WhiteAfrican – Page 33 – Where Africa and Technology Collide!

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The Grid in Tanzania and an African Mobile Phone Documentary

There have been a couple new entrants into the mobile and web space in Africa that I haven’t had a chance to review adequately. One of them is The Grid, by Vodacom. Also in this post is a new documentary on mobile phone use in Africa.

The Grid (Tanzania)

“The grid connects your cellphone and web browser into a social network that is aware of where you are. It uses cellphone mast triangulation to detect where you and your friends are and helps you leave notes on the places you go to”

The Grid launched into Tanzania in April. According to Vincent Maher, who heads up the project, there has been very favorable growth rates of the service.

Besides being a well designed and well integrated mobile/web social network, what I’m really looking forward to hearing about is The Grid’s location-based advertising unfold. For launch, they have partnered with Nandos, Sportscene, Jay Jays and Synergy pharmacies to deliver advertising within radii ranging from 0 – 10km from a users physical location. Vodacom has the muscle to pull this type of thing off, and the connections to create the advertiser relationships.

The Grid is really a direct competitor to Google Latitude (I’ve written about this here), something I’m really excited to see coming out of Africa.

Hello Africa

A documentary about mobile phone culture in Africa. I was excited to see the trailer for this last month, and the full version is now available. Find out more at ICT4D.at

Hello Africa from UZI MAGAZINE on Vimeo.

Before 2001, the year the first cell tower was erected in Zanzibar, people had very limited means of communicating with each other from a distance. Today, the situation is completely the opposite. Cell towers from main operators cover the whole island and people communicate all the time with their mobile phones. It is difficult to imagine how it once was before.

There are plenty of aspects about the ongoing changes that could be covered in a documentary, but the purpose of this fillm is not to elaborate and draw conclusions. The purpose is to catch the vibe, the know, show what’s going on right now. A snapshot of the Zanzibarian zeitgeist.

Uganda’s Appfrica Labs

May 12, 2009 / HASH / 7 Comments

Jon Gosier runs Appfrica Labs. He’s been hard at work over the last year promoting technology all over Africa on his blog, and at the same time building a base for the technology incubator Appfrica Labs that he launched late last year with some external funding from European VC firm Kuv Capital. Jon is one of the most capable, energetic and social programmers that I know. He is entrepreneurial, understands the business side of things as well as the nuts and bolts of developing. In short, he’s about the perfect person to put your money behind if you’re going to invest in the African startup tech space.

Innovation in Uganda, by Ugandans, for Uganda

There’s something very powerful about the focus that Jon is applying to Appfrica Labs. I’m sure that there are opportunities and applications that he will incubate that stretch beyond Uganda, but he’s taking a measured approach. There’s enough low-hanging fruit in Uganda for him work on, so he’s starting there.

“The mission is to offer opportunities and work experience for East African software entrepreneurs so that they can then use their talents to bolster the growing local markets by creating their own products and companies. We pick up where local colleges like Makerere University leave off by offering hand-on experience in Java, C++, C#, Ruby on Rails, Django and Python, PHP, Perl, Kannel and various other programming languages that often canâ€™t be taught in-depth in classes due to budget restraints.”

Jon notes that there are over 60,000 Facebook users in Kampala, and instead of creating yet another social network, he has decided to focus a fair bit of early development into this platform. He doesn’t focus on Twitter or other “hot Web 2.0 apps” which aren’t being used there by enough people yet.

Proof is in the development

A good example of this local Uganda focus is the apps and tools that are being developed right now. Here are just a couple examples, and I know first-hand that there are more on the way shortly:

Status.ug – an inexpensive, and efficient, mobile gateway for Ugandans to update Facebook via their mobile phone.

Answer Bird – Uses Facebook Connect to allow questions to be asked and answered in a Twitter-like interface more here).

OhmSMS – Get an SMS when your power is off at home or at the office, simply by keeping a cheap mobile phone plugged into an outlet.

Why this works

Appfrica Labs is not only a great idea, but it’s a blueprint for a new way for technologists to band together and create something in the face of a lot of difficulties in Africa. We all know of the problems faced when trying to get seed capital, or of the lack of traction when trying to sell ideas to the government or big businesses within a country.

What Jon has been able to do is create a brand which others can rally around and push their efforts forward as a collective. It’s about marketing, messaging and communication. He’s made a lot of headway for not just himself, but the other entrepreneurs in Uganda due in no small part to the hard work and late nights put into his blog, creating his own code, and promoting his message at conferences.

We have yet to see the final outcome of all this labor, but it’s an extremely strong start that leaves me optimistic about the future of Appfrica Labs and any other innovation hubs that pop up around Africa. Rebecca Wanjiku is right, Africans should stop whining and work smart, collectively to get new technology built, released and adopted throughout the continent.

Quick Hits Around African Tech

May 10, 2009 / HASH / 6 Comments

I’m thoroughly enjoying Dambisa Moyo’s “Dead Aid” book. Buy it, has great food for thought, and numbers to back it up.

The New York Times article on big web content companies lack of profitability in places like Africa.

We’re seeing a new trend of microblogging platforms emerge across Africa. Most recently in the Congo with Akouaba, but also in Nigeria with Naijapulse and South Africa’s Gatorpeeps.

Matt Berg writes about the “Off-grid solar calculator” in North Africa.

Mobility Nigeria points out that Nigeria displaces Germany in the Opera Mini top 10 list.

Bankelele breaks down some of mobile payment tool M-Pesa’s strengths and weaknesses in Kenya.

We’ve announced Ushahidi’s Beta stage, and another round of funding.

APC talks about the broadband rollout issues and a movement to change policy in South Africa.

The Rise of the Motorcycle Taxi in Africa

April 30, 2009 / HASH / 34 Comments

“Piki piki” is motorcycle in Swahili. That’s how I think of them, it’s what my daughters call them, and it’s what I want to write about today even though it has nothing to do with African tech… 🙂

The Rise of the Motorcycle Taxi in Africa

There has been a massive increase in the number of motorcycles in Africa over the last couple years. As an example, the story I got from more than one source in Liberia last month was that a year ago there were only a few motorcycles on the road. Now the country is covered with thousands of “peen peen’s”, their local motorcycle taxis.

As I travel, I like to test out the local motorcycles. Usually this means me finding a local motorcycle taxi driver and renting the bike off of him. It’s questionable whether a guy my size is going to fit onto the back of one of these 125cc cheap Indian and Chinese bikes. Plus, most of the drivers are horrible and there’s no way I’m putting my life in his hands. Here is a video of me testing out a “boda boda” in Kenya, and in the middle (1:38) of this Liberia video I test a “peen peen” out briefly.

The Business Side

Whenever I’m in a new country, I take the time to sit down and talk to the local motorcyclists. I’m curious as to when the bikes started showing up in numbers, how much they cost, and how much they charge to drive people around. I’ve started to wonder if it’s the same Indian and Chinese suppliers all over the continent, since you can buy the same models from Kenya to Liberia with the same average pricing of $500 – $1500. You know when someone has some money, since they ride a Yamaha, Honda or some other Japanese motorcycle.

On the business side, the motorcycle is bought by an entrepreneur who has some capital, who then rents it out to a taxi driver who pays him a daily rent on the bike. Anything he makes above rent, he keeps, and then one day a week (Saturday) he doesn’t pay any rent and keeps all the profits. Meanwhile, the owner has to cover maintenance, insurance and registration costs, fuel costs are covered by the driver. The owner’s goal is to get a small fleet of 4-10 motorcycle taxis on the road.

Here’s a breakdown for one owner/driver in Liberia:

“Nafa” Chinese motorcycle cost: $750
Daily driver revenue (avg): $22
Daily driver rent: $8
Daily driver fuel costs: $3
Daily driver profit (avg): $11

Maintenance and Modding

I’m also intrigued by how they keep them running and how they get modded by the riders. Sometimes you’ll see radios strapped to the handlebars, stickers, signs and tassles. Helmets, when worn, are a hodgepodge of any type of hard head covering that can be found, from construction to racing helmets, they’re all there.

In West Africa, fueling is done via roadside stalls that sell gasoline by the jar or bottle. In East Africa they generally get filled at normal stations or via drums in the more rural areas.

Gallery

Sembuse: East Africa’s First Mobile Social Network

April 26, 2009 / HASH / 28 Comments

For 15% of the cost of a normal 160 character SMS message in Kenya you can now send one with 1000 characters in it.

Sembuse is a mobile social network. It’s a way for East Africans to connect with each other via short messaging, cheaper than normal SMS messages (much like it’s counterpart Mxit in South Africa). It’s a new release by Symbiotic, a Kenyan firm that specializes in making mobile phone related applications. To get the application on your phone, point your device to to m.sembuse.com (or s.zunguka.com). It’s a free download for anyone with a GPRS or 3G enabled phone, and you can try it out immediately.

Making Money

Mbugua Njihia is an entrepreneur, I’ve known him for a little while, and he’s focused on running profitable enterprises. There are two revenue streams at Sembuse.

Maneno Ads by Sembuse 1. Value added services:

“Customized news alerts, real time stock market alerts and news, rave crave â€“ that gives users a snapshot of the nightlife in their location, the gossip channel â€“ that allows users to submit and share gossip with their friends, the sports bar â€“ where sports fans can keep up to date with the happenings in their favorite sports and a video section with mobisodes across a variety of channels.”

2. Advertising
There is a proprietary hyper-targeting advertising platform – SembuseConnect that allows businesses to connect with their target market directly on their handset. They can book their ManenoAds (text adverts) and choose their desired target group on the Sembuse network from the ease and comfort of their mobile phone wherever they are. The advertisements are served immediately the order is confirmed.

I asked Mbugua about the advertising, and he got back to me with the following statement:

“Going into launch we have two advertisers on board on trials – Standard Investment Bank and Royal Media Services. For the larger FMCGâ€™s and cooperates the approach is to use their ad agencies to book and manage the medium for themselves and the rate cards have already been dispatched. This however doesnâ€™t prevent us from having a direct engagement with clients. The biggest source we hope will be individuals and small to medium sized enterprises who can place their own adverts through their mobile phones.”

In Summary

I’m really interested in seeing where this goes. The guys behind it are ambitious, and they’re doing something that I’ve thought for a long time needed to be done. I’m particularly glad to see that they’ve taken a two-pronged revenue approach. Relying on advertising alone in this economic environment wouldn’t be that promising, but by tapping into the end-user as well, there is added potential.

Finally, I wonder if we’ll see more people moving from their older SMS-only phones, with no data capability, to GPRS enabled phones. I know we saw this happen in the case of Mxit in South Africa, so I wonder if the same will be the case in East Africa.

Screenshots

Nigeria – Barcamp Nigeria

April 25, 2009 / HASH / 1 Comment

Mobile Phones in Africa (Video)

April 25, 2009 / HASH / 4 Comments

I found out about the “Mobile phones in Africa” video project that Martin Konzett and the team at ICT4D Austria were up to when I ran into him at the MobileActive’08 conference last year. He was shooting a lot of stuff with his Nikon D90 (video and images). I had no idea that it would be this good!

This video embedded here is a low-res version of the trailer. I was able to watch the high-res version today at the Africa Gathering in London, and have to say it’s amazing. Very impressive stuff, and I can’t wait to see the whole video. It will be out on May 8th.

England – Africa Gathering – London

April 25, 2009 / HASH / Comments Off

My (short) TED Talk on Ushahidi

April 25, 2009 / HASH / 3 Comments

I was fortunate enough to be at TED this year as a Fellow. While there, I did a short TED University talk on the roots of Ushahidi, where it’s going and a new initiative called Swift River. Needless to say, it was only 4 minutes, so I couldn’t get all the information that I wanted to in there. If you would like to know more about Swift, take a look at this video where Chris and Kaushal talk about it in more detail.

Currently we’re seeing this at work in India, where a group of people have come together to deploy Ushahidi and Swift River to gather information from normal people about the elections.

Where Africa and Technology Collide!

Page 33 of 109

The Grid (Tanzania)

Innovation in Uganda, by Ugandans, for Uganda

Proof is in the development

Why this works

The Rise of the Motorcycle Taxi in Africa

The Business Side

Maintenance and Modding

Gallery

Making Money

In Summary

Screenshots

Some quotes:

Other resources and posts: