Why Social Media Will Fail in South Africa

I stumbled on a very interesting post which is an elaboration on Tuesday’s theme, entitled The Internet’s Hierarchy Of Needs. The author also superimposes Maslow’s Hierarchy of Basic Needs on the internet.

As we can see, at the very base of the pyramid is

• 1. Existence needs: The most basic need for the internet to play any meaningful role, namely computers connected to the Internet and access to documents and any media necessary for whatever task needs to be accomplished. Right there South Africa fails already, since technology infrastructure, access to computers and the internet is non-existent or few and far between. In 2006, out of a population of nearly 50 million people, only 5 million had internet access. There has been some attempts to outfit black schools with Open Source Tuxlabs from the Shuttleworth Foundation, but unfortunately one never hear of these efforts anymore and if there is any success stories then they surely keep it very quiet.
• 2. Connectivity needs: the ability to connect to and between documents and sites and it’s subsequent implications; this largely flows forth from the first need and is therefore impossible for the majority of the South African population to attain, without access to a fast and modern computer with the appropriate software and connectivity installed and without the necessary education and sophistication to effectively use and utilize these resources, this is somewhat of a moot point
• 3. Organization needs: the ability to sort and search based on title, metatags and document contents - when a large majority of the current web surfers do not understand fully the mechanics of SEO and web development, how long is it gonna take someone who needs to first get access to a computer in the first place, then learn to use it properly, to know to Google around for the appropriate information that he/she needs, which is essentially what this level represents…?
• 4. Semantic needs: the ability to derive meaning from language, content and context - here again we can see that with the foundation of the previous requirements unfulfilled, this level will not be reached; in a country where even many government decision-makers do not have a good grasp of the English language, which is the internationally accepted language of the internet, business and technological studies and learning, the lack of understanding of any web based technology or jargon or techno speak underlying the tools needed to access information will be to the detriment of all involved
• 5. Actualization: the web becomes a frictionless tool for personal growth and fulfillment - this is the apex of the pyramid and unfortunately in the case of South Africa, a level that will only really be reached by a small minority of privileged individuals. The foundations are lacking, this level can never be reached; when the average black child lives in poverty with his parents, cannot afford a computer themselves, do not have the money to send the child to a school where he will get a decent education and maybe exposure to these modalities, a vicious circle continues to perpetuate itself; a circle of poverty, hopelessness, desperation and inevitably all the social ills that we see manifested each day by taking note of news headlines…!

On Tuesday I wrote about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and used it to speculatively analyze the Web 2.0 scene in South Africa and also to make a pronouncement as to the viability of a Social Media effort online in South Africa. Given the highly unequal distribution of resources and technology infrastructure, the majority of the country’s population do not have access to computing technology and internet access.

Any kind of Social Media Strategy is therefore little more than inside baseball amongst an incestuous clique of privileged practitioners who retain and guard the old money and benefits of the old apartheid regime. Whatever Social Media campaign is launched online will necessarily only be seen by a handful of regular old faces who continually regurgitate each other’s utterings and bounce around any newsworthy items or movements within the local South African Web 2.0 zoo.

For the majority of the population who struggle to figure out where the next meal or roof over their head or warm blanket is gonna come from, these issues may as well have taken place on the moon. Social Media Press Releases and Social Media Newsrooms and shiny new websites with all the bells and whistles added on for people to comment and share and save and bookmark and all the widgets etc etc. Many a social media consultant and expert have “emerged” and are peddling their virtual wares, many websites are erected (!) in the hope of being THE must-go-to destination for anyone fortunate enough to learn of it’s existence.

Unfortunately it is a project doomed to failure:

• There is not a critical mass of internet users to visit these sites,
• those that do have internet access do so mostly from public terminals at school, university or from their work machines. (where in some cases internet access are severely restricted and most social networking activity has to take place “undercover” e.g Facebook being blocked and only corporate e-mail from behind a firewall is allowed
• Their priorities are not to whip out their credit cards to support online businesses.
• Mostly kids at school and students at university use their internet access time to check e-mail and catch up with their friends on Facebook and MySpace.
• Only a small handful of geekily inclined web surfers really spend a significant enough amount of time online to Save, Bookmark and Share stuff or leave comments on each other’s blogs.
• And those Saves and Shares and Bookmarks do not necessarily turn into sales, the only really lucrative businesses online in South Africa seem to be the Mobile Service Providers who sell prepaid airtime and the myriad of ringtone and mobile games vendors.
• Most of the online campaigns that are successful target only a small niche, privileged market anyways, which reinforces my earlier points: it remains a case of incestuous inside baseball with no intention of ever including the majority of the population in any sort of “social networking” endeavour
• For entrepreneurs who may want to do business online, it is virtually an impossibility since PayPal does not operate in South Africa and credit card purchases are limited to the handful of high net worth individuals who can afford to qualify for these facilities in the first place
• most of the online merchants are the old media companies and established big businesses who leverage their existing resources to establish a web presence.
• For the average Joe entrepreneur who do not have a rich uncle or a corrupt relative high up in government with access to BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) deals it is a pipe dream which will remain only that, a dream.

It is a terrible indictment on local Web 2.0 efforts, but these issues need to be aired out in the open if we are gonna make any headway in this country. The way things are going now it seems every man and community for themselves and we see a perpetuation of the old divisions among racial and class lines, a situation which can only lead to a Zimbabwean tragedy in the long term when the poor majority start taking matters into their own hands as we recently saw with the xenophobic attacks in the country!

Last, but not least, already reports are coming in about the failure of many corporate social media community attempts. This article on ReadWriteWeb cites reports by the Wall Street Journal and other research done about failed attempts and “abandoned towns” on the internet social networking scene. It comes back to the earlier assertion; communities are built around shared or common interests and characteristics. Why would anyone go and register and upload their profile photos and share anecdotes on a social networking site dedicated to kitty litter products and devices…? The more workable and sensible strategy seems to be to utilize already existing popular social networks where people are already congregating and try and get their attention and engage with them there instead of trying to build a dedicated site and try herding everyone over there. It just will not do, unless you’re someone very famous or interesting or has a very compelling value proposition like being an expert in your niche and sharing scarce specialist information or advice. For the rest of us, it would be well advised to stick to the Facebook pages, YouTube channels, Flickr accounts and ning social networks where we can tap into an already existing network without having to reinvent the wheel again all over at great cost.

Tags: access to scarce resources, business, communications, hierarchy of needs, ICT, marketing, maslow, politics, social media strategy, social networking, socio-political, south africa, strategy

WordPress 2.6 is out… One month ahead of schedule!

Matt Mullenweg announced the early release of WordPress 2.6 on the WordPress blog one month ahead of schedule. Here is a video that runs us through the most noteable new features and improvements.

Tags: blogging platform, CMS, Matt Mullenweg, new release, WordPress 2.6, WordPress blog

A 50 Ways Mashup between Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang

Two of the web’s foremost commentators and thought leaders in the social media space, Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang, has teamed up to bring us an awesome list of 50 checkpoint items to accomplish when augmenting our online marketing strategies. Chris has his original post up here. At the suggestion of one of the comments from @jonburg , Jeremiah has gone ahead and broken up the list nicely into 5 social computing objectives as defined by Forrester Research, where Jeremiah is a senior analyst.

Chris Brogan http://www.chrisbrogan.com

I will now shamefully reproduce the list here after having given due credit and linking to the original authors ‘ posts above. First to Chris Brogan for producing the list, and second to Jeremiah for organizing it for us according to the 5 social computing objectives. In the spirit of sharing with proper attribution, I don’t think either of them will mind too much

Listening: Gleaning market and customer insight and intelligence

10. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
11. Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
14. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
21. Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
25. Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
32. Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
33. Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
34. Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
38. Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
39. Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).

Talking: Engaging in a two way discussion to get your message out (and get messages in)

2. Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
5. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
8. Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
9. Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
13. Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
19. Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
23. Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
24. Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
26. Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
28. Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
30. Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
40. Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
41. Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
44. Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.

Jeremiah Owyang http://www.web-strategist.com

Energizing: Letting your customers tell your prospects on your behalf (viral, word of mouth)

1. Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
3. For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
4. Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
12. Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
36. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
47. Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.

Supporting: Getting your customers to self-support each other

6. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
7. Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
15. Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
18. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
29. Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
35. Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
37. Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.

Embracing: Building better products and services through collaboration with clients

31. Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
50. Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too.

Strategy, Training, and Planning
Many of these aren’t directly social media tactics, but they are great rules of thumb.

16. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
17. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
20. Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email Chris for a calendar).
22. Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
27. Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
42. Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
43. Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
45. Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
46. People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
48. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
49. Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.

Tags: business, chris brogan, jeremiah owyang, marketing, mashup, objectives, social media, strategy

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Social Media Strategy in South Africa

I came across a very insightful post over at Experience: The Blog where the author uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to tease out some of the reasons for online behaviour, in this case why people join online communities. It is a very good analysis of the motivations behind people’s behaviour and set me thinking about the online social media scene in South Africa and why companies who engage in online social media campaigns may be jumping the gun a bit.

South Africa is still in a very fragile state of uneasy equilibrium socio-politically, nearly fifteen years after the end of apartheid the overall majority of the black population is not very much better off than before the end of apartheid in 1994. Economically, the majority of the country’s wealth still are controlled by a small minority of predominantly white people, the reasons and dynamics for such a state of affairs which falls outside the scope of our present conversation. The result is that when it comes to information technology and the ecosystem around ICT tools, we still have a very unequal distribution of access to these modalities. In other words, the average black student or child still does not have access to computing resources and their parents still are not in a position to afford a computer; most of the time they are still struggling to just provide in the basic needs like proper housing and enough food on the table in the face of a struggling economy and rising fuel and food prices.

When one speaks of social media, you are thus speaking, in a South African context, of a small minority of predominantly white geeks and geekettes with an odd sprinkling of Coloured, Black and Indians thrown in who are leading the conversation and an incestuous in-clique parrotting and echoing each other’s blogs and blog posts. Recently a furore broke out when one freelance journalist made a list of the prominent figures in the South African blogosphere and almost all of them turned out to be white. One coloured blogger quickly reacted with a counter-list of non-white South African “Web 2.0″ personalities and his post was severely criticized by many on the “white list” as being divisive and hurting those he mentioned on the list. How exactly it would hurt them I could not imagine, I suppose all the white boys would fort up and keep the business and the action within the in-clique and ignore completely anything that any of these “troublesome” coloureds have to say…?

The point is, social media and social media marketing and social media strategy is an almost pointless pursuit for businesses in South Africa when the same small group of people who are also the same group who got the contracts to develop these sites, now have to go around and stir up their small, limited circle of friends to go and see what Company A or B has put up and comment there or add a digg, or del.icio.us bookmark or in South Africa’s case Muti or Laaik.it or Amatomu or Afrigator. Once anyone has put anything up and he goes: “hey guys go look at my post” a small number of his/her buddies will rush over and throw two cents worth of “nice post, keep at it” into the comments collection-box and be on their merry way to look at the next shiny little pebble on the internet highway.

When it comes to companies releasing press releases about new products/programs or initiatives they are launching, we are stuck in the old top-down hierarchical mentality of wanting to control the message and releasing stiff, formal templated media releases that does not contain anything with a potential of going viral or being worthy of being shared with your friends on Facebook. The Vodacom animated meerkat is a much despised brand property on Facebook where there is actually a group called “I fucking hate the animated meerkat from Vodacom” with 15,642 (South African) members.

Some of the bigger media companies have in-house “social media experts”, mostly web development geeks who saw potential in this new frontier opening up and all sorts of “consultants” offering “New Media and Social Media Strategy” services for exorbitant fees. Most of these consultants are based in closed in-clique centres like Johannesburg and Cape Town where most of the action is happening and the market is so small that there is usually stiff competition from the same group of individuals for the available social media gigs. This then inevitably leads to some behind-the-scenes intrigue and gossip mongering and trying to keep it “within the family”.

This means that in a South African context where an incompetent and corrupt government alliance are failing all it’s people, every community is closing in on itself and protecting it’s own and being very protective of the available small pieces of pie going around. The hierarchy of needs that Maslow talks about thus comes into play with people who have access to technology and the education enabling them to wield that technology adequately and competently, keeping it to themselves in order to remain ahead of the pack in the African bush. You then find a situation like you have at present in the online Web 2.0 South African zoo, those who have been benefitting from apartheid through privileged education and upbringing and access to good education and resources banding together only with those from similar privileged backgrounds.

Everyone else is not “worthy” and it is not their problem or their concern why “these people” aren’t educated or sophisticated enough, it’s been fifteen years of Affirmitive Action and BEE after all! We thus see a very vicious racism rearing it’s head where the Australian passports and emigration visas are being dusted off and old Afrikaner Boer generals are nostalgically praised in popular culture to signal a return to the “good old days” if only in spirit and not in the everyday reality.

My point in waffling on like this? People form communities around common and shared interests. Many of the small minority of active participants in the South African blogosphere or Web 2.0 scene share only one thing: being white and their parents having benefitted from the previous apartheid regime. They are thus the custodians of the old wealth and the old ways and are doing everything to protect their position of privilege from being usurped by pretentious nouveau-riche blacks who wants to overrun and nationalize everything in sight. Recent political developments like the ANC youth league president threatening with killing for the very unsuitable presidential candidate does not exactly help in easing their fears.

So social media strategy and social media marketing online in South Africa is only existent for a small minority of privileged white geeks and their equally small potential white and privileged audience who might be enticed into visiting a site and leaving a comment or sharing it on a social bookmarking site. The rest of the population do not have computers, many access these sites from work or school or university and then only to check the odd e-mail and zombie bite their friends on Facebook. Most of the teenagers are clogging up the GPRS networks with Mxit from their mobile phones and those (mostly white kids) that have access to 3G use it to play XBOX or World of WarCraft online.

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal blog, the opinions expressed here belongs to me alone. You are free to differ from me in the comments, but please keep it civil and on point, I tolerate no monkey business

Tags: hierarchy, maslow, opinion, philosophy, politics, psychological needs, social media, social networking, south africa

Morphic resonance, (mistaken) IP infringement and how to build a web app in four days…!

TechCrunch has a story up about the ins-and-outs of building a web application in three four days with little to no money. These days with open source tools and web-two-point-owe type open APIs and frameworks, it is easy for a dedicated team of developers, designers and PR/marketing people to bring out something that may just be the next hit of the social media world. Guy Kawasaki knows all about this with Truemors and Alltop. The flipside of that coin, however, is that there will be a proliferation of so many social networking/web-two-point-owe type of tools and sites to choose from, it will be hard to distinguish which ones are worth engaging with or signing up for and which ones will just be contributing to social networking fatigue

Already there is a movement in the direction of lifestream aggregators like Friendfeed and planet type services that pull all your scattered web services and networks you belong to into one central space. That is of course the main raison d’etre for this very blog of mine where I can pull everything together under one roof and my own namespace. Of course the process takes time and effort and it becomes yet another modality to manage and nurture and maintain if you wanna establish a credible and/or professional web presence.

Speaking of lifestream and web aggregator services, the South African blogosphere temporarily experienced a little uproar when Justin Hartman, one of the co-founders of Afrigator.com, blogged about a new RSS aggregator service called regator.com that received some press and buzz over at TechCrunch , Mashable and ReadWriteWeb. Justin and the co-founders and many of the SA bloggerati felt there was a possible case of IP infringement since the logo, name and colorscheme is basically identical to the Afrigator.com properties’ own brand assets. A flurry of comments on Justin’s blog was followed by one of the co-founders of Regator.com posting a comment and basically playing very nice and dispelling any fears and suspicions of foul play or malicious intent. It is a play on aggregator, since it is an aggregation RSS service, alligator seemed a natural and fun mascot, alligators are green, and the top level dot com domain name was available, hence regator.com. It all seems to be a major coincidence and case of morphic resonance and Justin has decided to check out the beta version of regator.com just to set his own mind at ease.

Afrigator.com of course is also an example of how a web app can be put together with enough skill, dedication and ingenuity from the right people combined in a good, efficient team. It is a South African made aggregation service where people submit the best blogs from within South Africa and the rest of Africa and the ones with the most buzz around it (algorithm, algorithm) kind of floats to the top a la digg or techmeme. ReadWriteWeb did an excellent round-up and hat tip to local South African web dev skills last November and this very story also featured in yesterdays uproar about the regator copyright infringement case.

Update, July 05, 2008, 07:30 UTC +2: Scott Lockhart, co-founder of regator.com commented on my blog post about the misunderstanding about them infringeing coincidentally using the same mascot, colorscheme and similar sounding domain name as local aggregator service Afrigator.com I appreciate the effort Scott has gone through to do damage control and set minds at ease and convince evceryone involved of their bona fides and that they really were not aware of Afrigator before yesterday. He also pointed me to Justin’s update and that Justin went over and got access to their entire operation to see that intentions were good. Stii, one of the Afrigator.com co-founders, also did a very diplomatic post and put a nice positive twist on the whole saga.

Tags: africa, afrigator, branding, business, copyright infringement, intellectual property, lifestream aggregator, marketing, readwriteweb, regator, social networking fatique, South African bloggerati, strategy, techcrunch, webdevelopment

Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, WordPress, Africa

I have found a very good tool in the form of a WordPress plugin called WordBook, what it does is to integrate with your self-hosted wordpress.org blog on your own domain and then also your Facebook profile and mini-feed. This updates all your WordPress blog posts to your Facebook profile mini-feed and those of your friends.

The plugin from the wordpress.org plugin directory is over here.

The original author’s site and the latest developments around this plugin is over here.

There is a nice write-up of what it does over here.

Of course the biggest news in the tech space is the unsolicited ‘hostile’ bid from Microsoft to take over Yahoo to the tune of $44,6 billion dollars. The Media has already blown this into one of the most visible stories in headlines and titles of news updates from all over.

I do not claim to know all there is to know about these things, so I will point you to a collection of very insightful and in-depth posts by people more knowledgeable about it.

I found a good post on the current state of mobile, internet and other infrastructure issues in Africa and the implications for entrepeneurs in the Web 2.0 space.

It comes via a newsletter from Russell Southwood over at www.balancingact-africa.com

African countries’ ICT policy– going from the blah, blah, blah cycle to getting something done

In a week in which the heart of South Africa’s ICT industry - Sandton - suffered continuous load-shedding (rolling power cuts for those of you who speak English), no-one doubts that developing a modern ICT-enabled economy in Africa is a challenge. It is easy in these circumstances to respond cynically by asking: Government? What is it good for? But a small number of African Governments have managed to make a difference through facilitating major projects but the majority are in the slow-track when it comes to getting the big things done. Russell Southwood looks at why some countries talk, whilst others do.

Changing an economy through introducing ICT is akin to trying to set up a whole row of spinning plates. Without infrastructure, you can’t get media, services and applications. Without media, services and applications, you can’t get critical mass. Without critical mass, there’s no-one to e-mail or exchange videos with, so why bother? And that’s before you get on to all the “nice things” that might happen if African governments delivered their services better.

The private sector can do many things but even in Africa it does not do very high risk investment and it does not go where tomorrow’s market is today. For example, despite all the heady promises made at the Connect Africa event in Kigali last year, the new vertically integrated mobile companies are unlikely to lay extensive high-capacity microwave or fibre infrastructure quickly. They will follow the market in metro areas and connect up major cities. They have shareholders’ money to look after and it would be unusual if they did otherwise.

But for Africa’s fast track economies where growth is running ahead of the global average, it is important that they get in place the new global ICT infrastructure to support their changing economies today. Access to fibre really is the fuel of the new global economy: the cutting of the Flag cable to North Africa and Asia illustrates this all too vividly in a negative way.

For five years and more, African Presidents and Ministers have been making speeches about how important ICT is and how they wish to use it to attract new jobs. If words were money, Africa would be rich beyond its wildest imaginings. Some of this “blah,blah,blah” has led to new initiatives but in most countries these have simply fizzled out. But recently in East Africa, Kenya and Uganda took decisions that they would build national infrastructures. Kenya decided that it would initiate its own international fibre connection.

Spurred by the World Cup in 2010, South Africa has more international fibre plans for the West Coast of the continent and has set up Infraco to intervene in the broadband connectivity supply market. To meet its growing connectivity needs, Angola is going to buy a Russian satellite. Nigeria has launched Nigcomsat and set up Galaxy Backbone to address the Government’s own connectivity needs.

None of these initiatives are above criticism and indeed some are questionable but it is interesting to see that some countries are taking steps to do something rather than simply talking about what needs to be done. However, these countries are the exception rather than the rule. They are the fast-track countries that either have oil-revenues and/or have burgeoning economies that are not solely reliant on mineral extraction. However, mineral wealth is quite widely spread across the countries of the continent and there are significant numbers who have it that are not “stepping up to the plate”. The remainder of the countries concerned have a range of relatively easy excuses: lack of money, lack of education, corruption and much else besides. But if Nigeria or Uganda can foster these kinds of changes, why is it that Gabon or Ghana do not?

Making change in the ICT space requires a particular chemical mix that involves both Government and others, along with a magic ingredient that consultants call vision, but might better be called imagination. Those that have taken initiatives have had the courage to imagine that their countries might go from being global victims to becoming attractive places to live and work. Rwanda’s President Kagame rarely sets a room alight with a speech but he has understood that if his small country Rwanda is to find a place in the global economy, it’s going to be necessary to work very hard at providing the conditions in which that might happen. He and his country may or may not be successful and they may or may not have the capacity to succeed but you cannot fault them for trying.

Getting a Government that does something requires getting a number of committed people in place. Firstly, there has to be a President who does not just make the speeches but also provides political backing and resources to get things done. Africa still has highly centralised decision-making processes and without Presidential backing, no-one takes you seriously.

Next there has to be Minister who can take that backing and motivate the sometimes indolent and leaderless civil servants in the appropriate Ministry and get into dialogue with the private sector and others about what needs to be done and how to achieve it. The Minister is nothing without a highly articulate and energetic civil servant who can: “carry the message”, respond quickly to all the interested parties and knows how to manage initiatives successfully.

All set and ready to go? No. Government by itself working “top-down” is one hand clapping in an empty room. There needs to be a vocal, critical but supportive private sector that knows how to make demands and shape projects. Alongside them has to be an equally vocal civil society that speaks up for the non-market requirements like education and health. Everyone at every level needs to understand the difference between having a successful meeting and actually getting something to happen. No more self-congratulatory speeches to other Ministers but time to concentrate on a small number of achievable initiatives and work to deliver them.

In a subjective assessment carried by Balancing Act of the sixteen West African countries on the basis of the above criteria, only two countries (Nigeria and Senegal) met these conditions outlined, although the latter does not really have an active private ICT sector because of the dominance of the incumbent Sonatel. Ghana has the scale of economy to succeed but somehow never really manages to convert all the right words into political will and thereafter into action. The majority of the others have strong individual servants and sometimes Ministers but they lack Presidential and/or private sector and civil society support.

Nearly all of these “slow-track” economies lack the imaginative response to change that says if the country gets ICT support in place, we can start building a very different place to live. They may - like Mali – have a small-scale illustrative project (a Government-sponsored call centre) but this project (or even groups of small projects) are not life-changing enough for the countries concerned. And please do not bleat to me about how these types of countries lack money as there are both private and public sources of financing for those who have the ideas and energy to attract it. Open economies with ideas about their future are at a premium in the global economy.

For private sector ICT companies, whether carriers or vendors, the obstacles in the slow track economies make selling services there a complicated business. For the individual small ISP owner, it means that he or she become not just the commercial head of their company but also unpaid policy advocate in the continuous trench war over a favourable ICT policy.

The big companies like Cisco, Google and Microsoft have understood that they are not simply selling “kit” or software but have to create the “weather” that will allow more open markets to flourish. This week Microsoft and the Centre Africain d’Etudes Supérieures en Gestion (CESAG) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU), which aims to deliver high-quality ICT policy training to government employees in West and Central Africa. CESAG is an institution specialising in the delivery of government-related training and leadership capacity building across
French-speaking Africa.

Microsoft’s Regional Technology Officer Nicol Woodward is tasked with influencing Government across 10 policy areas that include: interoperability; identity, privacy; innovation; IPR; accessibility; spectrum allocation; standards, DRM and formats, and GAP. What’s GAP? It’s Microsoft’s way of looking at Government as decision-maker, influencer and customer. G stands for governance. A for Architecture in the sense of how everyone will get networked and P for procurement.

Like other large vendors, it has both to both set up the debate and try to reap the rewards that come from the dialogue. It would not be a business if it did not want to make sales but it can’t simply say “we’re right and all the other guys are wrong”. Creating a successful economy involves complex but vital debates around issues as diverse as IPR and piracy and how you foster innovation. The answers chosen by policy-makers to these many debates are all linked: get one wrong and it becomes harder to get the others right.

As Woodward told us:”We have got to the point in Nigeria where we are having in-depth discussions about IPR and DRM. It’s the same with Angola. These are blossoming economies and they want to get it right. We want to explain things from our viewpoint but whatever they install, they are well informed in making that decision.”

Obviously explaining these issues cannot be left to the Microsofts of this world alone but given the perilously low levels of understanding in many countries, the discussion has to start somewhere. The issue is then how public these debates are for if they are conducted entirely behind closed doors then they will not be subjected to the full force of all viewpoints.

The difficulty is that for some Open Source advocates that choosing it is so blindingly obvious that they forget it is debate with two sides. The more thoughtful Open Source advocates, like Microsoft, believe this is a debate that they can win on the merits of the arguments. But whichever road you choose, you have to have a growing economy to have the expertise and resources to make it a debate worth having.

So if Africa is to have more open, successful economies that can begin to ride the waves of global expansion and contraction, then it will require multinational (and regional) ICT operators to take more interest in the continent. And for its politicians to understand that words do not feed mouths.

But the best is yet to come…

A South African blogger has taken the time and effort to reproduce, for the edification of everyone who cares to read, the PATHETIC, SHAMEFUL speech made to Parliament by the South African Minister of Minerals and Energy Affairs after a disastrous two weeks where industry and the entire country came to a standstill because of power failures and the subsequent CIRCUS of incompetent, corrupt and arrogant imbeciles running the country into the ground with their IDIOCY!!!

Anyways, we remain positive, it is sooo un PC to be cynical and an afropessimist these days, but to all those who care to investigate and have to live under such obvious IDIOTS, at least be truthful and call an IDIOT an IDIOT, whether they be black or white or Indian or Coloured or Green for that matter, just tell these idiots to put people in place who know how things work, and who know how to keep those things to keep on working so we all can start getting this country out of the SHIT that it is in!

Of Rats, Mice and cultural dissonance: Marketing to Chinese in the Year of the Rat

A lot has happened this past week that could possibly be construed as newsworthy, so here are a couple of things that caught my attention as it was streaming past my consciousness:
- The Twittersphere ™ has been abuzz with the MacWorld Expo and Steve Jobs’ keynote clogging up the data pipes
- Africa continues to dominate the news headlines with unfortunate socio-political outcomes: Kenya’s disputed elections and the subsequent ethnic violence despite Kofi Anna’s intervention; the continuing saga in Zimbabwe: humanitarian disaster, monopoly money, runaway inflation, refugees streaming to SA
- South Africa’s own very embarrassing situation with the national power grid unable to keep the country and it’s industries running smoothly, today four gold mines shut down and loss of that production output pulled down the market; an economist interviewed for SABC3’s midday news/business program says this roughly translates into more than a billion South African rand loss to country GDP for the day and every day that the power shuts off…

Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic.com and Robert Scoble is at Davos in Switzerland at the World Economic Forum debating global issues and getting major scoops on their video streaming websites with notable luminaries concerned about the state of the planet and it’s people.

Techbiz was that WordPress’ parent company, Automattiq, got some nice funding from amongst others, The New York Times which is a good indication of the support there is for this popular blogging platform with the many piowerful capabilities to launch an online media empire. All New York Times blogs and all the GigaOm network blogs, amongst many other promoinent web companies, use WordPress as their web dev platform. Hogsback Media Networks itself runs on WordPress and is one of the value added services we offer clients who register and host their preferred domains with us. With 5GB of storage space and 65GB monthly data transfer quota, we specialize in offering companies and professionals the professional and robust online publishing capabilities that WordPress allows.

Problogger and doshdosh was two very serendipitious stumbles on the Twitter public timeline and I am so chuffed having found them. They both excel at showing others the nuts and bolts practical aspects of blogging, marketing your writing efforts at your blog, and how to optimally use these new information and communications technology tools to create a virtual global working village where the tech savvy early adopters share links to useful resources and little bits of glimpses into their lifestreams with whoever out there in the world care to tune in; you only need my URL baby
It also saddened me tremendously to learn of Heath Ledger’s untimely death. May his spirit rest in peace, a peace he unfortunately could not find on this planet.

As to the rest, there continues to be maiming and death and hunger and disease and poverty and natural and man made disasters and accidents; that seems to be the nature of this twirling little speck of dust on which we have chosen to become manifest at this time…

I want to end with an interesting post I stubmledUpon, the blog is Dutch and is concerned with marketing and the author looks at the cultural implications of iconic marketing gimmicks and how it must adapt to the environment in which it hopes to have a successful business presence.

I roughly translated from the original Dutch, those of you who are Dutch or Afrikaans can head over to molblog.nl and read the original post.
UPDATE: I received an e-mail from the original poster with his permission for me to translate his post, and he included a translation for me as well. How very polite, indeed, so Thank you Jos Birken from marketingscience.com

Here is my translation:

The Year of the Rat is approaching. In contrast to our own Zodiacal constellations with it’s Capricorn, Libra and all the rest, the Chinese zodiac consists entirely of animals. The Rat is the first sign in the cycle, with attributes like leadership, charisma and intelligence.
Chinese born in the Year of The Rat proudly proclaims: “”I am a Rat!” As a marketer in a Chinese environment, at the moment it is not good to ignore the Rat.

For Westerners, things are a little different. Around these parts, rats are, to put it mildly, not seen in a very charming or positive light… Unless you’re in the pest extermination business, mentioning rats as part of your marketing material is generally not a good practice!

But what is a globalized marketing professional to do in these modern times, where every day the communications barriers between cultures are eroded more and more…?

Frasers Centrepoint Malls, owner of a chain of shopping malls in Singapore (”Where Eat Meets West”), has the solution. They rename the Rat to Mouse and close a sponsorship contract with Disney. Two flies with one shot! And no, the fly is not part of the Chinese zodiac.

“What better way to usher in the Year of the Mouse than with the most celebrated mouse of all?” proclaims Frasers in page sized adverts. The biologists among us may cringe, but the marketers of Frasers are unfazed. Rat, Mouse, what’s the difference, right? 2008 becomes the year of Mickey Mouse.

Overall, marketers are increasingly confronted with this kind of cultural clash in communications. In China the Year of the Pig has just concluded, but advertising may have been subdued due to fear of offending Muslim sensibilities.

Trivial detail: in Centrepoint Mall, Fraser’s crown jewel, the festivities are ushered in with a traditional Lion Dance. The Mice won’t be too pleased about that!

And here is the mail from Jos himself for comparison

Hallo Mario,

Geen probleem hoor. Zo lang er sprake is van bronvermelding en het stukje in een niet al te dubieuze publicatie terechtkomt, heb je mijn toestemming. Ik ben altijd iets geruster als ik zelf even met de herverspreider kan communiceren, vandaar mijn verzoek om een email.

Sterker nog, het is een rustige zaterdagochtend en in ben in een goede stemming, dus hier is een vertaling. Service van de zaak. Alleen de oorspronkelijke links moet je zelf even incopieren