The power of ecosystems: a case study of Africa’s Talking’s developer ecosystem

on YouTube ↗30m

" summary

Africa's Talking presents a concrete case: an API platform that integrated with 30+ telcos to expose SMS, USSD, voice and mobile‑money APIs and signs over 6,000 business users and 40,000+ developers while claiming rapid growth toward ~550,000 devs. The team shifts devrel from events to measurable developer success and economic opportunity, ties Orbit metrics into Airtable with data science to link event attendees to revenue/LTV, and reports early wins in creating multi‑sided marketplace flows.

AI-written summary · about

" chapters (7)

1. 0:00Introduction and background
2. 7:19Evolution of developer relations
3. 11:52Recognizing multi-sided platforms
4. 16:07Metrics and measurement in DevRel
5. 21:20Digital transformation in Africa
6. 23:29Future of DevRel and call to action
7. 24:55Q&A session

" related talks

• 32mAfrican Startups & Tech CommunitiesFilip Sasic, Menna Shahin, Marijan Cipcic, Antonio Separovic · Infobip Shift 2023
• 26mCustomer Spotlight with SafaricomOluseye Farodoye · apidays Dubai & Middle East 2022
• 33mThe Power of Developer CommunitiesScott Hanselman, Angie Jones, Rajeev Rajan, Sead Ahmetovic · WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2024
• 19mChalk Talk: APIs & Today's Digital RevolutionAlex Walling · apidays New York 2024
• 26mAPIs as Agent of ChangeEric Horesnyi · Apidays LIVE Paris 2020
• 01h 01mBridging Tech and Development CooperationElisabeth Goos, Fabian Best, Tiara Pathon, Karolin Erdmann · hub.berlin 2022
• 29mAPIs for Biz Dev 2.0 - Which Business Model?Mark Cheshire · Nordic APIs for Business - The Internet Days 2013
• 20mWhy does an API Platform need developer evangelists?Tony Blank · Platform Summit 2014