Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.

Building on the momentum we had during the first MOMO meet up of 2011, we are excited to have Microsoft for our next meet up happening on the 21st of February at the iHub.

Topic : Microsoft Imagine Cup Competition

Imagine Cup is an annual competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft Corp. which brings together young technologists worldwide to help resolve some of the world’s toughest challenges. Primarily a software design competition, it enlists teams of four within the high school and collegiate levels to submit software solutions addressing a specifically provided theme. Started in 2002, it has steadily grown in size, where in 2008 210,000 competitors representing over 100 countries competed in the nine Imagine Cup invitational.

Speakers

1. Vincent Mugambi- Developer & Platform Manager- Microsoft Eastern & Southern Africa
2. Conrad Akunga – Virtual City

As always a big thank you to the iHub team for making every MOMO meet up run smoothly and for providing us with the best space any techie community could ever ask, and to Virtual City for their support and sponsorship. MOMO-Kenya would not be where it is without these two supporters.

Date: Monday, 21st Feb. 2011
Open Hours: 18:00 – 20:00
Presentations: 18:00 – 19:30
Networking: 19:30 – Close
Venue: iHub, Ngong Road
Please Register in Advance

Sponsors

Main Speaker

Many thanks for those of you who attended our first MoMo meet up of 2011. The iHub was packed again as developers and enthusiasts came together to hear Pesapal talking about the online payments ecosystem in Kenya.

For those of you who missed out on this month’s MoMo meet up or may be you just want to go through the excellent presentation Liko Agosta, CEO- Pesapal made here it is:

PesaPal- 360 Degrees

Nokia is offering a unique opportunity  to software developers in Kenya and Uganda.
We are offering a 14 week course on Java ME development for mobile handsets to the top developers in both countries.

We are looking for entrepreneurs who are passionate about leveraging mobile phone technology to develop applications that will bring useful service to local communities and create prosperous businesses.

The training will be fully sponsored by Nokia, and we are therefore looking for applicants who have a strong academic track record, and demonstrated interest in mobile technology.

All applicants must have minimum of 1 year of Java development experience to qualify to participate in  this training.

The course will run for 14 weeks beginning from 7th of February to 13th of May 2011, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Deadline to apply is January 28th 2011.

to register go to http://events.forum.nokia.com/invitation/eastafrica?mode=register

For more information contact:
Teemu Kiijarvi
Forum Nokia Developer Relations Manager

Happy New Year!!

The Mobile Monday-KENYA team is excited to be starting 2011 with a very exciting line up of Speakers. This coming Monday the 17th of January we will be having PesaPal, a payment platform that helps Kenyans buy and sell on the internet using Mpesa,Zap and Credit Cards. They will be talking about “E-commerce ecosystem in Kenya.”

If you’re into E-commerce and M-commerce this is a MoMo event you don’t want to miss!!

Please remember to register or go to http://momoke2011.eventbrite.com/!!

Steve Goh, Co-founder of Mig33 speaking at the 10th Mobile Monday Anniversary Peer Awards Ceremony in Helsinki, Finland.

Many of you have asked if we are going to have any MoMo meet up in December, the answer is no. Now I’m sure that disappoints many of you avid MoMo attendees and we apologize for that, but there are a couple of reason behind it, first being that December is a pretty tight month with a whole bunch of family activities, we didn’t want to hold an event when the majority of our attendees would not be available, secondly it’s been a roller coaster ride for the MoMo team- from inception all the way to our last 2 events which were amazing in terms of participation and attendance, we wanted to take the time to think up how to make 2011 bigger and better for you,the mobile community, but we need you to help us.

We need you to give us ideas,comments, feedback on what we can do to make MoMoKE have the impact it should have amongst mobile developers, enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and the community as a whole. Send as an email on [email protected], trust me someone will respond. If you want to volunteer your time or resources for some of our events please send as an email, we won’t say no to help.

2011 promises to be the most exciting time to be involved in the mobile tech space, and we intend to build a strong community that can be able to take advantage of the opportunities out there.

Our last MoMo event for the year held at the iHub was very successful. We had over 100 people attending and the quality of the content was amazing. Nokia was well represented by Agatha Gikunda, Safaricom was represented by Nzioka Waita and we had guest appearances from the Deputy Vice Chancellor of JKUAT.

Pictures from the MoMo meet up that happened on the 15th of November at the iHub.

John Wesonga, kicking of the meeting

Kahenya & Limo talking about overlap.co.ke- An app that allows motorists to report errant drivers

Deputy Vice Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology speaking on the importance of engaging the main actors when developing an app that is specific to their sector e.g. If you are developing an app to assist farmers, talk to them and understand their challenges.

The Mobile Monday-Kenya team from left John Wesonga (MoMoKE),Nokia-Agatha Gikunda , James Muendo (MoMoKE) AkiraChix- Jamila Abbas,Virtual City-John Waibochi  and Safaricom- Nzioka Waita

Big thank you to Virtual City, who continue to sponsor us and help us grow this community. Also we want to thank Nokia for being part of this event.

View all the pictures in our Flickr stream http://bit.ly/gZwpu4 and check out what Erik Hersman aka White African had to say Mobile Monday takes over the iHub

Life is mobile and with life comes living, which requires one to part with cash or some other form of value in exchange for what they want. With the introduction of mobile money in many African markets and the success that is Mpesa, focus is shifting to mobile payments.

While some may argue that it is the technology that is holding back adoption of mobile payments on a mass scale, I believe it is the lack of reasonable business models that ensure all players in the value chain are adequately compensated. The tug of war that played out for us after the rollout of Mpesa, goes to show that while mobile payments is a lucrative market, cross industry synergies must be forged to ensure seamless service delivery and most importantly stability of the payment ecosystem.

The mobile payments arena is attracting many startups seeking to become the defacto connector in what could soon become a billion shilling industry as demand for payment convenience and online purchasing rises in the region. Some of the payment services currently in the market include; PesaPal, Commerce 360, Moca, JamboPay and Ipay. All of these services build on top of popular mobile money services Mpesa, Zap and Yu cash with extensions that support credit card payment to target the growing number of consumers who carry plastic.

An analysis of the current services looking to grow mindshare reveals that the ultimate business model for mobile payments at least on a local level is yet to be discovered. And perhaps that model doesn’t exist.

The concept of mobile commerce and e-commerce lends itself to different types of inventory being available for purchase. Notwithstanding different users want to be engaged in different ways and they want different things. The experience and billing for a virtual good purchased on a social network cannot be the same as that of an online store selling dresses.
The key lies in creating business models that suit the different consumer experiences. Models that adapt to the preferred method of payment as well as type of good or service being purchased. One underlying issue that must also be tackled head on is the revenue structures. Currently mobile money, which is the backbone of current mobile payment solutions, is the domain of mobile network operators and the tariffs for these services were not developed with m-commerce in mind.

The mobile network operators would do well for the market and themselves, if they crafted a proposition to add value to the mobile payments ecosystem.
This move in my opinion is as simple as adopting a different set of tariffs for mobile payments and setting standards for interoperability that will drive innovation by the upstarts seeking to deliver last mile payment solutions. This will lead to an increase in the volume of M and E commerce with all players being adequately compensated for their value addition.

Mbugua Njihia is CEO of Symbiotic Media – a mobile tech firm based in Nairobi

Twitter – @mbuguanjihia

This article was published on cgap.org and highlights the innovative mobile money solutions coming out of Kenya. As a disclaimer I’m personally involved in one such project Mamakiba.

You can read the original article here

Kenya grabs a lot of attention with mobile money, but is all the innovation happening at the top of the food chain? We don’t think so. In fact, working with FSD Kenya and some great ex-Unitus folks, we’ve found a veritable hotbed of Kenyan entrepreneurs spinning out one exciting idea after another. The next round of mobile money innovation could easily come from the little guys, if only they could gain traction with the right financing and other support. Unfortunately, the entrepreneurs tell us that’s not there in Kenya. There seems to be a clear market failure with willing, able and attractive entrepreneurs finding a wilderness empty of the kind of angel and early VC financing, mentoring plus nuts and bolts advice they need to soar.

I recently spent an intense week in Nairobi scoping out the landscape. We found out 2 things:

1. There are a ton of small entrepreneurs working in mobile money and they are arriving from 4 vastly different directions.

• Adjacent industries:   Mamakiba’s founder started by asking why so many women want to give birth in a clinic with trained medical professionals, but do not: the discovery… it’s hard to save up the USD 40 cost, even knowing months in advance (shades of Sendhil Mullainathan’s findings in the domain of behavioral economics). Mamakiba starts with a savings calculator to help pregnant women figure out how much they need for the kind of birth they want, links them to M-PESA to do the saving, and pairs regular saving reminders with health messages via sms. Take away: not all the innovation is coming from financial experts, but other fields where financial services are part of the solution to some altogether different problem. mHealth is particularly exciting — if mobile money is like PayPal, mhealth could be its eBay, driving usage to huge levels.
• Premium mobile content providers:   Cellulant is a profitable company which got its start selling mobile music but really got active in banking 3 years ago when its founder – Ken Njoroge – decided they needed to make it easier for their clients to buy their products. Cellulant has since built platforms for many of Kenya’s banks (for more than music, these days) and is trying to bridge the divide between the multiple banks and mobile network operators. It may very well be a third-party, non-bank, non-MNO player who figures out how to connect everyone’s platforms to everyone else’s. Lofty goal indeed, but it would make mobile money truly interoperable for the first time in Kenya.Symbiotic has its sights set on a similar target, and is also thinking about how to make it social.
• Silicon Valley meets the Rift Valley:  Then there are the classic tech entrepreneurs who write great code and see grand visions of the electronic future. One is PesaPal, which aims to aggregate massive amounts of data on electronic transactions and do 3 things: (1) offer the data to banks to do credit scoring, (2) personal software to help people “see” their finances and plan for goals, (3) supply chain management for SMEs. PesaPal is the only startup we found which had successfully attracted VC funding.
• The financial services sector: Chamgamka was founded by 2 guys who worked in mainstream insurance for decades. They launched in 2009 offering a reloadable health savings card stocked in stores next to maize, batteries and Coca-Cola. This effectively turns saving from something that’s abstract and has to be planned for, into a physical product one can buy on impulse. This is just the kind of product-side innovation we called for in CGAP’s latest Focus Note. Going with cards also allowed them to launch immediately, avoiding a long and potentially unsuccessful negotiation with mobile network operators to use the mobile network. They have several thousand profitable customers. Chamgamka allows top-up via M-PESA but their focus on cards as their main transaction instrument shows mobile isn’t the only game in town.

2. But as exciting as their ideas are, nearly all these entrepreneurs are somewhere in the “valley of death”, past funding from friends and family, short of commercial investment.

• There are some good resources out there. iHub and Mobile Monday have surged into the gap providing a space — literal and figurative — for networking. In fact, Mamakiba’s founders were introduced through the iHub. Several incubators provide training, work space and some other forms of support: particularly exciting is the newMobile Application Lab supported by Nokia, the Government of Finland and infoDev. There are also a few high profile contests. Outfits like Virtual City have won big awards from Nokia. The Kenya ICT Board ran a successful competition. And the US Department of State’s Apps for Africa contest handed out a $2,000 prize to Mamakiba and a few other designers addressing development issues. While these help get entrepreneurs excited, and raise the profile of the winners, no one can build a business off the small, infrequent sums.
• Money money everywhere, but not a drop to drink.  We found a growing community of VC firms (mostly foreign), some angel investors (mostly Kenyan), and an incredibly vibrant tradition of investment clubs (chamas) which by one count have USD 469 million in assets in Kenya. But no one is investing in tech startups. The smallest investment we found a VC making was USD 150,000. Local angels strongly prefer businesses with physical assets which can be sold in extremus, particularly real estate and service businesses like restaurants. And the chamas – though widespread – tend to invest in the stockmarket and more traditional businesses. In other words, nearly all the entrepreneurs we spoke to have a hard time seeing the path to commercial investment and business success.
• As a result, many ambitious ideas are in danger of staying on the drawing board, untapped. Ideas that have a long gestation period and which can’t be immediately self-financing typically don’t get tried. When they are, there is enormous pressure to focus on the surest bet, quickest. In other words, the runway is very, very short — far shorter than the window of opportunity for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Kenyan entrepreneurs have maybe a few months, half a year. It’s almost impossible to iterate an idea to find the right recipe in time.

How can we shift this equation?