Mondeas
Airtel’s Rene Meza is on a mission: he wants to put a mobile phone in every Kenyan’s hand. To do this, he has slashed the cost of calls. Safaricom’s Bob Collymore said some of these cuts were “reprehensible” and that the price war could cost the industry up to 26 billion shillings this year. Meza, who headed Zain Kenya before it was taken over by India’sBharti Airtel, says he won’t stop.
Behind this war of words, a revolution is brewing, and it’s happening in your phone, through your phone and because of your phone. This revolution is changing the way we work, play and interact with each other. And everyone wants a slice of it.
More and more Kenyans are using their phones to get online: updating their Facebook status, tweeting their thoughts, and reading the news. Many already use their phones to pay bills or move money through M-PESA.
According to Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Information and Communication, over the past year or so, the number of Internet users has more than doubled from 3 million to 7.5 million – and around 60 percent of these are using their phones to get online.
This is still just the tip of the iceberg. As phones become smarter and cheaper, and network operators cut costs even further to gain a competitive edge, the potential growth in mobile data and its spin-off products could be huge.
In Kenya, young wannabe IT entrepreneurs are creating apps for this new reality. It’s as though Kenya, and much of Africa, has skipped the computer age. As Manoj Kohli, Bharti Airtel’s CEO for international operations, says the phone has become the mobile laptop for the common man of Africa.
Erik Hersman, a Nairobi-based tech guru who co-founded the iHub and crowdsourcing network Ushahidi, says Kenya is still probably about two years out from achieving the critical mass of mobile phone penetration needed to underpin big mobile and web businesses. But it’s happening, at least in some quarters.
“We’re starting to see decreases in phone costs. And the … IDEOS smartphone is now available at around 8,500 shillings. Now we’re talking about a phone with a real web browser, real data connectivity, real usability. And that’s going to change the way people interact,” he says.
China’s Huawei launched the IDEOS smartphone here in January in partnership with Safaricom. Airtel has teamed up with Nokia and Chinese telecoms firm ZTE to offer “free” handsets, with the sale price matched by free airtime.
Internet access is now also more reliable and cheaper, changing the way people live. Think about it. How would you cope if the Internet was shut down, as happened in Egypt during February’s people-power revolution?
“With Safaricom taking up 3G in a big way … and taking up data as a strategic move, it was able to generate a lot of noise,” says David Owino, co-founder of HumanIPO, which connects small investors with entrepreneurs via its social media platform.
“People were able to see that the Internet is not just about reading mail, reading news. It can be a way of life. I know a lot of people now who cannot work if there is no Internet.”
The benefits of this new virtual world are anything but virtual. In a report last December, the World Bank said Kenya might see a new wave of robust economic growth driven by several factors including the telecommunications revolution. It predicted 5.3 percent growth in 2011 and singled out mobile money as one of the greatest success stories of Kenya’s ICT revolution.
“The mobile web is a massive, massive thing that’s coming,” says Hersman. “And it’s where information and services are surfaced through the data channel to ordinary people because the penetration levels have increased and the demand is there.”
The next step is to provide that information and those services. Someone has to make the apps we use, write the text we read, make the videos we watch and create ads for our phones. Kenyans are already stepping up.
Nairobi has gained a reputation as East Africa’s technology hub. Check out the iHub off Ngong Road. Men and women are hunched over their computers or sitting in comfy car-seats working out IT solutions to everyday problems.
Not all the ideas pan out but some do, in a big way. John Waibochi, and Virtual City won the Nokia Growth Economy Venture Challenge last year for their Mobile Distributor Solution, which allows distributors and retailers to sell in the market using the Nokia phone for their sales, deliveries and orders. The award came with an investment of $1 million.
Another example among many: AkiraChix. This team of women won 1 million shillings in the IPO48 competition last year for M-Farm, a mobile-based marketplace that allows farmers to get better prices for their produce.
There are many more success stories. Kenyans have developed mobile apps to tell you where to eat, where to party and what to watch at the cinema. Moses Kemibaro, who heads up online classifieds site Dealfish in Kenya, says that 70 percent of the traffic to their pages comes from mobile phones, their “priority target device”.
Dealfish, which has around 20,000 listings, is a brand of MIH Internet Africa, itself a division of media giant Naspers. Kemibaro says Dealfish has the potential to become a market leader and, to ensure success, they’ve made it mobile web compatible.Because Nokia is still the preferred phone in Kenya and much of Africa, Dealfish is looking to build apps for the Nokia platform. The site also has an SMS component so that people without Internet access can post queries and ads. Because not everyone is included in Kenya’s ICT revolution Kemibaro says there is a glaring division between “Kenya’s digital elite” and the rest of the country.
“Looking at the last 15 years, the general level of access has increased incredibly, affordability is there … but that represents the top of the pyramid … We still have a cascading effect, things are trickling down to the masses and needs at that level are different.” Kemibaro has some wise words for young techs eager to get in on the mobile web gold rush. “I remember talking to IT entrepreneurs and telling them ‘look guys,if you’re going to do this, you have to solve a big problem.’ It’s not just about whizzbang and fancy technology.” So if you are an app developer, team your technical skill with a conscientious, problem-solving attitude, and get ready for the next leap forward. If you doubt there is money in it, take a look at mobile advertising growth rates in Africa.
Last year, Kenya saw six months of triple-digit growth in mobile advertising, according to BuzzCity, a global mobile media company. It numbers Kenya among the top five mobile advertising countries. Hersman says the mobile ad numbers are huge. “The next wave is data, data penetration and ordinary people’s access to everything the Internet can provide because of it.”
It’s no wonder the phone companies want your business. In the future, you won’t just have a phone in your pocket. You’ll have your life in your pocket.
