Should developers and techies in Africa develop and create for local markets, or venture out? Interesting take on the TC article after the click.
Snippet of the article from TechCabal
I’ve spent three years running a Cameroonian startup, carving my niche with B2C products for the African market. This is what I have to say. I think developing for Africa sucks right now for small to medium-sized companies. It had not always sucked. But right now it does.
A few years ago, the African market was a very lucrative market for the average zero-funded entrepreneur. The African market has always been plagued with poor infrastructure, corruption, limited skills, poor education, poor government support and many others. But even with limited branding and advertising budgets, the typical African entrepreneur had the advantage of being local. Being local meant that we could carve our niche in a market that was not interesting before for our mightier competitors out of Africa. That was then. We’ve lost that local advantage for one single reason.
Africa is no longer invisible.
The author goes on to say:
I am not saying it is impossible to build a commercially successful (tech) product for Africa. However, past commercial success stories have shown that you need both patience and heavy capital ( we are talking about millions of dollars ). Branding and marketing in Africa still depend on expensive TV ads. Your aunt in Africa, who probably goes online once every month won’t find out about your product on google adwords. Payment still requires setting up many sales points. Government officials still need to be bribed.
On the other hand, developing from Africa and selling to the whole wide world has become easier with the rise of AppStores, SAAS, online fashion stores, freelance websites, and global ad networks where your traffic can be monetized at global rates. Marketing to the world is getting easier with social media and search engine marketing/optimisation. The list goes on.
There are so many ways we can get better at selling to the global market, where the money is. Yet, we spend so much time fighting with our brothers over this tiny African market.
To read the rest of it, click here.
As an entrepreneur & techie who has lived in Lagos, Nigeria for the last three years while I don’t necessarily agree that the big dogs are coming in and snatching up the opportunties usually exploited by local entrepreneurs, I do agree that being in Africa or developing from Africa does not mean you have to service the local market only. Africans are everywhere. Friends of Africa and people who dig different parts of African culture (which isn’t meant to sound monolithic because Africa is a continent, not a country) are also everywhere. They need stuff. We should and could build for them.
Again, interesting read. Check out the convo now.
