last year, Anyango received the Safaricom Apps Challenge award in the mobile for good category. And that list continues to grow thanks to being listed in the top 25 under 25 entrepreneurs in Kenya recently.
However, her biggest challenge has been juggling between developing software and running the company.
“When I started out I had to multi-task and perform several roles. I have now employed an android developer to help me” says Anyango.
As she follows her passion, he eyes are set on partnering and expanding to other remaining counties for adoption.
“For now we are targeting Nairobi County alone; but once we acquire the experience and muscle based on the user feedback we get, we can then move to other counties. This process requires one step at a time” confirms Anyango.
In their quest to develop a solid business model for investors and attract a critical mass, they are working on building sms platform for non-android mobile phone customers.
“The advantage we have is that most Kenyans have android phones and that is the first market we wanted to capture. It is workable to cater for other customers who operate on IOS or Windows.”
United States and South Africa have implemented similar neighbourhood social networking platforms and have so far recorded dividends.
“In US it is called ‘Our next door’ while SA calls it ‘Our Hood’. If the whole country adopts Ujirani we will then realize a friendly, safer and secure nation” confirms Anyango.
The life of a software developer, says Anyango, is flexible so long as at the end of the day you deliver.
“There is a lot of joy that comes with self-employment. For me I wake up anytime I want. You can decide to work at home or at the office so long as you have done your work. I also get to dress the way you want” smiles Anyango.
To cap it all, Anyango says no matter how long it takes to realize a dream ‘being passionate about anything is the driving force’.
“There are jobs actually; you just have to create a job for yourself because if you do that you create jobs for other people and also living your dreams”
‘And if you believe and passionate about something you will definitely do it’ concludes Anyango.
