I have a new article published on African Loft looking at the netECHO technology developed by InternetSpeech.

The article is available at: www.africanloft.com/audio-internet-%e2%80%93-netecho

Extract:
‘With the release of the $20 phone, the ‘People’s phone’, and the massive success of mobile phones over the last decade of mobile phones in Africa, perhaps this latest development has the potential to connect people to the web who would not have access otherwise. People will be able to access the web without the necessity of more expensive technology such as computers…’

TradeNet is a service developed in Ghana by Mark Davies, a British business man who founded MetroBeat during the dotcom boom, and moved to Ghana in 2000. Development was funded by Mark Davies (US$800,000 investment), and also by aid agency USAID (approx US$200,000 investment).

The concept is comparible in some ways to Ebay - it is a place where people buy and sell goods online. TradeNet however is designed specifically for the market within Africa, targeting those who do not necessarily have access to the Internet, by giving them access to these services via SMS instead. It almost goes without saying that SMS is the most suitable way to implement a service such as this in Africa, with the statistics for mobile usage rising massively over the last few years, and predicted to rise further.

The service has been developed for the exchange of agricultural products, and allows users to submit information about products they have to sell, subscribe to allow users to request what kind of products they are interested in, and then allows the potential buyers and sellers to communicate directly to make a sale. The issue of facilities for farmers to buy and sell efficiently is one that has been widely identified as a need (for example, this blog post from the VeSel group).

The service is free to the buyers and sellers (submitting sale information and receiving SMS) and the sellers get to set up their own webpages with their information if they wish.

TradeNet’s Vision:

‘Our goal is to increase revenues for farmers and traders by making markets more transparent, and by shifting the balance of power slightly towards producers who suffer from the thinnest margins on what they trade. We also aim to assist projects and associations to serve their members with better and current information to sell more and buy better, and to market their products to a global audience. More recent tools enable producers to enhance their yields and find better buyers by managing their information networks more effectively.’ (source)

So, why is this service deemed to be so potentially successful? What makes it different from others such as Trade at Hand funded by the UN.

The business model behind TradeNet is one that it seems has not been implemented before. There are two areas of the project that are unique to TradeNet and it is these that make it a more viable long-term solution.

The first is that TradeNet not only make money from advertisements posted into the SMS that the users receive (good point regarding this raised in Trisignia’s article, asking how all that fits into one SMS?), but they also make money from selling data that it collects from the users (their personal info - telephone numbers, names, locations etc) to advertisers.

This concept of collecting and selling data is one that seems to have different interpretations from different people. The Economist’s opinion is:

‘The price of economic development may be junk mail by mobile phone.’ (source)

Whereas Trisignia’s article sees it as:

The service is…gathering valuable economic data about the marketplace it’s helping develop, and it’s leveraging its knowledge about the marketplace to sell more ads. (source)

Whilst both these articles recognise that the collection of the data helps to sell more adverts, the Economist see the data as enabling junk mail, whereas Trisignia see it a collecting valuable data. My question would be, exactly what data are they collecting? Because that question has not really been answered from the research I have done. How can that data be used in the future? Who can have access to it?

In short, there is a recognised problem in Africa that there is a lack of data available, and it seems that potentially this service may be helping that issue (White African blog wrote a post about it a while back). But I would want to know a lot more about what data, and how it could be used or accessed before making that judgement. (Although that is not to say that if the data is not going to be of direct benefit to Africa itself, but solely to advertisers, that it is a bad thing. It is still enabling development through enabling this service to run and therefore may be a necessary evil.)

The second area that gives TradeNet an edge over other comparative services, is that the company is making it’s software available for use by other projects. This means that the concept can be applied to other markets and uses, by other developers having the ability to create their own websites using the same back-end software. However, I have not been able to find a lot of information on this area on the web, but am going to do some investigating and will post again when I find out more about this.

Overall, TradeNet seems like a very positive step in development within Africa and I will be extremely keen to find out more about its progress. A comment that Mark Davies made on White African’s post made me even more positive, as it seems that his ideology and approach to the project have a solid foundation which is something I believe is crucial:

‘This must be a profitable venture, a service-based venture, a customer focussed venture, and it must unleash what i imagine is loads of commerce opportunities leading to wealth generation. I’m skeptical about technology ’solving’ things, but it’s one contribution to the debate.’

The Nokia Siemens project, which is to be released next year is designed to target the rural village populations in emerging markets. It has been build due to rising demand for mobile services in these markets, and the high percentage of populations who live in rural areas. In Africa, it is estimated that 70% of the population live in villages, and currently, most of these cannot afford the services or handsets available.

The rationale for the project is based on predictions that of the one billion new subscribers expected worldwide by 2010, 80% of these are likely to be from lower-income populations such as rural villages in emerging market countries. These rural populations, which include half of the world’s population, are only able to pay approximately a third of the cost of mobile services as the majority of current users already pay. Therefore the key to further development for this market segment is low-cost delivery methods.

Nokia Siemens have identified this need and requirements, and defined three keys areas that must be targeted to allow successful implementation of a low-cost solution.

‘It requires innovative technologies to deliver low-cost solutions, novel business models for rural areas and the synthesis of a new value network to make the solution feasible.’ (from the project’s white paper)

The project itself is one that is designed to profit all parties involved, from the mobile operators, to the end users, and the entrepreneurs or small businesses in between with a new business model, which is designed to enable these lower-cost alternatives to mobile connectivity.

In simple terms, the project extends GSM networks past the current coverage to areas with sparse populations that would tend to have higher costs incurred through coverage than urban areas, by setting up mini-networks or ‘GAPS’ in villages. These network bases will require simply a PC, a GSM transmitter, power, and radio frequency. The whole thing will be plug and play and will support around 80 subscribers. It will support voice and text and can be expanded by joining the GAPS to create larger networks. They will also be connected via ‘Access Points’ which will connect around 200 GAPS so that voice and text can be transmitted between their subscribers. Internet would also be possible with this system, but the focus currently is providing basic services for as low cost as possible, and Nokia Siemens anticipate that this system will fall within the US$3 per month per user that has been defined.

This system caters for two business models that can support it. The first is one where a local entrepreneur can run the network themselves as a franchise, without training or assistance from the mobile operator. The second is that the operator may employ local people to run the network for them.

Seems like a potentially effective project, I will look forward to finding out about the outcome some time next year.

Relevant links:
The project website: Village Connection project site

Google have placed a representative in South Africa, in preparation for the launch of ‘Google South Africa’ next year.

According to the representative, Stafford Masie, Google recognise that Africa will soon be using the web to a much larger extent, and they clearly want to be a part of it. Apparently, they also believe that the mobile phone use can be productive for them, with the release of Android, Google’s open source OS for phones.

Although currently it appears that Google is concentrating on South Africa in particular, the effects that this could have will surely spread further afield, and will perhaps encourage other foreign companies to consider spending more time and money on African development of technology if they believe it will be profitable, as well as encouraging the development of African-based companies.

It seems that this move is one of the more promising, if a company like Google believe that it is worth their time investing in Africa, then it seems that maybe there really is going to be further positive development of technology and communications. Maybe it will also encourage appropriately developed technology, if representatives are actually being posted to the continent where they will gain inside knowledge on what the area needs.

Along with the satellite broadband that has been launched by Nigeria’s new satellite (see my post on the satellite conference in West Africa), perhaps there will be a viable solution to affordable Internet in the not too distant future.

It will be interesting to watch what Google are up to over the next few months until Google South Africa’s release.

Relevant links:
Google’s Android OS
Matthew Buckland’s blog post

There are a range of phones that have been developed for emerging market economies.

Part of this drive has been due to the GSMA Emerging Market Handset Initiative, which was set up in 2005 as part of the GSMA’s ‘connecting the unconnected’ campaign, with a target of 80% of world population having access to mobile communications by 2010. The rationale was that although 80% of the world population have access to wireless services, only 25% can afford to make use of it.
Motorola have been the main supplier of phones for the initiative, as they offered two low-priced phones, both under US$30 a piece – the C113, and C113a.
The Motorola C113 is specifically designed for emerging markets, with a very long battery life and talk time, no extra features such as camera, colour screen or internet, but has basic useful features such as a calculator and stopwatch.
The other handset, the C113a appears to be very similar, with a couple of extras such as an analog clock and slightly more talk time.

Since 2005, Motorola also released the FONE F3 which is designed to be hard wearing and dust proof, as well as having an intuitive interface which is intended to be easy to understand for first time users, it does not have many extra features (no mp3 player, internet or external memory for example) but does come with a function that allows you to keep track of your charges, and a long battery life.

Nokia have also developed handsets targeting emerging markets. The 2626 was released in 2006, and included more features than the Motorola, such as email, WAP, mp3 ringtones etc. It is also available in a variety of colours. Not to be presumptious, but I haven’t seen yet exactly what makes this phone emerging-market specific?

A point that supports this question is that it appears the 2626 design is trying to kill two birds with one stone – in the sense that it is targeted at emerging markets, and also targeted at a ‘style conscious customer on a budget’ in the developed world (as advertised on pocketpicks.co.uk). Perhaps this is the key design flaw that answers the above question with the answer – it isn’t emerging-market specific.

As yet, Motorola seem to be the most appropriately designed phones. Any more examples would be very welcome…

Relevant links:
GSMA Emerging Market Handset Programme:
GSM world
The Motorola C113
GSM arena
The Motorola C113a
GSM arena
The Motorola FONE F3
Mobile gazette
Mobiledia

Nokia 2626
Tech Digest article
Pocket Picks article

The Connect Africa Summit was held a couple of weeks ago in Rwanda. Over 1000 people took part, and it seems like the results are potentially quite promising.

The driving force behind this Summit, which is one of a series planned across the world, is the need to speed up the development process to attain the goals defined at the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003.

The key point seemed to be that it has been established that ICT must take the lead in development of Africa as a whole, and that broadband is the next big step in this process. The opinion that this can be successfully implemented by a estimated date of 2012 is drawn from consideration of the growing mobile phone market, which is currently surpassing any other country in terms of growth rate (and has been for several years), and had nearly 200m subscribers in Africa at the end of last year.

Funds and Aims Promised:

An estimated total of US$55,892,750,000 has been promised.

US$50b from mobile operators who have committed to increasing connectivity to interconnect all African cities, and strengthen the connection to rest of world, with 90% coverage of the population by 2012.

Over Euro100m of grants, along with over Euro200m of loans from the European Commission to develop projects that have multi-nation impact, either through cross-border projects or country projects that will develop the continent as a whole (this fund is intended to be added to at the end of 2008). This project mentions specifically the use of ICT.

The World Bank Group has not committed to, but has talked about the likelihood that they will increase their US$1b per year to US$2b per year by 2012, which is a fund aimed at development of the private sector.

The Africa Development Bank has committed nearly US$65m towards infrastructure development (and is intending to spend 60% of its resources on infrastructure in the next few years).

These outcomes seem very positive in terms of infrastructure development, and helping to achieve the 2015 goals. However, it does raise a concern that appears to me to be potentially critical in terms of the overall development of Africa through connectivity, which is - whilst it is very positive that there is clearly to be plenty of money and technical progress in terms of this development, what exactly is the connectivity to be used for?

The one target relating to this is one of the 10 connectivity goals from the 2003 Summit which states:
‘encourage the development of content and to put in place technical conditions in order to facilitate the presence and use of all world languages on the Internet’.

This goal seem quite ambiguous in terms of what content they are referring to. Who is going to develop it? Who is it going to be developed for? What are the aims of this content? How are they going to find out what content people want? The list of questions goes on… I have not yet found (and someone please send me links or information if you have the answers to this) any information as to what software or hardware is to be developed specifically to accompany this newfound connectivity.

My concern lies with the fact that technology is only as good as the applications that it supports. People don’t buy a computer because it has the fastest processor, they buy it because that fast processor can make their software run faster.

It is also concerning that this drive may fall into the same trap as many other drives for African development in the past. A factor that could be linked to the cause of these could be the assumptions made by the people, governments and corporations funding or developing the projects as to what is needed to encourage development, whereas perhaps the reality, as seen by the end users of these projects, is very different.

So maybe in the case of African connectivity, the first question should be – What do we specifically want to be able to do that we can’t do now? (And by this, I don’t mean ‘access the internet’, rather, ‘farmers want to communicate directly with buyers in developed countries’ for example). And then secondly - What will enable us to do that in terms of technology?

Otherwise the risk is that perhaps the huge amount of money and time will not be used to their maximum potential, and the goals set out in 2003 will be achieved in theory, but not in practice.

There does appear to be some evidence that corporations have in some cases recognised this need – Nokia’s head of mobile division was quoted last month saying that they see the key as the content the phones deliver to the potential users.

“We are looking as a company as to how to facilitate and participate in creating content that is actually relevant for the consumers in emerging markets… the biggest barrier in emerging markets to people using the mobile internet was lack of interest.” (Kai Oistamo, Oct 2007)

However, if the Nokia 2626 is anything to go by in terms of what Nokia think is appropriate development of technology, then this company policy may not amount to much in practice…(I will be writing a post overviewing emerging market handsets shortly, where I will go into more detail on the phones themselves).

However, another concern regarding this huge investment in infrastructure comes for a conversation I recently had regarding African infrastructure development with a retired managing director for global infrastructure investment at CDC. With regard to developing infrastructure for Africa, he said:

‘There is lots of evidence that unless a country is spending 4-5% of its GDP on infrastructure development, they will not sustain any increase in GDP per capita.’

And I would question as to whether many of the coutries being provided with this infrastructure do spend this amount? If they don’t, it appears that any development projects will be futile, as in the long-term, how will they be able to achieve the aims of overall development in the country?

Relevant links:
The Nokia 2626:
Tech Digest article
pocketpicks.co.uk article
The Connect Africa Summit:
allafrica.com article
International Telecoms Union (itu.int) article