IT brains develop first African anti-virus software

Innovative youths from Baringo County at work. (Photo: Boniface Thuku)

Baringo, Kenya: It all started three years ago as a small technology centre to nurture Form Four leavers with an interest in Information Technology by university students in a remote village in Baringo County. That small centre has now grabbed world attention by producing the first-ever African-made computer anti-virus software.

Bunifu Technologies has suddenly found itself in the limelight after a breakthrough that birthed Bunifu Sniper Malware, a home-made anti-virus device.

The young team of 12 innovators launched the software during a colourful ceremony at the Kenya School of Government in Kabarnet.

“We are a nexus of engineering and programming and since inception we have developed more than 50 products such as mobile, desktop, web and engineering solutions and tools,” says Keith Korir ,the founder of Bunifu Technologies.

“The anti-virus has an in-built console panel that will help users recover infected files safely,” adds Korir.

The Sniper anti-virus, which took the group more than a year and a half to develop, also features a wireless and Local Area Network (LAN) scanner that can scan devices within your Wi-Fi range or over your LAN, a document, file and folder repair and restore, file and folder unlock sensor, wireless and LAN sensor as well as piracy protection.

The anti-virus, which Korir says is a software too tough for even hackers to crack, is better than others available in the market.

He says there will be continuous online upgrades of the antivirus software although the company is also working on ways to enable offline upgrades.

The Malware specialist says Bunifu Technologies has provided technology-based services and products that range from Android mobile apps, desktop applications, web applications and engineering solutions.

Other products that have been developed by the firm include accounting software that provides real-time analyses and record keeping of day to day transactions and Light Bolt SMS – a mass message sending utility that has the ability to send customised personalised messages to many from a single message.

Bunifu’s other product is an exam management system that provides an easy interface for exams processing and analysis as well as the Bunifu mini-commander, a handy automated software that can process and respond to SMS commands and also process more than one command at a time.

The Sniper anti-virus product has dominant features such as fast engine, over 17 million virus database definitions, heuristic engine, shared protection, directory navigation guard (watchdog) and proactive real-time surveillance.

Other features include document recovery ability, integrated folder and lock ability, safe mode protection capabilities, clipboard paste protection and zipped scan.

“As opposed to other anti-virus or malwares, Bunifu Sniper has unique ability to recover virus-affected documents and also allows scanning of files over a network apart from the obvious cleaning of the document,” says lead developer Kimutai Kipngetich.

Kipngetich says they initiated the project in March 2012 and completed the development of its first version almost a year later.

For efficient and productive share of responsibilities, the youths developed specialist departments where each played a role for the success of the project.

The other team members are Elisha Kiptukyo (business development) and Winston Chemjor (web developer).

Others are Philip Koimet, Solomon Komen, Collins Kiboino, Isaac Kiplagat and Amos Chepchieng.

Doreen Ngetuny is the only female member of the crew and the team leader is Wilberforce Seguton. Emmanuel Yatich is in charge of user experience and user interface.

Kiptukyo says the product, which is now on sale after the launch and will be available in selected stores in Nairobi and Kabarnet, will compete with other common anti-virus softwares such as Kaspersky, McAfee, Symantec, AVIRA and Bit Defender, among other Western-developed anti-virus products.

“Bunifu Sniper is already on sale and will be available on an e-commerce driven website that is safe and secure to use for transactions.

It retails at Sh2,999 for a single licence.