Technology is the fastest growing sector in many African countries, and a revolution is underway that could transform the continent. Africans are taking to social media in ever greater numbers, with some prominent figures using the likes of Twitter to espouse the virtues of the continent’s tech development. Tom Jackson looks below at the ten tweeters at the forefront of Africa’s ICT growth, who comment on the role of technology in entrepreneurship and empowerment.

Judith Owigar

Co-founder and president of Akirachix, which seeks to promote the role of women within the African tech sector. The Akirachix network brings together women with an interest in technology for networking and training, also working with tech professionals and students. It runs training programmes for girls in poor urban areas of Nairobi. Owigar is a coder, blogger and tech enthusiast who believes that technology can be used to make Africa richer and more transparent.

“Technology will drive development in Africa through techpreneurship, giving people a platform to speak and even making African government more transparent and accountable to their citizens,” she says.

Will Mutua

Mutua launched the Affrinovator website in 2010 with the intention to “put Africa on the map. The site showcases African technology and start-ups, telling the stories of entrepreneurs and innovators across the continent. He believes that Africa’s youth stand to gain the most from the tech revolution.

“I see technology creating a platform for the continent and particularly its youth to engage the world at a higher level than would have been possible before,” he says. “Increasing internet access has opened up the continent like never before, giving Africans a level platform to compete with others across the globe on the knowledge economy.”

Juliana Rotich

Co-founder and executive director of crowd-sourcing site Ushahidi, Rotich has worked in the telecommunications and data warehousing for over ten years. She also co-founded Mobisoko, a mobile marketplace for language and location relevant apps in Africa. Originally from Kenya, she has a Computer Science degree from the University of Missouri.

“The narrative about Africa is changing every single day, driven with the opportunity in a continent of more than 300 million middle class Africans,” she says. “New technologies are already shaping lives on the continent, from the rural farmer with only a cellphone and able to find commodity prices to urban hipsters in the various cities who are indeed Digital/Mobile Natives.”

Jon Gosier

Gosier has spent the last few years supporting Africa’s emerging tech scene, as a designer, software developer and writer. His company Appfrica has launched projects to connect rural African villages with the internet, and he organises the annual Apps4Africa competition to encourage African software developers to develop local content.

“I’m excited by the sheer amount of innovation occurring across the continent right now, but disappointed by the lack of support available to them,” he says. “Innovative solutions like the ones developed by Apps4Africa winners Victor Ogo Ekwueme (whose Hospital Manager uses predictive technology to help hospitals prepare for the aftermath of disaster) and Eric Mutta (whose Grainy Bunch apps manages the supply of grain in Tanzania) are examples of African ingenuity at work solving Africa’s big problems. Yet, in the NGO community, support help scale for such apps is virtually non-existent.”

Nmachi Jidenma

Currently working at Google as a program coordinator seeking to increase tech and internet usage across the continent, Jidenma is the founder of the popular blog Celebrating Progress, which celebrates business and success stories in Africa. She also previously served as Africa Editor at The Next Web, an international tech news service based in the Netherlands.

“As submarine cables land and as the cost of international bandwidth falls across the board, new technologies are increasingly taking centre stage across Africa from MPesa in Kenya to MXit in South Africa,” she says. “Young Africans are quickly becoming voracious adopters of new technologies particularly across mobile and social.”

Ory Okolloh

Policy manager and government relations manager for Google in Africa, Okolloh is another co-founder of Ushahidi and was its executive director until December 2010. She is also co-founder of Mzalendo, which tracks and records the performance of member’s of the Kenyan Parliament.

“Technology in Africa is one of the few spaces that is not dominated by the typically parasitic political elite, and therefore offers people an opportunity to express themselves and harness their talents with much lower barriers to entry that they would find in other spaces,” she says.

‘Gbenga Sesan

Sesan is the executive director of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria, a social enterprise connecting less-served groups with tech opportunities. Having trained as an electronic and electrical engineer, he was educated in management at various universities which included Oxford and Harvard. He has also acted as a consultant for companies including Microsoft, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the International Telecommunications Union and the British Council.

“In Africa, a continent known to be on the undesired side of the digital divide, new technologies have liberalised access to information, which has led to many changes, including citizen-government relationships,” he says.

Erik Hersman

Technologist and blogger Hersman was raised in Kenya and Sudan. Running the iHub, Nairobi’s innovation hub for the tech community, he is at the forefront of the tech scene in Kenya. Another co-founder of Ushahidi, whose operations and strategy he manages, he also showcases stories of African inventions and ingenuity on multi-author site AfriGadget and his own blog, WhiteAfrican.com.

“Africa is on the edge – where innovation tends to come from,” he says. “We hold onto technology longer, experiment on it – abuse it even. SMS and USSD are great examples of this, while much of the Western world is jumping on the next big technology bandwagon, there are really crazy things coming out in emerging markets, like USSD internet, payment systems, ticketing and more. Add to that the following two trends; first, that the middle class and consumer adoption is increasing in Africa, and second, that technology costs are decreasing rapidly – and Africa becomes an easy place to get excited about.”

Mariéme Jamme

CEO, blogger, technologist and social entrepreneur Jamme has a passionate commitment to empowering Africans through education, leadership, social entrepreneurship and economic development. She assisted Appfrica International and the State Department in the USA to organise the Apps4Africa contest.

“People across Africa are using technology to get access to information, there is intellectual hunger to have access to all the tools that will allow them to connect, share, learn and get education,” she says. “In the recent years we have seen a rise of young Africans developing software solutions and mobile applications, decoding codes in Kampala, in Kinshasa and Nairobi.”

Idris Bello

Nigerian Bellow describes himself as an “Afropreneur”. He has advanced degrees in Computer Science and Engineering (Nigeria), MBA – Entrepreneurship (USA) and Global Health (Oxford), and has dedicated himself to enhancing the lives of Africans by coming up with inventive platforms for tech-enabled investments all over Africa.

“Much has been made of the role of technology in North Africa’s political revolution,” he says. “But there is another kind of technological revolution going on in Africa. When one takes a look across the continent today, and observes the increased activities in technology incubators and entrepreneurship hubs, it is apparent that Africa is on to something. From Nairobi to Lagos, from Kigali to Accra, no weekend goes by without a new technology event or start-up.”