Comments on: Mobile Phones as Platform in Africa

By: Ira Rollover WebLog » Blog Archive » Alterwave - Direct Marketing and Advertising to mobile phones via ...

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:25:53 +0000

[...] Mobile Phones as Platform in Africa | White African Not just that though, it has a business model. Itâ€s not just … agencies come and go (and a few do have lasting impact, Iâ€m … Do You See? 6.28; But, Where Were the Hippos!? 6.26; Again, Mobile Phones … http://whiteafrican.com/?p=365 [...]

By: Mike Solomon

Mike Solomon — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 12:46:30 +0000

Great Post – yup mobile is the immediate future of SA comms and advertising (to approach it from a commercial point of view.) Slow broadband adoption and prohibitive technology costs will see the web take up a lot slower in SA but it will come!

By: HASH

HASH — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:09:20 +0000

Mark, that’s where I am in complete agreement with you.

I strongly believe that the real lasting development is only possible through “for-profit” enterprises. We’ve all seen the well-meaning development agencies come and go (and a few do have lasting impact, I’m speaking in generalities here), but it’s the businesses that grow in a community that make the difference over the long haul. They provide jobs, they increase the standard of living and they open up new possibilities for other entrepreneurs.

By: mark

mark — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:57:58 +0000

thanks. It’s exactly how we see it. Even though we’ve partnered with public donor projects, and in some ways they’ve been great, they just have no job security! This must be a profitable venture, a service-based venture, a customer focussed venture, and it must unleash what i imagine is loads of commerce opportunities leading to wealth generation. I’m skeptical about technology ‘solving’ things, but it’s one contribution to the debate. We launched today in a marketplace with hundreds of traders… I’m not sure they really understand yet how they can make money from this… but we’re getting closer and closer to them adopting it. Already some impressive success stories are emerging. We have to be cautious however that the short term will show gains by the tech savvy…

By: HASH

HASH — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:53:09 +0000

Hey Benin, agreed, Prosper.com has a great application that I think could very easily be utilized and implemented in Africa.

By: Benin Mwangi

Benin Mwangi — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:06:40 +0000

Hash:

Great post! You and Emeka Okafor( on his similiar post) have summed it up so well that there is little for me to add on this subject, other than saying “yes, I agree with you”.

So here’s a side observation….There is a U.S. based website called http://www.prosper.com. I would imagine that if someone did this in SSA, but using a mobile platform-the upside would reach into infinity…What do you think?