In a twist of policy that I do not pretend to understand, telecommunications in Nigeria are skewed opposite to what I expect in an African country. International calls are dirt cheap, while Internet bandwidth is almost non-existent.
Dirt cheap international calls
A mobile phone call from Nigeria to the USA is around $0.20 per minute (35 Naira), and cheaper if you subscribe to one of the many prepaid mobile phone calling plans. Text messages from Nigeria to the USA are a few pennies per SMS.
This is a fraction of the $1+ per minute cost to call the USA from other African countries, like Kenya or Uganda, using a mobile phone. Or the comparable $1+ per minute cost to call Nigeria from the USA.
Non-existent Internet bandwidth
Yet using the Internet for even basic tasks, like publishing this post, is an odyssey of endless page loads and connection timeouts. Reading websites is marginally easier, but only because you can open multiple sites at once, go do something else, and come back after 5 minutes to read what you were looking for.
I’ve found connectivity speeds to be around 10-15 kbps, or about half of the 28.8 kbps speeds of dial-up modems from the mid-1990’s. 56K, the old gold standard for dial-up, is but a distant fantasy for Nigerian Internet users.
Last night, I was lost in Abuja, looking for an Internet cafe that had connectivity. So I called Inveneo staff in California and had them look up the place and its location on Google Maps of Africa for me. As soon as I hung up, I thought of a way to arbitrage this price differential between voice and data rates in Nigeria: commercialize the Question Box.
The Question Box is a phone in a box connected to live operators who look up information for callers. In Uganda, this service is free to a community, as part of an NGO outreach to them. Well in Nigeria, drop the box and just have a phone number that connects to a low-cost-to-call but high-bandwidth country (the USA? UK?).
Users would pay a few Naira over regular mobile phone rates to SMS or call the number and ask the computer operator questions. The operator would look up answers online and reply through the selected medium, and be paid via that slight Naira fee. This service would also be a gold mine of aggregate data and trends for companies looking to expand into the Nigerian market.
Over time, I expect Google’s Ugandan SMS service will replace this type of opportunity, but until then, I see a lucrative niche that caters to those who know the power of the Internet and are willing to pay for quick access to it. Like those lost on a random Abuja side street.
I’ve contacted the Question Box people and asked about the business model, but they were very vague and only replied that they were concerned about ‘sustainability’ and were looking at different options. In Uganda’s case, where labour costs are much lower, I’m still not convinced it can be run on a cost covering basis. If you have to use someone in the US, you’re dealing with much higher income levels. I don’t think anyone in the US would sit down and do this for a couple of Naira.