[Afpif] Transit vs. peering Focust for Africa by 2021

[Mark Tinka]

On 6/Aug/15 16:35, Anibe Onuche wrote:
> Hello Tinka.
>
> Thanks for your mail and bringing us up to date on best approach to
> the issue at hand.
>
> I would like to point out some few things here though.
>
> First, I was referring to the 80% locally generated content vision
> while not ignoring the percentage the global internet brings.
>  I would like to see a scenario where Africans build up content by
> themselves to suit African contents.
> I would like to see a mail server that matches the yahoo prototype
> with an African identity.
> India has done it with their rediff portal (rediff.com). 
> I also want to see an Akamai ( and a lot of concepts e.g netflix )
> prototype in Africa.  Iroko Partners are buying into the idea of
> hosting within the African content and I hope this happens soon.
>
> You mention the usual suspects but you might be shocked on the a new
> direction we African want in the not too distant future. We are seeing
> this happening slowly.
> Digital Media , Social networks, Newspaper contents,Mobile money,
> movies with African Content will be more receptive soon. 
>
> We need to put our acts together to make this happens.

I think we need to be able to understand the difference between serving
existing demand, and innovating for local interests. Both of these
things are not mutually exclusive. However, one needs to appreciate the
immediate challenge at hand.

While there is no shortage of African solutions, there are reasons why
the technology offering the same solutions from the big names has the
market share. The reasons vary, so no use debating that. The bottom line
is in 2015, end users want what they want. And if they are saying they
prefer Skype to your local mobile provider's Skype "clone", there is a
reason for that that should not dissuade us from the task before us.

If we want to turn the tables and have 80% of our content coming from
the continent in the next few years, we need to work as hard on getting
the popular content on-continent as we are on innovating for Africa.

Mark.
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