Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

March 18, 2010.

It is the Tandaa Local Content Conference today in Nairobi. Thanks to ICT Board again.

I am at iHub Kenya and just heard Wanyama [@kenyafreelancer], say “What more do we Kenyans want? We have Fibre now”

I am at iHub Kenya and just heard Cynthia Muyoti of FabGuru , say “Facebook has made my business better? 1391 fans todate and I am soon expanding my Shoes Business”

Seated next to me is Agosta Liko, Mbugua Njihia and John Karanja. I hear talk after talk. Aly Khan Satchu talks about how anyone can be rich and gives examples.

So I brainstorm with fellow coders and the question becomes; ‘How can Kenyan Coders be rich?’. Not the “i can afford to go out and i own a toyota” rich. Or the “I pay all my bills and my rent is always paid on time” rich. How about the “I look at the food names on the menu, not the price before I order rich”, or the “I am undecided whether to drive my Range or my Mustang today rich”.

50 Cent said ‘get rich or die trying’ [GRODT], but I tell you, try ‘get rich or get rich’ [GRoGR]. We are in a position never experienced before. So, for free as usual, I will list the top 10 opportunities that are there open-legged and wet and just waiting for Kenyan coders to smell the coffee and dive in and start making the old-Money conglomerate wish they could impregnate their daughters.Only coders?? Naaah! ANYONE can jump into the eChapaa bandwagon. It is free and there for everyone.

My Top 10

1. Local Digital Content – Yes. Content is the buzzword. Enough Said. Anything you know [Yes, am speaking to Pamela, Wangechi and Anyanche] is sellable. Just grab word-press and google-checkout and walla!
2. Content Discovery Tools – Coders. The challenge is yours. Java Applications, Desktop Applications. There is over KSHS 100M not made per month by PRSPs because of lack of content discovery tools. That is why the guys down South are inviting  likes of Symbiotic to go down there and consult on HOW to convert content and knowledge into wallet-content.
3. Mobile Apps – Think of anything useful as a mobile phone app and there are 100, 000 people who NEED it and will PAY 20 bob each for it.
4. Mobile Games – Here we go again. the limit is only your imagination. grab a keyboard and write some code!! Stop these silly excuses that ‘programming is hard’. I got a miserable B in KCSE and can code, sembuse wewe!! But whatever you do, please don’t use VB.
5. Hacking and Security – The silence is deafening, but the hackers are on their way. Be equipped to defend Kenya. Your hacking knowledge will be invaluable in 3-6 months time. Tick.. tock…
6. Animation and Design – Some foreign jamaaz came here, partnered with HomeBoyz Studions and now are making millions of dollars per month. What are Kenyans doing? Facebook all day and complaining about how hard life is, how much of a a parent-hater Esther Arunga is and how much money Ruto is stealing. Kaeni papo hapo.
7. Kenyan Social Networks – YES. I said it. You can start your own Facebook tomorrow and become rich like crazy. There are 4M Kenyans with an Internet Connections. This number grows by the day. there are only 580, 000 kenyans on facebook. This is 14.5% percent of Kenyans with Internet. So what are the other 85.5% doing? Waiting for you to give them something better. Something Kenyan. Something more contextual. Lala tu.
8. Adult Sites – Ati Eish? We all know Kenyan is the mdinyano capital of East Africa. An average slut makes KSHS 2, 500 per night. And those are the cheap ones. Connect the clients and the vendors. Simple as! I wont say anything more.
9. eParty – Bring clubbing to the mobile phone. Hook people up to YOU on thursdays, fridays and sato. Just charge each user 10 bob per week. Kenyans will pay.
10. Your own WebTV Show – If you are that Kibera guy who can dance like MJ or that Kileleshwa bathroom singer, get heard online! Make some money. Sell yourself!

So maswali ni, what do KENYANS want! Are you going to waste all day thinking up cocky status updates for facebook and poking strangers who you mean NOTHING to, or are you going to monetize your time? Are you going to waste your life away in the digital world, or are you going to focus on what will really make your momma smile in public pointing at you and say, “yeah! that’s my baby!”. Are you going to complain all day about the government, corruption, the kaanjo and these bloody foreigners, or are you going to take control of your life?

Amua mwenyewe!

Ehh, back to code! Pole timo.

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of being in the same room with some very influential development oriented people. Meeting was held at ICT board, hosted by PK. Invited were Symbiotic, MobileMonday, Safaricom, Top PRSPS and Developers in then Kenyan Mobile Arena

It was a good meeting of minds and well worth the time and effort. For Once, I was in a room with some guys from Safaricom who had their brains bigger than their Egos.

Present

Paul Kukubo – Head of ICT, Lewela and Kaburo

2 Peters from Safaricom, Sylvia Mulinge,

Salim, Timo from SMC, Wesley from Letti Games, Cellulant, Adtel and IMS teams.

Absent

All other Jokers in the country.

Agenda

• Why Safaricom is seen as a monster by Kenyan Software developers. Perception being that most ideas sent to Safaricom disappear at the Marketing department and and get ’stolen’ to make Safcom all this BILLIONS, while the real inventors languish in poverty.
• How do we as inventors and developers work together with Safaricom and make a living out of code.
• What are the key failure factors met by developers while dealing with Safaricom.

Mangumi na Mateke

The top 2 issues and responses are as listed below.

ISSUE: The current locus standi is grim and really pathetic. Wesley argued that Apple Automatically gives the developer 70% shares and keeps only 30%. This encourages the developers to innovate and pays them immediately. Safaricom and the PRSPs take over 75% leaving the developer with a measly and satanic 25%. As if that is not enough torture and an abuse of human rights, the developer WILL NOT get paid until after 4 months. A Kenyan Mobile developer CANNOT live on code, unless they decide to follow the path of the weak and prostitute themselves and get employed

RESPONSE: Safaricom expressed willingness to shift the revenue shares to the favor of the developer. Developers will get as high as 90% of the money they bring. Systems that bring DATA traffic and thus bring residual income to Safaricom, e.g. Sembuse from Symbiotic, will also attract special treatment and revenue share models from Safaricom.

ISSUE: There are SO MANY requirements from Safaricom before a developer can get to the platform where their services reach the market. CCK Licence, PRSP Licence etc.

RESPONSE: This challenge fell to the PRSPs. It is, obviously out of the Safaricom domain. Adtel and IMS expressed willingness to incubate developers and their systems [Apps, Games, Ideas] at a very sexy revenue share.

There is a positive vibe from Safaricom at last which might indicate the following:

• The actual problem and cause of the ‘Safaricom ni Madogi’ movement in Kenya by coders is due to the red-tape between the entry-level marketing department and the upper tier. I remember going with a proposal to SafCom and Evah from VAS asking if we were read to accept 5% revenue share while SafCom kept 95%. I felt like crying. Maybe she was Joking. Meeting people higher up makes you realize that SafCom aint all that bad.
• Safaricom have started to realize that Voice and SMS are dead! The next frontier for MSP Mkwanjalization is DATA and DATA driving solutions. Step in Java Developers!
• Safaricom have started to smell the coffee. Which is good. Of late, they have just been inhaling the AC!

Lemmi go back to code. Mbugua is giving me that ‘you have not coded for 12 minutes straight’ eye! And No, Deno, Safaricom have not ‘onad me kando’ to do a positive blog about them. Good stuff is happening.

In a previous Post, I talked about how Google could use GoogleCheckOut to monetize Africa and do a 2-fold win-win move:

• Help Millions if Africans access e-Commerce and sell to the world, as opposed to locally.
• Enable Google take a big chuck of the millions of USDs sent from US/Europe back home to Africa.

I also talked about the blacklistic that payPal does for African IPs. So bubbling with Ideas and possibilities, I approached CK [of Google Kenya and not DjCk]. Google is your friend, right? Ohh how wrong I was!

CK Made it clear to me that [Quoting the chat]:

• unfortunately we [google] are not ready for monetization in Africa
• even if we were to monetize the entire existing online population in sub-saharan africa, it would not be a significant amount.

So, apparently, Africa is too small for Google. I thought not. So I googled (sic!) some facts about Africa Remittances and what I foind blew my mind. According to this report, :

Kenyans in the diaspora are contributing an equivalent of 3.8 per cent of national income through remittances.

In the year 2004, for instance, Kenyans living and working abroad remitted about Ksh35 billion ($464 million), which overshadows the net foreign direct investment (FDI) of Ksh3.6 billion ($50.4 million), which accounted for 0.41 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

More recently,  [According to this]:

Despite the global recession, remittances by Kenyans abroad, a key source of hard currency, grew 6.6 per cent to $611 million (Sh49 billion) last year, Central Bank has said.

However, the growth was much slower than the 41 per cent rise the previous year [2007] when the remittances stood at $573.6 million (Sh46 billion).

The figure above oscillates between .6B and 1B USD depending on the source.

So, WHERE IS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR PAYPAL?

I believe that internet has reached sign-up saturation… people no longer jump to a bandwagon and register with no clear benefits. They now need a REASON. Free email sevices like yahoo and lycos had a boom because they had that UNIQUE offering.. FREE. Sadly, FREE is no longer a selling point nowadays.. people need to feed the fundamental human urge.. the urge to trade.

If a big player [PayPal] could use TRADE as a reason to get people online, this would be a winner. You know africans. We NEED a valid and convincing REASON to do anything constructive.

Trust me… Wangechi will not get online to poke Otieno… but tell her that Otieno will pay… she will log on to your site faster than you can say Paypal. Think of all the possible implementations of MicroPayment and MicroLending for social and business reasons in a typical African/Kenyan setup.

I will seek audiences with Menekse and the like and see if this cross-continent trade with Paypal Linking to Zap and Mpesa using our hand-made KuKanja Payment gateway can be made a reality.

More later…

This poem is about the unending trials and tribulations of a Kenyan Coder.

Monday: Wake up at 5am all psyched up and ready to start this new lucrative project,

Turn on the PC and fire up netbeans and start apache, glassfish and googletalk,

A mail pops up and a client is calling me for a quick 10k job in westlands,

Because my pocket is empty, i run to westlands for the all-day 10k job and the lucrative project stalls.

And so, today, yet again, I will postpone my success…

Tuesday: wake up all fired up. Today I will debug that piece of Java code,

I disconnect the net and shut down all other distractions, even my phone.

BUT, the electricity company decide to also disconnect the power, ohh my god!

I should be all panicky and angry, but I decide to remain hopeful and bold,

Power comes back at noon, and by then it is hot, and no longer cold-code time,

And so, today, yet again, I will postpone my success…

Wednesday: I pick up my call at 5, there are some investors in town who want to see us,

Sometimes it is Safaricon who want a demo of my system and cant stop calling us,

We spend on cabs and lunches and waste coding time hosting the same old vibe,

Our success Project delays because of useless meetings and countless proposals for other solutions,

And so, today, yet again, I will postpone my success…

Going Forward: In the midst of all the hassle and bustle, I decide to watch news,

Mr Politician lectures the clapping crowds on how they bring them development,

And how the government is there to help the vijana kupata kazi,

I laugh and go to bed, thanking God for knowing better,

And so, tomorrow, never again, will I postpone my success…

The time is now.