Habesha in Tech

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!

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Over the weekend I had the opportunity to have a chat with Bekure Tamirat about his Tech Journey on Clubhouse. We spent about 2 hours talking about his career and answering questions from audience.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to chat with Addis Alemayehou about Tech Investing. Bekure Tamirat and I were co-moderating the Habesha in Tech room. Addis shared us his starting point where he started investing in working at a hotel in Mississauga and then become a real estate investor in Toronto. His story and journey is very inspiring to many of us. 

He moved to Ethiopia to contribute to the growing economy. Addis have been doing impressive work on expanding his investment portfolios: Fin-tech, telecom, communications, manufacturing, logistics, tech and more. He supports many young start up owners by guiding and sporting in ways he can.

Addis also believes that Ethiopia has a huge potential in almost all of the sectors but Logistics is the biggest that will be hit by the disruptions. He also mentioned that the billing system still needs huge change as the data shows that 60% of people walking in the streets of Addis Ababa pays some kind of bills, this has a huge space for disruptors. 

The new telecom licence awarded to Safaricom PLC by Ethiopian Communications Authority is bringing new opportunities to the tech start ups which is driven by the competition with existing telecom provider ethio telecom, the sole telecom provider in Ethiopia. Addis also discussed on the newly launched telebirr that is providing mobile money solution and he believes telebirr will be a game changer for new and existing businesses.

Ethiopian start-up ecosystem is growing very fast and newcomers are joining in every sectors. Addis has advice to those who are interested in Tech or any other sectors in Ethiopia. Here are key take aways:

It was an honour to host Addis Alemayehou on Habesha in Tech club. Thank you Addis for spending your time with us. I also would like to thank Bekure Tamirat for being a great co-moderator.

Bekure is my next guest on July 3rd at 1:30 P.M. EDT, please join us then.

#thankyou #tech #startup #opportunities #community #innovation #investing #logistics #investment #digitaleconomy #startupecosystem Kazana Group Gebeya Inc. 251 Communications & Marketing PLC

Habesha in Tech club is a @Clubhouse club where we discuss with Successful Habesha Tech Professionals on their career journey.

This sessions occur every Saturday @1:30PM Eastern Standard Time. Stay tuned for more exiting episodes.