Habaka, Madagascar tech hub
When I knew I was going to Madagascar I checked out the local tech scene. Naturally I bumped into Habaka, Madagascar’s hub for technology, information and startups. It’s run by Harinjaka Andriankoto Ratozamanana. There’s a 300 sq.m. building for activities such as teaching kids how to code, making things, web tech startups and a lot more. I happen to be here on a Saturday afternoon with a presentation:
CodorDojo Madgascar
- learn coding together
- tech like HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Java, etc
- but also with MIT’s Scratch, which looks like a lot of fun for young kids to playfully learn coding
- it’s free for kids (and parents)
- there’s a small group of people starting this in CodorDojo now
For now more info on Facebook: CoderDojoMadagascar
And then I held an ad-hoc presentation of Wikipedia, Kiwix and I found out most people in the room had heard of Wikipedia, but not of the Malagasy version of it, which has an impressive number of 47k articles now and the Malagasy Wiktionary even 3,5M. As it happens most of this work has been done by one person, who’s living in Paris: Jagwar.
Ready for space
Meanwhile I found out that the seven 20 year olds are actually planning to send a satellite into space.
Globalizing local Madagascar business
Drongo is globalizing local Madagascar business by offering translation and additional services in French, English and Malagasy.
Update: There’s a now a Wikipedia page (in French) about Habaka, created by one of the participants of the course.
