Media Indaba Africa 2017

How exactly does an emoji end up on your phone keyboard? It's actually a tightly regulated process overseen by the Unicode Consortium, the non-profit organisation based in Silicon Valley whose members are primarily US tech companies. It takes upwards of 18 months between when an emoji is proposed and when it can end up on your smartphone. Jennifer 8 Lee is a vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, and she'll  walk through the emoji proposal process, including the timelines, and the selection factors involved. She’s looking for ideas from different countries in Africa! So here is your chance to impact billions of keyboards worldwide - make sure you sign up for her workshop later today.