Social enterprises and the target audience for their value propositions
It struck me while browsing through some ‘design for social impact’ product websites recently that while their focus might be on the poor, their communication and messaging was geared towards the Western or top of the pyramid audience. I’d rather not link to nor name names, select your favourite cookstove/solar lantern/water purifier social enterprise and […]
Questioning the value of the term Base or Bottom of the Pyramid aka the BoP
Siim Esko wrote a short piece on his blog BoP Strategies after a conversation we recently had. Since much of his work focuses on the BoP in India and I’d just returned from the Kenyan tour, it was but natural for us to compare and contrast the challenges and the conditions of the lower income […]
Estimating price in unexplored and untapped markets
In addition to estimating the size and value of the Kenyan cyber cafe industry for our client, Village Telco of Cape Town, South Africa, we were tasked with finding out what would people pay for their product, the Mesh Potato. This challenge was the equivalent of walking up to someone and asking: How much would […]
At the inflection point of high growth to mature plateau
The only other cybers we’d seen this packed till now had been those in Nakuru – a veritable boom town for the industry- since in the past 5 years, the numbers had grown from 10 cybers to the current 77 not including the ones in the process of opening. Focus Cyber in Wote, in an […]
The role of the cyber cafe
Monica’s cyber in the small town of Maai Mahiu, a market for a primarily rural area, is now the only such facility available. There was another cyber on the other side of the main highway, she said, but it closed within its first year of operation. Internet access in this locale is available only through […]
Patterns of behaviour: trade offs made in time and money
This insight emerged from a conversation we had yesterday with Jane Mbithe, who manages EasySurf cyber at the Yaya Centre. Reflecting on patterns of behaviour among her high net worth customers who often already possessed the latest laptops and broadband modems, she said it boiled down to the elements of time and money with respect […]
Leveraging ignorance vs enabling knowledge
If someone were to purchase a mobile broadband modem but was unaware of data bundles, how quickly would 500 shillings worth of airtime disappear into cyberspace? I’ve been there – not knowing what ‘converting to data’ meant – and going through euros worth of airtime while surfing in Helsinki until the shop assistant gave me […]
Reflecting on the mobile internet in Kenya
After the past three weeks of focusing on cyber cafes and internet access in urban and rural Kenya, we’ve been questioning the value of the “mobile internet” statistics provided by operators to the CCK. Muchiri pointed out that since most of our feedback seemed to revolve more around SIM operated routers installed by cybers, or […]
Postcard from Kajiado: Cheap chinese phones and the internet
It wasn’t the first time we’d heard this from a cyber cafe operator, but apparently the biggest challenge to mobile phone users wishing to get online by using their spanking new phones was whether they were a cheap Chinese phone or a fake. Up and down Kenya, or right in the heart of Masai country […]
The increasing importance of user experience for cyber cafes
This idyllic garden paradise is our favourite hangout and interestingly enough, our cyber cafe, in the literal sense of the words, since it provides free wifi along with your coffee and butter cream cake. Given our recent single minded obsession with internet access and cyber cafes, it was only natural to fall into a conversation […]
