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ISSUE NO 75 AFRICAN WEB NEWS AND USEFUL SITES

KENYA’S INTERNET AD MARKET GROWS AS LOCAL PORTALS’ TRAFFIC GROWS

Africa’s dot com story is different from those found elsewhere. There never was a hollow dot com economy since the internet is just beginning to take off. Every day more and more people are getting connected and cyber cafes are mushrooming in all corners. Rose Lukalo-Owino of Africa Online looks at the state of Kenya’s internet ad market.

Nowhere is this growth reflected better than in the fast growing internet advertising market, as businesses and advertisers begin to reach their consumers through the internet medium.Internet access subscription in Kenya is currently estimated at 50,000, with actual usage estimated at 500,000.

Despite this sizeable potential market, the uptake on the value of advertising on the internet has been relatively slow. Several stumbling blocks contribute to this.

Primary among these factors is that until recently local portals did not have enough traffic to make a respectable return on an advertiser’s investment.

A second issue has been market ignorance on the value of advertising on the internet. Agressive market education initiatives must address this issue if internet advertising is to take root in the local market.

Internet media initiatives in Kenya that aim to attract revenue generating traffic fall into various categories.

One is the local ISP portals that serve varied internet media objectives. The largest of these is AfricaOnline.com, which was re-designed and consolidated into a Pan-African portal and re-launched in April this year. This initiative has seen the AfricaOnline.com Portal position itself among the top sites in the continent, with an audience that continues to expand rapidly.

Others initiatives are kenyaweb.com, ispkenya.com and wananchi.com and content specific sites like Kelele.com , a popular local entertainment portal, attracting 50,000 hits daily, restuarantsnairobi.com and Lawafrica.com a law profession portal.

Amongst the local daily publications, the Daily Nation website has attracted good advertising revenue, and is a case for the power of local content in generating heavy traffic. Latest claimed figures indicate 500,000 hits daily!

COTE D’IVORE’S ABIDJAN.NET CELEBRATES THREE YEARS

Abidjan.net that claims to be CI’s reference site is three years old. The US-based start-up Webology was behind its launch. It claims to be the most visited CI site with more than half a million visitors a month who look at over 12 million pages amongst its 20,000 indexed sites. It has also recently added "Abidjan.net mobile" to the services it offers. So who are Webology? They are the company that has also put money into JobAfrique.com et Le nouchi.co. Abidjan.net is run by two young Ivorians Jil-Alexandre N¹Dia and Daniel Ahouassa. According to Jil-Alexandre N¹Dia:"The internet has created an enormous change in the level of our social and academic life," and Abidjan.net’s objective is to "help developing countries make use of this technology."

SA’S PICK ‘N PAY LAUNCHES INTERNET SHOPPING SERVICE

As retailer Pick ‘n Pay launches its internet shopping service in Johannesburg, the online home shopping industry in SA prepares to go mainstream.

http://www.futurecompany.co.za/news/today/news1.html

(source: The Big Change)

AFRICA’S FIRST ARCHITECTURE SITE GOES LIVE

Africa-Architect.com is the first web site specialised in the world of architecture in the African continent. It is a source of information about architectural events and in the African continent. Moreover, the AUA: African Union of Architects official news are available on this website. Africa-Architect.com makes the work of architects easier and all the actors in the building field. Its Africa-search data base has information about all activities in the building sector classified by country and nature of work. You can be a Net Reporter of Africa-Architect and write about your country or region. Send your contributions to: Khaled Aouij

Director Africa-Architect (info@africa-architect.com )

(source: Kabissa)

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