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Africa
Why Mpesa is still a financial disruptor
Farhad Manjoo makes a compelling argument for why the real winners of the payments revolution are the same players we already know, the credit card companies and the banks, in in an article entitled "Don’t mess with credit: Why the future of payments is already in your pocket."“Nearly every start-up working in payments is simply creating a new front end for your credit card. That’s not a small thing; we need new ways to use our credit cards. But we ...Young mobile users responsible for most Twitter growth in Africa [Infographic]
New research suggests that Twitter’s growth in Africa is being driven primarily young people using mobile devices and that South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Egypt are the continent’s leading tweeters.The research is a collaboration between Portland Communications, a strategic communications consultancy and specialist media platform Tweetminster.The two claim to have "analysed over 11.5-million geo-located Tweets originating on the continent during the last three months of 2011”. The analysis, they say, was "complemented by a survey of 500 of ...Mocality scandal: How far in the cookie jar was Google’s hand?
Last week, Google got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, allegedly engaged in a range of questionable activities with regard to a Kenyan company called Mocality. According to Mocality, Google employees were "scraping data" collected by Mocality for its business listings, and then using that data to target advertise GKBO's services to Kenyan businesses. To make matters worse, Mocality has telephone recordings of Google representatives describing a non-existent relationship between Mocality and the GKBO project. Google VP, Nelson ...Mocali-gate: Where is the broken link in Google?
The recent Mocality debacle has brought to light a few concerning issues surrounding Google’s business practices in Africa and the supposed ethical transparency by which it stands. The internet giant's "do no evil" motto implies a moral standpoint to which the entire company should adhere. Yet with recent scandals surrounding the Chrome team and Google Kenya, one gets the impression that Google is getting too big to oversee and control all of its employees.I'd like to start off with ...10 African tech startups worth watching
It’s practically a tradition to follow a post like this with a good old-fashioned flame-war where everyone reveals his or her own sense of inadequacy. In order to save time I’d like to encourage you to stop reading now and skip to the bottom and start doing that right away; that way I can continue by typing Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet and get away with it.Disclaimers: I have left out Motribe, my own company, because I think ...Why 2012 could be the year of the African startup
The past few years have been about building an infrastructure that improves the chances of the technology startups in Africa to succeed. Seeing this buildout in action in 2011 was exciting, but it should be recognised for what it really was: a setup for 2012 and beyond.You see, all those labs and hubs around the continent, the startups and the media coverage? They’re all about getting attention and increasing the awareness of the pent-up startup potential in Africa’s technology space. ...Four things Africa has to get right to guarantee future innovation
Fail to innovate and you will simply be left behind. As I previously noted, this is especially the case for the African continent. Africa has, for the longest time, been relegated to the back of the classroom, the backward, war-torn, black sheep of the world. But today it is emerging, and African nations are betting big on technology and innovation as the stepping-stones to rebuilding themselves.But what will it take? What are some of the components that are necessary for ...Necessity is the mother of invention: Why utility beats ‘cool’ in Africa
It is said that necessity is the mother of invention and indeed that could perfectly describe Africa where it comes to innovation, particularly on mobile.Utility vs Coolness
In a great talk at TEDxVienna Alexander Oswald, Head of Marketing at Nokia, tells the story of how he and his family visited Kenya and were immensely shocked at just how much people in Kenya were able to accomplish via mobile phones.From sending and receiving money, to banking and paying for utilities & ...Undersea cables set to launch African bandwidth explosion
Many years ago, I worked for UUNET Internet Africa in South Africa. I remember sitting in the Operations room and looking at an international undersea cabling map, which showed each and every cable connecting the different continents of the world. It used to amaze me that South Africa's connection to the rest of the world was so fragile. If I remember correctly, we really relied on one or two undersea cables at the time. I believe one of them was ...Africa’s mobile operators need to be more disruptive
Generally speaking, in the 90s, Africa's mobile network operators (MNOs) were highly disruptive. In this last decade however, they have continued to decrease in this.Operators are no longer the offensive, attacking force of yesteryear, instead they’re putting up barriers and defensive walls trying to protect what they have and hide.Instead, the disruption comes from the open web. Whenever the operators put up a blocker to what users want, usually in the form of price or access to their infrastructure, ...
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Memeburn focuses on web and innovation technologies. It has a particular interest in startup news and technology trends in emerging markets. More about us hereCopyright © 2011 memeburn. All rights reserved. No article may be published or reproduced without prior written permission from Memeburn.
