With presence across nine African countries through its i-portals, Umuntu Media continues to challenge traditional publishing models. Its latest offering, a personalised Virtual Notice Board called Mimiboard, is already popular across the continent.
It is of little wonder that Umuntu Media’s (Umuntu) new offering, Mimiboards, is now a fashionable resource across Africa hence reflecting on its founder and chief executive Johan Nel’s passion for technology — as expressed in an interview with HumanIPO.
“Our vision and focus for content publishing, from the onset, has always been to provide hyper-local, relevant. community driven content. The new publishing model is that the readers must decide what is news.” said Nel.
Delivering localized content
Hyper-local is a term Nel uses often in the conversation to explain Umuntu Media’s focus and vision. It means delivering content that is localised, right down to community level. This is what inspired the launch of its i-portals like iNamibia, now the biggest local website in Namibia.
He explained that 18 months ago when he started the company, he realised there was a gap in online publishing targeted at African citizens. The problem was that most of the content was not local or even published by locals.
Some of the content was not relevant for readers, he said.
To address this, in each of the nine countries where it has an i-portal, Umuntu has local journalists on the ground gathering relevant local news and publishing them. Each i-portal publishes sports, business and current affairs news that is specific to that country.
Also, thanks to a partnership with Tracks4Africa, it owns the largest database of restaurant and accommodation listings, which they localise for each country’s i-portal.
Reaping what it sowed
It is making significant strides considering that a year and a half ago, it started with a small team and a low budget.
Umuntu is among the first movers in each country it has launched an i-portal. Umuntu’s i-portals in Angola, Mozambique and Botswana are the second largest in each of those countries — as well as the fastest growing.
Add to that, they have the biggest Facebook Fan Pages in Namibia, Botswana, Angola and Mozambique.
As Nel says, “a publisher that owns a technology platform is the publisher of the future.” With this vision in mind, Umuntu went on to innovate further — still keeping true to their vision and focus — to deliver relevant, hyper-local content that is community driven.
“Our success with i-portals continues to be great. But we wanted to add another platform and do more to bring hyper-local content to communities,” Nel said.
How traditional noticeboards came of age
Mimi — a Swahili word that denotes ‘I” in English — is an apt prefix to Umuntu’s new service offering, Mimiboard,
Already Mimiboards are gaining popularity and receiving accolades as witnessed at the recent Nokia & World Bank Open Innovation Summit where it won the “Best Innovator” award.
The traditional community specific noticeboard where community members can post notes about any information relevant to the community inspired the idea for Mimiboard. The focus, as Nel repeatedly reminds me, is for hyper-local content.
In brief, a Mimiboard works in a similar manner to a traditional noticeboard. You first decide on a location (in this case it would be a virtual area that the board will carry content for), give it an appropriate and descriptive name to allow for easier discovery (e.g. Nairobi Traffic, Cape Town Lunch Specials), add and respond to notes on the board.
The main difference between a Mimiboard and a physical noticeboard is the ability to add and respond to Mimiboard notes via the Web, Mobile Web, SMS (Text), Twitter, J2ME and Android Apps. Also, the mobile app allows for discovery of other Mimiboards through filters or based on your location (using mobile phone’s location based services).
Further, the board can be shared on social networks, embedded in a website or even printed as a community newspaper as it has been done in some communities across the continent.
Acceptance, impact
Mimiboards have been widely adopted by content publishers ranging from radio stations, universities and rural communities. They have helped in community crime reporting, traffic information gathering and publishing and help informal traders market their products or services.
Such is the impact of Mimiboards on the continent that Nel and his team have decided to enter the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge. This challenge fits quite well with what Umuntu is achieving with Mimiboards, which is developing transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation and engage communities.
The challenge has received over a thousand entries with the bulk of them coming from the USA. With Nel and his team’s passion and focus on “hyper-local” content, and the popular usage of Mimiboards, it wouldn’t be a surprising to see them receive not only significant recognition for their efforts in “democratizing” content publishing but also funding to expand the business.
