Celebrate Senegalese Apps! Announcing the Senegal Selection for the African Content Award and the World Summit Awards Mobile 2014/2015

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World Summit Awards Mobile (WSA-mobile) is a bi-annual global competition. Among the partners are the Abu Dhabi System & Information Center, Internet Society (ISOC), Mobile Monday, UNESCO, UNDP and UNIDO. Its goal is to “to select and promote the world’s best in mobile content and innovative applications.” It focuses on local content and apps targeting the Millennium Development Goals. Participants submit their apps by contacting their country’s national expert and win a trip to attend WSA-mobile Congress in Abu Dhabi in 2015. In addition to the main competition, for the first time, WSA-mobile is also hosting the African Content Awards in Morocco in October 2014 to “promote and recognize creativity in the region and to encourage collaboration among African countries.”

Christelle Scharff, one of the organizers of MobileSenegal Hub, was nominated as the WSA expert for Senegal. Involved in the mobile ecosystem in Senegal since 2008, “I’m honored to be following in Alex Corenthin’s footsteps and have the opportunity to evaluate the best mobile apps from Senegalese developers,” she said.

Actors of the ecosystem were contacted through the Mobile Monday Dakar and Mobile Innovations Dakar Meetup groups (around 800 people). The tech communities were asked to publicize the contest. 23 submissions were received. The apps were of particularly good quality and most of them were submitted by established companies, NGO and professionals. Local content is crucial in apps targeting Senegal, the diaspora and beyond and we got apps with content related to local news, music, business  and health. The quality of the apps shows that Senegal is becoming a vibrant region in mobile development.

Each submission was thoroughly reviewed. Detailed feedback was provided to each app as this was important to encourage participants to improve and continue to build on their work. MobileSenegal are Mobile Monday Dakar are planning an event to showcase some of the submitted apps in the summer.

After careful consideration, the following apps were selected to represent Senegal for WSA-mobile. Please join us in congratulating them for their success and wish them the best of luck in the global and African Content Award competitions! Don’t forget to download and rate the apps!

Note: WSA-mobile and MobileSenegal Hub are not responsible for copyright violation in any application. All participants signed a waiver that they own the rights to all content and material contained in the applications.

Hanging out with the Asha 501 in Lagos

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By Dr. Christelle Scharff

In late June, Amadou and Imhotep, two Senegalese developers of SenMobile, attended a 2-day training bootcamp sponsored by Nokia on developing apps for the new Asha 501 in Lagos, Nigeria. Asha 501 phones can be programmed using Java ME and some specific web development technology. The Java ME community of Senegal is small. Companies and startups are generally focusing on Android. Developers, with the push of Google and Microsoft, are often developing for Android and Windows Phones. MobileSenegal has been pushing mobile app development in Senegal since 2008 with an emphasis on Java ME, Android native and jQuery Mobile for multi-platform development.

This blog post focuses on the experience of Amadou and Imhotep in the bootcamp.

The bootcamp took place at the Co-creation Hub Nigeria in Lagos. The Co-creation Hub is “Nigeria’s first open living lab and pre-incubation space designed to be a multi-functional, multi-purpose space where work to catalyze creative social tech ventures take place”. Our two developers had the pleasure to take part in the large community of the Co-creation Hub. They were impressed by the place, especially by the rooftop that has a great view of Lagos! They saw many differences between the community of developers in Lagos and the one in Senegal. Please note that Lagos is a city of 8 million inhabitants and Senegal has only around 13 million people. To just cite an example, most of the developers in Senegal do not have a credit card and they have real financial difficulties to buy mobile phones to test their apps, relying often on more fortunate friends or on emulators. In Nigeria, developers have credit cards and they can set up an account to buy apps in an app store. This is very important for developers. You need to eat the dog food as they say!

What’s up with the Asha 501?

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The 501, which is being rolled out for sale worldwide, is a low-priced smartphone (less than $100 US) for emerging markets and Nokia promised a fast, responsive performance and long battery life (one of their sales slogan: “Super smart pocket power”). Software-wise, it features a radically different OS from other Asha and Series 40 devices. It has the feel of a latest generation smartphone! Nokia provides a new SDK with new guidelines for design and user interfaces on their developer site.

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One of the key features on the 501 is the lack of physical keys on the phone’s main area. There is only one button there and it is reserved for the back function. In designing the UI, Nokia dictates specifically in not using an onscreen back or exit button, as this will be done exclusively with the physical back key. This behavior is drastically different from previous Asha and Series 40 devices and it will take some effort porting apps developed for the older OS and devices to this new platform! Asha 501 offers an interface with a headbar, a content area, a toolbar, and option menu on the top of a notification bar and a notification panel. More on the UI can be found here.

The size of the JAR app installation file on the 501 is limited to 5 MB or less. This was decided to reduce the failure rate of user downloads and app installation. Because of this, it is important to optimize everything, e.g. sound, images. More work for the developers!

Design sessions

The bootcamp was organized around talks and personal design review sessions with UX/UI experts. The talks included deep dives into the design of apps for the Asha 501, how to port Series 40 apps to the Asha 501, and monetization. The main lesson of the talks is that design is crucial in app development. Sounds like common sense, but we always forget this when we are working. It is important to think carefully and make some key decisions about the app before developing anything! Knowing the specificities / standards of the platform is also required: just look at how any app that is available on Android and Windows Phone and you can see the difference right away. It was also pointed out that it is important to take some distance and ask for feedback from others on a design or app. An external eye is always welcome!

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Our two developers had the opportunities to participate in one-to-one app reviews with Jan Krebber, UX Specialist, Nokia Developper Experience. The Nokia expert reviewed CoiffeurCompta, an app for barbers to manage their accounting (BarberMoneyBox, the English version of this app, will be available soon), and the design of NawetaanLive, an app for the Nawetaans soccer games. Getting selected for these sessions was not easy due to their popularity amongst participants. However a good sport app is necessary on the Nokia Store! These sessions were extremely valuable because they provided detailed insight on building a great Asha 501 app that takes advantage of the platform’s unique features. We will use what we have learned to port these Series 40 apps to the Asha very soon.

Our two developers thank Nokia for their invitation to the bootcamp. It was their first time in an Anglophone country and visit such a crowded city. Dakar does not compare! They could understand the importance of speaking English. Google Translate is nice on a computer but in real life situation it is important to be able to communicate with people and English is a must! They said that they often overlook design and placed more importance on implementing features, but they will take what they learned and use it in all of their future applications.

Note: Dr. Christelle Scharff, one of the organizers of MobileSenegal, is the founder of SenMobile.

Training Professional Mobile Developers in Senegal

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by Dr. Christelle Scharff

On April 26 – May 3, MobileSenegal and the Mobile4Senegal association hosted DEM (“Developpeur et Entrepreneur Mobile” / “Mobile Developer and Entrepreneur”), a 5-day training for 20 professional developers. The name “DEM” was chosen because it means “going” in Wolof and we are striving to build a real mobile ecosystem in Senegal.

The training took place at the West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar. The facilitators were Christelle Scharff and Thomas Sarlandie, who is the co-founder and former CTO of Backelite, a leading digital agency based in France.

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In the last 5 years, MobileSenegal has trained more than 350 students and developers in mobile app development in Senegal. These training were focused on mobile technologies (Java ME, jQuery Mobile, Android, etc.) or project-based teaching.

DEM, on the other hand, targeted professional developers who are already established in digital and service companies or independent developers who have a personal project. 20 professional developers were selected out of a pool of more than 100 candidates based on their background, motivations, and personal projects.

The goal of DEM was to introduce participants to the latest tools and approaches of the software and mobile industry to develop quality and professional apps. We created a specific syllabus for this training that was aligned with the needs we identified in Senegal and the current practices of the industry.

The training covered the following topics:
• Provide an overview of the mobile landscape, its potentials and constraints;
• Introduce jQuery Mobile library for mobile web development;
• Discuss and use the latest leading software development approaches (such as Agile Methodologies) to improve software quality;
• Introduce the use of collaborative tools such as Git to increase productivity; and
• Promote the use of good UI, UX and quality assurance practices to produce professional apps.

The material is available under Creative Commons Licenses in GitHub at https://github.com/mobile-senegal/dem-training.

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The training was highly interactive and integrated lots of hands-on exercises. For example, participants played the XP Planning Game to understand the concepts of iteration, user story and planning in Agile Methodologies. They proposed design options for an app on transportation, did interactive exercises in Git, and submitted bug reports for a small app in GitHub.

Overall, the workshop was a great success. From their comments in the post-workshop survey, most of the participants were very satisfied. They enjoyed the high level of interaction between the instructors and the participants and found hands-on exercises practical. They liked that instructors brought their insight and practical experience in the classroom. They said that they will begin adapting what they have learned, especially jQuery Mobile, GitHub, UI/UX design, and Agile, in their everyday job. The practice of creating user stories for requirements engineering and the use of remote access devices for testing were “revelations.” However, some people wanted the training to have more coverage on how to prepare the app for the local market and how to design for specific platforms, i.e. iOS and Android. Some people proposed to have a mini-project to practice outside of the classroom.

We hope to host more workshops for students and professional developers in the future. Please follow us on our Facebook page or @mobilesenegal for the most up-to-date news about our activities and the latest trends and info on mobile technology!

Big thank you to Thomas, WARC and the individuals and companies who made a donation to Mobile4Senegal!