South Africa is Not Sub Saharan Africa

The improvement of the world needs to be highly contextualised. In fact, everything needs context to be relevant.The above video of Hans Rosling is mind-bending. At the 15 minute mark he talks about Africa and how we cannot provide a single solution to a problem like HIV/Aids. We need to provide a contextualised solution for each and every region being dealt with.This is true of almost every interaction that I have with businesses and individuals (local or foreign) wanting to target Africa. It's phenomenal how shallow our understand is of the vastness of the continent when it comes to culture, language, societal norms, likes and dislikes.Africa is not a country just as South Africa is not a reference to a region.Educate yourself.

Be smart, be niche, be mobile

Fragmentation and fierce competition are enemies of one size fits all mobile solutions.Mobile is the not-so-new-hotness. There are many, many, many companies and people building products and apps targeting mobile first and mobile only. But there aren't many who are succeeding.The reasons for failure are often simple and obvious and easily avoidable.

Device fragmentation

Pick a device.If you choose the right device for your application, website or product and this device is relevant to your target market then you wont have to support every device under the sun upfront.Test your market with a single device or OS, just make sure you choose it wisely and own it. For example, in Africa, if you can build something for the Nokia S40 devices and it works, you'll do just fine.

Market fragmentation

Pick your market. Be it a country, city, gender, age group, creed, all off the above or none. Just pick one and go after like a you are possessed.

Country

Pick a country. You can't be everything to everyone all the time right off the bat. Conquer a single country and then consider moving on to another.

City

Maybe consider picking a city. Some cities, like Lagos, have nearly 20 million people in them. That's not a bad place to start.

Age

You cannot market a product targeting every age. That's just not realistic. A 13 year old is not looking for the same things as a 60 year old. And don't tell me that if Facebook can do it, so can you. Facebook started with a single age demographic.

Attention Deficit

Users are constantly being nagged for their attention.The product you are nagging me about needs to make me feel like I can't live without it. The applications and products that do this best for me are the ones that do a single thing amazingly well. I don't have a single app that handles photography, social, music, video and everything else all in one. That's called a mobile phone.Your app needs to do one thing and be the absolute best at that one thing to grab (and keep) my attention.

Niche, Niche, Niche

The chances are that your product, app or website is not going to compete with Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even the local equivalents of these behemoths. Something you build may one day grow into a competitor to these players but they all started in a niche; search, photography, university.Pick your niche and go after it like there's no tomorrow for your company. Don't let anything stand in your way. Own that niche, make it yours and dig a moat that prevents anyone else from owning it. Then expand that niche little by little. This is how you build a sustainable business. 

Africans Can't Be Trusted - Let's Make Some Money

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.

Google Wave use cases in Africa With al...

Google Wave use cases in Africa

With all the Google Wave hype sprouting up all over the web I've been left slightly underwhelmed. The reasons are relatively simple; I don't know enough people using Wave to interact with and I'm not doing business or working on projects with the people I do know on Wave.With that said though, I can see some potential use cases for Wave in Africa.Generally there are some fundamental problems with the Internet through Africa. The biggest of the lot involve the digital divide.

Wave in the classroom

Let's, for a second, imagine that a School A in South Africa partnered with School B in an area that was struggling to find quality educators.School A provides a computer room with 20 PCs and broadband Internet (potentially sponsored by Telkom/Mweb/etc) and goes to lengths to educate the pupils on web usage and Google Wave. This would be a laborious process, I agree, but let's just imagine.What could happen next is almost magical. Students receiving lectures from the teacher at School A could start a Wave, "Mathematics, Grade 12, class 14". School A's students and teacher could make notes, upload documents and collaborate on these documents and lecture notes with School B. Thus educators in School A could partially attribute to School B's education. This is not a foolproof, 100% solid solution to a massive education problem Africa faces, but it is possible.

University collaboration

Along similar lines as the school example above. University lecture and project collaboration could become seamless across African borders. Students and lecturers could share, comment and interact with one another in real-time. No delays, no restrictions (other than the broadband issue) and no bureaucratic processes to concern themselves with while debating with multiple scholars from multiple disciplines across multiple borders. Just simple debate.Access to previously restricted or hard to reach areas and school of knowledge could be opened up to an immense audience in Africa that his hungry for the chance to interact with other pools of knowledge.Of course the major challenge with this example is that it hinges on many people committing to a Wave and contributing to it on a consistent basis.

Business Mentoring

Small businesses are the way of the future for South Africa and Africa on a large scale. What many of these small businesses and young entrepreneurs are missing is guidance.A mentorship Wave that provides valuable readings, insights, guidance and tips could be invaluable to businesses people trying to stake their claim and start up a successful business.You may argue that many of these business people wont have access to the web, well there are Internet cafes across the country that hundreds of thousands of people use on a daily basis.

More...

Are there any more use cases? Without a doubt. Have we realised the potential of real-time collaboration yet? Probably not. But the future is there for the taking.Let me know how you might see Google Wave being implemented in Africa.

The next killer app wont be a killer app at all

Every year around this time there is a buzz. It's a very strange buzz that arises and expands beyond industry, colour, creed, or any other classification you can think of. January/February is a very special time for me. It's a time where people think things through, imagine things, create and define things. It's a time when predictions are made or attempted and a time when everyone seems to be looking for the next big thing.So what is the next big thing? What is going to make you famous? What will be the next Facebook or Google or fraction of these giants?I have been hearing um's and ah's of the next "Killer App" or killer application. This phrase is taking a few different forms. Some more literal than others.Andy Hadfield, on his blog, asked if Twitter is going mainstream. I knew what he meant but wanted to push the conversation to a different direction. I wanted to know what defines mainstream in South Africa since many of the online guru's in SA think that the next Killer App is literally that, a single killer application that will launch a career, make a million or few and destroy the opposition.This, as far as I can see, is an online impossibility right now. In fact, I think that it's almost an impossibility for the next few years if you are talking strictly about fixed line internet. Even the coming Internet/broadband/fiber-optic revolution is going to take a while to penetrate the masses and therefore no online killer app in South Africa alone is going to be anything close to a killer app. It just wont.Here's a quick quote from my comment on Andy's post:

I would be more inclined to argue that our precise problem here in SA is that we think a couple of thousand people makes something mainstream. The bare fact of the matter is that it needs to be a tool that is mainly used to be called mainstream (in my opinion only). Thus we could almost call facebook mainstream and be justified in that branding.We could call Mxit mainstream and I would argue that Mxit trumps what twitter is trying to do.So instead of us trying to push twitter in to the mainstream we should be looking at the ways the the majority of South Africans communicate (cellphones perhaps) and custom build a twitter-like solution that isn't going to cost a bomb and provide the same functionality. Or would we call that Mxit or The Grid?I think we need to think bigger, take products to market and then make them mainstream instead of trying to manipulate the word mainstream to suit our needs.Simply branding something mainstream because the word was featured on the cover of a magazine with maybe 30 000 circulation cannot make something mainstream.evl - "The prevailing current of thought, influence, or activity" - can you honestly say to me that twitter is a prevailing current of thought in the South African population, no, the South African ONLINE population. Even if we get the number of twitter users up to 10 000 South Africans that's still probably between 3%-5% of all South Africans online on fixed internet using twitter. that's not mainstream. that's irrelevant.

There are three ways that I think Vincent will begin to see more local millionaires.

The first

is hyper-local content. That is what I think the next "Killer App" is. Hyper local is where it's at when you combine it with the massive cellphone penetration in this country. An application like twitter is one that can be exceptionally successful in South Africa and reach mainstream status but while it is an online-centric application or service it is going to stay on the fringe in South Africa. We need to make hyper-local content contextual, relevant and easy to access. As far as I can see or believe in SA right now the contextualising of hyper-local and simplified content is going to be the winner.

The second

is a combination of things. The first entity is Africa. It's one of the few untouched, untapped media markets. The second entity is mobile technology. The combination is a mashup of hyper-local, mobilised, African-centric content. I think that this, moving forward, could potentially be the combination of things that take South Africans in to the next realm of success (or the first depending on where you sit).

The third

is foresight. This is something that copyblogger has blogged about recently. We cannot beat those who entered this market first at their own game, especially not from where we sit.From the Copyblog post:

The truth is, some models that worked a few years ago for early adopters are difficult if not impossible for new players to successfully get going today.The key to avoiding this frustration is to see where things are going and become an early-adopter in the next big wave of the commercial Internet. Of course, even if you’re already doing well, it never hurts to take a look forward, right?

We need to sit where we sit, contextualise our problems, learn about our opposition and where the market is moving and make the first move. If we don't make the first move we are going to be behind the early adopters again and have to wait man more years to have another chance to become the early adopters.I am interested to know what others out there think the next Killer App will be, whether it is literally going to be a single application, a concept, a mindset, a minsdhift, a community or a project. Where's the money at and is it actually about the money?

According to Nike football doesn't exist in Africa

For some reason today I visited kickoff.com. Nike has a massive banner advert across the top of the site.I found myself intrigued for some reason with this advert so I clicked on it. It took me to the nikefootball.com website.The strangest thing happened. I think the website broke as soon as I landed on the page because there is no Africa option on the site. They ask you to select a region and a language but sadly there is no way to choose Africa.Does Nike think that we don't have Internet down here in deep dark Africa? Do they think that we don't know what football is (or soccer) in Africa, can't afford an actual ball or did they not notice that little thing called the World Cup in 2010?This sort of junk really gets under my skin because it's not like we are some obscure little country in the world, THEY LEFT OUT AFRICA. In case you were wondering and didn't know this, Africa is actually an entire continent that is bigger than freakin' Europe (I think). How do you leave out an entire continent that is hosting it's first FOOTBALL WORLD CUP in 2010?Ridiculous and it pisses me off.

Live Earth Concert Lineup

This is it:UB40, Joss Stone, Angelique Kidjo, Baaba Maal, Danny K, The Parlotones, The Soweto Gospel Choir, Vusi Mahlasela, and Zola.What is that? Every other venue just about gets the biggest baddest bands in the world but we get South African Acts (WHICH ROCK MY WORLD) that I can see any time, any where in SA. I love the local bands, they are lekker, but lets be honest, Live Earth is meant to be raising awareness by recruiting the world leaders in music... AHEM.Some of the artists we wont see:Jack JohnsonSnoop DogKatie MeluaDave Matthews BandRed Hot ChilisFoo FightersDavid GreyAkonPaolo NutiniJohn MayerMadonnaBlock PartyGENESISBlack Eyed PeasBeastie BoysKeaneAND MANY MANY MORE.Why do the international organisers of this sort of event always screw SA. It happened at the Live 8 concert too. We were an afterthought and a concert was thrown together.I will probably not be attending the conert. No thanks, I don't like being second fiddle.