The list released by world renowned top tech website mashable.com also listed Ghana’s award-winning digital and mobile advertising startup AdsBrook at number three and the internationally recognized web messaging platform Dropifi at number 16.
Saya Mobile is a mobile chat app which works across iOS, Android, Blackberry and Java platforms. Like Dropifi, Saya is one of many startups which emerged from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) based in Accra Ghana.
Saya has been touted as Africa’s answer to Whatsapp, because even though it borrowed from SMS technology, it is, as CEO of the company Robert Nii Lante Lamptey put it “1,000 times cheaper than SMS”.
It allows users to stay in touch with their phone contacts by sending unlimited messages and images at a fraction o the cost of one SMS and the uniqueness of Saya is that it even works on lower end feature phones, while Whatsapp works only on Smartphones.
Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer of Saya, Badu Boahen Amankwah would add that Saya also allows user to chat with friends on Facebook and also has a feature called ‘Street Chat’ which enable users to join a location-based chat with other users around one’s location.
Saya was founded in October 2011 and was officially launched in March 2012 in Accra, Ghana.
Second on the list was Kenya’s Ushahidi (testimony), was originally a website that maps reports of violence around the 2008 Kenyan election, but has since evolved to become a tech non-profit that specializes in developing free open-source software for data collection, visualization and interactive mapping.
The rest in the order or priority from 4th to the 20th position are Gloo.ng, an online grocery business from Nigeria; Mara Online from Uganda which is touted to be Africa’s answer to Skype; Aim Group, a digital agency from Tanzania which harnesses social media to assist companies like Vodacom, Tigo, Castle, and Ndovu extend their reach and messaging.
PriceCheck, the largest price comparison site from South Africa sits at number seven, while Nigeria’s Iroko Partners, the world’s largest distributor of African entertainment comes in 8th with more than six million users from 178 countries; and South Africa’s biNu, a mobile app which boost internet speed is number nine. BiNu users can also interact with each other via news feeds, social profiles and messaging.
Nigeria’s leading online megastores, Konga is number 10, while South Africa’s Bozza is number 11; Bozza is a mobile social networking startup which helps companies in a township collaborate and prosper. Njorku from Cameroon is a job search engine and it stands at number 12.
Egypt’s Fawry, a payment service which can be used in banks, post offices and at several retail shops in the country, came in 13th, and Nigeria came in again at the 14th position with Spinlet, which is a mobile music download platform. Number 15 is South Africa’s Mxit, which house 50 million users doing free online messages, enjoying multiplayer games, buying music, exchanging goods and even trading on the stock market.
Ghana’s Dropifi, which came in at number 16 helps users, particularly corporate organizations to get more from their ‘contact us’ page. Dropifi users can see data in relation to industry metrics, access demographic and social media profiles of message senders and analyze the real sentiment behind the messages they receive. This helps companies to meet prospective and existing customers at the point of their need.
ForgetMeNot Africa from Zimbabwe is number 17; it has an optimizer technology that converts Facebook "actions," emails and chat messages into SMS formats, without connecting to the Internet, and Nigeria’s Jumia is number 18; it is Africa’s biggest online shopping mall, with operations in Egypt, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Kenya as an "African Amazon."
South Africa’s moWoza and Afroes are numbers 19 and 20 respectively. moWoza is a commerce service that focuses on mobile as a delivery platform, allowing customers to "shop wherever they are, at any time" and register with a licensed agent. When the transaction is complete, both the customer and beneficiary are informed by SMS, which also indicates where the parcel can be collected.
Afroes, which has operations in Kenya too, produces applications and content for young people, which contain educational and social messages. It is in development with a series of mobile games and SMS reporting platforms that will form the interactive component of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, "Champion for Children campaign.
Meanwhile, last year, Ghana’s SMSGH also made the top 20 tech startups cut, but SMSGH has since grown beyond boundaries and is now hardly a startup.
Source: Adom Business
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