Bill Gates & Africa's Energy Poverty: Good Intentions; Dangerous Interpretations

This is one blog post where I really seek feedback. 
Whether contrary points of view (preferably), or corrections, or any kind of contribution on this critical topic affecting our continent. So please feel free to share your thoughts at the end....

Bill Gates To Help The Poor Get Energy

"These days, I don’t take energy for granted. I know what a difference it can make in the lives of the poorest [people], and I’m committed to helping them get it."                                       - Bill Gates

The above quote came from Bill Gates' blog post entitled "Powering The Fight Against Poverty" and I couldn't be happier with him for it. ♥

I find myself sharing opinions with the legendary computer scientist and entrepreneur on many other thoughts from his blog; like Africa being the least to blame for climate change and yet the most likely to suffer the greatest causalities to its effects. 

I also loved Mr Gates' kind advocacy for Africa where he says,

"Instead of putting constraints on poor countries that will hold back their ability to fight poverty, we should be investing dramatically more money in R&D to make fossil fuels cleaner and make clean energy cheaper than any fossil fuel."

That one came from another 2014 blog post by Mr Gates.  
In fact here is a scrumptious video bonus for you here ► Bill Gates speaking at TED.

Bill Gates' "Faulty" Argument?

Nevertheless, I am going to very respectfully disagree with Mr Gates on one particular point. And emphatically as well because of the gravity of what is at stake:

"We should not try to solve the problem on the backs of the poor. For one thing, poor countries represent a small part of the carbon-emissions problem. And they desperately need cheap sources of energy now to fuel the economic growth that lifts families out of poverty. They can’t afford today’s expensive clean energy solutions, and we can’t expect them to wait for the technology to get cheaper." 

This is indeed very nice and thoughtful from the philanthropist, but I warn against very likely misconceptions that such a statement could very easily generate and has very possibly already generated.


Not all of today's clean energy solutions are too expensive for Africa (And I am referring to sub-Saharan Africa). Solar energy is MOST certainly NOT too expensive for us! 
The rate at which costs of renewable energy solutions is falling is too dramatic to make such dismissive statements at this point in time.

I am very confident that solar will actually be cheaper for us, not just in the long term (beyond 2030), but even in the mid term (from 2020 to 2030) as well. So why wait? Why not begin building capacity right now? 

Feeling The Full Blast Of Africa's Energy Poverty

But before someone gets irked by that claim, and accuses me of being an insensitive son of an ex-military ruler that spends most of his days living lavishly in the UK, let me quickly add that I fit perfectly into the category of those people who Bill Gates says are in desperate need of electricity right now!

I do not currently earn enough to power my home any much more than the average Nigerian does. Despite that, I am certain that I have, by far, more need of electricity than any human being I ever met, by reason of the amount of time I spend everyday on the Web - improving my knowledge and skill on Semantic Web technologies, Big Data, digital marketing and Google Analytics. I also obsessively do research on electric vehicles, battery technologies, micro-grid distribution, and most of all, renewable energy generation - including solar, geothermal, biomass, solar thermal, and emerging sustainable energy trends.

Yes, you could argue that all of this boils down to simply powering a laptop, and yet recently when both my laptop battery and my UPS backup system both went bad, I suddenly realized how desperate such a situation was, and how terrible it must feel to live like this all year round.

Add to that the fact that I have to deal with teaching a small (but growing) group of young people to help them acquire digital skills and learn code, yet who live in much harder circumstances than even I ever imagined (and cannot even afford their own laptops).

Side note:
 I didn't start obsessing over renewable energy because I was an environmentalist that wants to save the world (even though I have NOW indeed began to care).
I do it because my commonsense tells me that Africa has to key-into the knowledge economy at some point in our existence, and we can not go back to begin at the stage of the industrial revolution.
I realize that we simply have to START FROM THE FUTURE! And renewable energy, for me, is clearly that future. So as strange as it sounds, our present wretched state of electricity supply is an opportunity for us....

So I can safely say that I am many times more awake to the electricity horror than any other Nigerian right now, and YET, here I am, INSISTING that solar energy should be our NUMBER ONE priority!!! (without necessarily abandoning our natural gas projects of course).

So how could Bill Gates' statement generate misconceptions? 

"... They can’t afford today’s expensive clean energy solutions, and we can’t expect them wait for the technology to get cheaper."

First recognize that I actually found Bill Gates' article during a spirited debate with a fellow Nigerian who had completely bought Mr Gates' argument. Which at the time, wasn't really Mr Gates' argument. But he (Bill Gates) had actually given some sort of endorsement to a certain Bjorn Lomborg. Find that here. 

During the course of our argument, I kept referring him to data from energy related sources (like the US EIA, World Economic Forum and US.DOE). He on the other hand kept referring to statements made by Bill Gates. 

You see, the dynamic at work here is that when the richest man in the world appears to say that Africa should leave clean energy to the developed world, the danger is that many Nigerians would probably not bother with any kind of confirmatory or contradictory research on the matter any longer. Many would just simply fall in line. 

They could very likely dismiss the idea of renewables altogether; in fact some of the elite already are dismissing it.
And knowing my society the way I do, I can guess that even if solar became a hundred times cheaper than fossil fuels, Nigerian policy makers would then still probably need to be struck by lightning first, in order to revisit the argument again. 

Here are two tweets from Nigerian billionaire, Tony Elumelu during the World Economic Forum at Davos 2016:

 

Again, this kind of talk will leave many not-so-informed people with the idea that renewable energy is a kind of luxury that will never be able to replace fossil fuel sources. 

Similar comments have come from Jim Ovia and Aliko Dangote (Nigeria and Africa's richest man) who appears to have been getting very friendly with Bill Gates since the latter brought his admirable fight against polio to Nigeria in 2011. 

Now, compare Koffi Annan's comment:

I should point out that Alhaji Dangote is among the many billionaires who joined Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Coalition that was announced at the Climate Change Conference (COP21) .

Would it be a surprise me to see Dangote team up with Bill Gates sometime in the near future, trying to sell his TerraPower travelling wave nuclear reactor to Nigeria? 
Not likely.

Follow The Truth; Follow What Is Abundantly Clear

The truth is, I have nothing against people who "follow" Bill Gates (I don't mean on Twitter). I just think these issues are much bigger than one man. Regardless of how smart, or how rich, or how generous that man is. 

Africans need to have their own thinkers.
Other parts of the world are fast becoming knowledge economies. Innovation always trumps maintaining the status-quo.
So why must we be different?

Figuring out how to convert all of the free knowledge available to us into location-biased technology, and that technology into location-biased solutions is our only challenge. 

We can overcome this challenge through the use of clear focused government policy that makes solar power generation and solar technology research very attractive in sub-Saharan Africa, and more importantly, attractive to young Africans. If we do not incentivize it, it will never get a fighting chance against the traditional sources (like oil, gas and coal).

I cannot say that I am 100% certain that Bill Gates is wrong, but I personally prefer Elon Musk's "sleeves rolled-up", value-chain thinking approach to the CO2 problem. Musk and several other "hands-on" entrepreneurs are tackling the issue from many angles, eventhough they are not all multi-billionaires like Bill Gates and Alhaji Dangote. 
In my opinion, their drive to defeat global warming will soon catch up with our hunger for energy. 

It only makes logical sense that a technology that requires a raw material that is absolutely and abundantly free ( the sun, heat and the winds) will surely become cheaper than the alternatives that need to be extracted and processed before being used to generate power.

So whether it is for Climate Change, or for reducing Energy Poverty, these people's (Elon Musk and co) continuous ACTION will keep doing exactly what the world needs: persist in driving down the cost of solar panels, other renewables and energy storage. 

So Nigerians must quickly realize that we must choose to prioritize on sustainability. And start putting in the necessary action now!
Coal is not sustainable, and I doubt that gas is either. 
America and Europe may have gotten their opportunity with coal during the famous industrial revolution, but things are different now....

Solar is the "new coal". It is also the "new oil". 
We must see this as a revolution for us as well, not just a means of generating electricity. 
We must not utterly fail this lesson!
Sooner, rather than later, we must understand that this is an excellent opportunity for us to aggressively gain a bit of lost ground on that exponentially increasing technological gap between us and the Asians (not to mention Europe and the US). 

DO NOT GIVE UP ON GAS

What I am saying is not meant to take anything away from Africa's traditional power generating projects, like our natural gas projects in Nigeria.
I strongly suggest that we continue to grow our generating capacity with gas, rather than flaring it. 
But why should this slow down any solar aspirations we might have?  

Again, I repeat that the main reason why I am strongly advocating for solar energy is not because I am trying to save the planet but actually because I am convinced that it will not be any more expensive than the traditional sources that Africa is used to.

Let us consider the Grand Inga Dam Project which African leaders came up with. Consider that $80 billion is to be spent on this project that should bring 40,000 MW of power between 2020 and 2025. This number (40GW) is no doubt very good news for Africa, and even more so that that price includes the cost of transmission lines as well. But Africa has only one Inga falls. 

Now, obviously there is no way that any solar project can dream of that 40 GW output number. The largest solar project currently, is in the Mojave Desert in California and it's output is presently less than 400MW. 
Now, It cost $2.2 billion, but there are reports of bigger projects coming up around the world that would be proportionately bigger and cheaper. 

But my real argument is that if we quickly add very large solar projects to this Grand Inga Dam thing, it will start us off on a path that would definitely bring down the cost of future renewable projects in sub-Saharan Africa and in each respective individual country. 

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a concentrated solar thermal plant in the California Mojave Desert. It has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts.

Let us take a look at the relentless drives being made by developed nations, confederations and agencies (like the IEA and IRENA), and realize that we must also gear up for the future. The world is certainly not playing around with renewable energy, and neither should we. They are not only worried about global warming, they are ALSO aggressively trying to break their shackles from oil exporting nations. (Nigeria, does that mean anything to you?)

We must understand the potential implications of the strides achieved by the State of California, and more recent ambitious goals by China, Oman, Morocco and the City of Vancouver.

Back in 2012, the Barack Obama of the US made a deal with auto manufacturers to reduce fuel consumption to 50 miles per gallon. This is part of a long term goal to reduce fossil fuel consumption of US vehicles by 80% before 2050.

It is sad that at such a time when (reliable) information is free on the Web, many Africans seem to be intellectually lazy. But we must encourage our children to read extensively for their sake, and their children's. 

It is really upsetting every time I read about possible plans to build more HVDC transmission lines that would potentially carry power generated in African deserts to Europe. It doesn't upset me because I think Europeans are greedy - after all, the existing lines have been bringing power from Europe to North Africa anyways. What upsets me is the fact that Europeans have seen the huge potential of Africa's sunny deserts for ages, while we refuse to open our eyes.

I am not an engineer but I have done a lot of research into this power crisis for a few years now. And I have made my conclusions that decentralized distribution is one of the biggest solutions that sub-Saharan Africa will need to truly overcome our energy poverty.

Part 2 of this post will continue with my ideas on decentralized Micro-grids, battery storage, and how sub-Saharan African governments (like our North African counterparts) can attract the best solar energy deals to the continent, and also build local skill and capacity in the process. It is now ready. Find it here.

Now it's time to hear from you.
Do you have any contrary points of view (preferably), or corrections, or any kind of contribution on this critical topic affecting our continent? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments....

Demystifying Yahoo-yahoo

So recently Republican Senator Ted Cruz of the USA verbally attacked Nigerians with a sweeping generalization while he was criticizing some health care policy by the President of United States (Barrack Obama). Mr Cruz claimed that Nigerian Email Scammers were somehow responsible for the web-development problems that the Obamacare website had been facing.

(Note: My original post was in March 2014 but that website has been taken down)

Now this is quite an unfortunate and asinine way for a Senator, or even anyone who has gone through some form of high school to speak publicly. And we all know that every nation in this world has its own fair share of miscreants and law-breakers. 

Yet, who cares really? 

Everyone generalizes! 

So that is not what my article is about.

I am talking about…..

Demystifying Yahooyahoo!

Internet fraud, or Yahooyahoo, as it is fondly called by many young Nigerians, is an ugly anomaly that has greatly affected the global perception of our nation for quite a while now. And if you are in my line of business (digital marketing) then you most certainly would have come across many people from all over the world, who have had some kind of encounter with a yahooyahoo idiot from Nigeria at some point.
But thankfully, that doesn’t seem to have affected my online interactions so far so badly.

In this article, I am going to attempt to shatter some of the myths that surround this infamous yahooyahoo madness, and afterwards try to present an alternative for young people out there, who either think there is no other option, or those who are just on the verge of beginning their shameful Yahooyahoo career.

Ignorance may seem to be an excuse for some today, but you will always be responsible for your choice to learn or not to learn. So, if you would like to stop being a coward, and start becoming a responsible individual with a global view, with integrity, with family values, and with genuine self-esteem; then read on.

Now yahooyahoo is the name that young Nigerians came up with to describe the activities of their peers who engage in internet scams for the purpose of making some money. It entails the use of emails or other internet resources to execute confidence tricks on unsuspecting victims, usually (but not exclusively) foreigners. They do this with the goal of making some foreign currency from them. At times, and I’m not sure if I understood this perfectly well, they get access to hacked credit card details (from Vietnamese hackers I am told) and use those to shop online so they can sell off the items they buy as soon as they are arrive via shipment.

Now, while a minute few yahooyahoo fraudsters have been known to make insane amounts of money from this enterprise, clearly, a much greater majority have continued to suffer in their ever deepening poverty.

Now if you are one of those hyper-sensitive and overly self-defensive Nigerians who like to blame this embarrassing trend on the “greed of the foreign victims”, presuming that that somehow justifies those dickheads among us who perpetrate this act?
Then I would suggest that you open up your mind at this point, or stop reading altogether. Cos this is gonna get rough!

 This article should help you change your thinking so that you would longer be a passive abettor, or vindicator, or devil’s advocate (whichever way you view it); but become the kind of responsible citizen that is armed with the right kind of advice to give to his or her neighbor’s son or anyone else you know that might be misled with this warped sense of rationalization.

So here are a few hard and uncommon truths about the matter:

1. Yahooyahoo is NOT easy money

Now, you might even wonder why I think I know what I am talking about? If I am being so self-righteous, how come I claim to know so much about internet fraud if I myself haven’t also been a perpetrator of it?

Well, I haven’t. Sorry.

I have a friend who owns a number of cyber cafes, and I spent quite a few nights I the past surfing all night at his cafes. Many of his regular customers happened to be yahooyahoo boys and as a result, I am fully aware that these perps work as hard, if not harder than everyone else.

The kind of dedication they put into it: from as early as 9am till about 6 to 7am the next morning; doing the same thing over and over again and every day.

Bro, if that isn’t hard work, then I wonder what on earth is!

Then you might also need to inspect the conditions in which they do this laborious work:

First of all, I must point out that my friend’s cafés are among the finer cafés in the mainland area of Lagos. And while I spent my nights in his comfortable office with air-conditioning and an additional three-seater lounge chair, even I, still found it often very uncomfortable being there for so long.

Yet these kids have to endure in stuffy rooms with only a few fans, seating on metallic chairs or even wooden benches. And they have to manage this hardship while they do their so-called “work”.

They spend nights upon nights in front of very old and sluggish performing computers, in the most uncomfortable positions, often chatting with people who they often times cannot really understand (because of their typical poor grasp of the English language).

Yet I wonder if any of them ever stops to wonder if their age mates who work in the daytime and in more comfortable offices are actually going through that much stress for their, by and large, CERTAIN monthly pay checks? 

Or if they ever do the arithmetic to figure out what the TRUE monthly “income” of their yahooyahoo runs come to? 

I mean, after they have calculated the difference between the seasons when they have “hit” and the many more seasons when they..............don't.

This brings me to point number….

2. The Nigerian Police Is Your Friend

Apart from the difficulty of the yahooyahoo work itself, and the cost of keeping the business going, and the risk of uncertainty, as in, “will they pay?” “will they not pay?”. There is still another major hazard to this profession….The ever loveable Nigerian Police.

One of the funniest things you will ever experience is when you are at most cyber cafés in Yaba environs (day or night – makes no difference) and a police van is driving by (and by police van, I mean a danfo bus that police men usually use to comb the streets for game). 

The way many of the boys and young men browsing in the café would suddenly jump up and run out of the hall, you would think that they saw a horde of rabid grizzly bears charging into the café.

The whole scenario reminds you of the biblical saying, “the wicked flee when no one pursues”.

Of course, they run because when they are caught, they know that our dear policemen are not in any way interested in their breaking of the law. But they harass them for large sums of money as bribes. Many of them have to borrow money to bribe the cops to “get out of jail”.

So despite the shame, and the two deterring factors I raised above, why do a lot of young boys still go into this….

3. The Fan Club Appeal

This is regarding the fact that there is a lot of misinformation going around about this scam life.

And just like many Nigerians do with other social plagues like gangsterism and occultism, they tend to sensationalize and glamorize yahooyahoo in all of their tale-bearing and gossip.

Most of the time, supposedly harmless, careless talk ends up in the hearing of unsuspecting kids, who in turn are quick to believe whatever they hear about “the bad guy” life of a yahooyahoo boy.

So it’s very easy for them to imagine the yahooyahoo life as similar to the Nigerian version of a future Bugzy Seagle or Don Corleone lifestyle.

We know that naturally VICE tends to be attractive to young boys. And when the added incentive of getting rich quickly is added to it, it becomes a much more potent drug. Especially in a society like Nigeria’s where things are the WAY they are! (I won’t say more about that one for now)

So it is very important for young boys (and girls) to get the more honest picture of this particular way of life. 

And that is why I have gladly taken up this task. But if everyone else prefers to be sounding-off no differently than fanboys of the scammers, please be my guest. See where that takes you?!

Meanwhile, I had promised that I was going to provide an alternative for young people who are out there and have gotten more and more frustrated by the poverty that prevails in our society. A poverty that came as a result of the thickness of corrupt leaders past and present, and perhaps also because of mistakes in judgment made by their parents….having too many kids, or not choosing a proper education for their kids.

What I say to this is, there is a way out!
But you can only find that way the right way.

SHAME: Nigerian fraudster arrested in a foreign country. 

4. Come & Think With ME

For less effort and fewer hours, I could teach how to make more money, and feel very assured about your future. And i will never charge you any money for this. You just have to learn to change your mindset about a few things first.

A) Money is NOT the reason why you are on this earth. You only need it to purchase the necessities of life and some luxuries if you like. What would guarantee you happiness and fulfillment is the DISCOVERY and drive to your true purpose in life.

B) It doesn’t matter who the richest man in Nigeria is. Once you get to a stage in your life, where poverty no longer has a strangle hold on you, you would begin to realize the things I have been saying. But it is better not to wait until you get to that stage.

C) Knowledge is key for the human experience. Decide you want to learn first, then accept that there are no species or races of human beings that are especially made to be more intelligent than others. Learning is a choice!

D) A good life is like both a tree and a building. You plant a tree and water it. But you don’t expect to eat the fruit from that tree the next day after you plant it. Also a building. It takes hard work to finish its construction. But it is hard work that looks twenty times harder than it actually is to the layman on the outside observing the builders doing the work. 

It is much easier for the builders who know exactly what to do at the right time.

Likewise success in life requires a waiting period and hard work (that isn’t that hard after all once you’ve gotten into the swing of what to do) before you can begin to eat the fruits of your labours.

So once you’ve wired your thinking into this paradigm, all you need next is to realize that there are tons of legitimate things you can do with the internet to earn a living. 

If you wish to know about these things you can join my community on Google+ where you can ask questions about digital marketing. It doesn’t matter what your passions are. I am sure we can figure out a way you can tap into the abundance of resources you can get on the internet to maximize those passions, and turn them into business ventures.

Thanks for sticking around.

After Davos 2016

Instead of posting my own recap of what happened at DAVOS 2016, I felt it was better for me to give you a sort of prelude to the coming World Economic Forum On Africa 2016 that will be coming up in Rwanda this May. 

However, I could still also link you to a document that does perhaps some level of justice to the highlights of DAVOS in a more global sense.

By the way, I must apologize for having not yet posted my thoughts on the 2015 edition of the WEF On Africa that came up in Cape Town South Africa in June 2015. I did however manage to post my commentary on the 2014 edition. That’s the very least I could have done anyway, considering that that one was held in my own country (Nigeria).   

But anyway, I also added some context to it that I gained by also following the narrative from the US-Africa Business Forum which came up a few months after. I encourage you to check that out after reading this post.

 

Clever Gatete, Finance Minister of Rwanda, where the World Economic Forum On Africa will hold on MAY 2016

THE ROAD TO KIGALI

There is no doubt that it is time for Africa. But I am sure that by now you know that is a huge understatement. Yet, let me just say that no matter who you are or what you do, as long as you are reading this words right now, you really need to become interested and connected to what and what is unfolding on the continent. Yes, I mean that!

As the developed world advances further and further into becoming Knowledge Economies, we in the developing world are at the risk of becoming even more at a disadvantage when it comes to global trade.

First off, when our predominantly agriculture-based economies were predicated almost exclusively on harvesting crops and mining raw materials, we were at a disadvantage because we relied heavily on their production of the technology and equipment we needed, like fertilizers, irrigation systems and oil rigs (they were manufacturing economies then).

Then we arrived at this point, where we've become a hybrid of  mostly agriculture-based and sparsely manufacture-based economies. Here we are still at the disadvantage that we can’t really manufacture goods that are worthy of export to other continents, even though at least, we've started producing a few of the goods that we use, which are growing our economies at faster rates than the agricultural culture alone did. 

Yet, when we look ahead into the future of these knowledge economies, we begin to see a picture where they will soon be driven mostly by their consulting services sector (thus knowledge) more than manufacturing. 

They are already using data to drive innovation and to create remarkable solutions to human problems (albeit sometimes creating some new problems in the process).

Shifting Towards A Knowledge Economy

I don’t mean to scare you, but I must awaken us to the fact that we have to get our acts together. 

Here in Nigeria, we have been too sluggish in dealing with our woeful electricity supply deficit. It is too shameful to begin to discuss how poor it has been, and how no visible changes have been made despite all that was promised by the previous governments.

From my observation, it is almost certain that the rulers in Nigeria still DO NOT UNDERSTAND the role that electricity plays in all forms of development, especially the manufacturing sector. 

The wretched state of electricity in Africa (along with corruption) has probably been the most crucial factor in our sluggish crawl to industrialization.

Now, I know that CNBC Africa’s Chief Correspondent and South African journalist, Bronwyn Nielsen has been very active at bringing this issue to the front burner, but I am appealing to every African (especially Nigerians) to press this point even more than ever before.

There is a lot more to be said about how to take our positions as manufacturing economies, but for now I am focusing on the most rudimentary ingredient. Of course, those of you that are part of our Digital Africa community know that my first advocacy is always for broadband internet access for every African. And also future-oriented education, and relentless skill acquisition using the Web. Yet, I realize that power (electricity) is critical; especially for those things to even work.

SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

My advice would be to find out what the topics of discussion are at the WEForum On Africa, and how your current knowledge/education, skill set, or interests may relate to those topics, and the consequences that could possibly come out of the discussions on such topics.

Was that sentence a bit confusing?  

I will illustrate:

1) Future Energy was a big topic among African leaders at Davos 2016 (a few days ago).
I personally have no education in engineering or material science or whatever relates to energy, yet I was trained as a journalist, and I personally became interested and obsessed with solar energy when I realized how much more the sun has been blasting us in the city of Lagos since the last decade.

As a result, I will be joining this particular conversations about future energy to do whatever I can to spread information and ideas on transitioning Africa smoothly into solar and energy storage technologies. This is also sure to make me read more on the topics surrounding energy in general, not just renewable. 

2) Inclusive Growth has been an ongoing topic on the WEF on Africa platform. 

If you are an economist, or you work in the financial sector, or even if you have developer skills in designing mobile apps, you might want to consider keeping up with this topic in order to learn of what the major policy makers and industry players are actively doing to enable/sponsor solutions that foster inclusive growth or information dissemination on it among the masses.

In so doing you are likely to discover opportunities to develop applications that can be useful for such endeavors.

These are just a few tips on where to start thinking, in terms of being a responsible citizen on our beautiful continent. I am sure you can come up with much better thought paths that can help key our people (especially the younger generation) into the debates and discussions that have a greater impact on our future than we often consider.

There are always other important global issues to discuss, like gender issues, health care, and of course the future of technology, robots and artificial intelligence.   

Ariana Huffington was perhaps the most engaging speaker at Davos as she touched on a wide range of issues.  

Insects: the secret weapon to saving food waste? @KeesAarts https://t.co/O6wLlbghvW #wef16 #davos

— Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) January 21, 2016

So don’t forget, like I said before, see this as an OPPORTUNITY. Consider the great economist, Adam Smith’s words, and think also of your own selfish interests. Plug in and be connected!

Thanks and Happy New Year.

From,
Rotimi Orims

Please stay with Digital Africa as we look forward to World Economic Forum Rwanda in May 2016. We will definitely be giving our own opinions and hoping to hear yours during or immediately after that event. Please join us. You can click on the “Keep Up With This Blog” icon below the Blog Archives in the top right column of this page, and also join our Digital Africa community on GooglePlus here ►

The ZMOT & The Moments That Matter

After reading Jim Lecinski's book. "Winning The Zero Moment Of Truth" several times over, I have come to realize that true and long lasting success in digital marketing will not likely come from carrying out arbitrary activities using digital tools.

This post should guide you away from following the crowd in wasting their time dumping links on social media, and basically constituting a nuisance to those who actual use social media for "social" reasons. 

It should also guide you away from overestimating what you can achieve with SEO; and also wasting money buying pay per click ads that send you a whole bunch of curious window shoppers and no actual buyers.  

This post should actually guide you into understanding how real life people truly use the Web, and how you can truly begin to know these people.

The Zero Moment Of Truth 

And All Those Micro Moments

Now please don't get me wrong; I think SEO is great, Pay Per Click Advertising is awesome, and Social media marketing truly builds brands. In fact I employ all of these activities and more, and I suggest you do so as well.

However, what I am saying here is that all these activities need to be done in a such a way that it is must be about meeting your customers at the very point of their need. Not yours.

And there is more and more technology springing up to help you do this with scary levels of accuracy these days.
Think about it seriously...Would it not matter to you if you could distinguish between a young lady who Googled your product, "Shea Radiance Brightening Cream" while standing in the isle of a store, from someone else who Googled it from a desktop at the office?

Understanding shoppers' Intent is a big deal in modern marketing. And you should be getting comfortable in that kind of business process before your competitors catch wind of it. 
And lucky for you, most of them (your competitors - at least those in Nigeria) are still asleep.

The "rules" are changing dramatically: Shoppers are like military authorities dictating these new rules for you and your competitors. Google search, YouTube, Facebook, Reviews on Google plus and reviews on blogs, even Whatsapp are some of the tools they are using to dictate these new rules of engagement. And Learn how to engage, you must!

Shoppers are looking for your products. Their technological sophistication does not stop them from having needs. 
It only makes them more tactical and confident at finding exactly what they want.
 
Many of these clever shoppers are seeking answers before they step into the store. They are asking questions; seeking a special experience. An experience, they are convinced that THEY have total control of. And this control they feel is psychologically empowering!

We Must Now THINK In Moments

Believe me; This is all about thinking. Theirs and yours!

Let me let you in on a "secret"......that moment when shoppers want an answer to one of those questions of theirs' has been very well understood by Google.
They call it the Zero Moment Of Truth.
I am not going to go into definitions here.
The likes of Jim Lecinski and Brian Solis have written plenty on this topic, so serious business leaders need to seek these out.

I have also written so much about it already. And I think you can find perhaps my easiest definitions ►here or maybe ► here. My article about the FMOT (First Moment Of Truth) should also help you get a clearer psychology of what I am trying to do here.

But if you are one of the few wise ones, who need a more detailed, step by step guide on how to implement ZMOT campaigns, then ensure to add Jim Lecinski's free e-book to that reading list.

So anyway, what I want to talk about here today is the fact that Google have again recognized that this concept of the Zero Moment Of Truth can now be further broken up into billions of micro moments. Yes! Everyday they see billions of searches from people around the world.

And these are the moments that really matter to any smart marketer. And trust me, it is all about thinking.

The Magic is in Mobile.

The increasing use of smartphones is what is causing the explosion of these countless micro moments. The ease at which an internet connected phone can fit into our pockets has changed everything: phones can be everywhere we are. Even the bathroom. So we are virtually taking the world with us everywhere we go.

Never have we known such....."ridiculousness". Yet most of today's marketers think about this thoroughly when we are planning, doing research, or writing our ad copy.

Computers and the Web brought consumers online, mostly because of the ease of shopping without having to drive down to the store and join thse long checkout queues.

But today's clear and present reality is that consumers now just simply live online? Thanks to their mobile phones, they don't come and go any longer. They are always online....as long as their is WiFi or data from their network provider. 

So for the thinking marketer, these billions of moments can be arranged into the following four categories; plus an additional one I added:

• Want To Do Moments
• Want To Know Moments
• Want To Buy Moments
• Want To Go Moments
• Want To Express Moments

Now, I do not want to simply regurgitate stuff I read from Google. And I also believe that you will learn better by doing your own research. So I will very briefly just guide you through these groups of moments, and we can both go and do something else.

1. Want To Know Moments

The most prominent of the moments on Google.
People are always trying to find out stuff. We are always seeking information. And most especially because we now realize that we can get informed any moment of the day. Whether it is stuff they want to buy, or just stuff that they are curious about.

Helping people know more about stuff can put you in very good standing with them whenever they want to buy that stuff in the future. 
So think.....is there an opportunity there?

e.g. There is a sudden hike in Nigerian women's searches for information about baby food (even though most will still buy their baby's food from the shop next door).
Your company sells baby food.
What to do?
 

2. Want To Do Moments

Very similar to want to know moments because it is also about learning. But these are "Show Me How" searches that people are making to learn how to do things.

These searches are much more frequently done on YouTube, which is a video (long and short) streaming website that bears some of the qualities of a search engine as well as some qualities of a social network. 

I personally learned how to navigate the user interface of the Google Analytics tool by watching a YouTube video. Today I am a practicing Certified Google Analytics professional. 

Other people are using YouTube videos to learn how to prepare Gbegiri Soup, or how to snap a screenshot with a Samsung Galaxy S4, and so on.

Again, imagine a company that sells instant Amala powder or Poundo Yam should be taking advantage of promoting videos such as this. 

3. Want To Buy Moments

I would say this type are the only moments that the few digital marketers in Nigeria are paying attention to right now. 
Funny thing is that these are among the fewest comparatively among the shoppers moments of intent.
Shoppers searchers here are usually more specific.
"Cheap men's loafers". "3.5 KvA generator with delivery". "Pizza in Wuye area Abuja".

It would be funny if you sold men's loafers, generators or Pizza, and were not thinking of how to make yourself visible for such queries.
 

4. Want To Go Moments

Are simple. They want to go somewhere. Sometimes they are already driving, or already walking. And they ask Google questions like "Suya Spot near me" or "Good restaurants in Lekki". This usually works best when the searcher uses geo-locating services on their mobile devices by the way.

I remember a friend of mine once searching for "Drycleaners and Laundromats close to 1004", but none of these dudes offering this service was smart enough.

Extra. Want To Express Moments

This is mostly observable on social media. You may call it the new selfie craze.
Like it or not, people all over the world are crazy about their selfies. It seems to be instinctive human behavior. 
And here in Africa, it seems to me that we are even more selfie crazy. But it is not just about selfies; it appears that people want to be showing off their food, their trophies, their medals, their badges, etc.

There could be opportunities here as well. But I prefer you think (that magic word again) of a clever way to spot and respond to this opportunities and tell me in the comments. 
Or better still, come and ask me in private via any of my social channels using this unique hashtag = #OrimsThinkExpress

Hahaa!

So there you have it!
These are the moments that matter!
But each industry has its own unique moments, and you should be learning how to master those moments.
Unless, of course, you want the future to rob your business of its position in that industry.
Thanks for reading.


If my writing has any positive impact on your marketing, or if you have more questions, please connect with me and let me know. I would love to discuss more with you. 
You can find me on Google Plus, Twitter and LinkedIn. 
Also come and ask broader questions about the Web as it related to Africa in the Digital Community where I am one of the moderators.  

See you there.
You may get further reading on the ZMOT in my other post which has Nigerian examples.