Africa Business Communities

[INTERVIEW] Interview with CEO of Every1Mobile: impact of mobile tech on African youth

Mobile technology is booming in Africa. According to GSMA, there are 475M mobile connections in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Dominating the market in Africa is feature phones, a low-costing, high-impact device that has changed the way people engage, connect and share information.

Algy Williams, CEO of Every1Mobile, a social enterprise that builds mobile communities for youth, had this interview with AfricaBusinessCommunities.com.

Algy Williams talks about mobile communities and how they have been instrumental in gauging attitudes and knowledge around unemployment, enhanced service delivery in the health sector and access to education.

 

Please tell us about yourself.

"I've been involved in many different industries - airships, graphic design, special effects for film and TV, themed entertainment, video games, and now mobile social networks - but the common theme has always been working with ground breaking technologies in a creative environment. I sold my last company in 2008, building it up from three original employees to 400, spread over offices in UK, USA, Canada and India. I’m 55, married with a son and a daughter."

 

Tell us about Every1Mobile (E1M).

"Using mobile social media, E1M builds and manages large, highly engaged communities of young people (aged 15-35) on the mobile phone across Africa. We engage with our users around key areas of passion, having built and grown 8 communities in Education, Health, Livelihoods and Entertainment. Most recently, we have created a community that helps our users fast track into the formal economy.

These topics are extremely broad, so in general terms we try, in whatever way we can, to help people become healthy, confident, educated, banked and employed, etc.

At the same time, we aim to become the gatekeeper to this audience, who are an integral part of Africa’s current growth. Our users are in very high demand from third parties such as international brands, multi-nationals, financial institutions, governments, foundations and NGOs, who are working effortlessly to understand what makes these users tick. We have set ourselves up in such a way that we can engage directly with our users, and encourage their participation to better understand how they think, feel and perceive key topics, brands and products.

On a larger scale, we use different tools to engage with our users and build our communities, including: themed moderated forums, peer2peer advice, recruitment, personalised and curated content, expert Q&As, quizzes, user-generated content, surveys, panel discussions, opinion polls, competitions, awareness campaigns, polls and petitions, pre and post surveys, leaderboards, points system and social gamification and much more.

The Company has 22 fantastic employees with offices in Cape Town, SA and Brighton, UK."

 

What is your most used platform?

"In South Africa, most of our users are on Mxit. Outside SA we have a number of platform partners who are helping us expand rapidly across the continent."

 

How do you do it?

"We constantly try and provide content and services that are relevant and useful….and fun, entertaining and non-judgmental. But the secret sauce is what our community managers and the development team are able to create and execute. We have a dedicated community manager for each of our 8 communities who engages, talks and thinks like our end-users, interacting with them on a daily basis.

Right now we concentrate on optimising our content for feature phones, given that this is still the predominant type of phone. So our technical team is key to making sure that the user experience is as good as it possibly can be, given the limitations of the devices. We’re looking forward to low-cost, high-impact smart phones hitting the market in serious numbers as we can deliver even richer content and experiences to our users."

 

How many people are using it and across how many countries

"E1M’s mobile network currently includes the following:

 

  • 8 mobile web sites
  • 1.4 million unique users
  • 3.8 million visits per month
  • 38 million pages served per month
    • A strong presence in 7 African countries – South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya and a growing number of users in 12 others."

 

Does it address real life issues?

"That’s exactly what we’re about - all the issues, big or small, that affect young people on a daily basis. Topics may include how to deal with exams, vocalizing your thoughts around a political issue, or testing your knowledge on STDs - the whole spectrum.  Our communities enable users to participate, learn, access support and get up-to-date reliable information on key issues and topics that may not normally be discussed or may be seen as taboo within their communities. Our communities allow for varying degrees of anonymity so that users can address and engage with these real life issues without hesitation or fear of public disclosure.

The key to us is not to be preachy. In many African countries, we often see ‘programme fatigue’ - overexposure to HIV or sexual health messaging, for example. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for the messaging, but what it does mean is that the way content is delivered needs to adapt. It needs to adjust according to the audience you are speaking with. A topic like HIV testing or condom usage may change in approach and content based on the age, area of economic background of the users we are engaging with. What we find that works is running our more serious content alongside lighthearted content. It ultimately makes the hard issues more approachable."

 

How do you go about the nurturing?

"Our team of community managers is at the heart of that nurturing - they are the ones who have a relationship with the users in their communities, a finger on the pulse. Experts support our users by offering advice and resources. We have 3 sexual health experts who answer questions in our Talk & Tango section and shape the editorial content of our sexual health sites, smrtSex and HIV360; a maths and science Professor (Prof Ron) who educates users on numeracy and other educational topics; and a team of voluntary business experts who advise our budding entrepreneurs.

Ultimately nurturing comes from the users knowing they have a safe community made just for them, where an open platform is provided, where someone will listen and answer their more intimate questions and where they are able to connect with others just like them."

 

Why did you decide to create communities rather than targeting particular kind of people?

"Targeting youth in Africa is already a very robust challenge, but fortunately, with mobile technology, we are able to reach people in even the most remote corners of the continent.

Though our communities are group-oriented, they are specific, unique and tailored enough that any type of user (whether it’s age, gender, race, socio-economic status, you name it) can find content and information that is relevant, helpful and crucial to their day-to-day lives. In that sense, though we create and house large communities on mobile platforms, our content in itself and our engagement approach does enable us to target particular kinds of people.

Going even further, our ability to collect demographic data (through user registration) enables us to create content that is even more tailored to a particular kind of individual.

On our web hosting platforms, for example, if users engage and provide us with key demographic data, we are able to track their interests and provide them with tailored content and information. In that sense, no users community home page would be alike.

But on a broader level, our community managers play an integral role in facilitating on-going, two-way dialogue to ensure our users are always gaining information and content that is unique to them."

 

Can you tell us about the content mix?

"We cover a wide range of topics, including sexual health and relationships, living with HIV, non-curricular learning, soccer, poetry and creative writing and fashion. And we run two text-based soap operas, one aimed at our South African users and one for our Nigerian users, each with its own writing team in its respective country.

By far the most interesting content we see in the community comes from our users themselves. This may be in the form of poetry, short stories, forums, discussion groups and petitions. For example, we have a community called smartClub where our users help us design all new content and dictate what topics will be explored next.

Health: We have almost 1million monthly users within our smartSex and HIV360 communities, engaging in issues related to love, life, sex, health, personal hygiene, relationships…

Education: Our beSmart and loveWords communities boast also boast roughly 1million monthly users. Here, we delve into topics around basic education, literacy, numeracy, life skills, and personal hygiene, to name a few.

Entertainment: Swagga is our go-to entertainment community with >600,000 monthly visits. It’s where users go for the latest deals, product promotions, competitions and to engage with their favorite brands and products."

 

Where do you think your strength lies at the moment?

"Our strength lies in our team and the trust that we have built with our users. The next challenge is to produce content that is both universal (education, health, livelihoods) and local (relevant local courses, the best clinics and the best jobs, opportunities and market places near you). We want people to be educated and informed on broader topics, but also be supplied with information on local resources and access to services within their communities."

 

Finally what is the latest?

"We’ve recently been voted:

E1M - Top 15 most exciting UK start-ups according to Mashable 

http://mashable.com/2013/06/27/uk-startups

E1M - #46, The Start-Ups 100 List, 2013 

http://startups.co.uk/startups-100/2013/46-every1mobile

We will announce two substantial distribution deals quite soon, which will significantly increase our user base and our territorial reach."

 

www.every1mobile.net

Follow us on Twitter

  Become a Member of our Linkedin Group

Follow us on Facebook

Share this article