Max and Mike take Tanzania’s IT market by storm

When it comes to playing with tech toys, Max and Mike are making it happen. They have tapped into a local market for Tanzania’s own social networking forum, Jammi Forums.

Max and Mike started their enterprise with Jammi Forums, an online presence that has seen double the number of people signing up daily in Tanzania when compared to those that sign up to Facebook. That’s a staggering statement when you consider the impact that Facebook has had online.

These two friends have known each other for years and have a couple of things in common: they love technology and both have business-savvy brains. If it’s got to do with information technology, they are always interested. They design websites, design blogs, develop digital strategies, register domains and consult to businesses for their information technology needs. And the best part is that they don’t even need to work in an office to get their work done.

As long as I have my BlackBerry and my Apple MacBook, I don’t need to be in the office. I can be at home and get all my work done,” says Max proudly.

The pair have targeted the Tanzanian youth as a major marketplace for business, as these future generations are the ones accessing the online world more than anyone else.

What do they want? Technology. So we give them that,” says Mike.

And what exactly is the secret to Max and Mike’s success?

You don’t create something for you – you create something for your customers, for what they want. This will keep them coming back,” says Max, who explains that their forum receives a minimum of 1 000 posts per day and is growing at a rate of 25 percent every month.

Technology is big business in Africa, and when you’re able to give your customers a tailor-made service that they want that is centered on that popular thing called ‘social networking’; you know you’ve struck it lucky.