1. Social Venture Acquisitions

It happens in every industry, A few companies are breakout successes and everyone wants piece. In this case Clean Tech and Social Ventures ‘doing good’ will increasingly be targeted by larger corporate entities with deep pockets. Think General Motors buying Optimal Energy (the alternative energy car-maker) or Microsoft buying a group like FrontlineSMS. While those specific examples are likely to never happen, my point is that the CSR divisions of companies will become increasingly hungry to hit he ground running with talent, resources, and knowledge in areas that hey are trying to impact. What better way to do this than to buy up or partner with established independent social ventures?

2. Non-Obvious Hires

With the line between what’s ’social responsible’ and what’s acceptable as general business practice blurring, companies will have to hire people who can keep their businesses in the black socially as well as financially. For example, Google’s daycare debacle this year was huge PR blunder, one that could have been avoided by an internal social policy czar. There’s a big difference between someone doing this and normal HR. Usually HR departments are overstaffed and underfunded, I’m thinking board members and executives who’s sole job is to supervise CSR divisions. This is nothing new but my prediction is that in 2009 more of these positions will be filled by people with experience coming from the NGO and nonprofit world.

3. African Industry Boom

Africa is by definition an outlier. It’s a whole continent that, for the most part, is completely decoupled from the world economy and subsequently peoples expectations of what it can contribute. People here are looked at as offering very little, if anything, to the world community especially when it comes to technological innovation. 25 of the poorest nations on the planet are all in Africa and the world economic crisis is only compounding that fact. What this means is the world isn’t paying attention to Africa…at all. It’s up to Africans to capitalize on this underestimation. Malcolm Gladwell, in his most recent book OUTLIERS, writes about jewish lawyers who were the industry outcasts of the early twentieth century in New York. Fast forward a few years and the entire landscape changed, making those who were marginalized early on were subsequently placed in the perfect position to dominate an entire industry. Could the same thing happen to Africa? Definitely, the mobile phone market here is proving to be successful beyond most expectations just five years ago. Other industries are also predicting growth in 2009.

4. Cumulus Solutions for Developing Countries

‘The cloud’ is an elusive technological beast that happily thrives in the world of billion dollar data centers in the west. But there are currently about three billion people untouched by the internet across Asia, South America and Africa. Look for a number of CDN’s to try to penetrate these emerging markets by offering mobile services, alternative energy powered data centers and hyper-local hosting solutions.

5. Innovations in Water Technology

The one resource that the world needs more than anything else on the planet is being strained by over population, pollution, and global warming. In 2009, I predict we’ll see a tipping point of innovations in water technologies. Whether it’s simple solutions like the Water Cone or more advanced things like Max Water.

6. Software as a Service for NGOs

In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that a number of NGO’s are starved for people with tech experience on the ground. This is because most experts in the tech sector go for the kushy jobs in San Francisco, New york, Seattle and Denver where they can easily pull in six-figures. Meanwhile, the supply of local talent in extreme markets, has the basic aptitude but often lacks the same type of savvy western organizations are used to. Should these organizations get more flexible? Perhaps, but they’re more likely to just complain about not being able to find locals with the expertise they need to get a task done. In the past it meant they would outsource to foreign groups (usually back home in the States, Europe or Oceana). In 2009, I can see multiple NGO’s will be tapping the same local vendors for work. Some examples, eTech in Uganda and Herman Chinery-Hesse’s BSL in Ghana.

7. The Push for Local Content

I blog about African tech because I have to. Save for a handful of awesome blogs focusing on niche areas, Appfrica tries to be all encompassing. The point is there’s a deficit of local coverage instead of a surplus. The problem extends beyond tech. Where’s the local video online? Animation? Web apps? Kenya’s government recently declared that it would offer $10 million in grants to local content producers (before hypocritically threatening the freedoms of it’s journalists.) Local content is important for many reasons but mainly, it supports local economies and it drives innovation through competition. It’s also faster to serve locally, especially in Africa where the entire internet backbone is reliant upon sparse fibre connections that connect with to even sparser satellites.

8. Web Real World

The convergence of real-world activity and the web will increase. If Web 2.0 was all about socializing content and socializing around that content, then the next trend will be to semantify real world happenings. A Few Examples? Talkshoe, Qik, Fring, Twitter, TripIt and Dopplr. These types of services will increasingly be applied to more than ’socializing’ with friends. More organizations will find ways to make things like Twitter more practically functional. For example, the NGO Water for People is using Twitter to fill in their donors and board members of their employees actions in the field in Africa and Latin America….from the field, as they do it.

Photo by Christopher Chan

About the Author: Jonathan Gosier is a software developer, writer and social entrepreneur. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he incubates and invests in East African entrepreneurs as the CEO of Appfrica Labs. He's also a 2009 TEDGlobal Fellow.

Categories: Editorial, Web ~ Trackback