“This is wealth in Wote”
The owner of this shamba specially asked his man to remove the pipe so that he could proudly share his ‘wealth’ – sweet, fresh water piped in from a submersed pump with pipe and power laid down under the dry river bed and his fields. Value is always contextual.
Low Income Household consumer research in rural Kenya
In a couple of weeks, I’ll be starting a whole new set of fieldwork in rural Kenya. This time we’re doing something closer to the better known applications of our human centered design approach for increasing our understanding of people. It will be among rural ‘BoP’ households on behalf of a consumer product that’s retailed […]
Scarcity as a driver for innovation
Frugality and affordability are very much in the news of late, what with the most recent essay on Change Observer and this post on Paul Polak’s new blog both highlighting similar concepts but from the point of view of very different markets. It seems to imply the trend towards frugal design or extremely affordable yet […]
In conclusion: Lessons from The Village Telco project in Kenya
We’ve finally reached the point in our work for Village Telco where there’s been enough time for some reflection after the intense weeks of travel and observations across Kenya. I can cluster our learning into three broad areas: our approach, methodology and team work; Kenya’s people and the informal economy; and finally, the role of […]
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 […]
