Among 2o startup funded in a month,only 5 startups are subjected to be funded and come into existing companies with success in Africa.This statistics always rises the questions such as Why are the other 15 failed to be successiful in time?or what are the reason for their failure? But before we jump on answering those questions above,we must ask our selves these question;What are the general success factors of the modern busines in Africa?

Like other business firms in other part of the globe,the success factors for business in Africa are the same,but environment consideration is important especially when you are thinking of how to  create  the next business in Africa.The following are the business success factors:

Viable business concept
A clear business concept is that intend to solve a certain problem in a society as the way to fix the customer needs.Everything can be  customerly  in a certain society but the culture and governmental regulations play the important role to make the business concept viable in that community.

Understanding of the market
A clear understanding of the market is the key of the business to prevail since if you understand the market you are automatically having the trick to play with your revenue streams and maintain your customers and beyond adding more revenue streams.

Management capability
In order for a firm to exist in a business process;the firm's team means everything for the service.Maintaining the positive relationship in a firm,(a relations towards business  existence);especially on production, quality assurance,and marketing is the most important roles the managers must endorse so as to make the firm come into success.

Strong financial understanding and control
In order to call you name that is in businesss,you must know what goes in and what goes out of your business and controling as well as expanding the in and out flow pipes so that the business can be big and successiful as you wish.

Consistent business focus
Above all the consistency of the firm business focus is very essential since the future of the business intend to give solutions.

Being aware and live the success factors is the only way to avoid failure which are on the way due to;lack of business plan,Insufficient market research,underestimating of competition,inadequate insurance,lack of customer service,Lack of experience and knowledge on the industry you are trying to compete,insufficient operating capital,change in the governmental regulation and lack of fear of failure.

It is how simple to know why most startups fails or not see the success in time;since most of them do not know their critical success factors to which they should be founded and being able to withstand the unforeseen chalanges which they differ each other.

Tanzanian Legendary Blogger Issa Michuzi

I have been a blogger for the past four years all this time I have been studying different tricks and technologies on how to drive traffic in your site. The issue is not what you have, the issue what the people want. If you want to drag people into your site you have to think like them but this is very difficult when you are doing cooperate blogging or when you are blogging specifically about particular thing which just select a certain portion of the community as your main audience. 

Personally I like to blog about technology, is what I do actually and I love doing it but loving isn’t enough you have to make something out of it. The only way to do that is to perfect what you do, to provide something of the highest quality that would not only make you survive in the online battle for struggle of existence but will also make you survive living in the shadow of famous people who don’t need to be creative since they are already known. It’s harsh reality but until you are able to survive in the online competition every day you must wake up with something new in your mind to drag the audience into your site. 

The easiest way to have six million hits on your site per month is to be famous, you don’t have to link your site with social networking site, advertise it or even sending thousands of twits to different people to drag them into your site. 

I have been studying a lot of tricks online about increasing traffics in your site some of them are even unethical legally not advised but yes they work. In my experience you don’t have to stress yourself with cyber stalking or putting links into people Facebook wall page or even tagging them in photos of your new site while they don’t actually want to be tagged. There is always a better way to drag traffic into your site always understand what your audience want and ask yourself if what you are giving to them is the thing actually they want.Most of us we like blogging but we are not committed. You can’t make a cool blog or site and expect it to go viral in less than six month while nobody knows you, who do you think you are Issa Michuzi ? Ask him when he started blogging you will realize soon as Google take control over Blogger it was the time Michuzi engaged himself in the blogging industry. 

There is no alternative for hardworking, reading news and committing yourself on what you do if you want to have success. Make sure you promote the local content and no matter what you blog, blog it well and no your audience. If you are a social guy, you hang out with famous people and you like to blog about them then do it. It usually work but it takes some time. I know this guy of course not personally DJ Choka with his blog I used to read it when I was doing my degree in my first year. You can imagine now the time he has spent for his blog to become popular. For the tech enthusiast with their startups who takes blogging and article writing as their carrier they should stay focus and disciplined things like this they take time to mature but when you are up there is no going down. Keep doing what you are doing but make sure you do it right. For any queries about dragging traffic to your site you can contact me directly through my personal mail or see our email address in the contact us page. 

Mark Zuckerberg

On May 18, 2012, Facebook, Inc.  went made its Initial Public Offering and issued its shares to the general public, Before that date it was seen as becoming the next Google , valued at 100 Billion USD others even anticipated its IPO to be Bigger than Google. On the opening of the IPO facebook shares sold at $38 per share valuing the company at a staggering 104 Billion Dollars the largest valuation to date for a newly public company making it’s 27 year old CEO mark Zuckerberg even Richer and seemed like everybody wanted to invest on facebook.

But now, barely five months later, Facebook shares have lost almost 47% of their value and many investors have lost their money and others are whining and calling for the resignation of Zuckerberg from the position of CEO.

What Went Wrong?

American Stock Market, viewed and envied by us third World folks as the most efficient stock market in the world, They way we see it, if there is one place in the world where a company cannot be wrongly valued much less massively Overvalued is at Wall street, Besides, People in the US are not in the habit of investing their money without having really good reasons to do so, After what happened in the Dot Com crisis of the 2000s with grim stories of the Infamous ENRON and WORLDCOM, only fools part with their money without reasonable amount of research.

Or maybe not, Could it be that people are not calculative rational beings Economics professors tell us they are? Some argue that most people who invested on facebook did not even take the time to read the IPO prospectus and the letter Zuckerberg wrote to the “to be Investors” at the time, Seems people looked at certain factors which led them to give the company much more value than it really had, For example; Facebook has almost 1 billion users all over the world, It is projected that facebook will have a 17.7% of all online ad revenue by the end of the year  while yahoo will have 13.1 and Google 9.3%. By the end of the year 2011 Facebook had projected revenue of USD 4.2 Billion. 

Looking at these factors, many an investor felt like investing on Facebook was a right thing to do forgetting more important indicators of this company’s Value like the fact that almost 50% of its users are using Mobile devices now which results in much less revenue, Also there is much chatter among High end Business people that Facebook advertising is not as effective as traditional modes of marketing, this includes a research from a Professor Ben Edelman of Harvard Business School who basically doesn’t think Facebook advertising adds any value to one’s business, He compares it to advertising on the Far side of the moon hoping that when Aliens finally get here they will know what to Buy!!.

What is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s View?

Mark Zuckerberg, a 27 year old Harvard dropout founded facebook in his dorm room 8 years ago, as he himself says he did not think or plan that It will become a company. Many people who know him say he is not the type of person to crack under pressure and also he doesn’t care much about money and material things, in His letter to investors he states clearly that his plans for facebook are Long term extending for Decades and not months or a few years, So a crisis only a few months from the IPO is nothing to make him flinch.

Zuckerberg’s standing point is clear in his letter to investors; He says “….Facebook was not originally founded to be a company. We’ve always cared primarily about our social mission, the services we’re building and the people who use them. This is a different approach for a public company to take, so I want to explain why I think it works….” meaning that Facebook’s main aim is to create the products and services that help people connect and share, it is not to make money out of those products, simply put, Facebook raises funds to create the social products and does not create the social products to make money.

However this turns out, I think Facebook has revolutionized this world, and from my point of view, a company with 1 billion users is worth to be part of. What is more important than High share value is having users who will keep using your services, after all, I don’t think anybody expected Facebook’s value to keep increasing up and above $104 Billion, and despite all that At $18, using the correct share count (2.7 billion), Facebook is still valued at almost $50 billion.

Victor Joseph Mnyawami is the Founder and Chairperson of Beeble

(http://www.beeble.co.tz/)

Sources:
http://www.businessinsider.com

accountingdegree.net

TECH360 Correspondent 

Facebook is a lot of things to a lot of people, maybe that's why there are almost a billion Facebook users. Everyone loves the social media site for different reasons such as: dating, chatting, stalking, social revolution and even getting the latest news from different sources.

As i was going through my Facebook profile today, i found another useful use for this great social media site, who knew you can use Facebook to bookmark your favorite sites and articles? By carefully choosing what you like (Facebook like feature on websites and blogs) and from which online resource, you can create a very good collection of resources, put in a place where you are more likely to revisit (Hey who doesn't spend some few good minutes or even hours on Facebook every day?) why not spend this valuable time wisely by using it for a better reason err maybe bookmarking?

iTony Severine
IT Consultant

We have all heard about viruses and so we have various types of anti-viruses installed in our computers so we can protect our computers from the harm of viruses.

GAUSS it’s the name of the big threat to computers now. Discovered in June by researchers from the KESPERSKY LABS, it has already harmed 2,500 most in Lebanon, but with a high spreading speed. Its purpose appears to be acquiring log-ins for e-mail and instant messaging accounts, social networks (Facebook, twitter e.t.c) and, notably, accounts at some of largest banks including the Bank of Beirut, Blom Bank, Byblos Bank and Credit Libanais.

A warning to computer users mostly the banks also to the E-COMMERCE those who use the online payment system PayPal, there is possibility which is not yet confirmed that this new threat is a financial target. Researchers needed to help cracking the "warhead" encrypted in this virus. Formore please visit the link.

Posted by Victor Joseph Tech 360 Magazine Guest Writer

LILOs:  Get Rich Slow

LILO, standing for a Little In a Lot Out,  The term first appeared in TIME of Thursday, Apr. 09, 2009 in an article by Josh QUITTNER to refer to a kind of web based companies which are very cheap to start and can become serious money makers to their founders.

How do you get started? All that's required is a great idea for a product that will fill a need in the 21st century. These days you'd do best if your idea either makes people money or saves them money.

An example of such a company is MotorMouths.com founded by John Tayman and went online on January 2009; Motormouths simply summarizes car reviews from other sources and rank every model of new car.

By April 2009 Tayman figures he had worked about 10 hours a week on it and hasn't spent a cent on marketing or advertising and he already had 10,000 visitors each week.

By Victor Joseph Mnyawami.tech360magazine guest writer

Amazon.com, Ebay.com, shopzilla Alibaba.com and ShopatHome.com,  score 10 if you guessed  that they are all popular online shopping sites based in the US, Asia and Europe, It’s a big Business out there worth Billions of dollars and making people billionaires. The question is what is happening here in Africa and specifically, Tanzania.

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, ecommerce, eCommerce or e-comm, refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Electronic  commerce draws on such technologies as electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at one point in the transaction's life-cycle, although it may encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail, mobile devices and telephones as well.

Historical background

E commerce can be traced just as far back as when electronic devices were networked for the first time, or rather when Michael Aldrich, an English inventor invented Online shopping back in 1979, But things did not get merrily until the 90s when the world wide web as we know it today was available commercially, after that , Jeff Bezzos came up with his Amazon.com and by 1996 eBay.com appeared and after that Alibaba.com then the word   e-commerce became an everyday term, at least in the developed countries.

The Nature of Electronic Commerce

E-commerce comprises business transactions conducted using electronic communications

Processes and facilities (and especially the Internet). May take any of the following forms;

Trade in Physical Goods. Following the universally known example of Amazon.com, in theory consumers in many countries can now purchase goods from anywhere on the globe by placing orders and paying over the Internet.

Trade in Offline Teleservices and Virtual Goods. Many services such as capturing medical records data,  digitizing architectural drawings, translating, computer programming, etc. do not have to be done at a client’s physical premises, and there are also so-called virtual goods like downloadable music files and digital images that can be created anywhere for electronic delivery to 

the client. All that is necessary for these types of trade is effective electronic communications.

Trade in Online Teleservices.

These include services such as call centers, Internet service providers, server services and so forth.

E-commerce in Africa.

Within the framework described above, what is the reality of e-commerce in Africa? It must be said that—with the exception of South Africa—there is minimal evidence of ecommerce on the continent.

Several factors are the cause for this situation, unlike in the early days of e-commerce in the developed economies there was much commentary about supplier reliability (the major e-malls and brand names prevailed), privacy of information (credit card fraud was the topic of the day), and the “World Wide Wait” as a result of slow telecomm links. Those concerns have greatly diminished and ecommerce has matured in the major developed nations. This is far from the case in the developing world and especially Africa. Currently common obstacles to ecommerce in Africa are specific to the socio-economic milieu of the continent.

The obstacles to e-commerce in Africa are many and varied:

§  Policy Regimes: Monopoly provision of telecommunication access and weak Regulation results in high costs of service and limited business opportunities for value-added services.

§  Legal Frameworks: Most countries are still to legalize digital signatures and contracts and tackle issues such as Intellectual Property Rights and Consumer Protection in the digital arena. Dispute settlement in the whole  B2C arena and protection of intellectual property rights in the teleservices and “virtual goods” marketplace are significant inhibitors.

§  Financial Environment: Credit cards are taken for granted in the developed world and are the sine qua non for B2C e-commerce. Also, e-entrepreneurs can often look to vibrant venture capital sector to fund new ventures. These are fundamental gaps in most developing countries. Many developing economies are almost entirely cash-based. Credit cards are virtually non-existent, and central bank clearing facilities are very limited. Concerted collaborative efforts between fiscal authorities, banks and private sector merchants will be needed to create an e-commerce friendly financial environment. A sea change in banking attitudes will be needed to enable a venture capital market.

§  The Information Infrastructure: Whether e-commerce relates to physical goods or teleservices, the costs of equipment and connectivity loom large in developing countries, especially in monopolistic regimes. Limited bandwidth adds to the problem of providing off-line teleservices and online teleservices demand high quality fast network access.

  

§  Transportation and Delivery Systems: Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between developed and developing countries more vivid than here. The essence of B2C ecommerce is instant gratification! The placing of an instant order (and perhaps the equally quick debiting of the consumer’s account) has to be followed up with appropriately quick delivery of the goods. While this is eminently feasible for virtual goods such as music files, it is far from so when it comes to physical goods. Airfreight is risky, infrequent and expensive in Africa; customs clearance procedures are long and complex; local warehousing facilities hardly exist.

§  Human Capacity: The people required to effect e-commerce have to be computer literate, oriented towards the digital economy, and comfortable with the major languages of the Web. Those that meet the requirements have to be willing to stay in their home countries and not join the brain drain.

However, The above mentioned problems are not here to stay, Policies and Legal structures tend to change if the change is demanded, for example, with the increasing number of Africans who are engaging in online activities, governments will have to start aligning their policies to accommodate that, With the trend towards mobile means of transferring money which is getting very popular very fast in these parts of the world with services such as m-pesa and tigo pesa, the Financial environment is due to change towards e-commerce, Also, as new and better Information infrastructures such as the new fiber optic cable get installed, The problems of slow connectivity and limited bandwidth will be a thing of the past in the very near future.

Africa may  be more than a decade behind the progress of electronic commerce, but one thing is clear, it is happening now and I am sure it is going to have even more impact here than it had in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

E-COMMERCE GLOBAL FACT FILE:

·         Amazon.com reported a net income of US$ 631 million in 2011 with revenues of a staggering US$ 48 billion.

·         EBay.com reported a net income of US$ 3.229 billion with revenues of 11.651 billion.

·         China's online shopping sales rose to $36.6 billion in 2009.

·         The United Kingdom has the biggest e-commerce market in the world when measured by the amount spent per capita, even higher than the USA.

·         Jeff Bezzos, founder of Amazon.com was worth US$18.1 billion by 2011

·         Revenues in B2B ecommerce in the US was at US$ 133.3 billion in 2005.

-Victor Mnyawami (22) is the founder and chairperson of www.beeble.co.tz