Jamie Yang, speaker at TEDxDar 2010

Jamie Yang is a player in the alternative energy industry in Tanzania, working mainly in rural and semi-urban areas within the country. It is notable that he worked for IBM at a point. Jamie’s talk was kicked off by a strong statement on the commercialization of poverty in Africa and he had with him 2 pictures of the same farmer, one posing to be the poor guy and the other of the same man, dressed in the same clothes, too happy, probably because he got paid to pose for the other picture. The tales told of poverty in Africa do not reflect the actual state of the matter here.

Jamie stressed the need to empower communities by working with them on the ground to use their available resources to better their lives other than begging for help to solve temporary issues. He explained how EGG-energy, a company he founded stands in the gap between non-governmental organizations and venture capital which he termed as “evil capitalism”. How they use social investment to empower communities where they work to providing lighting in areas where electricity supply is not available. While they work to make profit and still keep the community at an advantage, he explained his approach which he recommended, to do business with the poor at their affordability. To treat the poor as a consumer of their products.

Jamie explained how everything costs more to the poor person as compared to the rich. How access of services for the poor is harder because resources are concentrated along developed lines.

In my view, Jamie, who is among the 2010 Echoing Green Finalists spoke a blunt truth that people fear either because it would be too expensive for them if Africa was not seen as poor or because they are beneficiaries of the commercialization of poverty.

Why are NGO and non-profit organizations among the richest in the African economy? It is they who live in mansions and drive luxurious cars whose cost is amounts that would do something to change someone’s life forever. Why is it that it is they that “fight” poverty that first serve themselves with huge salaries from the money they got by using posed photos of non-existent poverty? Where is civil education on our resources and why is our economy still poor while we have gold, diamonds, copper and all sorts of minerals in this country? Why is it that the richest people in our economies find it wise to invest out of Africa? Just my mind running wild. Jamie was a great speaker at TEDxDar 2010.

The official poster for the event

TED is made from initials of 3 words: Technology, Entertainment and Design. TEDx events are independently organized events which are about ideas worth spreading – here is an interesting blend, TEDx meets a rich Swahili culture when it comes to town in Dar es salaam this coming Saturday 22nd May 2010 in an interesting inaugural TEDxDar. Am a foreigner, who has found a home in the sweet welcome of Dar. The warmth of the people of Tanzania is exceptional. The love for people within them is something you will never find anywhere else in Africa. They have passion for soccer more than anything else I know. They are a united people. Despite having too many tribes, they all speak a common language, Swahili.

Entertainment in Tanzania is unique. Local content is highly valued as compared to western content. The movie industry is booming. Local musicians are entertaining us in Swahili and making it to our hearts. They are expressive and they are passionate about their culture yet very careful to not let it keep them off connecting with the rest of the world. Nightlife is great, everyone becomes familiar too quickly. In the last few months I have seen great international musicians perform in Tanzania and corporates really believe in the power of music and art as a way of outreach. I have seen Busta Rhymes, Beenie Man, Angelique Kidjo, Sean Kingston and more just within under a year visit and light up Tanzania.

I have seen the great Naomi Campbell in Tanzania, mixed with Hasheem Thabit, Tanzania’s own NBA star, had a drink with Nancy Sumari, former Miss World Africa and Miss Tanzania, shared a cab with the famous Canavaro and attended my first ever soccer match in Tanzania. Its a land of great influence.

Technology is quickly elevating Tanzania and while the rest of Africa takes a step into the mobile and internet sweep, Tanzania ranks 8th in Africa on the state of the mobile web report. Mobile phone companies are in price wars to ensure the consumer gets the best and young innovators are fast moving to create localized content and get things moving towards the first lane.

TEDxDar cant come more interesting. It blends all this and puts it in a single event, a great Saturday to share ideas, mix and socialize. Great speakers in the list to take the very interesting themes, my favorite being “What Would Nyerere Do?” Its not specified with what but since am in the ICT industry, I would like to imagine what Nyerere would do with my iPhone, 6 Telecoms’ 5MB/s connection and probably a handy PSP. There is no telling, I bet Nakaaya Sumari (Tusker Project Fame 2006, musician and politician) who is among the speakers will be there to tell us what she sees “In-Between Spaces” the other theme at the event.

Selemani Kinyunyu, a slim young man who I met back in 2008 at my Nairobi office came to me to do a website for what I found as a really interesting idea about carbon offsets will be there too, maybe I can understand a few lines I missed then. In simple words, TEDxDar brings a unique diversity together and it sure is the ultimate event and am proud to be associated with this event.

I will be blogging about it here on that day and also doing twitter updates (Follow @raidarmax, @pushmobile, @majibuanswer, @TEDxDar and @tristarafrica for live updates on the event day. Also, use the #TEDxDar keyword on tweets and tracking software for live posts from the event). It is an exciting moment and lets keep it TEDxDar!

And for party animals and those of us with the energy to stay up late, there will be an after party to go with it! Its also about entertainment, isnt it?

Tigo Campaign

Mobile operators in Tanzania are at great war, price wars that is. When Tigo lowered its call costs to Tsh. 1 per second (1USD = Tshs. 1350), all the other networks branded it as the inferior network. Tigo is considered the village boy by the other players, its the only mobile network in Tanzania that has not bothered to sell expensive data plans, not bothered to improve its data platform (still on GPRS) and not even bothered to offer any corporate services to its subscribers and instead concentrated on the small consumer who is the majority. This concept has worked for them greatly, they have turned out as one of the biggest networks in Tanzania by subscriber base.

Zantel, a CDMA/GSM network which is leading in EVDO data services in Dar es salaam was second to introduce the 1 shilling per second calls and a 3.45 shillings across other networks. With a very small subscriber base compared to the other networks, this was not very notable even with really colorful branding, very well done campaigns featuring popular artists including Lady Jaydee (Leading Musician) and Nancy Sumari (Former Miss Tanzania & Miss World Africa) among others.

Early this month, Vodacom followed and introduced 1 shilling per second for Vodacom to Vodacom calls and went down to serious campaigns featuring AY, a popular Tanzanian hip hop artist. The most surprising thing is that in a week of this launch, Tigo hit back with a half a shilling campaign titled “Tigo Thumni” with calls from Tigo to Tigo costing only half a Tanzanian shilling, meaning a call is 30 shillings a minute, which is literally the cheapest call rate in East Africa coming to about 1.65 Kenya shillings a minute.

Zain which for long stuck to its “corporate” outfit, today decided to unveil its 1 shilling per second campaign, not an offer but a rate reduction on Zain to Zain calls. So literally speaking, Tanzania is officially the country with the cheapest calling rates in East Africa if not Africa generally.

Data rates are also reasonable compared to Kenyan rates with Zantel’s EVDO service being the fastest in Dar es salaam and only going for Tshs. 10,000 for 200MB and Tshs. 70,000 for 2GB, way cheaper compared to Safaricom’s 3G which is the only service that comes closest in Kenya to what Zantel is offering.

Tigo is also rumored to be launching a mobile money transfer service in Tanzania to try seal the wholes which have seen Vodacom’s M-Pesa and Zain’s Zap fail to hit the market as expected and reflected by the growth in Kenya.

While the call rates may be cheapest in Tanzania, customer care is worst in Africa here in my opinion, a shame because Tanzanians are among the most hospitable people I know.

Good job done by Seacom so far is commendable. So I take a moment to try and figure out who Seacom is and according to their website, “SEACOM is a Mauritian company owned 75% by African investors as a collaboration between East and Southern Africans and owns 100% of the SEA International Cable. A small group of Investors with proven access to both debt and equity, were selected specifically because they were not national telecommunications operators thus avoiding value chain interference by to separating the ownership of the asset from its use” That is good for PR. Just before that paragraph, there is a small chart of cable ownership and it leaves me wondering why Kenya and Tanzania has to own only 35% of the cable in our countries while Seacom owns the other 65%. Looking at all the other countries where Seacom is present, the country owns 100% of the cable.

I just have questions, why cant we be 100% owners? What are the direct implications on cost to the consumer for that? What were the ownership options and is it that we didnt have investors with the capacity or was it dictated or politically “arranged”?  So far, Seacom cant even release the list of ISPs buying bandwidth from them something that makes me even get more questions.