The Fund for Internet Research and Education – FIRE Africa – is Africa’s leading Grants and Awards programme designed to encourage, support and develop innovative online solutions to Africa’s education, information, infrastructure and communication needs.
Case Study: Platform for the promotion, management and sale of African ccTLDs via mobile payment
Project: VENAME is a platform that facilitates the registration of African domain names (ccTLDs) and assists African registries in the management and automation of domain names for their countries. Crucially, this platform offers payment via mobile, which enables many Africans whose only option is to pay using their mobile device to actively particpate in the digital economy.
Organisation: Cinetcore
Country: Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali
Category: E-Development, FIRE Africa Awards 2013
Making it Happen
CINETCORE won a US$ 3,000 Fire Award in 2013. It used this grant to recruit two developers to evolve the platform, purchased two android mobile phones to help develop the mobile app, became a FreeNom partner, created a PayPal merchant account to enable international payments and opened a business bank account. “In addition to enabling us to make several business related purchases and perform essential development work, we were also able to attend entrepreneural workshops organised by AFRINIC and ICANN,” says Project Manager Idriss Marcial Monthe Djombissie. “We also took part in the Marketing Workshop held in Tunisia during the AFRINIC-23 Meeting which helped us enormously with this aspect of running a business and we are now focusing on putting what we learned there into practice.”
Update 2015
VENAME is now a fully functioning platform, serving over 80 customers a month and offering three mobile money payment options. CINETCORE has partnerships with six ccTLDs: .SN (Senegal) .CI (Ivory Coast) .TG (Togo) .ML (Mali) .GA (Gabon) and .CF (Central African Republic) and is in currently in discussion with several more. In the coming months, the team will focus on implementing a sales and marketing plan and hopes to increase its client base to around 150 per month by the end of 2016.
More about FIRE Africa
FIRE Africa provides funds for projects, initiatives, tools and platforms that harness the power of the Internet to empower the local and regional community to solve the region’s unique online communications problems. Since we ran our pilot project in 2007 to identify innovative ICT solutions to the challenges faced by local communities, FIRE Africa has grown into a fully-fledged programme that has helped over 30 initiatives in 16 countries over the last eight years.
Calling all African innovators and Entrepreneuers
Have you got a great idea? Does it use ICT to solve an issue in your community? If your ideas are aligned with one of our funding categories, you could have the chance to win a FIRE Africa Award or receive a FIRE Africa Grant.
Calling all Potential Sponsors and Partners
FIRE Africa is actively seeking organisations and individuals to support Internet-based innovation in Africa. We have a wide range of sponsorship and partnership packages available and can tailor packages according to your needs. In addition to funding, FIRE Africa’s partners and sponsors offer their experiences, advice and regional insight so we are constantly aware of innovation initiatives taking place out in the community.
