At the just-concluded TM Forum Africa Summit in Johannesburg, industry professionals from across Africa’s communications and digital space gathered to discuss key trends particularly around customer experience and additional services through big data.

The event, which took place on August 6-7 2013, is one of many events for the global trade association, with other summits taking place in places such as San Jose in the US and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

Editor of ITWeb Africa, Gareth van Zyl, has sat down with the T M Forum’s chief strategy officer Nik Willetts to discuss the organisation’s event in Africa.

GARETH VAN ZYL: Can you tell me what the TMForum does, where you have reach across the globe?

NIK WILLETTS: So, we’re a global trade association for the communications and digital space. We have about 970 member companies around the world and the way we work is that everybody who works for one of those companies is our member. What we focus on is how to manage and how to deliver what we call digital services. So, everything from traditional mobile services like voice and data and so on all the way through to more complex e-health services and other services like that. We’re looking how to make a more digital ecosystem work together and we’re a non-for-profit organisation that aims to bring different industries together to do that.

GARETH VAN ZYL: How does your African event differ from your other events elsewhere?

NIK WILLETS: I spend a lot of my time talking to CIOs and senior executives and operators all around the world. And what’s different in Africa is first of all, most of the rest of the world has reached what we call mobile penetration. So, over 100% of the population elsewhere has got mobile phones. Africa is coming in at just about 68.8%: that’s massive growth in just 10 years. Ten years ago, people weren’t predicting that Africa would get anywhere near that, because they didn’t think you could turn any kind of profit on the amount that a lot of people have to spend. But I think Africa has proven them wrong; it’s attracted a lot of investment on the back of that. So, the difference here really is that you’re in a market that’s still growing. That’s got a lot of opportunity. South Africa: a little bit different, more of a mature economy. But still some of the same challenges. So, we’re seeing a lot of focus here, which we’re seeing replicate all around the world, but we’re seeing a big focus this year on customer experience management. So, how do you make sure as a mobile operator they hang onto you as a customer by giving you the right experience. And a recognition that it’s about more than getting your bill right or giving the right number of minutes: it’s about what your experience is when you’re on your smartphone and so on as well.

GARETH VAN ZYL: Africa has been characterised as a predominantly feature phone market. It’s changing but it’s still regarded as mainly feature phone dominant. So, what’s some of the services that you’ve picked up on that are leveraging these unique circumstances do you think?

NIK WILLETTS: I think there’s these amazing social improvement programmes going across Africa. I’ve just heard it over lunch, South Africa being more akin to European country in terms of its development in mobile, but once you step outside SA: everything from SMS-enabled water pumps...(to) mobile solar charging stations. But even concepts like drug management and drug distribution across very rural areas -- you have no fixed infrastructure or communications. And you may have say a malaria drug sitting in one location, but you have on stock management, there’s no way to know how much stock they have and how much more stock you should send. And using services like that make an incredible difference to population health and so on. But using what we consider basic technology. So, the possibilities are endless, even with a feature phone. But the smartphone is coming. Africa is only at about 6% smartphone penetration, which is very low right now. A lot of that is down to cost, but we’re now seeing 3-4 phones on the market that are sub-$100 US. Now that’s still a lot of money to a lot of people in Africa. But there’s still new financing programmes coming on and so on. So,...elsewhere in the world the smartphone has driven an amazing revolution in how you consume music, communicate, watch movies, all these types of things. You’re progressively going to see that same revolution happening in Africa where they access to more content. But also the same social impact. What’s really interesting about Africa is everywhere else in the world, for the most part, where mobile phones have taken off, they’ve been competing with established infrastructure. So, you go anywhere in Europe or developed economies, you’ll find there is an established banking system that predates telephony and so on. In Africa, the mobile phone has become a substitute for the banking system. So what we would class as the unbanked, but using mobile money to send money around, and we’re seeing new banking products coming out of that. If you extend your thinking out to: now they’ve got even a basic smartphone, and maybe they want to order even a basic product through e-commerce, if you want to do that today you need a credit card for most services. If you got a mobile phone that has a payment mechanism you can pay with that. Not only that, but your mobile company can actually identify you and say yes, we know who you are and that’s a genuine address etc. So, when you start to look at that in the context of a bigger ecosystem, I think the social benefits can be huge. Not just that people can order through e commerce, but when we think about farmers or rural locations or schools, all kinds of different products and services that can be delivered. What we hope to see is that it’s a big stimulus into further growth for the African economy.

GARETH VAN ZYL: Just talking about this year’s event. What are some of the big names here?

NIK WILLETTS: We’ve heard this morning from MTN on customer experience, we’ve heard from Nokia talking about their developer and social media programmes. We’ve got Google, Microsoft speaking -- Microsoft speaking about their 4Afrika project, which is one of the more basic smartphone projects. We’ve also got all the really big operators, so, Vodacom, MTN, Telkom SA are our host sponsor of the event, they’re actually endorsing the event as well. So, within SA all the big operators. And then quite a spread of operators as well from across Africa. So, really good coverage, and it’s a fascinating market. It’s so much more interesting than the other markets because it’s so diverse.

GARETH VAN ZYL: This is your only event in Africa?

NIK WILLETTS: Yes it is.

GARETH VAN ZYL: So, you wouldn’t maybe plan on having an event in Kenya or Nigeria?

NIK WILLETTS: We’re looking at it and learning about all those markets, but also seeing how. A lot of what the forum does is that we produce best practices for operators around the world. And so we talk about markets like Kenya where they focus now on how they can improve customer experience for example. And we can provide a lot of learning. And I think that’s one of the advantages of operators in Africa: is that because their growth has come later as compared to other markets in terms of their mobile penetration, they can learn a lot of the lessons that markets are going through elsewhere in the world, and you can leapfrog some of the challenges that others have had.

GARETH VAN ZYL: How many people are attending the event this year?

NIK WILLETTS: 170 people this year, which is a little bit up on last year. And I believe 34% of them are senior, C-level execs and that’s about 30% growth on last year as well.