Understanding Africa

We like to showcase stories from around the world and if you have been regularly reading our stuff you'll know that this week we've been in Johannesburg, South Africa, trying to get a bead on what happens in this part of the world.

I recorded a conversation with Simon Griffiths, global product marketing manager, SYSPRO to discuss how the African market is fundamentally different to those in Europe and the US.

A few factoids:

• Some 60 percent of Africans access the Internet via a cell phone.
• African infrastructure is going mobile first because wireline cannot reach the population.
• Africa is one of the fastest growing economies, although growth varies from country to country.
• It is a young population, with the majority of South Africans under 30.
• Access to power issues means that feature phones dominate the market.

In this short conversation, Simon discusses what this means, explaining the importance of this combination of circumstances and how that is shaping the applications being developed and deployed in these emerging markets.

It's an exciting time and our conversation provides an interesting insight into this new economic frontier.

Tomorrow we publish a video of a conversation with the head of Inclusive Banking at Standard Bank, South Africa. It talks about bringing banking to three million unbanked people in the last 18 months.