Now to track them down and get their stories…done during the 20% hours we will need your help…any guys doing great work that you know of or would like to know more about…just drop us a note.

It is great to finally have EasyHisa out. Standard Investment Bank have come out strongly as being forward thinking and early adopters….but most importantly I commend their support of  local talent and competence…they did not import technology from outside our borders but chose to engage local qualified companies and individuals  such as ourselves to make the product a success.

Time and again at different forums I advocate for firms to engage local developers to develop the industry as well as set Kenya apart in the African region for software development.

More importantly, the current extensions under development will see the stock trading business overhauled yet again with real-time bank account access and plugin to all major available money transfer services to allow investors take full advantage of real- time information and trading.

Here is an excerpt from SIB chairman’s speech, more pictures and video to come…

Every few years, there is a leap in technology that changes how we do our work, how we invest or how we live our lives. The cellphone changed our lives in ways we never imagined. In the Capital markets there was the Central Depository System and the Automated Trading System, which improved the efficiency of the trading cycle from weeks to 5 days. The wide area network further enabled stockbrokers to trade from the comfort of their offices.

We need to keep our market intadem with the innovations coming through information technology.

We introduce EasyHisa, as the next leap in technology that will change how we trade on the Nairobi Stock Exchange once again. This is an important milestone in our Capital Markets.

Easy Hisa is a new sms service from Standard Investment Bank that allows an investor to rade shares from the comfort of their home or office. The service is so efficient that certain paribus, an order sent is processed and delivered to the exchange within one hour.

Let us ask ourselves, how much it costs to trade on the exchange currently?  Along with the commission to the Stock broker there are other extra costs to you the investor.

There is the cost of transportation in which our customers, through our research, have informed us to be between KShs 100 and KShs 1,000.

There is the cost of time away from your employment, business or family.  A lot of customers cannot leave their employment or business during the week and sacrifice instead to come in on Saturday when they could have been taking care of other personal matters.

The third is the cost of opportunity.  This cost, suffered by some investors, is one that is very important when trading in shares.  Profits that you could have made may be lost if you cannot trade instantly.

With Easy Hisa these extra costs are greatly reduced or eliminated altogether.

For instance, remember that Safaricom went as high as Kshs 7.80 before going down to the current prices we see today, Now imagine that a simple SMS would have enabled you to lock in such a profit as you continue with your day to day business.  That is why you must have Easy Hisa today.

This service enables you to, among other things, place orders, check the balance in your account or the value of your shares and even hold an order if the price has moved in a way you did not expect.  As you can see, there is true control over your shares with this service.

In conclusion, our esteemed customers continuously call for us to improve our service beyond their expectations and we continue to accept the challenge.

The Chairman of the Capital Markets Authority, Mr Cheserem during the University challenge, also asked the industry to face up to this challenge and offer mobile trading among other services and therefore this Launch of the SMS trading is also an answer to that call.

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Easy Hisa,

Trade shares anytime anywhere via SMS.

Maker Faire Africa asks the question, “What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?”

Maker Faire Africa will engage on-the-ground breakthrough organizations like Ashesi University and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to sharpen focus on locally-generated, bottom-up prototypes of technologies that solve immediate challenges to development. Specifically, Maker Faire Africa will take an approach that will achieve three principal aims:

• Brighten the light on local examples of the “fabrication” ethos
• Provide mechanisms to incubate these innovators and their products to a point where they can be taken to market
• Connect refined plans to disseminate innovations with venture finance

The aim is to identify, spur and support local innovation. At the same time, Maker Faire Africa would seek to imbue creative types in science and technology with an appreciation of fabrication and by default manufacturing. The long-term interest here is to cultivate an endogenous manufacturing base that supplies innovative products in response to market needs.

Background
When discussions of wealth creation and poverty reduction are made in reference to the continent, for a variety of reasons manufacturing is left off the table. This is partly the fault of education and or orientation. Making fabrication the next “big thing” in a sense could go some way in changing these attitudes. Manufacture – literally, fabrication by hand – is exciting, and exists across the continent of Africa, and is abundant – from centers sited at dumps, where scrap metals are abundant, to more formal collections of mechanics and repairers who have set up shop in the urban core. Much of this curiosity, talent, and entrepreneurial spirit in manufacturing remains trapped in the in

Not only does Google want to organize all the world’s information, it also wants to make all that information available to everyone in the world. For the majority of the world’s population, that means making it available on a cell phone, and not a fancy iPhone or Android with a Web browser either. I’m talking about $10 cell phones with not much more than voice and SMS capabilities. If Google can reach people, especially in developing nations, with SMS, it can reach everyone with a cell phone.

In Africa, it is launching a suite of SMS services today, including SMS search, Q&A-style tips, and an SMS-based marketplace.

Outdoor advertising runs out of growth steam – http://tinyurl.com/dk7p5l

April 30, 2009: Cutbacks in marketing budgets across corporate Kenya are slowing down growth in outdoor advertising that was until last year the fastest growing segment of the media buying market.
The industry whose value was estimated at Sh10 billion  last year is rapidly losing its market grip as companies revise brand building plans, citing uncertainty in the business environment.
It has emerged that a number of outdoor advertising industry players have reported significant reduction in placements, raising the possibility of job losses and forced consolidation in the sector.

“Right now, companies are looking for all possible avenues of cutting down on cost and unfortunately the advertisement beat is being affected,” says Mr Joseph Ng’wano, the deputy general manager at Outdoor, an advertising agency.

Ms Lilian Maina, a director at Media Masters, another outdoor adverting agency, says that their business has gone down by 50 per cent.

‘Most of our clients used to advertise on bill boards but since November last year most of them have shifted their advertisements to small media since they are cheaper,” she says, adding that billboard advertisers have moved to small media stands.

Despite warnings by experts that brand positioning and building is most critical during times of economic downturn, cutbacks in advertising spend have continued. Some of the top spenders in outdoor advertising that have slowed down on their bill board exposure include telecoms giants Safaricom, Zain, Telkom Kenya, Econet, beer maker East African Breweries and soft drinks giant Coca-Cola.

“Strong brands have particularly proven their worth in cases where economic downturn makes mergers and acquisitions the most viable option for the survival of a business,” said Doug de Villiers, the chief executive of Interbrand Sampson Group.

“Besides its role in the valuation of partners, strong branding also informs decisions as to what business names will survive the merger,” he said.

Advertising usually accounts for 40 per cent of a firm’s marketing budget but Mr Ng’wano said that the spend is normally the first casualty of cost cutting measures.

This is especially so in Kenya where the traditional model of managing in a crisis starts with review of internal activities including training and HR.  Kenya’s economy is expected to expand by a margin of two per cent this year.

Most manufacturers have started cutting back on production citing high cost of doing business in the country.

Such moves are also expected to culminate in huge cutbacks in advertising budgets as a cost savings tactic.Advertising agencies say that most companies, especially those in the manufacturing sector have slashed their 2009 advertising budgets, a move that is now causing jitters in the multi-billion shilling advertising sector which has in the past few years experienced growth in the numbers of registered new firms.

Kenya has experienced an explosion in the number of media and advertising firms in the recent past but the new move by the firms to choke their advertising spend is likely to stunt the growth of the advertising agencies which are increasingly finding it difficult to attract business. Most firms are already considering retrenching their staff to cut down on costs.

The wilting of advertising stream for agencies the world over is normally countered by the reduction of payroll by most firms as salaries account for more than half of the agencies expenses.

A spot check by the Business Daily indicated that most billboards on Mombasa Road, Jogoo Road, Langata Road and in the Central Business District have been empty without advertisements for almost three months now.

Outdoor has specialized in billboard and trailer advertising concepts— the charges range from Sh80, 000 to Sh100,000 per month for billboards and Sh15, 000 to Sh20, 000 per day for trailers.

Gone down

The firm owns 100 billboards of which 30 have been empty for the last three months.

Mr Ng’wano explained that most companies have reduced the number of adverts that they used to place on billboards.

“Companies that had six to eight adverts on billboards have reduced the number to between three and four adverts,” says Mr Ng’wano adding that billboards are Outdoor’s major sellers and they account for 80 per cent of Outdoor’s business.

“Because of this reduction in billboard adverts our business has gone down by 60 per cent,” says Mr Ng’wano.

Media Masters does billboard advertisements as well as small media advertisements which includes bus stop stands.

Media Master charge between Sh120, 000 and Sh160, 000 per month for billboard advertisements and Sh60, 000 to Sh40, 000 per month for adverts on bus stops stands.

The shift by advertisers to small media has forced Media Masters to put up more small media stands in an effort to cushion their loss on billboards adverts.

“We have put up 10 more small media stands and we are still leasing with the Nairobi City Council for new stands,” says Ms Maina.

Players in the industry feel that business is bound to remain slow in the better part of the year unless the business environment improves.

“Right now there is no fundamental that we can rely on to push business up. If the economy improves then our business will improve too,” says Mr Ng’wano.

In a recent interview with the Business Daily, Thomas Omamo, the managing director of ZK Advertising said top spenders in advertising were growing cold feet.

“Indications show that there would be a pull back by advertisers,” said Mr. Omamo.

Katy Gabel
Nairobi

Timothy Mbugua is the CEO of Symbiotic Media Consortium. He started the company to provide a “one-stop shop” for promotions and campaigns, using a full suite of media products to engage clients. This includes print campaigns, web presence and mobile applications.

In addition to corporations, we’re also making products for the local mwananchi [citizen]. If there are five corporations we’re working for, we will have to wait three months down the line to get payment. But for mwananchi solutions, they pay before consuming the service, hence cash flow is improved for us and we have more to work with.

One of the products is Zunguka, which is pretty much a tool for collaborating. We’ve plugged in a viral aspect to it – if you refer friends you can earn redeemable points for the cinema and things like that.

Zunguka is a suite of six products: one is called TumaSMS, or “Send SMS” [short message service] in Kiswahili. There are two categories for that product: TumaSMS Mwananchi and TumaSMS Biashara. TumaSMS Mwananchi is a service to send short messages through the Internet using your own number. On TumaSMS Biashara we enable businesses to send SMSs to their client bases.

At the same time, on TumaSMS Mwananchi, you can opt to send free SMS messages by joining our advertising program. If I send you a message, for example, that says “how’s life,” Coca-Cola has bought 100,000 tags through us so that every time someone sends a message including the word “life” we attach an advertisement saying “Live on the Coke side of life.” So you can choose to send your messages either cheaply or for free through value-added text. It’s becoming pretty popular with corporations here.

A classic example of something we’ve done is a product called Esplanade for stock brokerage houses. As a client, you can access your stock portfolio account through the web, SMS and email. For example, I can send a quick message saying, “Sell my Safaricom shares at 50 bob [shillings].” But how do I know when to buy or sell? Well, I can set up my account to alert me anytime Safaricom, for example, gets to eight shillings. So I don’t have to keep track of it by constantly calling my broker.

It’s very exciting, because what’s on the market currently is access to share prices for the cost of a premium rate SMS. If you have a portfolio of 10 stocks, [it] would cost you 100 bob [about U.S. $1.60] to check them all. But if you use Zunguka, viewing those 10 stocks would cost you about 12 shillings instead.

Esplanade is pushed from the broker end. So brokers end up doing a lot of the customer education. If there’s any activity on your account, you will be alerted. This helps combat fraud on the brokerage end and increases investor confidence.

There’s another product called SMSoko where we’re simply connecting buyers and sellers via SMS and web. Not all SMEs [small and medium enterprises] can afford advertising in the newspapers. So they can join Zunguka and create their SMSoko, meaning SMS Market. It can be updated via web or SMS. You list your product, a description and a price.

If I [as a consumer] am looking for, say, black Timberland boots, I simply send an SMS and I get an SMS in return saying, for example, “We’ve found 100 traders, but because you entered via SMS we will send you the first two.” Some people have asked us, well, for those 100 traders, how do you make sure everyone gets noticed? Well, those two sellers are a random pick from the group, and all 100 traders will get a message that you are looking for black Timberland boots.

We also have a product called Kelele Mobile, which provides mobile entertainment: ringtones, wallpapers, MP3s videos – all that. It’s already a market that’s really growing, but we’re targeting East Africa by providing local content, which is very popular. Once you join Zunguka, you can share your Kelele content with friends on the network, building a full-on community.

We’re working hard at taking Zunguka international and throughout Africa. A lot of people in the Diaspora want to use our low-rate text service to contact friends and family.

We’ve designed a few other mobile services outside of Zunguka. We designed an SMS service for retrieving national examination results for secondary students. We also designed a program which sends alerts to HIV patients in western Kenya reminding them to take their antiretroviral medications. The doctor just needs to enter the patient information in a computer, and the system sends automated reminders to that patient. The patients know where that information is coming from, and they appreciate the privacy that comes with it. Another project we’re looking to do in September is creating an electronic register for political parties to prevent… electoral fraud.

Beyond that, we’re trying to work with the networks to improve what we can offer to clients. We’re really excited about location-based services. Imagine you’re walking on the street in town and you pass one of your favorite coffee joints. You then get a text on your phone telling you that you can bring in the electronic coupon for 30 percent off your cup of coffee. The possibilities are great.

Another service is called Saa Zingine, or Sometimes. It’s a dating service. We’re looking at using Zain’s One Network to do location-based services based on text. So I can just ask where the person I want to date is, and if they reveal their location to me we can meet up or chat on SMS or whatever we choose. It’s a very playful part of the portal. You can put up a profile and search others. Once you add location-based services, it takes it a notch higher. So we’ll do the Kenya launch, then the Tanzania and Uganda launches. We’ve been advised that Nigeria might be an interesting market to grow in just because of sheer numbers.

In Africa, there’s still a whole market to cover in terms of voice and SMS. But for me, 150,000 people with high-end phones provide sufficient reason to develop sophisticated applications. But I need to know that the network will allow me to take some of the 50 shillings that [a user] has made for the network by using my services. So more agreements need to come in, or we’ll be forced to continue basing everything on text, where the networks [take] more than 50 percent. The marketing is yours, the application development is yours, but the networks profit.

While these numbers may seem low and inconsequential if you know the levels of service adoption in the US and UK, but for us it is an exting start for a service that will be rolled out in 7 African countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Egypt,Nigeria and Ghana) with products also developed with the diaspora in mind.

Do you zunguka?