Category Archives: kenya communications

M4Change Nairobi

 

The Mobile Tech for Social Change camp (m4change) was held last Saturday (June 27 2009) at Strathmore University, Nairobi, and was staged by @afromusing and @jessicacolaco

More presentations and pictures are at the Wiki page, and these are my notes from attending a brief part of the talk on mobile applications in the morning

– With regard to mobile applications e.g. MPesa, (developers should) just create them, and let users sort themselves out e.g. a credit society that has 4 managers who are signatories, each one enters one (secret) digit of the society mobile PIN# to enable a mobile transfer transaction
– Wanahabari is a text to mobile application for journalists
– You can buy prepaid electricity via mobile phone in Rwanda
– Alternatives mobile browsers to opera include skyfire and mobileXL
– Safaricom is buying out leading developers in Kenya who may develop applications that compete with them (is that a bad thing?)
– While there is demand for Safaricom to avail an API for Mpesa, it is owned and controlled by Vodafone (UK)
– If you have an account at Consolidated Bank of Kenya and others, you can use a mobile phone to transfer money from your bank account to your Mpesa account
– Fibre mirage?
(i) The cost of last-mile connectivity in Kenya is still high e.g. one example cited was a quotation from a leading ISP in Kenya for $10,000 to extend the fibre just 300 metres
(ii) Even though fibre can make speeds more than 17X faster today, the ISP will only make gradual increments of 2X every few months to fool customers that they are always upgrading/improving
– There is no adequate consumer protection group/lobby in Kenya to agitate for better services. The communications commission of Kenya (CCK) regulator does not respond to consumers complaints
– Only Safaricom has a 3G license in Kenya (the cost is astronomical) and so far only deployed in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu
– Safaricom has developed Mpesa bulk payment/transfer systems. An example given was to enable payments to farmers in Mt. Kenya region
– A great resource for mobiles in development is the CGAP site (World Bank)
– M-pesa heralds a shift from branch-based banking to agent-based banking with examples (at CGAP)
– Safaricom partnership with Western Union to enable transfers from the UK to be sent to recipients mobile phones. Still being tested with Safaricom employees, but will probably be as expensive as a regular western union transfer.

Easter Reading

Kenyan Blogs to Read this Easter

Been a busy week, with a bit of travel, a lot of sports to watch and not much time to blog, so here are a couple of posts of note from the last week from friends and online colleagues.

Ka-investor explains the beauty of Twitter – it is simple, accessible from anywhere, via mobile phone, but which may take away some effort from doing full blog posts (and I’m guilty of that as well)

Maishinski explains how to make money in a recession e.g. buy cows cheaply because of the drought

This was a week of shocking layoff announcements, from Zain-Kenya (#2 mobile company) and even giant brewer – East African Breweries, and some more layoff perspectives from Grains of Masala. However senior Kenya government workers  are immune from the wave, as explained by Coldtusker

The Kenya Capital investment group has another corporate earnings roundup, as Equity Bank shares begin another curious ride that their CEO prophesied last month after the share split.

The creation of new districts (administrative political/government territories) appears to be an expensive futile exercise at the Nairobi Chronicle reports.

Finally, a rant by Kahenya becomes one of the most revealing posts on how lack of regulation in the communications sector stifles investments and profitability. I am also listed as a trouble maker owing to my links to Google

Zain in Kenya

Vuka Verdict:

Zain introduced the Vuka revolutionary flat rate call package of 8 shilling per ($0.10) minute to call all other networks in October 2008. After an initial surge in customers. What do the numbers bear out?

Rough dialing

– Zain gained a million customers 3.08 million (up from 2.1 million)
– Zain lost revenue $162 million (~13 billion) down from $194 million
– Zain lost big money: Net loss was $90 million in 2008 compared to a loss of $21 million in 2006. the ~Kshs. 7.2 billion is perhaps the largest corporate loss in Kenya for a single year

Zain outlook

– The 2009 numbers should be much better as marketing costs of Zain’s Vuka were quite heavy for the last quarter of 2008 and by which time customer numbers were still growing. But with just 5% of the entire Zain group customers, Kenya may be an expensive group to manage in what they consider to be a competitive market with low revenues [Average revenue per user/ARPU was $6 (down from $7)]. Zain claims 18% market share to Safaricom’s 77% and 5% for Orange
– Zain owned 80% of the Kenyan operation, up from 70% in 2007
– If Zain can state the population of Kenya is 38.5 million (up from 37.5 in 2007), is there need for an expensive Government census which will take place later this year?

E-Government Moment

E-demand Kenya High school exams results were announced this week, and the top keyword searches at the site for one day were as follows showing the demand for information online

1. 12.79% www.examscouncil.or.ke
2 6.73% bankelele
3 4.38% kcse results 2008
4 2.69% related:www.examscouncil.or.ke/searchkcseresults2007.php
5 2.36% Kenya examination council
6 1.68% examscouncil.or.ke
1.68% 2008 kcse results
1.68% http://www.examscouncil.or.ke
1.01% Kenya examinations council
1.01% examscouncil Kenya
1.01% www.examscouncil
1.01% www.examcouncil.or.ke
1.01% kcse examination results 2008
1.01% related:www.examscouncil.or.ke/
1.01% Kenya national examination council kcse results

E-possibilities: Also at the Kenya revenue authority site is this land rent checker which should enable potential buyers to investigate land claims before they buy

E-legislation the media kenya communications 2008 bill which contained several laws regulating and facilitating e-commerce is back in the news with media owners asking for certain sections to be amended. Read How was the bill passed over their protest

E-infrastructure The first of three undersea fibre cables has reached Kenya’s shores. Much is expected with promises that communications costs could be lowered by up to 90%. And other transformations through new possibilities for e-government, bandwidth, service providers, broadvand, film & video, content etc. We will see how this plays out, as all these plans and talks will now be put up to the harsh light of reality.

Also – Found at @dkobia – an E-government website I hope will come to Africa one day.

Media Bill 2008

(Download and read the KCA Bill 2008 (PDF) here)

Regarding the Kenya communication (amendment) bill 2008: Like with the last controversial media bill, getting a copy of the bill that has the media up in arms has not been easy.

I’ve seen one PDF version of the bill, and these are some other aspects of the bill brought forward by now cowed permanent secretary Bitange Ndemo and hapless Minister Samuel Pogishio which was on January 3 2009 signed by President Kibaki who hailed at as a milestone bill for e-commerce
What’s in it?

Content government which produces the most content gets to decide what’s in the in the public interest? Who knows what’s in demand e.g. all TV stations play music videos targeted at youth – and does that meet the requirement to of Kenyan programs that serve children – also set what time programs can be shown – does the CCK have time for this really?

Controversial topics: coverage must be balanced and where a complaint is lodged e.g. on a news story, must take action

E-mail (electronic record) now recognized as official communication. E.g. companies with tens of thousands of shareholders, legal correspondence

Electronic contracts are now recognized in law e.g. by e-mail – they can also can include security features like an e-signature, and can be for official government transactions

Electronic signatures now recognized except for wills, and title deeds
Electronic fraud/forgery now outlawed, but the maximum fine is just 200,000 (~$2,500) or two years in jail

Electronic files now admissible in court if it meets criteria specified e.g. the requirement of banks to provide physical statement and letters in court, can now be substituted by printouts. In addition tasks performed over several computer networks can be deemed t have been on one computer and qualify

Kenya gazette electronic version of the Kenya gazette now recognized as authority

Fair play new restriction include monopoly of programming and unfair competitors may be fined up to 10% of revenue (ii) but also discrimination of some kind is banned – this could be outdated as mobile companies in Tanzania and Uganda have introduced location based discounts – depending on their location at the time of calling and the level of traffic on the network

Hacking now outlawed, but the maximum fine is just 200,000 (~$2,500) or two years in jail. Elsewhere it states a fine of 1 million and jail of 5 years

Infrastructure sharing e.g. mobile phone towers may be shared, where no agreement can be reached between providers minister may mandate this (co-location)
Mobile phone reprogramming outlawed 300,000 or 3 years in jail for those seeking to unlock the I-phone. Elsewhere it has been said even downloading or changing the ring tone on your phone constitute reprogramming

Movie censorship empowers decisions made by the Kenya film censorship board ? to bar/edit films they have reviewed

Pornography outlawed– publication of obscene material online (including forwarding of obscene e-mail) liable to a fine of 200,000 and 2 years jail.

Vernacular radio/TV elevates and restricts vernacular broadcast stations – mandates that members of the community participate in the selection and provision of programs to be broadcast. But also restricts what parts of the country they can be broadcast – what is the interest of one media house to broadcast in several languages?

Summary
– Regulator CCK (communications commission of Kenya) gets powers it does not need nor do the members understand, but they can hold them just in case, or till the day they need them like the next election.
– New tax (i) universal service fund charged on all licenses – mobile phones, television, radio etc. which the minister for information will set. funds raised can be given out as loans or grant for provision of service to rural or under-served areas.

Overall an omnibus bill combines communications and broadcast, good and bad characteristics, it is here to stay and we all have to adapt to it now that it is law

More training needs to be done now, at the judiciary – on the new laws, at banks and companies – on the consequence of e-mail communication since it’s now binding and enforceable, and in offices everywhere – on the sharing of passwords and other secure resources

Banks have a framework for e-commerce; also there’s more government bureaucracy in this bill – a universal service advisory council, and more members to the CCK Board.