How Apps Revolutionise East African Integration

“There is an app for that” is not just Apple’s trademarked tagline for IOS marketing endeavors. It is the East African translation to the responsiveness of new media and the vibrant free trade market.

As East African Integration buzzes off the hook in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, East Africans have taken up the task to coexist in the digital matrix.

Communication Complements Transportation

WhatsApp messenger is more than a meme-agent in Tanzania. Over 200 taxi owners at the Julius Nyerere International Airport plug into a WhatsApp group and share short sound bytes of the traffic situation in Dar es Salaam. In response to the alarming rate of traffic-related grievances in the East African region, taxi drivers in Dar Es Salaam are working in tandem with new media to dissolve traffic woes.

In 2013, WhatsApp, which is presently serving over 450 million users worldwide, added a voice messaging ‘one-press and send’ function to its service. “We send each other recordings of how the traffic is between the airport and the city,” said Godwill Emmanuel, a taxi driver at JNIA. With audio bytes that take less than 15 seconds, they share the traffic forecast: real-time information on their daily routes, accidents along the highway and even, police harassment during traffic peak hours.

Colorful Swahili is the highlight of these audio snippets. Emmanuel shares some sound bytes of drivers wishing their colleague a happy birthday. Not only are these audio bytes a blend of effective communication and transportation, but they are also a staging for entertaining, delightful content to beat the agony of traffic.

Over-The-Top Content

Whatsapp, like Skype, Kik, Viber, Snapchat, is an Over-The-Top (OTT) instant messaging service. Over-the-top content refers to audio, video and other interactive media such as GIFs, that are shared over the internet without the involvement of a multiple-system operator (e.g. Safaricom, Airtel, Orange) in control of the distribution of the content.

In 2012, OTT users sent 32.6 OTT messages on average a day, compared with the five Short Message Service text (SMS) messages each day per Person-to-Person (P2P) SMS user.

OTTs focus on content distribution to monetize on subscription fees and advertisement revenues. By offering free services financed by targeted advertisements, OTTs quickly achieve a significant customer base which, in turn, drives ad revenues.

Voice, Messaging, and Video OTTs can now be seen as revenue squeezers. Their services do not only impact traditional telecommunications companies revenues, but pressure their network infrastructure. Can we make a forecast that East Africa’s leading telco may release an OTT app in the next five years?

Digital Receptivity in the East African Community

What a time to be alive! Technology has advanced exceptionally in the past decade. It continues to advance at consequential momentum. After our smartphones started showing the symptom of size fluctuation, we have coexisted in a world where developers and designers practice “electrical wizardry”. Who are we to be left behind? Who are we to not be affected by this radical change?

Hua Liu (2008) stated that, “ the human environment has much more mobility than the natural environment”, comparing the natural environment to a constant. (p. 104). As technology affects major actions in our lives such as business, communication, health, the natural environment is the world we create after years of consistent routine. We have created the digital matrix.

Africa Exists

We are well aware that, for many years, Western media has made a hobby of broadcasting Africa’s hopelessness. I mean, how do they console themselves and their #whitepeopleproblems? Their in-flight movies are longer than their flights! Africa’s despondency has been their comfort place.

One of the main and very influential means through which meanings are produced and disseminated is the media.

The digital matrix is changing all of that. Africans are creating their own space, in their own time. Afrocentric applications prevail, made especially for the African context. Formal education might have been introduced by the white man, but practical education is being tailored by the African people.

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The stereotypical representations of Africa created by many a Western journalists have implied a universal meaning for deficit and affliction.