When the graduation ceremony was over, he thought his dreams had finally come true and that his sixteen years of hard labour in school would eventually translate into a rewarding office job.
That’s what happened to Tony Oloo after he completed his Bachelor’s degree of Business Information Management, before reality finally dawned on him. Job interviews were hard to come by and the frequent stipends he used to receive from his parents and the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) were no more.
Eventually he settled for an internship at a local company where he was required to work with no pay. He didn’t have any work experience and he was ready to do anything to at least build his portfolio.
As he did the common tasks which included dusting computers and solving common Microsoft office tasks, he could not help but wonder how his dream after-school life was turning out like. Like most people of his age, the temptation to engage in sports gambling kicked in – but he could barely sustain the habit since he did not have the cash to spend in the first place. Besides, he lost most of his bets and that made an already bad situation worse.
This went on until one evening he stumbled upon a video on YouTube. There was nothing so special about this video only that it talked about something that sounded interesting to him. “The video explained about the possibility of making a living out of mobile apps and given that I had some training in Business Information Management I felt the urge to explore the idea further” says Oloo.
A constant reminder by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) to repay his student loan was not helping at all. “I felt like I was between a rock and a hard place. I had to do something about it” adds the young man who went ahead to quit his internship to pursue this newly found idea.
His first app was a big flop – it was an emoji app whereby people could share emoji’s with Kenyan celebrities in the background to express their feelings. But it seemed the Kenyan online community wasn’t really ready for that idea. A brief chat with his friends on how it would be good if someone could find a reliable source of information about the cultural norms of their community bore his next idea. That’s when he came up with the cultural apps of Kenyan tribes
The budding developer went ahead to create apps with tidbits of various cultures and norms of seven Kenyan tribes namely: Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo, Kamba, Luhya, Kisii and Mijikenda. This time, the apps were an instant success with some clocking more than 500 downloads in a matter of months.
“My Google stats show that I have had about 2,500 downloads over the last six months. I normally sell some of my apps at Ksh50 while others are available for free though I have monetized them through Google Ads” remarks Mr. Oloo who has set his eyes on hitting 500 downloads per week.
He has lately added two more apps to his collection. One of them is called the Safaricom Bot a sort of virtual customer care tool that uses artificial intelligence to respond to basic queries about Safaricom (a local Telco). The other one is called Mugabe Quotes and it mainly generates hilarious quotes from the renowned African statesman.
Mugabe Quotes has garnered over 1,000 downloads since he uploaded it on Google Playstore a few weeks ago. Several corporate institutions have since approached him and he now spends most of his time creating tech-solutions for them.
“I am grateful to Kuza Biashara for giving us a platform to learn and express ourselves. I would like to encourage the youth to take full advantage of the benefits that come with the IT industry and not to rely so much on formal employment. Self-employment is the way to go.” He concludes.
Bio
Tony Oloo is an upcoming tech developer who has set his eyes on promoting access to information through the use of Mobile technology across Kenya. You can sample out some of his apps on his Google Playstore account. He can be reached on: tonyoloo[at]ymail[dot]com