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Mobile Media Services at Sub-Saharan African Newspapers a Guide to Implementing Mobile News and Mobile Business

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Mobile Media Services at Sub-Saharan African Newspapers a Guide to Implementing Mobile News and Mobile Business Mobile media services at Sub-Saharan African newspapers A guide to implementing mobile news and mobile business © SIMON MAINA / AFP FILES / AFP www.wan-ifra.org www.africanmediainitiative.org Mobile media services at Sub-Saharan African newspapers A guide to implementing mobile news and mobile business Published by: the World Association of Newspapers (WAN-IFRA) and the African Media Initiative (AMI) Supported by: Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) © 2011 World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers Mobile media services at Sub-Saharan African newspapers Table of Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 6 2. Setting the scene – Mobile in Sub-Saharan Africa ........................................... 9 2.1 Usage and infrastructure ........................................................................................... 9 2.2 Access points for mobile content..............................................................................14 SMS ......................................................................................................................14 MMS .....................................................................................................................14 Mobile Internet ......................................................................................................15 STK .......................................................................................................................15 USSD ....................................................................................................................16 Voice SMS/IVR – Interactive Voice Response ...........................................................16 2.3 Conditions for mobile business in Africa ..................................................................17 Premium SMS .......................................................................................................17 Mobile money as an alternative ..............................................................................18 Mobile advertising .................................................................................................19 2.4 Mobile trends in Africa ............................................................................................ 20 3. Case studies – Mobile media services ................................................................ 22 3.1 Uganda ................................................................................................................... 23 The Observer ........................................................................................................ 23 The Daily Monitor ................................................................................................. 25 Expert Article: The role of mobile technology in Uganda’s elections .................................27 3.2 Kenya ..................................................................................................................... 30 The Standard ........................................................................................................ 30 The Nation .......................................................................................................... 32 3.3 South Africa ............................................................................................................ 35 Grocott’s Mail ...................................................................................................... 36 Mail & Guardian .................................................................................................. 39 Avusa Group .........................................................................................................41 News24.com ........................................................................................................ 45 Expert Article: Mobile Youth in Africa ............................................................................. 48 4 A guide to implementing mobile news and mobile business 4. Important decisions when entering mobile ......................................................51 4.1 Who is your audience? .............................................................................................51 4.2 What are your audience’s needs? .............................................................................51 4.3 What do you want to achieve with mobile? ............................................................ 52 Loyalty and relationship building ........................................................................... 52 Reaching new readers ........................................................................................... 52 Market positioning ............................................................................................... 52 Revenue generation .............................................................................................. 53 4.4 What services could you offer? ............................................................................... 53 Classification of mobile services ............................................................................ 54 Mobile content services with potential for African media ...................................... 54 Additional uses of mobile for African media .......................................................... 57 Expert Article: The crowd maps potholes in Kampala ...................................................... 62 Expert Article: Planning to crowdsource? Here’s how! ..................................................... 63 4.5 How do you offer it? How to “mobilise” properly ................................................... 65 Expert Article: Choosing publishing systems – an overview ............................................ 67 4.6 How will you finance the services?.......................................................................... 69 Paid-for ................................................................................................................ 69 Advertising ........................................................................................................... 69 Message-based advertising ................................................................................... 69 Website ............................................................................................................... 70 Application ........................................................................................................... 70 4.7 Is your media house prepared? ............................................................................... 70 Expert Article: Advertising sales transition – going mobile ................................................71 4.8 How can mobile fit into the overall digital media strategy? ..................................... 73 5. Summary and conclusions .......................................................................................74 6. Sources/references .................................................................................................... 77 5 Mobile media services at Sub-Saharan African newspapers © Louise Hallman 1. Introduction The content of this report is based on a series of interviews held on-site in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa in February and March 2011. The aim of this report is to provide a comprehensive guide for Sub-Saharan media companies looking into the mobile channel. The typical reader is a media manager who needs to understand the overall opportunities and challenges in the market today and in a foreseeable future to be able to make up his or her mind on how to take mobile further in their own organisation. In Uganda and Kenya mobile usage is growing fast; of experience in mobile media. You will also find a however, most mobile media services offered are still list of questions you need to answer, one at a time, quite basic and the usage and volumes are still low. For when you move into mobile. These questions can be that reason we also looked at South Africa in hopes of adapted and used whenever you introduce any new finding media services that had proven to work and channel in your media portfolio. had been accepted by larger audiences in a market Each media company/newspaper interviewed was with similarities to that of Sub-Saharan countries. asked a series of questions in order to describe Hence this report encompasses data from three their experiences, their lessons learnt from mobile, markets in different stages of mobile development. opportunities and challenges in their markets as well Contemporary case studies of mobile media as their future plans. In the end of each interview, from the regions are presented here, together the newspapers were presented with example with additional ideas of services that could be services that they were asked to evaluate – whether implemented. In chapter four and five you will find these concepts could work in the newspapers’ discussion, hands-on tips and recommendations own portfolios. The case study section is found in from the author based on research and discussions chapter three. In addition to interviews with media on-site with African media houses as well as years companies/newspapers in the different countries, 6 A guide to implementing mobile news and mobile business interviews were held also with mobile network technologies, accompanied with new business operators, service enablers, researchers, media models for
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