Kudos to Afrigator

I'm glad to see that, after a break down some time back, Afrigator is up and running. I was a big fan of the blog agrigator from inception but got a bit disillusioned when I notices that the RSS feed (at least for the Kenya section of the site) stopped updating for a long time.

I have just returned to the site after my friend John Wesonga let me know that It had been mentioned in a CNN article along side giants like joost and esnips as one of the the top web 2.0 start-ups outside the US. It was the only one from Africa to be mentioned so kudos to the Afrigator team.

One of the most interesting things that I came across in the CNN article was the amount of funding that it took to setup Afrigator. The article quoted $32000, a figure that i feel really shows the benefit of doing work especially technology oriented work in Africa. When put up against the other start ups mentioned (many of which refused to declare what funding if any they had received) it is clear that Afrigator was the least funded and if I am not mistaken the start up with the second lowest amount of declared funding had something like $1 million. Despite the disparity in funding, the quality of work that has been put out by the Afrigator team is definitely at per with that of their, much better funded, compatriots. It just goes to show that the dream Africa as a center of technological innovation is becoming a reality faster than most think and the cost saving advantage will only accelerate the process further.

I am looking to leverage African technologists in the near future, hopefully I will be able to put yet another tech start up from Africa on the map.

BDAfrica: The good the bad and the ugly

I have been reading the Business Daily Africa website for some time now as my source for Kenyan business news and I must say that I love the articles that they feature. I they stick to the business facts and for the most part steer clear of the political noise that often clouds the news from others such as its parent company's (nation media) nationmedia.com and the East African Standards eastandard.net.

One major qualm i have with the site though is the number of typos that i keep running into in their articles. I don't believe i have ever gone through an entire issue without finding a significant number of typos. Some of these typos are Rather innocuous such as a missing letter here or there but some are more serious such as miss quoted figure or differences in figures quoted more than once within a single article.

The mistakes take away significantly from the air of professionalism that is created by the clean layout and clear writing style that is employed by BDAfrica.

I would advise that they impose stricter editorial over-site to ensure that the facts are not only properly researched but properly presented in order to prevent loss of credibility. It they feel that hiring a full time staff member to do proof reading would be too costly then they should at least give readers an easy way of sending in typo notification. I'm sure that a number of readers wouldn't mind assisting in this manner given the value of the articles they put up.

While they are at it they might also consider implementing a discussion feature that would enable viewers to discuss the most popular articles. I see this taking a longer term to implement as it might necessitate them moving from the ijoomla platform to a more feature filled platform.

Overall though I think that bdAfrica.com is at the front of the pack as far as Kenyan business news is concerned and would recommend it to anyone wishing to stay on top of Kenyan business news.

Interesting things happening in kenya

There are a number of interesting development in kenya of late. One of the most interesting thus far is the launching of KenTv, an IPTV service based in the UK and focusing on the delivery of kenyan content to kenyans int eh diaspora. It is an area that is definately lucrative and I can see a number of individuals really latching on to the service. According to John Wesonga, the service is currently getting over 35000 view per day. Thats a huge number for a site that has just been launched that the is focusing on Kenyan content. The naviagation could use some work though and the 5 minute Nakumatt advertisement is a bit too much if you ask me.

Also, in news just released on bdAfrica, kenTv has just entered into a partnership with the steadman group to provide on demand research sevices to Kenyans in the diaspora. I think this service will be a hit both with kenyan students seeking to do research on Kenyan topics as well as with people seeking to guage the viablilitly of business ventures before plunging in. The turn-around time is good (92 hours) and the price is quite appealling ($3.99 per question with bulk discounts) considering what it would cost to do similar research on your own. Another advantage is steadmans ability to return research result of the entire East African region.

Also the Safaricom IPO is causing quite a stire as is to be expected with $500 million worth of equity in the pot. A number of major financial institutions (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Credit Swiss, PNB Paribus to name a few), are gunning for advisory roles on the IPO along with a number of major internation law firms. I must say that i was a bit disapointed not to see Merrill Lynch as one of the firms in the running, I feel that they are letting a major entry point into the African market pass them by. This is quite sad considering the growth potential in this market. Setting up relationships early is definately going to be a key determinant going forward of who cashes in on the Afican Renaissance.

tugo

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