Uber is set to launch its new ‘Pool Chance’ service in Kenya, enabling riders heading in the same direction to share the cost on their journey. Riders have a chance of getting discounted rides if the driver picks up other passengers; otherwise, they’ll have to pay the regular fees they’d pay for an individual ride. UberPool negotiates a specific carpool rate for the rider regardless of who else gets into the vehicle. The Pool Chance trip option is available on the budget service, Chap Chap in Nairobi; in the populous Nigerian city of Lagos
Google has just launched TaskMate, a crowdsourcing app that lets people use smartphones to do tasks and get paid, in Kenya after a year-long experiment in the East African country. This launch, however, is just the beta version. TaskMate joins a growing list of apps and services launched by Google that offer people local job opportunities such as taking a photo of a nearby restaurant, answering survey questions, or helping translate sentences from English to your local language. It also includes a rewards app that lets people get paid for filling out local services
Netflix Inc has launched a free mobile plan in Kenya as part of its strategy to spark growth in the East African nation, home to over 20 million internet users. The plan will be rolled out to all users in the country; it will be available on Android mobile phones and will not have any ads. Some shows will not be included in the free plan, and they will be marked with a lock icon. Clicking on one of those titles will encourage the user to sign up for a
It’s fair to say Kenya’s predominantly informal sector is currently under shock, due to the impact of the ‘rona’ and the measures and mitigations that have followed: quarantines, social distancing rules, curfews, restrictions and possibly lockdowns. M-Pesa inextricable link with Kenya’s biashara economy [small trader economy] fully exposes it to this shock. Newly appointed CEO Peter Ndegwa of Safaricom and M-Pesa admitted to Reuters , that the mobile payments darling of Africa and East Africa is fully dependent on the economy of Kenya. It has only been a month of subdued biashara,
As a naturally curious and confident person, Linda Kamau is no stranger to trailblazing. There were four paths in her all-girls school, and computer science was usually the path least chosen. But for Linda, computers were a passion, and she happily chose computer science to the surprise of her peers. She also had a natural interest in making things better, a talent encouraged by her older brother with whom she would spend time around the house repairing everything from radios to the roof. At many African universities, it is extremely
