Tech Hub Nigeria- Empowering Nigerian Geeks

If you were present at the last barcamp Nigeria in May, I think this shouldn’t be new to you. I made a short presentation about it and got quite a number of people interested in the idea of a tech hub. Read more here.

The goal

We hope to create a hub where geeks and those interested in technology can have access to the facilities (Fast PC, Internet, Power and resources) to get their ideas off the ground.

It is modeled around successful hubs around the world including Africa (iHub, SiliconCape). I believe very strongly that there are great ideas waiting to be birthed by our young people.

We have not made much progress on it, we need more people to join on the legworks. Also more corporate sponsorship is needed. Mail: info@techhubng.com if you are interested.

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Nigerian Startups – In search of focus and profitability

Personally, I started exploring the idea of starting up and building the next Microsoft, Yahoo or Google from Africa in the year 2003. I started learning about Bill Gate, David Fillo & Jerry Yang, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. I was deeply fascinated and inspired by their record setting innovations and wealth.

I, like so many young people, wants to become the CEO (or Group CEO as the case may be) of large corporations or conglomerates. We want to be on front-cover of top magazines, on Forbes list, and become inspiring role models. They are indeed aspiration worth pursuing!

If there is anything I learnt about the people I named above, it is simply that they are known for one thing, even though they now control 100s of things, they are still known for that one thing and were able to leverage their achievements in that single area to other endeavors.

Society and Your Dream; Setup for Failure

The environment in the United State was crafted for success while our environment here was “conned” for failure. Think about it; No power, no funding, No legacy innovations to build on, and persistent uncertainty in the polity!

Our society even though setup for failure, requires a very thoughtful approach to achieve success. You can’t stretch yourself too thing and expect to be at your best innovatively! No way!

If there is one person (that I have personal encounter with during the startup period) in this industry that has successfully harnessed the power of focus to achieve prominence and wealth, it is Seun Osewa, the founder of Nairaland.com. When he started, he dropped virtually everything else he was doing to focus on the project; today Nairaland.com is a success story of Nigerian web asset. I personally wrote to Seun in year 2005 about my startup and invited him to get involved; his response for declining was so understandable that, looking back I give him kudos for that matured decision.

Why focus?

I know someone might want to ask, why the hell do I need to focus, when I have multiple ideas? Let’s explore it together;

1. In Africa/Nigeria, the web/technology industry is still in its infancy, profitability is very scarce and fewer people are interested in spending/investing online, so, your mileage is tied to availability of fund both to run the company and to innovate.
2. Running business in this part of the world is hell! If you have not really run a business (or manage finance in company) you definitely may not understand this. You buy diesel, you pay Nepa bills, pay your staff, pay for internet subscription, market your business and close sales. At a time I worked closely with those running cybercafé, I almost question their decision to be in that line of business given the profit margin; very low! Imagine spending as high as N80, 000 on diesel and another N120, 000 for internet subscription and pay staff salary monthly in 2004? No wonder many cybercafé closed shops!
   The story is not different from corporate setting where we spent sometimes about 200k on diesel monthly.
3. Consumers are still not spending much time as they should online. By that I am talking about consumer internet products. Talk about Facebook, Youtube, MySpace etc. how many people can spending as much as 10hours each day online without feeling the pinch (provided they are not accessing the internet from work which they don’t pay for). Understand this; consumer internet is the cash cow of the internet, the long tail as they call it!

Let me stop at these three, you can add more in the comment section.

How do we get there from here?

Yeah! There is surely a way out of this imbroglio;

1. Brainstorm on your startup ideas, then filter them and pick the best, the one you are most passionate about and that can be profitable earliest.
2. Trash every other things you are doing and focus on it.
3. You really need to generate money from your startup to sustain it.
4. Don’t start another startup until the first one can sustain itself.

I know you have many ideas; in fact you are an idea merchant. But here is the challenge; supposing you got funded on your first startup and are yet to make money, will those who funded you be willing to throw money at you? The only possible reason is for the new startup to help make your initial startup profitable faster or better.

Trying to shift focus will affect your ability to scale, given the limited resources at your disposal.

Investors in this space are not fully ready to take on your multiple ideas, likewise your customers. It will only make sense if you focus your passion and energy on the most viable (not necessarily clone or fantasy idea). Startup, stay focus and run with, you will get there!

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Taafoo.com, a Nigerian social networking joins the list of top-ten sites in Nigeria

You heard it, Taafoo.com the massively growing social networking site has joined the exclusive list of top-ten most visited sites in Nigeria.

We have followed the sites activities since early this year and It’s been impressive! In our monthly ranking, we saw taafoo.com moved from 56^th spot in May to 14^th in June and then 15^th in July and now on the 9^th spot.

The site help its users connect with Celebrities, other site members and buy stuffs easily online! It’s a full fledge “Social Commerce” and entertainment site.

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Glo 1 Launched in Lagos, expect cheap internet service

Globacom Nigeria’s indigenous telecom operator has finally launched it much awaited submarine cable. The cable runs through the coast of West Africa all the way to Europe, connecting Africa to the rest of the world.

The service is expected to drastically reduce cost of internet connection and other telecommunication services.

Some examples include:

• Teleconferencing
• Distance learning
• Disaster recovery
• Telemedicine
• Internet connection

The COO, Mohamed Jameel said : “For GSM, CDMA, Wimax operators and ISPs, Glo 1 offers extremely attractive prices on both short and long term basis, resulting in enhanced profitability for the customer through flexible terms of contracts tailor-made for the customer type and requirement,”

This implies that, even MTN and other telecom operators can buy bandwidth from GLO to cater for their customers’ needs.

Main One recently arrived, now its GLO 1, we expect all these to disrupt the market and help increase competition there reducing the prices.

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NDLEA online recruitment, set to make N1.5billion Naira

I salute the courage of the IT folks at the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for their foresight by opening up recruitment exercise of the agency to the public via the internet.

The platform is good and nice, a great initiative indeed! The site and subsequent TV and other media ads has increase the awareness of the agency and consequently helped it hit our top fifty ranking of Nigerian sites.

We must also recognize the impact of unemployment in the country and how people are beginning to troop on to the site. My concern really is, will this not make corrupt people get employment into the agency (as in the case of police)?

NDLEA is an agency setup by the government to tackle the menace of drug trafficking in and out of the country. They have performed quite well in recent years! If you want to stop the scourge of drug trafficking in the country why not join them?

BSC Degree is required for the top spot while minimum of O’Level (SSCE, WAEC, GCE, NECO) is required for other cadre of the agency.

While I like the initiative, I am totally against the N1,500 scratch card being sold to applicant. It’s a government agency and I expect that it should be compassionate to the economic situation of the country. I know is not a profit driven sector, so why are they charging this much? If my calculation doesn’t fail me, the agency can make as much as N1.5billion naira if a million people apply for the program. I really am not sure if they will need up to a thousand staff!

This is fish… I beg!

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Most Visited Nigeria Websites for August 2010

Another interesting month just gone past; so many website saw their activities increase while some stayed stagnant, others reduced. Let’s dive into how things have change in the last 31days.

Nairaland.com remain in the number spot follow by punchng.com . nigerianbestforum.com moved 4 places to stay on the 3^rd spot while gtbank.com remain on the same spot as last month.

Taafoo.com break into the top ten for the first time as other veteran on the top ten list remain there except for ngrguadiannews.com.

We saw a record growth in educational sites on the top fifty-list as 3 (waecdirect.org, yabatech.edu.ng and laspotech.com) new tertiary institution websites join the league. Lasunigeria.com could not meet up with the top fifty but it showed a massive increase in growth, currently on 54^th spot.

In all we have about six website making the cut for the first time while just 2 sites came back to the list after dropping of in recent month.

View this month’s table here.

Top Ten

The Movers

• smslive247.com 50
• web4africa.net 36
• bbnsms.com 25
• nigeriamasterweb.com 16
• nigerianelitesforum.com 13

The Shakers

• mobilitynigeria.com 17
• naijapals.com 15
• careerenigeria.com 14
• smshulk.com 12
• independentngonline.com 12

Debutants

• ndlearecruitment.org
• waecdirect.org
• laspotech.com
• yabatech.edu.ng
• web4africa.net
• smslive247.com

Rebounds

• bbnsms.com
• nigeriamasterweb.com

Trends

There is education frenzy in the air, Waec result was recently released while the private WASSCE (GCE) is starting next week. Also quite a number of universities are conducting registration for new students and require that they do so online. This has helped increase the ranking of the sites.

In all, 50% of the top ten sites are news site, while others are forum and a social networking site with gtbank.com as the only corporate site making the list.

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Kenyan Government grant Ksh300M to local content startups

Internet is driven by content; that is why on the internet, people say; content is King! Kenyan Government has recognized this and taking right steps to make it work in the country.

The program was launched in June this year and attracted 166 proposals submitted in the Government Information Portal (Firms) category. The winners were selected from that list. See what they intend to offer;

1. Octopus ICT Solutions Ltd for their ‘HIV and AIDS in the workplace e-Learning Course‘ that will bring HIV and AIDS workplace policy to every

civilian servant in the country. Starting with training for over 40,000 health workers in the first year, Octopus will develop an eLearning course that will work to sensitize civil servants on how to address HIV and AIDS at work and in their private lives. The course will help to reduce stigma and create a safe and supporting working environment for all civil servants including people living with HIV.

2. Infotrack Strategic Solutions Ltd for their ‘Teacher’s Portal‘ that will link teachers to their employers, the Kenya Teacher’s Service Commission. Teachers across the country often have to travel al the way to Nairobi to access service. The portal will allow the TSC to reach teachers country-wide with services and teachers to communicate easily and effectively with the TSC. The portal will also have public facing competent allowing citizens to review information on teachers in each county.

3. iBid Labs for their ‘Kenya Online Museum‘ project that will seek to document Kenya’s history online. Through multi-media, ibid labs will capture 3 million years of Kenyan history to be distributed online and accessed from mobile phones. Inspired by over 25 museums in Kenya that host a rich history of the country, ibid started their project several years ago by extensively researching Kenya’s history. The grant will give them the opportunity to realize their dream of making Kenyan history accessible to all Kenyans.

4. Foundation Support Services (FSS) Ltd for their ‘IVR Tax Filing Solution‘, which will offer a voice prompted option for tax filing. The Interactive Voice Response system will allow any Kenyan with a mobile phone to fill taxes in variety of Kenyan languages. The system will help more Kenyans fallen their tax requirement. The team at FSS have a variety of experience in voice enabled technology and are passionate about making service available to all Kenyans country-wide.

5. BTI Millman Company Ltd for their ‘eMazingira Software Application‘ – an open source application that will run on Ushahidi’s crowd-sourcing platform. eMazingira will concentrate on documenting and collecting information on environmental degradation and abuse. The environment is one of Kenya’s most precious resource and eMazingira will help citizens ensure that our natural resources are preserved for future generations. Citizen will be able to report environmental degradation cases to a dedicated mobile short code number and the information relayed to the relevant authorities for action. People will then be able to view reported cases and the actions being taken on an online interactive map of Kenya.

6. RiverCross Technologies Ltd for their ‘EDUWEB – An education institution listing and interactive mapping portal‘ that will provide a comprehensive list and interactive map of all education institutions in the country allowing users to locate institutions by proximity to relevant locations. The solution seeks to integrate data already available from the Ministry of Education, as well as additional information–all accessible from a computer or mobile phone. The portal will allow students and parents to research and identify the best schools and will also the allow the public to view and analyze vital data on educational institutions.

7. JBA Advertising Co Ltd for their ‘Lost and Found Project‘, which will collect information on the hundreds of IDs and official documents lost every day and provide an online and mobile based solution for search and retrial of lost documents. Loosing an ID can be quite a debilitating experience, and yet the document could be lying in a building or office nearby. With security and privacy in mind, JBA Advertising will build on a platform they have developed over the years to enable Kenyans to find their documents by accessing the internet or a query from their mobile phone.

Source: Kenyan ICT Board Official Press Release

I really hopes other African countries (Nigeria most especially) will follow this great gesture. This will create jobs and stimulate innovation.

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Facebook users in Nigeria hits 1.72million as other African countries sees growth

Facebook is a phenomenon no doubt; it’s the talk of town from the US to Uk, to India, Brazil and other countries of the world. If it were a country, it would have been the 3^rd most populated country in the world following only China and India.

Africa is not left out in the Facebook frenzy! Millions are now using the platform in their daily lives; employers are beginning to complain about the man-hour being wasted on the site by their employees. Though, originally created for students, it has been used for various means ranging from, socializing, volunteering, fund raising, politics, and business!

Below we did a brief analysis and comparison of how African countries are using the platform;

Egypt has eventually overtaken South Africa as the top Country in Africa using Facebook, with an astonishing 4.08million users; it warped South African strong hold on the site. Surprisingly, South African has more females than Egypt on the site; 1.58million for South Africa compared to 1.53million for Egypt.

South Africa is the only country on the list with more females than males and with the highest spending on Facebook. Nigeria on the other hand has male users more than times two of the total females on the site. In terms of spending, Nigeria is on the second spot after South Africa.

Currently, only 6 African countries has more than a million users on Facebook; Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia and Algeria. Kenya is approaching a million but has as much as 135,240 users to hit a million. The internet space in Kenya is waxing strong; it should be able to cross the line before the end of the year.

Nigeria has more than 11 countries users combined namely; Ghana, Senegal, Mauritius, Uganda, Libya, Cameroon, Zambia, Rwanda, Malawi, Mozambique and Mali.

Mali currently tops the table from behind with handful 44,360 users.

Why Using Facebook stats?

As the world shrink more and more, culture in developed world are fast spreading to other countries, in Africa the story is no different. Firstly, we need to understand that, effective social media/network usage requires spending time on the sites; in Africa, the price of internet connection is still more or less a luxury so, as we grow from using basic internet features, we shouldn’t expect social network adoption to be dramatic. The high-flying countries (top six) are with a minimal exception in this case.

Whether we like it our not, adoption of social media still consume couple of things; man-hour and money. As more Africans logon to the top sites, businesses in Africa are beginning to recognize the potentials of these sites hence spending more to promote their services. In economics, they call it capital flight, well… for as long as we consume… business must go on, if you consume, you pay for it!

On a lighter note; Facebook usage is a good sign of development on the continent as it can be leveraged to achieve other daunting tasks facing the continent. Nigerian president recently rescind his decision to ban the Super Eagles from international football after pleas from his Facebook fans, In south Africa, it was used during the election and we have seen how crowd sourcing innovative product (Ushahidi) from  Kenya is changing the face of the continent around the world.

Do you have a Facebook account? How long do you stay on it?

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Nigeria’s Cheapest Internet Service Providers [Comparison Chart]

Internet access remains the bedrock of any successful internet business, for now, we still have what I call “shadow broadband internet access” in Nigeria. I do understand that most of us try to get the best, affordable, and fast internet service in Nigeria. We have highlighted below prices of internet subscriptions in Nigeria. It’s in two segments; 1^st compares the ones offered by telecom operators (GSM) and then CDMA telecom operators. These services are targeted at small scale business to personal internet needs (we hope to do a comparison of corporate internet services).

I have tested virtually all of them and I can say categorically that they work fine for basic internet needs. Your location is also a pointer to whether you will get best coverage offered by these firms. In my own location, most times I get HSDPA and EVDO signals, these are real broadband (in Nigerian context)!

GSM Providers

The bone of contention has largely been the data-cap introduced by most of the service providers; most people (high-end users) are not very comfortable with that. In as much as I liked how fast there services are; I am usually put off by the data limits

They are also good for mobile internet access! The most reasonable of them all is the ones offered by Zain and Etisalat; 100mb per month at N1000. I have tried both services, I prefer Etisalat as its stable and fast. While Etisalat is a big minus if you go out of covered states, remains the best in states it is present e.g Lagos.

CDMA/EVDO Service providers

I was surprised to discover that Multilinks have data limits on their services. Their connection is fast and well priced compared to others but the data cap doesn’t cut it for me.

Starcomms is stable, fast and accessible! But it comes with a huge price compared to others; it is expensive but you get value for money! Recharging your plan is as simple as normal voice call recharge.

For Zoom, am waiting (hope not in vain) for when they will wake up from their slumber. I first used their internet service (1X) in  2006, best as at that time and quite a number of people troop onto the network then came the problem of scaling their service, they failed! For every installation you had to “Carry” your system to their office to install the software. Until recently, you have to go to their office to obtain internet card (which is different from the normal call cards unlike Starcomms) to recharge your network. I tried it out recently; it was very fast, apparently because they have lost all their customers to competitors. Their customer service is way below average; their staffs are always discussing unnecessary issues and will not attend to you timely! Are there customer service checks by NCC? Just asking!

Benefit of GSM networks

Imagine traveling to a remote place where you can only make calls? Well your Starcomms or multilinks may not be available in that village, but with the GSM service you will still be able to access internet but at snail speed! So if you are an interstate business person, consider using the GSM providers’ service.

If you are base in one of the top cities in the country where CDMA/EVDO operators are based and use the internet heavily, it makes business sense than the GSM networks.

Over to you, which internet service provider do you use and how reliable?

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[Press Release] Skoola a Nigeria Educational Social Networking site launched

We got this press release from Skoola.com a social media site with educational-focus. This is a creative idea,  I will give it an in-depth look and write a review here.

A New Social Networking site www.skoola.com has been launched.  The site is aimed at bringing students, graduates and educationists to get to network, share problems and help each other in academic field.

At Skoola you enjoy the following benefits and more:
- Submit Questions, Projects, and Assignments online and get answers to them in a giffy.- Create/Join a Study group/ Private Study Class with your friends and study online with ease.- Study & interact online with other students all over the world.- Prepare for Exams online using our online mock Quiz and exams.- Search for and Find Students Jobs. Work from Home and make money.- Submit/Get current Educational News/Gists & Jokes, News and Gist about your school.- Make friends with persons in your school and other schools and chat with your friends

How to Join
- Visit www.skoola.com and click on Register or visit www.skoola.com/register.php- Fill the Form and Click on submit. (remember your password because you will use it together with your email address to login)- You will get an Activation link, check your email and click on the link, You are done- Update your profile info, add your picture, location school etc - Explore the features on the site and take your studies to the next level
The Site is still in beta version and updates and features are added weekly.
Updates on the site can be found at http://skoola.com/blog.php

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