Goodbye 2008

I think this will be my last post this year, though I hope to get one out just before we cross into 2009, this year has been a rather eventful one I must say, it started out horribly to say the least but the latter part of it has been very very productive and satisfying for me.

First I started of writing and contributing to the CPB site, where Curt and I, report and try and document attcks, threats and persecution of bloggers around the world, something which I have come to learn is very prevalent despite what others might think.  In most parts of the world writing a blog post is usually a private matter governed by only your conscience, but in other place it is a life and death issue, bloggers have been killed and others are languishing in jail for very long jail terms.  Yesterday, Curt took a much needed break and I have now been appointed the editor-in-chief of the site, I hope I will be able to follow in his footsteps and even grow the site and our non-profit even bigger.

I also joined WildlifeDirect in September and my insight into conservation has grown amazingly, after a long period of viewing this as something not of my concern getting immersed into conservation projects and helping the conservationists with what I know best, blogging, has been satisfying a lot.  It is important i think that we, starting owning this projects and not thinking that it is for ’some other people’.  We should individually strive to leave this earth better than we found it.

I have had my writings published in a number of sites including The Tomorrows News Tomorrows Journalists Blog, a collective blog of young journalists, Kenyaimagine, an online news portal, AfricanPath, an african news portal and I have also had the pleasure of writing for Al Jazeera, and also an article of mine got published in The Mail & Guardian Newspaper of South Africa.  This has grown my writing portfolio and I hope that next year will bring more of the same.

I am very encouraged with the growth of our internet industry here in Kenya, everyday new material is coming out, new apps are being built, new sites are coming up and blogs are slowly entering the mainstream which to me is absolutely wonderful.  The good thing is that most of this enterprenuers are doing this themselves without waiting for the government to help them out, as it is currently just paying lip service, to the ICT industry. I await bigger things this coming year.

Happy holidays to you and see you soon.

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.

Open Access

Joshua Goldstein who blogs over at in an African minute finally finished his paper on Internet Access in East Africa, and I must say after reading the paper several times, he did the topic justice.

 

It is a commonly agreed fact that bandwidth costs in EA have to go down for communities to access the internet, I mean complaining about low internet penetration but not factoring in the costs is fool hardy to say the least.  It is also a commonly agreed fact that the best way to do this is by fibre optic cable. And that is what his paper basically is all about, Joshua looks at the options available to increase internet penetration and contrasts, ‘The Club Consortium Model’ and The Open Access Model’ being a proponent of the latter, his paper delves more into The Open Access Model, what it entails and the challenges it faces.

 

My conclusions upon reading the paper is that I basically agreed with him on the various issues he raised in the paper.

 

 When you look at the pros and cons of the two models, The Club Consortium Model (CCM) is weighed down by the fact that it is basically a monopoly and thus the operator can charge you as he pleases after all who is to stop him/her from doing this.  The operator in this instance being government owned will bypass regulator issues as regulators in this part of the world are government controlled entities, whose policy is determined by government lobbyists.

 

The Open Access Model (OAM) stands out as the best in that it utilizes synergies from the government and the private sector.  This model tries to get information to the people at the lowest price possible.  By elimination of monopolies the price of bandwidth ultimately comes down as the Public Private Partnership (PPP) shares the initial high cost of infrastructure.

 

The TEAMs (The East African subMarine System Cable) and EASSy (East & Southern African Submarine System Cable) the fibre optic cables that are tentatively to land in Mombasa at the Kenyan coast in the second quarter of 2009 are versions of the OAM, this indicates that it is a model that is gaining currency.

 

Both models have their challenges but on final analysis the OAM scores higher than the CCM.

 

Joshua states three challenges to the OAM;

1. Collaboration between government departments that are historically unwilling to collaborate, i.e. to reduce repetition/duplication.
2. Initial high cost vis a vis the demand.
3. Information access by the citizenry i.e. if gov’ts are willing to allowed free flow of information.

 I’d also say training is another issue but it a general challenge to , users have to be able utilize the internet; they have to know HOW to use it.

In conclusion I’d say Joshua’s paper is spot on how to get internet to the people.  You can get more information about Open Access here