 When I was a student, I studied computer engineering and I used to work in Intel and chip design in the Ladd department, which is the local area network and when I graduated four years ago, I moved to Berlin and most of the time I spent as a go developer there and Three years ago. I went to Google IO and there was a workshop there Where they gave you mobile phone that had an app and the app shows how much data do you consume doing different things and we had different tasks like for example a find instructions how to go from one place to another or translate a word how to use a certain fertilizer and things like that and then They asked us how much data did you consume and then it showed their phone and showed this number and then they showed us the price of this amount of data in different countries and what can you buy for this price in those countries and I learned that for the price of 5,100 megas you can buy food for a week or maybe food for a large family celebration for a holiday or something and this was my first very personal interaction with this Conflict that developing countries have many times in that you have to choose between Basic needs or learning more stuff and that left a very strong impression on me and In the beginning of this year. I left my job and moved to Kenya and The purpose of the stock is to share with you what I learned when I was doing the research before I moved and What I learned from being on the ground And I hope this will tickle to somebody like it tickles to me through years ago And you'll go home restless and I'll be thinking what can I do? Is there something I can help and you'll start reading about it and you'll start learning about it and at this point Please talk to me. I would love to help you and share more of my knowledge more than I can do in the 40 minutes here So learning World map brings you back to geography lessons, right? So we are here. This is our Europe and we're in Spain and this is called the Mercator projection and it was introduced in the 16th century and This is one of the possible world maps Here are many more Possible world maps and the reason that there's more than one is that if you take the globe Which is a 3d surface and you project it on a 2d surface. You have to lose some data So the different maps basically show you the different data that you choose to leave out And if you want to know all of them or many of them xkcd 977 is your address or You can accept oh You can accept this as your world map and join the Flat Earth Society. Thank you very much. That was my talk So this is the gals Peters projection and it was introduced in the 19th century and Here is Europe again Looks kind of different now, huh? so there is It's an interesting question why this map that is way more recent is not the most popular one, but this one is Could be related to the fact that most of the maps are printed here and it looks kind of nicer than here. I Don't know But the takeaway I want you to focus on here is This is Africa Africa is a huge continent Let's talk a bit more about how large Africa is if you take the area of Europe and North America Which in this case is actually in North America and Central America according to Wikipedia and you add up both Continents you get slightly more than the area of the African continent If you take the number of people living in North and Central America and add to that a number of people that live in Europe you get only slightly more number of people than people who live in Africa and Yeah, that's a lot and Another interesting thing I want you to take away from here is the languages while Five languages is the official number you need in North America and not much more is what you need in practice and In Europe officially there's 24 but in practice you may need a bit more and by in practice This is a real stretch because Wikipedia here includes number and went to the count They add Mayan and other languages that are fairly not common In Africa the situation is different and while officially there are 26 languages in practice, there are Few thousands of languages in use and if you wonder why the range is so large is because the Linguistic researchers are still debating. What is a language and what is a dialect? So this number just remember this for later. We're gonna use it Last slide about how large Africa is we're taking the territory of Africa We're putting inside United States including Alaska in Hawaii then we're putting China we're putting Japan. We're putting India. That's a large part of the Asian continent Then we're adding many countries from Europe like and Italy Germany France Spain Portugal and we still left with space. This is how large Africa is and We're not saying this to show off But we're saying this because imagine how much hardware is it needed to have Internet as good as it is in Europe or in America It's a huge area to cover and it requires lots of hardware lots of time and lots of money and It will take time until it will be the same There are some nice initiatives that try to attend this problem and they have software solutions They have cool drone solutions and there's even a hot air balloon and They're interesting initiatives. You can follow them they may take time also and Why is there such a big difference why Do we still talk about the need to cover the area of Africa and it's not as obvious as it is Hey, we have so much internet in Europe here, right? So yeah, I will need your attention because we will go over a timeline of the internet in a very brief way And we're gonna see what went wrong So 70s nothing interesting was going on in Africa and Globally the US military had 17 nodes that were communicating between them first half of the 80s The UN set up a dedicated organization that is in charge of bringing internet to Africa While globally the first ISP was being set TCP AP protocol was being announced and second half of the 80s We got the desktop and your mom started dealing with you get off the internet. I need to call your aunt and Yeah, globally there was a well it already things connected while in Africa the first networking system in South Africa showed up Let's go to the 90s 18 institutions in Africa could communicate over with each other while globally the worldwide web was already a thing Second half of the 90s the first internet connection reaches the African continent What happens in the world? I can hotmail Google PayPal. You already start using getting interested in uses of the internet Moving to the 2000s The first major internet connection to the continent while globally Skype pirate Bay you start already Making your bandwidth sweat a bit because you have a good and stable internet connection Second half mobile phones come into our lives and this time It's nice because they don't only come to the lives of people outside of Africa. They're also a popular thing in Africa and Also IP management becomes a thing in Africa and Reddit and YouTube step into our lives and I should also say that very recently the domain dot Africa became possible to the suffix became possible to buy if you feel like buying that it's a good time now and This decade high speed network reaches 0.4 percent in the African continent while Globally the technical challenges are no longer there You should start doing here at chat your your challenges are what's interesting product you can have One more timeline. I'm gonna go with you Bear with me. This is going to be the number of internet users So from the 80s where it was not much a thing to the 90s where the gap started be a bit larger The 2000s is where it became a thing and in the middle of the 2000 2005 there was two large milestones that were happening while in Africa the sub-Saharan connection Number of it was over five percent Globally 1 billion people were connected. That's a huge difference and It grew to the point that today Around fifth of the people have an internet connection in Africa while globally more than half and if this half Looks funky to you. Remember this includes Africa. This includes Asia this includes Latin America and this includes developing regions. So the average is High and that's how it looks. It's a huge gap But I can make this graph look nicer if I'm gonna add the mobile subscriptions This looks nicer, right? 75% of the people in Africa have some kind of a mobile subscription and practically everyone in the world have a mobile phone so all the buzzwords you hear that Mobile first and forget the rest is there is a point in it but if you're gonna go to Africa or if you're gonna go to developing areas May want to consider that it's a mobile only Because the number of people who have a laptop there is not high and it's not gonna increase much Not to mention the number of people with a desktop So all your thoughts mobile Let's look what is interesting in mobile. What is the requirements here? So from my research, I saw that financial medical and educational are popular NGOs focus on that a lot. They have cool technology and they need lots of help because they do great things sharing economy and transportation the public transportation is as you imagine not amazing and Driving is also not always easy, especially in Kenya because they drive in the wrong side of the road So yeah Uber is a thing there and other local competitors Whether in agriculture is obvious for everyone because large percent of the Money that the the continent makes come from growing crops entertainment and social media Everybody there have a Facebook account or a Twitter account so that's a good way to go and Religious is an interesting one I found that many of my friends there have an app that would read out to them versus from the Koran or from the Bible I have yet to seen this outside of Africa and Talking about demand, let's look at this this I took from the website app trace comm and This is the top downloaded apps that are free from this week from US and Spain countries and app store of Google and of iPhone and I would like to apologize for not having the Catalonian flag. This is unfortunately not available there So what is interesting here? US people love this app. That's called the low walkie-talkie and Yeah, YouTube Instagram Snapchat what not nothing new and interesting here And Spanish people. What do you like? June better shopping you guys love shopping And there is also Netflix Instagram YouTube no big surprises here The next slide. I'm gonna show you will be the same but for Congo and Kenya Take a second to guess. What are we gonna see there? quick question This flag is it Congo or Kenya? Those who think Congo raise your hand This flag The flag on the left To all those who raised your hand go watch fun with flags Guys, this is Kenya So what do Kenyan people download? the Android Play Store Opera mini fast web browser Facebook light. What's up? Uber Make sense there are some local apps like my safari comb and we're gonna talk about them in this talk and Some other apps then on the Apple Store Instagram Uber Facebook YouTube That's what's interesting because it's fairly heavy on the data and Twitter and such Let's look at Congo What do people in Congo download from the Google Play Store? There's what's up Instagram share it. We're gonna talk about this as well. There is Facebook and Messenger Sounds reasonable. People love to commute people love to talk and People in the Congo Apple Store. What do they download there? Snapchat Instagram YouTube again Messenger Facebook now I think it's pretty weird that if I'm telling you internet is a problem and then I'm showing you people use YouTube You're gonna suspect me right? What is she talking about? YouTube is very heavy on the data and I want to ask you how many people do you think live in Congo and own an iPhone? Maybe not so many Maybe they don't live there. Maybe they just change to the store Could be interesting now app trace belongs to is a free product of the company that I used to work for adjust so I can guarantee you the information is correct but The question is how many people? Does this represent how many of the population would do this and that's a question that we're gonna answer also during the talk and the takeaway that I want you to have from this talk or from this slide is that What you find online on the App Store may not always be correct and There is total of 14 takeaways in this talk Take them all and the next slide will be the same for Vietnam in Japan I really hope you will not disappoint me with the flags this time so in Vietnam people like taking pictures and sending messages and In the App Store again YouTube is being very popular And in Japan, it's interesting because I have no idea because I can't read Japanese but it's also interesting because It means that the market there is very close and local and the global apps are less of a thing there and This is off the scope of the focus of this talk, but it is an interesting thing for you to have in mind So we said apps, let's talk about some examples Uber is We agreed is popular in Kenya and in African countries and the Kenyan competitor of Uber is called taxify that's their logo and Their user experience of all those right share apps is completely not what you think so I Need to go from one place to another. I cannot use a public transportation because there's no official timelines or routes and I'm definitely not going to drive the wrong way. So I'm calling a driver and I open the app I write pickup location. I write destination and I hit get a driver app searches app Says this is your driver and then I'm getting a phone call. Hello. Hi. I'm your driver. Nice to meet you Where are you? Can you see there a road in the app? Fadville estates? Okay, I'm coming hang up Okay Get ready closing the door and then I get a notification that your driver is here and then again I'm getting a phone call. Hi. Hi. This is your driver How are you doing? I'm here. Okay. I'm coming Hanging up Going inside the cab and then he says hi. How are you doing good? How are you? Where are we going today? Can you see that I wrote it in the app? Yes, okay, so we go there Can you navigate me? I'm not a local. You're the local. You would know better how to go there and Then several things can happen They would either ask you maybe you know a better way or maybe they will ask you to open Google Maps on your phone and navigate them or other variations and I feel like it's a very great responsibility to do it and I usually say Sorry, I don't want to do it. I want you to do it. That's why I call the cab and then then we drive and I'm willing to bet that this is not the experience that the uber designers had in mind when they did the app and If you think about it when you develop an app or design an app here in Barcelona and people from Spain use it They will sometimes misuse it Imagine how big this difference would be if you develop an app here and have people in Africa use it this is how different it can be and This is another takeaway from you the UX is going to be different You have one thing in mind and it's going to be absolutely different and also a funny thing that I noticed When I was looking for uber I found or when I was looking for tax if I found uber Competition is everywhere next App I will talk with you about is this one anybody in the crowd knows it Few hands. This is called share it and this allows you to share files over Bluetooth and This is going to be your common way to distribute apps because not many people have a play store account there and It is interesting because when I was going and having people try my app They I showed them the app and they said fine I'm gonna download it and then I go to the play store for them I find the app I hit download and then they say and then it shows the screen of pre-slot login And then I'm asking do you have credentials? Okay, we can sign you up. Do you want? Yes. Okay. What is your email? No email and this is where it becomes interesting Most apps are being distributed by some person downloading the app and then sharing the APK overshare it with his friends The reason for that is that Wi-Fi is not too common so if you want to Download an app you're gonna go and find your friend who has it And this will make getting an updated version hard this will also make Knowing your users what operating system they use when does the app crash for them? Hard because you don't have all this information in your Google developer console And maybe somebody from this room will get inspired and go home and develop a good solution for this Maybe it would be cool would be useful last example is MPSA Who knows MPSA? More people awesome So the official definition is a mobile phone based money transfer and financing service This means essentially this is the bank for many people Because banks are not common there and they're not common or not eager to give accounts for people who live there Many people just open this MPSA or equivalent that is linked directly to their SIM card And this is their one-stop shop for all finance business. You get salary there You can send money to your family there. You can receive money. You can pay bills. You can buy insurance you can buy government bonds and and It's nice because it puts all this concept into a very advanced place who of you buys your insurance mobile here and They're doing well. They launched 10 years ago. They are doing this year. They did 60 million euros they have 20 million users who do an action every two three days and They're not only common in Africa, but you can find them in Asia in the Balkans and in many other areas And they have 130,000 physical agents This is how the interface of the app looks like very simple very Clear and this is how you would charge your phone with credit So you cannot have a subscription and you pay monthly but you go and you buy those scratch cards that give you internet and SMS in minutes From and you can buy it for either one hour a few hours one day one week one month or 90 days Yes, you can buy internet for one hour in case somebody misheard and That's how a physical kiosk looks like here's a person could be depositing his money or maybe withdrawing his salary You can find in Pessa and equivalents in huge Supermarket stores and you can find them in different Markets for example anywhere you go you just pay with your phone and because this is linked to your sim card This is not an app from on the phone. So you can have it Operate on the most basic Nokia with a usd menu and this is pretty amazing that you open this Star something something pound Screen opens. I write the amount of money. I want to send I write the phone number and then the person gets the money with a basic Nokia pretty awesome and no need for internet connection and M Pessa caters to different different types of crowds and This is great because Africa is very right It has skyscrapers and it has people who live in houses made of mud and it has Large slums and it has kids who learn in school with tablets. It is super right and Your takeaway from this slide is That it is the target groups are different from what you may have in mind And if you do want to go and develop for Africa you can either pick a group and Make sure you you research it well Or you can be like and Pessa and cater for all the different types. I said, let's go to Kenya that was my choice after two years of research and I found a friend from University who was passionate about this as well and we teamed up and we founded Conta that is essentially a tool or a platform for vendors from developing countries to open an online store From their very basic devices. So it's like a very unfancy version of Shopify and This is how we designed the UI fairly simple. You can buy you can sell and you can send messages and We said let's go for it, right? What could possibly go wrong and The next few slides will be what did went wrong and what I would love you to have in mind When you decide to go for this experience so the first thing is Not so much data The average person in Kenya at least has around two three hundred megabytes a month They don't have access to Wi-Fi too often This means that around 10 megabytes a day should be enough for you for your social needs Communication needs educational needs business needs everything 10 megabytes a day Those megabytes are very precious. They're expensive and if you're gonna develop an app Try to have it low on the size Not fancy apps that weigh 40 megabytes, but basic apps that make that way as little as possible And even those will be sometimes hard to download because this person in the picture Did like the idea and did decide to download and his internet connection was really bad This was stuck on the screen for a few minutes And I ended up opening a hotspot from my phone and tethering so you could download the app key takeaway Internet on the phone your data plan is also problematic So let's say you did manage to download the app and then you open it and then it crashes And it crashes because the operating system is maybe not what you read online that it is Because this person is not signed up to the Google Play Store and all friends are not on the Google Play Store so nobody's Knowing what operating systems they use and you don't know that it crashed because you don't see it on the Google Developer Console and you also don't know why it crashed so you need to have smart logging when you do it This device did not crash, but it insists that we're offline even though just one second ago. We downloaded the app This device is called techno. This is not Nokia. This is not Samsung. This is not iPhone techno anybody heard of them here silence They are so popular that Nairobi they have a building that is 10 floors high and is made of glass They're doing super well very popular device Unknown off and yeah, it was buggy to work with it so the screen was supposed to be a product and This is an orange and it would have been super nice if there was actually a picture of an orange But there isn't because the internet timed out and it failed to download and We thought that a good alternative would be maybe to put a default picture But then just all our users had this thing which looks pretty ugly your take away Try to design without pictures This can be an option to have pictures, but it should look really good without and Another problem we had This is a nice one So this is the store Management page which you can do here. You can upload the image of your store You can write description with the name manager stocks a financial balance Pretty simple, right? so one of the persons who was using the app a Fill the name and upload a picture and everything and then they asked me how do I put items and So I learned that manage stock while it would make sense for us It doesn't necessarily mean for everyone that this is related to items and When I changed to edit items, it was fine And your takeaway here is that choose your words wisely There's no good resource yet for what words make sense for whom But don't assume that the words you're gonna use because you know that are understood around you will be understood in other places And don't listen to the people who say use symbols or don't rely on it because that's also a problem In this screen the person who was using this looked at the screen and asked how do I rename? So this icon of a pencil is not Translated to edit to everyone So even logos choose them carefully and To wrap up I want to repeat all the takeaways we had So internet is not available everywhere This is mainly a mobile only world The demand is different from what you think the use of your app will be different from what you expect The way it's distributed it is different the way you're gonna handle finance. It's different PayPal and credit card, and you're not gonna help anyone doing this and pay sign other mobile payments. Yep Variety in the target groups you have to do lots of research around that It's not the common ones you may have around you here Mobile data it is cars and it is expensive If you want someone to use it, you have to make it worth it and you have to be economical The app store is not so common as you may think The operating system and the devices are not so common Images may be problematic to download language could cause communication barriers and symbols can do that as well and I hope That with this presentation You maybe got a bit scared by but mainly got challenged And have this tickle your brain and you look for this adventure and you will Appreciate all the challenges in your way, and you will try to make something great. Thank you Thank You Natalie We have a few questions from the audience. I Would love to learn more about your work with tuna panda How can I support your work with them? Thank you for asking this tuna panda is the coding school that is located in the slums of in the largest slums of Africa that is called Kibera and They always look for people to help their students So they have lots of code online on github and anybody who would like to join and help Checking code and teaching people remote. Please. Please. Please talk either to me or directly to the people from tuna panda Thank you for asking that awesome How do you navigate doing work to support and evangelize Nairobi and Kenyan tech without putting yourself? Who isn't from Kenya at the center of the conversation? Hmm How so is the question asking how to develop for somebody who is local? I guess Yeah, probably ask many people That's the only way I found that's working only assumptions all the thing you read only partial Awesome. What advice do you have for technologists who want to use their skills to help others in developing nations? Reach out to the people who have Organizations in the field of expertise if you are a developer if you are a doctor if you are artists people all Around have institutions for all those fields and they always appreciate help even remote Amazing. Thank you so much Natalie. Thank you