I remember when Fiber optic cables landed in Kenya, my friend Idd Salim predicted that there would be 10 Kenyans under 32 USD millionaires before October 2010..That was really ambitious by any standard but it is great to have people with ambition around. By then I had a view that things will be different but it will take time before we can talk of some Zimbabwe Dollars millionaires around, leave alone Kenyan Shillings millionaires.
Here we are in September 2011 and with mmmmmh…zero millionaire under 32! May be i am wrong , do we have any Kenyan millionaire made of making money online in the last 2 years?..I am not talking about those on Government taking kitu kidogo or grabbing land somewhere!! Ok..I know Agosta Liko of Pesapal is the Kenyan making highest money based on mcommerce or ecommerce. Kamal is doing great with the software at Craft Silicon but i think he has been doing it for sometime. John Waibochi of Virtual City got a lot of funding from Nokia but is he making good money online? The question here is not about the funds flowing into the industry but about people selling IT products and services.
Are Kenyan developers giving the ordinary Kenyans solutions worth spending money on? Are the apps currently on the market worth being bought? I found out that there are 30,000+ Kenyan apps out there in Ovistore, Android and a few on App store. The problem is , most of those apps are free or not making money at all.
According to Nzioka Waita of Safaricom, there is acute need for the capacity building for the Local content creation, Kenyans have no share on the Android market and Apple Stores. Agree with Nzioka that the capacity building might be required, and that is why i commend the great initiative like m:Lab, iHub, Nailab, Safaricom partnership with Stathmore University and others. But that is that. To me i think the biggest problem at the moment is the mindset. I think and i might be wrong, most apps are developed with primary aim of being submitted to a given competition to win some funding or just to attract some funding. Now i know probably you are already wondering what is the problem with that. The problem is, nobody sit down to come up with a clear, precise and detailed solutions or apps geared in solving the most pressing problems in Kenya. Most of the apps are half baked solutions that nobody would to use, let alone spend money on.
Kachwanya.com blogger NoniemG sometime back wrote
Sometimes the problem with a product is not that it does not have funding, the problem is that it does not satisfy the psychological desires of those it wants to sell to.
The funding based on competition, has its own flaws. majority of apps that win such competition usually sound NGOish or sort of humanitarian solutions. I like them but in the real sense, such apps are not business or profit oriented. If you app is about mhealth, you can’t really go out there trying to make huge bucks at the expense of the sick. And please don’t get me wrong here on that, what i am saying is that it is high time now Kenyan developers start focusing on things that can make money for them. Leave the NGOish kind of ventures to the real NGOs. By the way, they are many around.
According to the researchguidance the Weather and Business apps generate the highest average paid download revenue in the android market. The real reason behind that is, there are not many Weather apps or even business apps. People will be willing to pay for the app as long as it can sort out their needs.
Back to the post by NonieMG
Your consumer/client/customer would like to make a decision that makes them look intelligent and sophisticated. They would like to justify their decision in the following terms:
- It saves me time
- It saves me money
- Its easy to use
- I get it all here
- The service is great
Get people such a solution and you become the King or Queen. Again it is too early to pass the judgement…5 years down the line should be the benchmark time…
Good stuff as always @kachwanya:twitter .
Here is my 1.85 cents.
The only innovations wort talking about in Kenya right now are the 72 unreleased apps in people’s laptops, and the likes on Ushahidi.
These are Apps that are NOT generating revenue but are fueled by funding, and thus, are scalable and sustainable.
Lemaiyan (http://allafrica.com/stories/201109160029.html), won the USD 25k from google android challenge, not because the app can make money or is scalable. No. Because it helps people. Like Ushahidi. So, people get money, funding (hence financial success) once the Build Apps that HELP PEOPLE. Not apps that are scalable or sustainable.
I will blog about this soon.
The mobile apps wave has got a number of developers working on adrenaline and not taking time to think about…….mobile apps are just a terminal for accessing and submiting
content but need am underlying platform that processes the information…am not sure how many local developers have the …..
This is partly as a result of foreigners holding competitions in Kenya with very little barriers to entry. They offer up big prizes, without taking equity in the company, or charging an entrance fee or anything. They are practically giving away free money. This allows for briefcase businessmen to swoop in with a flashy presentation, wow the audience and claim their prize. The app is quickly shelved as yet another unfinished project, and the briefcase businessmen prepare to rinse and repeat.
Another issue that causes this phenomenon is that a lot of leading Kenyan tech bloggers and news writers for one reason or another have a soft spot for ‘Heal the World’ apps. So far, many Kenyan bloggers would readily seek out and write a story about how a new NGO app has been created, or how they went to a conference to discuss Red Cross matters, rather than talking about Seven Seas’ latest contract, or Mobile Planet’s latest venture. This makes most Kenyan techies look up to non-profits as examples to follow, and the vicious cycle continues.
I think foreigners need to stop giving away free money at these developer competitions. We need serious investors who will take equity and follow up their investments. This will weed out the apps that are made specifically for contests. I also think the press need to reduce coverage of NGO-type apps to become a negligible percentage of their content. If it were up to me, I would give these ‘Woiye Woiye’ apps a TOTAL MEDIA BLACKOUT. My policy would be ‘No business model, no story!’ Ka si pesa au biashara, nani tembea!
I think it will take time.. but we’ll get there.
“Another issue that causes this phenomenon is that a lot of leading Kenyan tech bloggers and news writers for one reason or another have a soft spot for ‘Heal the World’ apps. So far, many Kenyan bloggers would readily seek out and write a story about how a new NGO app has been created, or how they went to a conference to discuss Red Cross matters, rather than talking about Seven Seas’ latest contract, or Mobile Planet’s latest venture. This makes most Kenyan techies look up to non-profits as examples to follow, and the vicious cycle continues.”
Have you thought that for once the kenyan startups/techies dont consider providing fodder for bloggers? Cheap to Free advertising that they underrate?
They should not stop. It is a free market and everyone is free to spend his/her money the way she/he deem fit. The problem is not foreigners but the Kenyans mindset, which definitely need to change. I would still support this kind of funding but i would be happy to see more creativity and innovation based on the needs on the ground. People solving the problems before thinking about funding
I guess the money will still flow in, but it would be great to see people making money through selling IT products and services
Yeah, we will get there. No doubt about that
I agree with the Ghafla!Guy to a greater extent than would have otherwise been intended, most of the Kenyan start up techpreneurs DO have an inclination towards ‘Heal the world World’ apps as opposed to real cash cow apps.Its a bout time this changed if we are to have ‘the next ten USD millionaires under 32’. I have nothing against open source and free apps other than; they lack a business model and most of them are hardly sustainable. I doubt this is what Kenya needs right now.
I agree it is the mindset. Our education system does not create problem-solvers rather people who just look for money the fastest way possible. We need a paradigm shift in our way of thinking and build localised solutions to local problems.
For instance I have never seen an eco-friendly app, anti-deforestation app yet environmental degradation is the main cause of hunger, high food prices and instability.
Interesting post.
It’s sad to see the charity model eating away at the IT sector as it has other industries.