Men of Influence magazine


For example, many services focus on the agricultural sector and mobile phones, he says.

In addition, many of the services are built for the “cultural nuances of Kenya” and the way people access the internet.

“When people from the west come here they get confused and they have a hard time attacking the market because they don’t understand that the typical African has a different paradigm of what the internet is,” says Mr Hersman.

A recent report by the Kenyan government, estimates that more than 90% of people who access the internet in the country, do it through the mobile network. That means slower speeds and smaller screens.

And as people do not have an always-on connection, mass-market, consumer services need to build in other ways of interacting with a service such as SMS alerts, says Mr Hersman.

A good example he said, was a second hand car website called Cheki.

“The site lets you search for cars in the local market, but it also has a mobile web component and you also have a chance to SMS the owner.”

“The people that made it realised that most sellers will be able to receive an SMS rather than an e-mail.”

For most business ideas, he says, “you need a mobile component and then you work backwards from there”.

Mobiles also need to be included in most ideas, he says, because of the ubiquity of mobile payments services in Kenya.

Services such as M-Pesa, which allow people to save and transfer money through their phones, could be regarded as Kenya’s biggest hi-tech success so far.



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