Maneno, the open blogging platform for Africa, has launched its Open Theme Development System.

To get folks thinking how they can expand Maneno themes, they've announced a theme contest with a cash prize of $250 USD for the winner.

It's quite simple to enter. Just download the development kit, work on your design, test it on The Sandbox, and once ready, mark it a "public".

But get to work now, the contest closes on May 1.

Can we say its about time that Apple finally realized Kenyans want iPhone apps too?

The iPhone went on sale in Kenya in December 2008, via Orange but over a year later, February 2010, Apple added Kenya to the App Store.

iPhone users in Botswana, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, and Uganda can also change their lives with iPhone apps.

Hat tip to TechMasai

When people talk of the many languages of Africa, and need for localized content, they're often thinking about English, French, Kiswalhili, or Xhosa.

But in the technology space we have our own languages in addition to these. We have languages of hardware and networking, from servers, to routers, to nodes and bridges, to the languages of code, like PHP, Java, and C++.

Thanks to Jonathan Gosier, we now know the popularity of each programming language in Africa with this handy chart:

Now why would it matter to a business that Java is way more popular than J2ME? There is business opportunity in this variability. If you are a big company, you should try to dominate the Java and PHP market, but if your small, walk away from the popular languages. You'll not beat the big players at their own game.

Yet a new entrant who is willing to gamble on Python or Ruby can make a name for themselves before the big players know what happened. Also, with unique skills, you can price your services at a premium to others, making your company much more profitable. See Apple as a great example.

Just be sure that if you choose one language to focus on, you keep some skills in several. This will allow you to translate between them as needed, matching the right software language to the job.

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Nokia has launched a global developer competition that challenges developers to create mobile phone applications and services worthy of a $1 million investment.

The Calling All Innovators 2010 Contest is focused on the following four categories: Eco/Being Green, Entertainment, Productivity, Life Improvement.

Also (and I can't tell if this is part of or in addition to the $1 million investment above), Nokia is launching a Growth Economy Venture Challenge with a $1 million investment grand prize.

Both contests are looking for submissions that:

• could truly change the way people use Nokia mobile devices.
• demonstrates how mobility improves the lives of millions of people in emerging markets worldwide.
• recognizes a good business opportunity can also contribute to "doing good" – and making a dramatic difference in the lives of people in developing nations.

So if you are a mobile phone applications developer, what are you waiting for? Check out the contest site today!

So often Africa is a consumer of software applications written by outsiders that its great to hear of a home-gown app that is actually better than its competition.

StartUp Africa writes about Personera which can create personalized print calendars using Facebook content. Ismail says this service is better than its rivals as well.

With Facebook driving ICT adoption in Africa, Personera should have a lucrative business model based on local buyers.

Congrats to Personera & may we have more examples of local talent!

Trying to watch a YouTube video on the low-bandwidth connections common in Africa is an experience in frustration. Download speeds are so slow that you often wait more than a minute for every minute of video. A 5 minute YouTube video can take 10 or 15 minutes to download. And if you're on Nigerian Internet - forget about it.

For everyone who starts a YouTube video download and then takes a nap, we now have a low-bandwidth viewer: YouTube Feather

The "Feather" project is intended to serve YouTube video watch pages with the lowest latency possible. It achieves this by severely limiting the features available to the viewer and making use of advanced web techniques for reducing the total amount of bytes downloaded by the browser. It is a work in progress and may not work for all videos.

But Feather has another advantage - its great for low-power computers too. Because of its lower processor needs, it runs better on Inveneo Certified Solutions than regular YouTube. And let's be honest, when do you use the advanced YouTube features that Feather strips out?

You can sign up for the YouTube Feather Beta here and once you do test it with ICTworks YouTube Channel:

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End users of computers in the developing world often want to engage in activities that are beyond the stock software that comes with popular operating systems, especially Windows XP. But they usually lack the knowledge or bandwidth to find and download the right applications.

To empower these users, and reduce implementation time and costs, Inveneo has developed a Community Center Software Collection - more than 30 applications, including iTunes, Skype, QuickTime, RealPlayer, Flash, Shockwave, and solutions for typing tutors, editing photographs, audio files, and movies - that come pre-installed on request for XP-based hardware platforms.

This bundle of software and OS modifications is designed for a shared computing environment where there is little to no technical support, and has proven to be very useful for computers running Windows XP Home in rural and remote areas. Its available in English or French, however the operating system must be in the same language.

While this specific Community Center Software Collection is unique to Inveneo, its our hope that the underlying idea - appropriate, pre-installed software applications that make computers instantly useful to end users - becomes common in the developing world.

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Here's a great opportunity from Nokia for for African mobile and web application developers to create best-in-class applications. Nokia is offering $125,000 and Ovi Store membership for applications relevant to Africa that will run on Nokia devices:

We're looking for applications that are as uniquely African as bunny chow and biltong are and ones which will add value to the lives of the Africans who use it.

And while this contest runs through November 15th, you can already celebrate African developers on the Apple iPhone.

iWarrior on iPhone

The cross-Afrian team of Kenyan Wesley Kirinya and Ghanaian Eyram Tawia of Leti Games have developed iWarrior (iTunes link, game review) for the iPhone. Here's what Erik Hersman has to say about it:

It’s a great first-effort from the team, and I believe it’s the first game created by a team in Africa. This itself is a much more difficult task than what many might expect. Just to get an iTunes account and a way to be be paid for your application is a challenge due to Apple’s inbuilt prejudice against Africa.

Let's hope that Nokia's contest shows an openness towards African developers that is seemingly lacking in Cupertino.

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Summary

We are always looking for the latest in low-powered devices and one that caught our eye recently was a touchscreen from Asus, the EeeTop.

In a recent Economist Article, I heard for the first time about gOS, an operating system claiming to be "the most beautiful and easiest to use Linux operating system on the market."

The author experienced gOS during volunteer work he did refurbishing computers for kids.  He praised gOS for its child-friendliness, its clean interface, and it's blazing fast 9 second startup time.  He even says he "has kept a copy of this clever Linux distribution (gOS 3.1 Gadgets is the latest version) on one of his office machines to remind him of what, with luck, the future could look like."

Strong praise, and the screenshots look pretty...has anyone spent much time with gOS?  I'm curious to hear whether others agree or disagree with this assessment.