China's Ambition @Africa

McKinsey’s Global Institute projected that annual e-commerce sales in Africa’s largest economies will reach a total $75 billion by 2025, a prospect which has excited tech companies around the world.

Africa’s budding e-commerce market is the new playground for Chinese tech giants. Chinese firms plan to export e-commerce culture to Africa. Some of China’s largest tech giants are establishing roots in Africa’s budding e-commerce market, where structural limitations and immature markets have deterred global players.

Ecommerce:

Alibaba opens applications for $10 million African Netpreneur Prize

The Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative (ANPI) officially announced a call for its inaugural round of applications. The process will start on Mar. 27, rescheduled from the initial plan of Jan. 15. It remains unclear why the date was changed. The $10 million competition for African entrepreneurs was founded by the Jack Ma Foundation to provide African entrepreneurs a platform where they can scale up their work. The Prize is open to innovators from African countries across all industries, who can nominate themselves until Jun. 30.

The Africa Netpreneur Prize is the second initiative launched by Alibaba’s Jack Ma to support African entrepreneurs. In 2017, Alibaba Business School and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) announced the eFounders Fellowship, a program that will train 1,000 entrepreneurs from emerging markets; 200 of those come from Africa.

What happened: Transsion Holdings has partnered with Shanghai-based China Literature to load its reading app onto all of its mobile devices sold in Africa. The 30,000 literary works planned for initial distribution will be in English and come from China Literature’s existing collection. In a statement, Transsion said that there are “huge opportunities” in the Africa’s digital reading space and that it “noticed an increasing demand for online reading content” from its customers there.

Why it’s important: This partnership follows a joint venture between Transsion and Netease to build the BoomPlay music streaming app, which Transsion also pre-installs onto all its mobile devices sold in Africa. BoomPlay’s reported 46 million users would make it the largest music streaming app in Africa, and provides a reference point for the potential reach of China Literature’s app. Transsion held 48.7% of Africa’s mobile phone market and 34.3% of its smartphone market in 2018, and recently reiterated its confidence that it will continue to dominate against competitors like Huawei, which has only a 9.9% market share.

Technology:

Transsion and Huawei among top 3 bestselling phones in Africa

When thinking of Chinese phone brands, what names come to mind? If you’re like most people I speak to, you’re probably thinking about Huawei, Xiaomi, or possibly Vivo or Oppo. But what about TECNO?

Even in China, where the phone maker’s parent company, TRANSSION Holdings, is based, TECNO is hardly a household name. It has never even cracked the top ten in China’s smartphone market, and has not focused heavily on developed markets. However, if you live in Africa, the brand is just about unavoidable. In fact, TECNO, its sister brand itel and other TRANSSION devices make up nearly half phones that are sold on the continent, according to company representatives.

TRANSSION is just one of many Chinese technology firms who have made inroads into Africa in recent years, and with the increasing focus that China is devoting to the region, the firms there now may simply be the first wave of Chinese tech pioneers on a continent that may be poised for same kind of dynamic economic growth that China itself experienced in the 1990’s and 2000’s.

Xiaomi unveils first 5G smartphone, looks towards Africa

FEB 25, 2019 Xiaomi, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone manufacturer revealed its first 5G smartphone at a conference in Barcelona. At $680 (about RMB 4,500), the Xiaomi model boasts a new Qualcomm chipset, the same one found in Samsung’s Galaxy 10, a 94.3 screen-to-body ratio and two back cameras which shoot video at 960 frames per second. The Mi Mix 3 5G makes 5G affordable to “normal consumers,” Xiang Wang, the company’s Senior Vice President explained and added that Xiaomi is looking towards Africa as an area with growth potential.

Huawei to open its first South African data center

Huawei’s expansion in Africa comes as it faces international pressure on its overseas operations.

Huawei is working with South African partners to launch services at its first cloud data center in the country in March 2019. The center will be opened in Johannesburg, followed by another one in the coastal city of Cape Town at a later date. Huawei also said it would deploy localized public cloud services based on domestic policies and requirements as part of its plan for a fully-connected Africa driven by data and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Huawei Cloud to offer services in Africa

Huawei’s cloud division is a recent entrant to the competitive cloud computing market. Since the beginning of 2018, it has launched international data centers in Russia, Hong Kong, and Thailand. The company has an international focus, with it and its partners offering services in 14 countries globally. Alibaba Cloud already has data centers in China, the US, Europe, the Middle East, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Australia, though none in Africa. Tencent also has plans to develop its cloud computing services as it focuses more on enterprises amid a crackdown on gaming in China. Huawei will begin offering cloud services in South Africa this year, with plans to expand further into the continent. A company representative said that South Africa will become Huawei’s base for expansion amid plans by tech giants Microsoft and Amazon to tap the market on the continent.

READ MORE: How Shenzhen is fueling Ethiopia’s burgeoning startup scene

China's Culture & Entrainement Ambition @Africa  

Transsion to install China Literature app on all Africa-sold phones

Transsion Holdings has partnered with Shanghai-based China Literature to load its reading app onto all of its mobile devices sold in Africa. The 30,000 literary works planned for initial distribution will be in English and come from China Literature’s existing collection. In a statement, Transsion said that there are “huge opportunities” in the Africa’s digital reading space and that it “noticed an increasing demand for online reading content” from its customers there.

This partnership follows a joint venture between Transsion and Netease to build the BoomPlay music streaming app, which Transsion also pre-installs onto all its mobile devices sold in Africa. BoomPlay’s reported 46 million users would make it the largest music streaming app in Africa, and provides a reference point for the potential reach of China Literature’s app. Transsion held 48.7% of Africa’s mobile phone market and 34.3% of its smartphone market in 2018, and recently reiterated its confidence that it will continue to dominate against competitors like Huawei, which has only a 9.9% market share.

China is slowly expanding its power in Africa, one TV set at a time

StarTimes is a Beijing-based firm, and has Chinese TV shows into the house of 10 million subscribers in 30 African countries. Startimes produce local content in collaboration with local companies in each country. 

READ MORE: Can China convince Africa to like it?