East Africa is fast emerging as an important investment destination going by the recent Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), according to the 2014 Africa attractiveness survey by Ernst &amp; Young.
Four East African countries were ranked in the top 10 countries by FDI projects in 2013, showing the regions increasing attractiveness among investors. FDI projects into the region increased by 7.4% in 2013 compared to the previous year, second only to West Africa which registered an improvement of 20.5%.
Also for the first time, the region overtook North Africa in terms of FDI projects. The region that includes Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi accounted for 17% of FDI projects flowing into sub-Saharan Africa between 2007 and 2013, which according to the survey have grown at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.4%, the second highest in Africa.
East Africa’s main attraction lies in its growing market potential which is made up of 210 million people, an improving economic environment, infrastructure development, political stability, ongoing integration through the East African Community (EAC) initiative and the recent discoveries of gas and oil.
Rising disposable incomes have seen financial services, retail and consumer products (RCP) and technology, media and telecommunication (TMT) become the three most targeted sectors in the region. Banks have seen the usage of their mobile phone services by their more than 50 million subscribers increase  more than six-fold in the past five years, making East Africa the world’s fastest-growing market. Notable investor countries include Kenya, United States, Britain and India. Kenya leads the pack as the biggest investor increasing its investments by 9.5% in the 2012-13 period according to investment specialists fDi Intelligence.
Kenya, being the biggest economy in the region, has naturally seen plenty of interest directed its way. The country attracted the second-highest number of FDI projects last year behind South Africa. In addition, FDI projects into the country have been increasing at a CAGR of more than 40% in the past seven years. With such high interest, it’s not surprising that Nairobi is home to some of the biggest international organizations such as HSBC, Bank of China and IBM. The latter even established its first African innovation hub in the capital, further shoring up the city’s status as a telecommunication hub.
The attractiveness survey that tracks FDI in the region shows Nairobi’s share of FDI projects in Africa has increased fivefold from just 1.5% in 2007 to 7.5% in 2013. Nairobi is now listed third as the most attractive city to do business in sub-Saharan Africa.
Tanzania is not far behind, especially following its recent natural gas discoveries. The country, which also ranks as Africa’s third largest gold producer, has seen FDI projects grow at a CAGR of more than 23% in the past seven years which is impressive considering its need for more infrastructure. Dar es Salaam is set to become Africa’s fifth-most populous city in Africa by 2030 and will see the greatest expansion of middle class households with incomes between $5,000 and $20,000 every year by 2030.
Uganda which debuted in the ranking of the top 10 countries in 2013 also grew its FDI projects by more than 20% since 2007. Recent oil discovery may keep the momentum of double-digit growth for a long time to come. Neighboring Rwanda has equally enjoyed impressive growth in the past few years underpinned by huge investments in IT infrastructure &#8211; the country laid fiber-optic cables covering the whole country in 2010 &#8211; and increasing ease of doing business, which has seen the country ranked 32nd on the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings in 2014 and third in sub-Saharan Africa for its favorable business environment.
The remarkable progress in FDI inflow shows the improving perception toward the region. Ongoing work toward a common currency by 2023, together with the plans to make the region operate as a common market, should further boost East Africa’s attractiveness in the coming years.
Already the common market protocol which came into force three years ago, and set to be fully implemented by 2015, is expected to achieve the four freedoms &#8211; free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the region.
This should help grow East Africa’s intra-regional investment and encourage regional integration. With such progress, it’s undoubtable that the future is bright.

The Investment Hotspot

Politics is a dirty game, but when gender becomes part of the mudslinging, there is a dangerous detraction that muddies political waters, especially at a time when South Africa should be building on its 20 years of democracy.
While women’s participation in politics in South Africa may rank among the highest in the world, there is disparity between the way female politicians are treated in relation to their male counterparts. Politics allows an attitude of permissiveness, where sexist insults and criticism are par for the course in the cutthroat, survival-of-the-fittest political game. It is almost as if so long as you decry rape and violence against women, most other gender-based barbs, quips and caricaturizations sneak by the green light.
Recent media articles, debates and Twitter trends have trained a sharp spotlight on how 20 years into democracy, gender issues continue to be entwined with issues of race, class, lingering social division and double standards. It is this complexity that is at the heart of the matter.
FORBES WOMAN AFRICA spoke to three prominent South African politicians about how much of the glass ceiling they have smashed. While the positions they hold shape critical agendas, female politicians are routinely name-called, even by each other.
Why does the African National Congress Women’s League (ANCWL) not believe it can put forward a female presidential candidate and why does Twitter trend because of an MP’s dress?
Helen Zille
Democratic Alliance (DA)
As head of the opposition, Zille is no stranger to dishing out criticism or taking it. She believes strong women leaders – the DA’s top three are women – are comfortable and confident to lead.
What concerns the Western Cape Premier, though, is that the hostile arena of politics dissuades other women from entering the fray. “I fear many women feel inhibited from assuming leadership roles because of the abuse and invective they face in the public square,” she says. And the invective that circulates is not for the faint-hearted. Former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) leaders Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu have openly passed comments about her, which Malema has later defended as part of “public debate”.
“Persons guilty of sexist behavior should be named and shamed. There is no place for such behavior in our society. But, we need to address the underlying causes of sexism, which begins in the family and in communities,” she says.
Zille came under fire earlier this year following a public spat with DA Youth leader Mbali Ntuli, who criticized the DA’s march on the ANC headquarters during a jobs march. Zille called Ntuli a “princess” and “prima donna”, but she says: “I was describing indulgent and petulant behavior. My response would have been equally robust if it was directed at a man.”
Zille cautions that gender issues can become media fodder and headline grabbers. It can take away the focus that recognizes the strides women have made.
Mamphela Ramphele
Agang
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Mamphela Ramphele’s entry into the political arena as leader of Agang last year was bound to see daggers drawn. She was not surprised, but is disappointed at how a woman in power still unsettles many men.
“The more women succeed, the more many insecure men feel threatened. Women remain ‘out of place’ as leaders in male-dominated societies and it is not in politics alone,” she says.
It was Ramphele’s peck on the lips with the DA’s Zille, in their short-lived political partnership earlier this year that took on all kinds of sexualized caricaturization. It shifted from jokes and the material of satirists to become crass, cringe-worthy and below the belt – all with sexist overtones. She puts it down to media’s inability to move forward or to look at the deeper context surrounding issues of sexism in society. For Ramphele, it means the debate must move forward and beyond gender as seen in isolation from other issues that threaten freedom. It is the role of media, business, those in education and female leaders to use their power more definitively. She insists South Africa is ready for a black female president, however, she is under no illusion that women in many sectors of society remain second-class citizens.
“For millions of our daughters, the notion of gender equality remains a distant dream in the daily battle just to stay alive. How can they see themselves as leaders? Yet women lead families and communities, providing the strength and stability (emotional, financial) for many. We need to find ways to empower women to lead in their communities and beyond,” says Ramphele.
Thandile Sunduza
African National Congress (ANC)
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“Maybe if I wasn’t pregnant I would have just been able to make a joke about the tweets, but why is it not okay for big women to show off that they are pregnant. Why is big not a brand or sexy? We have many big African women in Parliament, but we play the culture card when it’s convenient for us,”
says Sunduza.
She says it was hurtful that it was mostly women, and black women in particular, who led the Twitter taunts.
“We have a pull-her-down mentality that shows we are still not liberated. When women don’t stand up for each other, we elevate the patriarchy that still exists in Africa.”
She takes a swipe at journalists who tweet before they think, egging each other on.
The damage was done in minutes.
“Of course we have freedom of expression in this country, but people need to think about other people’s dignity and rights,” she says.
Sunduza says a growing culture of mockery as acceptable behavior, be it gender-based or otherwise, is worrying.
“How many people were interested in the President’s State of the Nation speech, and how many more people were interested in my dress? What does it teach our young people? That’s sad [to] me,” she says.

‘Women Must  Stand Up For Each Other’

A Tuesday night in early October marked yet another victory for African women with the launch of this publication in
Johannesburg, South Africa. The bold monochrome cover and red lettering of the inaugural issue sent the message that African women were seated at the boardroom table and ready to make their voices heard.
But even in the atmosphere of affirmation and optimism, the keynote speaker, businesswoman Cheryl Ca-rolus, pointed out that women still face many challenges, from the kitchen to the office.
“Even Superman had a mother,” said the Gold Fields chairperson, reminding the room full of powerful women that their ancestors had played a key role in men’s success for centuries.
What then about Wonder Woman? The iconic comic book character is a demigoddess who battles other-worldly villains with little more than a lasso of truth and a tiara of tele-pathy. Today, Wonder Woman would be wearing a business suit, multitasking her way through the corporate world with a personal digital assistant. But even she would probably buckle under the pressure.
In her book, Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, former Harvard Business School professor Debora L. Spar explores the demands on women.
She notes that women may have broken through the glass ceiling, but they still face a plethora of obstacles in the corporate environment, which have not adapted to the professional and domestic demands of working women.
Referring to the impossibly high standards that women in the American workplace hold themselves to, Spar says the woman in the perfume advertisement has become the icon of the working girl: “It conveyed this image of this sort of effortless combination of work and motherhood and sexuality and professionalism and ease.”
As an increasing number of African women become a formidable force in business, a reinterpretation of traditional family values seems to be neces-
sary to ease some of the pressures on working women.
“If someone were to ask me what makes successful women, it’s about the infrastructure. But it’s also about love and the giving spirit,” says Basetsana Kumalo. The beauty queen-turned-media maven attributes much of her success to Agnes Mofokeng, the woman who has lived with her since she was 10 days old.
“She’s an extension of my mother. For me, she epitomizes grace, kindness. A good soul, who, in all my years, has been with me. She has always just been the rock for my family. My husband and I often ask each other what we would do without her.”
Shared child care is a common fixture in African homes, but not for Kumalo. “I don’t see her as an employee. It’s never been about that. We have a mutually respectful relationship and it’s about family. They say it takes a village to raise a child and she’s part of my village.
“It goes beyond employee-employer. It’s about being in a village and having an elderly person in my village helping me raise young men who will hopefully be trailblazers, world shakers and history makers,” says Kumalo.
Mofokeng agrees: “This doesn’t feel like work to me… sometimes I have to remind myself that she’s my boss. But often I feel like she’s my daughter –  having watched her grow and go through the different phases of her life.”
However, Mofokeng emphasizes the importance of trust in such a close domestic setting. “If you’re in my line of work, you need to respect your job, take it seriously and be professional. You must know why you’re working and throw yourself in.”
Meanwhile, performer and businesswoman Unathi Msengana describes her decade-long relationship with her project manager, Colene Arendse, as one that relies on this trust.
“I think, because there’s a lot of trust, and I know her intrinsically as a person and she knows me as a person and we know each other’s value systems and how we want to do business with dignity… It’s a huge trust that she has in me because her company is a corporate commodity,” says Msengana.
Currently Arendse is working toward launching the first music and business conference in South Africa next year. And Msengana is acutely aware that her professional behavior directly impacts on Arendse’s business. “It just takes one bad spell to tarnish her company.”
The usually shy Arendse, who prefers to work behind the scenes, jumps in: “It’s her brand, it’s my company. I take my hat off to her. She’s in music, on radio, on TV and not everyone will like you. The only place she’s not criticized is at home.”
As business partners, they are aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Where Msengana excels at sales, Arendse closes the deal with a watertight proposal and streamlined logistics management. It’s also a business model built on family values. “You identify strength in someone because you know that person and you use that professionally because trust is intrinsic in the relationship,” Msengana explains.
“Professionally, you know they have the capability. But personally, there’s that trust and if you betray it, it would not only destroy the professional relationship, but it would destroy families. We know there’s a lot at stake if we disappoint each other.”
The pair is also planning a series of wine and music festivals across the continent, modeled on the Soweto Wine Festival. The event aims to introduce South African blends to new audiences, while simultaneously promoting South African musicians. Msengana is not only a business partner but will also perform at the events.
When Kumalo began building her career, she knew she wanted Mofokeng to be a part of her life. After she won the Miss South Africa beauty pageant in 1994, Kumalo moved from her family home in Soweto to an apartment in northern Johannesburg. At the age of 20 and alone in the city, Kumalo asked Mofokeng to live with her and help manage her life in the public gaze, with the demands of being a beauty queen.
A year later, that beauty queen relaunched her career as a businesswoman, becoming an equal partner in Tswelopele Productions. The company would later merge with Union Alliance Media and was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
Kumalo’s latest venture is the acquisition and redevelopment of abandoned buildings to create new urban spaces. But when she was building a family, Kumalo again turned to the woman who had helped to raise her and her siblings.
Kumalo and her husband, Voda-com CEO Romeo Kumalo, insist that their two sons speak Sesotho at home. And, with Mofokeng’s help, the children are taught to respect traditional values.
“When I look around, this family hasn’t changed much from the atmos-phere in the Makgalemele home. These families have the same values,” says Mofokeng, comparing Kumalo’s home to that of her parents.
“If she comes home late and leaves very early in the morning she will call and say: ‘would you please sort out this and that in the house?’ She’ll ask: ‘how are things going?’ and so on. I also give her feedback when she’s not around… There’s constant communication between us,” explains Mofokeng.
Kumalo values these regular updates: “There is an amount of guilt, when you feel: ‘I wasn’t there for this and that milestone in my child’s life’. I think guilt will always be there. As mothers we’re nurturers, we want to be there, we want to raise our children, but times have changed…
“People may say I’m a workaholic but it’s who I am, as well as a mother, and it makes me a happy mother.” Msengana believes her close relationship with her project manager has enabled her to be a better mother.
“I remember, in the first couple of meetings, Colene said: ‘You need to let go, you need to let go’. Because I used to micromanage. It’s allowed me to be more present as a mom.”

The business of family

She sits at the helm of a multinational cable and satellite company and is one of the most powerful women in African media, but for Abiola Alabi, this is a long way from the character in the initial script.
As a determined young college entrant, Alabi’s interests were elsewhere. From an academic Nigerian home, her future as a doctor had been scripted. She enrolled as a pre-med at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States. It wasn’t long before Alabi’s interest turned to pharmacy.
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“After one summer as an intern pharmacist however, I realized that these careers, were not the best match for my personality,” she says.
An interest in Africa led to a new path. Alabi, who had become very active on campus, became affiliated with groups and organizations that nurtured her new interests. She became a member of international student groups and president of the African Student Organization on campus.
Identifying ways in which her new experiences could affect her interests in the continent, Alabi made the decision to major in public health with a marketing minor.
“I knew that if I majored in public health, I could still end up making a contribution to the continent, in one way or the other,” she says.
After college, an opportunity saw her move to South Korea to work for an international student organization that promotes international exchange programs.
“I was able to start seeing different parts of the world that I had never experienced before,” she says.
“I moved to Seoul for two years and was completely fascinated by the type of development happening there. I thought, ‘this place is on the precipice of something really big.’ There was a huge investment in education in Asia and I was mind-blown, by the unbelievable work ethic. It was also cultural and felt very intense but the development was just as intense,” says Alabi.
After two years in Seoul, the Asian affair was far from over, as Alabi secured a role with Korean car company Daewoo, where she worked to launch a new product in the United States.
After this, Alabi put her marketing knowledge to use in a new e-commerce venture with a focus on youth marketing and destination sites development for students where everything from course books to dormitory furniture was sold.
“The company didn’t survive long but this was an important phase for me as it really helped me develop as a professional by understanding the upside and downside of taking risks when it comes to businesses. It was also such an exciting time and a great learning curve to understand how technology was going to change people’s lives tremendously with e-commerce. It was clear that we were in the digital phase and everything would change with it,” she says.
After working in traditional marketing jobs in the automotive and e-commerce industries, Alabi decided to take a leap as she explored a new career path in broadcasting and production.
“This was an interesting experience. I started off doing sponsorships and marketing for Sesame Street in New York, which was a production viewed in over 120 countries.”
Alabi’s international portfolio created an avenue to visit Africa more often.
“I was exploring partnerships and opportunities in different African countries and through that, I started to have meetings with M-Net. On one occasion, I was on my way back to the United States when they called me up and proposed a partnership with me,” she says.
As this was in perfect synergy with her desire to be involved in the development of the continent, this was an opportunity Alabi had to embrace. In 2008, she joined M-Net Africa, a multinational satellite television company, as managing director. With this fresh start, much lay ahead for Alabi and her team. She had one question: how to expand, build and elevate the brand from where it was to a greater level.
“That was my challenge,” she says.
Expanding M-Net’s African content portfolio was her biggest task. With only one Africa Magic channel at the time, Alabi’s team needed to create a home for African programing. The plan was to create a diverse portfolio of content. Relevance became vital as they produced and bought content tailored for the continent. They were on a mission to build a strong African brand that viewers could identify with and call their own.
“It’s not just about telling externals how you’d like to be projected. It’s also about how you want to project yourself to yourself. Our images are like mirrors and we were very particular about improving the quality of our programs,” says Alabi.
The need to create an array of choices as well as a home for African content for their viewers saw the development of additional channels to the Africa Magic platform. M-Net launched local language channels, starting with the Yoruba, Hausa and Kiswahili language channels. This increased the amount of content being produced in local languages and created a distribution outlet for independent African producers. Five Africa magic channels were rolled out as part of M-Net’s stable.
Content had to be moved from the existing M-Net international platform to a premium channel, Africa Magic Entertainment, earlier in the year. This saw a complete overhaul of the Africa Magic platform.
In spite of the infrastructural challenges that affect doing business in Africa, Alabi attributes the success of the brand to the dedication of her team and the can-do attitude of Africans at large.
“This really is the ingenuity of it all, for me. Yes, there are challenges but finding ways to deal with them, is the only way forward,” she says.
Despite her dedication to the brand she manages, there is room for Alabi to do more.
“I believe we all have a role to play, no matter how small and I love engaging with organizations that have a purpose of making a difference,” she says.
She recently joined the Pan African Civil Society Organization, Africa 2.0; she’s also a member of the Africa Leadership Network (ALN) and was named a 2012 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Alabi has kept to her ambitious track record as she also served as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Entertainment in 2010.
When she isn’t working, Alabi enjoys spending time with her family and travelling with her husband.
From pre-med days to M-Net Africa, Alabi might have come full circle but also believes there are never enough circles to draw.  <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2031" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Biola-Alabi-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />

From American Medicine  To African Television

As my car comes to a halt at a red traffic light, the newspaper vendor approaches, waving the latest broadsheet.
“Take one,” he pleads. And when I decline: “How about some change so I can eat tonight.”
Thabo Dube has been selling newspapers on one of Cape Town’s main traffic intersections for more than a decade. But in the past couple of years, he has fallen on hard times.
“I used to be able to make a living from this job, but now I also have to beg to make ends meet,” sighs the lanky father of three, as cars speed past.
As a newspaper salesman, the 43-year-old doesn’t earn a fixed salary. Instead, he buys a stack of newspapers at a reduced vendor price each dawn and takes home whatever profit he makes from sales that day. If he can’t sell the whole stack, he barely cuts even. Some days, he makes a loss. Dube is feeling what many international media experts have been preaching over the past few years—print is becoming an endangered species. The future of news is digital. Instead of buying a daily newspaper or taking out a subscription, more and more people read news on the internet, tablets or their mobile phones.
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It all began in the United States and Europe where the growth of the internet and mobile media access has already sparked the demise of the news industry as we know it. Traditional print media are struggling to make profits. Countless newspapers and magazines have had to lay off staff. Some publications have gone out of circulation. Although African print media have not yet experienced the same slowdown, they are on a straight path towards digital media consumption, experts say.
“The way people consume media in Africa will change dramatically,” predicts Justin Arenstein, manager of the African News Innovation Challenge (ANIC), an internationally-funded initiative that sponsors digital media projects on the continent and consultant to the world’s top search engine provider, Google, as well as the Knight Foundation, a US-based foundation that supports innovative journalism.
What is a fact in the States and Europe is becoming equally true for Africa. Today’s consumers don’t go to a single place for their news. They prefer to access information in ways most convenient to them: by scanning through different sources of content digitally, reading bits and pieces from various publications instead of reading one newspaper indiscriminately from front to back. Readers don’t want editors and journalists to tell them what’s pertinent any longer; they would rather search for specific sites and content that is relevant to their lives, depending on what topics or geographic areas interest them most. That’s especially true for the tech-savvy, digitally literate young generation that demands content to be audio-visual rather than printed black on white.
Print publications in Africa have started to feel the pinch.
“Newspaper and magazine sales are dropping. Publishing houses need to understand why and come up with alternative solutions to maintain a healthy revenue stream,” suggests Dawn Rowlands, CEO for sub-Saharan Africa at digital communications group Aegis Media. There is only one solution to prevent losses, she says: “Print needs to evolve to content provision.”
That means getting content to people should take priority, while the platform used to reach readers is secondary.
That’s easier said than done. The convergence from print to digital has been, and still is, a difficult road for most print media houses. Although newspaper owners realize they have to expand their business model to include digital media, they are not too sure how to make it work and how to monetize it. There is also a great reluctance to change, despite the fact that profits are tumbling. Most publications’ attempts to keep up with the digital revolution have been half-hearted, defensive and often even arrogant.
“It’s a head-in-the-sand approach. Although many African newspapers have developed an online presence it has financially not been that successful,” says Rowlands.
The focus remains on print, with online editions being the poor, low-quality cousins.
In the long run, ignoring the digital trend will not pay off, Rowlands warns. Although people may continue buying a newspaper on a weekend for a leisure read, she is convinced that print media as we know them will vanish within the next decade. The lesson for many print media houses will therefore be a tough one: those that don’t adapt will die.
“Eventually we will see the death of traditional print media in Africa, maybe in the next 10 years,” predicts Rowlands.
Only media houses that reconsider how they approach consumers and that reinvent themselves on the internet and on other new-media platforms, such as mobile phones and portable electronic devices, will have a chance of survival. Learning from the progressive downfall of print media in the States and Europe is a good way to stay ahead of new developments, experts suggest. No need to reinvent the wheel.
“If African media take heed of what’s happening up north, of what hasn’t worked and where the pitfalls are, they have a good opportunity to build something great,” says Arenstein.
Unsurprisingly, owners of print media hold a more moderate view. Print is far from being dead, insists the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). Contrary to conventional knowledge, newspapers remain a large and thriving industry worldwide, despite the rise of digital media: between 2005 and 2010, daily newspaper circulation in Africa rose a whopping 30%, according to WAN-IFRA statistics.
Another study on “The Future of Print Media”, conducted by US publication Capstone Report, states that the “death of print” remains a limited phenomenon in Africa… for now. In 2011, print circulation in many markets on the continent was stable or slightly up, in part because of rising literacy levels. Literacy—which increased by more than 12% in the past decade among African adults—usually leads to a boost in disposable income and this creates potential new newspaper audiences.
But despite relatively upbeat current data, experts warn the respite won’t last long. Even though African news markets have not fully matured yet, they will be faced with similar challenges to the States and Europe in the next 10 to 20 years, cautions the Capstone Report. Already, African audiences are moving online at a remarkably high speed. The common challenge for print media hence becomes trying to keep up.
The good news is that the predicted death of print does not equal the death of journalism or quality content. People will always want to read good content. What will change is where and how they want to read it. In Africa, mobile news delivery—and not website-based delivery like in the States and Europe—appears to be the medium of choice.
“Consumers in Africa leapfrog. They don’t follow the same path as Europe and the United States,” agrees Rowlands.
She believes the next few years will show huge change on the continent as prices of internet connectivity and technology come down, with smartphone penetration on a rapid increase. This means that people all over the continent have more access to digital news and social networking tools.
Platforms like smartphones and tablets are the future of publishing in Africa because they allow people to look beyond national borders and access the content they want, when they want.
“The appetite for online content is growing because people like to go online to find alternative content that they can’t necessarily buy at their local newsstand,” says Susan Hansford, business development manager at South African publisher Primedia Online.
“People love technology. It’s going to move really quickly. Some experts predict smartphone prices will drop to $20 within the next five years,” says Rowlands. In countries like Kenya or Nigeria, China-produced replicas of Apple iPhones are on sale for a mere $40—nearly half the price of an original iPhone.
Although $40 is a lot of money for an ordinary person living in Africa—in Kenya, for example, the average monthly income is about $60—increasing numbers of people save up for a mobile phone with advanced functionality, especially as prices for 3G and data bundles drop.
“Comparatively speaking, smartphones are not that expensive anymore. For someone living in a rural area, for instance, using a smartphone is often a more affordable and effective way to communicate with the outside world than the money and time it would cost to use public transport [to meet someone in person]. The argument that technology and connectivity are too expensive is a red herring,” says Arenstein.
In some parts of the continent, the digital revolution has already started. Kenya and Nigeria are fast becoming hotspots for digital media uptake and development. In both countries, mobile phones are increasingly used as the primary transactional device for news gathering, communication and banking. Mobiles are also used for other data sharing, like news and information about election monitoring, disease outbreaks, stock exchange fluctuations or weather forecasts for farmers.
Being at the forefront of the digital age has not happened by chance. Both the Kenyan and Nigerian governments have invested in digital development as part of their economic growth strategy by opening up competition in their telecoms and data sectors. This has forced mobile providers to lower the cost of their services, thus ensuring that larger parts of the population can access them. Both governments have also pumped resources into IT skills development so that their own population can develop new platforms, instead of having to hire foreign skills or relying on innovation buy-in from the developed world.
Private businesses in both countries have become keenly aware of the need to invest in digital content. Kenyan media houses, for example, formed a national digital journalism task force earlier this year aimed at developing a nationwide data-driven digital news model that will help the country’s media industry stay up to speed with new technologies.
The impact of what is happening in Kenya and Nigeria reaches beyond their borders. Kenya, for instance, is building a regional hub of technology and media innovation with its east African neighbors Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. Nigeria is doing the same in West Africa, to a lesser degree, by cooperating with Ghana.
“Change is coming, and we must be prepared for it. Technology always wins, no matter how much you fight it. So instead of resisting it, the print media must devise a way of embracing it. When television came, we all thought it would sound the death knell of the radio, since it is capable of capturing sound and picture. But television has not displaced the radio. Instead the two have been complementary,” says Nigerian Broadcast Production Services CEO, Tolu Ajayi, at a recent panel discussion about the future of the country’s print media.
At a slightly slower pace, Egypt, Tunisia, Ghana, Senegal and Tanzania are developing into digital hubs. Angola, Mozambique and Zambia also experience massive digital growth, even if those countries are still at the infant stages of digitization.
“They are big markets that navigate away from print, even though their media mix is currently less focused on smartphones,” says Rowlands.
For now, people here consume news mainly via mid-range mobile phones, such as WAP-enabled phones with internet access or handsets with radio access. They also increasingly use text-messaging services to access news and information.
“From Zimbabwe in the south to Senegal in the north, using mobile for content exchange, for business or private use, is starting to have a massive impact on people’s lives,” says Arenstein.
Only countries with poor IT infrastructure, like those situated in central Africa that remain without direct access to undersea cables, such as Chad or the Democratic Republic of Congo, continue to lag behind.
Surprisingly, Africa’s most developed nation, South Africa, is not at the forefront of media digitization with most of the country’s newspapers lacking investment in new technology.
“I don’t see the same degree of creativity in South Africa [than in Kenya or Nigeria],” says Arenstein, who consults media houses all over the continent. “South Africa needs to catch a wake-up call. It is lulled into dismissive complacency, believing that their [well-established] print media market is too big to fail. Yet [being a developed economy], South Africa almost falls victim to the same market conditions as the US and Europe.”
Arenstein is convinced that Africa’s most southern nation is at a tipping point at which it needs to make a massive switch to mobile media—and it needs to do it fast if it doesn’t want to miss the bus. “Convergence is definitely happening, with or without South Africa,” he warns.
Latest statistics prove Arenstein right—sales of some of the country’s daily newspapers decreased by up to 17% in the past year, according to the South African Audit Bureau of Circulations. This is just the beginning, the bureau warns, as the newspaper industry will further lose to digital products in the next few years.
“We are seeing print publishers either struggle with circulation or circulation is flat,” says Hansford.
But not all is doom and gloom in the South African news market. There is one paper, which has not only kept up with the times but been at the forefront of convergence. The weekly Mail &amp; Guardian (M&amp;G) was the continent’s first news website when it launched its online edition 19 years ago. Today, the M&amp;G is Africa’s first newspaper available on Kindle, apart from the fact that it can also be downloaded onto a rage of other mobile platforms—a tenth of the M&amp;G’s subscriptions are currently for Kindle and iPad users.
“Our strategy is ‘digital first’,” says M&amp;G online editor Chris Roper.
When the M&amp;G launched a new version of its website a few months ago, Roper said its readers increasingly demanded and made use of its multimedia elements, partly because bandwidth constraints are being eased.
“We didn’t do it as a response to slowing circulation figures [of the print publication], but because we believe in innovation, in getting content to people. It’s the news that’s important. The platform is less important. We provide whatever the content demands,” he says.
Multimedia has become a vital component in the creation of news. And so have social media.
“Journalism is becoming more inclusive. The audience also contributes. Today’s readers want much more than simply being presented with content. They want to engage intelligently with the publication, be able to comment, contribute and influence the choice of content,” says Roper.
On the M&amp;G website, readers can comment on articles, are invited to contribute content to a news story or join conversations and debates with journalists on Twitter. As its next move, the paper plans to run an ‘open newsroom’ by making its weekly news diary available online so that readers can make suggestions for what stories should be pursued. The M&amp;G is one of the few South African newspapers whose print circulation numbers have increased.
For many print media owners, one of the biggest stumbling blocks of the digital revolution has been their struggle to come up with new ways to make a profit. Traditionally, print publications make most of their money from advertising—much less from subscriptions and individual sales. But the advertising-driven model is becoming outdated fast as more readers consume digital content. And a new, equally profitable way of attracting advertisement revenue still has to emerge. Initiatives to put up paywalls to protect content have only shown moderate success.
In the meantime, advertisers go where the money is: they are quickly moving from print to online. It’s a vicious cycle. As more readers consume content online, print circulations decrease, followed by losses in ad spending and a slump in profits.
There is an upside, though. Internet advertising is growing rapidly for many and beginning to offset some of the decline in print. The internet is an attractive medium for advertisers because it allows them to match ads more carefully to different audiences and measure accurately how well their money is spent. Websites can track the exact number of people who have visited the site, clicked on an ad and bought the product. Internet advertising is also seductive because online ad rates are far cheaper.
That’s another reason traditional media are losing out. The ad revenue loss experienced by print is nowhere near making up for the ad revenue gain made by online.
“At no time in the foreseeable future will digital advertising revenues replace those lost to print, making the search for new business models, including paid-for online access for news, a key goal for many newspapers,” says Riess.
Print owners will have to figure out many aspects of their business in a media world where only one thing is certain right now. No matter how long they manage to hold on to their old ways of doing business, sooner or later, they will have to say goodbye to print and hello to digitization.

From Newsstand  To The Palm Of Your Hand

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Technology is changing the entertainment industry so quickly that it’s difficult to predict where the next media fortunes will be made. There is no shortage of entrepreneurs in this field, one of whom is Emma Kaye. Kaye is a leader in African animation and filmmaking. Her credentials are undisputed—she’s the co-founder of Triggerfish Animation Studios, producers of the award-winning Sesame Street and founder of the Sithengi Cinema Festival in Cape Town. But her focus has shifted from producing content for television and film to finding new ways to distribute entertainment content.
The late Steve Jobs epitomized this type of entrepreneur. The introduction of the iPhone was the game changer: Apple sold 128 million handsets earning the company an estimated $76.6 billion. The smartphone fueled the surge in mobile application use, changing the pricing and the distribution of entertainment forever. In 2008, a year after the iPhone’s launch, 18 billion apps were downloaded from the iTunes store earning the company $4.3 billion. Soon after competitors Larry Page and Sergey Brin—the founders of Google, created the Android platform increasing the amount of app content available to cellphone subscribers.
Kaye watched the evolution of mobile devices, then abandoned the old media platforms she’d relied on and immersed herself in new media; first as the CEO of Breakdesign and then as the founder of Gate 7 New Media, a mobile media, entertainment and content company. Under her stewardship, Breakdesign became one of Nokia and Adobe’s top seven global Flash Lite developers.
She was frustrated that there was a lot of generic content to download which had little relevance for Africa. She wondered whether people were downloading this content only because it was available or whether they were demanding it. So she co-founded Mobfest—Africa’s first user-generated mobile content platform. The first channel, Novel Idea, is a text-based mobile entertainment channel featuring serialized fiction—a first in Africa.
But it didn’t ease her frustration—soon, she had started a new mobile app called bozza.mobi.
“I have worked in the mobile industry for a considerable amount of time and during that time, there was a big gap in the market for content that was relevant for an African community. At the same time, there were barriers to media platforms for people who could produce relevant content. Although there was no shortage of content, there were barriers to producing and distributing that content on a mobile platform,” says Kaye.
She decided to conduct a proof of concept in Khayelitsha in Cape Town and Alexandra in Johannesburg, South Africa. She worked with individuals who could produce content but found access to traditional media prohibitive. The feasibility study was launched on MXit using seven minute mobile spec video content. Within three days, there were 40,000 downloads. Three months later, this number had risen to 170,000.
After the successful proof of concept, Kaye secured investments to build a customized mobile application. Aimed at feature phones, with plans to upscale to smartphones, the application features music, videos and poetry from across the continent.
Move over Nigella! Bozza.mobi recently launched Africa’s cooking channel. Users of bozza.mobi have been glued to the popular episode on ‘how to cook a sheep’s head’ in South African townships. In this particular episode, an industrial blowtorch is used to burn the sheep’s hair, turning it into easily removable ash, which is scraped off with a stone or pot scraper. The head is then thrown into a big water tank to wash off the remaining ash. Then it is cut in half, cooked and served to the restaurant’s customers.
For Kaye, bozza.mobi is about access to self-expression. With over 300 artists, filmmakers and poets on its growing database and with new channels being released daily, bozza.mobi offers these individuals and groups a mobile platform through which to distribute their music, films and poetry. Check out the show about a Congolese woman who used a rundown caravan as her hair salon. She uses bozza.mobi to teach hairdressing. By offering tutorials, small businesses can earn revenue—50% of their channel earnings—while users get free access to content.
The provision of free local content has advantages for handset manufactures too. When Nokia was looking to sell their 3250 series in Europe, they asked Kaye for help.
“We worked with Nokia on creating relevant content for a particular demographic in Europe. We created the interface and content relevant for the skateboarding community. It contained video, news tips and travel guides. Because the content was relevant, the Nokia 3250 series phones sold out,” says Kaye.
Handset manufacturers are now embracing local application development as part of their growth strategies. Ericsson ConsumerLab recently found that the emerging app culture in high-growth markets is driving the uptake of mobile devices. The study showed consumers are not buying smartphones for their superior hardware such as the touch screen, memory capacity, attractive design and resolution size, rather, they want app functionality and faster internet access.
For this reason, Samsung is partnering with app developers such as bozza.mobi, which is working on a new version of their application to be released in six months’ time. Samsung is teaching bozza.mobi developers how to develop apps for different platforms. The improved version of bozza.mobi will be rolled out in Nigeria and Kenya. In Nigeria, Kaye has partnered with IT company, Iroko Partners, founded by Jason Chukwuma Njoku. The firm distributes Nollywood movies online—its services have been well received by the diaspora in the States, England, Canada, Germany and Australia.
Due to the fact that apps are becoming an integral part of cellphone users’ daily lives, Kaye says the new version will also serve as a commercial tool to facilitate informal trading in African communities.

On The Up And App

Thabo Molefe, famously known as ‘Tbo Touch’ in entertainment circles, is not your typical, hunky, media personality. In all frankness, mention of his name rarely inspires dreamy emotional reactions from adoring fans. And even though he does his fair share of kissing babies and dishing out top-notch prizes on his many media platforms; the lion’s share of the coverage is about his “annoying” American accent, tabloid titbits of his personal life and how he is supposedly the world’s biggest name-dropper; hell-bent on importing American culture to Africa.
As someone who is no stranger to his drive-time show on South African Metro FM, and the many television shows he has hosted; I was not surprised or put off by the strong American influence which marks his speech and content. With Touch, it is definitely all about hip hop, basketball and “swag”.
“What a lot of people do not know is that my family has a very strong exile background,” he says. “My connection to the US is enforced by the fact that I was raised there, schooled there and I even lost blood there,” he continues, explaining that his father, Vernon Molefe, was assassinated there because of his political activism.
“My father had a project which saw him working with South African struggle icons. Through the Nelson Mandela Education Fund, he facilitated troubled South African kids to be taken to the States to be educated , away from the horrors of the apartheid uprisings. So one can say that I feel indebted to his cause,” Touch elaborates. He says his father was shot seven times in 1992, and that his murder remains unsolved to this day.
“I was taken in by Bishop Noel Jones who became my guardian, as a way of paying homage to my late father,” he says.
The month of July is of significance to Touch. This month brings to a climax his plans of returning to permanently live in the United States, and as he puts it—this time he’s going there to make huge investments, and not to look for hand-outs, like before.
“I feel that I have come full circle as Tbo Touch. In as much as I am grateful for the opportunities that I have been given by the national broadcaster (SABC) since my return to the country seven years ago; I feel it is time to take my radio show, The Touch Down 3-to-6, to New York, where it will be broadcast live on a daily basis for the next three years. This has never been done on African radio before, and what it basically means is that instead of calling up big name artists like Jay Z or Mary J. Blige and speaking to them telephonically, I will have them live in studio interacting with our South African listeners,” he says with palpable excitement.
“This has taken many months to set up. My team and I have been at pains to get the national broadcaster’s buy-in, but now I can announce that it is all systems go. We have set up our own studios in New York, and we have engineers on-site working around the clock to make sure that the show runs seamlessly. The radio show will also feed content to other programs as well. Top American broadcaster Ryan Seacrest has been doing it for years; I feel it is now my turn to do it for South Africa.
“No one can debate the fact that New York is the hub of the entertainment, and more specifically, music industry, so really one has not achieved global recognition until you have a New York footprint.”
While this is clearly great news for him as a broadcaster, Touch says he won’t be the only one benefitting from this new arrangement.
“One of the main reasons I am this excited about the venture is because the show, even though broadcast from New York daily, will continue to play African music.” For many decades, Africans have been flooded with American music and culture, so it is about time someone takes ours to them.
“I am hoping this will give local artists another avenue to be exposed and “picked up” by the real captains of the music industry—the kind of artists that practically live on the Forbes’ richest lists. And I am hoping this will be an opportunity where collaborations and meaningful partnerships between those artists and African artists can be fostered,” he says.
Music and radio are not the only elements central to Touch’s relocation; television station SABC1 has also commissioned him as an NBA Basketball sport correspondent, which means he will be courtside every week, linking fans to the game and its icons.
“The culture of basketball and the NBA has been continually growing around the continent since the late 90s, sadly though we could only watch re-runs and old games, but now we will stream it to the continent with no serious delays. As a game that I personally love as well, I am also very excited that I will be experiencing it up close and sharing that experience with the sport’s many African fans,” says Touch.
Not only does Touch seem to have the entertainment side of things well-covered. He is also gearing up to become a businessman in the hospitality industry, which may come as a surprise to many.
“My relocation will also coincide with the launch of a restaurant franchise I am opening up in Manhattan with my business partner Jeff Christie. The restaurant will have a special twist—its main commodity will be trading in wine from South Africa, and we will also have a live-streaming camera linked-up to another franchise in Cape Town, so that patrons on either side can have a kind of shared experience,” he explains.
“The restaurant’s music catalogue will also consist entirely of South African and African music. So I am working very closely with the South African Department of Tourism on this project, as I believe that the restaurant will have an impact on more people wanting the actual South African experience,” Touch says. He needed to raise $450,000 to get the business on its legs, which he did subsequent to getting many doors slammed in his face.
Asking him whether he will consider living in South Africa again, seems a bit foolhardy at this stage for a man with his kind of plans, but alas it has to be asked. “My concert production company, called Touch Lives, will continue to be based in Johannesburg. Touch Lives hosts four major concerts every year, and I will be here for each one. I also have a two-year-old son who will continue to be based here, even though his mother and I have come to an agreement that he will spend some time with me in New York. In many ways South Africa is still my home,” he concludes.

Touching African Lives From The Big Apple

A few minutes past midnight on March 2, 2006, Paul Melly received a call from one of his senior managers who had news no one wanted to hear and few could believe. The Standard Group head offices, the panting caller said, was being raided by a gang of armed and hooded assailants.
It sounded like a prank call, but April 1 was still 29 days away. If Melly had any doubts, two more phone calls from a senior journalist and a director confirmed that the media house he heads was under attack.
<div id="attachment_439" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-439" class="size-large wp-image-439" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Paul-Melly-3-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Paul Melly</div>
“It started as a nightmare scenario,” recalls Melly, who was vice chairman and strategy adviser to the company, which owns The Standard newspaper and Kenya Television Network (KTN). “Signs at the hour were that the Communication Commission of Kenya was dismantling our television transmission equipment. But then I told myself, a regulator can’t come at night. A higher hand than the regulator’s was involved and the magnitude of the event suggested a force that had some strong, invisible hand.”
If that was bad news, worse was to come. An hour later, Melly received more reports that another group had invaded Standard Group. This time, it was the newspaper printing press. The gang attacked and kidnapped staff, stopped the presses and was burning newspapers. A news gatherer was making the news, in the midst of a rare crisis. How could anyone handle such a disaster?
It was a world away from the optimism on the day when Melly joined Standard Group in 2004. His job description was clear: transforming a fledgling media house on the verge of losing money and public confidence.
The Standard Group is Kenya’s second largest media house, which runs The Standard newspaper, the country’s first private television station and magazine distribution. The newspaper and television station have won fans because of their independent approach to news. It is the scourge of government and its officials, and it splashes stories that its rivals dare not touch. In an exclusive eight years ago, it revealed President Kibaki had a second wife. A few months later, the Sunday Standard questioned Kibaki’s fitness and suitability to be head of state after speculation over the president’s ill health, following a freak accident on the campaign trail.
It was a tough row to hoe. The Standard, Kenya’s oldest newspaper that was started in 1902, struggled to win over new readers and KTN kept losing viewers to newer and more nimble broadcasters. Operational costs were on the increase, especially newsprint, and the struggle to secure the most talented journalists was draining the coffers of newspapers. At the same time, turnover slackened and profitability plunged.
With no training or experience in journalism, Melly was an unlikely choice for the highest management position in the group. He is a finance man, with a Masters degree in accounting and finance.
“Not being a trained journalist represented a strength in looking at things from a fresh point of view, challenging the status quo and always pursuing the ‘why strategy of asking why can we not do this or that’ without the inhibition of journalism experience,” Melly told FORBES AFRICA at the company’s new headquarters on the outskirts of Nairobi.
The position, he says, required leadership skills, which he had in plenty from the Capital Markets Authority, a government-run industry regulator, where he had worked for a dozen years, 10 of them as chief executive officer. He presided over reforms, including the demobilization of shares, which is the conversion into electronic form, and the automation of the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE), now called the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
Since December 2004, when he joined, he says Standard Group’s fortunes have improved. Turnover had grown from Sh1.7 billion ($20 million) to Sh3.1 billion ($36.5 million) by December 2010. Shareholders’ equity has increased fivefold, while profits have tripled, from near loss, to Sh453 million ($5 million).
“Figures speak for themselves,” he says as he takes me through the annual report for 2010. These numbers pale next to those of the rival, Nation Media Group, that turns over twice as much, with triple the profits, but they are big enough to toast with champagne at Standard Group.
Standard Group was far from ready when the hooded gang descended with AK-47s in hand. They stormed into rented head offices in the city center, arresting staff, confiscating computers and dismantling transmission equipment. At the printing works, they burned newspapers as they rolled off the press. Indeed, the events of Wednesday, March 2, 2006, played out like a Hollywood action movie.
“To say it was my worst day is an understatement,” says Melly.
The raid was executed with the precision of a commando operation and its magnitude showed it was not the work of casual criminals.
“Because the raiders were hooded and accompanied government security personnel with people of Caucasian origin, it immediately occurred to me it was sabotage on our operations,” Melly says.
There was speculation that the raid was aimed at pre-empting a negative story on senior people in government.
“It was just intimidation. The headline that day was ‘Champions of KCSE (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education)’ celebrating the performance of schools. Those who were burning them must have been ashamed because they were burning newspapers with positive content about our children. There was no content found in any of our offices that was being contemplated for publication or published. And if there was, arrests would have been made and people charged. That story was a conspiracy by those behind the raid to justify their actions,” says Melly.
When it comes to dealing with crisis, Melly says he takes one step at a time, avoiding hasty decisions. “You must analyze the situation with a reasonable level of clarity,” he advises. As he did that, he moved to reassure his colleagues and staff that all would be fine and they would prevail.
“I received calls from many people, but I did not make any attempt to call anybody in government or people I know. My desire was to gather more information as necessary rather than spread the panic. We needed to know, for instance, how many were the raiders, how were they dressed, armed, and find out if there were any hallmarks of government support. And given that they used government vehicles, the fact that some of our employees were being taken into police custody was enough to suggest that the operation was instigated by government.”
Standard Group lost advertising revenue in the newspaper, circulation, TV and editorial content in its news repository, crucial data on its magazine distribution division and hundreds of computers, all running into millions of dollars. Operations were crippled and something had to be done, and quickly.
As a leader, Melly had to think on his feet, answer anxious calls and maintain his cool.
By 6am, he says, he had in place a strategy, with key objectives of getting KTN back on air and repairing the printing press to have a paper on the streets the next day.
First, Melly rallied support among journalists, politicians and diplomats in defense of the freedom of the press. He assembled a legal team to assess the issue and free arrested journalists.
The key was to resume operations as fast as possible while assessing the damage.
“We managed the situation within a day. In the evening we were up and running and KTN had resumed operations. We acquired new computers and assembled new software. We managed to repair the damage to our press as we couldn’t get another media house to print for us. The Standard was on the streets the following day.”
Last but not least, what it took is courage. “When you are right, nothing can fail you,” says Melly.
“When I was growing up, my grandparents instilled in me a strong culture of determination and responsibility early in life. Being the first born, I started making contributions to family matters early, managing resources and leading others. More importantly, my grandparents always told me that in life you must go to the destination you have identified no matter the bottlenecks, and you must learn to overcome them the same way a river manages to overcome hills and barriers. However, you must not be reckless. Always be tactful.”
Melly says the team is now better prepared. The company has set up additional electronic surveillance devices allowing the station to be able to beam any future raid live on TV.
Looking back, he admits some failures.
“It took time for us to resume operations. At that moment we did not have an elaborate contingency plan. We took virtually the whole day. We have learnt the lessons.”
So why is he still restless?
“The mystery of it all is that I cannot, as the person leading this business, tell you why the raid was conducted. Because there was no shred of evidence that was provided either directly or indirectly to suggest that there was an illegality being committed or contemplated on our part as a media house or by any of our journalists, and I can only second guess that the overall objective was to dismantle a fierce independent media house in an attempt to cow the entire media in the country.”
If there is a next time, at least he will be prepar
<h3>What did he learn?</h3>
“I would want to characterize it as a defining moment not only in media operations and survival, but also as a major test on me in my professional career… Perseverance keeps you going, even in adversity.”
<h3>What did the government say?</h3>
The Kenya government confirmed it ordered police to raid the offices of The Standard newspaper and its sister TV station. The newspaper had been critical of President Mwai Kibaki’s handling of corruption scandals. The government had repeatedly accused The Standard of fabricating stories. Internal security minister John Michuki said the raids on the Standard Group in Nairobi were designed to protect state security. “If you rattle a snake, you must be prepared to be bitten by it,” 
he said.
A police spokesman said in a statement hours after the raid that authorities conducted the sweep to collect evidence about a plot that threatened national security. Jasper Ombati, the police chief at the time, said the police had evidence that Standard journalists were being paid to incite ethnic hatred and write fabricated articles about the government. He said security officers acted on intelligence information about “an intended act” that would threaten national security. He confirmed that police officers routinely wore masks to hide their identities in sensitive cases such as The Standard raid. Little has been heard from the government since then.

Tag: Media

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