As increased Web access and mobile phone penetration transform the way more than 1 billion Africans live and do business, a growing number of websites are looking to solve the distribution woes that have long plagued African filmmakers.
Though their business models and catalogs vary, the sites share common goals: to provide an effective outlet for the distribution of African content; to sidestep the pirates who have crippled homegrown film industries across the continent; to create new revenue streams for African content producers; and to allow Africans living in the diaspora to reconnect with their homelands.
“(The Web) provides a perfect opportunity for pirate-free content distribution based on sustainable models,” says Mike Dearham, former head of sales and acquisitions for South African network M-Net, which launched the online African Film Library, a collection of digitally remastered African classics, like Ousmane Sembene’s “La Noire de… (Black Girl)” and Djibril Diop Mambety’s “Touki Bouki.”
— Sites reel in auds for African pics - Entertainment News, TV News, Media - Variety
How Africa Tweets
Venture Capital for Africa (VC4Africa), an online community of venture capitalists, angels and entrepreneurs, today announced the launch of new tools aimed at helping people raise funds for their startups.
The network, which is dedicated to building business on the African continent, claims that the new tools make private investment easy, secure and social. It also says that they allow entrepreneurs to register their funding needs.
These are then shared for investors, registered as part of the VC4Africa investor network, to review. Any investor interested in the venture can reportedly engage the entrepreneur for more details. and if they like the terms the venture is offering, step forward as a lead investor.
The venture then goes into fundraising mode for 90 days in which the entrepreneur and lead investor can attract additional support.
This is the next step in VC4Africa’s efforts to help close the startup-funding gap, bringing quality entrepreneurs and qualified investors closer together.
Satellite technology, it seems, is thriving on the continent and is gaining popularity as a credible, cost-effective means of connectivity in Africa. This is one of the key messages to emerge from SATCOM Africa 2012.
(via Business in Rwanda: Africa’s Singapore? | The Economist)
Investors are impressed. Visa, for example, is busy linking Rwandan shops and cash machines to its global network. It picked Rwanda out of dozens of countries as a test ground for bringing electronic payments to “frontier economies”. (It also woos gorilla-watching tourists.) Elizabeth Buse, Visa’s president for Asia, central Europe and Africa, says Rwanda is “a very easy place for a global firm to operate”.
Companies still face immense hurdles, however. Skilled labour is scarce. Only 5.7% of the domestic workforce have a tertiary qualification. An agri-businessman says that he can trust only one of his employees with complicated duties. “Most domestically educated Rwandans have never learned how to think independently and critically,” says the Legatum Institute.
“Many Rwandan businesses do not even grasp the idea of bulk discounts, and tend to charge premia for larger orders.”
Rwandans admit they are not good at wheeling and dealing. The countryside is largely empty of the small businesses like battery recharging, second-hand clothes and cafés which light up villages even in Congo.
(via Kenya’s Startup Boom - Technology Review)
Local programmers and homegrown business models are helping to realize the vast promise of using phones to improve health care and save lives.
Growth of Internet use in Africa has superseded global average in the last decade reaching 2,000 per cent compared to the global’s 480 per cent.
The significant growth is attributed to information technology (IT) developments in the continent in recent years including improved means of connectivity such as links with the global fibre-optic cables, declining prices of computers as well as increasing access to mobile phone Internet enabled handsets.
However, a report by a market research company, Frost &Sullivan, still shows that Internet penetration is still lower in the continent compared to the developed world.
But there is also fresh interest in the technology sector, a development that is arguably epitomised by the interest being shown in the continent and its technology companies by the strategic investment arm of Silicon Valley chipmaker Intel.
Known as Intel Capital, the entity invests in start-ups and technology companies worldwide and it is seeing significant new opportunity in Africa’s technology value chain, in areas as diverse as infrastructure and content creation.
Intel Capital Africa regional director Sam Mensah says the prospectivity of the continent has also increased as local business adopts global best practices and introduces competent corporate governance structures.
In addition, the potential for growth in the technology value chain is material, given that Africa has about 15% of the world’s population, but only represents about 2% of personal computer users.
“The reason Intel Capital continues to invest in technological innovation outside our core business is because, in the long run, it is beneficial for Intel if a country has a vibrant technology ecosystem,” he adds.
“From the perspective of the companies in which we invest, the strategic value that a large Silicon Valley technology firm, with a global network, can bring to a local company looking to expand is significant and goes beyond the value of the investment,” he explains.
