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ISSUE NO 50 AFRICA'S DIGERATI

ROY STEINER, CYBERPLEX AFRICA

CyberPlex Africa’s Roy Steiner is a member of the Canadian diaspora living in Zimbabwe. This Harvard, MIT and Cornell Universities graduate worked with McKinsey & Co (management consultants), the Rockefeller Foundation and Africa Online. Roy’s internal focus is to promote a learning organization culture that will ensure continual improvement.

> When and why did you set up the company?

We believed in two key things: First, there would be a need to high end web development skills in Southern Africa as the web matured and companies began using it to really create value. Secondly, there was tremendous intellectual talent in Zimbabwe which we could train and develop to complete outsourced work for international clients. We also felt that we had much more control over our destiny with web development rather than with traditional infrastructure companies (I was the MD of Africa Online before starting Cyberplex)

> What are the main clients for your services?

Financial institutions, corportates, NGOs/Multilaterals, media and communciations and tourism companies.

> What are they mainly using the web for?

There seem to be three main uses:

1) Online Marketing - ensuring their potential customers can find out about who they are and their services.

2) Online Functionality - providing time saving functions like online billing enquiries and online stock trading, to enhance their relationship with there customers.

3) Knowledge management - increasing websites are becoming reposistories of knowledge -especially for geographically dispersed organizations - and huge value can be gained by well designed and executed KM solutions.

> Are there things you feel strongly about in terms of internet design?

I can best illustrate what I feel by pointing you to what I think are our best sites:

Netone.co.zw - an online billing solution

Allzimbabwe.com - a Zimbabwe portal

africandrum.org - a knowledge management system for the Kellogg foundation

continental.co.zw - an online trading solution

> Is the market affected by the economy?

Definitely - we are increasingly dependent on international contracts which now deliver 80% of our revenue.

> What’s happened to the considerable number of ISPs that there used to be in Zimbabwe?

They’ve consolidated down to four - Ecoweb, Mweb, Africa Online and Telco Internet.They all purchased the smaller players since the market couldn’t sustain much more given the high capital costs and the relatively small Internet population.

> Is there much difference between what they offer?

Not really - they all tend to have variable service levels.

> Has the growth in internet users slowed down?

Internet use is still very much growing but it is likely that given the economic situation this growth has been hampered

> What are your future plans for developing the company?

We have a number of very exciting developments ahead of us. They include:

1) Expansion to Botswana and South Africa.

2) Development of ecommerce and online payment systems.

3) Further development of our knowledge management capabilities.

4) Refining our outsourcing model.

News Update is a free e-letter produced by Balancing Act that covers African internet content and infrastructure developments, It goes out to government, the private sector, education and NGOs. To subscribe, send a message saying "I want to subscribe" to info@balancingact-africa.com