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JESSICA COLACO (KENYA)

Friday August 26 2011

JESSICA COLACO (KENYA)
Jessica Colaco first broke into the mobile applications world when she started work on her university thesis and discovered that there was a severe lack of maps available for the region. After failing to find useable maps of the region that would meet her needs, Colaco developed her own system that allows a mobile phone user to view detailed street maps of Nairobi as well as access her user generated point-of-interest database. The project attracted the attention of Google, who were keen to develop their regional Google Maps system, and who have since incorporated some of her findings in their product. She was instrumental in organising the first-ever Nairobi Facebook Developer Garage in March 2008, an event that served as a forum for students from different universities and professional software developers in Kenya to learn about the Facebook platform. Colaco has used her position to spearhead and manage the research projects within the company even as she continues to court international firms to adopt Kenyan-made solutions – a main mandate of her position at the iHub.

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