The successes of mobile phone entrepreneurs in Africa are reasonably well known, and African mobile phone payment systems are becoming well known, but Africa has other lesser-known technology entrepreneurs, like Verone Mankou, whose company VMK has launched a smartphone and tablet computer designed in the Republic of Congo.
The VMK Way-C tablet computer is billed as the first African touchpad, designed as a low-cost high-quality product to give many people access to the Internet. The name Way-C is derived from Congolese words meaning “light of the stars”. Another African entrepreneur, Saheed Adepoju from Nigeria, has created the INYE tablet, and several other Africans have designed mobile Internet devices in attempts to fulfil Africa’s need for more pervasive Internet access.
Another Nigerian company, Websoft, has produced the Vantium tablet computer, which runs on the Android Gingerbread operating system. A Nigerian bookstore, Debonair, offers its own tablet computer in two different models, the Bamboo D300 Tablet PC (“for men”) and the Bamboo Sugarcane Tablet PC (presumably for women). Another Nigerian company, First Atlantic Semiconductors and Microelectronics, produces an Ovim tablet computer.