Items by Will Mutua

Afrinnovator

• Toffene Kama: Startup Founder, Tech Entrepreneur and Passionate about Africa

  Posted: May 8, 2012, 7:06 pm by Will Mutua

  It’s always great to meet and talk with people who have a great passion for Africa just as we do here at Afrinnovator. Toffene Kama is a highly driven and passionate individual whose not just talking about Africa’s great future with passion and enthusiasm but is also actively running an amazing tech startup called Willstream Labs.

  Willstream tackles the problem of migrants remitting money back home to their families in their countries of origin in Africa for specific uses. Simply, the issue is that migrants need to send money back home frequently for all sorts of things – paying for a family members medical fees, or school fees or some construction that they are carrying on back home. Well, many times all sorts of issues can arise in the process, for example, quite frequently the money sent may end up being used for a very different purpose than it was originally intended. Willstream allows the ‘remitter’ to create a ‘stream’ and allocate funds for specific services at partner businesses that then the family member can go to and use (kind of like redeeming a voucher for a service). Toffene says that Willstream is not a money transfer service, but a payment service.

  I recorded a chat with Toffene in which we discuss Willstream and what they’re doing particularly in Senegal, Africa, tech, running a tech startup, product development and delivery and many other things. Here’s a short summary of our chat with some of the lessons learnt

  Check this out on Chirbit

  Starting Willstream:

  Toffene started Willstream to solve a problem which he faced himself as a migrant living in France but having to frequently send money back home. He quickly realized that many other people in his situation faced the same problem. Sensing an opportunity to provide a solution to the shared problem in a profitable way, he set about building what had been simply an idea in his mind. Interestingly, he did not set about starting Willstream immediately he had the idea, instead he kept talking with people and getting feedback for sometime before starting – why? One reason is that he says, having been in the telecoms industry and particularly in mobile payments, he knew the market was not yet ready for what he wanted to offer.

  Lessons learnt:

  1. Creating a product that provides a real solution to a real world problem beats creating a product to solve an imaginary one – do your groundwork/homework e.g. market research to ensure you have something real
  2. Observation is a key quality for entrepreneurs. Toffene was keen to observe and realize that his problem was a shared problem, not only that but observing the intended market is crucial

  Building Willstream

  Toffene set about building Willstream largely leveraging his past experience in the mobile and mobile payments world (Toffene has experience working for companies such as Redknee and Alcatel-Lucent), even getting people he had worked with before to build his company. One key area is product development. Toffene emphasized the importance of getting great people on board and a huge focus on product development.

  At the same time, keep a close ear to what customers are saying, and keep an eye on how they’re actually using your product. For example, Willstream launched a product called Willstream Clubs for which they had an idea of which market and what use cases they intended it for, but upon launch they found people from other markets finding it out and using it for interesting purposes, and they had to adjust their thinking to take advantage of the opportunity.

  As for the actual product development process, Toffene says he follows the Lean Startup methodology, they did not set out to build everything at once. Instead, they identified what the most important aspect of their offering was that they could produce (minimum viable product) and present to their market and built that as fast as they could and launched it

  Lessons learnt:

  1. Leverage past experience (Read: Why it might be a good idea to be employed (first))
  2. Get the best people in the business
  3. Focus on product development – create a great product, then refine it till it’s best of class
  4. Listen to your customers
  5. Keep an eye on how the product is actually being used

  On Funding

  Toffene and his colleagues set about building their company on their own resources and skill base. He says that it may be a burden for a startup to get external funding too early in its history. In addition, it is worth having something to show first. Create something, build something whose value can be quantified in some way and then you can leverage that to bring on board valuable funding partners.

  Lessons learnt:

  1. Invest yourself first, before you can get others to invest in you

  Africa, tech, entrepreneurship

  It’s time for Africa!

  Africa’s future lies in exploiting it’s human resource, not just the natural resources. It’s a unique moment in time for young Africans to leverage entrepreneurship to achieve their dreams.

   

   

• What’s your Business Model?

  Posted: May 7, 2012, 2:32 pm by Will Mutua

  Many an entrepreneur have come up with a brilliant idea and gone about the painstaking business of developing it only to come to the realization that there’s no sound business model behind it, or the business model is not sustainable. The problem is significant among tech startups where the founder has a great vision for a technology product or service but fails to adequately answer the questions of just how they will go about creating, delivering and capturing value.

  Then again, we find many tech companies have weak business models but are often over-valued, in comparison to the revenues and profits they’re bringing in.

  The business model is a critical component that investors look for when evaluating a potential investment. What’s the value of having a sound business model? Is it necessary to have one? What is a business model exactly anyway? What are classic business models you can implement? How do develop one if you don’t have one? Or how do you strengthen your existing model?

  As part of the event we’ll also have Mr. Liko Agosta, co-founder of PesaPal and Verviant give us his own experience in founding and running tech companies.

  Join us on Thursday, May 10 2012, at the Nairobi Innovation Hub (iHub) from 6.00 PM to 8.00 PM as we explore these issues and more.

• Talking about Africa’s Digital Content Future

  Posted: April 21, 2012, 8:26 am by Will Mutua

  The history of African peoples is filled with tons of folklore and a rich oral history. Our peoples in past times primarily disseminated information and preserved their culture in the form of folk tales, songs… content; and the primary platform of distribution was oral. Today, Africa stands to embrace it’s history of original content creation on the platform of the Internet and World Wide Web in form of digital content. A platform that not only creates a powerful media to create and convey original content across the entire globe but also to store it and remix it to create new and innovative content.

  Not only that, but the power of mobile has created even more opportunities for creation and distribution of content, democratizing and consumerizing the tools needed to create digital content. On the distribution side, increased bandwidth and access to it, has allowed ordinary people to efficiently upload their content to web based content platforms for all kinds of digital content, be it audio, image & video or text based, on platforms  such as Flickr, YouTube and Facebook that have then opened up a global audience for content creators.

  A huge problem for local film makers has been the actual distribution of their work. Film makers have largely depended on showcasing their work at festivals with the hope of attracting some attention for their work at these events. In addition, it would appear that the work of many African film makers, for example, is more widely known and appreciated outside Africa than in Africa. How can these problems of distribution and awareness be fixed?

  Buni Media, the originators of popular Kenyan political satire show, The XYZ Show, have created a new internet video platform – buni.tv – specifically focused on content created in Africa or about Africa, their aim: to revolutionize the distribution of African video.

  We talked to CEO and co-founder, Marie Lora-Mungai about Buni Media, Buni TV and digital content in Africa:

  Afrinnovator: Please introduce Buni Media to us.

  Marie (Buni Media): Buni Media is a multimedia company based in Nairobi and in Los Angeles, California. I co-founded the company with Gado in 2009 to produce The XYZ Show, which is now about to start its 6th season and reaches more than 8 million people on its various platforms (television, radio, buses, web, mobile) every month.

  Since 2009 Buni Media has grown tremendously and besides The XYZ Show, we now produce documentaries, we publish books, and we’re in pre-production on a new pan-African children program. “Buni” means “innovation” in Swahili, and the mission of Buni Media is to use innovative techniques such as puppets, satire, animation, social media and mobile technology to produce top-quality content that entertains and challenges audiences both within and outside the continent.

  Afrinnovator: You recently launched buni.tv, tell us about that

  Marie (Buni Media): Buni TV is our new pan-African web and mobile video distribution platform. It is probably our most ambitious project to date and we’re very excited about its potential.

  One of the main challenges we’ve had on our journey to produce The XYZ Show has been its distribution. We’ve been pretty good at it – 8 million is a huge number. But it’s been difficult and sometimes frustrating. You have to deal with a broadcasting industry that does not have the interests of producers at heart. And the reality is, most talented filmmakers on the continent will never have the opportunity to show their work and to find their audience.

  Today if you produce a fantastic film in Africa, the best you can do is to take it to festivals around the world and maybe get a European television station to buy the rights for that territory. But African audiences will never see it. From the audience’s perspective, you might know that there’s better content out there than what you’re being served on TV, but you don’t know where to find it or how to access it. Buni TV proposes to bridge that gap.

  Afrinnovator: What are you trying to achieve with this new platform

  Quite simply, we’ve set out to revolutionize the distribution of African video.

  Buni TV will first source, select and showcase the best, most innovative video content being produced in or about Africa. We clearly have an agenda here, which is to show audiences on the continent and the rest of the world that there is some really great work being made by African filmmakers, animators and artists – a fact that festival curators have known for a while but that has not reached the general public yet.

  Buni TV will then leverage the upcoming mobile video revolution to bring this content directly into the hands of the audience. Buni TV is accessible both on the web at www.buni.tv and on smartphones at m.buni.tv. Our platform is built on top of a video manager service which allows us to both host this content and stream it to a whole range of devices from computers to tablets to mobiles, while automatically adjusting to the speed of your internet connection. Basically if your phone can play YouTube videos, it can play Buni TV.

  We strongly believe that tablets and mobiles are how people in Africa will primarily consume entertainment in the future. The continent will skip television, satellite and cable to jump straight into the era of personal entertainment devices. Getting relevant content directly to those who want to watch it will allow us to create new revenue streams for filmmakers and help support the creative industry.

  Afrinnovator: Tell us about the opportunity for local digital content development in Kenya (and Africa)

  Marie (Buni Media): First of all, a precision: what you call “digital content”, I simply call content.

  We used to talk of digital content as opposed to film or analog recordings – it was a technical matter. Today 99.9% of the video (and same with sound or photography) content being produced in Africa is made using digital technology, like the Canon 5D for example. So let’s talk about the opportunity for local content development in general. It is our position at Buni Media that as producers of content we should not see Kenya as our market. The world is our market.

  One of the challenges of the Kenyan media industry is that it is talking to quite a small local audience, and very often that market alone cannot sustain quality productions. Kenyan filmmakers have to look beyond their own borders and create films that can appeal to at least the whole East African region, if not Africa or even the world. That’s where the opportunity lies and that’s how you can find good numbers. A global platform like Buni TV will help create these trans-border markets.

  Afrinnovator: Where do you think Kenya (and Africa) stands in terms of the quantity and quality of digital content being produced in the country (continent)?

  The Kenyan film and television industry has made some tremendous progress in the past few years. Some of it has to do with the proliferation of affordable, quality equipment, which has allowed Kenyan filmmakers to practice, learn and experiment. The Kenyan animation scene is particularly interesting – and Buni TV will be featuring some fantastic Kenyan animated films like Kwame Nyong’o's The Legend of Ngong Hills, which is nominated for a 2012 Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Animation.

  But in general there’s still a long way to go, and some years are better than others. Distribution and funding (both are irrevocably tied) are always major challenges, and this is where Buni TV comes in. If we can fix distribution, then all of a sudden funding will become available. If we look at Africa in general, there is definitely a good amount of quality content now out there. African films keep getting noticed at big international film festivals and ironically, Western audiences might know more about independent African cinema than audiences on the continent. Again, Buni TV proposes to be the solution to this problem.

  Afrinnovator: What can be done to promote more digital content development from the country (or continent)?

  Marie (Buni Media): Fix distribution, which will dramatically increase people’s exposure to quality content and help create new audiences. Then the rest will follow.

  Afrinnovator: How do you read Africa’s digital future? What can we expect?

  Marie (Buni Media): The future lies with mobile technology.

  What many Kenyans do not realize, is that Kenya is the world leader in that domain. What Kenyans have come to see as every day things like M’Pesa or even call-back ringtones are still at the very forefront of innovation in terms of the global mobile industry. When I talk about Kenya’s mobile landscape to tech people in the US, they are extremely impressed. And Kenya is showing the way for the rest of Africa.

  There are currently more than 600 million people on the continent who own a mobile phone. That’s double the total population of the US. Out of these 600 million mobile phones, about 18% are smartphones, which is quite a small share. But with the arrival of affordable devices like Huawei’s Ideos, this is rapidly changing. That is a massive opportunity, and Buni TV is in an ideal position to take advantage of it.

• Buni TV launches www.buni.tv and m.buni.tv

  Posted: April 18, 2012, 10:48 pm by Will Mutua

  Buni Media is announcing the launch today of Buni TV, its new web and mobile Pan-African digital video platform.

  By showcasing the best, most innovative and visually arresting content being currently produced in or about Africa and distributing it new audiences on the continent and abroad, Buni TV (www.buni.tv) aims to become the premier destination for independent African video.

  At launch, the platform will offer the entire 5 seasons of the very popular Kenyan political satire The XYZ Show (produced by parent company Buni Media), award-winning Kenyan animation films like Kwame Nyong’o’s The Legend of Ngong Hills, documentaries by Egyptian filmmaker Abu Bakr Shawky, Nigerian children TV program Bino and Fino, music videos from across the continent, as well as content provided by its partnership with Scotland’s Africa in Motion film festival. Buni TV will also act as a curator, showcasing film trailers and other videos already existing online but notoriously hard to find.

  “There is actually quite a lot of remarkable, high-quality African content out there, but it’s often scattered over niche sites and very difficult for African audiences to find. Buni TV editors will do the leg work for our audience and select only what is worth their time. Buni TV wants to become the number one destination to watch modern, creative African content online and on mobile,” said Marie Lora-Mungai, CEO of Buni Media.

  Whereas others African video platforms seem to target only the diaspora market, Buni TV wants to bring its content in priority to the continent’s under-served audience. Anticipating Africa’s upcoming mobile video boom, Buni TV developed a light, user-friendly mobile site that works on most smartphones and can be accessed at m.buni.tv.

  Buni TV’s platform was developed by Asilia and designed by Barbara Muriungi. “Buni TV comes at a timely stage in the telling of the African story. Rather than outsiders making films about Africa, Africans are also able to do so, and showcase them not just to the outside world but to other Africans”, they said.

  Streaming videos on Buni TV will initially be free with advertising. Buni TV will share the revenue made from advertising around their work with the filmmakers on a 50-50 basis. In the future, the platform will develop a subscription option to allow access to premium content.

  “Buni TV has been developed by filmmakers for filmmakers and film lovers. We know what it means to be independent creators. In Africa like everywhere else, distribution is a major challenge: how to find the right audience for your work, how to get your work in front of that audience, and how to generate revenue from that audience. We’ve built Buni TV to provide a solution to that problem,” said Marie Lora-Mungai, CEO of Buni Media.

  About Buni Media:

  Buni Media (www.bunimedia.com) is a multi-media company based in Nairobi, Kenya and Los Angeles, California. It is the production outlet behind The XYZ Show, Africa’s first political satire program featuring life-size latex puppets. The XYZ Show (www.xyzshow.com) reaches an audience of more than 8 million people every month through its various platforms.

• Will the Local Tech Startup Investors Please Stand up?

  Posted: April 4, 2012, 1:31 pm by Will Mutua

  The first live Afrinnovator Meetup (branded ‘kongamano’ – swahili for ‘meetup’) took place this past Monday at the incredibly huge 88mph-run Startup Garage space in Nairobi. The event put together a panel of funds and VCs that are focused on tech investment: Invested Development, an impact investor; 88mph, our gracious hosts and eVentures Africa. We had about 70 people in attendance forming a great audience that actively engaged the panel. (We were unable to livestream but watch out for the video soon)

  One of the questions that came up is that of local tech-focused investors, or the lack thereof. The tech investor ecosystem in Kenya is still taking shape but even in these very early days of what has been called the ‘Silicon Savannah’, it is evident that in Kenya, much of the funding for tech startups is by foreign funds and VCs. In fact it could well be that in the recent past, the majority of funding for tech startups locally has been from the government through initiatives such as the ICT Board local content grant.

  Source: angelblog.net

  While the country is seeing a lot of private sector investment in other areas such as real estate, we’re yet to see the same scale of investment in tech – highly focused and specialized investment. Why is this so? And how can the situation be remedied?

  A different ball game

  Investing in tech startups is somewhat of a different ball game from investing in other areas. Firstly, tech is a fairly risky business. And the earliest investments in a tech startup are the riskiest, yet the most critical. This stage is critical both for the investor, risk-wise and for the startup as this is the point where they’re working on the foundations of their company and their product, if they get it wrong at this point, their chances of success go down dramatically. Yet, it is in this stage of developing a tech startup where the largest gap exists for relevant investors.

  Whearas for local investors, traditional investments such as real estate are more predictable and hence the investor is able to manage risks better, tech has a certain level of uncertainty at the beginning. Will the founders create a good working relationship and the team dynamics needed to push things forward? Will their product be well received by the market?

  Secondly, investing in tech takes understanding tech. Especially when dealing with software based startups – web, mobile, applications – since the product is intangible. When dealing with other types of business, the product (or service) is very evident, you know who your supplier is, you know who your customer is, you can workout the logistics of acquiring the product or the raw materials, manufacturing the product and distributing it. On the other hand is a knowledge based, intangible product that is often delivered over an intangible channel (the World Wide Web) and the monetization at times is not as straight forward as a customer paying up front for a product in exchange for the product.

  Building on success

  Perhaps another challenge that faces potential investors is that there haven’t been some major locally-backed successes that create the precedence necessary to attract other investors into the field. In Kenya, there’s a tendency for people to just wait in the wings while watching and waiting to see if someone else will take the risk. Then, once someone risks and succeeds, they’ll flood the market.

  It wouldn’t be a surprise if at some point in the future, once a few startups have gone wildly successful, the tables will be turned and local investors will be making a rush to invest in tech.

  The question is, who’s going to take the plunge and risk the success or failure of making major investments in tech startups? As you may have read before, there’s an upcoming fund called the “Savannah Fund”, that may just be the one to fill this gap. (Stay tuned for more about this fund in the near future)

  Tech investor community

  Well, it would be hard to have a tech investor community minus a good number of tech investors to form the community in the first place. Tech hubs have done a great deal to not only create physical spaces but to create the overall environment necessary for the growth of the tech community already.

  And whearas few actual startups have broken out and are on their way to success, there’s much more trial attempts than was previously the case. And this is the right approach, investment follows innovation.

  The more innovation we see, the more startups keep trying and trying and ultimately making some success, the more attractive tech will become for local investors. And eventually will draw them in. At that time, it will be critical to form the right kind of community on the investor side of the table.

  A word of caution

  As it stands, the largest proportion of investment in tech startups is coming from outside the country. If potential local investors don’t watch out, they may come in late in the game and miss the greatest successes, and hence the greatest potential returns.

  We’re trying to build something that will benefit the country first. If local investors do not come together and start investing in tech the gains made from those startups that will go wildly successful may end up benefiting others more than ourselves. A typical case of Africa’s best resources benefiting foreigners more than the continent itself.

  Foreign investment is all well and good, and it is very welcome. At the end of the day, for the startup, what matters for them is getting the necessary investment to work on their company and make a success of themselves. But it would be a shame if local investors missed out.

  It can be done

  For the most part, the capital requirements for tech startups are pretty low compared to most if not all other kinds of investment. It would not be astronomically difficult for investors who are used to massive capital investments to put money in tech with a fraction of their typical investment and yet investing in multiple startups, hence spreading their risk. If any one of those startups succeeded, they could easily multiply their investment given that tech can provide the uniqueness of disproportionately large returns to relatively small investment.

  But, given that, as we have noted, this is not your typical investment in real estate or whatever else. There’s a need for either investors to get educated on the dynamics of tech in some kind of forum perhaps, or for them to reach out to people in tech who can help them understand the area and make the right investments while bearing with the risks and patience sometimes required.

  The Ron Conways of the ‘Silicon Savannah’ will be made in these days, and the opportunity is wide open.

• Kenya Technology, Innovation & Startup Report 2012: A Preview

  Posted: April 2, 2012, 1:00 pm by Will Mutua

  It is my pleasure to present a preview of the upcoming report “Kenya Technology, Innovation & Startups Report 2012“.

  The aim of the report is to look into where Kenya currently stands as far as innovation and startup culture is concerned. We talked to several influencers, thought leaders and pioneers of Kenya’s digital revolution to get there take on what the future holds for the country as far as technology and innovation are concerned. We also researched a wide array of materials from published papers, to research publications to blogs to get a clear picture and objectively determine where the country is headed as best as we could.

  Kenya has been identified in recent times as one of the countries to watch in Africa as far as technology and innovation goes. Dubbed the ‘Silicon Savanna’, Kenya is rising fast as a technology powerhouse on the African continent and more so in Sub-Saharan Africa.

  We looked at the following areas in particular:

  • Mobile and Mobile Web o Apps
  • Mobile Money
  • Mobile Web
  • Internet and Web
  • Online services
  • E-commerce
  • Infrastructure
  • Social networking and social media
  • Local content
  • Innovation, Startup Culture and Funding

  You can download the report preview here!

  We’re also having our first Afrinnovator Meetup this evening at the Startup Garage. We will be livestreaming

   

• Disruptive Innovation in the African Tech Context

  Posted: March 30, 2012, 1:21 pm by Will Mutua

  What is it really to disrupt, or what is a disruptive innovation? And to put it in the African context, what does ‘disruption’ mean for the continent and what are the opportunities to disrupt?

  A dictionary definition of the term ‘disrupt‘ is:

  1. to throw into turmoil or disorder
  2. to interrupt the progress of (a movement, meeting, etc.)
  3. to break or split (something) apart

  Disruptive Innovation is NOT making a good product better

  Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who coined the term and came up with the theory of disruptive innovation describes this kind of innovation as that kind of innovation that transforms a product that was traditionally complex and expensive to being widely accessible & affordable. The easiest example of this is the PC revolution and how companies like Apple and Microsoft undercut the giants of the computing world by introducing these much lower cost, much simpler to use computers as opposed to the traditional mainframes that were way too expensive, even for many companies.

  Disruptive Innovation is about New Markets

  A truly disruptive innovation will be targeted at an entirely new market spectrum. Disruptive innovation is not about building better products for our best customers but really it’s about creating totally new products (or a new class of an existing product) for totally new customers. Using the PC revolution example, Apple and Microsoft literally created a market for the Personal Computer. An interesting concept here is that of “competing against non-consumption“, that is creating products that are not really competing against another product but competing to get non-consumers to start using that product.

  Disruptive Innovation in Africa

  Given this idea of competing against non-consumption, it could be that Africa might be a great place for disruptive innovation. The gap between rich and poor is generally quite high, and the proportion of the lower income population is higher than the middle income populace.

  This means that there are fewer people who are able to enjoy certain things in life simply because of the purchasing power they have. Often-times, the people in the lower income population would like to enjoy the same things as those in the middle class but cannot, and there you have a non-consuming market for which one can disrupt to take advantage of.

  Framing this theory in the African context, what’s a great example of disruption in action? And what opportunities are there for entrepreneurs to create disruption?

  Case: Mobile Money Disrupted Traditional Banking

  Five years ago, Kenya’s dominant Mobile Network Operator, Safaricom, introduced a new product offering – MPESA. Five years later and multiple awards later, MPESA is the definitive case for the transformative potential of mobile money.

  MPESA was really a disruptive technology. Who was disrupted? – The banks, the traditional lending institutions. MPESA (and really mobile money in general) really represents this concept of competing against non-consumption. The core tenet of mobile money has come to be stated in the goal of reaching the “unbanked”. Basically, people who have no access to or no capacity to qualify for a traditional bank account – non-consumers.

  The big question now is, who’s going to disrupt Safaricom in Kenya?

  Perhaps that disruptor  in the mobile money space could be found in a much smaller mobile money network that boasts a modest 70,000 subscribers versus Safaricom’s 15.21 million customers, and moved Sh. 1.13 billion in December 2011 versus Safaricom’s 116.6 billion.

  That’s Mobi Pay’s Tangaza platform.

  While their figures seem modest, they’ve overtaken even the second largest MNO in Kenya, Airtel Money which has a larger subscriber base of about 3.16 million but moved only Sh 420 million in December 2011, less than half of Tangaza’s volumes. In fact, Tangaza has the lowest number of subscribers.

  A key differentiator of the Tangaza offering is that they support cross-network transactions, something that the MNOs have been reluctant to embrace.

  Opportunity to disrupt: Energy

  Much of Africa’s population is rural, with much of the rural population having very limited or no access to electricity. It is estimated actually that very soon, more of Africa’s population will have access to mobile but not electricity. This presents a great opportunity to exploit the concept of competing against non-consumption.

  The thing with clean energy such as solar is that the technology is still quite expensive and would be out of reach for rural Africa. It is interesting, however that there are amazing innovations that will open up this low income segment. One case of a company’s that’s poised to create disruption is Egg-energy:

  EGG-energy

  EGG energy a Tanzanian company that calls itself the “Netflix of batteries“. EGG aims at helping low-income consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa gain access to clean, affordable energy, using a unique strategy based around portable rechargeable batteries. Their business is based on the fact that 80% of the Tanzanian population live within five kilometers of a transmission line and less than 15% having access to electricity

  According to their website, their model works as follows:

  1. We take power from a grid or off-grid power station and package it into portable, rechargeable, and affordable batteries. Each battery is about the size of a brick and lasts about five nights in a typical household.

  2. Each battery is rented to a customer in exchange for a subscription fee.

  3. Customers can exchange their depleted battery for a fully charged one at any time, by paying a small swapping fee at a nearby EGG-energy charging depot.

  Perhaps they will disrupt Tanzania’s power companies!

  Opportunity to disrupt: Smartphones

  One of the most evident opportunities for disruption in Africa is in the handset manufacturing industry. It has been predicted that Smartphones will become cheaper as more and more higher end features also appear on devices in the lower end of the spectrum.

  Huawei made a killing in Kenya with it’s $100 IDEOS Smartphone, and already the prediction is that the cost will go down to close to $50. According to Vodacom CEO, Pieter Uys, in an interview with Memeburn:

  We’ve now broken the US$100 barrier for a smartphone. In 18 months time that US$100 will be US$50… if not less. And then it keeps coming down — that’s what happened with ‘normal’ phones.

   

• Afrinnovator’s First Live Event: Investor-Startup Meetup at Startup Garage

  Posted: March 26, 2012, 7:05 pm by Will Mutua

  As we’ve noted before, funding is one of the hot topics when it comes to tech entrepreneurship in Kenya, and many other parts of Africa. We recently looked at the ICT Funding Gap in Kenya, and the challenges of finding investment at the earliest and riskiest part of a startup – the seed funding level. And then even more recently we looked at the other side of the coin, the apparent challenges that investors are facing when it comes to funding tech startups in Kenya.

  The articles sparked off a bit of a discussion online, with investors and techpreneurs alike airing their views.

  This has led us at Afrinnovator to organize our first live event to be held on Monday, April 2nd from 5.00 PM to 7.00 PM at the Startup Garage (register to attend here). The event will be set up in a panel discussion format with investors and tech entrepreneurs. We will be aiming at discussing the issues of finding funding, from an entrepreneur point of view, and also what investors are looking for in startups.

  • What are your options as an entrepreneur to fund your tech startup?
  • How should you prepare to pitch to an investor?
  • What are investors looking for?
  • How do investors evaluate potential investments
  • What’s the investor-entrepreneur relationship like?
  • At what point should you go for funding?
  • Do you need funding in the first place???
  • What lessons have others who have taken funding learnt and how did it work out for them?

  Join us as we explore these issues and more, as we have a lively and interactive session with both investors and entrepreneurs. Among our panelists will include representatives from:

  eVentures Africa: eVentures Africa Fund (eVA Fund) is the first venture capital firm investing in African SME’s active in digital media.

  Invested Development: funds and supports radically affordable and innovative solutions to poverty in alternative energy and mobile technology.

  88mph: 88mph is a Denmark/Kenya based seed investment company with focus on Startups targeting the East African mobile and web market.

  Register to attend!

   

• Tech Startup Funding in Kenya – the Other Side of the Coin

  Posted: March 21, 2012, 10:11 am by Will Mutua

  Fairly recently I wrote a piece on “The ICT Funding Gap in Kenya“. We noted the existing gaps as far as funding is concerned particularly at the earliest stage of a tech startup. But it seems there is another side to the funding coin.

  In the recent past, the situation has radically changed in terms of the availability of funding particularly for software based startup funding at the seed level. Whereas, we’re not quite there yet, the situation is definitely not what it was even as little as a year ago. There’s more funding in the ecosystem and more funds willing to risk investing in early stage startups. And based on how things are currently progressing it may well be that the tables could soon turn or are already turning to a situation where the pressure is on startups.

  Following a discussion with some of these funds, I found they too are having certain challenges with funding startups.

  100% Commitment

  One of the main concerns of some of these funds is basically that they’re finding that local startup founders are not willing to commit 100% to their ventures. The founders are going about they’re venture, not because they believe in it or are sold out to it, but more of as a side project, what here could be termed as a “side hussle”. The founders have a few more projects on the sidelines that they’re not willing to let go of to pursue this particular one that they’re seeking funding for.

  Seed funding is a rather risky affair as it is, investors at this level are comfortable with that risk, but would want as much as possible to keep that risk within what is manageable. If a founder is split on what they want to do, and are not sold to one project and committed to giving it their best shot, then that presents an even greater risk for the investor. This “hussle mentality”, drastically reduces the chances of success and hence the chances of the investor making a return on their investment.

  Perhaps, on the other side, I could see why some local founders may have this “hussle mentality”. You see, unlike other parts of the world where a history of the success of tech startups has been established, such is yet to become clear here. In a manner of speaking, as far as the history of tech startups and innovation goes here in Kenya, it’s still the equivalent of those first few million years post the Big Bang. Yes, there are a handful of success stories at varying degrees, but we’re yet to see a good number of them. Perhaps, this leads to some founders thinking they need to spread their risk – if this doesn’t work, I still have this and that. Basically, hedging their chances of success.

  But that does work from an investor point of view, the investor is thinking, “I’m risking my money on your venture, you’d better be committed to it”

  Good ideas alone won’t cut it

  The other concern that came out is this myth that good ideas alone are good enough. Christina Tamer of Invested Development said it this way:

  Technologies and businesses must be market-driven. It’s important for entrepreneurs not to confuse market need with market demand. Just because people ‘need’ something or could use it, it doesn’t mean that they’re demanding it as a market and are willing to purchase.

  Many startups are founded on the idea of what the market ‘could‘ use. What they ‘might‘ need. Or what is perceived to be something people would want versus what they actually need. Or on the other hand what just sounds like a good idea to the founder, or what has worked in other markets.

  This simply calls for market research, which it seems, few tech startups are doing. One might argue that it could be out of the reach of most startups to afford doing comprehensive market research, but even without rolling out such an effort there is a level of research that one could carry out with little or no money. Simple things like talking to the right people such as either people who would be the target market for the product or service, or experienced people from that sector.

  There definitely are ideas that take off based on a deep intuition by the entrepreneur on what the market needs or anticipating what people could use, and even foreseeing what future needs to be. But even then some market research helps to clearly define the market and then build on that. A clear market means less risk for the investor, and higher chances of making a return on their investment.

  Coupled with this issue of defining markets is the issue of defining a workable business model for the startup.

  The NGO/grant money effect on valuation

  This is probably one of the most interesting insights I got, because I had never thought about it. If you’re in any way involved in the tech community here in Kenya, you will probably hear of a NGO backed hackathon or contest quite often. The idea is usually to provide grant money to people who come up with good ideas to solve some (usually social or human) problem. And there’s big money to be won in most if not all cases.

  What some of the funds are identifying as a potential downside to this is that it’s creating not businesses, but simply people who come and put something together just for the prize money. Not only that, it blurs the lines as far as how to value a startup in the earliest stages. It’s feeding more to this “hussle” mentality instead of producing solid tech-based businesses.

  Perhaps investors need to also come up with more IPO48 type events that are not just about creating cool technologies that don’t translate into business but actually finding good ideas and people to run with those ideas and then investing in them over the long term versus just giving them prize money. This is what gave good ideas like M-Farm the muscle to move ahead instead of dying at the level of just having won some prize money.

• Case Study: How Kenyan SME earns 60% of its Revenue from the Web (Part 2)

  Posted: March 16, 2012, 11:08 am by Will Mutua

  We continue with Grace’s story of her successful use of the Internet and social media in running a successful SME

  Stories such as that of Grace Murugi and her Cakes.co.ke business not only inspire, but also shed a light on the opportunities available to African businesses if we embrace Internet and Mobile technology, be it in operations or in Marketing.

  “If Online Payment could be more embraced locally, my work would be so much easier”

  In early 2011, Grace integrated online payment into her website to allow her clients to pay online via Credit Card. This opened up a new opportunity for her to tap the Diaspora market. A year later, nearly all Online Payment transactions come from clients in Diaspora who are purchasing Cakes for their loved ones in Kenya. Kenyans don’t trust Kenyan websites when it comes to Credit Card Payment, she says. They opt for M-PESA, the local Mobile Money service by Safaricom or Cash. For Grace, this presents an unnecessary complication in reconciling her accounts.

  “Being Google’s Ambassador for Kenya Business Online has been a big blessing for my business”
  
  Among her corporate Clients includes Google Kenya who discovered her business through (you guessed it right) their Search Engine. They have been getting their Cakes from her for a while. When Google Launched their Putting Kenyan Businesses Online initiative, they chose to use her as a classic example of what Kenyan SMEs can achieve by having an online presence. Google shot a Video testimonial on her and several other Kenyan businesses, as well as using her as the face of all their online advertising banners.

  This has given her unprecedented PR mileage, even earning her mentions across popular Radio Stations in Kenya such as Kiss 100, Hope FM and recently on Classic FM’s popular morning show. The resulting business exposure is priceless, and her website traffic has sky rocketed since she started featuring on KBO Ads.

  “Internet Marketing is so effective and so free it hurts”

  Grace has been managing her online platforms personally since inception. He only cost so far has been the time spent managing her website, as well as the $47 that she spends on her domain and website hosting. With 60% of her business coming from the website, she cannot think of any better way to market her Cakes.

  “I have never spent a dime on Above the Line Advertising. When I heard how much it costs to advertise in the Newspapers and on Radio, I was shocked”

  Grace derives inspiration from the success stories of the likes of ebay.com and cakelove.com. Her website gives her unlimited opportunities when it comes to the number of customers she can attend to from the comfort of her small shop in heart of Nairobi’s CBD. With my website, I can serve Millions of People, without the need of having all of them walk through my doors, says Grace. She references the thriving American Cottage Industry. In the US, entrepreneurs are able to run businesses worth millions from the comforts of their homes, why can’t we? She asks. To run a viable business in Kenya, a recognized Physical address that isn’t in your Mum’s basement is a must. The age old rule of Location, Location, Location is stronger than ever in Kenya.

  “Most people who call us first ask where we are located. Not that they want to come over, no, they just want to verify that we are not a briefcase company. Why it matters, I will never understand.”

  This year, Grace wanted to Trademark the name ‘Cakes.co.ke’ so as to protect an identity she has worked hard to build over the last 3 years, and also in line with her Franchise model of expansion. It was thus quite disappointing to find out that the Kenyan government has no legal provision for Trademarks that have .co.ke extensions to them.

  “That’s when I really felt the pinch of being held back by Government legislation, or the lack of for that matter”

  Grace has now expanded her business to include a Training School where she trains interested clients in Cake making. She did not think twice about employing the same Web Marketing strategies as those used in her business to promote the Training School. It still works like a charm, she says.

  “No matter how you Market, at the end only one thing matters; is it a Good Product?”
  
  Grace shared with me an anecdote of a client who bought Cake from her in 2009, before leaving for a long stint abroad. When the client came back to town early this year, she gave Grace a call asking that she delivers to her the same Cake she made 2 years ago. The client couldn’t remember what type of Cake it was. The only thing she remembers is that she loved it! For me, that will always be my biggest Strategy, making amazing Cakes. She concludes.

• Case Study: How Kenyan SME earns 60% of its Revenue from the Web (Part 1)

  Posted: March 15, 2012, 11:25 am by Will Mutua

  Africa is undergoing a wonderful renaissance, driven by Internet and Mobile Technology. In just 10 years we have leaped from a 0.4% internet penetration rate to 13.5% internet penetration rate, according to Internet World Stats. We have embraced mobile technology, making it a part of our day to day business, at times setting the pace in innovation such as is the case with Mobile Money. True, we have a long way to go. 90% of African businesses do not have online presence, and only 2% of Global online content is from Africa. However at the rate we are going, this will change, soon.

  Stories such as that of Grace Murugi and her Cakes.co.ke business not only inspire, but also shed a light on the opportunities available to African businesses if we embrace Internet and Mobile technology, be it in operations or in Marketing.

  Her passion for baking Cakes and Pastries goes way back, but only while in campus did she commercialize it, albeit on small scale. It was a simple business model. She got orders from her fellow Campus students, did the baking at home and brought the cakes back to school for delivery. She posted a couple of posters and printed a few business cards but mainly relied on referrals and word of mouth to get her business.

  Grace was pursuing a Computer Science Degree and had a career in Technology awaiting her upon completion in 2009. She however opted to continue Baking Cakes.

  With a layman’s knowledge of Marketing and an appreciation of e-Commerce, she decided to use the Web in promoting her fledgling business. Her Computer Science background gave her sufficient skills to build a simple website as well as get herself website hosting and domain registration. She read online tutorials to learn some Search Engine Optimization and the basics of Social Media Marketing, and subsequently used the skills acquired to set up a Facebook page and a twitter Account. Since then, she has been posting daily photos of and updates about her Cakes.

  “My business is where it is today because of my Website, my Facebook Page and my Mailing List”

  For two years Grace has relied on her Website, her Facebook Page and her Mailing list to get new and repeat business. She now generates 60% of her Monthly revenue from Website leads, and wants to grow this percentage further. Her website is her ever fresh Catalogue, her Facebook page enables her to update her clients daily and get their feedback. She also sends out one Email update per month to her Mailing List of Eight Hundred clients. These are clients who are too busy to follow her on Facebook or visit her website every day.

  Every morning, after ensuring that all her Baking needs are taken care of, she settles down with her iPad to check her email messages, respond to queries on her Facebook page and Twitter Profile as well as track the previous day’s traffic on her Website.

  A beaming Grace proudly says that the strategy is working.

  Cakes.co.ke is currently ranked no.1 on Google Search for Cake related Keywords in Kenya. Over time, she has mastered the art of Content Marketing. She says that her best kept secret to being ranked no. 1 is the daily updates on Cakes.co.ke and her Facebook page. The website is rich with information on her Cakes, and her happy Clients. The few minutes spent on her website and Social Networks each morning have brought her hundreds of clients each month through Search Engine Leads.

  ===

  This case study was put together by Alex Muriu (@alexmuriu) the same guy who brought you the Mobile Web East Africa Infographic!

• The ICT Funding Gap in Kenya

  Posted: March 12, 2012, 8:31 am by Will Mutua

   The Missing Middle

  While capital has flowed rapidly to satisfy the needs of the largest and — thanks to the microfinance boom – the smallest African companies, SMEs have fallen into a “missing middle.” SMEs in the missing middle are starving for capital. They are too large for micro-finance institutions, too small for main-stream private equity and not serviced by commercial banks, which prefer to focus on high-value, low risk corporate clients. – From Open Capital Advisors, “The Missing Middle”

  One of the often cited challenges many startups in Kenya (and much of Africa) face is that of finding relevant funding for their startup especially in the earliest stages, what is known as seed funding.

  The situation has somewhat improved over the past few years but still there seems to be a gap remaining. In recent times, some innovators and entrepreneurs have found an aveue to get the funding they need through participating in pitch contests such as IPO48 and others.

  The Capital Markets Authority (CMA) of Kenya, fairly recently carried out a research study and published a report titled, “Impact Investing: Challenges and Opportunities in the East African ICT Sector”. The report sheds some light on the funding situation in the region.

  According to the report, ICT contributes 3 – 5% to GDP on average to the East African countries (based on 2008 data). The ICT sector is, however growing at about 8 – 12% on average across the region. According to the report, in Kenya, the ICT and transport sectors combined contribute about 14% to Kenya’s GDP, more than manufacturing:

  One interesting observation from this report is that the major source of funding for Kenyan Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is from personal loans and from friends (50.3%).

  It would appear that the largest funding gap is currently at the early stage or ‘seed’ level, particularly for software startups. Other sub-sectors have varying funding gaps though:

  Let’s face it folks, raising seed funding is hard enough for normal start-ups- I would say its at least twice as hard in Africa – Mbwana Alliy

  The telecoms market is currently dominated by fairly large companies that have the capacity to raise any necessary funding from a wide array of sources. Smaller firms have a harder time acquiring medium term (5 – 7 years) capital.

  While the cost of capital may be high for companies in the hardware sub-sector, these companies have the ability to use their equipment as collateral to access financing such as trade financing and working capital financing from banks, and vendor financing from equipment suppliers.

  Within the software sub-sector, companies dealing in established and well-known brand name software would appear to have it easier than the smaller startups that are working on a custom idea that has not yet picked up. Established brand name dealers and re-sellers for example can more easily obtain some trade financing from banks when they have established clientele and purchase orders.

  Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms also face significant challenges as far as funding goes. These companies typically will need heavy investment in order to acquire equipment, train staff and also for marketing. This is compounded by the fact that to be highly competitive, a BPO firm will need to attain some significant level of scale, for example in terms of the number of call center seats.

  This is an excerpt from an upcoming report by Afrinnovator titled “Kenya Technology, Innovation and Startup Report 2012” Look out for it!

• From Mobile Money to Mobile Finance: Effects of Mobile Money on household, community and national economics

  Posted: February 17, 2012, 10:23 pm by Will Mutua

  Back in 2011,  Erik Hersman, Ken Banks & Rudy De Waele curated a presentation dubbed “Mobile Trends 2020 Africa“, a collaborative outlook. Essentially they sought the views of different people across the continent who are players in one way or another in mobile on what they thought the future of mobile in Africa held and what it would be like in 2020. I was honoured to give my 5 thoughts on what I thought would trend in mobile within this period. One of my predictions was that: “Mobile money will shift economies on a large scale and across borders.”

  So it came as a rather interesting discovery to learn that according to a recent Africa Development Bank (AfDB) research study, increased uptake of M-PESA, which is the literal mother of Mobile Money, is said to be contributing with some level of significance to the levels inflation in Kenya. Inflation was a major problem in the Kenyan economy in 2011, having hit a high of 19.7% towards the end of the year.

  It seems we have already got to that point already where mobile money is becoming a matter of concern as far as national economies are concerned. According to an article titled “M-PESA linked to rise in Inflation“ in the Business Daily, a Kenyan business paper:

  Increased uptake of M-Pesa, Kenya’s dominant money transfer service, has fuelled inflation as the service grew large enough to influence implementation of monetary policy, an African Development Bank (AfDB) research claims.

  Then very recently a discussion broke on local Kenyan discussion, Wazua, on speculations that Safaricom, Kenya’s top MNO and M-PESA operator, would buy a bank. Whether such speculations are true or not, one thing is for sure, mobile money has come a long way in a relatively short term and it’s for sure that mobile money is affecting economies at the household level and at national level so that now we can study the finance and the economics of mobile money. This area of M-Finance, as it were, will become an area of increasing interest in future, perhaps it will be even necessary for universities to include this topic as an area of study in itself or within finance-related courses.

  The household level

  William Jack of Georgetown University and Tavneet Suri of MIT Sloan in 2009-10 carried out a survey in which they sought to investigate the “Economics of M-PESA“, apparently the survey had the blessing of the Central Bank of Kenya, Safaricom and Vodafone.

  Perhaps the most interesting effects of mobile money on households relates to ease of movement of funds & saving capacity.

  According to the previously mentioned survey, it appeared that M-PESA encouraged people to feel safe to keep funds in their M-PESA account for fairly extended periods of time. On the other hand, mobile money also affords an easy, and cost friendly means of moving money.

  It is true that Safaricom is moving massive amounts per day via M-PESA is estimated to move about 2 billion shillings daily, and according to a Safaricom report, between April and September 2011, they moved Sh. 314 billion. It’s interesting that this amount is actually a minor fraction of the total money moved within the country. According to the same report (based on fairly dated information):

  …the volume of transactions effected between banks under the RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement] method is nearly 700 times the daily value transacted through M‐PESA. On the other hand, the average mobile transaction is about a hundred times smaller than the average check transaction (Automated Clearing House, or ACH), and even just half the size of the average Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) transaction. Thus M‐PESA is not designed to replace all payment mechanisms, but has found and filled a niche in the market in which it provides significantly enhanced financial services.

  It would be interesting to learn what the current share of total transaction volumes is being handled via mobile money versus other means (if you have any tips please comment below).

  The Community Level

  Beyond households, mobile money is affecting local community economics. The introduction of mobile money and it’s effects at individual and household level eventually spill over and start having effects in communal life.

  The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded a project dubbed “The Financial Services Assessment” project in 2010 that was designed to examine the impact of financial services on the lives ofpoor people across the developing world. Part of their outcomes relating to the effects of M-PESA were published in a paper titled “Community-Level Economic Effects of M-PESA in Kenya: Initial Findings“, authored by Megan G. Plyler, Sherri Haas and Geetvea Nagara of the IRIS Center, University of Maryland.

  According to their findings, M-PESA had four overarching economic effects at the community level:

  1. Local economic expansion: In essence, the team found that, M-PESA facilitated increased money circulation which had an effect of increasing local consumption, which of course means more business for local store owners and the like. In addition new business and employment opportunities arise out of for example the establishment of M-PESA agents, existing store owners could also diversify their offering by including this service that is now in much demand
  2. Security: Other than physical security (i.e. muggers realizing that few people carry liquid cash) the study found that M-PESA contributed to money security, that is by enabling people to safely store funds in their mobile money account
  3. Capital accumulation: Being able to save money instead of spend it enables wage earners to accumulate financial resources on their phone safely even without having to have a bank account or resort to a less secure mechanism such as keeping cash under the mattress
  4. Business environment: “M-PESA reduces the overall transaction cost of moving capital along a network and increases the flow ofcapital. While the amount of money M-PESA moves is relatively small among formal financial systems in Kenya, the number of transactions and volume of flow is increasing and covers larger segments of Kenya’s population in terms of income, age and depth and breadth of access (Jack and Suri, 2009)”

  The National Level: Monetary Policy

  This is where things get really interesting. The effect at the household and even community level are almost predictable from the earliest signs of successes of mobile money. The national economic effects however have been more gradual and have become more and more pronounced with the increased adoption and use of mobile money services.

  In fact, the issue of the macro-economic impact of mobile money has spawned academic interest and conferences to discuss these issues. In 2010, for example, The Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) at the Columbia Business School hosted an event dubbed “The Macroeconomics of Mobile Money” to discuss the impact of mobile money on the macro-economic situation.

  1. Impact of Mobile Money on GDP

  Menekse Gencer of mPay Connect Consulting gave a presentation at the CITI event (there’s a paper based on the same presentation as well) looking at the impact of mobile money on GDPs of emerging markets. According to him, mobile money has triggered improvements in GDP. Menekse notes a statistic that a 10% rise in mobile subscribers in emerging markets would lead to a 0.6% to 1.2% increase in GDP. Why would mobile money make contributions to a country’s GDP? According to Menekse, the answer lies in 5 forces that are inherent to mobile money:

  1. The ubiquity of data transmission that mobile provides means that financial services can be extended to reach people who were previously unreachable.
  2. Mobile money as a new industry that is precipitating new investments for new ventures, new jobs and new revenue streams for existing companies
  3. Mobile money as an infrastructure supporting new businesses in other industries
  4. Mobile money formalizes the informal financial sector , enabling savings, loans and investments in lieu of “cash under the mattress”
  5. Mobile money enables efficiencies associated with digitization and reduces frictions associated with cash (such as theft or ‘shoe leather costs‘)

  2. Impact of Mobile Money on Monetary Policy

  a). Monetary Policy –  Effect on Money Supply

  Mobile money would affect money supply in two ways at least as per the M1 definition of Money which combines the currency in circulation and demand deposits:

  1. Currency circulation: Mobile money creates a situation where people have more money in their pockets in the form of mobile money. What happens if  these stores become vastly more than actual cash in supply?
  2. Demand deposits: Traditionally demand deposits have been considered to include easily accessible funds stored in demand deposit accounts in a commercial bank. Well, how does storing money on your mobile phone fit into this? Further more, what if you could move the money off shore

  b). Monetary Policy – Effect on Velocity of Money

  The velocity of money  is the average frequency with which a unit of money is spent in a specific period of time. This is the issue the AfDB research we quoted earlier found – simply put, money held in M-PESA accounts has much higher transactional velocity.

  “Evidence shows that the transactions velocity of M-Pesa may be three to four times higher than the transactions velocity of other components of money.

  “The increase in the velocity of money induced by these activities may have in turn propagated self-fulfilling inflation expectations and complicated monetary policy implementation,” said AfDB in a brief on inflation dynamics in selected East African Countries.

  Conclusion

  The fact of the matter is that mobile money is not only disruptive in terms of technology, but also as far as economics goes. And this trend will continue into the future perhaps becoming even more interesting as the uptake of mobile money increases, mobile payments and mobile transactions become mainstream and even cross border as well as integrated to other forms of money stores.

• The Role of Government in Promoting Tech Innovation in Africa

  Posted: February 10, 2012, 6:04 pm by Will Mutua

  In talking about the efforts to promote technology and innovation in Africa, we tend to focus a lot of attention on private initiatives such as innovation hubs and the like. It is clear, however, that without a supportive, forward thinking government, it would be very difficult to move things forward.

  Ultimately a generally stable government creating the right environment for business and investment is critical for tech, innovation and startups to take off. More specifically though, it is imperative that governments also understand the specific opportunities that are there in the area of ICT, and not just the opportunities but also the challenges that exist because at times governments are best placed to provide the best solutions to some challenges such as by enacting enabling legislation.

  Thankfully, governments in places such as Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, and other countries on the continent have not been ignorant of this. This is evidenced in some initiatives such as setting up organisations specific to the growth of the local ICT sector e.g. the ICT Board of Kenya, government investment in local tech startups, investment in infrastructure and bringing up tech parks that aim at drawing in investment from outside.

  Nigeria’s ICT minister, Omobola Johnson, recently had a chat with ABN Digital about the Nigerian ICT sector and what the ICT ministry is doing to promote the sector. What’s interesting is that, while she was speaking about the local, Nigerian, situation, many of her observations – challenges, opportunities… – are very similar to other areas on the continent. Let’s take a look at some of these:

  Challenges:

  1. Local Consumption

  Ms. Johnson identifies the fact that many companies in Nigeria will opt for foreign built enterprise software whearas the country has skilled IT people who have created solutions that work.  This is a common problem on the continent. Somehow, enterprises generally do not trust locally built solutions vs. foreign built software which tends to be more expensive and at times even requires importing relevantly skilled personnel to handle the software.

  This creates a situation where not only are local developers not getting appropriate support to build and maintain their software but also where they’re being overlooked as far as labor is concerned to install, run and maintain the software. (Read: Mending Africa’s Tech Skills Gap & Tapping into it’s Youthful Population to Power Innovation in Tech & the African Renaissance)

  2. Funding

  This is a classic challenge across many African countries. The number of Angel investors is growing but still there is a gap as far as securing seed funding is concerned. Mbwana Alliy recently wrote an article looking at the issue of raising seed capital for your tech startup in Africa. As he noted, the dynamics of raising funding on the African continent is are very different from what is the norm in other areas of the world. It would appear to be quite easy to create a startup and at a very early stage, get massive amounts of funding in places like Silicon Valley. In Africa, things are quite different. Ms. Johnson notes that to move local software development enterprise forward, the traditional, collateral-based funding options are not going to work.

  …let’s face it folks, raising seed funding is hard enough for normal start-ups- I would say its at least twice as hard in Africa- even though Africa is uniquely positioned and there is rising curiosity and recognition of real growth investment opportunities outside of BRIC countries… Mbwana

  Some governments have stepped forward to provide an alternative for funding through grants such as the Kenya ICT Board Local Content Grant.

  3. Intellectual Property

  Another issue that Ms. Johnson notes as a major challenge to the young Nigerian software developer is the risk of losing their innovation to a much larger entity where some other entity that has the muscle basically takes ones idea and runs with it. She notes the need for appropriate IP to protect local innovators.

  The issue of Intellectual Property however is one that at times needs to be approached with caution – too much of it or applied in an inappropriate manner and we could end up stifling innovation instead of fostering it.

  Strategies to maximize opportunities

  1. Industry Standardisation

  As far as the issue of local enterprises using locally built software, sometimes the enterprise defends it’s position as far as importing technology and skills by noting a lack of quality in local software. Ms. Johnson suggests creating a standardisation mechanism that upholds standards as far as software development is concerned – quality standards for the software itself, documentation etc.

  This in part is what has led countries such as Kenya to launch certification and standardisation programs such as Kenya’s “Chipuka Certification” for software developers:

  The Kenya ICT Board launched today, Tuesday, February 7, 2012 introduced a certification program that will offer credential examination for software developers in Kenya. The Certification program dubbed ‘Chipuka’ which stands for “To Emerge” is being designed in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University. The certification will help employers to easily identify software developers that have the skills necessary to carry out IT jobs to a professional and world class standard.

  This particular initiative in Kenya, was also created to address the current IT skills gap in the country:

  A study carried out in 2011 by the Kenya ICT Board and IDC, revealed that there is currently a software skills gap in Kenya. Although there is a high demand for software development in Kenya, few companies source these skills locally. At least a quarter of companies surveyed said they were not satisfied with the quality of IT professionals in the local market. As a result, nearly a third, plan to contract external providers.

  The survey predicts that the demand for software developers will grow by 135% between 2011 and 2013.

  2. Incubation

  Incubation and innovation centers create spaces to consolidate entrepreneurial activity, foster innovation and impart other relevant skills to enable innovators turn innovations into products and a business. Private initiatives particularly as far as innovation hubs go are thriving across the continent. The government can step in and give even more thrust to these initiatives, of particular help would be more incubation centers in public universities. Places where university students can take the skills they are learning and apply them to innovative enterprise.

  3. Develop local market

  The fact is that to develop the local IT industry, enterprise support is necessary. Enterprises can create great demand for relevant skills and products. As Ms. Johnson notes “We may not be able to build the big enterprise software overnight… but there are elements of integration… ” and these are areas where local tech entrepreneurs can come in to create value and grow local IT industries

• Mending Africa’s Tech Skills Gap & Tapping into it’s Youthful Population to Power Innovation in Tech & the African Renaissance

  Posted: February 3, 2012, 1:28 pm by Will Mutua

  In a rapidly changing technology world, it’s not only important that one understands how to do your current job/technology well but also be exposed to new ones, particularly in open source and cloud computing and mobile development technologies that may not have originated from the enterprise segment or the 10 year old technology used by your bank. – Mbwana Alliy

  In a previous article looking at doing tech business in Africa, we found that Africa’s youthful population is where it’s at. Majority of the African population is under 30 years of age with two thirds being under 25 according to the Africa Commission. We saw that presented an unprecedented potential market for those who can understand this demography and provide what they are demanding.

  On the other hand, this youthful population also presents a massive potential labor force. According to the Africa Commission, by 2015 youth will account for up to almost 30% of the total African labor force. If appropriately skilled and exposed, this youthful population can easily provide the brains and smarts to power Africa’s renaissance particularly as far as technology and innovation go.

  Douglas Cohen, in an article titled “The IT Skills Gap is Everyones Business“, explains the ICT skills gap in South Africa:

  There is a shortage of ICT skills in the South African market. That is a fact. There is however a difference of opinion on the scale of shortage. The National Department of Labour last issued a National Master Scarce Skills list in April 2008, indicating the ICT sector needed a minimum of 37,565 IT professionals to ensure adequate skills in this sector. However, the results of a more recent ICT survey, conducted by IT Web and the Joburg Centre for Software has found the department underestimated, by almost half, how many ICT skills are needed in SA. The suggestion therefore is that the ‘real’ skills shortage can be as high as 70,000 practitioners – more than 25% of the current workforce.

  The Right Education

  The World Bank Knowledge Economy Indicator comprises innovation, education and ICT scores and measures a region’s innovativeness relative to these. As the diagram above shows, Africa lags behind other regions as far as this measurement. But even more important is the relation between education and innovation. Regions with better scores on education tend to be more innovative.

  Crippling Tech Curricula

  A few years back I had the opportunity to work briefly at Microsoft East Africa as what they call an Academic Developer Evangelist. The point of the role was to influence college and university tech-related academic programmes so that they adopt and teach the latest Microsoft developer tools and technologies such as .NET. The job gave me an opportunity to gain some insight into the state of technology education across the East African region.

  What I quickly realised was just how static tech curricula were relative to the dynamism of the real world of technology. Most students were stuck at the level of outdated, obsolete  concepts (across the open source and proprietary spectrum) that put them at a disadvantage upon graduation. Many tech firms have to re-train fresh graduates upon hiring them so that they can come up to speed with the realities of technology in the real world.

  Industry – Business Gap

  The tech curricula problem is aggravated the more by the gap between industry and the academic world. The problem is simple, ICT-related businesses operate in the ‘real world’ of technology that is highly dynamic. To be competitive, they have to be constantly on the look out for what’s new, and adapt rapidly when things change – when new technologies come up, when the major tech companies such as Google and Microsoft take strategic routes that set the pace for what direction technology will develop in future… The most successful ICT companies have to be agile.

  On the other hand, the academic world is sort of closed up in a cocoon of relative stability. The same things are taught year in year out, with little or no change to reflect the reality of the world of technology. Unless a student is exposed elsewhere, or they happen to be really curious, they’re stuck. To make matters worse, the education system often trains students to not be inquisitive and explorative.

  In Kenya, many have complained against the 8-4-4 curriculum saying that it’s basically a system that encourages cramming and regurgitating. The fact of the matter is that even before they get to university, students have already been accustomed to receiving without question what the teacher gives them, then getting an exam where all they have to do is give back to the teacher exactly what the teacher gave them in exactly the same way, or else they fail.

  Mr. Macharia, CEO of Seven Seas Technologies in Kenya notes:

  “ … there’ s an urgent need to incorporate industry needs in university curricula across all our universities to ensure industry relevance.

  Time has come for all the stakeholders in the higher education sector to join hands and tackle the skills deficiency problem to avoid sending out to the job market graduates trained under IT environments not aligned to the dynamic ICT Industry. It is costly to have fresh graduates, hired as engineers on the bench and not billable for several months before we can actively deploy them to customer environments, a practice quite the opposite in the accounting industry.”

  Solutions

  What are possible solutions to the skills gap dilemma? Altering university curricula is a long process, you can’t just wake up tomorrow and say, “hey, lets drop this and start teaching that.” and just do it. Are there other alternatives? Is there anything that’s currently providing a solution?

  1. Tech hubs

  Tech hubs across Africa are providing brilliant spaces for learning to take place outside the confines of strict curricula. Before tech hubs it was difficult for students to get direct access to and interact with industry practitioners. Meetups and tech talks in these community environments provide great opportunities for the exposure of students. With the right exposure, at least the student can then take the initiative to go out and learn for themselves.

  2. Industry Steps In

  It may not be the core business of industry practitioners to provide training to young students but it is to their advantage to have the necessary skills readily available. This is what must have led the likes of Seven Seas Technologies to invest in training freshly graduated university students.The alternative, importing the necessary skills, is a costly affair. Perhaps more companies should step in to fill this gap in like manner, at the end of the day, it is to the benefit of the organization.

  3. Third party initiatives

  One of the best examples is Coders4Africa:

  Coders4Africa was created in 2010 through the efforts of five friends who collectively have over 40 years of experience in the software engineering and development field. We are a not-for-profit organization with an initiative that focuses on providing professional training and certification on a variety of platforms to 1,000 African software and application developers by the year 2016. After years of interaction with technologist in Africa we decided to focus on software development as a way of giving back to the communities we originated from. Being born and raised in Africa although educated in the United States, gave us an advantage in regards to bridging the gap between Africans and the diaspora. - Kwame Andah (Co-Founder, Coders4Africa)

  At the end of the day however, innovation is not just a matter of having raw skills. It’s about applying those raw skills innovatively. It’s about thinking outside the box and applying the necessary skills to create.

  The beauty about tech skills particularly when it comes to programming, is that these skills can be easily acquired by the individual. The World Wide Web harbours a wealth of great learning material that is free to use, plus the necessary tools are also available for free download. Several great influencers and innovators in technology were not even schooled in tech but were self-taught.

  As we noted, Africa’s youth are tech-savvy, eager to learn, agile and have a great desire to carve out for themselves a better future free of the stain of mis-conceptions of the continent. Rightly skilled, this young population can be the engine to drive Africa forward into its future. Jon Kalan, writing for the Huffington Post notes regarding Nairobi’s youth:

  The country’s slowly improving education system is churning out a new generation of university graduates who are aggressive, ambitious, and hungry for a better future. They are fiercely proud of Nairobi, and feel they hold the responsibility for its economic future and its emergence in the global spotlight in their hands. They no longer graduate university with hopes of ending up at the once best paying jobs in town — UN agencies and the scores of other well financed NGOs. Instead they dream of starting their own business, or finding work in an increasingly robust private sector full of entrepreneurial ideas. The same cannot be said in most of Kenya’s neighboring countries.

• Doing Tech Business in Africa: A Few Lessons from Twitter’s Rise in Africa

  Posted: January 28, 2012, 5:42 pm by Will Mutua

  Very recently Portland Communications released some data from research carried to find out about the usage of Twitter in Africa. The report was received quite well and received some notable attention across the web. Much of what has been written has looked mostly at just the implications of the research on primarily social media and it’s use and growth in Africa. But I’d like to take a different turn and perhaps use some of the insights from this research to shed light on the subject of tech startups in Africa and what works.

  Qualitative vs Quantitative Factors

  According to the report, South Africa is the continent’s most active country by volume of geo-located Tweets, with over twice as many Tweets (5,030,226 during Q4 2011) as the next most active Kenya (2,476,800) and third comes  Nigeria at 1,646,212 tweets. This continues to give credence to the idea that these three are the countries to watch as far as technology and innovation in Africa go.

  Mbwana recently wrote a very well thought out exposition on what factors to look at when selecting which country is best to do business in Africa. Among the factors, Mbwana points out that one should look at are regulatory and macro-economic factors. Looking at rankings based on World Bank and IFC data, these three countries feature prominently among the top 15 countries in Sub-saharan Africa that are easiest to do business in – South Africa ranks 2nd, Kenya 9th and Nigeria 15th.

  It is interesting, however, that based largely on more quantifiable terms such as taxation and credit rankings, the latter two of  these three countries do not appear to be the most promising to invest in a tech startup relative to others on the list. There appears to be other factors that are making these countries rise above other states that would seem obviously better candidates when considering where do a tech startup than these.

  It seems the more qualitative aspects have a strong bearing on where to do tech business in Africa. Borrowing from Mbwana’a article two key qualitative considerations are:

  An entrepreneurial support network – Startup Culture:

  Basically is there a critical mass of other like minded people in the country? People you can learn from, people who’ve already interacted with the system and have learnt how to go about things in that country when doing tech business? In any case having more people trying to achieve in the same area as you are also makes it exciting to do business and creates a great ecosystem to operate in.

  Perhaps that’s why so many tech startups move to Silicon Valley, there’s something about being in a place where there are many people competing and co-operating and those clusters create great feeding ground for investors. Vibrant innovation hubs such as Nairobi’s Innovation Hub and Nigeria’s Co-Creation Hub are indicative of the presence of a strong entrepreneurial support network.

  Lesson: Don’t forget the qualitative aspects. Balance out the quantitative aspects verses the more qualitative ones.

  Local Culture:

  In ‘Pondering Africa’s Tech Investment Potential for 2012 and Beyond‘, we noted how devastating it can be for the foreign investor to fall into the mis-understanding that Africa is one country, with one culture.

  The diversity of cultures in different parts of Africa has a strong bearing on not only how people do business there but also on how consumers will respond to products – not just the product itself but how it is presented and the messaging around it. You can have a great product and kill it with your advertising messaging.

  A great example of how understanding the culture can make a great difference in how well the target market take up a product in Kenya is Safaricom’s advertising. Many of Safaricom’s products were more widely received than competing offerings simply because they understood local Kenyan lingo and incorporated it in product names and advertising messaging.

  For example, transferring airtime credit from one’s Safaricom line to another is dubbed “Sambaza” the competing Airtel service (this was really the mistake of Airtel’s predecessors, Airtel seems to be doing much better) called their own similar offering “ME2U”, people took to Sambaza versus ME2U and nowadays you’ll hear a Kenyan with an Airtel line saying they want to “Sambaza” credit to another Airtel line…. this is a bit hard to explain given most of the people reading this are not Kenyan but it’s exactly the same thing as saying you are going to “Google something on Yahoo”

  Lesson: Keep in mind the context of your operation

  The Youth of Africa are where it’s at

  The report indicates that 60% of Africa’s tweeters are between the ages of 20 and 29. That’s pretty amazing if you think about it.

  According to the 2011 Africa Youth Report compiled by the Economic Commission for Africa:

  The majority of Africa’s population is below the age of 30… Young Africans are the key to an African renaissance and will remain players in and advocates of social transformation and development in many spheres. The enormous benefits young people can contribute are realized when investment is made in young people’s education, employment,health care, empowerment and effective civil participation

  According to this document from the Africa Commission:

  Almost two-thirds of the population in Africa is below 25 years of age. More than 20 per cent, or almost 189 million, are youth between 15 and 24 years of age. This share will remain more or less constant for the next 10 years.

  This presents an unprecedented market and labor pool (Read: Kenya Julisha ICT report: Invest in new skills. It’s called Human Capital) if tapped. Many are tech savvy and connected unlike ever before on the African continent and they are willing to learn & try new things. They do not have immediate memory of colonial times, and so are not living with that burden on their minds, they see a world open to them to explore, where they can compete with contemporaries from across the globe, and share and learn from them.Thanks to the Internet and web (particularly delivered via mobile) they have ready access to information and this has empowered them.

  Lesson: Tap into the youthful African population

  Reflecting again on the Twitter report, it is interesting that majority of Twitter users in Africa are using it to stay connected with friends – 81% of those polled saying that they mainly used Twitter for communication with friends. One could easily draw a parallel between Twitter and SMS messaging (only that Tweeting is cheaper). Perhaps one reason why Twitter is picking up is that Africans can already relate to sending short messages via mobile and so it is really to turn to the internet based for communication with friends – the principle is the same.

  Lesson: If you’re introducing something new, it could be helpful if you can mimick something that’s already common to increase adoption rate

  The Power of Mobile (duh)

  The Portland Communications research indicates that close to 60% of tweets from Africa are sent via mobile phone. Now, the amazing link between Africa and the mobile platform is not a new subject but one that deserves mention over and over again. The simple fact is that the mobile device will remain the most powerful platform to reach the mass market in Africa for some time to come.

  There are companies that are doing pretty well by tapping into this. For example, ForgetMeNotAfrica brings internet messaging and social networking to every mobile phone including the most basi ‘feature’ phones without WAP.

• Building Websites that Work in Africa

  Posted: January 25, 2012, 11:35 am by Will Mutua

  It is interesting that sometimes it’s not the most robust and well designed solutions that get picked up by consumers. Great design of course is something of great importance when designing a piece of software, an app or a website. And clients will gravitate to well designed (graphically, not in terms of user experience), well tested and robust services. But sometimes, it seems, it’s enough that something simply works!

  Africa is a bit of a late-comer to the internet. Since the .com boom and bust, the internet has evolved and grown in leaps and bounds. It’s only a few years ago that the term Web 2.0 emerged, giving an identity to what the web had evolved into. In terms of technology, particularly on the software side, much has come about. There are a myriad of frameworks for developing robust web applications and web services based on a wide array of standards.

  The technology today affords the creation of some great looking web apps with solid engineering behind them. At the turn of the millenium, the websites were pretty well, boring, at least as compared to the standard today. Even, a person with little or no programming knowledge can create a great looking website in a few minutes using WordPress or other such blog and CMS platforms.

  Yet it still occurs that at times consumers do not turn to the most well designed website to satisfy their needs. Sometimes it just boils down to who was first to market and who is offering a service that works, and one that works without failing.

  Back in 2008/9 one of the suggestions going around within Kenyan tech-circles about how easy it is to create a ‘Kenyan’ Craigslist and how it would be quite easy to make it pretty successful. Craigslist is one of those few websites that survived through the .com boom/bust period. But one pretty amazing thing about Craigslist is that, at face-value, it’s not a work of genius in terms of graphic design. It is actually at best, simply a list. And it works, people use it, and they’re making money off it.

  Here in Kenya there are two very popular websites that prove this point both owned by Cheki Africa Media. Cheki.co.ke (currently ranked 49th in Kenya on Alexa, top 10 locally) is a used cars website and brightermonday.com (Currently ranked  45th on Alexa among all sites visited by Kenyans and top 10 locally) is a jobs site. Both do not have what one might consider stunning graphic design even compared to other players in the same market, but both have become probably the leaders in their industries and have expanded to other East African countries and even to Nigeria. Both sites provide a very specific service and do a great job at what they’re made for.

   

  In Nigeria, Nairaland is ranked as the 10th most popular website and 2nd among local websites by Alexa. Nairaland is a basic online discussion forum. Nothing fancy.

  Question is, why does it happen that at times the successful site is not the greatest looking one? If you’re planning to create a web offering in Africa there are some important lessons here.

  First to market

  Africa is Rising. And technology is the main engine. Things are also happening fast! There are many opportunities to offer online services that have not yet been tried in different regions of Africa but those opportunities are being filled up fast! People are seeing the gaps and filling them.

  So, sometimes it’s best not to get stuck on getting everything right as far as look and feel go but of more importance would be getting into the market fast, first and with a product that works, hence raking in the customers and possible revenues before competition shows up. Then work from there, you can add on great graphic design afterwards. Just make sure you have a solid product, that’s scaleable. You can add on the great graphics work later – that’s why you iterate in product development.

  If you are offering a great service, and customers catch on and engage with your service, it is unlikely that they’ll jump ship when someone else comes by who’s offering exactly what you are offering with a better looking skin on it.

  User Experience Design trumps Graphic Design

  As far as design goes, it’s NOT wise to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Don’t just cobble up something and serve it to the customer and say, “Hey, it works!”. You may not want to hold up the product because of the graphic design side of things but user experience is everything. If you’re going to spend time on design, spend as much of it as you can on getting aspects of user experience and user interaction just right.

  Mobile Web Rules in Africa Design Specifically for it

  In Africa, it’s worth noting that most internet consumers do not have the luxury of the full scale desktop browser experience. Much of Africa’s internet usage is via mobile phone. In Kenya, for example, statistics have shown that 99% of internet access is done via mobile. And as far as mobile web browsers go, in Africa, Opera Mini is probably the standard.

  Therefore it would be wise to invest in creating a custom site for mobile, or making your website mobile friendly. As far as web design for mobile goes, the cardinal principle is to minimize. Minimize on the number of graphics you have, minimize on the number of actions a user needs to do or number of pages it takes to accomplish a task.

  Conclusion

  It’s better that it works than it looks great but doesn’t work. All the same there is a minimum as far as design goes, it may work but it may look really awful. So get the balance, but don’t be over-concerned about getting the perfect graphic design on the first iteration. Andrew Mugoya recently published an ebooklet titled ‘Help, I am a developer with no clue about design – 6 1/2 tips for developers with no access to designers‘ that’s targeted at developers who can’t get dedicated resources for design that could help get the minimum as far as design is concerned. The simple tips in this book offer simple, practical ideas for the minimum as far as design goes.

• WezaTele’s MyOrder Powers Mobile Ordering

  Posted: January 23, 2012, 10:53 am by Will Mutua

  Weza Tele is a visionary firm that leverages on technologies such as, USSD, Mobile Web, and SMS to provide order management, distribution, tracking, circulation and validation solutions. Weza Tele also offers reliable customer service, support and maintenance to its clients.

  Myorder Enterprise provides a tailored, deployed solution that automates order management, tracking and validation across the enterprise. At its center is a dashboard where distributors and customers, manage inventory, generate reports, and view performance trends.

  SMS ordering: New feature in Myorder Enterprise

  According to the CCK Kenya latest report (2012), there are 27 million mobile subscribers, SMS per subscribers per month growing by 125% from 8.5 SMS as at June 2011 to 18.99 SMS at September 2011.

  Weza Tele has tapped into this market by developing an SMS-based ordering service for its clients that they are currently working with in the industries of publications, cosmetics, beverages, grocery & food stores as they strive to reach their vendors and end users with an easier way for them to order from their simple phones.

  It is easy to use and integrate into your current sales process and the service consists of 3 simple steps:

  1. Register
  2. Order your items
  3. Orders confirmed

  How does the SMS ordering service work?

  For End Users

  The system enables registered customers to send in orders in a simple and memorable format. This works from a basic phone with no need for an Internet connection.Everyitem on a catalogue a code is assigned that further simplifies the ordering process. We translate the codes, calculate the total price, and send you an electronic confirmation

  Our software also has built in error correction mechanisms. For instance, if you incorrectly type in your order information, then the system is able to automatically correct that and figure out what you meant to type. It then sends you an smsconfirmation before your order is further processed.

  For Distributors

  At the heart of the software is a simple and well-designed dashboard. This enables you, as a seller, to manage customer information, orders, prices, products, reports and recipients with control rights. You can also periodically receive orders by email,formatted as Excel spreadsheet with customizable fields you would want to see.

  Benefits:

  Ease of use – No special equipment needed hence more flexibility when ordering. Works with any mobile telephone that can send Text messages (SMS) or email.

  Fast – simplifies the process for both customer and retailer, as the customer avoids the likelihood of being held in a phone queue and the retailer gets structured, aggregated orders from time to time.

  Low Cost – Free registration.

  Convenience – Buyers send from their mobile phones and receive SMS notifications to confirm orders.

  Simplicity - There is no hardware or software to install so that in a matter of minutes its up and running.

  For more information contact us:
  Sam Kitonyi
  CTO, Wezatele
  Email: apopheniac@gmail.com Mobile Number: +254 710 742 134

• Apps4Africa 2011 Winners: Innovative Apps Combating Climate Change

  Posted: January 16, 2012, 10:57 am by Will Mutua

  Originally from the Appfrica blog

  Appfrica is the organizer and facilitator of the second annual Apps4Africa competition which rewards African technologists for developing creative solutions to some of the continent’s most challenging issues. 2011 was the second year we’ve done Apps4Africa, the first year culminated with this congratulatory message from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton:

  Last year the theme of the competition was Climate Challenge, which means all the entrants should have focused on solving climate change and adaptation issues that affect their local communities. Over the course of 7 months our teams are going to over 15 countries to support the competition, answering questions and hosting workshops. Since we’re now two thirds through the competition, I wanted to share descriptions of the 6 winners from the East Africa and West/Central regional competitions.

  The East Africa winners were announced on January 14th, 2012 at Villages In Action in Kikuube, Uganda. The West/Central Africa winners were announced on December 8th, 2011 in Durban, South Africa at the COP-17 Climate Change Conference.

  East Africa Winners

  1st prize of $15,000 – The Grainy Bunch by Eric Mutta (Tanzania)
  The Grainy Bunch is a national grain supply chain management system that monitors the purchase, storage, distribution, and consumption of grain across the entire nation. It was developed with the understanding that selling “the effects of efficiency” to actors in the grain supply chain is much easier than selling “the effects of climate change”.

  Grain is nicknamed the “white oil” which lubricates the engine of Tanzanian growth. Even short-term disturbances in its supply chain adversely affects hundreds of thousands of people. To ensure both food security and economic security for all Tanzanians, a system is required to both monitor and facilitate the supply chain of grain, from the soil to our plates.

  2nd prize of $7,000 – Mkulima Bora – Stepheno Maleche, Gerry Nandwa, Joseph Onginjo and Oliver Otieno (Kenya)
  Mkulima Bora enables farmers to input the type crop they wish to plant into an app, then it cross-checks meteorological data to determine if the crop is suitable given the timing and location. Mkulima improves farmer yields, saves them time, and money

  3rd Prize of $3,000 – Agro Universe – Oliama Brian, Daniel Mumbere, Nabuto Josephine, Bossa Alex, Sanya Duncan, Olwenyi Victor, Kato Charles, Masaba Kizito, Kalema Moses, Namuyiga Winfrey (Uganda)
  Agro Universe allows farmers with agriculture products or livestock to alert the app’s community so that they can buy and sell goods from each other. It works on both mobile and the web. The aim of Agro Universe is to create a regional marketplace where products can be sold that may have no demand in the user’s immediate area but that might in areas farther out.

  West/Central Africa Winners

  1st prize $15,000 – HospitalManager by Victor Ogo Ekwueme (Nigeria)
  HospitalManager is a web-based application that helps hospitals and health organizations prepare for disasters such as floods and storms. More frequent heat spells, rains, and floods are leading to heath emergencies, both due to the event itself, and later to water related disease. HospitalManager will help hospitals in Nigeria, and potentially throughout Africa, identify patterns in patient visits following rains and floods, so that staff can better prepare for these situations and save more lives. Hospitals can anticipate incoming disease and emergency patterns using real time climate forecasts. On longer time scales it will allow policy makers to plan locations of new hospitals.

  2nd prize $7,000 – Eco-fund Forum by Assane Seck, Guillaume Blandin and Markus Faschina (Senegal)
  Eco-fund Forum is a web-based community organizer and geo-localized data exchange tool to help individuals and communities working on sustainable resource management throughout Africa to share their own experiences on best practices. Thus they will better understand and respond to the climate change challenges impacting each specific local context. For example, coastal communities in Senegal that suffer from erosion can learn from neighbors that are successfully and durably overcoming the same problem by regenerating and preserving a littoral forest. Furthermore, the Forum will give those communities a voice which should alert political decision makers to address climate change challenges in time.

  3rd prize $3,000 – Farmerline by Alloysius Attah and Emmanuel Owusu Addai (Ghana)
  Farmerline is a mobile and web-based system that furnishes farmers and investors with relevant agricultural information to improve productivity and increase income. Lack of information about weather patterns and about which crops grow best in a changing climate hurts rural farmers’ yields. Cell phone use is growing rapidly throughout Ghana, including in rural areas. This mobile tool can help farmers in Ghana to get information about agricultural best practices down to the farm level, including choosing crops best suited for their specific location, and how to prepare for changes in the weather (including dry spells, changes in seasonal onset, and extreme events).

  East Africa Honorable Mentions

  CoHeW – Geno Juma, Nicholas Mugah
  The CoHeW program is designed as an aid to the community health worker (CHWs). The program will have a two pronged approach; it gives stop gap solutions to the respondent and serves as an information gathering tool for the CHWs. The ministry of health and other health administration planners need a source of information on likely occurrences of diseases and projected disease outbreak periods.

  AgriRight (Plant it Right) – Wamahiga Grace, Njeri Winnie, Harun Mwangi
  AgriRight is a mobile app that helps farmers plant crops that are right for a particular area.Many farmers, plant crops which are not sustainable for a particular area, which leads to a waste of resources (time, money, energy). They often incur huge losses, reaping very little or no crops at all.

  West/Central Africa Honorable Mentions

  iProtect
  An application that allows residents report issues like bush burning and deforestation in real time via SMS. It’s a citizen reporting and preparedness project that allows the public to alert the greater community of emergency events.

  Mobile Agri Business
  Mobile Agribusiness is an agriculture application for farmers to have information, skills and to connect them to available market in real-time in DRCongo. The project aims to create a mobile market place for farmers in Congo.

  What’s next for Apps4Africa? Well it’s too soon to say but the Climate Challenge will begin in the Southern Africa region in a few short weeks. Bookmark this post and come back in early April to find out who the Southern Africa regional winners will be! If you’d like to get involved with Apps4Africa or the winners, please email us at info@apps4africa.com. Many of the entrants are choosing to open source their code which you can find here on GitHub.

• Pondering Africa’s Tech Investment Potential in 2012 and Beyond

  Posted: January 15, 2012, 2:52 pm by Will Mutua

  [In 2012] New investor interest thanks to continuing coverage of Africa economic growth potential vs other markets- especially in the attractive mobile segment (700M subscribers barrier will definitely be crossed in 2012). – Mbwana Alliy

  It is clear that Africa’s fate has been changing and will continue changing in the coming months and years. Perhaps one of the remarkable evidences of this is depicted in two Economist articles. In the year 2000, The Economist ran an article titled, “The hopeless continent“, the article went on to paint a rather dark, and indeed hopeless, picture for the future of the African continent, citing the negative effects of civil wars, poverty and disease on African states. Fast forward one decade into the new millenium and The Economist in 2011 runs another article postulating the exact opposite, “The hopeful continent“,

  Over the past decade six of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries were African. In eight of the past ten years, Africa has grown faster than East Asia, including Japan. Even allowing for the knock-on effect of the northern hemisphere’s slowdown, the IMF expects Africa to grow by 6% this year and nearly 6% in 2012, about the same as Asia.

  Africa is now considered by many to be the place to invest in for the future. This has also been supported by the kind of resilience that the continent has shown amidst the financial turbulence in the past few years that has gripped the west. According to this article by Charles W. Corey back in 2010:

  African economies have shown resilience in the face of global financial adversities, have passed the stress test and can be expected to achieve economic growth this year, says Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

  Addressing African finance ministers April 26 in Washington, Kaberuka acknowledged that the global financial crisis has done some damage, but said African economies are expected to average 5 percent economic growth in 2010 and 6 percent growth in 2011, with some countries forecast to achieve an even higher rate.

  In many African countries, he said, the crisis has “only been a setback.”

  So it’s only logical that we are seeing more and more investor interest in Africa. In 2011, it became clear that one of the areas of particular interest as far as foreign investment goes is the area of technology and innovation. Of course there has been specific interest in very specific countries as far as this goes but the fact of the matter is that the stories of technological innovation from Africa that have gone global such as Ushahidi and MPESA (we need new examples to talk about) have drawn the eyes of potential investors in this direction. The number of foreign seed investors in technology (particularly from Europe, though we are yet to see how the eurozone situation will affect things in 2012) for example in Nairobi, Kenya has increased.

  There are, however, a few pointers for both foreign investor and investees to consider if we’re going to reap the most out of the oppotunity

  For the Foreign Investor

  1. Learn the continent: Africa = Diversity

  One of the most devastating mis-understandings among foreigners is that Africa is a single country, with one culture. This mindset can be devastating to potential investors. The fact of the matter is that the African continent is diverse and the diversity has far reaching implications on not only how to relate to people but also how people prefer to do business in different parts of Africa.

  The business culture in some countries is really fast paced and aggressive whilst in other areas there’s a kind of laid back, easy going culture which does not necessarily indicate that there are less opportunities in such a culture. Foreign investors need to take time to study their chosen country for investment and understand what the people are like, what their culture is like, then adapt and approach investments with that understanding.

  2. This is not America or Europe: Africa = Uniqueness

  Still on the issue of culture, foreign investors also need to understand that Africa is a unique playing ground. Do not approach Africa with the idea that things will work here the same way they work elsewhere just because they work in those other places. In fact, going back to the issue of the rich diversity of the continent, one strategy may not even work for two different countries within Africa!

  With the diversity of the continent comes the uniqueness of states and regions within the continent.

  These two amazing qualities of the African continent are in part contributed to by the histories of the different states, whilst many African states got their independence from colonial masters around the same period in history, their experience of colonialism set them on vastly different tracks in some cases.

  3. Shed the veil: Africa != Aid

  There’s still much mis-information and resulting mis-conceptions regarding Africa out there. I remember once working on a project for a foreign client and the guys’s daughter once asked her father (my client) whether I lived in a hut and whether we had elephants walking about all over. It was kinda funny really, but also a bit sad.

  Mention Africa to many foreigners and the ideas that float to the top of their mind generally revolve around, aid, AIDS, malaria, poverty, civil war and famine. Many others believe Africa is one big charity case. Many stick to only what they see on TV, never going beyond that. Sure these issues face many African states, but they are a) not a one size fits all description of all 50+ states on the continent, and b) not the only story to be told even in some of the areas plagued by some of these evils.

  Africa is also a place of innovation and entrepreneurship, and many Africans are hardworking people, not to mention the physical beauty of the contient

  Some notes for potential investees

  1. Funding is not everything

  Andrea Mugoya calls this the ‘funding addiction‘:

  I’m not against funding but as I mentioned in my ebook, getting funding for the sake of getting funding (or as an end goal) is dumb! I’m still amazed each time I see ‘funding’ being used as a measuring stick or as a major goal for a startup. I tweeted recently, “only fraudsters and scam artists see funding as an end in itself”. Genuine businesses or NGOs consider funding simply as a means to an end. Further, they would avoid external funding if they could. So why would entrepreneurs seek (or be encouraged to get) funding at the earliest opportunity, sometimes even before they have launched or tested their concept?

  2. Don’t just copy

  Sometimes you’ll here about someone building the ‘Kenyan Facebook’ or ‘Nigerian Twitter’ or something of the sort. While the aim may be to create a similar service that caters to the specific needs of that demography, many times it’s a matter of simply copying that service and hoping to sell it locally without adding anything unique or innovative to the offering.

  Not only is this an un-innovative approach but also not very likely to succeed since the local population may already be using the other service heavily and so have literally no incentive to use your product, not only that but the entrepreneur may create for themselves a competitor whom they have neither the capacity or resources to compete with.

  The challenge for the potential investee is to come up with something unique and as we have noted before, one thing would be to create something that solves a very real problem in the every day lives of local consumers.

• A Mobile Money Wish List for 2012

  Posted: January 11, 2012, 9:38 pm by Will Mutua

  In an effort to identify the 12 major tech trends to look forward to in 2012, Mbwana Alliy, noted that 2012 would be a landmark year for the growth, innovation and increased adoption of Mobile Money in Africa. What specific growth/innovation areas would be most anticipated? ere’s a wish-list:

  1. More mobile money powered convenience services – both online and offline, mobile money has enabled a lot of convenience to the consumer. It has been said that many foreigners to countries such as Kenya, the birth place of mobile money, find it hard to fathom that people pay for such ‘trivial’ expenses as taxi fares from their mobile phone. The convenience of mobile money has gone on to be applied to a wide variety of areas, from organisations paying employees via mobile money, paying your insurance premiums or paying your electricity bill. It would be great to see wider and even more innovative applications of mobile money in 2012.

  2. Tighter integration of mobile money at the POS (or better stated, powering micro-payments via mobile money) – This is closely related to the first point but it seems that it should be noted separately. Mobile money operators have made efforts to provide a means to pay for your shopping at the supermarket via mobile money, it is still quite a hassle, and a definite area for further innovation.

  3. Mobile Money to power Africa’s E-commerce Age – Companies such as PesaPal have innovated to bring mobile money onto the web and online payments. The MNOs have also made strides to partner with banks to provide prepaid debit cards that would facilitate online payments. Perhaps this point is not so much for MNOs and mobile money powered online payment gateways such as PesaPal, but for others who can create solid e-commerce businesses that now take advantage of mobile money.

  We are in the early stages of an amazing changein how electronic payments are done on the continent. Africans will begin to gain more trust from mobile online commerce as trusted global brands including VISA, MasterCard and Paypal enter and compete to play in the ecosystem they previously ignored. – Mbwana Alliy

  4. Disruption/Original Innovation – Erik noted the decreasing tendency of mobile network operators to want to step out of what is already raking in the revenues.

  Generally speaking, mobile network operators (MNOs) were highly disruptive in the 90′s, but have continued to decrease in this over the last decade. Operators are no longer the offensive, attacking force of yesteryear, instead they’re putting up barriers and defensive walls trying to protect what they have and hide.

  This being the case, it is up to third party innovators and entrepreneurs to really come up with original innovations based on mobile money that really disrupt the mobile money ecosystem. It would be great to see more innovations that find smart ways around the big boys to provide some really innovative solutions.

  5. APIs please! – Mbwana predicts that this could be the year when finally one or more of the major mobile money operators opens up their platform via an Application Programming Interface that allows third parties to hook in and innovate. It would definitely make it much easier for original innovation to take place. APIs would also increase the size of the ecosystem by making it easier for innovators to join in and provide more services, which would in turn attract more consumers and so on. It would be great to see mobile money being mashed up with other open APIs on the web, for example how about a service that allows anyone to send money from PayPal to MPESA and vice-versa seamlessly?

  In conclusion…

  Whatever the case, one thing is for sure, one can definitely expect more innovation in the mobile money industry – whether bottom up or top down! Last year VISA got serious about mobile money by acquiring Fundamo and formally joining bandwagon. Just this action alone could force the giants of the mobile money world, who for the most part right now are the Mobile Network Operators, to wake up. Another simple contributing factor would be the simple fact that mobile penetration is not only on an upward trend but is out-pacing expectations.

• Some Popular Android Devices in the African Market

  Posted: January 9, 2012, 12:53 am by Will Mutua

  This is a guest post by Rebecca Jones of gizmowatch.com and designbuzz.com

  Mbwana Alliy, in his widely popular article predicting Africa’s tech future for 2012 noted that one key trend will be the increased adoption of Smartphones among Africa’s middle class as well as the gap between feature and smartphone being bridged more and more.

  Smartphone adoption will grow among Africa’s emerging middle class as entry prices for an unlocked phone continue to dip below $100. Nokia/Microsoft Symbian/Windows Phone and Google/Samsung Android will battle for smartphone dominance- Nokia’s strong brand and feature phone momentum will prove to be an advantage. But affordable Chinese smartphones led by Huawei’s Ideos will continue to tempt Africans to upgrade. – Mbwana Alliy

  When you talk Smartphones in Africa nowadays, it’s almost impossible to ignore mighty Android, Google’s open source Operating System for mobile devices. Google has been keen on growing it’s foothold in Africa and Android has been a major contributor to Google’s efforts. Coupled with the burgeoning middle class that’s powering Africa into it’s future, Android could see increased adoption as Africans with greater spending power seek the hallmarks of the middle class lifestyle. According to an article on The Guardian:

  The African Development Bank (AfDB) says Africa’s middle class had risen to 313 million people in 2010, 34% of the continent’s population – compared with 111 million (26%) in 1980, 151 million (27%) in 1990 and 196 million (27%) in 2000.

  Africa has a young, fast-growing, fast-urbanising population. Many countries have benefited from a commodities boom and a 10-fold rise in foreign investment in the past decade, notably from China. Africa’s productivity is growing by nearly 3% a year, compared with 2.3% in the United States. Arguably, governance is improving, elections spreading and dictatorships and wars declining.

  The following is some popular Android devices from around the African Market:

  Huawei IDEOS

  Based on the tremendous popularity of the IDEOS upon launch in Kenya, it would be safe to say that the IDEOS set the tone for the future of affordable Smartphones. According to this statement by Huawei, the IDEOS U8150 sold about 60,000 units within the first five months.

  Mr. Herman He, CEO Huawei announced that, “Since the IDEOS launch five months ago, so far over 60,000 pieces have been sold and we are moving towards the 100,000 piece mark with its share of the local smartphone market at 45% in the first quarter of the year, making it the top selling device with February alone reaching 73%.”

  The 3G capable phone runs Android 2.2 (Froyo), boasts a 3.15 MP camera, 256 MB RAM, 240×320 touchscreen, and a 528 MHz ARM 11 CPU

  Samsung Galaxy S

  This cell phone has 1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor giving excellent 3D graphics experience with exceptional speed. The phone carries 4 inches screen which is better in size as compared to the iPhone and other Smartphones. The resolution comes to around 800 by 480 and is manufactured with Gorilla glass which is fairly robust and scratch resistant. At the back, you will find a 5MP camera which can shoot video in 720P at 30 frames per second.

  Motorola Milestone

  This device is also called Droid in other markets, which is seen 13.7 mm thick having an impressive slide out full QWERTY keyboard. The touchscreen comes to around 3.7 inches pretty similar to the HTC hero’s screen commonly seen in other android phones. It supports the Android 2.0 software which is best suitable for the quad band GSM and the dual band 3G support. You also get a multi touch support which is not seen in Droid in the US market. The camera of the phone is 5MP; you will find A-GPS and Wi-Fi support with MicroSD slot and the RAM as 256MB.

  Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

  Earlier Sony Ericsson often came with Windows, however, with Xperia X10 you can find the company switching towards the Android OS. This phone runs the Android 1.6 unlike what you see in the Motorola or Samsung Android based phones. One of the important features of this device is its interface which is a modified as compared to the other phones. The interface TimeScape which is a social networking interface best suited to access data from number of social media sites like Faceboook, Twitter, Myspace etc. Similarly, you have MediaScape which extracts a number of multimedia content in one player. The processor used in this phone is 1 GHz Snapdragon which gives excellent processing speed. Also the device has MicroSD slot which contains both the wi-fi and GPS.

  Motorola Dext

  This device is considered to be the best cell phone for social networking crowd coming through the Motorola’s MotoBlur service. With this feature you can store the social networking profiles online and then get them on your phone devices. With this interface you can customize all your incoming emails, texts and social messages in such a way that it makes sense to you. The phone runs Android 1.5 and has 5MP camera with wi-fi in the MicroSD slot. The touchscreen over this device is pretty small as compared to the Milestone. Unlike the Milestone, this device too carries a slide out QWERTY keyboard and a built in GPS system.

  About the author: Rebecca is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and lifestyle. Beside this she is fond of Mac themed mods and loves writing articles on iPad Wireless Keyboard

• 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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• 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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• 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…

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• The Glue of Innovation: Creating a supportive culture for innovation in Africa

  Posted: November 29, 2011, 3:47 pm by Will Mutua

  “Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress” – Ted Levitt

  In a recent article on innovation, we looked at ‘The engine (people & skills), the environment (policy and regulation), the fuel (funding) and the glue (startup culture) of innovation’. The aim was really to look at some key components that it takes for a thriving ecosystem of innovation to be born, develop and grow. In this post, we’ll  zero down on the last aspect, which I think is the most important of all: The Glue of Innovation.

  The right kind of culture is literally the fabric upon which an innovative ecosystem develops and is woven. Culture generally can be described as:

  The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group – Wikipedia

  So what makes up this glue? After watching the Sparkhouse video below titled ‘The Innovators’, perhaps we can summarise some of the key components that make up for a great culture of innovation and work into building on those, particularly here in Africa where as we have seen before, innovation holds the key to unlocking our potential.

  Innovation is a bit like sculpting… you have a block of stone and you can see something in it: you have a spark of creativity, and you abandon yourself to the freedom of creative impulse, you go to work at it, chipping off bits and pieces, carving here and there, turning the stone this way and that, until you free the creation that was trapped within.

  The spark of Innovation: Inspiration

  “There’s some point where you get together and you say, ‘ok, this can happen!’ and you have a vision of the future and you commit to it” - Bre Pettis, CEO, MakerBot Industries

  There’s no innovation without inspiration. Inspiration is the spark that ignites innovation. And inspiration can come from all sorts of places. From things that are just cool, to things that solve real human needs. All the same it’s hard to build something innovative without genuine, ‘original’, inspiration – which can sometimes be hard to come by. In Africa, perhaps much of the inspiration would come from our immediate environment – things that could be done better, real problems faced by people every day.

  The culture of startup culture: Creative Freedom

  Another definition of culture is:

  the act or process of cultivating living material (as bacteria or viruses) in prepared nutrient media

  And after inspiration, is creative freedom. Freedom to pursue the idea from an idea to something that works. This is the kind of environment or literally the culture or medium for the idea to grow and take root, for the innovator to prototype, experiment, refine, polish and finally unearth the product, service or artifact.

  “It’s about enabling creative freedom” – John Laramie, CEO, AdStruc

  Several things contribute to the right culture to emerge: in particular the right education system particularly at the university level that allows self-learning through experimentation and active engagement in innovative pursuits is of utmost importance,  the right regulatory environment especially where protection of one’s ideas and creations is concerned without at the same time stifling new creation, access to the necessary tools to make it happen…

  The right culture is not only important at the macro-level, so to speak, but also at the micro-level. Is there a conducive environment for people in your company to think up new ideas, try new ways of doing the same thing, experiment with alternatives, to adapt when things change or when the rug is pulled from under your feet?

  Do your homework

  Get excited about something, have a good idea, do the due diligence, do your research…  - John Laramie, CEO, AdStruc

  Much as innovation is largely about experimentation, it would be foolish to go in blind. Does your product or service offer some real value? Is the problem really there or did you create it? Are there alternative solutions that work better? Will people buy it? (And particularly in Africa:) Can people buy it? Do they have the purchasing power for what you are offering or do you have to explore alternative models for monetizing your product

  Never walk, or work, alone

  As it has been said, even the lone ranger needed Tonto.. and their horses. To make something big and meaningful is seldom possible by the efforts of a single person hacking at their computer in the dead of night. It takes working with other people to create and ship product – co-founders, programmers, designers, office administrators.

  “Go within yourself, but seek out the people who can help you get it made” – Sarah Blakely, Inventor/Founder, Spanx

  And perhaps even more importantly would be getting the input and opinion of people who see things differently from the way one sees them. They say focus creates blind spots and sometimes the innovator is so focused on what they see in their minds eye that they require a balancing factor to bring about a sense of reality

  No Innovation without Action!

  Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. – Thomas Edison

  One of the most crippling inhibitors to innovation is when people are waiting for the right set of circumstances to start. A few years ago the excuses ranged from the lack and inhibitive cost of bandwidth to the lack of startup funding. It’s not like these challenges are not there, they are there, and there will always be some challenge in the way of the innovator – but innovation demands perseverance. One can’t sit there and say, there’s no this and no that, and the other is not in place.

  Get excited about something, have a good idea, do the due diligence, do your research… but go for it! – John Laramie, CEO, AdStruc

  You’re never going to understand everything, you’re never going to know everything about your business, just do it – Ben Kaufman, CEO, Quirky

  Got the idea? Done your due diligence? Well, kick into action and get going! The classic tale is told of a farmer who stood out on his farm with seed in his hand waiting for just the right time to plant, when the clouds had gathered just enough so that his crop would get the rain immediately it came. And then the rain came suddenly and without warning and the poor farmer was drenched as he scrambled to plant seed into soil that was getting soaked and flooded.

  Innovation requires sometimes ignoring prevailing circumstances and charging forward. Let the right circumstances find you well into the execution of your idea. Let the investors find you having built your product or service and it’s already out in the market – you will definitely get a better equity-for-capital bargain because your startup has more value than if you go looking for funding without a working product, or one that’s been tested in the market.

  Get on that bicycle and cycle: Try-(Fail)-(Iterate)-Succeed

  If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative. – Woody Allen

  Not many inventions, if any, take flight at the very first attempt. If you’re going to innovate, you’re going to have to get comfortable with the idea of failing, and then getting up and trying again. To the innovator, failure is not doom but an opportunity to learn. Learning how it’s not done is one step closer to learning how it can be done.

  Make Meaning

  It stands to doubt that the sole purpose of innovation as something intrinsically human is purely economic – at the end of the day, don’t just make money, make meaning.

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• Africa: Innovating into the Future

  Posted: November 25, 2011, 2:44 pm by Will Mutua

  In this day and age, innovation for any organisation or nation is not an option, it is a necessity!

  If you do not innovate you will simply be left behind. And as we noted in the article, “Necessity & Invention: Africa’s story of mobile conquest & why utility beats ‘coolness’“, this is especially the case for the African continent. Africa has been for the longest time relegated to the back of the classroom, the backward, wartorn, black sheep of the world. But today it is emerging, and African nations are betting big on technology and innovation as the stepping stones to rebuilding themselves.

  But what will it take? What are some of the components that are necessary for African states to innovate into the future?

  People & Skills: The engine of innovation

  Mbwana Alliy asserts in his article examining the Kenya ICT boards recently released Julisha Report, makes the assertion that there should be very deliberate measures to build human capital:

  The conclusion by many is that a skills gap is emerging given both the trends and the current supply of talent locked up in traditional ICT industries. What makes Silicon Valley what it is, is the continuous learning that occurs among the talent that moves into new jobs and new technologies. – Mbwana Alliy

  The simple fact is that technology is a highly dynamic field. Things change a lot and they change fast! Some of the concepts that came into play a year or so ago have either been subsumed by new knowledge in that area or at least have had developments to the underlying principles. If technical knowledge changes so rapidly, it means that an undergraduate student getting into a technology-related field of study will most likely be lacking in relevant knowledge upon graduation if their university is stuck teaching outdated concepts or is not closely relating with what’s going on in industry.

  Therefore, there needs to be a move to strengthen technology curricula and also increase linkages between academic institutions and the real world of innovation – the startups and companies that are innovating.

  One final point for Government officials and International Development professionals reading this – you may want to allocate more of that lavish tech park money to skills development - it will build valuable human capital to support the industry and hence economic growth. - Mbwana Alliy

  Policy & Regulation: The environment of innovation

  Without a proper environment that allows the innovators to play. The policy and regulatory environment in any country can mean the difference between a caged, walled-off, restrictive and prison-like environment that does not make it easy for innovators to get creative and offer new products and services; or an open playing field.

  Regulation is really a bit like the Goldilocks fairy tale – too much of it will stifle innovation and cause stagnation, and too little of it may leave consumers vulnerable and unprotected. There needs to be just the right amount of it if the right kind of enabling environment for innovation is to be achieved. The right regulatory and policy environment, for innovators could mean the difference between an imprisoning, jail-house experience, or a fun play yard experience that supports invention and creativity.

  Regulation - Prison vs. Play Yard

  For example, in the case of mobile money, as the GSMA notes, “Regulation continues to be the most complicated issue for mobile operators wanting to be involved in mobile money”. According to a paper titled “Mobile Payments go viral: M-PESA in Kenya“, the authors note that one of the contributing factors to the success of M-PESA and mobile money in general in Kenya was the existence of a supportive regulator:

  Regulation of mobile money can help to secure trust in new mobile money schemes. At the same time,regulation may constrain the success of a mobile money deployment by limiting the scheme operator’s degrees of freedom in structuring the business model, service proposition, and distribution channels. In the case of M-PESA, Safaricom had a good working relationship with the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK)and was given regulatory space to design M-PESA in a manner that fit its market.

  The CBK and Safaricom worked out a model that provided sufficient prudential comfort to the CBK. The CBK insisted that all customer funds be deposited in a regulated financial institution, and reviewed the security features of the technology platform. In turn, the CBK allowed Safaricom to operate M-PESA as a payments system, outside the provisions of the banking law.

  Funding: The fuel of innovation

  Two years back, getting financial support for your tech innovation was not very easy. Thankfully, today things are changing. Looking at the case of Kenya, for example, it is definitely much easier now to get funding at the seed level than it has ever been. From pitch contests such as Pivot25 and IPO48 that have led to the development of businesses out of ideas such as M-Farm and MedAfrica, to fully fledged VC style funding such as eVentures Africa and other similar investment funds, there is now more funding available and it is more accessible.

  All the same, there’s still a lot of room for more. As Erik Hersman notes, we need more investors pouring seed funding at the bottom of the pyramid.

  To make the tip of the pyramid bigger, to have more success stories in the tech space, there is only one option: you have to make the base of the pyramid broader… Invest seed funds into local tech entrepreneurs. – Erik Hersman

  Mbwana’s article ‘Innovation funding in Africa: Are VCs & Impact investors taking enough risks?‘ points out the same thing:

  [There is still] a significant gap for early stage investing in web and mobile startups that constrains potential innovation. – Mbwana Alliy

  The future does look bright though – such indications as crowd-funding platform, GrowVC making it’s initial forays into Africa are an indication that not only are investors looking at Africa, but they are finding something to invest in.

  Startup Culture: The glue of innovation

  Once you’ve got all these components: the engine (people & skills), the environment (policy and regulation), and the fuel (funding) of innovation, the glue, that is the startup culture, is what pulls everything together. Without a supporting culture that encourages people to innovate, invent and keep at it despite failures, then all you have is an empty shell.

  The startup culture is really a culture that is characterised largely by experimentation, something that is contrary the sometimes prevalent status quo culture of security and finding a nice job, keeping it cool and not rocking the boat.

  This is where tech hubs, for example, are making a big difference. They are bringing together dynamic, passionate people, and giving them the right environment to do what they do best – ideate, create, disrupt.

   

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• Necessity & Invention: Africa’s story of mobile conquest & why utility beats ‘coolness’

  Posted: November 18, 2011, 3:27 pm by Will Mutua

  It is said that necessity is the mother of invention and indeed that could perfectly describe Africa where it comes to innovation particularly on mobile.

  Utility vs Coolness

  In a great talk at TEDxVienna Alexander Oswald, Head of Marketing at Nokia, tells the story of how he and his family visited Kenya and were immensely shocked at just how much people in Kenya were able to accomplish via mobile phones. From sending and receiving money, to banking and paying for utilities & shopping from their phone, to the use of mobile in tracking the price of agricultural produce and even automatic insurance payments to your phone and getting notifications from your child’s school about their performance in an examination or them not attending school (phew)! And furthermore, all these were not being done from smartphones and really cool apps that just seemed to work magic, but in his words (paraphrased), “This works even on the ‘dumbest’ of phones”.

  Alexander in his talk awes at these amazing inventions and makes comparison to the fact that despite his living in a world top 10 economy, he can’t get many of the same kind of services via mobile! Interestingly, Alexander, towards the end of the talk, concludes by stating that after 10 years in the mobile industry he has simply concluded that the top 10 economies simply have ‘too many resources’, and says, “The scarcity of the resources there brings out the best of people”; and he is right.

  Why was MPESA such a success? Simply put – it was a necessity. Pre-MPESA (sounds like when someone asks ‘how did we ever survive without Google?’), people still had to do all the things that MPESA has enabled them to do.

  Let’s put this in context. In Kenya, most of the working class are in urban areas, their parents likely live in rural areas. In the Kenyan culture, it is ordinary and even expected of one to take care of their parents and even their siblings once they are able to. This mostly means sending money back home to your parents for all sorts of things – their upkeep, your siblings school fees etc etc. Pre-MPESA people still had fairly ingenious ways of accomplishing this – from sending a relative home with the cash, to using bus services to send the cash, to mailing the cash sandwiched between carbon paper so someone handling the post does not see the money through the envelope and decide to pocket it.

  MPESA simply solved a very real need that almost every (at least adult) Kenyan was facing, they did it simply – all you needed was a phone of whatever kind, even the infamous ‘mulika mwizi’ (Nokia 1100/1200 type of phone); they did it efficiently – MPESA agents are everywhere! and they did it at a reasonable cost to the consumer. Kenyans bought into it hook, line and sinker!

  It all boils down to critical mass!

  Still, while the cost of phones is coming down and lower cost phones are getting more features than your average ‘mulika mwizi’, the solutions that are really taking off are not so much the ‘cool’ apps but those that are solving real needs, at low cost and are accessible across all kinds of phones that means either utilise SMS or USSD.

  In a discussion with a local expert on the issue, it came out that most Kenyans, particularly in rural areas are not even aware of what an ‘app’ really is!

  Does this mean that there’s absolutely no market for smartphone apps locally? Nope. It doesn’t, it just means that if you want to make something that will gain massive adoption, fast, then your best bets are not with smartphone apps. Does it mean that there’s no market for simply ‘cool’ apps? Again not at all, as the expert I was talking with noted, entertainment for example, is also a need. Perhaps ‘cool’ smartphone apps may not be accessible to the majority, but one could definitely make a business by targeting the relevant demography.

  On the other hand, for local app developers, there are also other markets that can be targeted that are not necessarily local. Who says you can’t develop something that catches on in the west? And there are also many opportunities to develop enterprise apps for corporate clients.

  Throughout the world, the basic foundation of any technology success is based on finding a problem, a need, and solving it. This is what we’re doing in Africa. We have different use cases and cultures, which means that there will be many solutions. Some will only be valuable for local needs and won’t scale beyond the country or region. Others will go global. Both solutions are “right”. It’s not a failure to have a product that profitably serves 100 000 people instead of 100-million. (Erik Hersman)

  All about the numbers

  All the same, whether building for the ‘dumb’ phone or the smart phone, the success or failure of consumer facing mobile solutions always boils down to ‘how many people will download and use your app?’

  Alexander gives a brilliant illustration of this during his talk by giving some numbers about the likelihood of people download and using smartphone apps regularly and as he notes, even with a substantial marketing budget, chances are you could end up only getting a minimal percentage of users to (a) know about your app (b) download it (c) use it once, and then use it again and again.

  Path of least resistance

  In conclusion, it would appear that the path of least resistance for local app developers looking to make a quick killing is still with creating ‘low tech’ solutions that are accessible to the majority and that solve a very real need in the consumer’s every day life. As Mbwana noted, ‘Let’s unleash SMS: Africa’s best distribution platform‘

   

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• Tanzanian & Rwandan Startups Making Content Publishing via SMS Work

  Posted: November 17, 2011, 1:44 pm by Will Mutua

  According to an official report released by the GSMA, Africa is now the second largest mobile market in the world. The report showed that over the past five years, Africa’s mobile subscribers has increased by 20 percent every year, and is expected to reach over 735 million subscribers by the end of 2012. (IT News Africa)

  The common denominator on mobile, platform-wise, (as Mbwana noted in his last article) across all devices is SMS, and here lies the power of SMS as a mobile content delivery platform. Local content generation has been cited as an area of great potential in Africa and for African tech startups. But content is only as good as how much of it is consumed, the more content is consumed by the target audience, the better for the content producer – hence for the content producer, reach and scale is of paramount importance to their success. And mobile, particularly SMS, is a powerful medium as far as reach and scale go. As we noted from the 3 memes we picked from Vint Cerf‘s talk during his visit at the Nairobi innovation hub – content + mobile = huge potential.

  On the other hand, SMS also poses some challenges for the developer and content creator. For one there’s a limit on the number of characters you can have in a single text message. Of course, this is not an insurmountable challenge since Twitter has proved that people can get pretty creative with a mere 140 characters. The difference of course for the content creator on Twitter and on SMS is that there is a cost per SMS, and so the more content you need to publish in a single text message, the more the cost per SMS. Of course, the cost of SMS is going down over time and MNO’s are looking more and more away from SMS/Voice to data revenues.

  Many startups in the west rely on huge distribution channels that inc. facebook, twitter, e-mail and Google SEO and adwords. I believe in Africa a different approach to distribution is required, one that puts SMS at the cornerstone of a startup’s marketing and distribution strategy, especially as SMS costs continue to go down. (Mbwana Alliy)

  With all this there are still startups that are making content generation and distribution via SMS work, these are just two examples from Rwanda and Tanzania:

  From Rwanda: Nyaruka Bizito

  This is a pretty innovative service was a Pivot25 finalist. Nyaruaka publishing platform allows anyone using any kind of phone to become a premium SMS provider and earn some money.

  The service works like this: a user creates content using a unique identifier by sending a simple SMS command to the Nyaruka service, once created the content (a joke, sports update etc) can be retrieved by anyone else simply by SMSing the unique identifier, Nyaruka retrieves and sends back the content to the requester and the content creator gets paid!

  From Tanzania: Bongo Live

  Bongo Live was also a Pivot25 finalist. Bongo Live offers several services targeted primarily at businesses and organizations.

  Their targeted opt-in based SMS advertising service allows subscribers to receive offers and discounts of their interest whilst advertisers can target their niche demographic with measurable results. A group messaging component allows advertisers to send SMS to their existing contacts. According to the founder, Taha Jiwaji, in an interview:

  Bongo Live is changing the way businesses reach new customers as well as stay in touch with existing ones. Our opt-in targeted sms advertising service lets businesses reach their target audience directly on their mobile whilst offering consumers deals of their interest. Businesses can also communicate with.

  Bongo Live also offers group/bulk SMS across all network providers in Tanzania.

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• Gbenga Sesan to host Google Plus hangout with finalists of the 2011 Android Developer Challenge

  Posted: November 16, 2011, 11:59 am by Will Mutua

  Earlier this year Google held their Sub-Saharan Africa Android Developer Challenge. Nigerian ICT Advocate, Gbenga Sesan will be holding a live Google Plus hangout session with finalists of this year’s Android Developer Challenge. This year’s challenge winners include Nigeria’s Afrinolly App, Kenya’s Olaleshe and Kenya’s Shoppers’ Delight App. The Google Plus Hangout will be held on Thursday, November 17th at 12 Noon (Lagos Time).

  The live session will provide an opportunity for African web developers, entrepreneurs and Internet marketers to hear from the winners about their experience building their winning applications, what their experience has been like since winning the contest and their plans for the future.

  The session will be held in collaboration with Nigeria’s Co-Creation Hub, Kenya’s iHub and the Umbono Tech Incubator in Cape Town.

  Interested web developers, entrepreneurs and start-up owners wishing to contribute to the session should please post their questions via the session’s Google Moderator page here before Thursday.

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• Critical Mass: More is better

  Posted: November 10, 2011, 1:50 pm by Will Mutua

  Carrying on the conversation from yesterdays piece on Forecasting Africa’s Mobile Future and some of the thoughts about what that future looks like, where the opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators are, as well as Erik’s ‘Pyramid model and theory’; let’s dig a bit deeper into the aspect about broadening the base of our startup pyramid.

  As we noted, the basic concept behind Erik’s pyramid model is that there are currently very few success stories as far as African tech startups are concerned, and at the same time fewer attempts. The base of the pyramid is made up of the upcoming guys who simply have an idea, maybe some code running but no real business or business model, just an idea. The middle level is made up of the guys who’ve come up with a business out of their idea but are playing at the Small and Medium Enterprise level, they have not quite ‘broken through’, at the very top are the likes of Ushahidi and MPESA, the names that are easily recognisable even at big time international conferences. These are the ones that have caused the world to turn around, look back at Africa, and specific African states/cities and say “Wait a minute! Something’s going on there”.

  The theory part goes something like this: to expand the ecosystem and get more success stories at the top of the pyramid, we need to put effort into the base of the pyramid, broadening it. The idea is that the more people we have trying at the bottom the more chances some of them will trickle up into the SME space, the more get up that one level, the more chances that a few will break through further into the top of the pyramid.

  This is also a meme we picked up from Vint Cerf’s visit at Nairobi’s Innovation Hub, where he talked about the power of building “Bottom up versus Top Down“.

  Bottom-up versus Top-down: Tech Parks versus Tech Hubs

  Mbwana Ally wrote a piece recently in which he basically critiqued the tech park model that several African governments are using to push innovation, he says

  What I have problem with is the belief by Government officials that these cities will create armies of entrepreneurs and innovation based on this infrastructure… Did Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page need a gleaming tech city to create Google or Facebook?

  Both the tech park and tech hub model are really trying to solve the same problem – that of getting more successes up at the top of the pyramid – only that they use different approaches in principle.

  The tech park model is an extremely high capital, potentially lower risk undertaking for governments. In reality it is an attempt to feed the top of the pyramid directly with the hope that there will be a trickle down effect that will then spur innovation locally hence pulling up local innovation through competition or at least falling back to Business Process Outsourcing.

  The main objective in these projects tends to fall on the belief that foreign companies will set up their regional headquarters and create jobs as well as the idea that lots of local medium sized ICT firms and business process outsourcing centers will emerge and move in. The model is to emulate the parks that have gone up in Bangalore, India.

  On the other hand, tech hubs such as Nairobi’s iHub, Senegal’s Bantalabs, Cameroon’s ActivSpaces and others are attacking the same giant from the feet instead of the head and hoping to chop it down instead of knocking it over. Tech hubs are comparatively, much smaller scale, much lower capital, but higher risk private initiatives. The goal being to grow the base of the pyramid, and then Erik’s theory kicks in.

  It may perhaps be left to time and history to show which model will work better (my money’s on tech hubs) in the long run, but one thing’s for sure, the giant must come down and all efforts to bring it down are definitely welcome and it’s better to try multiple things than just one.

  Critical Mass

  At the end of the day what we really want to achieve, particularly as far as the bottom up approach is concerned, is critical mass. The right number of entrepreneurs and innovators taking a chance, trying and trying and trying and trying and trying, and then trying some more and then some more. The more the better, because the more they are the higher the chances of a few breaking through the ceiling.

  Jason Calacanis, a serial entrepreneur – Silicon Alley Reporter, Weblogs, Inc., Mahalo and ThisWeekIn.com- has created a really cool startup event called LAUNCH, they got over 500 applications and close †o 200 of those are shortlisted to launch at the event. The day we’ll be able to give those kind of numbers we’ll know we’re getting there. Jason in the interview below says, “We’re bringing together critical mass…. it keeps the number of transactions up whether that’s people getting hired, investing… ”

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• Forecasting Africa’s Mobile Future

  Posted: November 9, 2011, 12:36 pm by Will Mutua

  Co-founder of Ushahidi, Erik Hersman, gave an interesting talk at the recently held AITEC Africa conference in Nairobi, Kenya in which he made some observations, predictions and opportunities regarding the current state and future of mobile in Africa especially looking at where the opportunities are for innovators and entrepreneurs.

  It is easy to imagine that the mobile revolution in Africa is overrated but according to this slide in Erik’s presentation, not only has Africa met predictions regarding mobile penetration from a few years back, but we’ve broken through those numbers:

  Observation #1: Mobile Web

  The mobile web presents amazing opportunities for delivery of innovative services via mobile. The continued growth of this medium is staggering. Many an African’s first encounter with the World Wide Web is on mobile. The MNOs know the potential and are cashing in on it.

  Big time international brands however, are the ones pushing most content consumed via mobile web. From Facebook to Google these big name brands provide the highly demanded content. The opportunity is definitely there to provide relevant localised content via mobile web. Based on some expert observations, mobile web is more readily taken up even in rural areas than mobile apps.

  And if you’re wondering where exactly to place your bets as far as what kind of content is in demand, research has shown time and again that the top 3 most in demand content types by most Kenyans (and by extension Africans) are: Games, Music and Social Networking/Media.

  Observation #2: Mobile Money

  There’s really no point in going into the ‘mobile money revolution’ in all it’s details here again, but it’s evident that mobile money has been a radical game changer and great success. However, much as mobile money transfers have been very successful, there’s still a major gap with regards to mobile money enabled merchant services. It is indeed possible to pay for your shopping at some supermarkets in Kenya via MPESA, for example, but the process is quite involving and tedious; in Erik’s words (paraphrased) “Paying is as simple as a painful 7 step process”.

  Herein lies an opportunity for innovating a simpler, less involving merchant process that works. There are a number of startups working in this space that are tackling the problem and providing innovative merchant related solutions, some of which include PesaPal, KopoKopo, mOrder and Nikohapa.

  The big boys are not innovating much here and have closed out their systems from developers, but it’s not stopping young innovators from looking for ways around.

  Observation #3: Smart(er) phones

  There’s already a pretty high penetration of android based devices in Kenya, for example, and the number is growing. Companies such as Huawei with their IDEOS line are giving more and more Africans the opportunity to own smart(er) phones at a fair cost. In the long term the trend will be towards an increase in adoption of such Android devices (or similar) and the mobile web while at the same time witnessing lower cost and fewer low end/feature phones (particularly in urban areas one would reckon).

  The Problem (Scaling out)

  Erik pointed out a challenge with how things currently are with regards to tech startups in Africa and making them successful. It is really a question of how do we achieve the necessary scale? Erik explains:

  We have a few good success stories in any one of these cities. There are a handful of great tech companies and organizations that have “made it”. This can be seen as a success in innovation or in business (or in both). Everyone wants to be at the tip of this, and these are the examples we hear of at international conferences and read about in the media.

  In the middle we have everyone else, the guys who are still slugging away. They have some clients and revenue streams, but they’re not at the top (yet).

  At the bottom, that’s what we deal with in places like the iHub and m:lab. These are those scrappy startups that might or might not have any right being in the place. They’re risky, probably don’t have a solid business model yet, and only a few of them will graduate into the SME space above them.

  To make the tip of the pyramid bigger, to have more success stories in the tech space, there is only one option: you have to make the base of the pyramid broader… Invest seed funds into local tech entrepreneurs.

  Tech hubs are filing a critical void with regards to this. There are many investors interested in getting into African tech, the success of such products as MPESA and Ushahidi have preceded us and have drawn attention here, but there’s this question that’s still hanging over our heads “What’s next? What’s the next big success?”. We’ve played on these two successes a lot, but we need to see more! This is what Erik is referring to here - how do we see more success stories at the top of the pyramid.

  Tech hubs are playing a critical role in feeding the bottom of the Pyramid. They are collating the innovators and inventors, the people with an idea and nothing or little more than that. They are acting as seeding grounds and the places potential investors can visit to get access through to the right startups and innovators to fund.

  There is also the need to celebrate successes at whatever level. According to Erik, the market is wide open right now, and opportunities are everywhere. It is so open that really, there’s room for everyone to play and win. We need to work together to grow the ecosystem.

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• Two recently launched web startups from South Africa

  Posted: November 4, 2011, 12:15 pm by Will Mutua

  More and more tech startups are coming up across Africa, fuelled by growing interest in tech, innovation and startups in Africa from all over the world, and an increasing realisation of major opportunities online, Africans are finding new grounds to conquer online, on mobile and other tech business areas. Today, let’s take a look at two recently launched South African web startups:

  1. Guzzle.co.za

  Guzzle aims to act as a kind of a bridge between the offline and online worlds. They search out great deals and specials from major newspapers and other offline sources and then put them online for people to find them easily. So instead of scouring through newspapers, catalogues and other sources for specials, they do all that for you and post them on one online location.

  In their own words:

  Guzzle searches all of SA’s major newspapers and retail catalogues for the latest specials on everything from Nikons to nappies. We don’t sell anything. In fact, the reason we’re so passionate about this venture is that it’s free (currently, even for retailers), so anyone who has access to the web can log on and start using Guzzle.

  Virtusa.co.za

  Virtusa is a digg-like website where SA based users can share and discover anything on the SA web, whether it be celebrity news, political news, business, stories, or what ever else. Virtusa is also giving Adsense publishers the opportunity to make money in an advertising revenue share model where the adsense publisher can get up to 80% of ad revenues.

  Virtusa builds a powerful list of popular news and stories being shared not only around the world wide web, but also the South African ‘web-0-sphere’ ! As the user, you get to submit interesting news, articles, and stories (the choice is yours), as well as vote for, and rate other interesting submissions. Essentially, this will play a vital role in the popularity of the given submission and will determine how the respective story/submission spreads. The more votes and ‘likes’ a story/submission receives, the more chances of increased popularity as well as possible increased search engine rankings. Moreover, Virtusa also allows you to connect with other like-minded people, create and join groups of interest, and make new friends.

   

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• Interview With, Andrew Mugoya Author of ‘African Apps in a Global Marketplace’

  Posted: November 2, 2011, 8:12 pm by Will Mutua

  Andrew Mugoya is the author of an ebook targeted at African app developers titled ‘Africa Apps in a Global Marketplace‘. Andrew runs the afriapps website that showcases apps developed by Africans. In his book, Andrew tackles many aspects of app development from user experience, to funding, to marketing and much more. The book is a pretty good read!

  Afrinnovator: Please give us a quick intro of yourself?

  Andrew: I’m Partner and Technical Director at Asilia – a Creative Agency based in London, UK and Nairobi, Kenya. I previously worked as a developer and Project Manager at several financial institutions in London.

  Afrinnovator: Tell us a bit about Asilia & Afriapps

  Andew: Asilia is a Creative Agency based in London, UK and Nairobi, Kenya. We offer design and technology services, with love. Our style and designs have been described as very ‘African’ and this is one of the areas we stand out, especially internationally.

  Afriapps.com is a platform to showcase great African apps. It is an Asilia in-house initiative and was launched in November 2010. This month is our one-year anniversary.

  Afrinnovator: You’ve recently published an ebook on app development in Africa or by Africans within the global context. How did you come about doing this? Did you see a need, was it out of sheer interest in the subject matter… ?

  Andrew: I wrote the book after noticing several trends on Afriapps.com. I thought I’d share my ideas, observations, tips and gripes about the industry in general but also offer developers a form of guide in going from app to business and being competitive.

  Afrinnovator: Give us some of the main topic areas you cover and some insights that can be found in the book

  Andrew: The book is full of useful recommendations for both the industry in Africa and individual developers.

  The main take-away for developers would be to focus on the user and the user experience. Design and the user experience are what app development is mainly about, not fancy technology or features. Due to open source software and standardised frameworks, the technology is rarely unique. What is unique is the developer’s and designer’s creativity in using technology to make the user’s experience simple, enjoyable and functional.

  For the industry in general, the challenge is firstly, to forge a niche in the global marketplace and secondly, avoid becoming dependent on aid/charity for its survival.

  Afrinnovator: What are your aspirations for Africa as far as tech & innovation are concerned? Specifically with regard to apps?

  Andrew: Firstly we need to find a niche for ourselves. An area that would be difficult for developers from other parts of the world to cater to. The obvious area that jumps out is Africa. Not just in the problems to solve but in how we are solving them; solving African problems in an African way. This means solving uniquely African problems and being unashamedly African in the design, language and style.

  In short, learn from Nollywood.

  Afrinnovator: What, in.your opinion, are the 3 best African made apps you’ve seen?

  Andrew: It is difficult to pick just one app. Every app we feature on Afriapps has something that appeals to me. However, the ones that particularly stand out are those that offer something uniquely African, are well built, well designed and look uniquely African. Andrika e-cards, Basic Swahili and Twi Phrase Book are good examples.

  One other app that stands out for me is Tuvitu from Shimba Technologies. It is a very innovative and popular app that could grow into a powerful platform.

  Afrinnovator: Any last word to African app devs?

  Andrew: In the book I cover many aspects that developers should keep in mind. But if I was to summarise it, I would say the following: Focus on the user and the user experience – from idea, design, coding and marketing. If you do that, funding and profits will follow more easily than if your focus was on awards, funding or publicity.

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• A Nigerian, Kenyan & South African Web Comic

  Posted: November 1, 2011, 12:49 pm by Will Mutua

  Digital online publishing presents some great opportunities for African content creators and creatives. The digital/online medium presents a way around the all too often lengthy and costly publishing process associated with publishing a print version of the work. And so without much ad0 here’s a pick of three web comics we found interesting from Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

  From Nigeria: Crasher

  Crasher is a creator-owned webcomic from Naija (Nigeria). It’s a love story at it’s very core. Most of the story takes place in the Obawon University somewhere in Naija.

  From Kenya: Emergency

  From African Digital Arts

  Emergency Webcomic is a miniseries written and illustrated by Chief Nyamweya. The web comic centers around Dedan Kimathi, a World War II veteran who returns home to try and rebuild a peaceful existence, but finds himself forced toward the same violence he left behind on the battlefield. The comic provides and excellent exploration into post colonial themes through a modern perspective.

  From South Africa: Virtuoso

  Virtuoso is an alternate history of an Africa that never existed, one run by steel and springs, commanded by vast matriarchies and past the height of its culture.

  Virtuoso is the story of Jnembi Osse, a professional weapons manufacturer for the most powerful empire in the world, and how her private rebellion becomes a full scale international incident.

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• Plugged Digital Expo

  Posted: November 1, 2011, 12:13 pm by Will Mutua

  Plugged is a digital expo and conference slated for the 4th-5th of November, 2011 at the Sarit Center, Nairobi Kenya.

  The event organizers are positioning this as an event targeting content creators (animators, VFX, artists, mobile and online content producers), technology suppliers, consumers, corporates and government audiences. That’s a pretty inclusive list as it seems to be the kind of event that aims to please anyone who’s somehow or other is interested or involved in technology and digital content creation.

  The event will feature:

  • A trade show – open floor plan, experiential opportunity for participants to experience and interact with the latest technology, gadgets and services
  • Networking – opportunities for businesses & entrepreneurs to meet face to face exchange ideas, create new partnerships and sow the seeds for the next big thing
  • Conference

  The event, however seems to have a strong leaning towards digital content creation as there will be dedicated floor segments for mobile, animation and gaming. Specifically there will be a gaming event & competition hosted by NexGen Ltd, Kenya’s premier gaming company. These are the guys who represented Kenya at the World Cyber Games and are on a mission to make gaming a full blown spectator sport in Kenya. For more information & sponsorship opportunities, visit www.pluggedexpo.com

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• Ebook: African Apps in a Global Marketplace

  Posted: October 31, 2011, 12:06 am by Will Mutua

  ‘African Apps in a Global Marketplace’ by Andrew Mugoya is a collection of ideas, observations, tips and some gripes about the African app industry.

  It will be available as a free download from Tuesday, 1 November, for a limited period.

  Synopsis

  African technology is in an exciting and vibrant phase with many talented developers and an unprecedented access to global markets.

  However, this is not a situation unique to Africa. App development has exploded all across the world. What this means for African developers and entrepreneurs is that they are not only competing for the same global market but also facing stiffer competition for their local markets.

  To be able to compete in this new world – to be able to survive – African developers and entrepreneurs will need to understand and adapt to this reality.

  ‘African Apps in a Global Marketplace’ is a useful read for African app developers or anyone interested in the state of the African app industry. It presents the reader with the points to consider in taking their app from a simple and fun idea into a product that can be successful globally. From conceptualisation to design, funding and marketing. Most importantly, it informs on how African apps can stand out in the crowded global marketplace.

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• Taking a look at hardware innovation in Africa (Part 2) – of hardware & hubs

  Posted: October 28, 2011, 4:19 pm by Will Mutua

  In the first part of this look at hardware innovation in Africa we mused about the feasibility of building up an environment in which hardware innovation and development can grow and scale up in Africa.

  Founder of the African Institution of Technology and Fasmicro,  a company that focuses on embedded systems, microelectronics, mobile apps and software, professor at Johns Hopkins Electronics and Engineering department and also 2010 TED Fellow & speaker at Tech4Africa, Ndubuisi Ekwekwe, in an interview with Memeburn:

  MB: Do you feel that Africa has more of a chance competing in the hardware arena than it does in software?

  NE: Yes. If you look at it, we simply do software on foundations people have created — we write on .net, Java, Oracle, C, etc, and have yet to create any platform that is indigenous. Contrast that with hardware, where it is unbelievably easier to compete if someone shows you how to make it. The East understands that when you have the labour force with decent education, you can ramp up that sector in any economy and get paid. So, they make the hardware and people have to pay for them while we spend efforts on the software, say Apps, and hardly know how to monetise them because we are competing against Americans and Europeans.

  The interesting thing to note here really is the point about hardware innovation being easier to do, scale and market versus software innovation. Being in software, however, it would appear that software is much more accessible (particularly cost-wise) as it is basically knowledge that is easily acquired and the tools as well are more or less readily available. On the other hand Prof. Ekwekwe does have quite an interesting point here! If you can make hardware components and knowledge accessible, the potential is astounding! And this is where initiatives such as the Fab Lab and others come in.

  The Fab Lab is an MIT initiative the idea of which is to provide the necessary tools for innovation and invention focused around hardware and digital fabrication:

  Fab labs provide widespread access to modern means for invention. They began as an outreach project from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). CBA assembled millions of dollars in machines for research in digital fabrication, ultimately aiming at developing programmable molecular assemblers that will be able to make almost anything. Fab labs fall between these extremes, comprising roughly fifty thousand dollars in equipment and materials that can be used today to do what will be possible with tomorrow’s personal fabricators.

  Fab labs have spread from inner-city Boston to rural India, from South Africa to the North of Norway. Activities in fab labs range from technological empowerment to peer-to-peer project-based technical training to local problem-solving to small-scale high-tech business incubation to grass-roots research. Projects being developed and produced in fab labs include solar and wind-powered turbines, thin-client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.

  Nairobi University FabLab

  In Kenya there are two FabLabs, one in Kisumu the ARO FabLab, and another at the University of Nairobi. The University of Nairobi FabLab initiative is the brainchild of Dr. Kamau Gachigi who is also a lecturer at the university according to this article about him:

  Dr. Gachigi hopes that the Nairobi FabLab will serve as “an infrastructure of high-tech business incubators can provide localized manufacturing capacity. . . (with) the potential to release technology-based economic growth for any developing nation or region.” He is optimistic that the FabLab will promote the creation of an atmosphere and culture of innovation and encourage venture incubation in the region

  The ‘hub model‘ seems to be working pretty well across Africa particularly partly because of the fact that the hubs are well… just that, hubs – central locations which attract and concentrate talent, tools, knowledge, skills and co-working to such an extent that the small community reaches critical mass within it’s reach and then expands outwards. These hubs so far have focused a lot on software, web and mobile. The Fab Lab is a great initiative because it brings in hardware innovation into the picture. What would happen if these hubs took a more deliberate attempt to include the hardware innovators – not just the CS and IT graduates but also the Electronics Engineering guys as well!

  A probable inhibitor, on might recon is cost. Can the hub manage to acquire and maintain a hardware-focused lab purely for experimentation? Well, fortunately today there are several open source hardware initiatives that are aiming to bring down the cost of hardware innovation that could help bridge this gap – examples of these include:

  BugLabs:  The Bug System combines open source modular hardware and software, a complete application development environment and powerful, cloud-based data aggregation tools to provide a unique, end-to-end M2M and Internet of Things innovation platform for customers.

  Arduino: Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

  Beagle Board: The USB-powered BeagleBoard is a low-cost, fan-less single board computer that unleashes laptop-like performance and expandability without the bulk, expense, or noise of typical desktop machines.

  Tech hubs such as Nairobi’s innovation hub create a central place where innovators bring in their skill and innovation capacity and the hub provides certain resources to a group of people that would otherwise be expensive to individuals, both technical such as bandwidth and otherwise e.g. good working environment. Its time to include the hardware innovators in what the software people have been enjoying, and indeed the possibilities increase even more when you consider hardware & software innovators under the same roof! The hardware guys build innovative gadgets, and the software people make those gadgets do stuff and as the continent draws more and more investment in tech through angels and VCs, who knows – we could be sending people to go show their stuff at the Consumer Electronics Show just like we had a couple of innovators representing Kenya at DEMO.

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• By the numbers: Communications Commission of Kenya Mobile & Internet Stats

  Posted: October 19, 2011, 1:41 pm by Will Mutua

  This post is originated from the iHub blog by Leo Mutuku, and reposted here with permission.

  The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) has released a Statistics Report on the Communications Sector reviewing the last quarter of the year 2010/2011. The information used to compile the report was provided by service providers in the sector. Some interesting numbers and trends arise in this end-year report (year ending in June 2011) which I will highlight in two different categories.

  Cellular Mobile Services

  The number of mobile subscriptions stood at 25.27 million up from the 24.9 million reported in December 2010, representing a 1.23% increase in subscriptions and a 64.2% penetration countrywide.

  Over the one year period, mobile subscribers have increased by 25.6%. 99% of these subscriptions are on the pre-paid plan.

  In the period between March 2011 and June 2011, Safaricom has had 148,063 new subscribers coming on board helping them maintain their lead in terms of overall market share of 68.6%. This is in stark contrast to Airtel’s loss of 202,970 subscribers in the same period. This could upset some hypothesis but my belief is that while Airtel have cheaper rates, Safaricom took them home with their 3G network and M-PESA services. Essar is lagging behind with a market share of 6.3% after Orange overtook them in the second quarter of the year to settle at 10.8%, a few percentage points shy of Airtel’s 14.3%.

  Mobile Money is big business with 17.3 million registered subscribers (This is approximately44% of the total population) who collectively deposited Kshs. 48 billion between March and June of this year.

  6.24 billion calls have been made in this last quarter with 89.3 % of the mobile traffic being intra network traffic. 641 million texts were also sent in the same period. On average, a subscriber uses 82.4 minutes of talk time and sends 8.5 SMS per month.

  Mobile Network Operators(MNOs) in the 2010/2011 reporting year realized Kshs. 104 billion as revenue from provision of mobile services. This is 15.7% more than they reported in the previous year. Part of this must have gone to pay the 5,827 staff employed in this sector.

  Here we can note that fixed line subscriptions are ever on the decrease standing now at374,942 compared to the 442,950 reported in March.

  Data and Internet Services

  There are 4.2 million Internet subscriptions and 12.5 million users in Kenya. This puts internet penetration in the country as a whole at 31.8%. 98% of the Internet market share is through the mobile platform. It is also interesting to note that Safaricom again claims the giant share of the Internet market with a 84.2% Market share.

  Total international internet Bandwidth available in Kenya is 5,131,237.12 Mbps. However, most unfortunately, total usage of this bandwidth is under 1% meaning the bandwidth is totally underutilized. Kshs. 148 billion was generated from the data and the internet market which is 42 billion more than was generated in the cellular mobile industry.

  
  

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• Watchout Dealfish, Google Trader is here!

  Posted: October 17, 2011, 7:41 pm by Will Mutua

  Google has officially launched it’s Google Trader service in Kenya following it’s success in Uganda and a launch in Ghana. Google announced on it’s official Google Africa blog:

  After the pilot launch in Uganda and the exciting launch in Ghana, we are excited to announce the launch of Google Trader in Kenya. Google Trader is a free classifieds service that allows people to buy and sell products and services, search for jobs or just about anything else they are looking for.

  Dealfish, an MIH Internet Africa / Naspers Group outfit, is probably Kenya’s prominent classifieds listings website and they have put a lot into their service to get it to where it is. Google’s entrance will definitely pose a significant threat given the already existing popularity of Google as well as Google’s marketing muscle and not to mention the fact that Google will leverage the huge number of Google accounts it has. Google is currently Kenya’s second most popular overall internet location, second to Facebook. Locally Dealfish ranks 2nd  according to Alexa Rankings.

  User interface-wise, Google Trader is well, simple (even rudimentary), no flashy stuff, simply a listing of classifieds items (and the screen for posting a new listing is just as bland). Dealfish on the other hand has a pretty elaborate user interface for viewing and adding listings with such features as customized posting forms depending on what kind of item you are posting. One also has to either create an account or use Facebook login to use Dealfish. A Google account suffices for Google Trader.

  On the mobile front, Dealfish recently announced their Android app, on the other hand one can use Google’s SMS trader to post and browse ads on Google Trader as well as a mobile web interface. This obviously gives them a much wider reach.

  Dealfish currently boasts about 83,200 ads listed on their site (based on the ticker at the top of the page) while we can’t quite estimate how many ads are on Google Trader at launch, it is evident just by browsing through the different categories that they already have tons of ads online.

  At the end of the day, it’s really obvious what Google’s end game here is. And that’s simply to get more locally relevant content online. The more they have the better for them because the more content they get online and on their platform, the more they can attract people online. Google’s key goal in Africa right now is not really monetization, it’s content, content and more content. And every offering they are putting on the African market is really about harvesting as much content as possible and drawing as many people online as they possibly can.

   

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  1. Africa is a goldmine for Google
  2. Google Doodle Kenya – Localize your Google
  3. Kenyan Caught up in Google Hack Case

• From Senegal with Love: Xtreme Design and Engineering develops custom mobile applications

  Posted: October 17, 2011, 11:53 am by Will Mutua

  Xtreme Design and Engineering (XDE) is a tech company based in Dakar, Sengal with offices in Conakry, Ghana and Atlanta, GA. The company offers a wide array of IT solutions including custom software and web development and 2D and 3D design but also has a knack for doing mobile apps for iOS and Android amongst other platforms.

  Xtreme Design and Engineering help businesses optimize their IT investments by offering complete lifecycle mobile and web applications development services. We offer global services on a project basis or strategic-staffing basis, for the most popular mobile platforms (IOS, Android, Blackberry…) and web development. We have expertise and experience in developing technology solutions including design, development, integration, migration, implementation and maintenance, and support.

  We took two of their iOS apps, iSenegal and Barcelona 24/7 for a spin…

  iSenegal

  iSenegal is a mobile business directory for Senegal. The application allows its users to lookup nearby businesses using specified keywords or by categories.

  The results are location based which allow the user to find the closest business based on his current location, pin-point them on a map for directions and contact them either by phone or email straight from the application.

  The app also provides a 7 days weather forecast for Dakar, Senegal.

  Review

  If you’re travelling to Senegal, this is a worthwhile app to take along. The app provides you the convenience of finding places of interest such as restaurants, shopping centers, banks, hospitals and more pretty easily. You can locate places on a map for easy directions. The 7-day weather forecast feature is pretty cool as well.

  The only thing is either because of the location we were testing it from (Kenya) it did not seem to give very many listings…

  Barcelona 24/7

  Barcelona 24/7 is a mobile that provides news about the FC Barcelona all day long. It covers all information related to the club (players, staff, transfers, rumors…).

  The first version presents the latest club news, a squad section that gives the biographies of the current 2011/12 players, the season’s schedule and rankings along with game scores.

  The app also has a video section that presents videos of the FC Barcelona team from this season as well as some classic videos.

  The same app exists for other football clubs including Real Madrid, Manchester United, Chelsea FC and many more coming soon.

  Review

  If you are a football fan and a particularly a fan of FC Barcelona, this app is worth checking out. The information is good and up to date.

  Related posts:

  1. Business plan toolkit for Mobile Applications Laboratories from infoDev
  2. [BREAKING] SA Design firm teams up with Posterous
  3. Tunisia to host The Web design International Festival

• Taking a look at hardware innovation in Africa (Part 1)

  Posted: October 14, 2011, 6:47 pm by Will Mutua

  Last year we posed the question: Is there a market for homegrown hardware solutions?

  At Afrinnovator, we tend to focus a lot on the software side of innovation, perhaps because there’s a lot of it happening. And that’s no surprise really since getting into software has much lower initial costs and potentially larger and quicker returns on investment. hardware is a totally different ballgame. It takes quite a bit to successfully develop and market a piece of hardware. Particularly in terms of cost.

  But alas, innovation knows no bounderies and so over the past year or so, we have heard of innovations from different area of Africa, particularly in tablet manufacturing – Nigeria-made Encipher Inye, VMK Congo’s tablet, and most recently in Kenya, the Noris Kaboo tablet.

  Erik Hersman recently posted a blog titled ‘Manufacturing our Future‘ in which he reminisces on his childhood when he and his friends would collect parts to build little mechanical contraptions. Many African boys perhaps can share similar memories. In his article, Erik makes mention of the Shanzhai culture in China and how pervasive it has become.

  Spot the difference

  In Kenya, there is an informal manufacturing industry called ‘Jua kali‘, the same concept exists in many African countries. Jua kali (swahili literally ‘hot sun’) industry basically manufacture non-tech products usually artifacts that can be made from scrap metals and other cheap and easy to come-by materials and provides employment for many Kenyans. What if the same concept could pick up at a higher level of sophistication but at the same scale?

  Image courtesy of The African Executive

  The World Bank estimates that the Informal Economy generates 40 percent of the GNP of low-income nations and 17 percent of the GNP of high-income ones. In Africa, the informal economy contributes significantly to the Gross National Income (GNI), to income generation of the majority of citizens. This is in addition to its contribution to the formal economy. According to data from the World Bank work on bench-marking business regulations, the size of the informal economy as a percentage of gross national income (GNI), ranges from under 30 percent in South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, to almost 60 percent in Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The average size in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is 42.3 percent. It contributes to enlarging the middle class in the Continent.

  There are two initiatives we are aware of in East Africa that exemplify the potential of this that we are going to look at in subsequent articles following this one. The Nairobi University FabLab in Kenya and the Fundibots. We can also consider the effect and influence of such events as the flagship do-it-yourself event, Maker Faire.

  In the mean time,  what are your thoughts on hardware innovation in Africa? What do we need to do to get us there?

  Related posts:

  1. Is there an African Market for Homegrown Hardware?
  2. Social Innovation/Entrepreneurship in Africa
  3. Semacraft Africa Innovation Tour 2011

• Tech Startup Success Formulas for Africa: Content & Connectivity

  Posted: October 10, 2011, 2:51 pm by Will Mutua

  Tech is (or will become) the New Agriculture

  In many an African country, the primary economic driver is typically agriculture (as well as mining & tourism in others). It is evident that many African economies suffer for their over-dependence on this primary industry, simply growing and selling agricultural produce with little or no value added. Gumisai Mumume notes thus:

  Across Africa, most countries face the problem that Mauritius once did: they produce and export mainly unprocessed crops or minerals, even though such raw materials are fetching lower and lower prices on world markets. In response, some are seeking to follow the example of Mauritius, to consciously and more energetically build up their manufacturing industries…

  Earnings from primary commodities represent 40 per cent of Africa’s gross domestic product. For 20 countries, a single commodity accounts for more than 50 per cent of export revenue. But such dependence on primary products, especially agricultural crops, means the continent is vulnerable to unstable market prices and weather conditions. [emphasis added]

  And not only is there a problem fetching good prices on world markets, agriculture is also plagued by many uncertainties such as droughts that many African governments are seldom able to handle. The recent severe famine in East Africa is a recent, startling example of this.

  And this is where, at least in some African countries tech has the potential to really rise and become a major contributor to the economy. In Kenya for example, the government has recognized the potential of tech and has plans underway to increase the contribution of technology to the Kenyan economy particularly through Business Process Outsourcing and the planned Konza technology city.

  The reasons for the great potential of technology to supercharge African economies are many and we’ve taken a look at them previously.

  However, there is reason to believe that tech startups, founded by young, dynamic and innovative people will be of as much significance, if not more than big government efforts following Vint Cerf’s ‘Bottom Up‘ meme. In this article we will focus on another meme touched on by Vint though: Content and Connectivity.

  Leveraging Content and Connectivity

  Much of the internet traffic from Africa leads to foreign services, for many countries in Africa the top visited sites are usually Facebook and Google. Local content is all about providing not just content that has been produced locally, to be consumed locally but more so about making really compelling and locally relevant content.

  Connectivity ties in with content really closely as really, there is no point in producing great content that no one can access. The power of mobile cannot be overstated as far as connectivity goes. Africa has become highly connected to the rest of the world through high-speed submarine cables and the potential of innovative satellite technologies such as the Other 3 billion (O3b) initiative could take that further. Despite this, substantial terrestrial (last-mile) coverage is still a challenge.

  Rudnick says that Africa with a population of 1 billion has 5 per cent of the Internet usage of the United Kingdom which has a population of 65 million. While the uncovered population presents numerous potential for growth, Mike van den Berg, CEO,  Gateway Communications, argues that the only possible way to cover the population is through a hybrid method combining both fibre and satellite connectivity. To support his argument, Berg says that fibre connectivity in the region has  been marred by unreliability resulting from cable cuts and outtages, sometime lasting months and also some areas would not be viable to cover via fibre.

  Mobile technology though is changing that. Smartphones are getting into more and more hands though with low cost smartphones becoming more and more accessible. Even so, the wide majority do not have very sophisticated phones and even then few have the disposable income to spend their mobile airtime on mobile internet.

  The ‘big boys’ are not asleep though, they recognize the significance of content and connectivity and are finding innovative ways to make their services available to the mass market in Africa by solving the challenges of relevance and accessibility innovatively

  Innovative Solutions

  Google, for example, recently launched a localized website for the video sharing service,YouTube in Kenya (youtube.co.ke). The idea is to offer Kenyans a site that presents locally relevant videos easily accessible for viewers. Google also launched their SA site a few months ago with the same intention.

  YouTube also offers a solution called ‘YouTube Feather‘ that provides a stripped down, low latency version of the website for viewers with slow connections:

  The “Feather” project is intended to serve YouTube video watch pages with the lowest latency possible. It achieves this by severely limiting the features available to the viewer and making use of advanced web techniques for reducing the total amount of bytes downloaded by the browser.

  Facebook is interesting because in itself the social networking site connects people to each other at a local level out of the box really. And perhaps this is one reason it has caught on so well in Africa. Think about it, every status update, photo or video posted by a friend (you know) is local content and it’s locally relevant to you, why won’t you want to check it out?

  On the connectivity side of things, Facebook Zero provides an optimized for speed mobile experience for Facebook users at zero data rates:

  When using the mobile internet, people around the world face two main challenges—sometimes the experience is too slow to be fun and the cost of data plans and understanding them can be daunting. We have designed 0.facebook.com to help solve these two barriers and we hope that even more people will discover the mobile Internet with Facebook as a result. [emphasis added]

  The way Facebook Zero works is really a paradigm shift on service delivery via mobile, they basically make it completely free for you to access the site:

  What they have realized is that the only way to increase penetration in the developing world is to cover the data costs for their users (or, if lucky, snooker a mobile operator into not charging them for it).

  I pay for someone to visit this blog. I pay my web hosting fees and that means that you can visit it for free. Almost. Unless you’re on a free WiFi service you still have to pay your ISP to connect to the internet. This is akin to me paying off your ISP for when you visit my website.

  In Kenya, Orange mobile has partnered with Facebook to provide the Zero service.

  Conclusion – Scaling up is easier

  Local startups can learn from these by finding ways to make sure that their own services are accessible and relevant. In fact it’s interesting that these global companies are finding ways to become more and more locally relevant in their different markets – perhaps success for local startups lies not in trying to reach mass audiences across the globe but providing clear, relevant, localized services. It seems like a much easier problem/challenge than making a one-size fits all solution – not that it would not work and local startups cannot become massively successful that way… it’s just harder to do.

  The principle is to work from known to unknown. In fact tracing back the history of the Facebooks and Googles of this world, one would find that the initial problem they were solving was quite localized – in fact Facemash (the predecessor to Facebook) initially caught on partly because Havard did not have a campus ‘facebook’ and gained traction from the campus level and was made to appeal to that demography. Who new it would grow so big in a few short years?

   

  Related posts:

  1. Startup Watch: Tuvitu – customized, aggregated content on your mobile
  2. A South African Startup Success Story: WooThemes
  3. Youtube marks 5th birthday with launch of Youtube South Africa

• 3 Memes on Africa’s Tech Future from Internet Father, Vint Cerf

  Posted: September 30, 2011, 3:30 pm by Will Mutua

  This week Kenya has been hosting the Internet Governance Forum  under the main theme, ”Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation“.

  Well, yesterday Nairobi’s Innovation Hub hosted one of the “Fathers of the Internet”, Vinton  G. Cerf for a session dubbed “Synergestic Communities” as well as a Fireside Chat. Vint and Bob Kahn co-designed the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. Vint is a thought leader on Internet related matters and is currently Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist:

  Cerf has worked for Google as its Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist since September 2005.^[3] In this function he has become well known for his predictions on how technology will affect future society, encompassing such areas as artificial intelligence, environmentalism, the advent of IPv6 and the transformation of the television industry and its delivery model.

  Based on Vint’s talk, there are a few notable memes that came out on what it will take to move Kenya/Africa in the right direction as far as tech and innovation are concerned:

  1. Bottom Up

  The Internet itself has largely been successful by the fact that it was built and operated from the outset in from a bottom up perspective. Vint mused about how people ask him who is ‘in charge’ of the internet whereas there really is no one individual sitting at the top with access to a big switch that could switch off the entire internet at will and at once and dictating what must happen on the internet.

  The idea is that, in his own words “people will eventually find a way to make it happen”, if you give them the opportunity and a suitable playing field. In other words we may not be there yet but the more we try and the harder we push and the more we keep at it, there’s bound to be a break-through.

  2. Persistence and Patience

  This one is closely related to the previous meme. Vint used a particularly interesting metaphor here, he explained how the efforts to move tech mainstream in Africa (or Kenya ) is like a bunch of people pushing this massive boulder up a steep hill, eventually they get to a point where they cannot push any further and it’s just too heavy and so high up that it over powers them, at that ‘tipping point’, the boulder now starts coming back down at a massive velocity and you’d better get out of the way cos you can’t stop it now.

  So what it will take is persistence in pushing in the right direction and patience. We are bound to get to the tipping point where the African tech, innovation and startup culture just takes off on it’s own and just moves with it’s own velocity.

  To expand this thought a bit further, I’d imagine that when that boulder comes down it will create an ‘snowball’ effect, not just coming down fast, but growing bigger and bigger as it goes down.

  3. Connectivity and Content

  Vint asserted that the more people get connected the better, especially highlighting on the power of mobile. It is evident that in Kenya, for example, mobile data is a cash cow for mobile operators given that majority of people are connecting to the internet via mobile.

  And this is becoming more and more so with what Vint termed as on of his top 3 ‘inventions’ associated with the internet – Smartphones. They are getting cheaper and even fairly basic phones are supporting sophisticated browsers such as Opera Mini. In fact Vint went ahead and also speculated on the effect of mobile on the Internet Cafe business model, does mobile data threaten the existence or success of Internet Cafes?

  Vint highlighted the fact that whearas there are many fiber landing points in Africa there are places that could also be better served by new satellite technology such as the Google backed O3b Networks. The ‘Other 3 Billion‘ initiative aims to come up with a solution that combines the speed of fiber with the reach of satellite.

  With regards to content, Vint pointed out the importance of making locally relevant content available online. This is especially powerful when combined with the power of mobile, in the sense that Vint noted that Google observed certain subtleties in what people tended to search for when the Googled from their mobile phones e.g. people when searching from a mobile will more often than not be looking for something within their locality such as the location of a store or restaurant.

  As far as local content is concerned, Vint also pointed out the power of user generated and crowdsourced content.

  He mentioned that this information is especially compelling because it is really a case of the market making available what others in the same market will be interested in as well. Of course the challenge with this comes when dealing with massive amounts of information where verifying that information could be a significant challenge.

  He mentioned in this regard that it is important to create and make available simple to use tools for people to create content with, particularly on mobile.

  Wrapping it up

  These 3 memes could be wrapped up in something Vint said (paraphrased) “You have all that it takes to make it happen and create more success stories like Ushahidi”

  Related posts:

  1. Africa Tech Innovation Pulse Check
  2. TMS Ruge says aint no holding back tech in Africa!
  3. Google Opens Up Umbono, SA Tech Incubator

• A Look at Mobile Broadband in Kenya [infographic]

  Posted: September 29, 2011, 12:27 am by Will Mutua

  This post was originally from the Nairobi innovation hub blog and is reposted here with their permission…

  The arrival of the undersea fiber cables in Kenya in 2009 has revolutionized the technology and economic sectors. Kenya is one of very few countries in Africa with a comprehensive framework set up in this regard. Average national download speeds have increased from670.89 kbps in 2009 to 3,806.03 Kbps in 2011. Further, mobile broadband speeds have also drastically increased while cost of Internet access decreased.  Mobile broadband is the ability to access data, voice and video at high speeds over an Internet connection through a portable modem especially a mobile phone. Recently, Safaricom and Orange announced download speeds of up to 21Mbps on their 3G networks .

  Click for larger image

  Network operators such as Safaricom are relying more and more on data to generate massive revenues. According to statistics, mobile broadband providers are making up to 19%of their revenue from mobile data services. It is predicted that mobile broadband can potentially increase national productivity and growth by up to 15%.

  Subscribers are now opting to access Internet and other web based services on the go from their cell phones and other portable modems due to the convenience provided by a wide coverage of GSM/3G networks in Kenya. The low bundle rates being offered are also a motivating factor. 1Gb of data cost about Kshs. 2500 last year compared to the current rate (calculated using cheapest combinations) of Kshs. 998.

  Innovation is at an all-time high with many local apps for phones being produced and sold on app stores every other day. Social and informative sites like Facebook, Twitter and the blogs are increasingly getting more mobile traffic than desktop traffic while marketing campaigns are slowly being taken to the mobile phone.

  It is however disappointing to see the little attention mobile broadband services are being given in terms of research (m-research.) New focus ought to be given to mobile broadband with regards to m-commerce, apps, and other online solutions and more so, on the potential of growth and impact on the country as a whole.

  Related posts:

  1. Making Africa’s Great Broadband Race Worthwhile to Consumers
  2. Zoopy Rebrands. Focuses On Mobile Video, Apps & Mobi Site [INFOGRAPHIC]
  3. Africa Internet/Broadband Pulse Check

• 3 ‘viral’ Local YouTube Music Videos from Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa

  Posted: September 28, 2011, 6:08 pm by Will Mutua

  Web video is one of those revolutionary inventions that has really opened up the world in dramatic ways. For example, 2011 YouTube statistics show that over 48 hours of video are now uploaded per minute, and YouTube has surpassed 3 billion views per day. TED’s Chris Anderson made the assertion that web video is powering global innovation in this 2010 TED talk:

  Without a doubt, web video is here to stay and in a big way, particularly when combined with mobile - this is exactly what moved Zoopy, formerly a video sharing website out of South Africa, to focus on mobile video.

  Well, this got us to wondering if we could pick out 3 YouTube videos from across sub-saharan Africa that caused a bit of a stir, particularly because of their local (this meaning a certain group of people could connect in a very close way to the author, character or nature of the video whether they are in the said country or it’s diaspora) relevance even though published on a medium that has no boundaries and knows no particular culture (except perhaps that of creativity and sharing) and here’s what we got:

  From Kenya: ‘Makmende’

  This was actually the video of Just-a-Band’s hit song ‘Ha-He’. The video depicts a heroic character by the name ‘Makmende’. To understand the significance, of ‘Makmende’ would take some understanding of local sheng’ language, and a bit of history. The character and his depiction really captured the minds of Kenyans with memories from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Makmende’s Wikipedia article (which he is too big to fit in), does a fairly good job of describing the origins of the word

  The word Makmende is a sheng (Swahili slang) word which means “a hero”.^[2] The name supposedly originated from a mispronunciation of a phrase spoken by Dirty Harry, played by Clint Eastwood, “Go ahead, make my day” (Mek ma nday) from the 1983 movie Sudden Impact. The word made its way into Kenyan streets in the 1990s whereby in the streets a bad-guy wannabe would be called out and asked “Who do you think you are? Makmende?”. Anyone who thought they could do the impossible or a particularly difficult task was always asked whether they thought they were Makmende, since only Makmende could do or attempt to do the impossible. The character Makmende is associated with the fashion wear of the early 1980s. He is portrayed with long John Shaft-like afro hair and bell bottom trousers that were the trend then.

  This video literally took Kenyans by storm, the result was all manner of heroic graphics featuring Makmende and punch lines on Facebook and Twitter about how super the super hero was like -

  “Just heard that Makmende can tweet 141 letters!”;

  “Some people wear Superman pajamas. Superman wears #Makmende pajamas”;

  “#makmende is so cool, Even his enemies list him as their emergency contact number”;

  “#Makmende can never have a heart attack, his heart is not so foolish to attack him.”

  “After platinum, albums go Makmende”

  “Makmende hangs his clothes on a safaricom line and when they dry he stores them in a flashdisk!”

  From Nigeria: D’banj Oliver Twist

  D’banj is a Nigerian singer-songwriter whose video for the song ‘Oliver Twist’ got over 16,000 views on YouTube within 24 hours:

  The song and video were produced by Mo’Hits Records who then went ahead to announce a competition where anyone could record a video clip of themselves or their group dancing to the Oliver song. The winner of this competition was even more popular than the original video:

  From South Africa: The Boy Named ‘Vicus’

  This one is as much a story of the musician as it is of the video that went viral.

  A video is posted on YouTube of a boy named Vicus playing a guitar and singing the song “These Arms” by “All for One”; the video goes viral and moves the hearts of many including Sony International and other big time record companies. The problem however was that no one can find the young man! Moreover there are multiple copies of the video online making it hard to even find the original uploader. The result is a bit of a race to track down the talented Vicus…

  Related posts:

  1. Just-a-band produces the most viral campaign yet – Makmende
  2. Youtube marks 5th birthday with launch of Youtube South Africa
  3. Africa Facebook Phenomenon Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa

• AfricaCom Conference & Exhibition – Setting the Agenda for African Telecoms

  Posted: September 28, 2011, 4:28 pm by Will Mutua

  There is no shortage of Africa/Tech-focused events nowadays. If you are looking forward for a worthwhile event in the area of telecoms and ICT, the 14th annual AfricaCom conference is just around the corner and promises to be a massive event. The event is to be held in Cape Town, South Africa, with a pretty impressive agenda. The event will cover such topics as:

  • Innovation
  • Social Media
  • Mobility and mobile money
  • Telecoms  - with a particular focus on rural Africa, and much more

  Africa is at a turning point.  Its booming communications market is ready to fuel the continent’s economic and social growth. Now is the time to embrace the opportunities in Digital Africa! AfricaCom 2011 gives you the most innovative, visionary, entrepreneurial, creative perspectives on the continent’s fast-moving telecoms, media and ICT ecosystem. The keynotes will bring together operators who are transforming their businesses, suppliers delivering more profitable solutions, and alternative players with a fresh approach to delivering attractive services to the consumers.

  Related posts:

  1. A Chat with Idea Bounty’s Dan Neville on the Innovation Conference "The Burning Platform" 2010 JHB
  2. Kenya’s Robust Growth Driven by Telecoms Boom
  3. Pan Africa Media Conference 2010: Talking Media

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Fish cakes

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Yet more fish cakes

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

The end of the fish cakes