ICTworks by Inveneo

When last did you visit a cyber cafe?

Eight years ago, my answer would have been “right now”. I would have been writing/reading this on a computer in a cyber cafe. Right now however, I am lying somewhere comfortable in my home, whilst punching the soft keys on my laptop.

A few years ago in Accra, one could count more than ten Internet cafes between Vodafone (then Ghana Telecom)’s Head Office around Kwame Nkrumah Circle and BusyInternet on Ring Road Central. There were: True Internet, WWWPlus Mega Cafe, Krofa Internet Cafe, Java Internet Cafe, and several others, whose names I do not remember at this time.

Sadly, most of them have closed shop. Whilst several reasons could be offered for the failure of these enterprises, one cannot overlook the solid impact of mobile phones and mobile internet technologies.

My facebook profile on a Nokia smartphone

Mobile Websites

A quick glance at the traffic metrics website Alexa.com reveals that the most visited websites in Ghana include: Facebook, Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Live.com, Wikipedia, MSN, GhanaWeb, BBC. Email used to be the most popular online activity in this part of the world but social networking websites seem to have taken the lead in recent times. News websites come third. Thus, the composition of the ten most popular websites is not much of a surprise.

What is more interesting is that ALL the most popular websites have mobile versions of their services. Typing facebook.com into a mobile web browser for example, automatically redirects one to a mobile version of the popular social networking website. The mobile websites are stripped-down versions but offer a lot of functionality, in a layout small enough to fit into tiny mobile phone screens. It is thus now common place to find people get busy with chatting, twittering, reading the news & more, from their mobile phones.

Smartphones

Smartphones are raising the stakes and pushing more possibilities into our hands, literally. They now have enough processing power to stream high-definition video and enough memory to download and store databases of music, photos and videos from the Internet. Some smartphones come with full QWERTY keyboards and thus making typing a pleasure. Emailing, blogging, chatting can now be done virtually anywhere.

Lower entry costs

Personal Computers are no longer the exclusive preserve of the rich and well-educated. 10 years ago, the pricing of an average laptop was about $2,000. Not any more. New, more powerful, full-featured laptops are available today for as low as $700. Their smaller cousins (netbooks) even come at lower prices; mwave.com currently prices an ASUS EPC900B-BLU01X Eee netbook PC at only $209.99

Used and probably refurbished PCs even drag the entry costs lower, for obvious reasons.

USB Modems

Those little devices have further democratised internet connectivity. Where mobile phones and smartphones are not enough, one could easily buy a USB Modem for as low as 60 Ghana Cedis (about $42) and connect it to a desktop, laptop or netbook for a full Internet experience. MTN Ghana is currently offering their USB modem at that price. Gone are the days when one needed to obtain a hard-to-comeby fixed phone line from the telecom monopoly or a fixed wireless antenna pointed at the Internet Service Provider’s radio mast, or a VSAT satellite dish + modem. None of these came cheap.

The more spectacular thing is that 3.5G USB modems offer real broadband speeds today.

Back to those cyber cafes. The rapid closure of cyber cafes is not limited to Ghana. 234Next.com, a leading Nigerian news source, today published a report titled: Cyber cafes are vanishing:

"In those days, around 2000 and 2001, I used to go to cyber cafe, pay money to check my yahoo email. You know the feeling that time was powerful. I was the only one who could browse amongst my friends then. We will go to a cyber cafe and crowd around one system, five of us, and then the systems were always very slow, so if we hear that one cyber cafe somewhere was fast we will go there," said Solomon Edema, a computer engineer. "Now, all of us browse with our phones. I also used my laptop. I have not gone to a cyber cafe for over a year now," Mr. Edema, adds.

Nowadays, the proliferation of computers and 3G mobile phones, including the famous China phones, has resulted in cheaper prices. As a result more people can afford internet-enabled phones. Similarly, the competition in the telecom industry has also led the telecom firms out-doing one another in offering cheap modems and internet access. Traders at Computer Village, Ikeja, now offer software that enable free internet access on laptops and mobile phones.

It is clear that mobile phones, are pushing cyber cafes out, the same way public phone booths and “communication centres” have become endangered species. What waits to be seen is how long the few cyber cafes that remain would last. Would they close shop or evolve their business model? Time would tell.

Do you want to deploy a computer lab as part of your organization's programs? Yet, are you lacking the cash to pay for the technology yourself? Here is a quick guide on how to raise money for an Internet Cafe from individual donors in 3 steps:

1. Have a clear pitch for your computer lab

The world is a busy place. You want to capture your potential donor's attention quick and hook them on your idea fast. Here's a great example of using YouTube to do just that - ProjectFOCUS' Bringing Solar Internet To Rural Uganda:

Note how ProjectFOCUS shows just the long-term benefits of the computer lab - health, education, economic development. They don't dwell on the features - number of computers, type of software, etc - but give donors the big, uplifting picture.


2. Have a clear fundraising goal

Individual donors want to feel like they are contributing to an achievable goal. Show them what the goal is, and better yet, show them how you came up with the goal. Again, ProjectFOCUS does that really well with their project goals:

Short Term
Project Focus is partnering with local organizations in rural Southwest Uganda to launch an Internet Café, providing access to information and communication previously unavailable to residents of the region. The Café will also provide technology skills training, a revenue source for a local community-run primary school, and allocate space and tools for the production of creative multi-media projects.

Mid Term
The next stage may include the establishment of additional art-therapy/creative media projects, water and sanitation projects, an earth-brick income generation project, and other ideas coming from community members.

Long Term
The long-term vision embodies continual support of holistic, sustainable, community-driven initiatives in the areas of education, health care, economic development, and psychosocial needs in the community.

Even better, they also give donors and understanding of the detailed costs of the computer lab (PDF). This way, donors feel confident that their donation will cover all the needs of the Internet cafe.


3. Have an easy way to donate

It may seem common sense to make it easy for people to send you money, but too often I see donation requests leading to an email address or requests for checks(!). So let's look one last time at ProjectFOCUS - this time at their website header, and note the call to action right at the top:

The "Invest Now" is a great way to make donors feel engaged in a beneficial, long-term project (vs. "donate now") and it links directly to a PayPal donation page. You can also use Google Checkout or even Global Giving. The point is to make it easy to give.

Are you looking for an Open Source billing software for a cybercafe? Then look no farther than Mkahawa - an open-source project that builds on Cafe Con Leche or CCL, and extends CCL's traditional cross-platform nature, simplicity, lightness and speed.

Mkahawa's speed and small memory foot-print comes from the fact that it is built in C and C++ and can run on Linux, Windows and MacOS.

More info on Mkahawa

Hat tip to Danny Aerts

In reading Miquel Balsa's post, The decline of Senegalese (and maybe all) internet cafes, I was struck by the suggestion that public internet access points would soon disappear because the business model wasn't viable.

On the contrary, I believe that we will soon see a cybercafe renaissance, with an explosion of different, and more varied format, for three obvious reasons:

Gone and good riddance

Free Internet access is dead. And good riddance.

I am sure that Miguel and I can agree that the aid-sponsored free community cyber cafe model is dead, and this is a good thing.

I can still remember the first free Internet cafe I visited in West Africa. Funded by USAID, it was supposed to offer access to a wealth of information about NGO services to the community. Except it was only open 9-5, weekdays, and had no control over content, which means there wasn't any in the local language.

Not that it mattered. The majority of the population was illiterate - in any language, much less the skills to surf the web. So it was populated by young boys playing games, downloading music, and skimming porn.

This model was bound to fail, but not before it also bankrupted pay Internet cafes by offering their services for free. Thankfully, big donors have mostly dropped the free cafe model, and not a moment too soon.

We sell you anything digital

Many services, all paid, but not all Internet based

Miguel made a good point - cafes only providing Internet are commodity businesses at the mercy of price wars and supplier whims. So the key to a vibrant cybercafe business is to move into related services for the same client base.

I know of successful African cybercafes that sell anything digital, from music and images off the web, to video, photos, and audio recorded in the cafe or at your event. They also had classes on advanced ICT skills like editing, video production, etc, in addition to graphic design and printing services.

The next level of cybercafe, is the cafe that has Internet access to attract the technology elite. Even though their primary revenue generation may be through food, their open internet access is what drives their customer base to the cafe. Bourbon Cafe in Rwanda or Java House in Nairobi are great examples of this Internet access as lure.

Growing, not shrinking, need for public access

Miguel's point I most disagree with is the suggestion that there is a decreasing need for cybercafes in Africa because of 4P Computing:

Outside of tourists locations, they seem to be drying up everywhere to some degree as more and more of us travel with laptops or at the very least, wifi/highspeed data enabled phones that can do simple browsing anywhere we go.

While he and I may travel with netbooks and iPhones, the majority of Africans do not have such electronica, nor are they buying the expensive data plans that allow for mobile web access. They closely monitor their communication expenses, budgeting for Internet access out of meager daily wages.

Yet more and more business and government services, and professional social capital is moving online. Stores like Rachels' Bargain Corner and Kenya's eGovernment initiatives require full-screen Internet access. And with Facebook driving ICT use in Africa, the next professional networks will be virtual, not in person.

So as high-speed Internet and cool new gadgets increase usage by elites, there will be even more need for average Africans to get online, economically, through public access cyber cafes offering Internet access in multiple formats.

More than decline, this is the time to invest in African cybercafes!