Media: Wall Street Journal: Ghana's Tech Frontier

MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 22 May 2002

ACCRA, Ghana -- Mark Davies wants to make serious money and help Africa join the 21st century at the same time. The only catch: His plan might be illegal.

Mr. Davies, a Welsh-born American and a dot-com millionaire, is the founder of BusyInternet, which provides Internet access to Ghanaians. By any standard, the company is already a tremendous African success story. Started with $1.7 million from Mr. Davies and local financiers, BusyInternet has positive cash flow after only seven months in business. But Mr. Davies has bigger ideas: Internet phone calls, which the Ghanaian government currently doesn't permit.

Many foreign investors believe that if Ghana permitted Internet calls, the desperately poor country could become a hub of call centers for companies in the West, a high-tech development path cut by India. "If they can export digital goods and services ... they can easily compete with India and other places," says Jim Moore, an expert on Internet development at Harvard Law School. "A relatively modest market share can do a lot for these countries because they are so poor."

One of the businesses piggybacking on BusyInternet's infrastructure, eShopAfrica.com sells colorful, hand-carved coffins. The government of Ghana, like those in other sub-Saharan countries, has a vested interest in protecting the revenue of the state telephone company. It hasn't ruled out Internet calls but is taking its time to study the matter. "Nobody knows whether voice transmission across the Internet is legal or not," says Mr. Davies, whose plans are on hold while the government ponders the legal issues. In the meantime, risk takers here plunge ahead and dare the government to stop them. And the unlucky among them end up in jail.

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who arrived in Ghana Monday night, wants the government to remove barriers to foreign high-tech investment. English-speaking Ghana is a prime candidate for such development. The year-old government of President John Kufuor has promised to be more business-friendly than that of his military predecessor, Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings. For now, though, starting a high-tech company here is anything but easy, as Mr. Davies can attest.

Mr. Davies, 38 years old, came to Ghana seeking to recapture the sense of adventure that characterized the early U.S. dot-com gold rush. In New York, he was a founder of Citysearch.com (www.citysearch.com), which merged with Ticketmaster and earned him a small fortune before he left in 1998. After starting and selling another tech venture, he spent four months in 1999 traveling across West Africa, landing in Accra with an idea for an Internet cafe that would serve not only as a place for ordinary Ghanaians to dabble in Web sites and e-mail, but also as an incubator for other Internet entrepreneurs needing space, infrastructure and moral support.

If Mr. Davies longed for that frontier experience, he picked the right place. He and partner Alex Rousselet, a 45-year-old Frenchman with long experience in the African oil industry, soon discovered they couldn't take even the simplest things for granted here. Electricity in Accra cuts out at least once a week, so they needed a $30,000 backup generator, and a huge battery to keep the computers up and running for 11 minutes until the generator kicks in. Then there is the $18,000 transformer out back; at times the 240-volt power can surge to 290 volts. The computers require frequent cleaning because of the dust that blows down from the Sahara. Customers steal toilet paper, apparently to sell on the street.

Minutes after Mr. Davies wired $150,000 for the lease on the building, a former gas-bottling plant, an elderly neighbor informed him that it was actually her property and that rights to it were in litigation. After a panicked phone call, he stopped the wire transfer, but it took three weeks to confirm his lease was valid. Customs held his satellite dishes for two months.

Embracing local customs, Mr. Davies arranged for a Ga tribal chief to bless the construction site with a bottle of imported schnapps. But even a tribal blessing can only go so far. Ghana Telecom, the virtual phone monopoly, has still installed only 15 of the 30 lines he ordered. The entire country has just 249,000 phone lines, for a population of 20 million.

Despite the obstacles, BusyInternet caught on. The company employs 50 people, and some 1,500 customers pay roughly $1 an hour to use the Internet each day; additional revenue comes from a copy center, meeting rooms, a restaurant and bar, movies, lectures and rent from start-ups who piggyback on the infrastructure BusyInternet has assembled.

Along the upstairs hall, a pair of Dutch Web site designers wait for Ghanaian companies to awaken to the power of the Internet. A business called eShopAfrica.com (www.eShopAfrica.com) sells Africana online. Products include hand-carved Ga coffins that are shaped like airplanes, shoes and howitzers, all designed to reflect the earthly interests of the recently deceased.

Another business, Data Management International Inc., of Wilmington, Del., employs 37 Ghanaians to process environmental fines for the City of New York. The Ghanaians type in data from computer images of citations handed out to hot-dog vendors caught smoking while serving, homeowners who leave trash on the sidewalk or ice-cream trucks nabbed selling cones in a crosswalk. The fines often far exceed the $72 that the average DMI clerk earns each month.

Messrs. Davies and Rousselet plan to open branches in other African cities. In Accra, they figure they have run into revenue limits surmountable only if the government authorizes them to sell customers Internet phone calls.

At a technology trade fair last week, Mr. Davies met Trevor Dearman, chief operating officer of Denwa Communications Inc., a Fairfax, Va., company that sells voice-over-Internet services. The two started chatting with Alexander Sulzberger, Denwa's local rep and a BusyInternet tenant. They discussed the possibility of preparing a system that would bill customers on the spot for both Internet use and phone calls. Mr. Dearman, relatively new to Africa, figured the technology is so cheap and simple that everybody should want it. "I don't know why it's so clandestine," he said.

"Because people get locked up for it," Mr. Sulzberger shot back.

Indeed, everybody knows what happened to Nanayaa T. Owusu-Prempeh, chief executive of Tin-IFA Ghana Ltd., an Internet-service provider across the road from BusyInternet. A couple of years back, Mrs. Owusu-Prempeh was making good money by facilitating the flow of incoming international voice-over-Internet calls into the local phone system, a practice known as call termination.

With 60 Ghana Telecom lines, business representatives estimate a call terminator could clear $15,000 a month. The thought of that lost revenue was apparently too much for the Rawlings government, and in 2000 a police SWAT team swept into Mrs. Owusu-Prempeh's offices and ripped out her satellite dish, computers, fax machine, tables and everything else. Her entire staff was jailed for three days, and, she says, it took about a year to get her equipment back.

For now, she says, Tin-IFA doesn't offer call-termination services. But she is ready to start up again should the new government allow it, and she suspects that many others are doing it on the sly. Ghanaian officials say they will decide in their own good time if, when and how to permit voice calls over the Internet. "We don't want to leap and then say we've either leaped too far or leaped far short of our target," says John S. Achuliwor, deputy minister of communications and technology. He stresses the government's concern about the impact Internet calls would have on existing phone services, such as Ghana Telecom.

Mr. Achuliwor also warns that violators could see their equipment seized. Mr. Davies isn't about to risk that, but others aren't so shy. At the end of the upstairs hall at BusyInternet is the local office of Rising Data Solutions, a Gaithersburg, Md., company with big plans for Ghana. Rising Data is negotiating a contract with a doctors' answering-service company that wants a low-price overseas center to handle calls from U.S. patients.

In the next few months, says Kwame M. Bonsu, vice president for operations, Rising Data will open a 100-employee operation where, 175,000 times a month, Ghanaian operators will pick up the phone and answer: "Dr. So-and-So's office. Can I help you?"

A 20-year International Business Machines veteran who has traded in his white button-down for the colorful African print shirt of his homeland, Mr. Bonsu is betting that the government won't dare raid such a large employer. "Let me put it this way: We don't think it's going to stop us from going ahead," he says.

Copyright WSJ updated May 22, 2002 Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com

Library: Entrepreneurship in Africa featuring eShopAfrica.com

Entrepreneurship in Africa: A Study of Successes

Entrepreneurship in Africa is a study of those entrepreneurs who have achieved success, wealth, and fame by organizing and directing a business undertaking in Africa. It is a story about successful entrepreneurs who have assumed risk in pursuit of profit, who have tried to conform to ethical business standards and who have tried to contribute to the economic development and improve the natural environment and the education, health, and welfare of their community and nation.

Fashion with a Conscience, Rome, Italy

Cordelia Salter, Founder of eShopAfrica.com participated in the Moda Mania Event, 2002 organized by Marymount International School in Rome, Italy. She presented a seminar called "Fashion with a Conscience" on how to make ethical design decisions by incorporating arts and crafts from Africa. The students were shown a wide range of African textiles, beads and other artefacts and given information about the artisans that make them.

Finalist in the Stockholm Challenge

eShopAfrica was a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge 2002, a global competition that looks for innovation and originality in the use of ICT. The Stockholm Challenge was closed after the 2006-2008 competition.

Media: AMEX: eShopAfrica.com made 'lead' company

AMEX, a USAID project designed to increase non-traditional exports from Africa, has made eShopAfrica.com a 'lead' company. It has chosen us an example of how ecommerce can be used to achieve their objectives and wants other businesses to follow our example. They are giving us valuable and timely support in building up our business fast.

Here are the criteria that AMEX used: 

• Wishes to be in the non-traditional export markets
• Wishes to use the most modern, but appropriate, technology
• Is a privately held market promotion and sales entity
• Is either already commercially linked, or wishes to be linked, with smaller firms of any type or small-scale producers of up-stream components. Is willing to 'pull' these smaller entities into a larger commercial arena
• Is willing to test concepts and develop new market opportunities
• Willing to be involved in the production and marketing of Ghanaian products with a high potential for increased revenues and significant multiplier effects
• Is willing to absorb new and innovative marketing and market intelligence systems. Growth potential in these aspects and also in revenues should be evident
• Has the potential for increased employment
• Has the potential to diversify its marketing of commodities, to include the United States as well as Europe and the West Africa sub-region
• Is sensitive to, and wishes to adopt, environmentally sound practices
•  There is the possibility of value addition to the enterprise's primary products.

Media: Computer and Technology News: Africa's Shopping Mall Launched

Computer and Technology News, Ghana, April 2001

Africa's Electronic shopping mall launched

An African art and craft ecommerce website has been launched in Accra. The website eShopAfrica.com is a business to business site with the objective of selling indigenous African manufactured products online to retailers and resellers around the world. The site, perhaps the most comprehensive and marketable website to come from Ghana, has an impressive collection of African products including cloths from West Africa, coffins from Ghana, beads from the sub region and masks and sculptures from all over Africa. The site also provides visitors the opportunity to personalise the products they want to and have them delivered.

The amazing story of eShopAfrica.com is that of four wonderful expatriate women: Cordelia Salter, technical member, Tine Knott, marketing member, Trish Graham, products member and Kawther El Obeid, business member coming together from different fields of endeavour and working from home to create what one IT professional at the launch remarked 'is the most practical example of ecommerce yet to come from Ghana'.

eShopAfrica.com uses an ecommerce software package designed for small businesses that want to sell on the Internet but can't afford large overheads, and this according to Salter-Nour is why anybody who wants to sell on the web should be able to do so. Through the technology of the Internet the eShopAfrica.com team hopes to give local artisans access to the global market. They say: 'It's time for ordinary Africans to start benefiting from connectivity.'

Even though the eShopAfrica.com team believe they will be bigger they say they intend to do things the African way and that they do not intend to destroy the way of production of the African people and that people will as El Obeid puts it 'not have to stop going to funerals because orders are so huge - we will remain big but small'

Copyright CTN Ghana ctn@ighmail.com

Launch Press Release Feb 01

eShopAfrica.com, a fair trade ecommerce website operating out of Ghana, West Africa is launching this week. eShopAfrica.com brings you top quality African arts and crafts made by traditional African artisans many of who currently live in povoery. The world has been told to buy more from Africa - we want to help them.

Launch Press Release February 2001

  eShopAfrica.com brings you top quality African manufactured goods in bulk. We are based in Ghana, West Africa and are using the Internet to create a larger global market for African products. The world has been told to buy more from Africa - we want to help them.
    We sell our goods in bulk - the more you buy the lower the price. As well as selling in bulk we offer pre-selected groups of items - Bumper buys - which attract a further discount. We offer a search service for unique and hard to find African items and can make product recommendations to help retailers find what their customers want. See the Gold Service page of our site for more details.
    We monitor the quality of all our products and agree quality guidelines with our suppliers. We enforce these guidelines rigorously to ensure our high standards. We do not disturb traditional supply and manufacturing lines and pay the fair market price for the quality we are buying. We put 10% of our profits back into the African community - see the Community page of our site for more details.
    As well as products, the shelves inside our shop are stocked with interesting facts about Africa and tips on how to use our products. Retailers can pass on these facts and tips to their customers to give the products added value.
    For our opening in February 2001 most of our stock is from Ghana. However, we are establishing links with artisans in other African countries and will be increasing our coverage soon. In the meantime, please visit our site and take a look at our products. The key to the success of any web business is publicity. Please help us by passing on our web address to anyone who may be interested. Thanks.

url   www.eShopAfrica.com

email  info@eShopAfrica.com