Why the African Developers Conference Was a Total Waste of Time?

8 min readOct 19, 2019

The experience from a different angle. Read till the end!

No It wasn’t, wink wink. A typical, usual typo problem !!

AfriDevCon was a spectacular event with a great collection of speakers from probably every sector in tech, business, and entrepreneurship; from all around Africa and some parts of the world.

Having developers from around Africa, Asia, and Europe created this whole diversity and convergence. Being the only middle-eastern attendee didn’t make a difference, which I wish we, as Arab Countries, should have. Maybe we do, but I didn’t notice so far!

So, let us dive into what I have been doing for the past two days at the African Developers Conference.

Hold tight!

The African Developers Conference is organized by Gebeya in collaboration with the Ethiopians In tech (EiT) and the Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MinT).

The two-day multitrack convention will be the first of its kind covering topics dominating the digital industry all across the world. Its main objective is to bring together software engineers, entrepreneurs, tech professionals, hubs, STEM students, University Faculty and aspiring tech talents to gain vital insights into the future of Africa’s Digital Transformation. Attendees will also be taken through a series of workshops, demos, networking as well as training sessions for the chance to enhance their knowledge, widen their perspectives and enrich their experiences.

Several influential speakers from Africa and around the globe will attend the event to share their experiences as industry leaders with a focus on Mobile, Data Science, Cyber Security, Cloud, API Economy, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), DroneTech, FinTech, Blockchain, Big Data, Enterprise Architecture, AgriTech, Gaming, Virtual reality, and EdTech.

Source: AfriDevCon Website

DAY 1

So the whole event was panel discussions in the morning and workshops in the afternoon.

I started the event with keynote speeches and welcoming remarks. I then took my route to The Dawn of Animation Industry in Africa, where I got to know how do African developers, especially Ethiopian Developers, build attractive, eye-catching animations and its development. Animation can be described as the visual script you throw confetti on your product, which will keep the user in captivated attention throughout the User Experience.

After that, I attended How to become a topnotch competitive developer. The whole session was full of energy and active participation with lots of questionnaires regarding how to be a real big name in the development lifecycle. Persistency, education, teaching, the state of the mind, building a competitive personality, not comparing yourself with others and many more traits and practices an African Developer can do to make sure that he/she becomes a topnotch in not only technology, but also in life.

At the tea break, there were some companies and brands alongside successful projects did present and got people to know more about what they do and how did they reached where they are now. Also, it was a chance for me to understand the whole African Development ecosystem and have a fireside chit-chat with developers, entrepreneurs, business role models, women in tech and more.

The 15 minutes elapsed, and it was the time for my favorite panel discussion, Trends in Cybersecurity. As a cybersecurity advocate, I really wanted this discussion to be fruitful, which didn’t disappoint me. The latest developments and trends in the field were discussed and covered. The poor infrastructure, convincing business people to re-think their security choices in tech and is Africa ready to embrace the changes in Cybersecurity are just a bit of what was witnessed in the panel discussion.

The next session for me was Blockchain talent shortage — Challenges and Solutions. Which not only did I got to know about the blockchain importance in today’s technology development, but also that Africa is in need of developers in such a critical field.

There is no value in working alone. Working with a team always produces better results. We can question each other’s assumption
-Judy Nigure

Workshops, DAY 1

It was time to get your hands dirty and start coding.

I went to UX UI in the real world because I always find myself always struggling to build web apps in specific and projects in general. A good workshop where principles of UX & UI were covered, step by step guidance was mentioned, and a rich list of references was given to the attendees.

Getting started in Game Development was my next stop due to my personal affection for the gaming world. We actually ended up the day building a basic, simple racing game. Surprisingly, the gaming development world was portrayed as being difficult to adapt to due to the physics and animation that is being displayed. Apart from the high standard requirements to install an engine and start developing games, everything went smooth, from coding to seeing the results.

My third workshop was Cyber Security and why developers should care. Judy Ngure, a cybersecurity engineer, showed some basic social engineering tricks and how hackers could use that to really hack you. >12,000 password predictions were shown, which proves how hacking can actually occur. Also, she mentioned SQL injections and how devastating that can be for your database and business in general.

The final workshop was prepared by the Google Developers Group Team in Addis, GDGAddis. A full working voting app from scratch was built using Google technologies, Firebase and Flutter by Melak Wuhbshet and Habib Mohammed . Amazingly, it was also uploaded and hosted on the configured website , so attendees really were engaged not only while building the app, but also to do the voting process and see the changes in real-time. You can too check it out, votely.gdgaddis.com

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together
-African proverb

DAY 2

The second day was better since all the attendees felt comfortable moving around, asking and approaching senior developers and entrepreneurs.

It started with a quick remark and then I had the chance to attend Preparing for the 4th industrial revolution. A very round of applause goes to the panelist who knew where to catch the topic and break it down into chunks of valuable information. Our generation witnessed the 3rd generation which is technology, but now tech has bombarded and is out of control. As of the context of Africa, one panelist saw that it’s better to have a 3.5 stage where we check all the marks before phasing to the 4th industrial revolution.

I was also lucky to be in the Women at the forefront of Technology session where capable Women proved that gender is just a noun-less word when it comes to technology. They showed their ability to build digital solutions that have a real impact on people’s lives within the continent.

Finally was the best of best, Building a FinTech platform. The session was full of energy, fun, information, challenges and future views which enriched ALL the attendees’ minds. I am not sure, but it was %100 concerned around Mobile Payments, which is the main concern in Africa that has not yet been solved in a way that convinces people to truly change to e-wallets.

“Investing in emerging markets where information is scarce and laws are not very clear requires humility and patience. You may need to pick up a hobby you don’t like in order to meet potential investors”
-Effeson Hailemichael

Workshops, DAY 2

For the workshops, it was more technical centered than DAY 1.

Modern web app with React and Redux was my focal attention where it turned out to be a GraphQL intro with some Front-end React coding part.

Then, there was the Let’s Write Code that S.C.R.E.A.M.S workshop where I learned how to architect your code directories and files. Additionally, we build an Angular app from scratch which proved to me, as the previous session did, that Vue is the best JS Framework for its ease and non-complexity.

I then decided to end the event by learning how to Build Clean Code, where most teams, projects, and startups fail. It covered both the non-technical part in the sense of why do developers write bad code, and the technical part of actually seeing some bad practices in writing code.

If we don’t share our stories and shine a light on inequities, things will not change.
-Ellen Pao

I had the chance to meet with some great brands recognized internationally.

For example, I met with Chromia, owned by ChromaWay, which is a new blockchain platform for decentralized applications, conceived in response to the shortcomings of existing platforms and designed to enable a new generation of dapps, DecentralizedApps, to scale beyond what is currently possible.

Amy Waliszewska, Irene Ramón, and Jahan Ghaznavi, who represented the Chromia Team in the event while also having 3 continuous workshops during the 2 days. Amazing people with cheerful personalities with a clear vision to where they want to really go, which is obviously far, far away.

Also, I met with the KaiOS team representative, which is one of the most fascinating operating systems, created for non-smart phones. The OS enables a new mobile ecosystem, KaiOS, to bring smartphone-like functionalities to affordable phones. The OS supports voice control, GPS, WiFi, 3G, 4G, LTE; has whatsapp, Youtube, Facebook, Google maps apps installed.

Last but not least, I met with Kye Anderson, an AI Specialist and the delegate of the Swedish Council. Since GDGAddis and University Industry Linkage and Technology Transfer (UILTT), Addis Ababa University are collaborating to host the AI For Climate Change Competition, I had some inquiries since AI can’t perform without having data, and in which we had some great conversation.

Shout out to Gebeyafor hosting such a great conference and for also inviting us, the GDGAddis team. Also a bigggggg shout out to the Moderator who have been wierdly-but in a good way-energetic, funny and friendly.

I hope I can see you all at the Biggest Festival for Developers, DevFest.

Been a great pleasure and privilege to be part of the event!

Check out the hashtag #AfriDevCon for more content..

Do some cardio to your fingers and hit the clap button till you break it, or till you feel tired. Thanks for reading !

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