Uganda: mobile software alerts users to blackouts

Wednesday, 13 May 2009

Wunderkind: Dennis Senyonjo

Appfrica Labs, a Kampala-based incubator and supporter of technology entrepreneurs, expects to unveil in a few weeks a mobile phone application that will alert users to power outages in the office or home.

OhmSMS is a mobile midlet (a java application framework for mobile devices) developed by Dennis Senyonjo, a 22-year-old computer science student at Makerere University.

The application is aimed at homeowners, small business owners and companies but will be useful to any mobile phone user.

Essentially, a user purchases a mobile phone loaded with the application and a small amount of airtime, which is left continually charging in the home or at the office. Although OhmSMS will work equally well on smartphones, "the real value in this service is purchasing a cheap phone just to leave charging; I can’t imagine anyone buying a Nokia N95, solely to run this app," says Jonathan Gosier, Appfrica's founder and director.

OhmSMS logs when the mobile phone’s charge is interrupted and when it resumes and sends a message to the user allowing him or her to make alternate plans.

Otherwise "you have to either call around to people in your area to see if it [electricity] is back, or you have to spend an hour or two in traffic just for the off-chance that the power might be back when you get there," says Gosier.

The midlet also records trends in power outages so that users can schedule around periods in which electricity is likely to be disrupted.

Senyonjo plans to provide the software open source but intends to sell handsets with the software pre-installed through local distributors.

"It’s pretty easy to reverse engineer something like this so at least if we open source it, we still get the credit for being innovative. We want to make sure we’re always supporting open source," says Gosier.

Another benefit, Gosier claims, of open sourcing OhmSMS is that it may encourage comsumers to learn about using their mobile phones for lower-level functions.

However, the open source model is the logical choice for many reasons.

Local mobile operators are resistant to working with an unknown entrepreneur and even young companies like Appfrica Labs.

Also, many African consumers lack access to credit, which would be the obvious method to purchase such applications, in the way that iPhone users buy software or music from Apple's online store.

For more information or to contribute go to Appfrica's web site