While the mobile
companies have realized the importance of the mobile audience and use it for
generating income through advertising and product auctioning most of the
African governments are still sleeping to utilize the opportunity. The individual companies have been advertising
through cheap mobile ads and have been able to reach millions of users through
mobile phone.
The worldwide
mobile messaging market is worth US$202 billion in 2011, rising to $310.2
billion in 2016. Asia Pacific generated the highest mobile messaging revenues
in 2011. In 2011, the main contributors to messaging revenues were SMS 63.5
percent; MMS 15.3 percent; Mobile email 16.2 percent and mobile IM 5.0 percent
this is according to Portio Research of February 2012. What is Africa’s position on
this?
While the total
global ads spending is US$ 5,333 Million only US$ 172 Million is coming from
Africa this means that only 3% of the total ads spending to mobile ads and services
globally comes from Africa. This is so disappointing
putting in mind the number of mobile users in Africa. “Out of every 100 people,
65 have some form of mobile connectivity” according to Peter Lyons, GSMA's
director of spectrum policy for Africa and Middle East when he was explaining
the status of mobile penetration on BBC’s focus on Africa Programme.
The
Revenues that is generated by the Mobile advertising industry globally between
(2010-2012) is US$ 20,610.0 Million while Africa has been grouped in the group
of the rest of the world sharing US$ 2,761.7 Million revenue the actual figure
for Africa is not known but logically is still too small comparing to the
opportunity that African mobile users possess to their governments and
stakeholders.
Kenya is among
the leading countries in Africa who at least utilizes the opportunity that
comes with the mobile technologies. Kenya is at the forefront of mobile money
transfers, with 8.5 million users and several projects to utilize the opportunities
that come with mobile technologies things like M-Farm, M-Health and others.
The mobile
industry in Africa is booming and a catalyst for immense growth, but there is
scope for far greater development. If our governments decides themselves to
commit in mobile technologies it will help to promote so many other sectors in
our community and reduce spending in funding some other projects which collects
money unnecessarily from our governments.
The governments
could have used mobile phones to create social awareness in our communities.
Instead of spending millions putting road side ads to create awareness on the
effect of (HIV) AIDS they could have a centralized database which send SMS to
mobile phones telling people about HIV (AIDS) because SMS is among the most
basic features which available in mobile phones. This is just an example on how
the mobile phone could be used to impact the community and cut down cost in
some of the government’s projects.
Government spends
a lot of money gathering data and information manually from people billions of
Shillings have to be injected into projects so that they can reach even remote
areas and villages but believe me the mobile phone can just do that for them.
The
Kenyan government's abolition of the 16% general sales tax on mobile handsets
in 2009 has resulted in handset purchases increasing by more than 200%. What does this mean when you gave the
chance for people to have mobile phones on their hands means that you will have
a chance to not only get the revenue from the business but the opportunity to
reach more people when you want to provide services to them.
There have been
so many projects going on some of them are effective while others remains on
papers on the use of mobile technologies to impact community. The most recent
one is the Tigo Kilimo in Tanzania while
almost 75 percent of Tanzanian’s are farmers we expect them to have the
opportunity to cultivate the products and practice agriculture in the most
efficiency way that was the aim of Tigo Kilimo
but can it be successful without a complete government support and public
awareness programmes? People needs to
hear it from the government themselves that why most of the mobile initiative
to impact the communities fail because the government are either not taking
them seriously or they don’t believe in mobile technologies to impact the
communities.
Now,
if the problem seems to be solved meaning that by 2015 we expect to have 36
million mobile subscribers in Tanzania comparing to the total population of
about 45 million it means the government can reach almost 72 percent of
Tanzanian. The questions that emerge how the government is prepared to use this
opportunity? It expected there will be more than 735 million subscribers by
the end of 2012 in Africa. Is the continent prepared to use the opportunity?
Sources:
BBC News Africa, Mobithinking.com
Jumanne
Mtambalike
TECH360
Correspondent