About
Public service director, technology leader, and writer.
Pronounced Ah Boo Ko Nay. The accent on the é in Koné carries the “nay” sound, the way it’s said in Côte d’Ivoire and across francophone West Africa.
I’m Abou Koné. Since October 2026, I have served as Director of Public Administration Digitalization at Côte d’Ivoire’s Ministry of Digital Transition and Technological Innovation. I coordinate work on public digital services, interoperability, common standards, performance measurement, and adoption across the administration.
Before joining the Ministry, I was CTO at Pacify. Earlier roles at Clockwise, ShopRunner, IDDataWeb, DDC, CACI, IMMUNIO, and Millennial Media covered product engineering, front-end platforms, distributed teams, and engineering management. I began my career building digital services through United States federal government technology contracts.
West African technology work
I co-founded AKIL Technologies in Abidjan in 2016 and served as its CTO. I led architecture and an engineering team building enterprise software for clients in Côte d’Ivoire, the United States, and France.
In 2018, I founded Code d’Ivoire, a developer community created for people building software in Côte d’Ivoire. The community published technical tutorials, organized online sessions, and produced annual State of the Code surveys to document how Ivorian developers learn and work.
I have also advised organizations in the region. For Orange Sénégal, I led an architecture study for NeSSICo, its commercial information system for postpaid services, and outlined a more modular path forward with its business and technical teams. Earlier community work included Coders4Africa, Gebeya, and the consulting practice 100Kode. Today I co-host TecPatri and continue selected software and writing projects.
I publish essays on Medium, longer-form on Substack, shorter technical posts on dev.to, and operator-audience articles on LinkedIn. Recent pieces are surfaced on /writing/.
Mentoring
Over the years, I have made time for practical conversations about careers, code reviews, and architecture. This mentoring has been informal, occasional, and free.
How I work
- Connect policy, service delivery, and technical realities.
- Use AI-assisted development tools as part of the daily engineering workflow.
- Prefer legible systems and clear responsibilities.
- Work in English and French across North American and West African contexts.
Currently
See the Now page for a current view of my public service work, learning, writing, and existing commitments.