–

The Internet has made the World a global village, that is digitally connected where information flows from one corner of the globe to the other in real time. However, unfortunately for Africa it accounts for only one percent of the World’s Internet activity. The good news is that this is changing fast, with the tremendous efforts by African Governments such as Kenya’s Vision 2030 plan, which has already led to the arrival of fibre optic connectivity to our shores in June 2010.

This new connectivity to the global Internet networks has resulted in an unprecedented explosion in broadband availability and development of local applications to service the digital needs of Kenyans. Unknown to many Kenyans, the popular and ubiqitous service known as M-Pesa sits on a “cloud” service based in Europe and is now connected to Kenya using fibre optic broadband cable that lands off the shores of Mombasa. This has allowed for the rapid expansion in mobile money use and applications.

As such, Kenya being a leading mobile technology innovation hub is the perfect place for us to launch our Internet Service Whive.com which aims to connect Africans by proving localized and contextualized communication and information applications.

Indeed Whive.com is a social media platform that offers SMS, Facebook, Twitter and Mobile Applications that are built specifically for local use within the Kenyan and African context. This has mainly been achieved by the integration of local languages and use case during development of these applications. In particular, Whive offers a variety of important services namely:

Group and Bulk SMS services
This services allows organizations to send short messages to grouped contacts using a bulk messaging system. We already have 600+ organizations using this service.

Social Advertising
We also have SMS, Text and Banner based advertising products for our 12,000+ individual subscribers on our web, mobile and native applications. Here sponsors advertise their products on each SMS sent through our network and these users send this SMS for free.

Importantly, Whive differs from other platforms because we are localizing our mobile applications to meet the needs of the diverse Kenyan and African communities. We have done this by making the application available in local vernacular, which include Swahili, Sheng, French and English. We will be rolling out our SMS application in other colloquial languages.

Whive is seeking to help the Kenyan youth with our Classifieds application. This application currently offers jobs and other essential information to this cohort that has been largely ignored for a long time within society. Recently Whive won the Vision 2030 ICT Award for the youth, gender and vulnerable groups sector. This achievement has emboldened us to do even more and as a result we plan to expand this service by developing a fully fledged Swahili social networking application to expand this service across our borders to the East African Community.

This new application will also form a basis of lingual translation services of key Kenyan languages for up to 10,000 Words. This will ensure that we continue to preserve our rich cultural heritage presently as envisioned in the New Constitutional Dispensation.

At Whive.com we believe that if we succeed in digitally connecting the youth to the opportunities the Internet has to offer we will as a country continue to benefit from the explosion of ideas and the utilization of talent that is plentiful in our country. In addition we will be able to meet the goals set in the Vision 2030 plan that aims to reduce illiteracy, poverty and bring our people to a middle income status by the year 2030.

Additionally Kenya will be recognized as a leading technology hub not only in Africa, but also across the world earning ourselves a prestigious leadership position that is rightfully ours.

In conclusion I would like to invite you all to join www.Whive.com where we are Connecting Africa.

John Karanja is the Founder and C.E.O of Whive.com.

This article was first featured on Business Daily on 10/06/2011 as part of the Vision 2030 Supplement.

Tech Community at iHub

Yes am back after six months hibernation from the wordy world of blogging and all things literal.

Nevertheless I will keep this post short and sweet

I will be speaking at 4 events in the month of June namely:

Vision 2030 Award Ceremony 9th June 2011

Whive was a recently a winner (Whive.com) of the Vision 2030  ICT Award for Youth, Gender and Vulnerable groups sector.  I will be making a presentation on our platform and how we are connecting the youth with more opportunities. [read more]

Pivot25 Mobile Innovation competition 14-15th June 2011

Whive.mobi is a finalist at this event with our mobile platform. Come and see how we are connecting Africa using this fast growing platform. [read more]

Afri Tech 2011 Nairobi 17 June 2011

At Afri Tech 2011, I will be conducting a seminar on the use of social media in Business using Whive.com as a case study. [read more]

Mobile Monday 20th June

Mobile Monday the premier event for all innovations mobile will have me as a guest speaker on how to monetize mobile applications.  Here I will focus on models that succesful applications have used to generate revenues  and how this is affecting our mobile development decisions at Whive. This event is sponsored by @NokiaEastAfrica [read more]

See you at these events and you can follow me at @KaranjaJohn and @Whive on Twitter.

Whive.com - Connecting Africa

Here is the Whive.com Mobile Web East Africa Presentation.

MOBILE WEB TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROGRESS

Social Progress Social Media

Manuscript Below

INTRODUCTION

Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, and thank you for coming to my presentation, which is about mobile/web technology and social progress in East Africa.  As you have heard i am John Karanja the Founder of Whive.com a web and mobile social media platform for Africans.

FIRST SLIDE

On my first slide, there is an overview of the 6 main points of my talk. Let me go over them so that we are on the same page from start to finish.

• Where are we with regards to mobile/web technologies and social progress in East Africa?
• Where are we going?
• How can we get there?
• How long will it take to get there?
• What do we do when we get there?
• How do we remain competitive in the global market?

SECOND SLIDE

So let’s consider my first point Where are we?

• East Africa has 3% Internet use and between 30-40% telephone use. So there is a huge gap between access to mobile and web technologies.
• 10,000 KM of fibre optic cable throughout Kenya for example. The rest of the region is following this example to provide the crucial backbone for internet growth.
• East Africa also has on the one hand a AVERAGE 70% literacy rate in both English and Swahili which is  good  but on the other hand a poverty rate of 50% which is an undesireable obstacle to future growth.
• This mismatch between our literacy and poverty rate has to be addressed because this region has a potentially large market of about 120 million people, 60% of whom are under 24 years of age.

THIRD SLIDE

Now let’s move on to my next slide where I pose the question, where are we going?

• Would we not like to see 100% web and mobile coverage?
• Universal Literacy  will enable us to achieve 100% web & mobile coverage and this in turn will help achieve Universal Banking (e.g. MPESA). Equity has identified a niche whereby the will be banking the unbanked through Mpesa thus becoming the largest network of Mpesa in East Africa.
• If we achieve these goals this will allow us to deploy more web and mobile solutions such as social networks (Whive.com) to more people, which in turn will enhance social connectedness.
• One of the central keys which will be pivotal to the cost effectiveness of services will be to achieve the goal of universal banking through services such as mpesa. This will allow for the efficient flow of capital and ease of business transactions. Reduction of corruption because systems reduce the number of loopholes for corrupt practices.
• Building Distributed services for Health and Agriculture for example Brookside has developed a mobile distribution system for monitoring milk distribution.
• Only 10% of Kenyans are insured we need to develop these systems for them.

FOURTH SLIDE

Now How can we get there?

This can be achieved through Crowd sourcing and social mapping tools (e.g. USHAHIDI).

• I suggest using existing Networks both Social and Digital (e.g.  Mobile social networks like Whive.com can be utilized by existing social groups such as small investment clubs).
• Building Digital villages for capacity building.
• Increased competition in the ICT sector. Incentives for SME’s involved in ICT (e.g. Tax incentives and access to affordable technologies).
• Universal Primary Education in Basic Computing Skills. Youth are most creative. Rwanda is doing it so can we!
• Where is all this money going to come from to achieve this almost utopian dream. The Money to do this is in the pockets of Kenyans(Stock & Bond Markets, Private Equity and Venture Capital) .

FIFTH SLIDE

How long will it take to get there?

• Starting the journey is the hardest part!
• India achieved recognition in software development in 10 years.
• Kenya is already  earning a 1/5th of what India earns annually!!!
• Which means in essence we can compete with India in software development.
• More Social/Tech gatherings and building capacity for research in order to solve local problems and meet the computing needs  of people throughout the region.  e.g. This can be done through incubation centres such as iHub and ICT parks such as Sameer Business Park will be crucial in the short term.
• Concept ideas such as Malili Technopolis which is a city being built in Athi River modelled on Malaysian and Egyptian Digital cities will attract interest in this region in the long term.

SIXTH SLIDE

How do we remain competitive?

• Laying a stable foundation will enhance future growth.
• Technologies to connect villages (fibre optic, WI-MAX and 3g networks) are essential.
• We have to get the youth into the electronic and digital sectors  at the higher levels of education. This is because our Youth are the wealth of our nation and we should offer them Better employment opportunities.
• Expanding our own markets by localizing software (Whive.com).
• Increasing competition in ICT sector to get best prices possible(Regulation and Licencing such as CCK).
• Research, map social problems as they exist now to monitor social progress in the future (Ushahidi).

SEVENTH SLIDE

Conclusion
Just to recap my 5 main points…

• We need to assess where we are, our strengths and our weaknesses.
• We need to determine what we would like to achieve.
• We need to analyse what technologies and policies to implement to achieve these goals.
• We need to define a time line to achieve our desired goals.
• We need to establish how we shall remain competitive through giving incentives to SME’s and regulation to establish fair trade/play.

Have a look at www.Whive.com to see our social media project.
Download this presentation at www.JohnKaranja.com More content and analysis is available on the same website.

Happy Holidays to you all.