The Antenna case – why so many ?

If you’ve recently visited any African capital – one of the first things that may strike you when you stick your head up is the amount of antennas on top of anything that’s more than 20m high.

2 attitudes can be adopted : “here’s an example of African business anarchy…” or “ why are these antennas here ?”

I obviously prefer the latter attitude since open-mindedness and curiosity are absolute pre-requisites to doing business  in Africa – allow for an open mind and a will to understand the environment, the market, its constraints, etc. and you will prosper on the continent.

Now to answer the antenna question : the first obvious answer is – they’re owned, shared, rented by Mobile Operators – GSM / GPRS / UMTS and Wimax ones (knowing that some operators have licenses to operate all technologies). The second less obvious answer is that banks, local companies, government agencies which usually have various office locations, etc. build their own WLAN network to save on data bandwidth costs and manage the security of their own network. And the third even less obvious is that some opportunists have built antennas in prevision of a potential need. They would in turn rent the site to companies or operators. There may be other answers for you to explore and share with us.

The continent is growing and opportunities to succeed in any business venture are huge – with the right focus, patience and a bit of funding obviously. If you’re not bringing in your own funds, this is clearly  a hurdle but with the right connections, patience and will – you can pretty much do anything that you want.

Point in case, I remember meeting with a local ISP / internet café / media business gentleman in La Medina district in Dakar a few years ago. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with La Medina, it is located close to Dakar’s business district and is home to “modest” income Dakar residents (there was an impressive fish market there before the road work were undergone on the “Corniche” (name of the road along the coast). While we were talking about collaboration opportunities in the VOIP space – he asked me to come and see his installation on the roof of his office building – a slightly rundown (or rather a not quite yet finished) 3 story high building.

He had installed there a huge second hand dish (bought from a Canadian company if I remember correctly) and when I say huge it must have had close to a 10m diameter and took up most of his roof... Clearly a very unlikely sighting. He had bought it a few months ago and was thinking of turning this into some sort of a media hub station for the town. He had all the necessary technical equipments in order to make it work + a series of manuals. That was his plan A – his dream. His plan B was to resell it if he couldn’t develop some sort of a business plan with it.

Now – you have to admire this gentleman’s vision.

A couple of take aways here : be opportunistic, think of plan A, B and possibly C and D when doing business in Africa – meaning that the application you had originally thought of for whatever solution / product you may be positioning may find new usage possibilities in Africa. Do not try to replicate a European model – you need to allow for market specificities to be taken into account. 
(Sylvain)