Launch of EA ICT Impact Investing Report

Tomorrow, the Capital Markets Authority, CMA, will launch a report from a taskforce it appointed to look into ICT Impact Investing in the East Africa region. In appointing the taskforce the CMA set out to:

To encourage the growth of impact investing in the ICT sector in East Africa and thus improve ICT services to the poor while also contributing to the growth of the financial market…

The taskforce with Richard Bell as the chairman undertook a three-phased research and will be launching their report on Thursday 24th February at the Nairobi Serena.

The taskforce’s major objecitves were:

• Identify the impediments to socially impactful technology investments in the region.
• Identify possible technology investments that could be attractive to Impact Investors
• Develop tangible recommendations on steps that could be taken to overcome the existing obstacles to successful impact investing and venture capital in the East African ICT sector.

The most important output of this report is the fact that actual and relevant data available to groups and individuals interested in investing in the ICT sector in the EA region.

Another issue I am most interested in is the recommendations from the taskforces on tax and legal requirements obtaining in the EA region. One thing to note is that in so much as the EA governements have tried to streamline tax and legal obligations to investment, they still are dissimilar, thus exposing investors to bottlenecks.

From the extensive expertise of the taskforce members, we expect a thorough and detailed report, I’ll be writing more on this once I after the launch..

TANDAA 08

The TANDAA08 conference, hosted by the Kenya ICT Board was supposed to showcase what local content developers are doing and the goverment plans to support them as we wait for the fibre optic cable to land in mombasa for what promised to good and very fast times for our internet industry.

Due to work schedules I could not attend the morning session, you can get info on the morning session from here. but I got there at around 2:00 in the afternoon and I was impressed with what guys are doing on the interwebs.  Among the speakers who presented their sites or gave talks included:

Aly Khan Satchu – rich.co.ke

Dr Sevilla – Strathmore University

Dr Mwirigi Kinagwi – askadoc.co.ke

Nick Nesbitt – Kencall

Alex Gakuru – Skunkworks

Ken Njoroge – Cellulant

Clement Ouda – myjobshouse.com

Muthoni Garland – storymoja.co.ke

kenyanpoet.blogspot.com

Waithera – capitalfm.co.ke

Overall I can say that the conference fulfilled its aims, the government presentation would have helped guys know what support they can get from the ICT Board seeing as they’ve got a huge grant to help local content devs. get along.

It is heartening to note that many website owners are earning good money from e-commerce kenyaemerging.com being a very good example.  Capital FM Mobile for me was the best, a gprs service where you get business directory, forex rates, atm locator, news among other things, another plus being you only get charged by your service provider (Zain or Safaricom) and not by Capital, I will give most definitely give the service a try.

Alex Gakuru’s talk on Skunkworks was also very informative.

That said during the conference I started the feeling that the conference was starting to turn into a sales pitch forum with presenters pitching the companies, it isnt bad but next time do it subtly.

Points that came out:

• There is a market for local content.
• The pay for registration model for portals and content sites isnt feasible at the moment.
• Monetizing mobile content provision is easier. (because mobile users are used to paying for services)
• Gov’t registration need to be streamlined, too many vague licences

Not a definitive list but the few that I could gather.

Overall I must say the conference was good and more or less a success.

PS

If you attended and have more that I missed, please leave a comment and I’ll update as required.

Tech-Phobia in Newsrooms

The technological divide that exists between the classroom/lecture-hall and the newsroom is one of the greatest challenges we face as young journalists.

 

The phenomenon of social and new media seems to be adopted perfunctorily in news rooms, I mean you will find good connectivity, superb hardware but the usage of the social/new media tools is next to nil.

 

In journalism school you get the idea that if you do not get onto the social media train you might as well be waiting for it on the tracks to run you down.  If like me you read Jay Rosen a lot then you be aware of the cuts that traditional news rooms have to undertake.

 

Now the whole disconnect is when you get into the news room, mentions of twitter elicits blank stares, an explanation does worse.  You start to wonder if truly social media is what it is made out to be.  But at the back of you mind you know that it is.

 

You know that the future of newspapers is online but the news room itself does not seem to realize this.  Even with journalists losing jobs daily, the message does not seem to hit home.  Even to the point that displaying tech-phobia is some sort of honor badge among the ‘veterans’.

 

Funny thing is that when you turn in a report fast enough you now get questions of how you did, then unofficially you become the in-house trainer.  It is for this reason that I think things are looking up, that in time we will take our place in this new digital newsroom though it would be better if it happened a bit faster.

 

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This is cross-posted at the Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists blog