In a world overloaded with information, digital and mobile users are looking for solutions that offer filtering, relevancy and make sense of the mountain of blogs, vlogs and news available online. That's exactly what Afrigator does, but with a strong accent on our African continent.
“Afrigator is community driven in that the user decides what is important, so content relevancy is democratic and dictated from a community perspective, which drives our appeal,” says Stii Pretorius, programmer and one of the co-founders of the site, adding: “Our most active countries are currently South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Egypt. Then we have a general Africa category that is very active.”
The service has carved a solid niche for itself because of local relevance, this done with sweat and own equity. But, following a deal with Naspers subsidiary MIH Print Africa, Afrigator is set to invest funds to put feet on the ground, intensify growth and invest in the consumer experience.
“We basically secured enough funding to take Afrigator into Africa and execute our plan for two years,” says Justin Hartman, who leaves his role as Digital Innovation Manager at Avusa to take the reins of the social media tool he helped found fulltime. Together with Stii Pretorius, Hartman will be directing Afrigator's growth, with Mike Stopforth playing an arm's length advisory role. The deal saw MIH Print Africa become majority shareholders in Afrigator for an undisclosed sum, while Hartman, Pretorius, Stopforth and Mark Forrester retain the remaining 25%.
Going forward
We basically secured enough funding to take Afrigator into Africa and execute our plan for two years.
Justin Hartman, co-founder, Afrigator
“The focus is to intensify on the innovative and creative ways we built the site, but to put some resource behind this. We have a great forward-looking strategy, which speaks strongly to viral and community driven growth. However, our growth will be strongly rooted in customer satisfaction. We realise that providing great service is crucial to customer retention,” explains Hartman.
“Then relevance and localisation are very important. Where else could you go to find out what people are talking about in Africa? We have real people talking about real issues in Africa for Africa. Afrigator has given Africa a voice, and not a small voice. Now that we have resource we want to be on the ground in these countries, with people who understand the landscape and can help us embed the service into relationships and content networks.”
Afrigator currently doesn't have significant competition, although aggregators are springing up in countries with strong blogging activity like Nigeria. However, the response is one of inclusion and co-operation rather than competition. “The fledgling aggregators we're seeing are largely very different to what we are doing and we don't see them as competition. It is just a matter of bringing them on board. It is better to collaborate than to compete. However, where there is competition we welcome it, because this will drive improvement. Amatomu forced us to improve our product, and as a result both services were strengthened. The winner in this scenario was the blogger who had greater even more choice and functionality.”
Afrigator's strategy now includes focusing on technology, upgrading their mobile offering, including photos into the aggregation offering, and developing strong revenue streams. “The most visible is a standard advertising stream. But we are getting more creative and will be expanding our revenue streams in the next three months in a way that will really benefit consumers and bloggers,” says Hartman.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Mandy de Waal is a freelance writer and columnist. A former broadcast journalist, De Waal writes for Brainstorm, ITWeb, MoneyWeb and is the editor of MoneywebLife. She writes about technology, convergent media, corporate rot and whatever else takes her fancy. Read the riffs on her blog.
Share