I got the pleasure to represent Upande at the Mobile Web East Africa, 2010 Seminar; held on the 3rd and 4th of February.

Though meant to be an East African affair, I couldn’t help but notice the absence of our neighbours’. I.e. Rwanda, a fast growing ICT country, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania and the heavy presence of South African presentations (probably due to MWA09).

Meeting started off with a presentation by Paul Kukubo CEO Kenya ICT Board who were the co sponsors of the event. Paul focused on how their approach is to influence policy formulation, intellectual property, data protection, linkages to venture capital and basically catalyzing growth in the ICT sector between government, the public and business.

Suffice to say the first day was dominated by ‘the big boys’ presentations; namely, The ICT Board, Safaricom, Vodacom SA, Grameen Uganda, AdMob, recently acquired by Google and Rick Jouberts Yonder Media (one of my favorite presentation of the day).

The sessions were quite an eye opener. Laden with statistics, facts and figures, Mobile advertising, Partnerships with Service Providers, Government input, growth and the potentials of Mobile web in Africa. Here are some of them:- 

Africa’s mobile facts

• Africa represents 15% of the world population, but only 3.9″% of the world’s PC internet usage
• Africa’s PC Internet users have increased by 1359% from 2000 to 2009.
• 95% of the African population does not own a Smartphone.
• Nokia 3110c is the most pervasive phone in the market (3.8%), Samsung E250 is at 3.7% penetration.
• Top Smartphones are the Nokia N70 at 10.8% and then Nokia 6300 at 10.3% and then the iPhone at 8.2%.
• African Mobile Web currently has South Africa, Nigeria, Libya, Egypt and Kenya as the top 5.

Kenya's mobile facts

• There were 3.5 million internet users in Kenya last year.
• There are 500 laptops sold per day in Kenya a rise from 20, 000 sales per year.
• Cheapest data enabled devices are about Ksh 2000 in Kenya.
• 70% of mobile data users spend less than 20ksh on a monthly basis.
• Mobile users are estimated at 19.05m subscribers in Kenya with 22m of the 40m Kenyans being the addressable market (15 yrs or older).
• Industry data enabled handsets estimated at 5m or 26% of G.S.M users in Kenya.
• Cost of a 3G handset is 3 times higher than that of a non-data enabled handset.
• Mobile data users estimated to reach 10m in the next five years subject to availability of affordable devices, increase awareness, local content development and drop in data prices.
• If you partner with Safaricom, they’ll take about 60% of revenues meanwhile elsewhere in the  world, like Japan, they give 70% to the developer.

Global Facts

• The global service revenue generated from subscriptions to mobile internet access is forecasted by Informal Telecoms & Media to rise from $57 billion in 2008 to $120 billion in 2013.
• Mobile ad revenue is estimated to be at $2 billion by 2014 and total the value of marketing spent on mobile at around $6 billion.
• Mobile subscription rose from 54 million to almost 350 million between 2003 and 2008.
• On average there is 60% mobile penetration in the world. In developing countries the figure stands at 48%, which is 8x bigger than in 2000.
• Lack of fixed-line access will drive huge mobile internet usage and revenues.
• Vodacom generates 49 million ad impressions per month in South Africa.
• $540 million is the money being made in South Africa in mobile content and the question then becomes whether people can find value in local content.

MWEA10 Day 2

2nd day presentations were more focused on the developers of mobile web applications. 

Started off by a presentation from Mbugua Njihia CEO symbiotic media consortium who cased a couple of their mobile based solutions. 

Eric Hersman ‘Whiteafrican’ followed up next with a beautiful presentation on the Ushahidi. I say beautiful because it has 'location' as a major theme on its Platform. Important to note, Ushahidi are working on a Joomla platform. This would make it easier to use their platform for Websites.

Liko Agosta , founder PesaPal “Kenya’s answer to PayPal” , gave a good account of the application. Tracking back to its inception, from a simple script done from a ‘text editor’ to its complex app it is today. The biggest challenge faced by PesaPal however is Trust! Kenyans being abit weary of using the service. Hopefully Safaricoms M-pesa may have broken that Jinx.

Next presentation was on mobile application and health care in Kenya, from Dr. Kahindi Shedrack.

Steve Vosloo - Shuttleworth foundation gave a good account of E- learning using Mobile phones.

The Other notable presentation was by Jacob Kittinya of Petrol Kenya whose site www.petrol.co.ke is a location based service that lets users know of the gas stations, pump prices and their location in Nairobi. Good use of Google Maps is noted here. Application however is not yet mobile based nor interactive.

Upande is currently looking for an experienced web developer. Someone to help us build high quality web applications. We use the latest technology to create applications of outstanding quality. The ideal candidate must be able to work independently and translate the customer’s wishes into a web application.

It is important that you feel comfortable in a small company with an informal atmosphere and friendly colleagues and that you enjoy keeping tabs on the latest technological developments in the internet field.

Qualifications and experience:

• A higher professional or university education
• At least 3 years of professional experience in the development of web applications using PHP, JavaScript (Ajax), MySQL, XHTML/CSS, Python, Java
• Experience with CMS systems including Joomla
• Exposure to the geo field would be of added value
• Experience with Linux preferred
• Good command of the English language
• Good communication skills
• Flexible work attitude, passionate and committed

What does Upande offer?

Challenging short term initial contract work with the potential for longer term attachment in a small, highly innovative company. Initially internal work with more outward facing roles in the future.
A competitive salary, depending on your qualifications and experience.

Interested?

If you’re interested in working with Upande, please send us your CV including sample work and references by e-mail (info[at]upande.com).

I have the pleasure of announcing upande.com which offers services and consultancies in interactive web mapping, GIS and ICT, with a strong focus on their use in the African context. 

Through this website we will initially only be blogging about everything related to this field of work, recent developments and opportunities, as well as sharing interesting and powerful use cases which will hopefully inspire others.

Google's geo products such as Maps, Earth and Map Maker will form a key element in blog posts, as these tools have seen tremendous development with regards to localised content for Sub Saharan Africa over the last year. The integration of these tools with the power of proprietory or Open Source GIS systems results in powerful visual tools with the potential to empower a wide audience ranging from policy makers to educators to scientists to development workers to the general public.

We look forward to comments and discussions on these topics and their potential impact on the continent and beyond.

the Upande Team