I am Thomas Schoemaecker, the new GM for Squad Digital Tanzania. I’d like to start by telling you 3 things about me. 1. I’m not German, or Dutch as many people think. I’m French - from Northern France in fact. 2. I’m a Xoogler - which means I’m an ex Google employee - I worked for 3 years with Google Africa, dividing my time between Kenya, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire as a Technical Solutions Consultant, working with over 30 partners among which Orange, Kenya Airways, and Equity Bank to name a few. And finally number 3 - Tanzanians call me Shemeji. My wife Janet and I have been married for 17 years and we have 2 wonderful children aged 15 and 6! Thank you all for coming to our event titled “Digital - a buzzword of the past”. How can it be the past? You’ll come to see how - through the sessions coming shortly that Digital is no longer a “Michepuko”. It is not the future, it is very much our present.

Thomas SCHOEMAECKER

General Manager Tanzania

Manish Sardana, Demystifying Community Building on Social Channels

Sean Riley Marketing in the Moment Rosemary Momanyi Harnessing the Power of Digital Advertising Justin Anyona Creating Digital Marketing strategy for your brand

GUEST SPEAKERS

So let’s start by telling you what Squad Digital is… We are a crazy Group of 120 Passionate Tech Ninjas serving over 50 clients in Sub Saharan Countries. We are a full service Digital Agency started in 2009. We’ve accomplished this in only 5 years ago. Squad is hot! Now were putting a team of talented young Tanzanians to develop our activity

120 people

We serve Clients in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria and most recently Dubai and Bahrain

We are part of WPP is the world's largest communications services group, employing 165,000 people working in 3,000 offices in 110 countries. We are also part of ScanGroup, Some of you may have already worked with Betty Radier at ScanAd, JWT and Ankur Bose at Ogilvy in fact. I’d like to thank them both for the support they’ve given me in organising this event.

As you all know, Africa is a huge continent… 1 Billion people - the 2nd largest continent - 70% under 25 - 5M new University Graduates every year - 7 out of 10 fastest growing economies by next year -

And the most exciting thing about Africa is that all this is happening in our time. Isn’t it? It’s massive.

Africa is Mobile - with already 750M Active Mobile Subscriptions among 2/3rds of the population

At the same time, SSA is going through a Mobile Internet Revolution

Look at this. This graph shows the explosion in Mobile Data Traffic expected to take place in the next 5 years. 20 times growth - 20x is amazing isn’t it? This will be fuelled by the arrival of Smartphones under $50 - Under $50!

Google have just released “Android One” an initiative to help manufacturers produce well spec’ed budget smartphones at scale.The first devices are due to come out in the next couple of months.

Remember Gen Z are born with Tablets and Smartphones. And they don’t understand why the internet is sometimes off!

54% of children with mobile phones, and 87% of those with smartphones, access the mobile internet.

For a marketer, touching people on their smartphone is the closest you can be to your customers

And it is always ON. Most people are always within an arm’s reach of their phone. 24/7

I just love this pic of the modern sitting room. Does that ring true to some of you here? I’m Guilty. And for marketers this Nth-Screen shift is huge, and it is also why TV alone does not do it anymore…

OK so this is Africa, but how about Tanzania? We’ve all come here to talk about TZ right? Let’s have a look at the Tanzanian landscape now…

The latest Regulator quarterly report shows that over 9M people are online here.

9.1 Million Tanzanians are online

And Tanzanians are social - with over 2M active on FB

Over 2 Million Tanzanians are on Facebook

1 person in 5 owns a smartphone in Urban Areas

Google Search has over 90% Market Share

Android Dominates with around 40% Market Share

In terms of growth, we really are on the edge of something big. I remember when being online was really a big money consideration. In fact when I was in Dar back in 2008, I remember that the first 3G deployments had started to arrive, and a daring company was the first to sell 1GB for I think 90,000TZS… And now you can get unlimited for a month for 7,000 15,000 or 20,000 - wouldn’t you agree that it is a lot simpler to get online. The staff are trained to install these APNs in a few seconds now. In the past 2 months, I started to track FB users in Tanzania, and the numbers grew by 360k already… This is huge. Twitter , Sean confessed that TZ is one of the leading countries globally on growth!

FB Grew 20% over the past 2 months TZ is one of the Fastest Growing Countries on

TWITTER

What is the most popular Internet Browser in Tanzania? Yep Opera - very popular as it compresses data and helps users save on their data consumption… 45% market share - and in fact mobile browsers account for 70% of the Tanzanian web. (Globally it is 30% only)

Opera is the most popular Browser

I wanted to also talk about the advances of Mobile Money and what it means to the digital economy. One of the main issues in launching eCommerce in any country is Forms of Payments. Credit card penetration is still very low here, but on the other hand, 31M accounts are right there - ready to pay, with massive Wakala networks.

TZ Has 31M Mobile Money Accounts and 11M Active Mobile Money Users

Now this is an interesting chart from the GSM Association. Kenya is always referred to as the Mobile Money country. Yes MPesa started there first, but I forecast that Tanzania will be the global leader in Mobile Money by 2015. What do you think?

MOBILE MONEY

http://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Tanzania-Enabling-Mobile-Money-Policies.pdf

More on Mobile Money in Tanzania

Now I am going to tell you a little story about Sheep. Kondoo right? So in Kuweit, you can buy Sheep on Instagram - just as simple as that…

In fact you can sell anything on Instagram there - take a pic slap a price tag and sell. Pretty cool right?

But in Thailand, people prefer selling straight on Facebook, over 10000 shops operate just like that. Even in Kenya there are massive FB groups called Soko Mkuu and Soko Nyeusi where people sell everything.

Do you think we’re ready for that here?

e-Commerce in Tanzania?

Well I’ll start with a lady who started iMalaika - a shop and blog and FB page and instagram account. Now some brands will go green as she reaches over 100k followers on FB. And she sells. Check out those 200 likes on this sample post

e-Commerce in Tanzania?

As I searched more, I found many more examples a cake shop

e-Commerce in Tanzania?

a fashion importer

e-Commerce in Tanzania?

a make up artist with over 30k followers on Instagram…

e-Commerce in Tanzania?

Now this site most of you may know, but I wanted to remind everyone that kivuko.com was last year on CNN list of the top 10 African startup to watch.

Now this site most of you may know, but I wanted to remind everyone that kivuko.com was last year on CNN list of the top 10 African startup to watch.

Another business I found is Zooks. They sell high-end branded goods and I hear they are quite popular.. What does this all mean for you?

Another business I found is Zooks. They sell high-end branded goods and I hear they are quite popular.. What does this all mean for you?

ZOOKS.co.tz

●  a Growing Population ●  coming online rapidly ●  on cheaper devices ●  constantly on Social, Search and consuming

Digital Content ●  using Mobile Money ●  All the Ingredients for eCommerce DIGITAL IS MAINSTREAM IT IS JUST SMART ADVERTISING

SUMMARY

A good example of smart advertising is this guy. Diamond is the biggest Youtube artist in East Africa.

His channel gets over 200k views every day. He has 60k subscribers and 11M total page views. A true digital star, with active presence on G+, FB, Instagram as well as YT who went from obscurity to national and international fame.