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.

In an attempt to maintain growth rates, operators in the sub region are looking to develop new markets and services. With urban markets becoming relatively mature, they are seeking to add new subscribers in underserved markets, usually in rural areas. Another option for operators is to develop added-value services that will encourage subscribers to spend more on basic voice and text-message services.

Just about everyone in Africa has a phone but not everyone can afford high end services, for example the average monthly income in rural Nigeria  is just NGN5,000 (US$34). This point illustrates the gap between what consumers desire and what they can actually afford in Africa.

Mobile networks and operators have to strike this balance and innovate with services that are of real value to these consumers.