Monthly Archive for December, 2008
The Minister of Education, Professor Sam Ongeri, this morning announced the results of the 2008 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations. Over 695,000 primary school pupils countrywide sat for the national examinations that will determine their entry to secondary schools in the coming year. I am keen to see how soon the results will go online at both the Kenya National Examinations Council and Ministry of Education web sites. However, its more likely that both the Daily Nation and East African Standard web sites will have the broad results tomorrow (Wednesday).
Technorati is the leading blog search engine and most comprehensive source of information on the Blogosphere that indexes more than 1.5 million new blog posts in real time and introduces millions of readers to blog and social media content. Technorati recently published the State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, which analyzes the trends and themes of blogging.
In the 2008 report, Tecnorati went beyond the numbers of the Technorati Index to deliver even deeper insights into the blogging trend. To do so, Technorati surveyed bloggers directly about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially. To read the full report go here.
Keringet is one of East Africa’s only natural mineral water products. It is an exceptional award winning water is bottled directly at the source, a natural spring located on a 20 acre private estate in the Kenyan Rift Valley, a part of Kenya renowned for its natural beauty and healthy climate. Bottled at 8,000 feet above sea level, Keringet has been voted ‘best tasting water’ for four independent years at the International BBI Awards.
During the course of this year, Crown Foods Limited selected Dotsavvy (the digital agency I co-founded and run) to redesign and launch a brand new online presence for Keringet. The work involved completely re-working the information architecture and creative design. We also integrated a content management system and e-newsletter module. The final outcome, that all of us at Dotsavvy are proud of can be found at http://www.water.co.ke. Enjoy refreshingly!
In the last 12 years or so that I have been “online”, I am still awed by the power of the internet to impact the world in a positive way.
At a time when the whole world is reeling from the financial crisis during the holiday season, this report on CNN.com shows how blogging can drammatically assist those in need. Never underestimate the power of one person leveraged with the internet!
In what can only be described as a stunning disclosure, Toyota is forecasting its first ever loss in over 71 years of being in business.
Toyota expects to reduce its global production for vehicles by over one million and will cut back operations significantly.
My concern is whether Toyota will consider pulling out for Formula One like Honda Corporation did recently due to the global financial crisis – time will tell what happens next. For the full story on CNN, go here.
I have just found out from CNN.com that over 1100 people have died from the Cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe and over 20,000 are sick with the illness. To-date, over one quarter of Zimbabwe’s population has left the country and now children are also abandoning Zimbabwe and moving to South Africa. The crippling inflation is also still on the rise and its amazing to imagine how Zimbabwean’s manage to survive today. This is all in light of the fact that Robert Mugabe continues to rule his fast declining country that is suffering an economic and humanitarian meltdown.
Quite frankly, I am flabbergasted and appaled at Robert Mugabe’s insistence on destroying Zimbabwe which once was known as the bread basket of Africa. Its amazing that the whole world and especially world leaders seem to be unmoved by the moral ineptness and ethical stink of Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe is a country that was once a gem of Africa and even rivalled South Africa in its progressiveness. How the current situation was arrived at Zimbabwe is simply an atrocity! Ultimately, it looks like a wait and see scenario so lets pary and hope for Zimbabwe’s liberation from Robert Mugabe’s Madness!
It looks that the mobile network tariff wars just won’t stop! In today’s paper, Orange Kenya has launched a free airtime service similar to YU Kenya’s. However, the striking difference is that Orange Kenya will reward you Kes. 3.00 free airtime per minute for any calls you receive from other mobile networks whereas YU Kenya is giving Kes. 0.75 free airtime per minute. This is bearing in mind that Orange Kenya still has one of the lowest standard rates for calls within its network, to other mobile networks and Telkom fixed of Kes. 3.50 per miinute.
However, there is a caveat – free airtime on Orange Kenya is rewarded for every incoming minute after 10 minutes weekly. At the same time, the offer is not extended to calls from the friends and family numbers which normally cost only Kes. 1.00 per minute, as well as Telkom Kenya fixed numbers and voicemail. Finally, the free airtime offer is only valid until the 15th January 2008 so its cleary geared towards the impending festive season. Now, what remains to be seen is if Safaricom and Zain Kenya will also respond with free airtime offer.
This morning, a Sunday no less, I made a presentation at this year’s edition of the Kenya Music Week (KMW). KMW is a music industry event that provides an accessible public forum for Industry stakeholders (i.e. musicians, producers, promoters, distributors, media, consumers, government & NGOs) to interact and produce solutions to Industry problems. My company Dotsavvy has supported KMW for the last 4 years by building and managing their web site. I am personally very proud to be affiliated with the KMW which has grown by leaps and bounds over the years and is playing a key role in stamping out music piracy in Kenya.
Kenyan music has become successful throughout the African Continent and is gaining audiences throughout the world. Its only a matter of time before a Kenyan musician breaks through the ranks and becomes a global star when you hear talent like Jua Cali, Eric Wainaina, Wahu, Nameless and Kanjii Mbugua do their thing. However, the feedback I received from the KMW workshop presentation I gave on social media marketing is that the major internet issues facing Kenya’s music industry are music distribution and sales, e-literacy amongst stakeholders, and building global awareness for Kenyan music.
There is no better channel than the internet as well as mobile media for distributing and selling music. However, the main problem in Kenya today is that we do not have the required legislation in place yet to address this issue. This, we hope should not be a problem in 2009 when it is expected that the draft ICT Bill will be passed by parliament. This is a crucial bill that the Kenyan parliament needs to pass since it will address e-commerce, m-commerce, digital intellectual property and content regulation issues for Kenya. However, its key that this legislation is done right and already a few red flags have been raised by ICT industry stakeholders since some clauses need to be amended, removed or added to make the bill comprehensive and current.
In the area of e-literacy, a strong recommendation would be for private-public sector partnerships that will enable stakeholders throughout Kenya to take full advantage of ICT as a key enabler for Kenya’s music industry which has already grown into a multi-billion shilling industry. In this day and age, with the advent of improved internet access and m-payments, Kenya’s Music Industry needs to understand and fully embrace ICT as the coming future. With the right knowledge and execution, Kenya’s musicians can become prosperous online even if there is massive piracy through more traditional distribution and sales channels.
On building global awareness and interest for Kenyan music, the biggest challenges are ensuring that its not only easy to find online and visible, but that legal distribution and sales channels are also enabled. There are so many potential consumers for Kenyan music but they can’t even find it online and cannot buy it online except in a few niche web sites. This is leading to piracy as things stand and once again Kenyan Music Industry will lose out if they are unable to take full advantage of the Internet and other ICT-enabled transaction channels.
All is all, the signs are encouraging. Many of Kenya’s leading musicians now have profile pages and do their marketing via social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. They use these profiles to keep their fans up to date on what is happening, invite them to concerts, allow them to sample music videos and music clips, etc. This is regardless of the fact that many Kenyan Musicians do not even have their own web sites or have even registered domain names – but they are still managing to effectively leverage social media online. You can download my presentation here.
There is a teaser Orange Kenya ad in today’s Sunday Nation that states the following:
It will change
your status
your views
your world
you.
Thursday 11 (in an iphone icon format)
So, its finally happening, as some had speculated months ago. Orange Kenya is launching Apple’s iphone in Kenya on Thursday the 11th December 2008 at their customer service office on Peponi Road, Westlands (8.00 pm)! This should be interesting. I am really keen to see what sort of price they will be selling the sexy iphone for in Kenya. Currently, many iphones in Kenya are the older non-3g model and are (still!) retailing for around Kes. 50,000.00 (these are the the network “unlocked” phones by the way) – this is really ridiculous since in other markets, the 3G iphone retails for around Kes. Kes. 15 – 20,000.00. What remains to be seen if they are launching the phone primarily for the consumer or business market. This will determine if the iphone may end being offered on Orange Kenya as post-paid or pre-paid services. Whatever the case, I am really looking forward to finally getting an iphone!
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