Tag Archives: marketing

Visiting Nairobi’s most innovative tech hub and digital agency

Digital team on roof of Nendo office in Nairobi. Photo by June Ondeng.

My colleagues and I on the roof of the Nendo office in Nairobi. Photo by June Ondeng.

“As a tech scene, no one can rival us. South Africa is doing a good job though.”

Benson Mutahi said this to me with a mocking smile, trying to spark a national rivalry. It was March and we were at the iHub – an innovation hub and hacker space for the technology community in Nairobi. With me were three colleagues, as well as five digital marketing interns we brought together from Zimbabwe, Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia and Mauritius to do user research.

Do Nigerians distrust Google?

There’s something strange about the way Nigerians are using Google search. If you compare the number of Google searches coming from Nigeria, it’s disproportionately low compared to other African countries, relative to online population size.

Let me give you an example. According to Google trends, the most popular searches in any country are typically three things: the name of that country, the word ‘facebook’ and the word ‘news’. Nigeria has 59 million internet users, three times more than Kenya has. And yet, Kenya has double the amount of searches Continue Reading…

Billboards in Dakar

I went to the westernmost point of Africa two months ago. Dakar is the capital of Senegal and sits on a triangle-shaped peninsula that prods into the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the unique features of this city is the coastline, known as the ‘Corniche’. Its high cliffs are unlike the prime coastal properties of Cape Town that exist as the terrain of the wealthy. There may be luxury hotels along the Corniche, but whole stretches of it are unoccupied. Anyone can access the edge of the dusty cliffs. Some people even build makeshift homes on it.

Driving along the Corniche highway, I noticed how Continue Reading…

DASO poster: results may vary

The DA Students Organisation released a campaign poster yesterday showing a topless black woman and white man in a loving embrace. It has provoked a huge response on Facebook and Twitter.

If you take the time to read through the Facebook comments, the way South Africans respond differently to the same image is quite interesting.

We can roughly divide the response into four categories:

It’s cheesy and belongs in the 90s
Its simplistic portrayal of race relations is offensive
It’s beautiful, we need more of this
It’s repulsive, you’ve lost my vote

Reaction number 4 might even be desirable for the DA. Perhaps it’s part of a plan to shake off some of the conservative supporters the DA gained since the VF+ and NP’s decline

I generated the word cloud above to show the most commonly used words in the 890 comments people have posted since yesterday. Below are three parodies that I’ve whipped up, enjoy.

impending boom – by Rossouw Nel