The ForgetMeNot Africa stand was busy with a lot of interest from African operator’s looking to add value added services to their networks and we look forward to progressing with these in the coming months.

The conference opened with a keynote session looking at market conditions in Africa’s telecoms, in particular the impact of the global economy on the sector. Chris Gabriel, CEO of Zain Africa presented his company as being customer-oriented rather than operating a network. Outsourcing, infrastructure sharing and partnerships are used by Zain to serve customers better and to be “smarter about how to invest”.

His presentation was followed by a debate between Ahmed Cisse (Deputy CEO of West African group Atlantique Telecom) , Ken Aigbinode (CEO of Nigerian CDMA operator Zoom Mobile), and Themba Kumalo (CEO of MTN Uganda). They discussed the impact of the global economic downturn on Africa’s telecoms markets. Mr Cisse said that his business was affected in the first half of 2009, but picked up in the second half of the year, with a 12% growth.

In the afternoon Geoff Goss from Celsys proposed ways to boost ARPU in a difficult climate. He argued rather than going through the pain and effort to save small amounts of OPEX, businesses would be better served focusing their time and energy into maximisng the value from current users. This can be done easily he added, by knowing your customer, innovating and focusing on what users want such as content.

The day finished with the AfricaCom Awards ceremony. ForgetMeNot Africa were nominated in the Best New Entrant category which was won by Dark Fibre and we wish them well on their success.

This is the annual gathering of Africa’s telecommunications leaders and we look forward to hearing the latest trends, meeting our partners and doing further business with networks wishing to provide 2-way email, IM and Social networking applications using the Message Optimiser platform.

We are also very much looking forward to the AfricaCom Awards, recognising excellence in Africa’s telecommunications. ForgetMeNot Africa are delighted to be nominated for the “Best New Entrant” award at this years awards.

We will keep you updated from our blog throughout the week with news from AfricaCom 2009.