Yes, I was at the September MoMoNigeria event but I left early to meet the Angels that night. Notwithstanding, I had my eyes and ears on ground to deliver the event as it all went down at Muson Centre that night.
The September edition of the #momonigeria event started with Adeyemi Fowe (Nokia and Mobile Monday Nigeria) giving an overview of Mobile Monday. He explained what the vision of Mobile Monday is and the role it plays in the technology ecosystem in Nigeria. He highlighted that Mobile Monday tries to create a platform that encourages networking within the ecosystem which will in turn help people to collaborate and create innovative solutions that will add value to the society at large.
An industry report was given by Bankole Oluwafemi (@MrBankole). He gave an overview of the current situation within the tech industry in Nigeria. He rounded off his session by asking a question for the participants to ponder on: Is the current e-commerce scene in Nigeria a bubble or a gold rush?
InMobi Session
The presentation began with Moses Kemabiro of InMobi showing a survey conducted on 1,700 respondents in Nigeria. A lot of interesting data was revealed, showing the kind of adverts that do well in Nigeria. It was also revealed that text based ads are the most successful because users tend to think that these ads are part of the content. Some other findings of the survey are:
- 3 out of 5 app users in Nigeria have bought a mobile app before.
- Excellent graphics, among other things, was one of the features that made users buy apps.
- 95% of mobile app users in Nigeria are willing to pay for a good app that is reasonably priced.
At the end of the presentations, a lot of questions were asked, most of them focusing on how to monetize a mobile app using Inmobi. Moses Kemibaro and Joel Rao did justice to these questions.
Missed the session? You can download the presentation here.
Eskimi Session
Aside Inmobi’s presence at the event, we were honored to have Vytautas Paukstys (CEO of Eskimi) in our midst. You can follow him on twitter via @vytaspaukstys. Vytautas explained the need for Nigerian Developers to focus on their core market which is the users with feature phones. He emphasized that those developing only for Android, iOS and Blackberry are limiting themselves to a very small part of the market. He also encouraged the developers in the audience to develop for Eskimi because of the potential market of 5 Million Nigerians using the service.
The “App Showcase” Session
Another highlight of the event was the “app showcase” session. Three apps were showcased at the event – Prowork (easy online project management), SWK (SMS Word Korrector), and iPolice (for reporting crime incidents).
Prowork: First up was Prowork, presented by Francis Onwumere. Prowork is an online platform for project management which allows you to easily create and share projects with team members using email and SMS. He gave a live demonstration of how the app works by sharing his screen with the audience and creating a new project. He also showcased the various features that the application has. The project aims to eliminate the various complexities that are involved in traditional project management so that businesses can focus on making money and adding value. It has features like SMS notifications, progress reports, document sharing etc. You can check out Prowork here
SWK: Next up was SWK, presented by Ebundetan Oyedele of iQube Solutions. SWK is an application that analyses text sent into your text-based system and automatically corrects it based on a dictionary database of words. It chooses the words that are closest in spelling to the wrong word and replaces that wrong word. This app was created by iQube Solutions and the link to the demo of the app is here.
iPolice: The last app that was showcased was iPolice. iPolice is a community policing platform designed to engage Nigerians in order to make our nation a safer place. It can also be used as a crime trend analysis tool. The presenter explained he found out that there is hardly any information online about the security situation in Nigeria. The project aims to do the following:
- Encourage Nigerians to be more active in community policing by providing a medium for them to share their local intelligence data (crimes that have happened in their area recently, personal experience, etc.)
- Provide intelligence analysis of the crime and security data that is gathered.
- Provide security and safety information for Nigerians. Citizens will in turn use this information to protect themselves.
- Help to locate the nearest police station with address and contact details for quick and easy crime reporting.
Interested in learning more about iPolice? Click here.
The next Mobile Monday Nigeria will take place on….. We will keep you posted about the theme and what to expect.
About Mobile Monday Nigeria
The Mobile Monday Event is an initiative of Mobile Monday that is organized in over 100 countries around the world. The event aims to bring together developers, visionaries and observers in the Mobile Technology (not limited only to Mobile Phones) sector.
Mobile Monday Nigeria aims to do the same in Nigeria through the monthly meetups organized every last Monday of every month at a venue that is communicated via Email and social media channels.
[Article credit: Akinbobola Akinola, Image via Flickr]
