Habesha in Tech

Last week I had the opportunity to chat with Kal Kassa. Kal shared us his experience before he entered into the crypto world. He has been in the crypto world for a while and he is a strong advocate for the adoption of Bitcoin in a global scale. He invested in making the Bitcoin buz get into the ordinary Ethiopian who may not have access to the documents, internet and the language. He leading the effort to write an eBook so that Ethiopians can read in their own language like Amharic, Afan Oromo & others. He is also working on hosting BITCOIN AFRICA CONFERENCE 2022 that would be the first of it's kind and will be huge influence on the adoption of Bitcoin in Ethiopia. His website - Bitcoinbirr is an educational site for everything Bitcoin and Birr. In addition, there is also a resource for our Eritreans -BitcoinNakfa. Please follow their work and see if their advocacy can bring the change to the bitcoin space in Ethiopia & Eritrea. 

I would like to thank Kal for joining us to share his story and stayed longer to answer our audience's questions. Thanks everyone for showing up and joined us live. 

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Our guest on Habesha in Tech club was Eyosias Y. Imana (PhD) who is currently working as Staff Modem Systems Engineer at Qualicom. He is born and raised in Ethiopia. He went to Bahir Dar University to study Electrical Engineering. He also attended his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology which focused on signal processing and wireless communications. His aspiration to learn and specialize in wireless communications led him to go for his PhD at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University which focused on development and implementation of flexible digital radio technologies.

He holds patents for practical innovations he made. We discussed about wireless communication technologies that impacted what we utilize today such as 2G, 3G, 5G and other technologies. He has expertise on Wireless systems, RF systems, communication theory, DSP implementations, RF-based sensors including ultra-short-range radars. 

I would like to thank Eyosias for his willingness to join me on this chat and sharing us his journey. I also would like to thank the audience who came to listen our conversation and came to stage to ask their questions. Special thanks to Eyosias family & friends who were there to listen and support Eyosias.

Listen to this Podcast to get the full conversation.

On October 2nd, I had an opportunity to chat with Rahel Boon-Dejene, the CEO of R&D Group. She is a person who is proud of her humble beginning and she shared us how she got into Tech. Her path to where she is now isn't an easy one but she accomplished it through persistence and pushing the limits of her ability and breaking barriers. She wrote 68 letters to multiple companies company that rejected her. Later she became Partner with ORTECH and she helped set up a state of the art analysis center in Ethiopia. That led to the establishment of R&D Group.

Please listen to our conversation to learn her story.

On our previous Clubhouse session we had a wonderful career talk on Data Science and Analytics career paths. The panelist (Mahlet Konjit-Solomon, Zeradam Fantaye, Bereket Kindo, Etana Disasa & Abel Gebresilassie) are currently working in the Data Science and Analytics fields. They provided their guidance and tips on how to be successful in entering in this career paths.

This Episode is Part 2 of the sessions and in this episode the panelist answered questions about Data Analytics.

Please listen to Part 1 & Part 3 - of the session to get the full picture.

On our previous Clubhouse session we had a wonderful career talk on Data Science and Analytics career paths. The panelist (Mahlet Konjit-Solomon, Zeradam Fantaye, Bereket Kindo, Etana Disasa & Abel Gebresilassie) are currently working in the Data Science and Analytics fields. They provided their guidance and tips on how to be successful in entering in this career paths.

This Episode is Part 1 of the sessions and in this episode the panelist answered questions about What is Data?, What is common in Data Science & Analytics?, What is Data Science? 

Please listen to Part 2 - Data Analytics & Part 3 - Q/A to get the full picture.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Yodit Stanton the Founder & CEO of OpenSensors. Yodit has shared us her tech journey and what paths she took to become where she is now. She believes that programming is an art and she loves learning new skills and upgrading herself. She is a Software and Data engineer working to helping people understand their physical space. OpenSensors aggregates data from a variety of sensors for the next generation of smart Building Management Systems.

Thank you for listening. Please share this with your network.

We had a successful career talk on Cloud Computing on August 14th with two panelists:

- Fukare Yimtatu

- Nati Abebe

They shared us their cloud career journey and provided guidance to new joiners and anyone interested in joining cloud computing career. They also shared their insights to some of the questions from our audience.

If you missed the live conversation, listen to the podcast on our website (habeshaintech.com) or wherever you get your podcast.

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On August 7th, I had the opportunity to speak with Selam Ayele Kebede to learn from her Tech Journey on Habesha in Tech club on Clubhouse.

Selam is a brilliant woman who have an exemplary life and tech journey. Selam & I went to Bahir Dar University and completed our degree same year, 2010. Selam studied Electrical Engineering and she was also active in the University's student clubs.

Her Tech Journey is an interesting one because it was impacted by the rapid tech world changes. The Finish company, Nokia, that had the largest market share in the mobile market was hit by the growing IOS & Android. This change impacted all students at Aalto University and drove everyone including Selam to look for an entrepreneurship route and think outside the predefined paths.

Selam was able to adjust to this change and bring herself to the newly growing e-commerce and digital market in East Africa and for that she joined an Ethiopian startups like soleRebels, Gro Intelligence, Seedstars, & GrowthAfrica.

Now Selam Ayele Kebede is the Director of Antler in Kenya. Antler is a global early-stage venture capital firm that invests in the tech startups.

Thank you Selam Ayele Kebede for sharing your tech journey with us.

Have a listen!

I had the opportunity to speak to Mahlet Konjit-Solomon, MSIT-HIT on Saturday July 31, 2021 about her Tech Journey. Mahlet has an amazing Tech career path which started from Ethiopia and now she is Chief of Public Reporting and Data Release at Maryland Health Care Commission in the US.

She studied Electrical Engineering at Bahir Dar University and worked in different companies in Ethiopia and moved to the US. Mahlet is open to learn 'the new' and explore opportunities whenever she encounters them.

We discussed about her #healthcare #career and how it ties to tech - through Data. She is also Founder of EthiopianHealthData, a side project to help her home country Ethiopia by developing a website and feeding #Covid19 daily cases #data and making it available to the public use. She is interested in supporting her community and collaborate on multiple other project mainly African & Ethiopian Digital Data.

Thank you Mahi for sharing your journey with us.

If you missed the conversation or would like to listen to it again, you can find the recording in our podcast (Apple, Google, Spotify and more).

On July 24th,  I had the chance to speak with Markos Lemma of iceaddis about his Tech Journey on Habesha in Tech, a Clubhouse club. 

Markos has an amazing tech career that started with his first start up that was aimed at working with travel agencies which got him paid ETB 500. He worked hard to build his career. He have spent a part of his career working at One Laptop Per Child and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (aka GIZ). 

He is well known for cofounding a startup, iceaddis – Ethiopia's first innovation hub & tech startups incubator. The team celebrated a 10th year anniversary of their #startup. iceaddis have helped more than 160 startups. iceaddis isn't going to be limited to Addis Abeba rather planning to expand to other cities in Ethiopia, icehawasa is next, and Germany and many more to come. 

Markos have worked with multiple other initiatives that are working towards education, clean water and other important project to support the communities in Ethiopia.

I have learnt so much from talking to Markos as he was very open to share his past not only the success but also the failures. I believe you will learn from our conversation.

Have a listen!

Join the Club: https://ios.clubhouse.com/club/habesha-in-tech