A Day with Team Nandimobile

Just recently I sat with this great team of software developers cum entrepreneurs who have built an award winning service that allows potential and existing clients of businesses or any such entities interact seamlessly with the organisation via SMS.

Nandimobile, born in July last year and presently in the Meltwater Business incubator is the company providing this much needed service which will give customers of businesses greater power in choosing how to interact with corporate Ghana. For example; one could simply send an SMS to a designated short code to inquire from say a bank about the requirements to open an account for example. All the customer need do is to precede the question with the name of the bank or institution of his/her choice and within minutes the customer gets a response to the query from the bank where he wants to open an account. Hence with this service people would from the comfort of their homes interact very cheaply with businesses and have very simple questions answered. Instead of making costly calls now we can simply send an SMS to have our queries answered.

The company has on its management team some of the finest young brains in software development and entrepreneurship in this part of the world. From left; Edward Tagoe (proud member of the prestigious ɔdadee 2002 year group) is the Business Development Lead, Anne is the Technical Lead and Michael Darkwa is the Product Development Lead.

Nandi is derived from “umunandi” a Zambian phrase with roots in the Bemba language and means “my friend”. The name nandi was settled on to reflect the company’s commitment to empowering relationships and enabling connections. The name was also chosen to highlight the company’s commitment to deploying its services to Africa and the rest of the world.

The company is currently embarking on a rigorous campaign to roll out their services country-wide and then expand into the rest of Africa in the near future. They are speaking with a wide spectrum of business organisations to have them sign up to the service.

In my opinion Nandimobile couldn’t have come at a better time. With national mobile phone penetration levels hovering at approximately 74 percent this service will create the much needed value for a device that’s always in our pockets or purses.

Keep watching this space to see how the great Nandimobile story evolves.

Nandimobile... empowering connections.

Amazing!!--How e-commerce and other mobile technologies are growing in Africa. Ghana a case in point.

Ten years ago, anybody who said Africa/Ghana will take a long time to embrace ICT and mobile technology in particular did not look far enough. Such people have absolutely been proved wrong in the light of recent developments in the e-commerce and telecoms industry in this country. 5,6 years ago, the millennium challenge account in setting millennium development targets for Ghana in the area of mobile telecoms, set a target of 32% mobile penetration by 2012. Little did they know things will move much more quickly. Mobile penetration as at year end 2009 was 67%-slightly double the penetration level predicted by the millennium challenge account 3 whole years before the target date...AMAZING!!!

What is more interesting right now; is the extent to which mobile phones are being used to accomplish so many other things apart from just making and receiving calls and sending and receiving text messages to. People are making good use of the functionality their mobiles offer thanks in part to the mobile telecoms companies.

A case in point--Ghana has less than 1% internet/broadband penetration. But interestingly, out of this 1% who have some level of access to the internet, 98% of them access the internet through their mobile phones. Indeed the internet is coming to Ghana/Africa through mobile technology as predicted by some analysts. Again, the phenomenon of mobile transfers has caught on like wildfire on this continent. There are 3 million more people with MPESA accounts in Kenya than all accountholders in all the banks put together. The last I checked, a whopping 2 billion dollars or so had been transferred so far using the platform provided by safaricom. Safaricom has slightly more than half of its 12 million subscribers signed up to MPESA.

The story is no different in Ghana-with the launch of MTN mobilemoney in June last year and Zap by Zain pretty shortly, the figures will likely climb by end of year as more and more people come on board onto the two platforms. MTN mobilemoney has proved to be quite robust so far.

Corporate Ghana has not been left out of the boon--ISPs have mushroomed countrywide, in-house mobile payment systems especially by the banks and other companies like Afric Xpress, market information services like Esoko, internet based payment systems and so many more such entities have all come up online...It's AMAZING!!!

Ghana and the continent of Africa have to stand up and embrace the fortunes that these new developments offer. Employment and all... PLAY UP!!!!!!

GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF EXCELLENCE

In the past few months, I have come to the conclusion that good is the mortal enemy of excellence. We cannot and should never settle for good enough in any way...settling for good enough is setting yourself up on a sure highway to mediocrity which leads to poverty.

We can all see the effects of mediocrity around us. It has always been right under our noses for those of us living on this continent-AFRICA since our noses first took the breath of life. We must fight this phenomenon with all our might on a daily basis. Lets strive to eschew this backward phenomenon in all its forms.

AFRICA, Ghana we are better than this, we are far better than all the mess we see around us constantly - it has to stop, it has to stop right now. We constantly have to remind ourselves what a great people we are. We can do this, we can achieve excellence everyday, we can catch up, let's not give up-life is too short...

Let us strive for the best always-excellence is the way to go, industrialisation is the road to take, technology is the tool, standards are what we must live by, respect for the dignity of the person seated next to you must be held up on high all the time. I am advancing, I am eschewing the 'good enough' craze. COME ALONG WITH ME AND LET'S DO THIS...

Long live the spirit of excellence in CHRIST in his people, long live Ghana and long live AFRICA!!! HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TOMORROW GHANA!!! MAY YOU LIVE ON EXCELLENTLY!!!!!