advertisement
free basics
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

Facebook’s Free Basics incubator helps bring social services to mobiles

Facebook and the Johannesburg-based Praekelt Foundation have unveiled an online incubator that will help developers and organisations from around the world, including South Africa, launch mobile social services on the Internet.org Free Basics platform.

The Internet.org mobile service was renamed to Free Basics in September to differentiate it from the initiative and open developers program.

Now, you can use the the Praekelt Foundation Incubator for Free Basics to easily create or add existing services that integrate with it, reaching more than one billion people across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

“Our mission is to connect the world, and we know when we bring communities together we can have even more impact. That’s why we launched the Free Basics Platform to work with as many developers, non-profits and the social good community, and entrepreneurs as possible to extend the benefits of connectivity to diverse, local communities,” Ime Archibong, director of strategic partnerships at Facebook said at the launch.

“Together Facebook and the developer, entrepreneur and non-profit communities in Africa can work together to bring opportunity to people in Africa and around the world,” Archibong added.

Praekelt and Facebook, with the support Torchbox, have also made available an open source tech toolkit that developers and organisations can use to better adapt their services for mobile on Free Basics.

A hundred submissions will be chosen from the Praekelt Foundation Incubator and will be publicly released in 2016.

“Over the last year, we have worked with NGOs to provide life-saving information to a potential audience of over one billion through Internet.org and the Free Basics Platform. We’ve never seen our work reach so many people so quickly. But we need to do more, and through the creation of the Praekelt Foundation Incubator for Free Basics we will do just that,” said Praekelt Group founder and CEO, Gustav Praekelt.

If you’re interested in the Praekelt Foundation Incubator for Free Basics, you can apply to get started, here.

[Image – Internet.org]

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement