From southwood@boyden.demon.co.uk Thu Mar 14 20:58:36 2002 Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 14:54:11 +0000 From: Russell SouthwoodReply-To: gkd@phoenix.edc.org To: gkd@phoenix.edc.org Subject: [GKD] Balancing Act: ICT and African Development Newsletter EXCERPTS from Balancing Act's News Update 99 ************************************************************************ REGIONAL BURSARIES TO ATTEND ENTREPRENEURSHIP: THE ART OF MAKING THINGS HAPPEN We will offer a limited number of bursaries (covering travel and accommodation) to attend the workshop taking place in Gaberone on 28 March 2002 to those living in the following countries: Angola, Namibia, Malawi, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique. There will be three bursaries covering travel and accommodation and several others for travel only. If you would like to attend this workshop, send your name, address and e-mail contact details to info@balancingact-africa.com This is the last in the current series of one day workshops are aimed at existing and potential entrepreneurs in the internet, telecoms and computing areas. The workshops will be addressed by those involved in investing in new companies and existing entrepreneurs and will have active sessions where participants work up business ideas. The Botswana workshop will be held in Gaberone on Thursday 28 March 2002 at the Botswana National Productivity Centre. The event is organised in association with the Botswana Information Society and the Government Computer Bureau. ************************************************************************ ________________________________________________________________________ SURVIVING AS A CONTENT-BASED WEB SITE - MEDIA.TOOLBOX KEEPS LEAN AND VIRTUAL ________________________________________________________________________ These have been tough days for anyone interested in producing quality content on the web in Africa. With the end of the dot.com boom, there has been a steady trickle of content web site owners pulling down the shutters and calling it a day. Content has not generated cash. With only a few high-profile exceptions, no one - neither users nor advertisers - seem to want to pay for it. Nonetheless there are those who have worked out a way of surviving and thriving by keeping their operations lean and virtual and/or making them an adjunct to some other activity. A good example is South Africa's media.toolbox which has focused on a group of people who are used to sophisticated media choices: the media industry itself in South Africa. It's highly targeted and within a short period of time has carved itself a convincing niche. Herman Manson explains how it has been done. A final thought. It used to be said what happened in the USA happened in the UK a year later. It may be that internet ideas that happen in South Africa may migrate northwards to the rest of Africa. How long before there is a Media.Toolbox equivalent for the rest of the continent's fragmented media? What does an out-of-work journalist do? Easy: launch a newsletter on the Internet. That is exactly what I did in 1998 when I left my position as assistant editor at an information technology magazine to jump into the then-brand-new world of Internet publishing. Aimed at Web developers, marketers and publishers, media.toolbox's first issue went out to fewer than 50 people, mostly culled from my personal address book. That number doubled over the week following the first issue and grew to reach more than 1300 email subscribers and around 3000 monthly users who make use of our website, which was launched in 1999 and is now updated daily. Today the magazine covers all aspects of business and media issues in the knowledge economy. The Digital Internet Media Association (DIMA), a non-profit forum servicing the interactive media services industry, has endorsed media.toolbox as an official media partner, as have First Tuesday South Africa. The magazine has no central office. Instead, the editorial, sales and production teams work remotely from their homes in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Grahamstown to put every issue together. media.toolbox recently appointed its first Johannesburg-based editor, Mandy de Waal, to manage our writers based in that city. media.toolbox has managed to attract some of South Africa's top technology and media analysts to contribute to its pages, including Michael Herman, Greg Gordon, David Shapshak, Andrew Miller and Di Paice. All contributors to the magazine volunteer their services, while advertising revenue subsidises infrastructure and administrative costs. In September 2000, the media.toolbox team launched Mobile.Works, one of the first African news sites dedicated to covering mobile and wireless commerce. That magazine launched into print in September 2001 as a quarterly in a joint venture with Connexity Publishing. Mobile.Works aims to help readers assess the real value of interactive commerce, content, and advertising on wireless platforms, from WAP-enabled phones to PDAs. One of our first initiatives this year will be the launch of a comprehensive database-driven directory of South African Web developers. It s currently being built by Cape Town-based Stonewall Productions, and should go live before the end of February. The Web Developer Showcase hopes to initiate more collaboration within this industry. The team behind media.toolbox has worked hard to make the magazine a well- respected, well-read asset to the community it reports on. The experience has been more than gratifying. media.toolbox: http://www.mediatoolbox.co.za or mailto:join-mtbmail@elist.co.za Mobile.Works : http://www.mobileworksonline.com or mailto:join-mworks@elist.co.za ************** *************** ***************** _______________________________________________________________________ AFRICAN WEB NEWS AND USEFUL SITES _______________________________________________________________________ * MEDIA PLACEMENT PORTAL LAUNCHES The African Extension and Exp.Momentum, recently launched the African Media Portal, a placement system for all forms of media in all of the countries on the African continent. http://www.mediatoolbox.co.za/pebble.asp?relid=2908&p=39 * SA STUDENT PORTAL OFFERS LOW-COST SERVICE WITH INTERNET SOLUTIONS Local student portal, Get a Life (gAL.co.za), has launched a pay-as-you-surf Internet service provider, where consumers can pay R39 per month, paying per hour after the first four hours. Surfers can also buy unlimited access for R75 per month. "The costs of using the Internet and e-mail are very high - way too high for most South Africans. Two years ago, it was R99 a month. Last year it went up to R119 a month. Now it's about R130. That's over R1 500 a year. Not only is the cost too high, but it's rising much faster than inflation," says Get a Life founder, John Kuhn.Internet Solutions will provide the bandwidth and 24-hour e-commerce backup will come from another young company - Cyberpro.Get a Life previously worked with Cyberpro last year to compete head-on with Naspers when it launched its online bookstore for students. Kuhn explains the pay-as-you surf option costs R39 per month, and includes four hours Internet use. Every hour after that will cost R3.50 per hour. For serious surfers, the unlimited access package will cost R75 per month. However, he says if Get a Life can reach 10 000 subscribers it will increase the hours available on the R39-per-month package to seven. (source:http://www.itweb.co.za) ************** *************** ***************** All material printed in Balancing Act's News Update is subject to copyright. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited without the express permission of the publisher. TO CONTACT US: Russell Southwood, Balancing Act, 71 Crescent Lane, London SW4 9PT Tel/fax: + 44 20 7720 5993 Cell: 07973 561987 E-mail: info@balancingact-africa.com ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: . In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>