ICTworks by Inveneo

Made in Africa: Africa's first handheld tablet, developed by Verone Mankou of the Republic of Congo, went on sale in Brazzaville and Pointe Noire yesterday (January 30). The "Way-C," or "light of the stars" in local dialect, sells for about US$300 and features integrated Wi-Fi and 4GB of memory. It will soon be marketed in 10 West African countries as well as France, Belgium, and India. There is some question as to whether the tablet is truly an African made project, as it is being assembled in China for the simple reason that Congo has no high tech factories. Stay tuned to ICT_Works for further discussion – the ICT4D world will soon be buzzing. In the meantime, congratulations to Africa and Mr. Mankou!

Mobile Tech in Mongolia: This is a part of the world that is often forgotten by the international development community. Yet this highly literate, sparsely populated, largely nomadic region of the world is poised for an ICT4D explosion, with considerations for improving access to higher education at the forefront. Blogger Michael Sean Gallagher explores various questions about "how to harness the knowledge potential of a literate society with good pedagogical frameworks and, if the situation demands, a pinch of ICT."

India: Increased Use of ICT for Education: From mapping to educational content delivery to data collection, from teacher recruitment to quality monitoring, the Indian state of Gujarat really knows how to effectively use ICTs for education. Read all about it

Girls in ICT Day! The UN's ITU agency has created the Girls in ICT Portal, a site for helping girls get involved in ICT studies and careers. They've even declared a "Girls in ICT Day" the fourth Tuesday of every April, when girls are invited into companies and governments agencies (globally) to meet ICT professionals and see what life is like on the job. "Girls in ICT Day" was only launched in 2011, so if you are an ICT professional please do your part and invite the girls in your life to learn about your work this April 24, 2012!

And now for some light reading… Information Technology and Educational Management in the Knowledge Society is an essential reference for both academic and professional researchers in the field of information technology and educational management. The papers presented in this volume are the result of an international call for papers addressing the challenges faced by the information technology and education management (ITEM) field in a society where knowledge management is becoming a major issue both in educational and business systems. This state-of-the-art volume presents the proceedings of the 6th International Working Conference on Information Technology in Educational Management. The price – $145 – is steep, to say the least, but for serious scholars and researchers of ICT, this is a must-read.

To get these links faster, follow me on Twitter: @SabinaBehague

In the American and European technology space there’s a growing problem. There’s so much funding available for early stage startups that everyone and their college dropout buddy is starting-up, leaving no one out there to hire.

It’s one of those first world problems: "We just raised 4 million dollars for our social network for redheads but we can’t find any developers…frowny face."

If Silicon Valley is having trouble hiring top tech talent, then it means that there’s also a drought in the NGO space. Even the biggest non-profits are suffering from the same lack of technical resources.

If you’re an African developer, this is a huge opportunity. I am Jonathan Gosier, and I say you should focus on acquiring (or maturing) some of the following skills. Talent in these areas is elusive even in the U.S. and Europe, being good at them will make you far more employable (or fundable if you want to start a company), globally as well as locally:

For Technical People

1. Ruby on Rails A lot of web startups use RoR because it’s a great language and it also impresses investors. However, they quickly realize that it impresses because Rails developers regularly command high salaries due to such high demand.
2. Python and or Django The Jan Brady to Ruby’s Macia. Actually, Python is probably more in demand these days simply because more developers are competent in it. It’s also great for mobile app development which makes it useful for all those SMS apps local firms are dying to build.
3. iOS – the iPhone continues to dominate the smart phone arena. It’s less relevant if you’re targeting a local audience (there go with Android or stick with Java), but if you are building apps that you want to sell internationally then there’s no app store with a richer economy for developers than Apple’s.
4. Data visualization All that ‘open data’ out there is irrelevant. What’s relevant is data that can be used by anyone at any organization, with minimal fuss. Visualization makes it easy to relate complex datasets to those too busy (or too lazy) to analyze them. Data vis goes beyond any specific programing language, but it is a skill and it’s one that Africans can find a great deal of opportunity in.
5. Math/Statistics Before one can visualize anything they need the components to visualize. If you’ve got a strong grasp of statistics and analysis, distilling information so that it’s actionable for others (who usually don’t share this skill) is a highly lucrative path to pursue.
6. Semantic Analysis Despite what everyone thought, the semantic web is here to stay. It hasn’t become a ‘new web’ like some once thought it might, but semantic technologies (sentiment analysis, natural language processing, text parsing) have become the methods that are routinely used to power some of the web’s most popular applications. These skills are incredibly lucrative. The growth of the ‘Big Data’ industry is fueled by them.
7. NoSQL & NewSQL Modern web apps require a great deal of backend engineering to deal with and keep track of all the byproducts of social, sharing, and content creation. There’s two schools of thoughts on this: one is that by doing more of the work on the application side (on request), applications can scale faster while handling more operations from more users. That’s the non-relational approach. The other school of thought is that there was nothing wrong with the old way of doing things, which stores data with the values the application uses for retrieving them later. The challenge was that this created a bottleneck at the database level which often lead to slow or stagnant apps. The new thinking around NewSQL is to keep the relational model and simply build better database software that allows for more throughput. Entire companies are being built of each type of database (see: Cloudera, Vertica, 10Gen), pick the one that makes sense for you. Also, this is the fuel for the Big Data/Open Data rocket ship.
8. jQuery/Javascript/Ajax Modern web apps do most of their processing on the front-end. As I mention above, this often means the application side is where most of the logic for the web app lives, while the database becomes a place to store and retrieve. For these types of web apps, front end logic is critical. Given the rise of the Jquery framework this is probably obvious, yet solid front-end developers are few and far between.
9. Hardware Engineering The ‘maker’ movement amplified by Afrigadget and Maker Faire Africa highlights another opportunity on the continent, the localization of manufacturing. Whether it’s bicycles or mobile devices, companies local to the continent that design and build things are scarce.

For Less Technical People

1. Design Look at the majority of African websites. Most websites made by African developers still look like they were made in 1999 using the GeoCities default templates (translation: Fugly). Blegh. There is a bounty out for good African designers. The mistake a lot of programmers make is they assume design is about technical know-how. It’s not – it’s about a sense of aesthetic and attention to detail. If you are a lazy designer, you’re not a designer. If you are a programmer who thinks design is superfluous to your application, then you’re doing it wrong. There’s also a dearth of design talent in the U.S. and Europe and a good designer can command the salary of a top programmer. Where are the African designers?
2. Writing You would be surprised at the number of people who can’t string together a well-written, cohesive, consistant thought in written form. Coupled with the rapid proliferation of social media (which, by the way, consists of mostly written messaging) the ability to write and write well has become incredibly important. I say this because you are not at a disadvantage if you are a non-native speaker. Example: Ariana Huffington is a non-native english speaker and she built a highly influential and powerful new media outlet that rivals old-school powerhouses like CNN and FOX on the web. It’s about being able to convey your thoughts cohesively and convincingly. It takes practice, so keep blogging!
3. Project Management Being the person who can cultivate the best traits from your team of peers is a huge asset that has always been rare. Many people manage, few excel at it.
4. Videography – We’ve all heard that there isn’t enough local content being produced for African audiences. One of the reasons is the lack of local producers. However, this is changing. More countries are becoming home to an African creative class who are producing film, television, and web shows locally. Can this be lucrative? I think so. As bandwidth falls in cost, eventually the demand for local content may not come from international viewers but the pan-African audience.
5. Critical Thinking/Problem Solving Deductive reasoning. The ability to deduce conclusions and the reasons why they have occurred. To do this, you have to be able to consider all sides and all aspects of a problem…even the ones that you don’t like. You have to be able to challenge assumptions, this includes your own. It is a skill to be able to analyze the intricacies of why things happen or if someone’s argument isn’t grounded in reality, and to be able to explain your conclusions to others. This will make you a better anything.

There are companies all over the world looking to hire people with aptitude in these areas, but being in Africa puts you in a position of power because there will be as great a demand for you at home as there is abroad. Does this mean you’d have to relocate to another country? Not necessarily, many of these skills can be outsourced to you or your company.

In 2012 learn the things that are in demand so you can build firms (or offer services) that capitalize on these global trends.

Jon originally published The Lucrative Skills African Talent Should Acquire in 2012 on Appfrica

I am Mbwana Alliy of Afrinnovator, and in my last post, I predicted tablets would start surfacing into the mainstream in Africa this year, especially within education. When I wrote that post I had not even given a second thought that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) would be a factor to consider. And I still don’t think they will be at this stage even with all the buzz and excitement coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which kicks off this week.

I personally think CES is increasingly becoming a bad predictor of what’s hot in the coming year- last year, Android tablets were meant to go mainstream with the introduction of Android 3.0 Honeycomb- that did not happen as much as Android smartphones took the world by storm. I also don’t think launching a tablet aimed at the developing world will elicit the sort of reaction from the right audience- are there any school teachers from the developing world or indeed African ministries of education going to be in Las Vegas this week?

The XO3 tablet actually looks really good. Great hardware design. Very thoughtful on specs and ports you’d expect on a tablet to allow all sorts of accessories from external drive, mic/headphone to multiple power charging port options. The power and charging feature have me most excited- the ARM chipset power efficiency and the cover doubling as a solar panel makes solar and hand crank charging practical. 6 mins cranking gives 1 hour usage, 1 hour solar charging gives 2 hours of use- not bad.

Continuing on the hardware side, it would be nice to have 3G wireless connectivity option (expensive and power hungry I know). But I feel this allows the tablet to be a lot more mobile given the growth of mobile internet in Africa- I feel relying on wifi in the classroom is limiting, after all the tablet is meant to be owned by the child and hence taken home- how are they meant to do research and homework when wifi at home is not guaranteed? 3G may also not be guaranteed but as I predicted- I feel it will grow this year to support smartphone growth and even then 2G speeds may still be able to allow the device to download ebooks- always on connection is better than no connection in my opinion. I guess they can just be books loaded for offline reading, 4GB space is plenty to hold this type of content.

On the software side, I am relieved that there will be an Android option- I feel like the linux based Sugar OS is pointless given history of linux projects backed with organizations with limited support- why not build on Android and further customize for educational needs? This is where we start to hit some of the issues I have with the OLPC model.

I did some digging and found that the OLPC initiative has shipped around 2M laptops since they begun 6 years ago. When you hone in on Africa, they don’t even approach 250,000. Its pathetic really- the OLPC has not delivered on its mission (at least in Africa) yet and it has to do with its distribution model. The devices have always been sold via Educational ministries and here lies the first problem, in Africa this is just not practical unless you go via President Kagame in Rwanda who has an iron fist rule and can push things forward quickly. Recently there were suggestions of air dropping laptops and tablets to schools-I am assuming a response to get around corrupt governments? All this still doesn’t help address the core mission of OLPC- education and getting as many devices out there as possible.

The gadget and hardware business is becoming increasingly fast paced and risky. And the commercial market has proven time and time again to be the best way to both reduce price and increase volume to the masses…Even then, success is not guaranteed, look what happened to HP and RIM/Blackberry with their tablet forays last year? In contrast look at Amazon’s kindle fire, the only real competitor to the iPad- important lessons can be drawn here.

Ultimately it comes down to price in Africa (and indeed other parts of the world)- lets hope they can hit the $200 price point at retail ($100 would be near impossible in Africa this year). Then there is the $35 Indian Aakesh tablet- a wild card initiated by the Government, they have shunned the OLPC model by at least taking charge of their own destiny- in this model they have dummed down the tablet functionality and are probably heavily subsidizing it to hit the $35 price point. India’s market is so vast, they could easily sell 5M in 1 year and be considered a success.

So is the OLPC XO 3.0 right for Africa? I would say no if they intend to achieve their mission anytime soon… Here are some things I would do to improve OLPCs model in Africa:

1. Diversify the distribution model: They should consider partnering with mobile operators to distribute, market and subsidize as well as add a 3G wireless chip. These organizations already have scale in Africa and they can help distribute the tablet much more efficiently and are more aligned to partner. Safaricom sold 350,000 Ideos smartphones in less than 6 months- how many other smartphones and feature phones were sold this way? Try 600M.
2. Build better on the ground partnerships & Focus on content distribution: Take advantage of AppStore (yes, stick to Android) for local distribution of content and empower developers together with educational ministries, education NGOs within target countries to develop content. Working with mobile operators also makes it easier to do so. By working with local organizations on the ground they can better assess content and other needs- they can also be valuable training partners for teachers who can then teach students. “Driveby tablet dropping” will not work.
3. Learn from Amazon, pick one use case and nail it, then expand: Amazon started with the kindle ebook reader, proved there was demand then scaled out to other use cases before bringing it to a full blown tablet over time- the model is less risky than betting on a bunch of tablet features up front and not have any traction, this would avoid the mistakes of RIM/Blackberry and HP. It also helps you focus on price initially and tier additional features over time.
4. Change the name away from OLPC: The name is already outdated, just as Apple Computer became just Apple, they need to recognize that their mission is not likely to be served by doing PC laptops anymore. Tablets are perfect for education, recognize that fast or be outsold by others. Laptops/PCs are better suited for productivity. I would be very surprised if they didn’t do this soon- otherwise they will just create confusion and sound outdated.
5. Become a social enterprise, Charities can’t compete in the hardware business: They should move away from a not-for-profit model. A fully profit model would be too hard for them to transition at this stage, so they should do the next best thing and become a social enterprise- this would allow them to access more capital for scaling up from the growing number of impact investors interested in education within Africa and around the world. They can then address more practical distribution models vs relying on Governments and air drops. Better distribution models for both the devices and content that I mentioned is ultimately the name of the game in the hardware business. Right now OLPC is a design house with very limited scale- and after 6 years, they should be scaling out if they are to achieve their mission this decade.

Here is a good video from the verge to learn more about the device.

This was originally published as Thoughts on OLPC-XO 3.0- Is it the right tablet for Schools in Africa? and is shared here with Mbwana's permission

It was a normal day by Accra standards. I walked out of the house ready to make my way to the center of town for an interview with a homegrown tech company; Esoko. I hailed a taxi and started haggling with the driver, once we had settled on a price, we were off on the traffic-ridden roads into central Accra. An average of 3-15 street vendors would emerge at the larger intersections and red traffic lights trying to sell us anything from fruits, jewelry, books, to shoes (don't ask me how/who would try on shoes while driving!).

Thanks to our zealous vendors, the market played out right outside the taxi windows accompanied by the sounds coming from the taxi radio speakers: Ghanaian Hiplife music and commentary on everything and anything on life in Accra. In those moments, I was immersed in the familiarity and novelty of the experience, completely unaware how my perspective on the market, media and communications in Ghana was about to change in the next few hours.

Below I detail what I learned from Sarah Bartlett (Communications Director) and Andrea Biardi (Technical Manager) who graciously sat with me and described the ins and outs of Esoko (Electronic Market, Soko = Market in Swahili), it's role in Information and Communication Technology for Development and why it could be changing markets in Africa in unprecedented ways.

How did Esoko begin?

A decade ago Mark Davies, a Welsh-South African, fresh from the dot com boom made plans to travel across West Africa on his motorcycle. During this trip he interacted with both rural and urban communities and he kept thinking how life would be different for the people he was meeting if they had basic technology and infrastructure like stable power, printing services and internet; basically, services that people in the west took for granted. What kind of opportunities and innovation would arise from that consistent access to technology? Thus BusyInternet was born; initially an Internet Café, Internet Service Provider and a business incubator run in partnership with the World Bank.

BusyInternet provides basic technology services to the public and has grown into a successful technology hub located in Accra amongst the hustle and bustle of the Kwame Nkrumah circle. As it grew into the largest technology center in West Africa, Mark immersed himself in a new challenge. With mobile phones spreading rapidly and with so much data that needed to be collected and shared, especially in rural areas dominated by agriculture, it seemed the missing link was a technical platform that could facilitate information sharing.

The idea of using mobile phones as that platform was obvious, as in Ghana the penetration rate for mobiles was upwards of 85% in city centers and averaging at 60% across the country. And it has continued to grow since: the International Telecommunication Union reported at the end of 2010 cellular penetration reached 75.4% across Ghana.

So in 2005, Mark and a few software developers started a new R&D company focused on local solutions to local problems using new technologies. Mobile phones played a key role. They created a plan to facilitate agricultural e-commerce under an endeavor they called ‘TradeNet’. Their first product became an application that enabled the dissemination and collection of price information for market commodities like grains and vegetables using simple SMS.

This information was accessible to anyone through the Internet but what made the tools from Esoko powerful and innovative was that you did not need a computer or the Internet to interact with the wealth of pricing information housed on the web server. With the simplest mobile phone, using basic SMS text you can access a world of pricing information. With the click of your mobile’s keypad or through auto-alerts customized for your needs the information would appear on your phone on a periodic feed. You therefore have access to the most up-to-date price information for the commodities of your choice be it coffee, cassava or wheat, at the tip of your fingers.

Mistowa and TradeNet: Before Esoko

In 2006 a partnership was formed between TradeNet and Mistowa, a regional program funded by USAID that aimed to remove trade obstacles in West African markets. Through this partnership, TradeNet emerged to provide an electronic agribusiness information exchange platform that enabled peer-to-peer trading. The initiative was able to offer access to real-time market information including commodity prices, offers to buy and sell between farmers, merchants and traders as well as business contacts on more than 300 products, from over 500 markets throughout West Africa.

TradeNet's work with Mistowa brought to light the kinds of applications that would fulfill the needs of the agribusiness sector. And with 60% of Africans earning their living from working in agriculture, a sector so underserved in terms of technology solutions, it made sense for TradeNet to continue in that area. TradeNet started hiring more software developers, and the applications started getting more interesting.

By this time, there was a growing global trend in using mobiles/ICT to exchange information in a new way, shorten supply chains and get people better money for their crops. It had become resource-consuming to obtain information through the classical methods - collecting forms, using landlines, travelling to locations etc. Many projects and businesses were trying to create electronic systems to solve supply chain problems but were not technology experts or developers themselves.

Around this time, TradeNet re-branded itself as ‘Esoko’ or Electronic Markets (Soko is the Swahilli word for market) and became one of the pioneers in this growing field of African mobile innovation joining the likes of Ushahidi, Frontline SMS and SlimTrader, companies that are creating innovative mobile solutions specifically for the African customer. Esoko focuses on tools for market and agricultural information and is expanding its efforts into other realms whereas other companies in the sector focus on m-money, m-banking, crowd-sourcing disaster/phenomena data and so on. In a continent with such growing demand for mobile technology, it is encouraging to see the variety and growing number of such technology companies creating solutions for the specific needs of the African customer.

Development Work, Local Interests and Sustainability

Several development projects have used the platform and Esoko hopes they will continue to do so in the future; it’s an ideal fit for projects that have a central mandate to integrate information and communication technologies into their projects. Esoko can serve as an ‘out of the box’ market information platform while providing training and support. This means that while Esoko is not part of the core structure that is built for any specific project, organizations can bring in Esoko as an outside expert for the tools they need rather than re-inventing the technology wheel each time.

Many donor-funded development projects have similar challenges surrounding sustainability. Typically, when a project closes down, Esoko looks for a new partner in a new location. In many cases, these new partners have a different value chain or mandate and may be working with different end-users e.g. traders versus farmers.

In other scenarios somebody has to take over and continue to provide the services the community has grown accustomed to instead of a completely dismantling and scrapping many months and years of work. In a new model, the project starts with government or donor funding and then transitions into a business; a franchise that can grow into a sustainable company. The first franchise launched in Ghana in January, 2011, will be a good model to pilot this potential solution toward sustainability.

Local businesses in Ghana are now using Esoko; utilizing some of their apps and services the same way that larger projects do. This kind of local interest also gives credence to the franchise model as there is demand in local markets for the products. Esoko has set up a shortcode across all mobile operator services in Ghana on the phone line ‘1900’.; shortcodes in other countries have also been set up. Franchises in Nigeria and Mozambique have secured funding and are well on their way to launching. The USAID funded Market Linkage Initiative in Malawi is also working to develop a franchise as a part of its efforts.

In other countries, government entities like the Ministry of Agriculture in North Sudan and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Nigeria have tried to integrate the Esoko platform into their own methods. This will undoubtedly contribute to a sustainable presence of these services as they continue to evolve and integrate into how communities do business.

Sustainability through Best Practices and Failure

Over time, Esoko’s driving principle has evolved into actively seeking feedback from users and stakeholders to drive improvements and new product development. This 'innovation driven' approach allows the company and its products to stay relevant as it continues to bring real value to its customers. This ultimately leads to better sustainability and profitability.

This approach introduces a different accountability schema than is common in the development sector because as a business, Esoko is accountable to its bottom line - profit. This is very different from being accountable to the interests and discretion of donors who regulate the access and flow of steady funds. For this reason, Esoko would want to tell its stories of failure along with success so it can understand its own pitfalls and evolve more rapidly to meet customer demand.

User feedback from one partner to better the platform for their specific needs oftentimes ends up benefiting multiple partners. This is true for some of Esoko’s main offerings (the stock tracking application was initially designed and created for Esoko’s Sudanese partners) as well as small enhancements to the platform, like adding tagging and comment boxes to the price upload page. These comment boxes ended up transforming the tool into a sophisticated aspect of the price information product; introducing comments about quantitative price data took the product from a simple system to access price data to something that was stand-out from anything that was available in the market and can inform the user about markets in a multi-dimensional way. The product was simple enough to use, but also very powerful for its ability to provide qualitative price data such as explanations about price hikes and other price-related occurrences. Enhancements like this are continuous and Esoko’s partners are the driving force behind them.

Presence across the Continent: Esoko in Africa

The network is available across Africa with public data being available to all users. When Esoko representatives are out in communities doing training and in meetings, most users express their excitement about the technology; their reactions show the technology to be something they have long been waiting for. Once the technology is deployed, Esoko works closely to help local partners customize to the specific needs and cultural idiosyncrasies of that community.

Monitoring and Evaluation for Mobile Tech in Development

In November 2010 a survey of 62 farmers in Northern Ghana who have been receiving price alerts for one year confirmed that they have benefited from the service, with an average improvement of 40% on reported deals and revenue. 68% said they would be willing to pay around $1.30 a month, with another 29% suggesting they would consider it, and only 3% saying they would not. The users of the products have been able to make more informed decisions about negotiating better prices, selling farther away, selling as a collective and sending products to Accra on a mass scale. These findings and others about mobile usage have been building momentum for mobile tech and its role in development helping Esoko realize the importance and power of M&E data in telling the story of mobile tech in Africa to the world.

To go beyond anecdotal reports, Esoko has invited researchers to design third party evaluations for these SMS tools. The surveys would obtain quantitative data for M&E that could be useful in showing how the tools are changing people's lives as well as the supply chain. CIRAD, a French organization, did 600 surveys; 300 people who have been using Esoko tools for two years and 300 that have not but live in a similar community and similar conditions. Those results will be out at the end of 2011. In July of 2011 NYU’s CTED in Abu Dhabi began a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the SMS-based market, taking three years to evaluate the impact of using Esoko tools on farm-gate prices and livelihoods (household assets and children in school), farmer marketing behavior (search behavior, bargaining power and market contracts) as well as the trust of other market players, especially traders. They will also gather data to find out how information spillovers and technology adoption occur among rural farmers in Africa.

Mobile Tech is a field replete with opportunities for research. There are many questions that would help understand the technology landscape, its impact and inform approaches when designing new mobile technology interventions in African markets. What is the correlation between mobile technology and development? How does the introduction of mobile technology affect communities and market systems? These questions are of interest to the larger global community as well as to local communities. Two research evaluations already done in India and Niger show that the introduction of mobile technology (voice-only) increased revenues to actors along the supply chain. These findings are cited countless times and have driven innovation as well as policies. New research about data-focused technology can lead to findings with similar implications.

Made in Africa by Africans

Esoko's employees are mainly Ghanaian and West African, with 3 African diaspora employees and 4 US/European expats. Visiting employees typically come for 6 months to bring in knowledge about the latest technology. Currently there is a group of 60 young professionals at Esoko building and supporting the technology. The truly exciting thing about the work Esoko is doing is that it is coming from Africa, and that it is complex technology. Esoko today has a solid user interface, a strong API to communicate with all the different mobile providers to get data from the field processed and then sent out via SMS to end users, and a complete setup of staff and developers comparable to a tech company anywhere in the world.

Impact: Business for Profit & Social Value – Disrupting the Market

According to Esoko, it is a company for profit and for social good because the two come hand in hand. The company has the intention of enabling better transparency, heightening efficiency across value chains and spreading information as well as helping organizations, businesses and individuals get to their bottom lines faster.

As far as innovative technology, the products are designed not to completely reinvent the market, but to make markets more efficient through the presence of the right tools. These tools and solutions are enablers that let people access information more quickly, easily and cheaply. This will likely affect the way people do things, however, it is difficult to say how exactly it will change the market.

For businesses, this means tools so they can do business better; source goods locally, tighten supply chains, and make real time decisions based on quickly sourced field information. For individual farmers who have begun using Esoko, the tools have started skewing the market in ways that are easy to recognize because there is a high level of isolation typically experienced by rural producers. If a farmer has pricing information for regions more than two markets away she might forgo selling her products through several middle-men traders that would buy from her and sell at a different market. With the information at hand she could make a cost-benefit analysis to decide if it is best for her to sell her commodities far away herself or to trade with the middle-men. This decision might eliminate her need to work with middle-men who could take her product and sell it for a larger margin of profit or exploit her for their benefit. Armed with the correct pricing information, she can also negotiate a better price with the middleman. This would likely disrupt the market in unprecedented ways because none of the tools are designed to manipulate the market in any specific ways. The tools are simply enabling access to information that would put the power for decision back in the hands of the customer.

Cultural Considerations

Each country may have specific user interaction needs, which translate into Esoko helping both projects and businesses deploy properly in their markets. For example Ghana has market queens for each commodity where merchants work under the main queen. Enumerators, who collect price data from markets on a regular basis, go into each large market and approach the queens. The queens then have to be ‘courted’ and shown how they can also benefit from allowing Esoko in the market; the goal being that the queen would give approval and Esoko can become operational in that market. The enumerators continue to visit the queen and the markets enabling Esoko to culturally integrate with the market.

In one instance that illuminates the cultural elements and the benefit of 'design for the customer' approach, Kumasi’s market queen was putting high taxes for importing onion from Burkina Faso leading to the creation of a renegade onion trade happening on the streets to forgo the market. While the queens have the power to slightly fix the price in Ghanaian markets, Esoko is able to use features like comments on pricing data to describe the dynamics that play into the fluctuation of prices. This qualitative data helps makes sense of the quantitative price data as well as the cultural and socio-economic context of events in the market.

Esoko is a new inventive breed of African technology company. As the demand for cellular technology continues to grow rapidly, the relevance and impact of mobile innovators will also grow for the African market. With a projection of 170% growth for mobile phone usage (85% growth in smart phone use and 150% in non-smart phones) across Africa in the coming 5 years, technology innovators have the opportunity to impact the market in unprecedented ways that increase transparency, simplify supply chains and maximize benefit to the users. It is becoming increasingly hard to imagine that this kind of technology would not have a significant impact on Africa's development.

About VC4A Questions:

VC4Africa seeks to connect entrepreneurs with the network, capital and knowledge they need to build promising businesses on the continent. We have members from 156 countries that network via our online platforms and offline via our VC4Africa Meetups. Our matchmaking site VC4Africa.biz is a tool for entrepreneurs to publish their venture and connect with possible business partners and investors. Our matchmaking program further supports entrepreneurs in their business planning and support entrepreneurs seeking venture finance. So how do we support the community with knowledge?

Building a business is hard and having access to the right knowledge and information is critical. Unfortunately, in the African space information is too often lacking. What do the changes in local tax code mean for the tech sector? What are the import duties for heavy machinery? What are the key points investors look for when reviewing a cash flow prognosis? What are the legal issues I need to consider when expanding across borders? VC4A Questions is a collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by the VC4A community. Together we are building a community generated database of knowledge. A few points that make VC4Africa Questions & Answers unique:

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Each question makes use of tags that make them easier to find across multiple search queries. This also helps members link new questions with existing discussions and further centralizes the conversation. Members can find similar questions they can borrow from when outlining additional context. Each question and answer is also rated and sorted by the users. This ensures that only the most pertinent questions rise to the top of the landing page and search results. It helps push prominent issues into the forefront and crowds out any unwanted messages or noise.

Follow Discussions

Members can follow topics they are interested in. Any updates are automatically forwarded per e-mail and this helps maintain an active dialogue. Members, the VC4Africa team and officers can also ‘recommend experts’ with certain questions and encourage them to share their expertise and input. This further serves to mobilize an active network and adds to the growing knowledge base.

VC4A Reputations

VC4A Questions is linked directly to member profiles. The system tracks who posted a question, who responded, how many responses were recorded and whether or not the questions and answers were valued by the VC4A community. This feedback is part of a reputation the user builds via the system. This helps other users appreciate the quality and level of a user’s contributions and serves to recognize the members who contribute the most and are otherwise experts on certain subjects or specific fields of interest.

Moving forward,

Please visit the new section of the website http://vc4africa.biz/questions/. We encourage you to take a look and play around with this new tool. Please add your own questions or share feedback with the community. We look forward to building this resource together and for the benefit of the entrepreneurs and investors working to build promising businesses on the continent.

Regards and happy networking!
The VC4A Team