AfriGadget Gets a New Look!

We’re proud to announce a brand new design for AfriGadget! The old design was rather old and ugly, so thanks for putting up with it for the last 20 months. Actually, I think the reason that there are so many more RSS subscribers to AfriGadget than daily visitors can be attributed to how it looked… 🙂

AfriGadget Redesigned!

2 New Things:

You’ll notice two buttons just beneath the header. We’re working on a number of items, two of which we’re ready to unveil.

The AfriGadget Grassroots Reporting Project
We’re intent on getting more AfriGadget contributors from all over Africa. Part of that plan is to find potential editors and set them up with a mobile phone with which to take pictures and do interviews. If you know someone that would make a good fit, let me know.

The AfriGadget Store (phase 1)
The first phase of the store is making some AfriGadget gear (t-shirts and mugs) available to everyone (hint: you can customize any design and select any type of shirt/color to put it on). The next step is to create a full-featured store with some of the items that are made by the entrepreneurs shown on AfriGadget. This would include products, as well as plans.

One of the big goals here is to create a service that doesn’t just publish interesting stories about African micro-entrepreneurs, though we do plan on continuing that, but to also explore ways that we can be a conduit back to those very same people. This redesign already has our future plans for dealing with entrepreneurs built into it. Part of that is the future phases of the AfriGadget store, but we’re also looking at ways to partner with others and encourage direct investment into worthy entrepreneurs businesses.

Look for more on that in a future update. Until then, we’re just happy we have some new stuff to show you!

If you find any errors, which I’m sure there will be some, please leave a comment or shoot me an email.

Lastly, a special thanks goes out to Jared for making this site look so good.

Author: Erik Hersman

Erik is the owner of White African, a blog about technology and Africa. He is the co-founder of Zangu, a new web and mobile phone application that he hopes will change communication in Africa. AfriGadget is another web project of his, not that he doesn't have enough of those already...

22 thoughts on “AfriGadget Gets a New Look!”

  1. The site looks wonderful, I can read the list of Categories now (I thought it was me & kept trying my different browsers)! Great idea and plans for the store, I’ll keep checking back and sending folks your way.

  2. Wooo the site is very nice and l hope by the time is now ready for making nice developments and have many folks advertise here and there to make is very enjoyable and interesting
    the love for children is my motto

  3. Erik,
    Looks fabulous.
    Re. Grassroots, I’m referring Mr Tony Odek of http://rabuorselfhelp.tripod.com/ & Mr James Omollo of http://nyakach.groenaanbod.nl/projects.php
    Both have adequate knowledge of the internet.
    Of course I have many others who would benefit with just cell phone/ SMS access.
    Re. Store, I’m referring Michael Njogo of http://www.maasaiproductskenya.multiply.com/ he’s sending us some of his goods right now (we’re marketing via eBay for Charity) but he can also supply you too.
    Thanks for the opportunity.

  4. The new design is modern and crisp, but I didn’t particularly dislike the old one. I think your observation that you have many more RSS subscribers than daily visitors is more likely based on the comparative infrequency of new posts. I know I subscribed to the feed soon after discovering Afrigadget because it was often only after many repeat visits to the site that I would read about a new gadet. This isn’t a negative in any way–now the RSS feed tells me when you have a new post up and I invariably go read it.

  5. Great site, I linked to it on my blog. I’ll be looking for cool gadgets in West Africa to tell you about. This is a fantastic way to share knowledge, thanks for all the time you put into it!

  6. @Donflan – agreed, that’s probably the real reason why most people subscribe to the feed. We actually try to make sure we don’t put up to many stories to quickly, as we believe (who knows if we’re right) that people don’t want to be slammed by daily news from us. A good story every now and then, that’s what people want from AfriGadget.

    @Nora – send me an email anytime with a good story of ingenuity from West Africa, we’re covered in East Africa, so would love to get more from other parts of the continent.

    @Cat Laine – hah! I couldn’t stand it either.

  7. Great new look and the grassroots project is an excellent idea to highlight the many alternative technologies being developed across the continent.

  8. Pingback: Black Looks

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *