AfricaFeed

An irregularly updated scrapbook. Snapshots and snippets of African tech, business, culture, media and music.

I am the CEO of Chembe Ventures. We provide seed capital to mobile application developers and web start-ups in East and Southern Africa.

sean | at | chembe | dot | com
February 8
From SUNO’s 2009 (yes I’m a little late with this) collection. For a fun video featuring their 2010 resort collection click here. This seems to have been shot in Puerto Rico for some bizarre reason. “SUNO was formed in 2008 by Max Osterweis after more than a decade of collecting textiles in visits to Kenya. Building a successful and visible company that employs local Kenyan talent, treats workers fairly, and showcases some of Kenya’s artistry could potentially affect positive and lasting social and economic change. The design and development for SUNO takes place in New York City, employing skilled sample and pattern makers in New York’s Garment district. The patterns and samples and then brought to Kenya where the garments are then artisinally produced in small workshops. The inspiration for this first collection comes from both the women of coastal East Africa and the women of downtown New York.”

From SUNO’s 2009 (yes I’m a little late with this) collection. For a fun video featuring their 2010 resort collection click here. This seems to have been shot in Puerto Rico for some bizarre reason.

“SUNO was formed in 2008 by Max Osterweis after more than a decade of collecting textiles in visits to Kenya. Building a successful and visible company that employs local Kenyan talent, treats workers fairly, and showcases some of Kenya’s artistry could potentially affect positive and lasting social and economic change.

The design and development for SUNO takes place in New York City, employing skilled sample and pattern makers in New York’s Garment district. The patterns and samples and then brought to Kenya where the garments are then artisinally produced in small workshops. The inspiration for this first collection comes from both the women of coastal East Africa and the women of downtown New York.”

February 7
From Ephemera Assemblyman: “In the 1980s video cassette technology made it possible for ‘mobile cinema’ operators in Ghana to travel from town to town and village to village creating temporary cinemas. The touring film group would create a theatre by hooking up a TV and VCR onto a portable generator and playing the films for the people to see. In order to promote these showings, artists were hired to paint large posters of the films (usually on used canvas flour sacks). The artists were given the artistic freedom to paint the posters as they desired - often adding elements that weren’t in the actual films, or without even having seen the movies. When the posters were finished they were rolled up and taken on the road (note the heavy damages). The ‘mobile cinema’ began to decline in the mid-nineties due to greater availability of television and video; as a result the painted film posters were substituted for less interesting/artistic posters produced on photocopied paper.”

From Ephemera Assemblyman:

“In the 1980s video cassette technology made it possible for ‘mobile cinema’ operators in Ghana to travel from town to town and village to village creating temporary cinemas. The touring film group would create a theatre by hooking up a TV and VCR onto a portable generator and playing the films for the people to see.

In order to promote these showings, artists were hired to paint large posters of the films (usually on used canvas flour sacks). The artists were given the artistic freedom to paint the posters as they desired - often adding elements that weren’t in the actual films, or without even having seen the movies. When the posters were finished they were rolled up and taken on the road (note the heavy damages). The ‘mobile cinema’ began to decline in the mid-nineties due to greater availability of television and video; as a result the painted film posters were substituted for less interesting/artistic posters produced on photocopied paper.”

January 13
Beijing Construction and Engineering Group (BCEG) began building the new Kigali Convention Center in Rwanda last year. The project will take three years to complete and will include a 5-star hotel and “digital museum”. The centerpiece of the new city center will be main concert hall. Designed by German architects Spatial Solutions, the unique shape of the building was inspired by the traditional African hut.

Beijing Construction and Engineering Group (BCEG) began building the new Kigali Convention Center in Rwanda last year. The project will take three years to complete and will include a 5-star hotel and “digital museum”.

The centerpiece of the new city center will be main concert hall. Designed by German architects Spatial Solutions, the unique shape of the building was inspired by the traditional African hut.

January 12
This photo is just one of many images available on Africa Knows, a new site launched by Sheila Ochugboju and Joshua Wanyama. “An elephant monument at the Nairobi National Park celebrates the burning of 12 tons of ivory in July 18th, 1989 by the then President Daniel Arap Moi. The event was a gesture against poaching worldwide.” In the words of the curators, the purpose of Africa Knows is to: “…tell a different story about Africa. The Re-branding of Africa. The story everyone knows and yet no one knows. Africa Knows is about the challenges, triumphs, dreams and nightmares of being an African in a 21st century city that is straddling several revolutions at the same time – the technological revolution, the agricultural revolution, a democratic resurgence and a post-colonial identity crisis complicated by old ethnic tensions.”

This photo is just one of many images available on Africa Knows, a new site launched by Sheila Ochugboju and Joshua Wanyama.

“An elephant monument at the Nairobi National Park celebrates the burning of 12 tons of ivory in July 18th, 1989 by the then President Daniel Arap Moi. The event was a gesture against poaching worldwide.”

In the words of the curators, the purpose of Africa Knows is to:

“…tell a different story about Africa. The Re-branding of Africa. The story everyone knows and yet no one knows. Africa Knows is about the challenges, triumphs, dreams and nightmares of being an African in a 21st century city that is straddling several revolutions at the same time – the technological revolution, the agricultural revolution, a democratic resurgence and a post-colonial identity crisis complicated by old ethnic tensions.”

December 28
Calling all East and Southern African mobile phone app developers. Chembe Ventures, a company I founded, is sponsoring a competition on Vodafone’s Betavine Social Exchange. The competition is designed to encourage innovative mobile solutions to assist low-income residents in urban communities address a specific or general security problem. One prize of US $ 5,000 will be awarded to the winning entry. * Entrants must be registered as a developer in the Betavine community * Entries need to be written in English * Entries must be designed for deployment in one of the following countries: Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa or Tanzania. Entries must provide solutions under one or more of the following headings: * early warning notifications of criminal activity, violence or other security threats * assistance for families, communities at risk of crime * reducing crime, preventing the spread of violence * location, identification and assistance of victims of violence or crime For more information on how to enter the competition and to read the full brief please visit the Betavine Social Exchange.

Calling all East and Southern African mobile phone app developers.

Chembe Ventures, a company I founded, is sponsoring a competition on Vodafone’s Betavine Social Exchange. The competition is designed to encourage innovative mobile solutions to assist low-income residents in urban communities address a specific or general security problem. One prize of US $ 5,000 will be awarded to the winning entry.

* Entrants must be registered as a developer in the Betavine community

* Entries need to be written in English

* Entries must be designed for deployment in one of the following countries: Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa or Tanzania.

Entries must provide solutions under one or more of the following headings:

* early warning notifications of criminal activity, violence or other security threats

* assistance for families, communities at risk of crime

* reducing crime, preventing the spread of violence

* location, identification and assistance of victims of violence or crime

For more information on how to enter the competition and to read the full brief please visit the Betavine Social Exchange.

December 25
Biltong, is cured meat South African style. It’s similar to “beef jerky”, although many biltong aficionados are offended when noobs innocently compare the two. “Biltong is dry cured and not cooked and there are no preservatives. Dry cure means that the biltong has a soft texture when you chew it. Jerky is saturated with preservatives and then cooked at 160F for 6 hours. You may as well eat a piece of cardboard with some flavor in it.” - 1-800-Biltong The UK has strict border control policies when it comes to importing cured meat from outside the EU, so DIY products like the Home Biltong Factory and BiltongBox are designed to “satisfy the cravings for that mouth watering delicacy which is so difficult to get outside South Africa”. While I was surfing for info on Biltong preparation (don’t ask) I came across GiftofAfrica.com, a web shop with a fairly narrow profile. Basically it sells three items, the Biltong Kit, African beads and the above album. Not exactly the long tail. Anyway, I love the album cover but I’m not so sure about some of the remixes. Wishing you all a Happy and Peaceful Christmas wherever you are.

Biltong, is cured meat South African style. It’s similar to “beef jerky”, although many biltong aficionados are offended when noobs innocently compare the two.

“Biltong is dry cured and not cooked and there are no preservatives. Dry cure means that the biltong has a soft texture when you chew it. Jerky is saturated with preservatives and then cooked at 160F for 6 hours. You may as well eat a piece of cardboard with some flavor in it.” - 1-800-Biltong

The UK has strict border control policies when it comes to importing cured meat from outside the EU, so DIY products like the Home Biltong Factory and BiltongBox are designed to “satisfy the cravings for that mouth watering delicacy which is so difficult to get outside South Africa”.

While I was surfing for info on Biltong preparation (don’t ask) I came across GiftofAfrica.com, a web shop with a fairly narrow profile. Basically it sells three items, the Biltong Kit, African beads and the above album. Not exactly the long tail.

Anyway, I love the album cover but I’m not so sure about some of the remixes.

Wishing you all a Happy and Peaceful Christmas wherever you are.

December 24

“Zimbabwean Finance minister Tendai Biti said the economy would grow by 7% next year, after 10 years of sharp contraction. He said growth would come from key sectors such as agriculture and mining. Zimbabwe’s biggest economic problem, stratospheric inflation, has been all but halted since hard currencies, such as the US dollar, were allowed. ” - BBC

December 23
When I started blogging/tumbling a little over a year ago, one of the first posts I wrote was about the Sapeurs of Brazzaville, young Congolese men who live in abject poverty, but beg, borrow and steal in order to dress themselves in immaculate Gucci loafers and 5,000-dollar Prada suits. Well, I’ve been neglecting my tumblog recently, as I’ve been rather busy with Chembe Ventures. A few nights ago I checked the Google Analytics stats for Africafeed.com and noticed that in the first week of December I was getting over 1,500 unique visitors a day, more than 5 times, ok, ok, more than 20 times the usual daily traffic. It turns out that at the end of last month, the Freakonomics bloggers at the New York Times linked to that old blog post when they wrote about Dan Ariely’s advice on how to “splurge less”; for example by “equating expensive wine with gallons of milk and making paying hurt a little more”. An example was made of the poor Sapeurs who “lament they didn’t see their Prada suits as houses for their families.” In any event it’s great to see more people mentioning the Sapeurs. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the inevitable arrival of the first coffee table book on the subject. Enter Gentlemen of Bacongo by Daniele Tamagni, published by Trolley Books of London.

When I started blogging/tumbling a little over a year ago, one of the first posts I wrote was about the Sapeurs of Brazzaville, young Congolese men who live in abject poverty, but beg, borrow and steal in order to dress themselves in immaculate Gucci loafers and 5,000-dollar Prada suits.

Well, I’ve been neglecting my tumblog recently, as I’ve been rather busy with Chembe Ventures. A few nights ago I checked the Google Analytics stats for Africafeed.com and noticed that in the first week of December I was getting over 1,500 unique visitors a day, more than 5 times, ok, ok, more than 20 times the usual daily traffic.

It turns out that at the end of last month, the Freakonomics bloggers at the New York Times linked to that old blog post when they wrote about Dan Ariely’s advice on how to “splurge less”; for example by “equating expensive wine with gallons of milk and making paying hurt a little more”. An example was made of the poor Sapeurs who “lament they didn’t see their Prada suits as houses for their families.”

In any event it’s great to see more people mentioning the Sapeurs. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the inevitable arrival of the first coffee table book on the subject. Enter Gentlemen of Bacongo by Daniele Tamagni, published by Trolley Books of London.

December 22

Bill Zimmerman is the founder of Limbe Labs,

“a unique community / collaboration space in Cameroon for startups, freelancers, designers, entrepreneurs (esp. internet entrepreneurs) and independent thinkers. Limbe Labs provides not only a great space to work but also opportunities to interact with other like-minded individuals.”

Bill also writes one of my favourite Afritech blogs, in which he “shares with others my daily experience as a technologist working in the Republic of Cameroon.”

During a recent trip to a local agricultutral show he met Lekuama Ketuafor, “the proprietor of Bamboo Magic, a one-man cottage industry he’s started to supplement his work as a teacher.” Check out the video above to see Mr Ketuafor’s cool bamboo laptop case.

November 20

A visualization of the decline of the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese maritime empires, created by Pedro M Cruz “with soft bodies using toxi’s verlet springs”. HT to @ckreutz via @kabissa.

It was a joy to watch the crescendo of exploding bodies in the 1960s. More than 30 “blobs of independence” (20 of them African) floating across the screen as 1960 turned into 1964. The unique manner in which the data is displayed reminds me of Hans Rosling’s famous TED talks.

November 5

The book above was mentioned by @Sociolingo in a recent blog post on Sand Divination in Mali. The following passage is from Chapter 7. Disclaimer: The links to external sites are my own additions.

“My introduction to Cedena, or sand divination, took place in Dakar, Senegal, where the local Islamic culture credits the Bamana (also known as “Bambara”) with a potent pagan mysticism. Almost all diviners had some kind of physical deformity — “the price paid for their power.” One diviner seemed quite willing to teach me about the system, suggesting that it “would be just like school.”The first few sessions went smoothly, with the diviner showing me a symbolic code in which each symbol, represented by a set of four vertical dashed lines drawn in the sand, stood for some archetypical concept (travel, desire, health, etc.) with which he assembled narratives about the future. But when I finally asked how he derived the symbols — in particular the meaning of some patterns drawn prior to the symbol writing — they all laughed at me and shook their heads.”That’s the secret!” My offers of increasingly high payments were met with disinterest. Finally, I tried to explain the social significance of cross-cultural mathematics. I happened to have a copy of Linda Garcia’s Fractal Explorer with me, and began by showing a graph of the Cantor set, explaining its recursive construction. The head diviner, with an expression of excitement, suddenly stopped me, snapped the book shut and said “show him what he wants!”

The book can be purchased at Amazon. For those of you who would like to delve further there’s the International Study Group on Ethnomathematics and yes, of course there’s the obligatory TED talk.

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kameelahwrites: jaeboogie: thedailywhat: Steve Breen.

kameelahwrites:

jaeboogie:

thedailywhat:

Steve Breen.

September 5

My Comment on White African's "Finding and Funding African Innovators"

Ooops, 4 months have slipped past without a single post from moi. Not good, not good. Anyway, no use in crying over missed opportunities. Time to recover my blogging mojo.

Earlier this evening I was drafting a comment to a blog post by Erik Hersman. As my response grew longer and longer, I decided I might as well publish it here too. It also serves as a sort of summary of my last 4 months. Well, that and my twitter feed. Thank God for 140 character “blog” posts :)

The two main questions posed by Erik in his post were,

1. How do you find the entrepreneurs and innovators in Africa who need investment funding to scale? 2. Who funds them?

So I threw in my 3 shillings…and here’s the original.

“As a European citizen and resident who has provided seed capital ($15 k - $30 k) to two East African start-ups already, I’d like to share some of my experiences.

Let me preface my comments by saying that I don’t think the outlook for seed capital / angel investments in Africa is bleak. Most low level angel investing is informal, and informal investing is, by its very nature, informal. It’s the “friends, family and fools” round, so we don’t get to hear about it very often.

Higher up the sophistication ladder you have angel investor groups, investment syndicates, matchmaking operations and of course VCs. While there does seem to be a dearth of these groups operating in, or concentrating on Africa at the moment, this is changing fast.

An experienced and accredited “Western” angel investor, who may be interested in investing in pre-revenue African tech start-ups will often go through Angelsoft at some point on his/her journey. There the investor will try to link up with investor groups or just review deal flows in a particular country or sector. This is where the problems start. There are 460 angel groups/VC companies registered with Angelsoft (representing almost 20,000 investors) but fewer than half a dozen have any focus on Africa. Of these one of the most reputable is Bid Network, as mentioned above by @egm and @jon. I know some of the management staff at Bid Network and they are all upstanding individuals who work hard, but they’ll be the first to admit that they don’t really have many projects in the general IT sector, let alone cutting edge mobile Internet or web services start-ups. Most of their deals are in agro-processing, alternative energy, and tourism, etc.

Another big problem with angel investing is the high failure rate. Depending on whose stats you read between 40 % - 85 % of start-ups never get past the 2nd year, so angel investing is risky business in any market, even without the specific peculiarities involved in backing ventures in Africa.

However, @HASH is absolutely right about having to get your boots on the ground. I have made two trips to Africa in the last 3 months. I visited four countries specifically to meet people involved in local tech scenes, to follow up on leads, ask a thousand questions, develop a better understanding of local markets and to really get a feel for what kinds of projects might succeed.

As a result of this research and these trips I formed a company, Chembe Ventures Ltd (thanks for the plug, @Jon) to make and hold these investments. The first venture I seeded was Status.ug Ltd, a Kampalan group developing a mobile social media network for Uganda. The product has its origins in a mobile Facebook updating app originally incubated by Appfrica Labs and Jon Gosier, and conceived by Felix Kitaka, a talented programmer whom some of you may know. The second investment is in an innovative results monitoring software. I’d rather not give too much away about that one just yet.:)

I’m expecting a co-investor and old friend who shares my passion and optimism for Afritech to join me as a partner next month. Eventually, we will launch a web site to showcase the Chembe Ventures investments and become more active and open in sourcing opportunities. Our goal is to be present in 3-4 countries by the middle
of next year. However, in these early stages, remaining low-key and credible, as well as working closely with those projects already seeded, are much more important to us than trying to be seen as something bigger than what we really are.

Obviously, we don’t expect to get rich quickly. Small but fair stakes with options in innovative ventures run by ambitious, talented and trustworthy entrepreneurs is the name of the game. It’s only a matter of time before bigger VC firms start looking seriously around the region. Hopefully, we can be their tour guides.

But of course there are problems…This comment is long enough already without getting into region/country-specific issues of poor investor protection legislation, corruption, tax burdens and bureaucracy. There are also more generic barriers one has to deal with. These are the same all over the world, from the Silicon Valley to the Rift Valley: flawed business plans, due diligence hiccups, unrealistic expectations, annoying “introducers”, agents and other BS merchants.

However, I think there are two or three missing links in the emerging “angel investor meets viable tech project matchmaking ecosystem” which are specific to much of Africa right now:

1. More organized, recognisable and credible groups of angel investor networks (primarily local!) are needed as well as organised foreign independent, nimble, seed capital providers.

2. The sector is crying out for a regional, professional matchmaking service focusing exclusively on cutting edge East African tech entrepreneurs. This is a must! It doesn’t have to list a hundred half-baked ventures. A half dozen well vetted projects and two or three successful matchups a year is a feasible and achievable target.

3. A success story! A hugely successful East African (not South African) start-up. It doesn’t matter whether it’s acquired by Google, or has its own successful IPO. This sector needs a Wow! story within the next two years. There’s nothing like a well publicised “fairytale” of a few bright kids from Nairobi or Lusaka making millions to spur the imagination of both potential investors and developers alike.

In closing there are two more issues I think are worth addressing here. Perhaps I’ll get some flack for bringing these up, but here goes.

Firstly, let’s ask a question. Is the idea that there is a huge overflow of tech entrepreneurship in the African IT scene just bursting to be funded, nurtured and incubated a bit of an illusion? Sure there are bundles of raw talent, skill and innovation and of course ingenuity, but, and this is true for some countries more than others, are African techies too risk averse? Too unwilling to take a chance? I disagree with @HASH when he says that in Africa “the gap between success and failure is a lot less forgiving”.

Secondly, as @HASH pointed out many of the sharpest coders end up working for multinationals or NGOs. What’s just as worrying is that many of the more ambitious
tech entrepreneurs also find it easier to tailor their killer apps for the non-profit sector. I’m sure we all look forward to a time when writing a solid business plan becomes more profitable than writing a sexy grant proposal.”

May 5

Are Facebook and YouTube Giving Africans a Raw Deal?

I’ve spent some time dwelling on the implications of a recent article in the NYT on the fate which may await Facebook, MySpace and YouTube users in Africa. Thanks to Bill Zimmerman for bringing it to my attention. At issue is the extent to which leading US social media companies plan to serve inferior quality content to users in developing countries in an effort to reduce their bandwidth costs. Or worse still, how many of them plan to cut off content to Africa completely?

“Whenever you have a lot of user-generated material, your bandwidth gets utilized (in countries where) bandwidth is expensive and ad rates are ridiculously low. If Web companies really want to make money, they would shut off all those countries. -  Michelangelo Volpi, CEO of Joost.com

A little over a quarter of the world’s population (1.6 billion people) has some form of Internet access, but according to the NYT article half of those fall below the income threshold expected by online advertisers (no source is given to support this claim!). So, what plans do high traffic operations have to cut their bandwidth bills?

“We may choose to set a limit to how much we are willing to pay in bandwidth cost. In some countries there may be particular peak times where instead of high definition, we might decrease the resolution.”  - Tom Pickett, Director of Online Sales and Operations at YouTube

“We can decide, either on a country by country or user by user basis, to engineer the quality of the service for that cohort of users.” - Jonathan Heiliger, Computing Infrastructure Executive, Facebook

MySpace is “testing a feature for countries with slower Internet connections called Profile Lite. It is a stripped-down version of the site that is less expensive to display because it requires less bandwidth”.

The global growth of Facebook and YouTube is being spurred by growth in emerging markets and pre-emerging markets. 3.8 % of Facebook’s traffic comes from Indonesia (now the 4th biggest traffic source outside the US). That’s more traffic than than Facebook gets from Germany and Belgium combined. Nigeria gives Facebook the same amount of traffic that it gets from Norway or Denmark. In Africa as a whole, Facebook traffic grew at a rate of 86.9 % last quarter!

The question asked ad nauseam about sites like Facebook and YouTube is how are they going to make money. In order to answer that question, Facebook needs to find out how it is going to make money in Africa, Latin America and India? Facebook can’t continue to grow without attracting new users from emerging markets. However, in Africa and parts of Asia bandwidth cost per user is much higher, but ad revenue per user is significantly lower. This is the “International Paradox”.

How much ad revenue per annum is each unique user of YouTube, Facebook or MySpace worth? It’s tough to get reliable stats for YouTube, but Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital reckons each Facebook user is worth $ 2.47 per year, and for MySpace his guesstimate is $ 6.50. I spent a lot of time trying to get my hands on a country by country breakdown of the eARPU (Estimated Annual Revenue per User) that various major social media brands place on users from emerging markets, but I’ve given up for now. If anyone reading this post has such data I’d love to see it.

What factors need to come into play before the cost of serving African Facebook and YouTube users comes down but advertising ARPU for Africa goes up?

1. Bandwidth: Metro fibre networks are expanding rapidly in East Africa and in two months the final kilometers of the SEACOM cable will be ready. More bandwidth and cheaper contracts should make it more cost efficient to serve rich media content to countries like Kenya, where 10 % of the 40 million population have Internet access.

2. Larger online ad budget allocations to target African audiences A corollary of the point above. Greater Internet penetration in Africa (currently at 6 % by the way), more bandwidth, etc. will lead to companies earmarking a greater portion of their ad budgets to target online consumers.

3. More African ad networks More truly African online ad networks will have to emerge to feed this market. Pamoja Media, which recently partnered with Yahoo, is the pioneer in this sector, but there should be plenty of room for new players.

But hang on a minute, maybe those of us interested in the future of the web in Africa should be asking ourselves a different set of questions. Instead of bemoaning the fact that African users could end up becoming second class consumers of Facebook, etc. shouldn’t we instead be asking why there isn’t enough unique African content available on uniquely African platforms? Alexa stats show that the 20 most visited web sites in Kenya and Nigeria are pretty much identical to the top 20s of Canada and the USA. The same goes for the UK and Australia.

Even though this seems to show that the global English speaking world has homogeneous browsing habits, it’s good to see examples of local content standing out (few though they are) amongst the Yahoos, E-bays and MSNs. Sites like Y-FM (Ghana), Sahara Reporters (Nigeria) and the Nation Media Group (Kenya) are climbing up the rankings in their respective countries. Important regional platforms such as Afrigator and Maneno are also increasing their traffic share.

It looks like the next 2 years are going to see an explosion in great web content coming out of Sub-Saharan Africa, with no shortage of users to create it, view it, share it and click on the ads next to it. As Aly-Khan Satchu said in a comment to the NYT article.

“Looking in the rear view mirror means you entirely miss the opportunity. I feel that in SSA [especially but it applies to Emerging Markets as a genre] we are set to embark on a one off super charged convergence with the rest of the World. It is the last convergence trade left, practically.”

So, Facebook and YouTube, stop looking at ways to give Africa a raw deal and start looking at how you can be a part of the revolution. Maybe you should take a page out of Google’s book.

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Thanks to Sean Jacobs, another Sean who blogs about Africa, for tweeting about this gem, and also to Nick Lotay for posting other rare Mahotella Queens clips from the 60s and 70s on YouTube.

It’s fantastic to read so many comments from South African and Zimbabwean diaspora reminiscing about what this music meant to them and their parents.