From incessant rejection by Google Adsense to the burst of innovation, Emmanuel’s journey to developing a social media application can be summarized in such a way. The 20 year old is a self-taught computer programmer who is a high school graduate from Accra High Senior School located in Accra, the capital city of Ghana.
Emmanuel Apetsi, the nimble minded protégé and programming genius launched his first application wizbook.net from the confines of his room on the 31st of December, 2015 with some other equally committed youngsters. The project according to Emmanuel, took them about a year to complete, the period that literally might have been littered with sleepless nights, brainstorming and coding errors.
The self-taught programmer in an interview with theafricanreporter.com revealed what culminated into him deciding to embark on such an audacious journey. He said he was motivated to develop the application due to Google Adsense’s defiance in granting him web ads services on his former website cyberkonk.com on several occasions.
But, Emmanuel, unlike many others who might have given up after several trials, took a different path to get what he needed. He shifted his attention to upping his skills and learning social networking, a field he knew no jack about, in order to create a platform that helps make communication between African countries easier and local, while making some revenue, theafricanreporter.com writes.
To Emmanuel, a “wiz” is someone who is especially clever hence naming his social networking application “wizbook” which to him is a collection of clever people.
But, when quizzed whether ‘wizbook’ is a caricature of a sort of Facebook, Emmanuel was quick to draw the difference between his work and that of Zuckerberg. Emmanuel says his book does not just contain faces, but the individuals themselves who are especially clever in their respective regards.
Emmanuel enumerated some of the challenges he faced and perhaps continues to face as a programmer. He mentioned during his interactions with theafricanreporter.com of his major challenge being the power crisis that has bedeviled Ghana for close to four years now. Emmanuel said the “dumsor” could be singled out as one factor that nearly stalled the project. In spite of the other numerous little challenges that he had to deal with, for instance discouragement from friends and colleagues, Emmanuel stated that he was not perturbed.
Emmanuel believes that the two major ingredients that kept him going were craftsmanship and skills. In expounding, Emmanuel intimated that craftsmanship and skills are key assets that every single student should have; without them, no work could be accomplished. Emmanuel says he has proven his theory through his work on the social network application, wizbook.com.
Master Emmanuel Apetsi, a high school graduate, wants to see wizbook fever spread across the continent of Africa and beyond. He has promised of keeping his product up to date with regular updates aimed at enhancing better user experience, precision and boosting application response rate.
This could be the application that is going to challenge existing social networking brands. Why don’t you check it out? www.wizbook.com and continue being a ‘wiz’.
