Editor’s Note: Portions of this article have been excerpted from The Cheetah Code Press Release and writings by Jon Gosier.

Jon Gosier, founder of MetaLayer (audience choice winner of Strata’s 2012 startup showcase), is combining his experience at film school and Lionsgate with his passion for African entrepreneurship to create The Cheetah Code, a film that highlights groundbreaking technological innovations across Africa. Gosier’s Apps4Africa initiative awarded financial investment and mentorship to developers from 15 African countries. Inspired by these participants while travelling throughout the continent, Gosier will now revisit and document some of these entrepreneurs to share their tenacity and brilliance with the world.

Whether it’s a Ugandan engineer teaching robotics to youth in remote villages, or a Malawian who taught himself to build windmills, which now power his entire community, or the Kenyans racing to offer the continent’s first pan-Africa mobile banking solution – left to their own devices they are coming up with disruptive innovations, creating new business models that not only employ themselves, but their peers, and creating new ecosystems for trade that boost the continent’s productivity.

Africa’s youth population (aged between 15 and 30) comprises over 20% of the continent’s population and around 40% of the continent’s workforce. The usual story of African youth correlates their growing numbers with unemployment, civil unrest, and crime. But, The Cheetah Code, captures other stories that are often obscured and unseen. Economist and writer George Ayittey refers to such millennial go-getters as being hungry for success and as nimble as Cheetah’s (in contrast to the stagnant ‘Hippos’ of previous generations). The Cheetah Code explores this emerging African creative class and the mindset of these young cheetahs and entrepreneurs who are changing the future of business in the continent. Gosier notes: “The growing African middle and entrepreneurial class is arguably the most exciting for the continent in the past five decades.”

Of the importance of looking to tech innovation across Africa, Gosier has said:

If in 2007 you told someone in the Intelligence, first responder, or GIS, community that a technology platform developed by a group of Kenyan bloggers was going to be one of the most valuable resources deployed during the tsunami in Japan – they wouldn’t have believed you. Then in 2008 my former colleagues launched Ushahidi and those industries were caught off guard.

Disruption comes from the places where you aren’t looking.

The groundbreaking technological innovations of youth across African countries will certainly catch the uninformed off-guard.

Learn more and contribute to The Cheetah Code via their Kickstarter campaign. Donor awards range from advanced screening of the film to producer credit and an opportunity to travel to filming locations in Africa to meet the Cheetahs in person.