Day 3 of the GKenya event was more for marketers and technology entrepreneurs to experience and learn about Google product to help spur innovation and business in the region. Content creation and monetization was high on the agenda with an obvious a focus toward online and mobile.
The VC/Entrepreneur panel was the most interesting part of the day…for me at least with the likes of the Mobile Planet and Seven Seas dons…among others who will shared their expertise in raising capital and launching technology ventures.
The stage was poorly lit but rest assured you the panel is who they say they are The audio on the videos may be abit sketchy…but guess they will do.
A few years ago election monitoring and reporting was a tricky, tiring and often thankless affair. Dealing with Kenya‘s elections processes in the last decade, in particular, has largely involved sending hordes of polling clerks, election observers and monitors, with paper files stashed in their underarms, to far-flung areas to help record the goings-on election and referenda. Apart from being slow, unreliable and erratic, such processes have proved risky for election officials especially if violence broke out.
But things are changing. Mobile phone technology is rapidly transforming the way these national and other crucial life-changing activities are carried out, bringing with it faster, reliable and credible relay of information from outlying areas.
Apart from elections reporting, the ubiquitous device, owned by nearly 20 million Kenyans, has also helped stem incidents of violence that have in the past rocked various parts of Kenya notably in 2007 elections. A lot depends on how transparent such processes as elections are but the mobile phone is taking a lion’s share of the contribution toward this positive change.
In a ground-breaking project in conjunction with the Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC), Safaricom, Kenya’s largest network operator, the world’s leading mobile handsets-maker Nokia supplied over 18,000 Nokia 1680 phones to be used by the electoral body’s returning officers and clerks in various part of the country.
IIEC had picked Safaricom after, inviting Kenyan telecom operators for a partnership with it with the objective of running an efficient and credible referendum process. continue reading »
Threw the question out to a seasoned telco executive – Whats your take on the current operator wars?
In not so many words: Bad for business but good for strategy students. Safcom have lost the advantage they had on price perception. Zain has gained the price perception advantage and taken the lead. Safcom have become followers. Game has changed. Territory ni ya bharti. New field for safcom. Zain had better have cash for the fight. Safcom has war chest just never been used.
• strategy – zain wins
• response and speed to market – safcom & yu
• overall gain - consumer
• overall loss - orange
• overall winners – cck as regulators.
next
1. challenge for sms based businesses like yours Mbugua
2. challenge for PRSP’s in general
3. sms aggregators have cost issues
4. new area for fights is data/content
Just a day after launching the “industry-shaking” low cross-network charges, Zain Kenya is accusing competitor Safaricom of sabotage. The company has written to the Communications Commission of Kenya, asking the regulator to stop Safaricom from “abusing dominance” by offering only limited capacity for cross network calls coming from the Zain network. “Our customers are experiencing congestion and call set up issues when they call Safaricom and not when calling Zain. This is purely for the simple reason that our main competitor has been delaying the capacity increase request from our side to accommodate the incremental traffic coming from us after we launched our new offer in the market,” said Mr. Rene Meza, Zain Kenya Managing Director. continue reading »
Spend time cleaning up your idea: you will most probably discover that your great idea was a mashup of several quite good ideas and one really brilliant one…prune,prune,prune
When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get he magical alchemy of great performance – good to great
My HR dept put out an advert for an office assistant cum receptionist. One of the cover letters stood out…literally, and HR had to share it with me…and I with you. Here’s to Henry getting a job but not here
RE: APPLICATION FOR THE POST AS A OFFICE ASSISTANT:
It’s with great humility and honor that I place my application epistle for the designation of office assistant. Take cognizant that I am a 25 years old graduate, who attained aggregate grade of c- (minus) in the (K.C.S.E.) in the year 2004. Mean while I am working with Tek-vision computers as a sole entrepreneur for my fate in life.
Born and bred with a genuine urge of working any where, I believe in me your office will jealously boast of not only an assiduous servant, but also a committed and conscientious person.
Affixed here with find my resume of academics credentials.
I thirstily await a positive response from your esteemed office.
Mbugua Njihia – the mind of is a personal soapbox: views, opinions and thoughts reflected here can be ingested and regurgitated in support of knowledge sharing.
The audio on the videos may be abit sketchy…but guess they will do.
