Latest mobile phone statistics from Africa and what this means…

A few weeks ago, while doing some research for my HRSDC client, I came across a report entitled  Africa Mobile Fact Book 2008 , which opened my eyes to the rapidly evolving mobile landscape in Africa. This growth has been fueled in large part by the liberalization effort resulting in the formation of independent regulatory bodies and increased competition in the market. Combine this with numerous grassroots efforts to empower the poor (by providing access to knowledge through technology) and you have yourself the beginning of a true revolution, in an area that is typically disregarded in terms of technological growth for obvious reasons (i.e 800 million people going to bed hungry every day).

However, consider these stats:

• The total African mobile subscriber base is roughly 280.7 million people (30% of total)
• The total African mobile subscriber base is expected to reach 561 million (53.5%) by 2012 .
• The mobile penetration rate in South Africa is 84%
• South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria and Kenya constitute the key mobile markets in Africa in terms of potential growth.
• At least 15 operators have already announced plans of introducing 3G voice and data services (including among others, Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria)
• SMS is being used in innovative ways such as pricing information for agricultural products, mobile banking (in more developed regions), and human rights abuse notifications.

Mobile Subscribers & Penetration Rates in Africa

Major Mobile Markets in Africa

Put simply, mobile phone devices can now be manufactured at little cost. With the advent of data services, these mobile phones are essentially mini computers. Many Africans could never afford an actual laptop or desktop, however a mobile phone running on a non-profit cellular network is within reach for many.  Of course, numerous barriers still exist. The main ones being taxation, low-income groups and widespread illiteracy. This is where grassroots efforts to provide low-cost technology to the poor (those that have at least some basic supply of food, water and shelter) come into play. Us in the social media sphere often talk about “individual empowerment” as one of the key elements of the web 2.0 revolution.  This is where that empowerment has the potential to make a real “life or death” difference. Having done some work with CIDA and various other non-profit organizations working in regions such as Africa, I am quickly learning that social media’s real power and potential lies in the developing world.  We’re not there yet (the infrastructure needs to be put in place first), however once those basic levels of literacy are reached (through efforts like the Ink-Media computer project), and once mobile phone penetration rates start hitting those high numbers (50% +), then the aggregate “long-tail” of the world’s poor will suddenly have a tremendous, powerful voice.

“Us Now” : A documentary you should watch…

Seeing as how this is a blog that deals in large part with “Government 2.0″ issues, I figured it would only be appropriate to mention something about the CSPS panel discussion I participated in last week. The topic was Mass Collaboration, Government & Internet, the catalyst for the discussion being the screening of a new documentary from the UK entitled “Us Now“.

Panel members in addition to myself included:

• Anthony D Williams, Co-Author of Wikinomics
• David Hume, Special Advisor on Engagement, Government of British Columbia
• Maryantonett Flumian, University of Ottawa Executive in Residence (also former Deputy Minister of Service Canada)

The official description of the film is as follows:

“Us Now tells the stories of online networks that are challenging the existing notion of hierarchy. For the first time, it brings together the fore-most thinkers in the field of participative governance to describe the future of government.”

A comprehensive debrief of the movie and subsequent discussion is summarized brilliantly by Richard Akerman in this blog post of his.

If you’re too lazy to read, you can watch the preview right here…

In terms of my own thoughts (in addition to Richard’s summary), I am simply thrilled to finally see the social media/government 2.0 discussion shift into second gear here in Canada. I don’t just mean that from this one speaking engagement, but rather from the sheer volume of government social media related proposals and speaking requests I have received as a consultant over the course of the last 6 months in particular. Naturally, our neighbours down south had quite a bit to do with the adoption of web 2.0 buzzwords in the Canadian political sphere, however i am referring to the bureaucratic side of government; the side that gets things done (or is supposed to anyway). Change really is happening even though you may not see it at the individual level just yet. It will take time, but those of you that understand the typical speed of the government machine know that in relative terms, things are progressing quite fast.

Case in point, have a look at the new additions to the Government 20 Best Practices Wiki , when you’re done doing that, learn about the ChangeCamp initiative, which is essentially:

“an event format, an open community and a set of tools and ideas designed to give citizens and governments the ability to work collaboratively in new ways to make change and to better address real-world challenges in our communities.”

The Ottawa version of ChangeCamp is being organized right now, so join in and participate!

As for the CSPS discussions, we have begun preliminary talks of offering very specific training sessions through the school on various social media topics as they relate  to government. Stay tuned…

Long overdue Podcamp Toronto 2009 debrief

Just so you know, it bugs me like crazy not be able to dump my thoughts on various time-sensitive issues that occur on a daily basis. It’s unfortunately that time of year again when my post frequency is hindered as a result of “March Madness” (year-end for government clients). I am working with about six clients at the moment in addition to regular speaking engagement travel gigs. This is more than enough to eat up all of my time.  My “blog about this” list has accumulated over 60 items since my last post, however the #1 item I want to write about first is my great experience at Podcamp Toronto 2009.

As I usually do with my conference “debrief” posts, the following are essentially key items derived from my handwritten notes for each session I attended. The quantity of bullets under each post is not a reflection of the session quality but rather “new” things that I learned and/or people that I met. Sometimes a single item and/or contact can be extremely valuable to me. There is little grammatical structure to these bullets since they are meant to be a brain dump. So without further ado here are the sessions I attended…

Building Relationships with Word of Mouth and PR Practitioners While Maintaining Credibility with Your Audience – Anita Clarke, David Jones, Eden Spodek and Matthew Stradiotto, moderated by Keith McArthur.

My Two Cents: Walked in late, however it is always refreshing to hear what “hobby” bloggers have to say. I often find myself forgetting that most bloggers have personal blogs unrelated to their day jobs.

• Sysomos is apparently emerging as a competitor to Radian6 (which I use religiously)
• Blog pitching firms expect bloggers to show them their private metrics in order to gauge performance
• Quantcast Analytics is a very useful, publicly accessible analytics site
• Many “hobbyist” bloggers don’t care about analytics, trends, marketing space, etc…

Stalking Your Audience for Fun & Profit – Monitoring Your Community & Competitors – Sean Power on the O’Reilly book \”Complete Web Monitoring\”

My Two Cents: I was absolutely amazed as to how many great free monitoring tools I had not previously heard of. Sean did an amazing job presenting a massive amount of content in a short amount of time.

• I was told to watch the video “Website is Down” to get an idea of what IT guys do during their work day
• There is absolutely no privacy online…NONE, ZIP, NADA!
• Most visitor behaviour assumptions can actually be measured
• Monitoring 101: What did they do? Could they do it?  How did they do it?
• Minefield of buzzwords out there
• Key items to ask:
  • How did users get there?
  • Places and tasks: What are they doing? Where are they going?
  • Where did they leave? Why?
• Install Clicky –>Spy software analytics
• People do this: Consume, Click, Give Data, Navigate
• Neat metric: Percent of people that scrolled to the bottom of the page (Visitor attention vs. absolute scrolling reach)
• Install Clicktale & Crazyegg–>Real-time monitoring software examples, both track scrolling & fold.
• Neat metric: Blank fields left by user (if you have forms)
• Install Bitcurrent –>Replays user paths
• Need to start using the amazing exit survey tool called 4Q
• Install Monitorus
• Start using Google Sets
• Use SpyFu to find out what competitors are paying for various keywords
• Start tracking my TinyURL’s in Google (great performance metric)
• Use MyBlogLog to establish your identity
• Various additional Social Media Monitoring Tools worth using:
  • Google Alerts
  • Whatchthatpage
  • Roll Yo (your own search engine)
  • Bigboards (checks forums)
  • Search IRC
  • Twemes
  • Facebook Lexicon
  • TweetDeck
  • SiteVolume (site seems to be down right now – March 1st, 09)
  • Buzzfeed
• Download the Facebook Socialistics app to analyze your social network
• Use BackType to track comments
• Those interested in being part of the analytics community should look at becoming moderators on the web analytics list
• Platforms worth looking into: StatZen and WikiMonitor (?) to measure wiki metrics (Sean or anybody, I need a link here! Can’t find it using Google…may have written it down wrong).
• Look into Trendrr
• Use Compete to look at competitor traffic

How social media can be used to demystify public service institutions to encourage civic engagement - Jairus Pryor (Bank of Canada) and Audra Williams (Parliament of Canada).

My Two Cents: Walked in late to this one as well so I didn’t catch everything. However, I was very happy to see someone else speaking on public sector social media usage, albeit more so the political side. I tend to have an issue with political examples here in Canada since I find that simply using the “tools” doesn’t mean squat if your belief system and political culture are not in tune with the basic principles of “web 2.0″ (collaboration, transparency, 2-way engagement, etc…). Those of you wondering what I’m talking about haven’t worked with the Prime Minister’s Office.

• Conservatives tend to use more social media “tools” than the Liberals
• The Bank of Canada has a wiki, a fake blog, a Flickr account (for press to get pics from) and a Twitter account.
• Advice: “Once you have managed to start using a tool and bypassed the red-tape successfully, figure out ways to use the tool in new ways”
• Great quote: “What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent”.

Government 2.0 – A discussion on the expanding role of social media and government/citizen interaction, right here in Canada - Mike Kujawski (That would be me!).”

My Two Cents: Great crowd, although I wish I had more time allotted than 30 minutes. I was just getting started! Here is the link to the video of the presentation. I have no notes for this one for obvious reasons.

Making Traditional Media a Little More Social - Using Twitter, wikis and live-blogging at the Globe and Mail - Mathew Ingram.

My Two Cents: Great to see the person behind the Globe & Mail’s social media initiatives.

• Globe & Mail has created a real-time live-blogging widget (based on Cover it Live) that also captures Twitter & blogosphere discussion that is tagged appropriately.
• Good quote in the newspaper world: ” The people formerly known as the audience”.

A Social Media State of the Union Discussion - Collin Douma.

My Two Cents: Always a great open great discussion when Collin is moderating.

• There is still widespread debate as to the meaning of the word “podcasts” now that mainstream media is using it quite loosely.
• It is important for us social media folk to look outside the fishbowl of our own community.

My Two Cents: Solid presentation on overcoming barriers.

• Important to not use buzzwords among clients…focus on the purpose/benefits of the tool instead (e.g. instead of wiki say “editable, shareable document”)
• Look into the Society for New Communications Research.
• Good books: “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion“, “Made to Stick” and anything by Maslow.

Taking Control of Success - John Meadows, Steve Saylor, Keith Burtis and Katherine Matthews.

My two cents: Good open discussion on the various perspectives on “success” in the social media community. I mentioned the importance of setting objectives, which many “hobbyist” community members tend to forget…hence why they have a difficulty in measuring performance and defining “success” , which in my opinion is completely relative and dependant on your own personal objectives.

• Great quote “If you’re interested, you’ll be interesting”
• I should try out Batchbook

Lunch & Learn on the latest in mobile social media marketing - Robin Browne.