Erik Hersman wrote a good post on the experience that African people are treated like second-class humans merely because we live in Africa. And let me just say; Erik has a point, a very valid point and an incredibly frustrating point. But his point leaves us with a massive gap in the market that no developed world companies or global corporates are willing to push in to. Africa is our playground and while the rest of the world avoids us and punishes us, we need to make inroads to block them out and own this market.

Basically we’re seen as untrustworthy by the rest of the world and are punished for that. The perception is definitely greater than the crime here. Africans appear to be untrustworthy but are by no means the biggest offenders when it comes to internet crimes as Erik showed in his post.

Erik suggests two solutions:

Too true, and there are only two ways that this might change:

First, we in Africa come up with our own payment and business solutions that work here first, and then interact with other global systems.

Second, the global corporates wake up and realize that there is quite a bit of spending power and money to be made in Africa, just like the mobile operators found out in the 90′s.

I’d like to pitch a third and more challenge-orientated solution; screw them. Forget those who punish us for being African. There are many, many business models that don’t have to include Paypal or the multitude of global corporates that punish us for where we live. Mobile is booming and Africa is at the cusp of this movement. We are setting the trends and defining the direction of where truly mobile products are going and should be going. We are the ones in control.

Yet the problem exists that we, as Africans have a persecution complex and insist on needing validation from certain places, companies and organisations to justify our success and movement forward. This is absurd.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there are viable reasons which make us need validation from Paypal and require us not to be banned by Google and blah blah. But there are many, many flourishing startups in South Africa and Africa that are not running off the back of these giants. I can name 5 off the top of my head.

We need to start setting the trends, bucking the trends and developing the roads instead of deciding that the roads aren’t tared with gold for us as Africans. We need to stop settling for mediocrity and start striving for cutting edge excellence that we define, as Africans on our continent.

The very outdated notion that there is not enough money in Africa to create a viable business model or revenue stream is long dead. There is money on this continent, there are users on this land that we occupy and there is massive, massive potential and hunger for new products and creation of wealth.

What we need to do now is stop leaning on the developed world, toss them to the curb and take control of our continent, businesses and business models. It might be a hard road to travel but in the long term it will be the most profitable in my opinion.

Mobile SEO is coming. Are you prepared?

I don’t think that you are, I’m not. No one is.

What I should be doing if I was a smart little blogger is move this blog to a mobile domain and spend some acquisition budget on getting readers to visit, follow me on twitter (via mobile) and click on my adverts.

But I’m not doing that. In fact before you can just launch in to mobile you need to understand it, entirely and I don’t think that there are many people who have a very high-level holistic understanding that is worth while and valuable.

You want some free advise? Learn about mobile SEO and sell your skills. Soon.

Jobs of the future are hard to predict.

What will we all be doing in 5 years? Who can tell.

I studied to be a journalist. No, I studied to be a print journalist. And now I work in and around mobile social networking strategy and development.

Let’s just quickly repeat that: Mobile social networking strategy and development. I am almost 100% certain that when I started studying at Rhodes University in 2003 that my current job didn’t even exist.

There is one job in particular that is going to need a lot more focus in the coming years:

New media sales and advertising.

The reason that I think this job is becoming increasingly important and increasingly neglected is because there is a marked lack of skilled and experienced people to fill this position.

What does this position entail?

Sales and advertising has traditionally (back in the old days) been about selling and advertising products. Getting people to buy in to your product or getting advertisers to place an advert in to your publication, on to your store walls or on your car and so on.

Sales and advertising is becoming a much more complicated and intricate art. You cannot just sell banners, text links, full page adverts, splash screens, in-video sponsorships or product placements. Social networks and new media businesses need to have a salesperson who understands every aspect of the business. This person needs to be able to cross sell, integrate campaigns, work on new media, old media and media that might not exist yet.

What does this person need to succeed?

This person needs to understand CPC, CPA, CPM, CPSA and how to make these models work. This person needs to not only know what CRM stands for but what it actually is and how to make it relevant to the client.

This person needs to know who the client is or should be and how that clients business or latest campaign fits in to the business of a new media business.

Sales is shifting as fast as media is shifting and technology is growing and developing. The trick here is that technology, websites, mobile content and advancements can push forward as fast as they like but if there is no team able to monetize the products, there may as well not even be a product.

It’s time start thinking about integrated salespeople, sales teams, sales in relation to your core business and if sales actually might be your companies core business.

Wordpress goes mobile but misses the point.

Mashable! today reports that Wordpress has launched two new mobile themes. But “mobile” here refers to iPhones and Android handsets not to the mobile market that we, in Africa, are referring to.

I’m interested to know how many 3rd world (low broadband) countries have Wordpress blogs. What is the number? Is it ten thousand, fifty thousand, more or less?

The reason I ask is because I have a feeling that if Wordpress was to start focusing on lower-end handset models in the mobile market they would open themselves up to a massively neglected market. The market that can’t afford “smartphones”, the market that can’t afford laptops, computers and fixed-line internet.

It’s interesting to think that in 1st world countries the term “mobile” refers to iPhone handsets or “smartphones”. What of the rest of the world? What of the people who don’t have these phones and can’t view the content they are looking for because it costs too much.

Meeting with Marc Smith this month was an eye-opener for many reasons. Firstly he told me that Obama winning a Nobel peace prize was not regarded in very high esteem by Americans. Why? Because if Europeans like their president there must be something wrong him. This seems to echo in the approach of many a large company playing in the online/mobile space.

Why is Wordpress not going after the African market? Why are they not providing those without fixed-line broadband an outlet for their mobile phones to read and write blogs?

To me it feels like a lack of insight and foresight.

Social media’s almost dead so let’s move on to mobile. Presenting Mobile Web Africa.

OK, so social media isn’t almost dead but the fact remains that mobile is the now, new, next best thing. In fact, it’s not even the next best thing. It’s the best thing since social media and it’s here.

Vincent Maher just announced on his blog that The Grid is platinum sponsor for the event which will have some of the most prominent minds and personalities in the local mobile industry as well as some African speakers to engage with.

Some of the local regulars will be present but this time under the spotlight of mobile and the current developments happening.

This conference is finally something that doesn’t have a social media (web too point 0h n0) slant to it.

If you think you know, you have no idea.

Get on it.