A foundation honouring slain African technology entrepreneur Carey Eaton is in its early planning stages.

Last month, 41-year-old co-founder of One Africa Media Carey Eaton was tragically killed during a robbery in Nairobi: an event that shocked Africa’s tech world and resulted in an outpouring of tributes.

Carey Eaton, who grew up in Kenya, is best known for leaving his chief information officer job at Australian internet company SEEK to return to Africa to build car classifieds website Cheki.

Cheki took off in Africa and formed part of the One Africa Media group that includes other classifieds and travel websites such as South Africa’s Private Property and StayNow.com. One Africa Media subsequently went on to raise $20 million from SEEK Australia and an investment from Tiger Global.

And Carey’s brother, Calvin Eaton, is planning to set up a foundation that could honour the One Africa Media co-founder by helping up-and-coming technology workers and startups in Africa. Calvin Eaton also works at One Africa Media in Nairobi.

“Regarding the foundation, Carey's passion was to mentor and give input to any local tech entrepreneur,” Calvin Eaton told ITWeb Africa.

“He was particularly concerned with the lack of skills of young people across Africa entering what will be the largest workforce in the world by 2040.

“The foundation is developing programmes in these two areas of his concern: tech skill education and entrepreneur mentoring. A number of partners connected with the businesses and further afield have expressed their desire to support such a venture and more details will be released as the programmes take shape,” Eaton further told ITWeb Africa.

Well-known Kenyan technology figures, such as BRCK CEO and Ushahidi co-founder, Erik Hersman is also a “brainstormer” regarding the Carey Eaton foundation.

Hersman told ITWeb Africa that it is early days regarding the Carey Eaton foundation, but there could be more information on it in August.

In the meantime, One Africa Media CEO, Justin Clarke, says he supports the idea of a Carey Eaton foundation.

Justin Clarke served as joint CEO with Carey Eaton for One Africa Media.

“Yes, we are 100% behind the foundation,” Clarke told ITWeb Africa.

“Carey really believed that ICT (information and communications technology) could change the face of sub-Saharan Africa: he believed in the people, the opportunity and wanted to be part of the solution.

“Calvin, who heads up our BI team, and works out of our Nairobi offices is going to carry the flag - and he is getting Erik and some key role players to come up with a plan that can make a difference,” Clarke said.

One Africa Media has hub offices in Nairobi, Durban, Cape Town and Lagos and nearly 600 staff members, according to Clarke.

Clarke, along with One Africa Media’s chief financial officer, are running the business out of Durban, South Africa.

And Clarke explained to ITWeb Africa that the scale of the business has helped it cope with the loss of Carey Eaton.

“Carey was a great leader, and he touched a lot of people with his generous spirit, so we really feel the loss deeply from an emotional point of view,” Clarke told ITWeb Africa.

“But we are nearly 600 people now and we have been building capacity across all the businesses - so the machine continues to run on without him.

“In fact there is a renewed commitment to make great things happen in his memory,” Clarke said.

Meanwhile, Calvin Eaton has told ITWeb Africa that police investigations into the circumstances around his brother’s death are “on-going”.