Zuckerberg’s tour and the Tech impact to the Continent

Mark Zuckerberg’s tour to Africa caused a lot of mayhem in a good and bad way in the continent, ranging from social tweefs on twitter  and brags between Nigeria and Kenya to be  specific, basically it was fun, but let us not get lost in all the hype and  forget what the visit was all about as entrepreneurs and Techies.

First Let us start with Nigeria where the Tech and Entrepreneurial forum was held and a main live stream was Cast, for those who missed it here is the live forum also available for download.

In Nigeria, the visit mainly was not only to view Andela where he  and his Wife invested a good amount of funds to boost the startup and innovation , but also to learn about the startup ecosystem as he had announced in  his facebook account.

As far as any new Africa business commitments, “We are not announcing anything,” Facebook spokesperson Sally Aldous told TechCrunch via email. And for the rest of his visit, several Nigerian startup heads said they’d been invited to a Facebook townhall and Q&A with Zuckerberg on Wednesday.

Aldous would not confirm the event, but did say,

“This is a trip about listening and learning and understanding the challenges.”

Nigeria has become a hot bed for startups and incubators attracting and drawing in a lot of techies and members,

Three of the continent’s best funded/well known e-commerce ventures—Jumia, Konga, and MallforAfrica— are all headquarted in Lagos. Nigeria produced one of Africa’s notable 2016 exits with Swiss Ringier’s acquisition of online deals startup DealDey.

Nigeria made global tech headlines in  March when Jumia Group (previously A.I.G.) became Africa’s first startup unicorn via a $326 million investment round including Goldman Sachs and AXA insurance.  In May Nigeria received priority from Facebook when it announced a partnership with Airtel, called Internet.org Free Basics (which was rejected in India), allowing Nigerians to access certain internet services free on mobile. And in June eBay announced Nigeria as the opening country for its Africa expansion.

Underlying this shift in focus to Nigerian tech, versus other African IT brightspots like Kenya or South Africa, are economics and demographics. Nigeria  has dual distinctions as Africa’s most populous country (183 million) and largest economy with half a trillion dollars in output).

Granted, Nigeria’s markets and currency have taken a beating over the last 6 months, these population and business factors have created a compelling investment thesis for tech entrepreneurs and investors to scale in Nigeria first, then outward.

Facebook’s obviously noted much of this. It’s likely many of these themes will echo during Zuckerberg’s townhall Wednesday and throughout the remainder of his Nigeria visit. On a business level, Facebook has 120 million users in Africa, 84 million of whom are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

With 17 million users, Nigeria is the company’s largest Sub-Saharan African market, followed by South Africa (14 million), and Kenya (5.7 million), according to spokesperson Aldous. A particular Africa play for Facebook will be tapping the online advertising market that’s rising with the continent’s shift to digital commerce. Africa’s online sales are expected to top $75 billion on by 2025, with $10 billion of it occurring in Nigeria.

In a 2014 Facebook Business post the company highlighted its Africa growth as “a new opportunity to bring value to both people and advertisers.” When Facebook opened its first Africa office in South Africa in 2015, it appointed Ogilvy and Mather advertising executive Nunu Ntshingila as Head of Africa.

Whatever Facebook’s long term Africa strategy, and even without new commitments, Zuckerberg’s visit carried a huge amount of significance for Nigeria and beyond. “Here in Yaba, we’ve been working to build a tech ecosystem literally from scratch. For him to come here was a big validation for what we’ve been doing,” said CcHub’s Tijani.

Tijani believes perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of Zuckerberg’s visit could be 60 “Summer of Code” students between the ages of 5 and 18 with whom Facebook’s CEO sat down and practiced programming. “Today was their graduation day and they got to do it with Mark Zuckerberg. It’s hard to estimate what impact that could have,” he said.

In Kenya, the hype was all about Kenya finest Fish palace , MAMA Oliech, it was the greatest pleasure of the country even us as coders code into the moment Lol! , it was the best surprise we all anticipated or practically did not expect!!

but,

While Zuckerberg’s Nigeria visit was less anticipated — given the country only recently registered in global tech news — his dropping in on Kenya is less of a surprise.

The East African nation of 44 million has become the continent’s unofficial tech capital, dubbed “Silicon Savannah” for its advances in digital finance, tech incubators and local IT innovations such as BRCK and the Ushahidi crowdsourcing platform.

Local telco Safaricom’s M-Pesa mobile money product is globally recognized. The company has used its mobile infrastructure to innovate a number of digital products, including solar electricity (M-Kopa), online TV and the recent launch of its M-Pesa integrated ride-hail app(Little), an Uber competitor.

The Kenyan government, which established an ICT authority, is one of the continent’s more proactive in supporting its tech ecosystem. And iHub helped spur Africa’s tech incubator movement, which now includes more than 300 innovation spaces across the continent, according to a recent GSMA survey.

From a tech perspective, Zuckberberg’s decision to visit Nairobi is relatively straightforward. Two initiatives he focused on were the BRCK venture and digital prototype startup Gearbox, both outgrowths of the iHub infrastructure Erik Hersman and Juliana Rotich established in 2010. BRCK developed in response to local IT challenges of poor net connectivity and electricity.

The solar-powered BRCK Wi-Fi product (about the size of an actual brick) provides device charging capabilities, 3G and 4G internet for up to 20 connections and now ships to over 60 countries. “He got a demo of the next generation BRCK device, and was pretty intrigued by our Kio devices,” said Hersman, referring to BRCK’s educational tablet for primary school students.

Zuckerberg also reviewed the Gearbox-supported Strauss solar energy panel and PayGo Energy home cooking product. “He was really interested in the integration of M-Pesa into other services,” said Hersman, noting the PayGo product allows Kenyans to finance the kit using mobile phones and M-Pesa mobile payments.

Zuckerberg’s Nigeria and Kenya trips coincide with Facebook’s expanding Africa presence and the continent’s growing digital profile. Facebook has 84 million users in Sub-Saharan Africa, 17 million in Nigeria, 14 million in South Africa and 5.7 million in Kenya, according to spokesperson Sally Aldous.

As previously reported, a particular Facebook Africa play will be tapping the online advertising market that’s rising with the continent’s shift to digital commerce, expected to reach $75 billion by 2025.

Facebook opened its first Africa office in South Africa in 2015, appointing Ogilvy and Mather advertising executive Nunu Ntshingila as Head of Africa. In Kenya, the company has provided financial support to iHub events and workshops (Erik Hersman confirmed).

Kenya is also one of Facebook’s Internet.org Free Basics countries, a program that allows users on Airtel networks to access limited internet services free on mobile. Facebook’s commitment to connect more Africans to the internet suffered a bit of a setback Thursday when the SpaceX rocket carrying the company’s Amos-6 satellite exploded pre-launch.

As for what to expect from Facebook in Africa after Zuckerberg’s trip, company reps would not provide details. iHub, Gearbox and BRCK co-founder Erik Hersman sees possibilities to upgrade Facebook’s connectivity efforts, “Free Basics is growing but it’s still not the open internet,” he said. “There could be an opportunity to open it up around a business model that works.”

Hersman also believes the Facebook CEO’s visit will also draw more attention to Africa from Silicon Valley. “He could have just visited South Africa, which is what more people would have expected,” he said. “Visiting Nigeria and Kenya sends a message that could get other global tech players off the sidelines. If Facebook is putting some time, interest, and money into these markets others will definitely pay attention.”

Source Techcrunch.