"Africa is the ocean blue" - Hersman

A throw-away comment from Richard Mulholland, “We live in a pimple in the arse end of Africa,” in his hysterical presentation on the side effects of Social Media at Net Prophet 2010, really got me thinking…and I hope too, the 800-odd entrepreneurs, developers, investors and marketers attending.

Let’s consider the following:

“Africa is far below what upper class SA techies are used to,” according to Erik Hersman, an American living in Kenya who goes by the name of @WhiteAfrican. Hersman is a co-founder of Ushahidi, a platform for crowdsourcing crisis situations and amongst other things a senior TED Fellow. He also quoted a leading mobile advertising network saying, “Kenya is proving more lucrative per subscriber than South Africa.”

One has to be impressed by the rapid growth of Kenya’s shining star M-PESA, initially sponsored by the UK-based Department for International Development (DFID) and launched three years ago. M-PESA allows people to send cash via SMS and of late have teamed up with e-commerce services like our very own Kalahri.net. Its also being used to save money, despite the fact that its no t a bank. They have 9.5 million users, 18,000 agents changing cash into SMS and will be bringing in 4,4 billion US dollars this year – that’s 14% of Kenyan GDP.

Englishman Stefan Magdalinski, living in Cape Town, working in Kenya and currently launching Mocality (a mobile directory for sub-Saharan Africa), stated, “Africa is seeing the fastest continental rollout of broadband ever.” This coupled with hawkers pushing 3G dongles in Nairobi’s streets and a 21% Facebook penetration means opportunity exists to take advantage of this rapidly growing market literally on our doorstep.

Fuelling Africa's growth

And its not just Kenya; Currently the main cities fuelling Africa’s growth are Nairobi, Accra, Lagos, Kampala and our very own Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Not to burst our bubble, according to Sarah Lacy of TechCrunch, “People in the US don’t think of Africa at all.” Yes, even the supposedly highly educated and informed still think that we have security gates surrounding our homes ostensibly to keep out the Big Five agreed Stephen Newton (Google SA). But as Lacy says, its because of this attitude “entrepreneurs have an advantage here as its an emerging market.”

So how do we as South Africans, most still grappling with how to market to our own mass market technologically, tackle this?

Look to India

Lacy advises, “India is where Africa should be looking…and their way around mobile.” They are managing, off the back of the most primitive handsets, to get people learning English, receive community newsletters over SMS as well as combating illiteracy - all in a country with many different languages.

In Nairobi (yes, Kenya again), iHub, an actual physical space has been set up for people to work, meet and collaborate supported by corporate partners some of whom are investing in young entrepreneurs. Could the brains behind Crowdfund, Eve Dmochowska’s new Geekspace in Jhb and hopefully soon in CT be the spot to find locals looking at venturing up North?

All things considered, will we now take the time to explore exactly what’s happening here and if we do, head into the deepest darkest taking heed of Magdalinski’s warning of the hunger, war, corruption and poverty?

But the real question is: Is the pimple about to burst or are we just going to dab on some Clearasil?

Much thanks to the event’s sponsors Old Mutual, RAMP Foundation, RSA Web, White Wall Web, Yola and Twokats for a truly insightful day.

For transcripts of all the day's speakers and presentations, go to White Wall Web's blog and www.netprophet.org.za for speaker slides and video soon to be uploaded.

Some additional info on Net Prophet (not necessarily related to above):

Net Prophet is a sponsored event and attendance more than doubled this year. The main reason for this is it’s free! The one problem the organisers had this year was while they want this event to be accessible to all, the first 100 places were booked online within 36 minutes of announcing that registration was open. Now that’s great for people with easy online access, but it does leave many out of the loop. To counter this, 30 people with a propensity for maths and science were exposed to Net Prophet on Thursday, 13 May. I hope more will benefit next year.

The RAMP Foundation has set up a Net Prophet Bursary, partnering with These Numbers Have Faces, which will benefit those with a high propensity to innovate in technology, yet do not have the knowledge required or the funds available to live their dream. For more information, go to www.rampgroup.co.za.