Since our trip to Africa was a family vacation and I really didn’t want business to intrude I wound up not spending time with startups in Nairobi. But I did talk to a lot of people we encountered about their use of technology.
Mobile communication is almost everywhere. Only when we went into more remote Samburu territory did we not have a cell signal. Many people are still using feature phones but Android is making rapid headway. An iPhone is considered to be a real luxury item and very few people have one. I took a picture of downtown Nairobi that shows a big LG and an even more prominent Samsung ad (admittedly not a great picture so you have to search a bit).
M-Pesa, the mobile payment system, is used incredibly widely. It has had some very positive effects, such as being able to pay women who work directly as is done for example by the Leakey Collection who work with Maasai women. That in turn has had a dramatic impact in reducing domestic violence against women. Somewhat surprisingly though, the use of M-Pesa has not reduced corruption. In fact you can now bribe folks using electronic payment instead of cash and some people think that the added convenience has increased corruption. It seems that there is an important tradeoff between adoption and enforcement. If you started to track electronic transactions on M-Pesa as a way to crack down on corruption you might stunt growth of electronic payments (people would be a lot less likely to use EZ Pass if they got speeding tickets from it).
Another big surprise for me was how relatively underdeveloped solar energy is. In fact the official Kenya government policy we were told is to invest more in grid development and fossil fuels which if true is bizarre at best. Distributed solar generation has huge promise in Africa. Fortunately, there are now startups such as M-Kopa, that are focused on helping finance the acquisition of solar devices. We saw one solar lamp in particular that doubles as a mobile phone charger and is very affordable.
We also went to visit a school that is supported by the Lewa Conservancy. One of our kids had done a small fundraiser prior to our trip and bought school supplies. When I first looked at what he had bought — paper, pencils and other very basic supplies — I thought this couldn’t possibly be what they needed. But it turned out to be spot on. When we went to the school we found it had 640 students and 18 teachers. The classrooms had 30-40 students in them with a teacher and a whiteboard. Basic supplies where exactly what was most needed.
Kenya has apparently announced a one laptop per child initiative. Based on our school visit though it would seem that subsidizing smartphones would be a much better route. Many of the kids walk long distances to school and it seems unlikely that they could carry a laptop back and forth. A phone in fact would make that walk safer. Also phones could have direct cellular data connectivity obviating the need for maintaining a local network. The school could add solar panels for charging the phones.
Overall I came away with a sense of optimism about the potential for Kenya. One of the most interesting questions though is what kind of society a country such as Kenya should be aiming for. I will have more to say about that as I shift my writing on Continuations to focus on my thoughts about the Information Age. I believe there may be an opportunity to leapfrog the industrial model.
