[kictanet] Is Google good for Africa?

Mon Oct 10 20:22:25 EAT 2011

+1

On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Matunda Nyanchama <
mnyanchama at aganoconsulting.com> wrote:

> This article appeared on the dotafrica linkedin list; I cannot locate it on
> the Africa Report website, though.
>
> *Is Google good for Africa?
> DCA inNEWS
>
> With an eye on its future profits, Google is investing millions to enable
> an army of tech-savvy young Africans to build the web from the bottom up and
> put their continent on the global information map.
> *_
> The Africa Report is a monthly magazine* based in Paris **France*,* which
> is the **English version of the highly respected "**Groupe Jeune Afrique",
> which **has been the leading economic, political and cultural media
> throughout Africa and worldwide. *
> * *
> *The Africa Report* thus provides more than 400,000 African and
> international readers with expert analysis of Africa's fast-changing
> political and economic landscapes.It has established itself as the
> international publication of reference dedicated to African affairs.  *It
> is the guide used by decision makers to anticipate economic and political
> changes in Africa and relied upon for the expertise of an independent
> editorial team in its surveys,* sector reports and country focus published
> in each issue.  Its recognized high-quality coverage of the African business
> environment is combined with the widest pan-African and international
> circulation.
>
> *Is google good for Africa?   **WRITTEN BY GEMMA WARE IN DAKAR*:
>
> http://www.theafricareport.com/201106285165490/five-stories/is-google-good-for-africa.html<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=wkvqrzcab&et=1107947158325&s=1800&e=001k7fMKumNiH_jkBduw08ScYTwY1I0r4NotagBQlNofXNaZBHoPaJvzG_grplYZDlEe4ENsv4G-uyfb4KvrwJSLKkO4Gets8L3ZuoKOXkWd7zCaBTn0RFRKjPImvYjD7wthVOHBeOBkp9lbLnlc-PV0w16U-HoIDVTw73mJJrM0frUYjmMB9Eam2pbbedL7S2i_goJTebkpyWWynvX3x7g2A==>
>
>  [image: Africa Report Cover]
> *As the influence of companies like Google grows, the continent's techies
> are aware of the urgency to stake their own territorial claim.*
> * *
> *An African-led initiative is pushing for a .africa suffix aimed at
> breaking down the dominance of foreign hosting sites.  Around 90% of
> African websites are registered as .com, says DotConnectAfrica's Sophia
> Bekele. When it costs $19 to register a .com site versus around $50 for a
> .co.ke in Kenya, the choice is obvious, but it is not helping to populate
> the African web. *
>
>  *With an eye on its future profits, Google is investing millions to
> enable an army of tech-savvy young Africans to build the web from the bottom
> up and put their continent on the global information map.*
>
> "*The problem with Africa is that there isn't enough information,"* Carlo
> D'Asaro Biondo, one of Google's vice presidents for the region, told the
> crowd. In front of him, laptop screens flickered in the dimly lit lecture
> hall as rows of young Senegalese techies tapped away at their keyboards. On
> stage, large breeze blocks in bright primary colours lay piled up in
> pre-planned abandon. One event in the US tech giant's G-Africa series, the
> G-Senegal meeting in late February brought together more than 600 web
> developers and HTML-literate IT students at Université Cheikh Anta Diop.
> They are all part of Google's plan to create an African army to help it
> build the web from the bottom up.
>
> *Google has Africa firmly in its sights*. As new fibreoptic cables bring
> down the cost of bandwidth, and manufacturers race to bring out affordable
> smartphones - the most basic of which still costs about $100 - the internet
> is going mobile in Africa. Already 40% of Google searches on the continent
> come from internet users on mobile phones. Google expects user numbers in
> Africa to grow from 14 million in 2010 to 800 million by 2015. Mobile
> information has been the midwife to the uprisings across the Arab world.
> Videos, photos and comments posted on Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned
> YouTube fanned the flames of revolt.
>
> *Seen from the Googleplex back in California, Africa remains a big,
> perplexing blank, an obstacle in the way of Google's brazen goal to organise
> the world's information*. But it has seen the future - one that will hold
> 43 million middle-class Africans by 2030, according to the World Bank. By
> investing now into Africa's internet ecosystem, Google hopes to hardwire it
> with tools that will make people click through to its websites.
>
> While there is an average of one web domain for every 94 people in the
> world, there is only one for every 10,000 Africans. An empty web with less
> local and relevant content means fewer reasons to go online and a dearth of
> revenue for Google, which principally earns money by selling targeted
> advertising on its search engine.
>
> I*t is also embedding itself in the internet's evolving geopolitics*. As
> authoritarians tighten their media-monitoring screws, buying
> military-calibre cyber surveillance software, Google will be monitoring
> them. Since 2010, Google has been publishing statistics on the requests it
> receives from governments to remove information from its websites. During
> Egypt's February revolution, the tracker clearly showed when the country's
> internet was cut. As part of its response, Google put to use a start-up
> called SayNow that it had acquired just a few weeks before to create a
> 'speak-to-tweet' service. It allowed Egyptians to leave voicemail messages
> that were posted on Twitter as audio files.
>
> *The company has won fans - and sceptics* - for its 'don't be evil' motto.
> It got burnt in China and its reputation suffered after it agreed to censor
> search results. It will not be doing that again in a hurry. But by shining a
> light on censorship, Google has helped democracy activists expose
> politicians who meddle with the freedom of information. In late May, an
> Egyptian court charged the ousted President Hosni Mubarak and two of his
> ministers $90m for cutting telecoms services.
>
> *During the revolution, Egyptian activists were fearful of what US
> multinationals might do with their private information.* "Anyone who holds
> this amount of information needs to be very careful with it," says Nadine
> Wahab, an Egyptian activist behind the "We are all Khaled Said" Facebook
> group. But when Google's property is attacked, it will make noise. In June,
> the company pointed the finger at the Chinese government after disrupting
> attacks on Gmail users, including US government officials and Chinese
> political activists.
>
> *Google's play on the continent is seductive and transformative*. It has
> launched dozens of projects in Africa. Its search engine is now available in
> 31 African languages, including Ewe, Sesotho, Wolof and Amharic. A $1.25m
> project will digitise Nelson Mandela's documentary archives. Another pilot
> in Nigeria - the Get African Business Online project - is helping small
> businesses to build websites. Google runs mapping projects to help chart
> unmapped areas (see box page 22). It is also forging relationships with
> Africa's more tech-savvy administrations. A web facility tailor-made for
> Kenya's treasury is helping constituents monitor the implementation of
> infrastructure, education and health projects launched under the
> government's Economic Stimulus Programme.
>
> Google's assault on Africa is coming at a time when the company is facing
> growing hostilities elsewhere. In late March, its plan to monetise 15m
> digitally scanned books for the Google Book Project was barred by a New York
> court. Meanwhile, the European Commission is probing whether Google is
> abusing its dominant position in online search by prioritising its own
> services.
>
> *MISSION: CREATE CONTENT Google's push to create local content is not
> unique to Africa and it forms a central part of its expansion strategy into
> emerging markets with low internet penetration*. So far, the coast has
> been relatively clear. While its biggest rival, Microsoft, has an
> established presence in Africa, Facebook and Twitter have not yet defined
> strategies for the continent. Yahoo email addresses are still commonplace
> across both anglophone and francophone Africa, but Google has pretty much
> won the battle for African search.
>
> Back in Silicon Valley, it used to be hard to get attention for African
> projects. Now, it is a different story. "If you do something that's involved
> in Africa, it's a very feel-good thing around Google," says Steven Levy,
> author of a new book on Google called In the Plex. Google, which is famed
> for employee perks such as free gourmet food and onsite medical care, allows
> its engineers to use 20% of their time on other projects. "What Google is
> doing in Africa is very sexy," says the firm's Senegal representative,
> Tidjane Deme.
>
> *Off the back of a successful final quarter of 2010 - which brought in
> profits of $2.5bn - Google is in the midst of an Africa recruitment drive,
> with more than 30 posts open across the continent.*  Its staff in Africa
> has grown from 10 in 2006 to 65 today. In December, it secured a huge coup
> by poaching Kenyan Ory Okolloh - founder of web platform Ushahidi and a
> prominent blogger and activist - as its first policy manager for Africa. The
> usually ebullient Okolloh has remained tight-lipped since she started, and
> declined to give an interview to The Africa Report.
>
> *WE COULD BE HEROES  *African googlers have begun to get themselves
> noticed. At first, Google was unsure how to react to the swell of admiration
> for its marketing executive Wael Ghonim, held aloft as a hero of the
> Egyptian revolution after his detention at the hands of the security
> services. "They were conscious, as a global corporation, of the implications
> of this," says Levy. But they realised soon enough the value of his
> profile-raising. On 12 February, five days after his release, Google's
> official Twitter account said: "We're incredibly proud of you @Ghonim & of
> course will welcome you back when you're ready."
>
> *Others are going on to great things.* Kenyan Nyimbi Odero, Google's
> former lead for West Africa, told The Africa Report he saved the Nigerian
> Electoral Commission around $100m in procurement costs with in-house voter
> registration software he and his team developed for 2011's elections.
>
> *Spreading its tentacles further and deeper into the world's internet is a
> fundamental part of Google's business plan*. In the year to end December
> 2010, 41%, or $11.9bn, of its $29.3bn in revenue came from outside the US
> and the UK, up from 37% in 2008. Despite its push for global
> information-sharing and transparency, Google will not reveal how much it is
> investing in Africa, although it admits that it is not yet making a profit.
>
> "*Our business model works only when you have enough advertisements and a
> lot of users online, and that's the environment we are trying to create in
> Africa,*" explains Nelson Mattos, Google's vice president of product
> management and engineering for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
> "Right now the goal is not to be profitable. We are not focusing on sales
> except for South Africa, where you already have an environment of enough
> users online, enough traffic online and enough advertisers who want to take
> advantage of that. In the rest of Africa, it's about bringing people online
> and making sure that they take advantage of internet services first."
>
> *With a platform like Baraza* - an online question-and-answer site that
> Google launched in October 2010 after success with similar pilots in China
> and the Middle East - users are persuaded to create content on a Google
> platform. "It has become extremely successful and we are starting to see a
> lot of the content that got created through the Q & A to surface in the
> Google search," says Mattos. Another beta project, Google Trader, launched
> in Uganda and Ghana, acts as a web and mobile marketplace for everything
> from rice-milling equipment to used Hondas.
>
> *Such crowd-sourcing is central to Google's global strategy*. It stems
> from founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin's belief in an open-source internet
> model, where tools are made freely available to developers. It is the
> driving principle behind its Android smartphone platform, which now has over
> 150,000 apps, but - like its African investments - has yet to bring in
> billions in revenue.
>
> *Since mid-2009, Google has been busy moulding a new generation of bright,
> tech-savvy Africans who are incentivised to evangelise.* Part of a growing
> young elite with the money to buy laptops, internet data bundles and
> smartphones, these geeks will rule Africa's online universe.
>
> But while Dakar's Google Technology User Group (GTUG) - a 50-strong network
> of young developers that receives a stipend each month from Google to host
> meetings - may know how to work the tools, they have little financial
> support to create new applications. Ibrahima Dieng, one of GTUG's leaders,
> says: "People come and try things out, but they don't publish." Many are
> students, without the credit cards needed to buy space online.
>
> *LEARNING TO ADAPT *Senegalese web engineer Hovi Kokuvi Amen Hovi says he
> is earning €11 a day from AdSense adverts hosted on two news-based websites
> he operates. He has been lucky - he can get at the money via a French bank
> account. Funds earned through AdSense used to be sent with a Citibank cheque
> in US dollars, a system not well adapted to serve developers in largely
> unbanked economies. In May, Google agreed to make payments via Western Union
> in Senegal.
>
> *Google has not yet made the biggest commitment it could to Africa - to
> build a data centre*, the beeping heart of its web operations. However, it
> has set up several dozen caches with African mobile operators and internet
> service providers. So, when somebody wants to watch a YouTube video or
> access Google Maps, the request does not travel all the way to a European
> data centre, but is accessible via a local store.
>
> *Back in 2008, Google provided an undisclosed part of a $410m investment
> in O3b, a series of low-orbit satellites that would bring fibre-speed
> broadband to the developing world from 2013*. Google also recently opened
> a point of presence (POP) in Nigeria to serve West Africa, effectively an
> entry point to its global network of data centres. There is already an
> active POP in South Africa, and Google plans to build one in Kenya to keep
> local traffic within Africa.
>
> Just how Google plans to recoup such investments remains unclear. Some of
> its products could become lucrative if they reach critical mass. One is
> Gmail SMS, which allows Gmail users in certain countries to send 50 free
> text messages from their emails. When users receive an SMS to their inbox,
> they get another five free messages.
>
> "*They're sowing now so they can reap the advertising funds down the
> line,"* says Banky Ojutalayo, a former senior manager for value-added
> services at Glo Mobile Ghana. He suggests that once the service had built up
> a large enough user base, Google would consider selling short adverts at the
> end of each message - a potential goldmine.
>
> *African mobile operators' eagerness to team up with Google shows the
> power of its global brand*. But sometimes the company falls foul of the
> higher standards it sets for itself. It was criticised last year for
> exercising loopholes to pay an overseas tax rate of just 2.4% in the US,
> cutting its tax bill by $3.1bn. Google insists that it "complies with tax
> law in every country in which it operates," including seven countries in
> Africa.
>
> *As the influence of companies like Google grows, the continent's techies
> are aware of the urgency to stake their own territorial claim. *
> *An African-led initiative is pushing for a .africa suffix aimed at
> breaking down the dominance of foreign hosting sites. Around 90% of African
> websites are registered as .com, says DotConnectAfrica's Sophia Bekele. When
> it costs $19 to register a .com site versus around $50 for a .co.ke in
> Kenya, the choice is obvious, but it is not helping to populate the African
> web.*
>
> Nigerian developer Saheed Adepoju, who launched his own version of Apple's
> iPad tablet called Inye last year, says some of his peers are worried Google
> is trying to take over their market. Adepoju tells them that they should not
> worry. "We know the local system better than they do. It's not going to be
> hard to compete with them."
>
> *Whatever its profit projections, Google's African advance is a long play.
> It sees that the continent is getting richer and more connected. Africa's
> sparsely populated internet is a money-making opportunity for Google and the
> army of African developers it is training to help fill in the gaps. Africa's
> future is an online and a mobile one, and Google has raised its flag firs
> t. *
>
> Original Article
>
> http://www.theafricareport.com/201106285165490/five-stories/is-google-good-for-africa.html<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=wkvqrzcab&et=1107947158325&s=1800&e=001k7fMKumNiH_jkBduw08ScYTwY1I0r4NotagBQlNofXNaZBHoPaJvzG_grplYZDlEe4ENsv4G-uyfb4KvrwJSLKkO4Gets8L3ZuoKOXkWd7zCaBTn0RFRKjPImvYjD7wthVOHBeOBkp9lbLnlc-PV0w16U-HoIDVTw73mJJrM0frUYjmMB9Eam2pbbedL7S2i_goJTebkpyWWynvX3x7g2A==>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Matunda Nyanchama, PhD, CISSP; mnyanchama at aganoconsulting.com
> Agano Consulting Inc.;  www.aganoconsulting.com; Twitter: nmatunda;
> <http://twitter.com/#%21/nmatunda>Skype: okiambe
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *
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