Africans need to be provided with content that is relevant to them in a manner which makes accessing it easy and affordable, according to panelists at VAS Africa 2014.
Speaking at the event in Sandton, Johannesburg, Wabona founder Simbarashe Mabasha, Bozza founder Emma Kaye, and Media24 business manager for mobile products Renato Balona agreed traditional content providers were not meeting the needs of Africans.
“Content as we know it has been fairly limited. It is the same people producing it. Which means there is a massive creative currency that sites on this continent that is untapped. Where is the content that is being produced in townships across Africa?” Kaye said.
She said Bozza was working on allowing such people to have their voices heard.
“We are very focused on the next generation of content. It is about immediate local content that appeals to their world,” she said.
“There are not many services that can deliver relevant content to the right platforms. It is about a) the content and b) the delivery, so it is an end-to-end solution.”
Mabasha agreed, saying content providers needed to find a unique and typically African way of doing things.
“The realities that we have applied are western-centric paradigms,” he said. “The reality is your customer doesn’t give a damn. He wants content that is relevant to his space and to his situation. What a lot of companies are now doing is going to the people and saying “tell me how we can help you”.”
He added: “The paradigms we are using are outdated colonial history.”
Balona said the key was in providing content in a manner which made it easy to access.
“People are essentially quite lazy, so if you give them content in an easy way, they will take it,” he said.
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