HiPipo Money

Two of the world’s top universities Harvard and MIT announced collaboration with each contributing $30 million into a nonprofit partnership edX, which they hope will make the top-notch faculties and courses of their schools available for free to millions of people around the world — free for anyone with an Internet connection.

This is very good news for all people around the world that have an interest in quality education. Education at the world top universities in the UK (Oxford, Cambridge, LSE) or in the US can cost someone over 50,000 USD for a single year.  This amount is not affordable for many people from the developing world. The cost aside, the traditional education model has limits on the number of people that can enroll for a program or course. Embracing online distance learning comes with an advantage that more interested people will have a chance to tap into the knowledge base of the world’s top elite universities.

Even as the online students will be able to attain certificates of mastery but not traditional degrees, it is worth investment of one’s time and we hope Ugandans and all Africans with interest to grow their knowledge and/or dreams to reach Harvard or MIT will tap into this new opportunity. 

According to comScore January 2012, report Microsoft’s Bing’s share of the U.S. search was 15.2%, while Google’s share was 66.2%. Globally, Microsoft’s search market share was much lower at just 4.4% in 2011. 

Since time, when Bing was launched we at HiPipo found little love for Bing since it hardly had relevant results for HiPipo content. Its crawlers were always behind Google and seemed not to pick most of the recent content from our African/Ugandan Market. This appears to have significantly improved as of our last search.  A current may 2012, search of the term “HiPipo” on Bing shows about 32,300 RESULTS. Even as this figure is lower than Google’s over 128.000 results for the search of the same term, it is a significant improvement. Also the Bing search interface has become much cleaner and presenting sitelinks in a clear way.  Is Bing simply getting better on its own innovation or is it simply copying Google? Could be both! 

In 2004 during my first degree in computer science, at Makerere University, I happen to have offered a course on e-commerce during which my lecturer offered a wealth of knowledge about this subject. Many undergraduate and graduate students in computing over the last decade have had similar training but e-commerce realization has long been a mystery for Uganda and other African economies. This has largely been due to infrastructure challenges (Internet was still seen as luxury by some back then) and majorly poor banking penetration among other factors.

First track to 2012, many banks are offering VISA debit cards with ability to conduct online payments whereas some few banks are even offering credit cards.  Even as this is good progress, the rise of mobile money is phenomenal and the rising penetration of mobile internet and smartphones is a big catalyst. The talk about e-commerce now will hence be largely focused on mCommerce.

Electronic commerce (Ecommerce) refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Mobile Commerce (Mcommerce) is any transaction, involving the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods and services, which is initiated and/or completed by using mobile access to computer-mediated networks with the help of an electronic device.

In Uganda, it is estimated that 5 million people are using the internet as of 2012 whereas over 15 million have access to mobile phones of which an increasing number is embracing mobile money.  Payment intermediary services such as Yo Payments from Uganda(https://payments.yo.co.ug/), JPesa(jpesa.com) PesaPal from Kenya come with  API which enables integration with websites(mobile web/apps).  These developments mean that there is a growing big market and the broken e-commerce payments system is being fixed.  The next natural process should be for businesses to realize the opportunity there is and to get started on embracing e-commerce and more particularly mCommerce.

Businesses in Uganda now need to rethink their distribution models and figure out how they integrate e-commerce/mCommerce in their sales and distribution models.   This will require businesses to set up websites with keen consideration for mobile web and apps.  The good news is that the cost of websites has gone down. Though this does not mean that good e-commerce websites come on the cheap, they are much more affordable compared to how it was several years back. There is still shortage of skills in the mobile space hence it may still be a little expensive to develop mobile applications but the opportunity that comes with tapping into this market will offset what may seemingly be  a big cost to join the e-commerce/mCommerce scope.  

As we hope to see more Ugandan and African business embrace mCommerce, for consultation in this space and for services to get your business online, HiPipo Digital Agency arm will be glad to work with you to push your business to the next level online.  Contact US Today.

BBA Stargame opens up on Sunday May 6th 2012 with a USD 300 000 winner prize on the table and a new format that sees contestants doubling up to play, in addition to introduction of celebrity housemates. The opening ceremony will be broadcast live online and will feature among others J. Cole.

The celebrity housemate revealed are

•Stylish entertainer, stand-up comedian and television pro DKB from Ghana (26 yrs)

•Tough, talented rap icon Prezzo from Kenya (32 yrs)

•Award-winning songstress Lady May from Namibia (25 yrs)
 
•Boldly dramatic pop music sensation Goldie from Nigeria (28 yrs)

•Famed socialite, model and businesswoman Barbz from South Africa (34 yrs)

•Unforgettable, highly successful R&B diva Mampi from Zambia (25 yrs)

•Unique and hugely popular, soulful musician Roki from Zimbabwe (27 yrs)
 

Flavia Tumusiime, Channel O VJ and Capital FM DJ is set to be the  first Ugandan and  East African to co-host   BIGBROTHER AFRICA Opening Ceremony.  It is expected that Flavia will be co-host with IK this Sunday, May 6, 2012 as the Stargame opens!

Big Brother Africa StarGame will see pairs of entrants in addition to the 7 celebrity housemates that BBA announced earlier this week.  The cash prize for this season is 300,000 USD. 

We cannot wait for the 91 days of BBA to start.

—————————

Uganda banks have long been slow in boosting their online presence that includes having websites and presence in social media.  Now that we are moving to a mobile generation, are Uganda banks ready for this era?

Our team did research about the Uganda banks online presence. Our discovery is that majority of the banks currently have websites, alas many are rarely updated (not even with different promotions of the banks)! Several banks that are part of international groups have websites that are hosted on the parent bank website eg Barclays Uganda is hosted on the International Barclays website. This tends to have an effect on the localization of the bank’s online presence since then all website operations and online presence of the bank appears to be directed by the parent company.

Even as some few banks have mobile banking solutions with functionality such as performing balance checks and other banking transactions through a mobile device such as a mobile phone, none of the Uganda banks has a mobile friendly website that we found as of April, 2012.  In the advent of the success of mobile money, banks need to think better of how they reach out to their mobile clients. Mobile friendly websites will be needed from the different banks to enable their customers or potential customer more easily access information about the bank’s products using mobile devices.