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COVER STORY
AMOLO NG'WENO
Tfie Oueen->
Of The Internet
Reboots
Arnolo Ng'weno was the Harvard-educated
pioneer of the internet in East Africa.
She sold out when times got tough, but now
she is trying to make a comeback.
BY LUKE MULUNDA
molo Ng'weno always wanted to be a doctor. But
when she went to college, it all changed. At Harvard
University in the Unites States, Ng'weno, a then
20-something ambitious Kenyan girl, became
fascinated with computers and everything they
could do-especially
transmitting information. Overnight, she fell
for the new, wide world of technology.
"My first experience with computers was at a US trade exhibition
when I was in high school, but I didn't actually get to use a
computer until I got to college," she says.
Luckily, Harvard had a course for every student to learn the
rudiments of computers.
"This experience totally changed my perspective on the tools for
getting any kind of work done and has shaped my career ever since."
Ng'weno studied psychology and social relations at Harvard, but
the computer bug had bitten and not even a master's in economics
and public affairs at Princeton University, or working for the World
Bank would get in the way.
Fate took a hand through the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology eMIT) in the east coast town of Cambridge. Here,
two fellow Kenyans-Ayisi Makatiani and Karanja Gakio-had
developed a similar obsession. So, when the three met one
evening, breaking bread and sipping black coffee at a small cafe in
Cambridge, the idea of an online news service was mooted. It began
on an internet community, hosted at MIT, called KenyaNet. In 1994
it became Africa Online, the internet giant that lives to this day.
"We saw the utility of local news to the African diaspora and we
thought the opposite would also be true; people in Kenya would
want to communicate with the world and know what was going on
A
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COVER STORY-AMOLO
internationally," recalls Ng'weno, who
quit as an economist with the World
Bank in Washington to help set up
Africa Online.
"It was the very early days of the
internet in the US and although we
were ambitious for our company, we
didn't dream it would change all our
lives the way it has."
As the internet boom kicked off,
Africa Online shifted focus from
providing news to connecting
Africans to the internet. In 1995, it
was bought by Boston-headquartered
International Wireless, which became
Prodigy. That year, Ng'weno was
sent to launch the Kenyan operation,
becoming the first internet service
provider (ISP) in East Africa's largest
economy. A year later, perhaps after
proving herself as start-up honcho,
she was moved to Cote d'lvoire to set
up a subsidiary.
Africa Online was on a roll. It
expanded to Ghana, Tanzania,
Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and
Swaziland, with the three coffee
drinkers from Cambridge in charge.
It acquired several ISPs, such as
Pipex Internet Solution (Swaziland),
Net2000 (Kenya), UUNET (Namibia)
and Swift Global (Uganda).
In 1998, Prodigy sold the company
to African Lakes Corporation, a
British investment firm that was
diversifying from agriculture and
mining. For a while, the company
traded on the London Stock
Exchange, enjoying favor from
investors, then listed on the Nairobi
Stock Exchange in 200l.
As the new century turned, the
internet (dotcom) bubble burst,
wiping out many companies around
the world and leaving erstwhile eager
investors in the red.
"The company needed additional
cash for growth which could only be
supplied by international investors,"
says Ng'weno, who won't reveal what
stake she held in the company, in a
country where too much wealth is
frowned upon.
"At the same time, the internet bust
NG'WENO
and investor jitters about Africa had
really hammered the share price of our
UK parent company, The African Lakes
Corporation, forcing its management
to de-list from the London and Kenyan
stock exchanges."
In 2001 the three founders exited,
with the company firmly in eight
countries and the largest ISP in subSaharan Africa outside South Africa.
Six years later, in 2007, South
African fixed-line telecommunications
company Telkom SA bought Africa
Online Limited from African Lakes
Corporation for £10.32 million ($15.8
million). The ISP, which had been
running at a loss, had just started
to make some profit, but it was not
enough to raise the necessary capital to
take full advantage of the opportunities
in Africa's fast-growing telecoms
industry.
Ng'weno left to work for a number
of organizations, including the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation.
Now, aged 46, Ng'weno is trying
to make a comeback in the industry
where she made her name, at a time
when many would be slowing down.
In April 2011 she launched a
business process outsourcing (BPO)
company in Kenya, just a month after
leaving Bill and Melinda Gates. Digital
Divide Data (DDD) Kenya blends a forprofit technology business with social
welfare.
"We're a social enterprise," she said
recently in an interview at her office on
the seventh floor of Paramount plaza in
Nairobi.
"Which means, while we're a
for-profit company in Kenya, we also
have a social mission which is to give
young people from disadvantaged
backgrounds a path out of poverty."
Most of DDD Kenya shares are
owned by the US NGO, also called
Digital Divide Data (DDD), which
received a grant of $895,000 from
the Rockefeller Foundation to bring
its social enterprise model to Kenya.
DDD has invested in an information
technology services business that
targets to train and employ 300 youths
fromslum areas in Nairobi.
The grant is part of the Rockefeller
Foundation's Poverty Reduction
through Information and Digital
Employment (PRIDE) program.
PRIDE is working in Africa to
foster and scale up a new arm of the
outsourcing industry called "impact
sourcing" by supporting projects aimed
at creating jobs for the poor.
Ng'weno, who is managing director
at DDD,says the organization hires
young people from Nairobi's vast
slums to deliver high-quality BPO
services. There's also a team of deaf
people working as digital management
operators.
"Our staff works with us half day
and go to tertiary education the other
half day," she says. "It's a model that
has worked well for DDD in Asia,
where our staff typically graduate from
their university education, and from
the company, after four to five years.
When they graduate, they are on a path
to careers in IT and other fields that
would have been difficult for them to
access without our support."
From 35 workers at inception, DDD
Kenyahas grown to more than 100.
"We don't think profit is
incompatible with achieving a social
mission. We actually believe the
profit motive is an important oneand the only way that we can grow
our business sustainably so that
we can fulfill our goal of providing
employment and career development
to young people from disadvantaged
backgrounds. If we don't make a profit,
we can't deliver on our mission," says
Ng'weno.
It is this social enterprise that has
anchored Ng'weno's second coming
on the internet platform, albeit at a
more advanced level. The company
is championing digital marketing by
helping organizations use the internet
to grow their brands and markets.
Recently, the company became the first
in the region to be certified by Google
to offer advisory and technical services
for the search engine giant's AdWords
advertising service. Ng'weno says DDD
"Wedon't think profit is
incompatible with achieving
a social mission. If we don't
make a profit, we can't deliver
on our mission:'
Kenya has a growing number of clients
in Kenya drawn from various sectors
including tourism, real estate and
financial services as well as big clients
across Africa and overseas.
Digital marketing covers a broad
range of channels marketers can use to
communicate with their customers. It
could be anything from email, desktop
text and banner ads, social media
marketing or mobile and text ads.
But it is the banner ads placed on
websites that have been attracting
the attention of marketers and
brand managers lately. With more
than 25% of the 44 million people
in Kenya online, according to the
Communication Commission of Kenya
(CCK), advertisers are increasingly
realizing that they need to fish where
the fish are.
"The internet has become an
integral part of everyday life in
Kenya and Africa and it's changing
the way people work, shop, look for
information, communicate and meet
people," says Olga Arara-Kimani,
Google Kenya's country manager.
"This, coupled with the fact that
advertisers are increasingly looking for
mediums that deliver high, measurable
returns on their investment, has led to
higher proportions of ad spend going
to online channels."
A number of big businesses in Kenya
are advertising online. Kenya has one
of the highest internet penetration
rates in Africa and emerging markets,
currently at 25% and growing at 17%
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COVER STORY-AMOLO
annually. About $8 trillion exchanges
hands each year through e-commerce,
but only a tiny fraction of that is in
Africa. DDD Kenya hopes to increase
this figure.
"Because it's so targeted, this kind
of online marketing is cost-effective.
Many people want to get into digital
marketing because it's possible to know
exactly who you are targeting."
DDD Kenya recently diversified into
electronic books. It is already digitizing
reading materials for the governmentrun Kenya National Library Services,
with a number of other projects in the
pipeline. It's betting on e-books and
hopes publishers will buy into the idea.
"The Kenyan education system
seems to give us a great pool of
candidates, despite having gone to
schools that are not seen as being high
achievers. Our staff speak, read and
write good English, which is important
for all our international and many local
clients."
Harking back to the days when they
set up Africa Online, g'weno says
technology has come a long way on
the continent. The infrastructure has
improved dramatically, especially with
the arrival of undersea cables.
"However, it's still not clear to me
why the entire internet slows down
in the late afternoon (especially on
Fridays)," she says.
For Ng'weno, training at Harvard,
the world most prestigious business
school that has produced some of the
world's biggest entrepreneurs
played
a part in shaping her into a shrewd
entrepreneur. "Harvard is a great
place to be challenged and to grow
intellectually," she says. "I'm sure it has
contributed to my life in many different
ways, which is the purpose of a good
university education."
Tenacity appears to run in the
family. Her father, Hillary
g'weno,
was the owner and editor of the
Weekly Review, Kenya's first
independent news magazine. He was a
ground-breaker in lively and objective
journalism. Ng'weno had a degree
in mathematics and nuclear physics
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FORBES AFRICA FEBRUARY 2012
NG'WENO
from Harvard. Fleur, her mother, is a
naturalist and expert on bird life. She
ran the Rainbow Magazine for children
inthe1970sand1980s.
So what does it take to be a great
entrepreneur? Amolo g'weno says
it is simply taking advantage of an
opportunity when it presents itself
and surviving disasters, so you are still
there to fight another day.
In a patriarchal society like Africa,
where men dominate business
and leadership, success stories like
Ng'weno's are rare. You may wonder if
"Theinternet has become
an integral part of everyday
life in Kenya and Africa
and it's changing the way
people work, shop, look for
information, communicate
and meet people:'
being a woman has worked against her
in business.
"People usually think it would be a
disadvantage. But I'd say I was raised
to see the potential in each individual,
regardless of their sex or social
background. And I think that's what
I've also found in my dealings with
others."
Tall and endowed with an African
female figure, Ng'weno does not cut
the image of a tech nerd. She's easy in
her attire and conservative in her use
of jargon. Unlike the noisy tech types
g'weno, who loves horses, talks as if
it is not her job to be audible, yours to
listen carefully.
On a warm Wednesday in Nairobi,
she paces in her hi-tech office to
oversee the Kenya ational Library
Services e-books project is completed
on time. She is undeterred by road
construction noises outside, which
includes a huge trench outside her
office building. It means she has to
park her car 300 meters away and walk
through the mess of rubble, earth, man
and machine.
"Right now I'm too busy for
hobbies," she says when asked if she
finds time for leisure. "Given the
airobi traffic situation, maybe I
will say, sitting in traffic listening to
radio while doing email on my laptop
computer. Our car was imported from
Japan and can only get two stations so I
listen to Ghetto Radio (a Nairobi radio
station that broadcasts in local slang
known as sheng) a lot."
To succeed in business, she has
learnt to turn what is perceived as
her weaknesses on their heads. It all
depends on how you look at strengths
and weaknesses, she says.
"I am frequently told I'm impatient
but I regard this more of a strength
than a weakness. Similarly I can be
detail-oriented and meticulous, which
my staff complain about, but I think
I've found a line of work in which
that is, again, a strength rather than
a weakness. Overall, I think most
attributes can be strengths in some
circumstances and weaknesses in
others and the trick is to find the right
combination."
With a meticulous eye for detail
backed with zeal for results, it is
surprising that a team with Ng'weno
on its side could go wrong. Yet, while
running Africa Online, she realized
that even IT wizards can make terrible
miscalculations.
"We had acquired a company in
Zimbabwe but we failed to take into
account that our corporate cultures
were very different," she recalls. "Their
IT people could not get on with our
customer service people. Within a
month most of their staff had resigned,
taking with them most of their
customers."
Africa Online ended up paying
money in Zimbabwe but getting next
to nothing in return. "This," Ng'weno
says with a shy smile, "was a big lesson
in thinking about corporate culture
issues."
Many more big lessons surely await
the comeback kid in Kenya's tough and
competitive digital world.