This week saw Kenyan tech pioneer, Dorcas Muthoni, founder of Open World and creator of Open Business, sharing her thoughts on doing business in Kenya and the general lack of women in the tech sector in Africa as a whole, during a fascinating podcast interview with the Financial Times. Dorcas talked about the exciting new business opportunities in Silicon Savannah and also about how to avoid corruption in a country which has its challenges in the way that business has traditionally been done.
Listen to the interview with Dorcas Muthoni on FT World Tech Founders.
About Dorcas Muthoni
Dorcas Muthoni is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Open Business. Open Business is a company providing support to help small businesses to thrive and grow by providing access to specialist tools and platforms harnessing the power of mobile technology. Open Business provides small businesses with the tools to manage their payroll and HR function, their inventory and point of sale activity, their Customer Relationship Management, and bookkeeping all via mobile.
Dorcas built her reputation as a leading tech player when she founded Openworld Ltd, a specialist computer software company she established in Kenya when she was just 24 years old. Openworld is a leading e-Government and business software services firm involved in the delivery of some of the most widely used Web and Cloud applications in Africa, such as ARIS, an African Union reporting application used by all 54 member states; and the Performance Management System for the Government of Kenya, automating performance contracting in the public sector.
Dorcas is passionate about using technology to positively transform African society through the lives of its ordinary people, businesses and governments and was a co-founder of the regional organization LinuxChix Africa. She also served as a Director at Ushahidi; and was a Member of the council of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa - FOSSFA. Through her day to day work as an entrepreneur and Computer Scientist, Dorcas seeks to see technology positively transforming the lives of the African society, governments and enterprises. In 2012 Dorcas is inducted by the Internet Society into the Internet Hall of Fame.
Images below are of Dorcas Muthoni pitching her new OpenBusiness App at Lionesses of Africa's 'Start-up Night! Africa' event in Berlin on 20 March 2018.
