Afrinnovator

• Three lessons from Ushahidi: Learning from Ushahidi’s history

  Posted: December 19, 2011, 1:08 pm by Will Mutua

  The Ushahidi crowdsourcing platform recently secured an additional $1.9 million round of funding from the Omidyar Network spanning 3 years.

  Ushahidi has definitely grown from strength to strength since 2008 when it was created and first deployed, really as a hack creating a quick solution to an evident problem at the time. The solution happened to work well and picked up momentum, drawing the attention of many across the globe. Powered by a small community of local developers and volunteers in Kenya and it’s diaspora, the ‘hack’ took shape as a powerful tool for crowdsourcing information, particularly during crisis situations.

  Beyond the Kenyan crisis, the technology was revised and improved, drawing more and more developers and more eyes to the interesting innovation. This included the Omidyar Network and others who poured in some fuel in the form of funding that allowed the founders of Ushahidi to focus and create, this time not spontaneously out of the urgency of creating a solution to a present pressing problem but intentionally, a solid platform that could scale not only technologically but also in terms of applicability. This has seen Ushahidi turn from just innovative application of existing technology (the original solution was basically a Google maps mashup) to really innovative technology such as the SwiftRiver initiative.

  Of course, history bears witness to the difference made in the last few years. The technology has been developed and refined, and in the process, off-shoots such as SwiftRiver have sprung out of the main shoot. The original team has grown significantly with more dedicated staff and the community has also grown significantly. Ushahidi has drawn global attention and has earned a place next to MPESA as one of Kenya’s best technological ‘exports’. Ushahidi has also been deployed to varying use cases including election monitoring, crisis mapping and organising large scale efforts such as the Snowmaggedon. The technology has been employed by major corporations, particularly media houses such as the Washington Post and Al Jazeera as well as individuals particularly through Crowdmap, the ‘Ushahidi in the Cloud’ initiative.

  Great strides have been made, but as Juliana Rotich notes on announcing the new round of funding, Ushahidi has yet to find it’s feet as far as revenue generation is concerned. The organisation is still very much reliant on private foundation grant financing:

  We’re now moving into the next phase of Ushahidi, where we’re exploring ways to diversify funding away from our historically private foundation grant funding, by increasing earned income revenue. This includes direct customer revenue through Crowdmap, B2B revenue through SwiftRiver SaaS offerings and continuing our value added services work on custom deployments of the Ushahidi core platform.

  Three lessons from Ushahidi: Learning from Ushahidi’s history

  One of the cool things about Ushahidi verses it’s counterpart Kenyan success story, MPESA, is that it represents a very contrasting path of development from which innovators and techpreneurs can learn a lot from. Whearas MPESA was somewhat the child born with a silver spoon in it’s mouth, that is, it had a large organization providing an institutional framework and support – both technical and resource-wise (both monetary and human) – from it’s conception, launch and growth, Ushahidi’s story follows a different path.

  Ushahidi was conceived from humble beginnings, really just an idea from a handful of individuals who were not even a formal organization of any sort, just friends and acquaintances who were themselves separated geographically. They did not have major financing or extra hands to develop the technology. Their budget probably was only a domain name and the hosting. And not only this but they did not have the luxury of time! Their country was being laid waste and they knew they could do something to help the situation. They certainly secured major funding later on but that was further down the line.

  So, here are a few lessons we can pick up from the history of Ushahidi. (All of which I  am constantly learning personally through personal experience, sometimes painfully, both with Afrinnovator and African Pixel)

  Solve a Problem: Necessity & invention

  What is interestingly similar about both Ushahidi and MPESA is that they both solved an existing problem very well and that is still fundamentally the basis of their success (Read: “Necessity & Invention: Africa’s story of mobile conquest & why utility beats ‘coolness’“). The lesson is simple, as Guy Kawasaki puts it, ‘Make Meaning’. If you set out to solve a real problem, really well, and do it, chances are that money will follow.

  Don’t wait for funding: Build it and they will come

  One of the most paralysing mentalities for the innovator is that “I need funding (VC or angel) to create my product/service”. And so the innovator either lies dormant, waiting to get some funding in order to build their product, while in the mean time they probably go only as far as pitching their ‘idea’ to potential investors but never really going all out, or they sell out too early. The moment someone proposes putting some money into their ‘idea’ they immediately take it, not realising they could have given up their stake in their company for something they could have accomplished without external funding at least at that stage.

  Someone once advised, “Do what you can with what you have until you can absolutely not do anything else“, what they meant simply was, there’s always something you can do with the resources at your disposal without first thinking ‘I need funding’ and quite often you can actually do much more than what you think you can do with whatever resources you have at hand. If you can code, or design, or sell your product/service yourself, do it, you don’t have to wait for external funding so you can hire a programmer and a designer. Another way of saying this is, “start right where you are“.

  Patience: Progressive, predictable growth

  Tied in to the previous lesson is progressive, predictable growth. Simply, don’t run before you can walk, and don’t walk before you can crawl. Sometimes for many an innovator/techpreneur, there’s this tendency to want to grow really fast. So if they have the financing they will literally go on a spending spree, hiring more staff than are necessary at that point in the life of the company, renting an unnecessarily large and expensive office when you don’t have to just yet.

  On the other hand it may refer to wanting to build everything at once, in other words, wanting to have all the desirable features in your product at once at launch. This creates a situation where the innovator/techpreneur can either get stuck trying to put everything into their product before launch and sometimes it can be costly, such as if someone else with more resources beats you to the punch.

  This is where versioning and creating a roadmap for your product can be of great help. First off, a roadmap allows you to build progressively as you also grow your company. So you can maybe build the initial product with just the skills you have, maybe as a programmer, perhaps this first version does not need really comprehensive security features which you don’t have the expertise in. So you release it, hopefully get some revenues from the initial offering. Then for the next version you can consider getting a specialised programmer for the security features that will be needed for that release, the good thing is, you are already in market and you’ve made some money that can support the new hire.

  Secondly, it’s also great for consumers to see progress, especially if it’s predictable. They know there’s additional value to coming. The trick is just not to keep them waiting too long i.e. Release early, Release often.

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• Mobile Health in Africa: The Entrepreneur’s Guide – Part 3

  Posted: December 15, 2011, 7:43 pm by Mbwana Alliy

  This is a guest post by Amy G. Lehman, Executive Director of Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic (LTFHC). This is the final post of a 3 part series on mhealth in Africa. Click Part 1 and Part 2 to catch up on previous posts.

  I want to thank my colleagues, Mbwana Alliy and Karen Cheng for their interesting and insightful pieces on mHealth. I am honored to be a part of the dialogue, and in my usual role of choice – as a “Gadfly” for the ultra-rural populations in sub-Saharan Africa, and for the populations around Lake Tanganyika in particular. I would like to raise some issues for people to think about, and in doing so, hope to encourage closer collaboration between the tech and delivery sides of health care, such that we each help to inform the other about what’s possible and about what works.

  As a practitioner in an ultra-rural location, I have long followed developments in mHealth and telemedicine and been excited by the possibilities. Unfortunately, I work in a place that is still largely without cell phone access, much less broad-band, so issues regarding connectivity, 3G availability, bandwidth are of paramount importance to me in discussing how mHealth can change the health care landscape.

  There was a short article in The Economist this past August called www.africa.slow that specifically discussed Sierra Leone’s internet connectivity problem, but also listed several other countries with the identical issues. One of those countries is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which, like Sierra Leone, has experienced tremendous instability due to war, and in fact faces an even greater uphill battle to achieve decent connectivity – due to the massive size of the country, the continued instability in certain areas, daunting infrastructural challenges, as well as investor fear (both founded and unfounded).

  The longest coastline of Lake Tanganyika is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and so I have personal experience in trying to address the connectivity problem. I also want to add that the second longest coastline is DRC’s neighbor, Tanzania – a country without many of the above listed problems – and yet the western corridor of the country is still largely without connectivity as well. My organization, the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic, has decided to attempt to crack the problem along the Congolese coastline by adapting simple technologies that have been used for oil and gas surveying in the past, to see if we can create a system that allows the far-flung, mud-hut health centers along the lake to communicate with the Regional hospital. Currently, they cannot – and this is one of the reasons the Regional hospital cannot fulfill its mission to support the health centers.

  But in piloting this “proto-network,” several questions are begged:

  What kind of information should be transmissible at this stage in the game? What do we expect these health centers to do, given their chronic lack of supplies and access to appropriate health care education, coupled with extreme needs? What do you do when you establish communication, but still have extremely high transportation barriers (One very common example would be this: Currently, if a woman experiences obstructed labor in the villages along the lake, the baby dies and the mother either dies, or develops a fistula. Is it helpful to send a text to the Regional hospital to say this is happening when the outcome will be the same? Yes, we need to collect data on incidence, but we may also create an unintended consequence of raised hopes, and subsequent disappointment or disillusionment when the technology can’t produce an immediate change in outcomes).

  Central to health care education is hands-on collaboration and learning in a physical health care setting – regardless of whether that training takes place in a tertiary care American hospital or in the Moliro Heath Center in Moba Territory that has no electricity nor running water. Personal collaboration between health care workers develops several things simultaneously – practical skills, that can also be performed under supervision to achieve proficiency; clinical diagnostic skills; camaraderie; empathy for the patient. These last two elements should not be underestimated in importance, and often are the qualities that can mean the difference between life and death in difficult situations. From my personal experience, it’s clear that this is still the gold-standard in training, at any level. Again, an example from maternal health: If one has never inserted a urinary catheter in a sterile way to treat an acute fistula, chances are you won’t be successful with remote coaching. You also have to have a catheter on hand. This is one of the main reasons why we are working so hard to create an actual physical platform (in the form of a floating hospital) for service delivery and education, that can accommodate the supply chain problems in the basin, as well as the extreme lack of infrastructure.

  Technology to Real Solutions

  Having said that, I am a true believer in using technology to help augment and maintain skills and knowledge that has been introduced initially in a face-to-face manner. And there are also other uses of technology that can be immediately deployed that don’t focus around direct patient care per se, but instead provide ancillary services and data collection from rural to ultra-rural areas – places that have traditionally had serious under-reporting or mistaken reporting. The National Institute of Medical Research in Tanzania, for example, has been piloting an incredibly innovative and effective program using community health care workers to send epidemiological data via SMS. I am a strong believer in the ability of health care workers, even at the lowest level of formal education – including NO formal education – to learn to use cell phone technology to accomplish important tasks. One of the keys to success is adequate initial hands-on training.

  I also think that trying things out in conjunction with local partners is a great way to fasten upon real solutions. We, for example, created electronic medical records for 30 Congolese women (the first, ever, in Moba Territory, and maybe most of the DRC) who traveled with us across Lake Tanganyika to the Tanzanian side, where we were able to provide surgery for their fistula injuries. Working with a long-time AMREF surgeon’s intake form, personal collaboration regarding operation performed, cell phones that could take digital pictures, and my employee Anderson’s tiny laptop that runs on Linux, we created really accurate and I must say beautiful e-records for our patients. Those records now exist in the cloud and are password protected. Because connectivity is still a problem to contend with, we also provided paper records to be kept at the Regional hospital. As our “proto-network” develops, we will be able to access and add to those records. In the mean time, it allows us to remotely keep track of our patients, and when we have a connection, augment the record with our physical follow up visits. This cost us nothing – except a lot of time. Another key to success in the ultra-rural areas is allowing everyone the time they need to develop, trouble-shoot, practice.

  My parting thought is the following:

  A core concept in delivering health care service in the ultra rural areas is that communities need to be able to “call for help” – whether the call is related to a labor emergency, cerebral malaria, a cholera outbreak, a severely burned child. The communities need connectivity to do that. But it’s clear that this is not enough. Health care systems in general need to be strong and developed enough to be able to realize the full advantages of telemedicine and mHealth services so that we can engage in true capacity-building of local health care workers in pragmatic and effective ways.

  Amy Lehman recently spoke at TEDxWomen in Amsterdam- a worthwhile video to understand the challenges and opportunity in her work. Highly recommended for the development and impact investing audience.

  Amy Lehman at TEDxWomen

  Please think about supporting the LTFHC during this holiday season: [https:]

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• Pivot East – Regional Mobile Apps. Developer Conference to be Held in June 2012

  Posted: December 15, 2011, 6:36 pm by Will Mutua

  The second edition of East Africa’s regional mobile apps. developer competition and conference will be held on June 5th and 6th in Nairobi. The progression of events dubbed Pivot East will begin in January 2012 with a call for entries to the mobile applications  competition. The competition which culminate in 25 of the best mobile mobile applications competing at the June 2012 pitching conference. Eligible contestants for the competition will be individuals and companies domiciled in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi and South Sudan. The pitching conference will have a rich audience of investors, development partners, telecoms operators and other industry players from East Africa and across the globe.

  Building mobile innovation powerhouse

  East Africa is increasingly being known globally as a breeding ground for mobile innovation. Deliberate efforts are required to sustain the favourable attention and momentum for the region to retain its position as a mobile innovations hub. Pivot East is an incremental effort to consolidate and showcase the region’s progress towards becoming a global powerhouse for mobile innovation. By leading the world with mobile money innovations such as M-pesa, the region is well placed to churn out more mobile innovations. This is more so with the launch of m:lab East Africa, the regions facility for mobile entrepreneurship training, incubation and applications testing in Nairobi. Other tech hubs and incubation centers have also been established recently in East Africa as part of a growing ecosystem to develop and nurture innovation alongside entrepreneurship.

  Pivot East also builds on the successes and lessons learned from Pivot 25 – the region’s first mobile apps. developer competition and conference held in 2011. Pivot 25 was organised by m:lab East Africa and its consortium partners led by iHub and eMobilis. The m:lab East Africa consortium which also includes The World Wide Web foundation and the University of Nairobi aims to identify, nurture and help build sustainable enterprises in the region’s knowledge economy. The mobile apps. competition and conference is therefore one of the Lab’s ways of improving chances for the most talented and promising mobile entrepreneurs “bubble up” and are showcased so as to receive support requisite through various access to markets, and access to finance initiatives.

  Building on Pivot 25 in 2011

  ThePivot 25 competition in 2011 attracted over one hundred (100) entries from across East Africa in five (5) categories. The five categories were “Payments and commerce”, “Entertainment, gaming and utilities”, “Business and the enterprise”, “Government, education and agriculture”  and “Health”. Twenty five (25) finalists in total were chosen and five(5) from each category were selected to present their applications at the pitching conference on 14th and 15th June 2011. The finalists were trained and coached to improve their skills to pitch their applications before the conference.

  The 2011 conference was attended by over 300 people who included angel investors, venture capitalists, corporate executives, senior government officials, representatives of development organizations and researchers. The panels of judges for the contest were composed of industry experts and global thought leaders. The conference proceedings were live streamed by Capital FM. The competition and conference also received much coverage from local and international media including being featured in the Time Magazine.

  Overall competition winner MedKenya pitches as panel of judges looks on

  In addition to five category winners receiving $5,000 cash prizes, the overall winner, MedAfrica (then MedKenya), won a fully paid trip to pitch their application at DEMO.COM in Silicon Valley and were voted one of the top ten applications at DEMO. Finalists also found exposure to sources of finance, business partnerships and markets for their applications through the conference and the Demo Pit component of the event.

  To Taha Jiwaji, PIVOT25 was a “Great experience boiling down a business concept into a crisp sell-able message and concept.” Taha was one of the finalists hailing from Tanzania and fronting his “Bongo Live” application. Asked to comment on his experience being in the competition, Jeremy Gordon, another finalist from Kenya with the “NikoHapa” application said “So far, our experience at Pivot25 has opened doors for us to become the successful company we know we can be, and we’re now doubly motivated to make it happen.” According to Kariuki Gathitu, who contested in the finals with the “M-Payer” application, “Young innovators like the ones who showcased at pivot25 will definitely heal Africa with the power of their minds.”

  Many pivot 25 contestants have gone ahead to achieve notable progress with their businesses including attracting venture capital and acquiring new customers. Seven of the finalists competitively secured a space at m:lab East Africa’s business incubation facility.

  Information about the PIVOT25 competition and conference can be found at http://pivot25.com

  Read more

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• Nigerian Card Game WHOT! is The New Game Taking Over iOS, Android and Facebook

  Posted: December 14, 2011, 10:27 am by Will Mutua

  WHOT! Is The New Game Taking Over iOS, Android and Facebook

   WHOT! is taking on the digital gaming world and being regarded as the best iOS, Android and Facebook casual card game.

  The popular mobile and online card game is gaining followers due to the addictive multi-application availability and the exciting interaction with plenty of twists and surprises!

  WHOT! is similar to Uno card game and is easy to learn and offers players challenges and rewards, making it one of the most popular card games in the world.

  The game is the creation of nKanika, Inc. nKanika is the one to watch, as they are creating the next generation of free to play games for mobile devices and the open web. The company was founded in October 2011.

  The key features in WHOT! include:

  • Detailed Graphics
  • iOS & Android – Intuitive style menu manipulation and selection using your finger
  • Universal app for iPhone™, iPod™ touch and iPad™ and Android devices
  • 4 fun and challenging levels! More to come
  • Real life rewards for achievements and points in the game using Kiip Rewards
  • Automatically tracks and saves all of your game stats
  • Free to play on Facebook
  • Online Achievements with Game Center support
  • Select your favorite card faces to use, just $0.99.
  • On-screen “How to play” instructions and button actions.
  • PC-style menus allow easy and intuitive configuration and navigation.
  • Retina Display support
  • Heyzap Integration for widespread discovery
  • Multiplayer – Coming Soon

  WHOT! is the company’s first title and designed for iOS and Android devices as well as Facebook. Amaete Umanah, the founder and CEO of nKanika said “ This is a splendid achievement. The bar has been raised, the gauntlet has been thrown down and we can’t wait to show the world our vision of our next iteration of WHOT! and our upcoming titles”

  WHOT! is very easy to learn and is played with just one finger! Kids and adults are enjoying the competitive scoring and are quickly becoming addicted to the spirited game.
  The new diversion is receiving rave reviews from tech gaming magazines and blogs and being touted for its classic fast-paced and exciting method appealing to all ages. Participants are able to compare their game scores to others worldwide on Game Center, and strive to improve and complete all the achievements. Some of the challenges are easy and others are only achievable by masters!

  The program is simple and the web portal located at http://www.whotcardgame.com features complete game instructions so users may become acclimated with the gaming progression quickly.

  WHOT! can be played on Facebook but requires the Unity 3D Web Player to work and is one hundred percent safe.

  The game is available for download at:
  iOS
  [itunes.apple.com]

  Android
  [www.getjar.com]

  Play Now on Facebook
  [www.whotcardgame.com]

  WHOT! has its own Facebook Fan Page and new and experienced users are invited to connect and join for updates, news and information at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Whot-Card-Game/198110233594592

  Learn more by visiting http://www.whotcardgame.com/

  ABOUT nKanika, Inc

  nKanika is a multi-platform, global interactive entertainment and licensing company. nKanika is creating the next generation of free to play games for mobile devices and the open web. The company was founded in 2011 by Amaete Umanah and Ime Etim. WHOT!, the company’s first title launched on late 2011 for iOS, Android and Facebook and has already grown to be one of the largest social games on mobile and has set the standard for financial performance.

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• Let’s put a smartphone into a feature phone and beat Moore’s Law

  Posted: December 8, 2011, 5:09 am by Mbwana Alliy

  What percentage of mobile phone users in Africa are smartphones?- A common question that comes up here in Silicon Valley to try belittle the growth of Africa’s mobile sector. My typical response has always been- “It’s low now, but Android phones are selling like hotcakes and it’s only a matter of time till the price comes down and the masses can afford a smartphone.”

  I am starting to revise my view. What is actually happening is that there’s a race for cloud services in demand now vs the realities of Moore’s law. The law which states that the price of computer chips will half for the same amount of computing power every 18 months- has remained true over the last 40 years, driven the tech industry and has enabled computing devices to get cheaper, smaller and more powerful and hence deliver more functionality. 5 years ago, we barely had colour display phones in the market, now they are very common. In the next “few years” we will likely see smartphones achieve mass adoption. That is if manufacturers decide to design for that price point faster. Nokia has a dominant advantage in Africa in the supply chain and distribution of feature phones which are keeping phones as low as $30- and as long as they keep selling in volume, Nokia might not need to push smartphones to Africa so quickly. It might be quite hard for smartphones, which come loaded with large touch screens, sensors such as GPS, acceleratomers etc… to hit a reasonable price point to entice users to upgrade even if Moore’s law is on the device’s side. Oh and don’t forget battery life- smartphones are no saint when it comes to power usage. Realities of the supply chain, distribution and current usage patterns might mean we have feature phones as dominant phones in Africa for quite some time. Many African consumers are price sensitive after all even if they aspire for a smartphone. Can we get smartphones below $50?

  In the meantime, the thirst for cloud services that internet connectivity brings is here today for Africans to consume, and this means that those who are using feature phones might get left out of the cloud services being delivered and optimized via smartphones apps.

  Earlier this year- Facebook acquired mobile company Snaptu which delivers Facebook and other services to feature phones (up to 2,500 different devices)- this is a huge validation from a cloud company of the importance, growth and staying power of feature phones. And the number of Facebook users in Africa are growing at double digit rates, month over month.

  I came across another company today that is betting to beat Moore’s law as to what devices will deliver cloud services to the masses first. That company is Binu out of Australia. The idea is to squeeze smartphone like applications that connect to the cloud through java enabled feature phones. The idea is brilliant- it helps deliver cloud service functionalities facebook, twitter and other content including e-books such as Qur’an and Holy Bible bundled via one simple app- they boast 10X the speed and 10X less data- and according to their blog- they have exceeded 2M downloads/month(15M to date) in less than a year since they have been in operation. This reminds me why the Opera browser has over 70% marketshare in Africa currently- efficiency pays in Africa. Even when Africans finally upgrade to smartphones- their browser brand of choice is likely to remain Opera which saw them through their feature phone usage days.

  Ultimately smartphones will get to Africa in the masses thanks to Moore’s law- but it doesn’t mean cloud services that are available today cannot be delivered on current features phones- 18 months can be a long time when the demand for the end services change even faster. In fact services like Binu, may in fact convince phone manufacturers there is a demand for the cloud end services and hence push the design constraints for features to behave even more like smartphones but retain the price point and battery life of features phones. Think the Wii vs PS3/X-box. Its not about how big your chip is but what you can do with it to delight customers.

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• A Discussion on Local Content within the African Context

  Posted: December 6, 2011, 12:57 pm by Will Mutua

  When listening to discussions on local content, it is sometimes a bit vague what the intended meaning is. Is it content that is created locally for local consumption exclusively? Is it content that is just created locally but could be consumed by anyone, anywhere? Is it content that is not necessarily created locally but is consumed locally? If anything really, just the term ‘local content’ is quite ambiguous in itself as really what we are concerned with here is ‘Local Digital Content’. What really is local content? And why is it that there’s such a push for more local content?

  In today’s globalised world, it has become harder and harder to any one or any nation to exist in it’s own little cocoon, disconnected and totally cut off from the rest of the world. Over time the developments in telecommunications, faster and more efficient means of transport, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and other factors have led to an ever more increasingly connected world where people, goods, services and perhaps most importantly (in a world that relies heavily on the knowledge economy); information. At the heart of the local (digital) content is really about information represented as bits and bytes stored on computers and travelling rapidly across networks.

  Perhaps a more refined term that would help us understand local content is ‘locally relevant (digital) content‘. The real value of local content is in it’s relevance within a particular culture. That relevance is what makes it desirable for consumption by people within that locality. Again, however, globalisation has led to a situation where sometimes there are gray areas between differing cultures from different parts of the world. The fact is that cultures have been opened up to influence from other cultures that are both near and far from the physical location of a people. So as far as local content is concerned, there could be, as we will see,  a lot of content that is interesting for people within a specific culture that is not necessarily restricted to that locality.

  But why the push towards promoting local content? Even Internet Father, Vint Cerf, noted the significance of local content and was among the 3 key memes we identified during his talk at the Nairobi innovation hub during his visit there. Governments are also seeing opportunities local content significantly, in Kenya for example, the Kenya ICT Board has set out a very focused agenda for local content in it’s ‘Tandaa‘ initiative.

  ‘Tandaa’ is a brand of the Kenya ICT Board that promotes the creation and distribution of locally relevant digital content through the Tandaa Symposium and seed money to ICT entrepreneurs.

  Through the Tandaa initiative, the Kenyan government has proceeded to hold events to promote local digital content generation and even providing capital through its local digital content grant initiative. The government has also not left it to private sector to generate local digital content but is making it’s own efforts such as the Kenya Open Data Initiative through which the government is opening up access to public data in a way that is easily consumable and programmable.

  From the government’s perspective, local content generation creates jobs for people – the programmers, designers, animators, videographers etc that it takes to create content and possibly businesses as well. Engaging content also means that it’s interesting to the public who will be interested in consuming this content – watching a video, reading an article, playing a game – engaging content can be monetized and that means there’s an economic incentive there as well. In addition there would be skills learnt or transferred in the process – programming, animating etc.

  The private sector of course, sees the opportunity in local content and major companies, from Nokia to Google are banking on local content:

  Nokia focuses on local apps, content in Kenya

  Electronics manufacturer Nokia is planning to rollout handsets in Kenya embedded with local applications and content, in order to boost mobile sales in the local competitive market.

  Kenneth Oyolla, General Manager, Nokia East and Southern Africa says mobile application marketing is a rapidly growing sector and advertising channel for brands.

  Oyolla says teaming up with local developers to create local content and applications for phone users is gaining momentum.

  “Increase in use of apps by the youth and middle class is spurning an unprecedented growth. We are looking at local apps critically and would increase our investment in local contents,” says Oyolla.

  Nokia is planning to invest in local applications as developers seek to create more relevant mobile user solutions.
  “Locally, the growth of mobile Internet subscription coupled with a significant use of smartphones is key to the growth of mobile application segment,” says Oyolla.

  Earlier on we mentioned that the relevance of content, such that it becomes interesting to people has been greatly affected by globalisation and the blurring of cultural boundaries. Let’s break this discussion down into the different kinds of locally relevant, digital content that emerge out of this influence:

  Locally Produced, Locally Consumed

  This is content that is created within, say a country (if we take people of a country to have same prevailing culture, generally speaking), that makes sense really only within that cultural setting so that it would only likely be consumed by people from that culture or who understand the culture. A very simple example would be a joke that only a native would understand and consequently laugh to. This kind of content contains elements that are unique to the local culture.

  The Kenya government has very specific intentions for more of this kind of content through it’s initiatives. Take this quote by Dr. Bitange Ndemo:

  The PS in the Ministry of Information and Communication, Dr Bitange Ndemo said with the laying of the fibre optic cable nearing completion there is need to generate web content for the enormous bandwidth that will be in place early next year…

  “We don’t want a situation where Americans or Europeans will use this resource to drive their content and we later end up not having ours. We have already created an enabling environment to make the cost of access low,” he said.

  This is also the kind of content that is likely to be most attractive for the local population.

  Locally Produced, Globally Consumed

  This kind of content is locally created, through the use of local resources and talent but given the impact of globalisation on cultures, the content ends up being relevant across different parts of the world or at least with other similar cultures from around the world.

  This is perhaps sometimes overlooked but perhaps has even higher chances for better economic returns than the previous kind which is locked in within a small area of relevance, so to speak.

  To show the contrast, take for example a website that provides purely local content that is only makes sense for people in that country, say Kenya. In this case there’s a limited scope for distribution of the content. Secondly, given low internet penetration rates in many African countries, the number of people who actually get to interact with the content limits distribution further. Of course, mobile would be a better channel but there are kinds of content that are not best suited for mobile or perhaps would be too costly for the consumer in terms of data rates, such as video content.

  On the other hand, take a website that produces content that is not just relevant for that specific country, but also across say, all of Africa. Africa is definitely a very diverse continent culturally, but there are also similarities, again, particularly because of globalisation e.g. just the fact that many countries are english speaking. The dynamics change and chances for success increase significantly because now there’s a bigger population hence wider distribution and the combined e.g. internet penetration rate means more people can access your content. Jobs and businesses are still created locally, yet the content has possibly global distribution, meaning more opportunities for economic success.

  A good example is the Tinga Tinga Tales. These are animated children’s stories based on African folk tales from around Africa. That appeal not only to African audiences but also to other cultures.

  Globally Produced, Locally Consumed

  Lastly, content can be relevant within a locality yet it is not produced within that locality. This is sort of the darker side of globalisation. It can be argued that for example whereas web content is concerned, majority of content consumed within African countries does not originate from within the continent. It is content that is produced by the likes of BBC, Al Jazeera, Yahoo and other major multi-national companies.

  In this case, since the content is not produced locally, there are no jobs created locally or skills transferred in the course of creating the content. In addition the content sits on platforms outside the country so that even internet traffic is largely external. There’s very little economic gain to the country.

  A brief note on platforms

  Something interesting to note as far as local content generation is concerned as far as where that content is hosted is that much of the content that is generated locally ends up sitting on platforms that are not located or owned locally. For example, Facebook hosts tons of content in the form of wall posts, notes etc that is created by people from within say, Kenya, but that content is on Facebook’s platforms. Same case with, for example YouTube. This has led to initiatives by some of these companies to promote local content e.g. Facebook Zero and YouTube Kenya but the content still ends up on their platforms and is consequently demanded from those platforms, which at the end benefits not local businesses but a foreign company.

  This creates a mixed set of fortunes for a country such as Kenya – there are opportunities for example for wider distribution of content by local producers, yet there is a limitation in the number of jobs that could be created such as the programmers and designers it would have taken to create and maintain the platform as is the case with platforms such as Whive in Kenya and Blueworld Communities in South Africa, that are targeted communities that serve the local population

  One final note, the world is flat

  The thing with local content and the impact of globalisation is that really, anyone who is able to understand the cultural context from anywhere around the world can come up and create content that is even only relevant to a particular community. In other words, I don’t have to be Kenyan to make Kenyan-relevant content. This means that there is the reality of international competition for local content to contend with and not only that but one can find aspects of a nations culture being ‘acquired’ and profited upon by foreigners.

  Perhaps it would be best to open discussion at this point…

  Related posts:

  1. Press release: Kenya ICT Board Launches Ksh 300M (US$4Million) Grant to promote development of local digital content and software applications The Kenya ICT Board is pleased to announce the launch...
  2. Tandaa: Local Digital Content Today the Kenya ICT board is holding an event dubbed...
  3. Tech Startup Success Formulas for Africa: Content & Connectivity Tech is (or will become) the New Agriculture In many...

• M-Pesa: Beyond the Buzz

  Posted: December 5, 2011, 11:10 pm by Mark Kaigwa

  Image by smagdali via Flickr

  This is a guest post by futurist and technologist Soud Hyder.

  I’ve been meaning to pen my thoughts on this over the better half of this year but time has nonetheless been very elusive. I happened to watch a video recording of a panel discussion about technology in Africa and naturally M-PESA seems to permeate through the discussion in one way or another.

   

  Two points were raised that identified the non-agnostic closed wall nature of M-PESA and other payment platforms as an Achilles heel and the impact of M-PESA as well as its correlation to GDP.

  In my opinion putting M-PESA into perspective would probably shed more light into the realities. M-PESA is a Vodafone product licensed to its subsidiaries the glory of which is Safaricom in Kenya. Now Vodafone is a PLC; Public Listed Company that operates in market economies. Meaning its intrinsic nature is to be a profit maximiser, it is not a charity. Hence it develops IP and seeks to monetise its IP through market dominance. If you look through all the successful financial and payment systems in the world, they are walled gardens of sorts and built on locking in critical mass and strategic partnerships. Secondly dismal scaling financial systems in Africa is not the fault of firms but rather the immaturity of economic policy within the regions. The lack of economic integration means that constituent states have different laws, regulations and systems and makes scaling financial systems a pipedream.

  The buck lies with the regulator I would say. In the case of Kenya M-PESA’s success can be hugely attributed to the laissez faire approach in regulation that allowed M-PESA and mobile money in general to function under a tiered regulatory framework where M-PESA funds are linked to a series of trust accounts held by several commercial banks. The fact that the electronic (virtual) money is 100% backed by funds in trust accounts which are M1 (currency in circulation + deposits) means that M-PESA associated funds are regulated by the Central Bank of Kenya further implying that the electronic money is indirectly regulated on a tiered level.

  But what happens when a little project grows far too big well too soon? When it affects millions of lives (directly affecting at least 33% of your population)? When it grows to turnover between 20% +and 30%+ plus of your GDP in 2010 and 2011 respectively? When the IP owner is a foreign based entity with significant portions of the service housed outside the operational country? Isn’t it a national security issue?

  Worse still some serious systemic risks are emerging. It has been argued that the tiered regulatory framework for mobile money that CBK has employed plugs the inherent systemic risk of having a 100% directly unregulated mobile money payment system and Safaricom’s inherent world class internal self regulation as well as trust account modus operandi mitigates the operational risks.

  Well for a small system operating within the economy that is acceptable. But when you have an indirectly regulated system growing in significance and amassing significant GDP throughput then there is an inherent systemic risk resulting from the laissez faire approach in regulation. The growth of M-PESA exposes Kenya’s banking system to liquidity shocks. Again it’s not really clear how the supervisory framework CBK has actually works, but logically a tiered scheme delays information flows, meaning that problems cannot be spotted on a real-time basis.

   

  The bigger M-PESA grows, the more money in circulation (M1) it holds, though distributed across several commercial banks, it would take a bit of miscalculation by one of the banks and a significant system outage of M-PESA (which have been rampant of late) to trigger a liquidity deadlock, which could further lead to a shutdown of the banking system and a collapse of small and or risk inclined banks. Furthermore restricting the service to one operator and having no direct regulatory control on the M-PESA framework without any QoS restrictions places the banking/payment system in Kenya in a bit of limbo. The blame lies squarely on CBK for allowing the system to grow to such a scale without facilitating a secure and reliable operational environment.

  On the other hand it can be argued that M-PESA has increased the efficiency of the Kenyan economy by catalysing the velocity of money. Which in turn has boosted and strengthened the internal economy. But then again quantity theory economists would argue that it can be linked to inflationary pressure because M.V = P.Q where M is money in circulation, V is velocity of money, P is price and Q is quantity, however this is not a universally agreed upon theory. Nonetheless I do believe that M-PESA has strengthened the dynamics of the local economy but also exposed it to other challenges and risks that do not seem to be addressed.

  The lack of direct regulation makes it almost impossible to figure out what really is happening. There is information all over the web with figures and graphs of M-PESA but no centrally available validated information or reports on at least publically relevant information on the status of the system. M-PESA seems to be more of a black-box, it works really well, nobody really knows how it works and God forbid let it not break before all stakeholders realise the sheer magnitude of the monster they created.

  Original post here.

  Related posts:

  1. A New Development Paradigm With Micropayments & Mobile Money; The Case of M-PESA in Kenya This piece is cross-posted from OpenIDEO with permission from the...
  2. Three Kenyans to showcase their online payment systems at AITEC's Banking and Mobile Money Conference Kenya’s innovative/tech space seems to be growing in leaps and...
  3. [BREAKING] The Silicon Cape Welcomes MPESA It’s official Vodacom and Nedbank partner to introduce the leading...

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Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes