Nairobi tech start-up founders selected to attend and participate in 2013 SXSW

Austin, TX – The Capital City African American Chamber of Commerce (CCAACC) and South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) are pleased to announce the inaugural class of the CCAACC/SXSW African Diaspora Fellowship (ADF) Program who will attend the conference in Austin, Texas from March 8 to 12, 2013.

Nivi Mukherjee is the founder and CEO of eLimu, an award-winning EdTech startup in Nairobi Kenya that delivers an affordable yet engaging and interactive educational app on tablets to Primary School students in Kenya. eLimu incorporates animations, videos, songs, music, games and quizzes to make the learning process fun.

Simeon Oriko, Simeon is currently a co-founder of Jamlab, a co-creation community and also serves as the Community Lead at the Open Institute. He is a recipient of the 2013 SXSW Dewey Winburne Community Service Award. Simeon previously founded The Kuyu Project, a digital literacy initiative aimed at teaching African youth how to fully utilize social media and other digital tools to effect social change in their communities.

The fellowship, designed to create a bridge between Austin and Nairobi, two growing technology economies, presents a unique partnership for the leading-edge technology event and a local minority business association.

Both fellows will be actively engaged in the 2013 SXSW Interactive Festival programming, Oriko as the recipient of the SXSW Dewey Winburne Community Service Award.

Among other activities, the fellows will be responsible for attending defined tracks/sessions of SXSW Interactive Festival, writing daily blog/journals and publishing articles on their experience to be featured in media outlets in their home country.  In exchange they receive a complimentary Gold badge for SXSW Interactive, round-trip airfare and room and board provided by Huston-Tillotson University.