The Semacraft Blog

We left this till pretty late but here it is nonetheless; our predictions for which five trends will be big in East Africa this year.  Of course we are focusing on social business and innovation for the BoP so there’s no mention of how the referendum in Southern Sudan is going to go 🙂 Enough with the small talk, here we go:

1. Read the rest of this entry »

Tis the season once again. Family, friends, food & facetime…the four F’s of Christmas. I also think it’s the one season in which social networks are unable to fill the relational void they fill the rest of the year. Nothing can truly replace facetime. That’s why people travel so much at this time of the year and airline ticket prices are at their most expensive.

Make 'face-time' part of your holiday

As we go into 2011, businesses will move from social business experimentation to social business strategy in a bid to mainstream the social web into business operations. But let’s not forget that family, friends and food need facetime to grow. Take your online communities and create offline opportunities for them to strengthen their ties.

We hope to see more of you in offline events in 2011 than ever before.

Have yourself a very merry Christmas and a radically better 2011.

The view from part of the Great Rift Valley Lodge

About 200 people from more than 24 countries converged on the Great Rift Valley Lodge for Open Innovation Africa Summit 2010. Organized by Nokia, infoDev and Cap Gemini it was three days of conversation, brainwriting (heard that one for the first time there) and consultations on four topics of importance to the continent. The summit followed the Accelerated Solutions Environment format owned by Cap Gemini.

The summit was organized along four streams and by the end of the three days, each stream had solid ideas on what the way forward would look like. You can see the four streams better explained here. In summary, they were;

1. African Innovation Ecosystem
2. Sustainability models for Base of the Pyramid
3. The Mobile Information Society
4. Human Capital – Education for All

Day 2 Plenary Session at OIAS 2010

I spent the two of the three days in the sustainability models for the base of the pyramid where lively conversations happened on co-creation models, incubators, a business model for educational gaming and crowd-sourcing. Hopefully, the Nokia/infoDev/CapGemini team will post the material generated and outcome summaries for the event sometime in the next few weeks.

As an outcome from the summit, we at Semacraft will be spending considerable time in the near future facilitating discussions around business model innovation and identifying other areas small or large enterprises can innovate in to deliver with success in the BoP. Follow us on Twitter (@semacraft) or subscribe to our RSS feeds for updates on the next workshops on BoP innovation.

You can see some reactions from the summit on the Techweez blog here and by Kachwanya here.

In a previous post, we looked at the role of social proof in moving innovations from early adopters to the majority at the base of the pyramid. This is a follow-up to that post.

In the West, as in the East, word of mouth can make or break a business. In markets where traditional media is absent or penetration and access to data on products or services is minimal (or absent), word of mouth is the ONLY way for a brand to be known. How can brands use word of mouth to help their innovations cross the chasm?

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Social media, social networking, crowd sourcing and websites/applications that leverage these for a cause are becoming ever so popular. How many of them actually deliver the results the project owners hoped for?

Participant's at a previous workshop

Semacraft has organized a workshop facilitated by Muchiri Nyaggah where contextually relevant & actionable skills will be learnt and practiced.  Featuring local bloggers and social media personalities, the workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to learn as well as apply strategic planning skills to develop measurable plans for web strategy.

The Agenda

• The Internet Landscape (from social media to crowd sourcing and all points in between)
• Turning visitors into advocates (How to go from casual consumption to active participation)
• Understanding relational ties & why they matter. (The impact of online relationships on Causes)
• Platforms for mobilizing citizens (what is available)


Niti Bhan of Aalto Design Factory facilitating a previous workshop.

• Crafting a plan (putting it all together measurably)
• Putting It All To Work

Venue: Navigators Complex, Kindaruma road, off Ngong road, Nairobi.

Cost: KSh. 6,500.00 per person

Please click here and register and receive the workshop pack and location map.