ICTworks by Inveneo

The greatest financial hurdles to open a computer cybercafe in Africa have been Line 1 on the Capex – Computers, and Line 1 on the Opex - Internet Access. Africa has the highest fees for Internet access in the world. What a lousy business - great demand, but expensive machines and expensive Internet in rural areas that are hard to service.

Mobile phones and mobile data at first seems a great competition to the Internet cafe. Both have low Capex, low Opex, and easy to service.

The rural Cybercafe owner is crying - "When do I get the cheap rates!" The Mobile companies are starving the Internet cafe. They don't offer cheap broadband off the backs of their connections. In the towns I've been visiting, I can get GPRS/Edge connections on my phone, I can see the backhaul is often highly contended satellite, sometimes fibre, but the mobile carrier isn't in the business of offering me a broadband connection to a home or to the Internet cafe. That is going to cannibalize his mobile data business.

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Value Added Services

So what to do? Value Add! All successful businesses change. Nokia started as a tree company!

I am John Hawker I can only tell you my experience with Sat-ed which developed and made this model for rural areas. You need to be more than just an cybercafe. You need to value add and grow with your customers. They're gaining in sophistication. This months model mobile phone is not enough, so be there waiting for that moment. Grow with them. They'll want more. As more phones join the network, their experience is going to fail.

We never took our test concept past 4 commercial “Internet” sites, but it worked for over 5 years, each site was financially viable within weeks and made much more than an Internet site, yet had the same staff and similar costs. What we did was offer a wide range of ICT services, always as low cost as possible as our areas were poor. Each site had 2 rooms, one for PC's, one for other “things.” Our site offered many things that being home alone with a mobile can't offer.

Local Trainers and Employees

We'd find teachers in the villages we worked in, identified who had good reputations and wanted to work as after school tuition in different subjects. That gave us a small margin, and a good reputation.

We'd run classes teaching kids how to use computers safely; parents liked that and felt safe. We repaired computers belonging to others, so that we created an environment that made people want to buy computers. The site manager/owner was a local trained to repair.

Be sure you add a cybercafe control system like "CafeCup" or any other system. This stops people messing with your system. You'll save yourself thousands for a $50 investment or a free system.

Scanning and Photcoyping

We added scanning which everyone does, and found old binding presses, very cheap, kids love them, and for a few extra cents it means their school project looks much better, you sell the plastic folder that goes with it at a mark up. So that over time the shop can evolve as well. Anyone running an Internet Cafe becomes over time adept at computer repair, we trained someone in the village.

We found a cheap old photocopier, copying is a great business, always in demand. Old photocopier also meant older people came in, something they don't do if it's computers only, and they stop and chat and loose some fear of PC's.

Digital Cameras & Fax Machine

Oddly with digital cameras we found that printing out photos at our last shop, and at the site of where we want to open in Ghana, the demand is huge. Fax machines are always in demand and the mark up is huge. Many businesses need a fax, not email, must be a fax and are willing to pay. Our fax machine was one of our best income sources.

Now an Internet cafe is the last place to rent books, but it's full of kids, and there are no libraries in our areas, so we'd buy books and comics at second hand markets, then but them in our shelves, and rent them out. Along with school stationary, paper pens, rubbers, rulers. All the things kids needs.

Extend Your Reach

There will be ways to connect your site, Satellite guys are hurting, so find some other cybercafés and buy in bulk, be there waiting, change your game.

And most importantly, add a WiFi system, extend the reach of your Cyber Cafe! Your cafe doesn't end with the walls! Buy a cheap buy good system like Ubiquiti and you'll find the mobile data users switching to you if you can get a good backhaul. The more customers you get, the better a broadband deal you can negotiate.

Don't worry too much about licensing. Look to offer it to schools, enabling you to buy more bandwidth cheaper, and your then exempt from expensive licenses.

Eventually you'll be a broadband supplier. It's how big companies start.

Our Impact

OK – and how much more profit did we make than a regular Internet cafe? Over 50% more profit. That's significant. 50% more than a normal cybercafe.

Demand is coming, along with a list of needs such a good e-education booths, all sorts of opportunities. Cybercafes will there to offer it.

A Dubai company plans to roll out 5,000 internet kiosks in Africa and the Middle East, and has signed a connection deal with the Abu Dhabi satellite operator Yahsat.

Intersat Africa says its solar-powered kiosks, which cost upwards of US$9,900 (Dh36,362), will bring internet connectivity to rural Africa and provide jobs in some of the most impoverished areas of the continent.

Features of Rural Internet Kiosk include internet access, a mobile-phone charging station, advertising screens and a photo booth. The company hopes to deploy kiosks across the continent.

Intersat Africa was one of the first companies to partner with Yahsat, signing a deal with the Abu Dhabi company in 2009. It will resell consumer internet packages once Yahsat's second satellite, which will facilitate consumer broadband services, is launched at the end of this year.

Under an extension of the 2009 partnership agreed this year, Intersat Africa will also build thousands of kiosks that will be connected to the internet via Yahsat's satellite.

"We have a roll-out plan for the first phase of at least 5,000 by the end of next year," said Abdul Bakhrani, the chief executive of Intersat Africa. "We are taking the internet to the grassroots."

There are also plans to launch the kiosks in Afghanistan and the company is looking at opportunities in more developed markets such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The kiosks have already been piloted in Uganda and Kenya, and Mr Bakhrani said the Kenyan government had expressed interest in launching an additional 4,500 units there. The company said the units would be run on a revenue-share basis with local entrepreneurs.

"They can get a loan from a microfinance company, buy the kiosk … and then it becomes a business for them," said Mr Bakhrani.

The kiosks will not require any fixed infrastructure, as they are powered by the sun and connect to the internet via roof-mounted satellite dishes.

The units are manufactured in Sharjah, while Intersat Africa is run from its headquarters in Dubai Silicon Oasis.

The basic kiosk costs $9,900, while more expensive models are available with scanning and printing facilities ($10,900) and solar-powered refrigerator ($11,900).

During testing, Intersat Africa said, an individual kiosk had taken up to $600 a month in revenue. Vendors sell scratch cards that give customers access to services, with internet access typically costing $1 an hour.

Intersat also plans a centrally managed advertising network, displaying commercials on each kiosk's three LCD screens and larger TV screen.

"All these kiosks are centrally managed from one location," said Mr Bakhrani. "When we sell advertising, we share the revenue with the owner." He said projected advertising revenues of $1,500 a month per unit was a "conservative" estimate.

Shawkat Ahmed, the chief commercial officer at Yahsat, said the kiosk initiative was "a self-sustaining empowerment model".

"The rural population has the right to information … If they have access to information, this will change their life," said Mr Ahmed. "We believe there will be thousands deployed once our [satellite] service is available."

The kiosks "can be placed anywhere in our coverage area, from the bushes of Africa to the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq", he said.

Yahsat is a subsidiary of Mubadala Development, a strategic investment company owned by the Abu Dhabi Government.

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The Bayview Webspot is an Internet Cafe in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco, USA.  The goals of the Bayview Webspot are to strengthen low-moderate income communities by continually providing access to, and ownership of, high-end technology.  As well as provide an environment of education and accessibility for our clients in a safe, friendly manner.

This location proved to be an ideal setting for Inveneo to test some new Internet Cafe software, CyberCafe Pro made by OneRoof.  Inveneo was tasked by Cisco with installing a low-cost, effective Internet Cafe software in the Community Knowledge Centers (CKC) it is installing throughout rural Kenya.  It was ideal for a couple of reasons.  The Webspot clients are similar in skill and computer knowledge as the CKC target market.  Also they have similar computer needs and usage as well as income levels, which makes Webspot a good place to test.  Finally one of the owners also works at Inveneo so access and approval was made easy.

CyberCafe Pro by OneRoof is the perfect price point, FREE, however the free version has advertisements at the bottom of the page.  It is possible to purchase a non-banner version for $99 per year but this requires an international credit card which is difficult to come by in rural Kenya.

The ease of use and flexibility of the software is amazing!  CyberCafe Pro comes bundled with terminal time management, employee tracking and point-of-sale software.  These are the three most used tasks in any internet cafe and that they are in one program makes training and deployment so much easier.  It also allows for easy tracking and control.  

Finally, OneRoof understands that CyberCafe Pro is not always intuitive and has dealt with this issue by providing YouTube video tutorials.  They are simple to follow and easy to access.  Kudos to the OneRoof team.

Inveneo continues its experimentation of the CyberCafe Pro software at the Bayview Webspot but so far Inveneo has deployed this solution in three CKCs throughout rural Kenya and all is well.

Across colleges in North America, ProjectFOCUS is raising awareness and capital to invest in solar-powered, income-generating internet cafes in Uganda with amazing, replicable computer lab fundraising skills.

But they're not just about fundraising or computer technology, they're also innovators in ICT4D. On June 5th, when they opened the Lyantonde Internet Center in cooperation with ICOD, they used bicycles to extend the reach of the Internet Cafe beyond it's physical office space. Watch the opening ceremony video to learn how:

By donating bicycles to farmer groups' elected "information agent" in the five villages of Luwama, Kyewanula, Kitazigolokwa, Iwensinga, and Lyantonde, ProjectFOCUS is increasing information dissemination among farmers in rural Uganda.

So the next time you're wondering how you can expand the impact of a computer lab, don't forget the basics like facilitating transportation to and from the cafe. A simple bike race and donation can change the whole perception of Internet access in rural areas.