<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;font-size:10pt"><div><span>Sam</span></div><div><br><span></span></div><div><span>There is a link; it doesn't lead to the story.<br></span></div><div> </div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;">----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;"></font><font size="2"><span style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;">Matunda Nyanchama, PhD, CISSP; mnyanchama@aganoconsulting.com</span><br style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;"><span style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;">Agano Consulting Inc.; </span><a rel="nofollow" style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;" target="_blank"
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where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a workstation…" - Anonymous</span></font><br style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;"><span style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;">-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;"><font style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;" size="1">This e-mail, including attachments, may be privileged and may contain confidential or proprietary information intended only for the addressee(s). Any other distribution, copying, use, or disclosure is unauthorized and strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and permanently delete the message, including any attachments, without making a copy. Thank you.</font><br><br></div><div
style="font-family: bookman old style, new york, times, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font size="2" face="Arial"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> samuel ochanji <sochanji@yahoo.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Matunda Nyanchama <mnyanchama@aganoconsulting.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cc:</span></b> KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Monday, October 10, 2011 1:46 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [kictanet] Is Google good for Africa?<br></font><br>
<meta http-equiv="x-dns-prefetch-control" content="off"><div id="yiv1523341822"><div><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt;"><div><span>Matunda,</span></div><div><span>I can see link to the Africa Report website in two places on the story, at the top and at the bottom. Also here http://www.theafricareport.com/201106285165490/five-stories/is-google-good-for-africa.html</span></div><div><span>Rgds</span></div><div><br></div><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt;"><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt;"><font size="2" face="Arial"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Matunda Nyanchama <mnyanchama@aganoconsulting.com><br><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">To:</span></b> sochanji@yahoo.com<br><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">Cc:</span></b> KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
<kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke><br><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">Sent:</span></b> Monday, October 10, 2011 10:01 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">Subject:</span></b> [kictanet] Is Google good for Africa?<br></font><br>
<div id="yiv1523341822"><div><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;font-size:10pt;"><div><span>This article appeared on the dotafrica linkedin list; I cannot locate it on the Africa Report website, though.</span></div><div><span><br></span></div><span><b><span style="font-size:32px;">Is Google good for Africa? </span><br>DCA inNEWS<br><div><span style="font-weight:normal;"><b>
<div style="display:inline;"><span style="font-size:9pt;"><br><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12pt;">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.</span></span></div>
</b></span></div></b></span><table id="yiv1523341822content_LETTER.BLOCK14" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:#2D6F84;" rowspan="1" colspan="1" bgcolor="#2D6F84" height="1">_</td></tr></tbody></table>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;text-align:justify;"><span><span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;">The Africa Report is </span><span><span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;">a monthly magazine<b> based in Paris </b></span><span style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><b>France</b></span><span><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">,<b> which is the </b></span><b><span style="font-size:13px;">English</span><span style="font-size:10pt;"> version of the highly respected "</span></b></span><b><a rel="nofollow" class="yiv1523341822yui_3_2_0_28_1318240301215101" style="color:rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;" shape="rect">Groupe Jeune Afrique", </a><a rel="nofollow" class="yiv1523341822yui_3_2_0_28_1318240301215103"
style="color:rgb(0, 0,
0);font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;" shape="rect">which</a> </b><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;"><b>has been the leading economic, political and cultural media throughout Africa and worldwide. </b></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;text-align:justify;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;"><b> </b></span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;text-align:justify;"><span><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;"><b>The Africa Report</b> thus
provides more than 400,000 African and international readers with
expert analysis of Africa's fast-changing political and economic
landscapes.It has e</span><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">stablished itself as the international publication of reference dedicated to African affairs. <b>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,</b> 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.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;text-align:justify;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;text-align:justify;"><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#000000;"><b>Is google good for Africa? </b></span><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><b>WRITTEN BY GEMMA WARE IN DAKAR</b>: </span></div>
<div style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;">http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=wkvqrzcab&et=1107947158325&s=1800&e=001k7fMKumNiH_jkBduw08ScYTwY1I0r4NotagBQlNofXNaZBHoPaJvzG_grplYZDlEe4ENsv4G-uyfb4KvrwJSLKkO4Gets8L3ZuoKOXkWd7zCaBTn0RFRKjPImvYjD7wthVOHBeOBkp9lbLnlc-PV0w16U-HoIDVTw73mJJrM0frUYjmMB9Eam2pbbedL7S2i_goJTebkpyWWynvX3x7g2A==</div>
<div style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"> </div>
<table class="yiv1523341822imgCaptionTable" style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;text-align:center;margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:5px;" align="left" width="130"><tbody><tr><td class="yiv1523341822imgCaptionImg" style="text-align:center;" rowspan="1" colspan="1" width="130"><img name="ACCOUNT.IMAGE.184" alt="Africa Report Cover" border="0" height="251" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="182"></td></tr><tr><td class="yiv1523341822imgCaptionText" style="text-align:center;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;color:#666666;" rowspan="1" colspan="1"> <br><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="color:#3366ff;"><i><span style="font-weight:normal;font-size:16pt;">As the inf</span><span style="font-weight:normal;font-size:21px;">luence of companies like Google grows, the continent's techies are aware of the urgency to stake their own territorial claim.</span></i></span>
<div style="font-weight:normal;font-size:10pt;"><span style="font-size:16pt;"><b> </b></span></div>
</span><span style="color:#0a74db;font-size:21px;"><i><span style="color:#ff6600;">An African-led initiative is pushing for a .africa suffix</span> aimed at breaking down the dominance of foreign hosting sites. <span style="color:#ff6600;">Around 90% of African websites are registered as .com, says DotConnectAfrica's Sophia Bekele.</span>
When it costs $19 to register a .com site versus around $50 for a
.<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://co.ke">co.ke</a> in Kenya, the choice is obvious, but it is not helping to
populate the African web. </i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<div style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"> </div>
<div style="color:#000000;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span>
<div style="text-align:justify;"><i><b>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.</b></i></div>
<div style="text-align:justify;"> </div>
<div style="text-align:justify;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">"<b>The problem with Africa is that there isn't enough information,"</b>
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.</span></div>
<div style="text-align:justify;">
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>Google has Africa firmly in its sights</b>.
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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>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</b>. 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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">I<b>t is also embedding itself in the internet's evolving geopolitics</b>.
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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>The company has won fans - and sceptics</b>
- 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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>During the revolution, Egyptian activists were fearful of what US multinationals might do with their private information.</b>
"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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>Google's play on the continent is seductive and transformative</b>.
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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;text-align:center;" align="center"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><b>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</b>. 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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>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.</b> 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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>WE COULD BE HEROES </b>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."</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>Others are going on to great things.</b>
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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>Spreading its tentacles further and deeper into the world's internet is a fundamental part of Google's business plan</b>.
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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">"<b>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,</b>" 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."</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>With a platform like Baraza</b>
- 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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>Such crowd-sourcing is central to Google's global strategy</b>.
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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>Since
mid-2009, Google has been busy moulding a new generation of bright,
tech-savvy Africans who are incentivised to evangelise.</b> 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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>LEARNING TO ADAPT </b>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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>Google has not yet made the biggest commitment it could to Africa - to build a data centre</b>,
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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>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</b>. 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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">"<b>They're sowing now so they can reap the advertising funds down the line,"</b>
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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"><b>African mobile operators' eagerness to team up with Google shows the power of its global brand</b>.
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.</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;text-align:center;" align="center"><span style="color:#3366ff;font-size:11pt;"><b><span style="color:#000000;">As
the influence of companies like Google grows, the continent's techies
are aware of the urgency to stake their own territorial claim.</span> </b></span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;text-align:center;" align="center"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><i><span style="color:#3366ff;"><b>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
.<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://co.ke">co.ke</a> in Kenya, the choice is obvious, but it is not helping to
populate the African web.</b></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">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."</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><b><span style="font-size:10pt;">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</span>t. </b></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">Original Article</span></div>
<div style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;"><span style="font-size:10pt;">http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=wkvqrzcab&et=1107947158325&s=1800&e=001k7fMKumNiH_jkBduw08ScYTwY1I0r4NotagBQlNofXNaZBHoPaJvzG_grplYZDlEe4ENsv4G-uyfb4KvrwJSLKkO4Gets8L3ZuoKOXkWd7zCaBTn0RFRKjPImvYjD7wthVOHBeOBkp9lbLnlc-PV0w16U-HoIDVTw73mJJrM0frUYjmMB9Eam2pbbedL7S2i_goJTebkpyWWynvX3x7g2A==</span></div>
</div>
</span></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;">----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;"></font><font size="2"><span style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;">Matunda Nyanchama, PhD, CISSP; mnyanchama@aganoconsulting.com</span><br style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;"><span style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;">Agano Consulting Inc.; </span><a rel="nofollow" style="font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;" target="_blank" href="http://www.aganoconsulting.com">www.aganoconsulting.com</a>; </font><font class="yiv1523341822Apple-style-span" size="2">Twitter: <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://twitter.com/#%21/nmatunda"><span class="yiv1523341822yshortcuts"
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