Distributors / Agents Wanted! To Sell Surveillance / Security Equipment in Africa
By 2018, five of the world's fastest-growing economies will be in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the International Monetary Fund. U.S. companies invested $48.5 billion in Africa in the decade through 2011, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, more than companies from any other nation did. But China and India are catching up, pumping billions of dollars into Africa in each of the past few years.
People are finding that there are opportunities beyond the biggest markets in Africa, and part of it is because year-after-year growth in Africa has been stronger than on almost any other continent.
Until recently, most U.S. companies concentrated investment in the continent's biggest economies, such as South Africa and Nigeria, or those with mineral wealth, like Angola. But as they seek new consumers, U.S. companies are branching out across the continent.
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Interested Parties Contact Me At: (1818) 298-3292 or Monty@DPL-Surveillance-Equipment.com
Aliko Dangote Set to Spend $9 Billion on Refinery Project as Wave of Consumerism Sweeps the Continent
Africa's richest man sat barefoot on his new yacht in a lagoon here after another night of about three hours sleep.
The day was filled with meetings about his cement company and preparations for a polio-fighting trip with fellow billionaire Bill Gates. His BlackBerry buzzed every few minutes with messages from the president of Benin, and a former U.S. ambassador wanted some face time.
"You don't see any sign of stress on me," Aliko Dangote said with a tight smile. The 56-year-old businessman said he was getting an energy boost from a weeklong fast that limits him to six glasses of watermelon juice a day.
For two decades, Mr. Dangote (pronounced DAHN-go-tay) has turned his relentlessness, connections and entrepreneurial bets on the rise of Africa into a fortune estimated at about $22 billion.
Most of it comes from his controlling stake in a conglomerate of cement, sugar, salt and noodle factories sprawled across 16 countries. Profits in three publicly traded companies (Dangote Cement, Dangote Sugar and National Salt Company of Nigeria) he controls hit $1 billion in the first nine months of 2013, up 43% from a year earlier.
Mr. Dangote now has a plan to quintuple his wealth—and become one of the five richest people in the world. He will spend $9 billion to build the largest privately owned refinery in Nigeria, which produces more oil than any other African country but must import most of the motor fuel and diesel it uses because existing refineries are dilapidated and inefficient.
Within about two years, the new refinery in a stretch of swampy shoreline outside Lagos could start piping in crude from roughly 7 miles offshore, bypassing a traffic jam of tankers often stuck for weeks. Competing against four government-managed refineries that run at barely 20% of their capacity, Mr. Dangote would double the country's maximum refinery output.
The refinery project is a bet that Africa's economy will keep growing much faster than the rest of the world, especially as a wave of consumerism sweeps the continent.
New airlines are taking off so quickly that some jet-fuel sellers, hurt by a shortage, have been caught trying to fill airplane tanks with kerosene instead. Car imports through Nigeria's main port have risen to about 300 cars a day.
As a result, Africa now is the world's fastest-growing oil user, and the International Energy Agency expects oil consumption in Africa to surge about 30% to 4.5 million barrels a day by 2018. The jump represents 15% of the world's projected rise in oil demand.
Mr. Dangote and his supporters, including Nigeria's president, see more than money in the new refinery. To them, it also defies centuries of Africa exporting its most precious resources—including gold, diamonds and humans—rather than putting them to work at home.
Nigeria's government has collected about $1.3 trillion in oil revenue since 1980, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. Yet about 60% of the country's 170 million people live on less than $1 a day, according to the government. It says as much as 400,000 barrels of oil per day—or one-sixth of total output—are pilfered from pipelines by bandits. Most of the stolen crude is loaded onto barges at night and shipped abroad.
The refinery planned by Mr. Dangote will "change the economic and industrial landscape of Nigeria," said Doyin Okupe, senior special assistant to Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan. The president thanked the billionaire and his bankers by inviting them to Mr. Jonathan's villa on a day usually reserved for government planning sessions.
The project faces daunting challenges. Competition will be fierce from U.S., Asian and European companies that also want to satisfy Africa's thirst for gasoline and other fuel products. Some energy firms are expanding operations in Africa, and American refineries are gaining an edge around the world as the U.S. shale-oil boom lowers their production costs.
Nigeria also subsidizes imported oil, keeping prices at the gas pump about one-third lower than they are in the U.S.
"I don't know how he's going to do it, but I do know it's going to be very, very tough," said Bismarck Rewane, managing director of Financial Derivatives Co., a research firm in Lagos. He has known Mr. Dangote since they lived near each other in the 1980s and attended middle-of-the-night house parties together.
Despite all his connections, Mr. Dangote hasn't won government approval for a license needed to build the refinery. That is not unusual. From 2000 to 2010, more than 100 refinery construction projects were announced in Africa. Only one was built, according to consulting firm Citac Africa Ltd. Others often fell victim to political interference or high borrowing costs.
"We will get it," Mr. Dangote said about the license. The ministry reviewing the license application declined to comment. Nigeria's next presidential election is scheduled for 2015.
In an interview on his yacht, named Mariya after his mother, the billionaire said his refinery will have no trouble competing because it will avoid Nigeria's costly and congested ports. He hasn't said if it will sell gasoline to retailers for less than they pay now.
He also expects Nigeria to eventually abolish foreign-oil subsidies, which cost the government $6.5 billion last year.
In the past decade, Africa's economy has grown by an average of 5.6% a year, compared with the world-wide growth rate of 3.6% per year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The surge has helped turn some of the richest businessmen in Africa into tycoons.
Africa now has 27 billionaires, up from 16 in 2012 and just two a decade ago, according to Forbes magazine. Those two were white South Africans.
Mr. Dangote was born into wealth. Near the dawn of British colonialism in the early 1900s, his great-grandfather, Alhassan Dantata, cornered the peanut market in drought-prone northern Nigeria. While other Nigerians chafed at colonial rule, Mr. Dantata exported tons of peanuts to feed Europe's growing appetite.
During the oil boom of the 1970s, an uncle of Mr. Dangote gave him a government-issued license to import cement. But few Nigerians had ever heard of him. Mr. Dangote spent much of his time and earnings in Brazil, usually enjoying the Carnival festival before Lent. In the 1990s, a friend talked him into flying to Atlanta, where he bought a house and then swung through every other month for jaunts at nightclubs.
He felt comfortable amid Atlanta's historically black colleges and restaurants, far away from a succession of military coups and botched elections in Nigeria. Startled by a snake in his basement one day, Mr. Dangote sold the house and bought a larger one.
But he started to feel the tug of his homeland, the most populous country in Africa. On trips to Brazil for Carnival, he saw signs of the economic progress the country had made: Desperate hustlers, touts and money changers didn't swarm him at the airport any more. And cement factories were popping up in the mountains.
“ 'If there is anything higher than the national honor that the president gave me two years ago…then he obviously needs to give me another national honor for building a refinery that we never, ever dreamt about.' ”
That gave him an idea to do something big, he said. He flew back to Nigeria, contributed to the upstart People's Democratic Party and made a promise after its presidential candidate won election in 1999. Mr. Dangote vowed to build one of the world's largest cement plants if the government restricted the flow of cement through the country's ports.
The businessman got what he wanted. The limits on imports of cement—the most common building material in Africa—lifted prices to twice the world-wide average. His business empire mushroomed. Dangote Group now makes a two-thirds markup on every bag of cement it sells.
In return, Mr. Dangote spent $1 billion on the cement factory and an adjoining, 1.7 mile-long airstrip, borrowing some of the money at an interest rate of 42%. They opened in 2008, and he vaulted onto the billionaires' list for the first time.
Dangote Group now employs about 25,000 people in Nigeria, is building cement factories in 14 countries in Africa and is buying mining licenses from Kenya to Zambia.
A pop song in Nigeria called "Aliko Dangote Special" includes the line "Cover of Forbes, he no be joke." The motivational book "Dangote's Ten Commandments on Money" cites the billionaire's advice "to make the best of your time because any time lost cannot be regained." No. 8: "Believe in Nigeria."
"It's something he said to me years ago: 'Only Africans will build Africa,' " said Kola Karim, chief executive of oil-exploration company Shoreline Natural Resources Ltd. Mr. Karim sells most of the oil from Shoreline's fields in the Niger River delta to India but would rather do business with Mr. Dangote.
The two men, who are friends, recently talked over the details on a dock next to the billionaire's yacht but haven't announced an agreement. "This is where my future lies," Mr. Karim said. "The market is in Africa."
Mr. Dangote will soon borrow $1.5 billion to lease about 740,000 acres, an area 50 times bigger than Manhattan. He wants to grow sugar and rice for Dangote Group's processing plants.
The area in northeastern Nigeria is swarming with fighters from Islamic insurgency Boko Haram, but the fields will put so many people to work that the insurgents will "leave us alone," Mr. Dangote predicted. Once the farm is thriving, "Boko Haram will not have guys to recruit."
The industrialist nudged Nigerian bankers for more than a year about his refinery plans. Then he started telling them how much they should lend—and at what interest rate.
"When he wants something, he gets it," said Edmund Boyo, a partner at law firm Clifford Chance LLP who worked on the deal.
In September, Dangote Group announced a $3.3 billion syndicated loan from banks led by Standard Chartered of the U.K. and Nigeria's Guaranty Trust Bank PLC. Terms of the $3.3 billion loan weren't disclosed, though he said it includes a penalty if he repays the banks too quickly.
Nowadays, banks sometimes charge him less than 6% interest, he added, a lower interest rate than Nigeria's government gets on its loans.
Yvonne Ike, chief execuitve of investment bank Renaissance Capital's operations in western Africa, said she has seen bankers' "eyes watering when they thought about how much they had lent" to Mr. Dangote at rock-bottom interest rates compared with other companies. Still, the bankers "couldn't stand not to be a part of the biggest debt deal in Africa," she said.
Mr. Dangote now is trying to line up oil to feed his refinery. Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC are selling oil fields along Nigeria's coast after long battles with kidnappers and pipeline-bombing oil thieves.
The billionaire wants to buy the two companies' tracts of oil-rich swamp. To protect the oil from bandits, he will bury pipelines to and from the refinery. Chevron and Shell declined to comment.
The billionaire hasn't announced any deals to sell the gasoline, plastic and other fuel products that will be made by his refinery.
He likely will have to lure away customers from state-owned oil company Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. It controls the four rundown refineries that dominate Nigeria's oil industry. Government leaders have denounced the company as opaque and unscrupulous.
"It's a waste pipe of corruption," said Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., a spokesman for Mr. Jonathan, Nigeria's president. An NNPC spokeswoman couldn't be reached for comment.
Mr. Dangote hasn't had a vacation since he took 18 children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces to Walt Disney World in Florida last year. That was his first vacation in 17 years, and he has no plans for another one. The refinery is keeping him too busy.
"If there is anything higher than the national honor that the president gave me two years ago, which I do appreciate very much, then he obviously needs to give me another national honor for building a refinery that we never, ever dreamt about," he said.
The billionaire's private jet was landing in Lagos at 1 a.m. last month when his pilot got a call from air-traffic controllers. Mr. Gates, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder and one of the world's richest men, had just spent two days with Mr. Dangote but was stranded 400 miles away by a broken-down plane.
Mr. Dangote told his pilot to turn around, pick up Mr. Gates and fly back to Lagos. Mr. Dangote got home at 4 a.m. and was at his desk by 7:30.
Africa's Richest Man Bets Big on Oil Refinery
Africa's richest man sat barefoot on his new yacht in a lagoon here after another night of about three hours sleep.
The day was filled with meetings about his cement company and preparations for a polio-fighting trip with fellow billionaire Bill Gates. His BlackBerry buzzed every few minutes with messages from the president of Benin, and a former U.S. ambassador wanted some face time.
"You don't see any sign of stress on me," Aliko Dangote said with a tight smile. The 56-year-old businessman said he was getting an energy boost from a weeklong fast that limits him to six glasses of watermelon juice a day.
For two decades, Mr. Dangote (pronounced DAHN-go-tay) has turned his relentlessness, connections and entrepreneurial bets on the rise of Africa into a fortune estimated at about $22 billion.
Most of it comes from his controlling stake in a conglomerate of cement, sugar, salt and noodle factories sprawled across 16 countries. Profits in three publicly traded companies (Dangote Cement, Dangote Sugar and National Salt Company of Nigeria) he controls hit $1 billion in the first nine months of 2013, up 43% from a year earlier.
Mr. Dangote now has a plan to quintuple his wealth—and become one of the five richest people in the world. He will spend $9 billion to build the largest privately owned refinery in Nigeria, which produces more oil than any other African country but must import most of the motor fuel and diesel it uses because existing refineries are dilapidated and inefficient.
Within about two years, the new refinery in a stretch of swampy shoreline outside Lagos could start piping in crude from roughly 7 miles offshore, bypassing a traffic jam of tankers often stuck for weeks. Competing against four government-managed refineries that run at barely 20% of their capacity, Mr. Dangote would double the country's maximum refinery output.
The refinery project is a bet that Africa's economy will keep growing much faster than the rest of the world, especially as a wave of consumerism sweeps the continent.
New airlines are taking off so quickly that some jet-fuel sellers, hurt by a shortage, have been caught trying to fill airplane tanks with kerosene instead. Car imports through Nigeria's main port have risen to about 300 cars a day.
As a result, Africa now is the world's fastest-growing oil user, and the International Energy Agency expects oil consumption in Africa to surge about 30% to 4.5 million barrels a day by 2018. The jump represents 15% of the world's projected rise in oil demand.
Mr. Dangote and his supporters, including Nigeria's president, see more than money in the new refinery. To them, it also defies centuries of Africa exporting its most precious resources—including gold, diamonds and humans—rather than putting them to work at home.
Nigeria's government has collected about $1.3 trillion in oil revenue since 1980, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. Yet about 60% of the country's 170 million people live on less than $1 a day, according to the government. It says as much as 400,000 barrels of oil per day—or one-sixth of total output—are pilfered from pipelines by bandits. Most of the stolen crude is loaded onto barges at night and shipped abroad.
The refinery planned by Mr. Dangote will "change the economic and industrial landscape of Nigeria," said Doyin Okupe, senior special assistant to Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan. The president thanked the billionaire and his bankers by inviting them to Mr. Jonathan's villa on a day usually reserved for government planning sessions.
The project faces daunting challenges. Competition will be fierce from U.S., Asian and European companies that also want to satisfy Africa's thirst for gasoline and other fuel products. Some energy firms are expanding operations in Africa, and American refineries are gaining an edge around the world as the U.S. shale-oil boom lowers their production costs.
Nigeria also subsidizes imported oil, keeping prices at the gas pump about one-third lower than they are in the U.S.
"I don't know how he's going to do it, but I do know it's going to be very, very tough," said Bismarck Rewane, managing director of Financial Derivatives Co., a research firm in Lagos. He has known Mr. Dangote since they lived near each other in the 1980s and attended middle-of-the-night house parties together.
Despite all his connections, Mr. Dangote hasn't won government approval for a license needed to build the refinery. That is not unusual. From 2000 to 2010, more than 100 refinery construction projects were announced in Africa. Only one was built, according to consulting firm Citac Africa Ltd. Others often fell victim to political interference or high borrowing costs.
"We will get it," Mr. Dangote said about the license. The ministry reviewing the license application declined to comment. Nigeria's next presidential election is scheduled for 2015.
In an interview on his yacht, named Mariya after his mother, the billionaire said his refinery will have no trouble competing because it will avoid Nigeria's costly and congested ports. He hasn't said if it will sell gasoline to retailers for less than they pay now.
He also expects Nigeria to eventually abolish foreign-oil subsidies, which cost the government $6.5 billion last year.
In the past decade, Africa's economy has grown by an average of 5.6% a year, compared with the world-wide growth rate of 3.6% per year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The surge has helped turn some of the richest businessmen in Africa into tycoons.
Africa now has 27 billionaires, up from 16 in 2012 and just two a decade ago, according to Forbes magazine. Those two were white South Africans.
Mr. Dangote was born into wealth. Near the dawn of British colonialism in the early 1900s, his great-grandfather, Alhassan Dantata, cornered the peanut market in drought-prone northern Nigeria. While other Nigerians chafed at colonial rule, Mr. Dantata exported tons of peanuts to feed Europe's growing appetite.
During the oil boom of the 1970s, an uncle of Mr. Dangote gave him a government-issued license to import cement. But few Nigerians had ever heard of him. Mr. Dangote spent much of his time and earnings in Brazil, usually enjoying the Carnival festival before Lent. In the 1990s, a friend talked him into flying to Atlanta, where he bought a house and then swung through every other month for jaunts at nightclubs.
He felt comfortable amid Atlanta's historically black colleges and restaurants, far away from a succession of military coups and botched elections in Nigeria. Startled by a snake in his basement one day, Mr. Dangote sold the house and bought a larger one.
But he started to feel the tug of his homeland, the most populous country in Africa. On trips to Brazil for Carnival, he saw signs of the economic progress the country had made: Desperate hustlers, touts and money changers didn't swarm him at the airport any more. And cement factories were popping up in the mountains.
“ 'If there is anything higher than the national honor that the president gave me two years ago…then he obviously needs to give me another national honor for building a refinery that we never, ever dreamt about.' ”
That gave him an idea to do something big, he said. He flew back to Nigeria, contributed to the upstart People's Democratic Party and made a promise after its presidential candidate won election in 1999. Mr. Dangote vowed to build one of the world's largest cement plants if the government restricted the flow of cement through the country's ports.
The businessman got what he wanted. The limits on imports of cement—the most common building material in Africa—lifted prices to twice the world-wide average. His business empire mushroomed. Dangote Group now makes a two-thirds markup on every bag of cement it sells.
In return, Mr. Dangote spent $1 billion on the cement factory and an adjoining, 1.7 mile-long airstrip, borrowing some of the money at an interest rate of 42%. They opened in 2008, and he vaulted onto the billionaires' list for the first time.
Dangote Group now employs about 25,000 people in Nigeria, is building cement factories in 14 countries in Africa and is buying mining licenses from Kenya to Zambia.
A pop song in Nigeria called "Aliko Dangote Special" includes the line "Cover of Forbes, he no be joke." The motivational book "Dangote's Ten Commandments on Money" cites the billionaire's advice "to make the best of your time because any time lost cannot be regained." No. 8: "Believe in Nigeria."
"It's something he said to me years ago: 'Only Africans will build Africa,' " said Kola Karim, chief executive of oil-exploration company Shoreline Natural Resources Ltd. Mr. Karim sells most of the oil from Shoreline's fields in the Niger River delta to India but would rather do business with Mr. Dangote.
The two men, who are friends, recently talked over the details on a dock next to the billionaire's yacht but haven't announced an agreement. "This is where my future lies," Mr. Karim said. "The market is in Africa."
Mr. Dangote will soon borrow $1.5 billion to lease about 740,000 acres, an area 50 times bigger than Manhattan. He wants to grow sugar and rice for Dangote Group's processing plants.
The area in northeastern Nigeria is swarming with fighters from Islamic insurgency Boko Haram, but the fields will put so many people to work that the insurgents will "leave us alone," Mr. Dangote predicted. Once the farm is thriving, "Boko Haram will not have guys to recruit."
The industrialist nudged Nigerian bankers for more than a year about his refinery plans. Then he started telling them how much they should lend—and at what interest rate.
"When he wants something, he gets it," said Edmund Boyo, a partner at law firm Clifford Chance LLP who worked on the deal.
In September, Dangote Group announced a $3.3 billion syndicated loan from banks led by Standard Chartered of the U.K. and Nigeria's Guaranty Trust Bank PLC. Terms of the $3.3 billion loan weren't disclosed, though he said it includes a penalty if he repays the banks too quickly.
Nowadays, banks sometimes charge him less than 6% interest, he added, a lower interest rate than Nigeria's government gets on its loans.
Yvonne Ike, chief execuitve of investment bank Renaissance Capital's operations in western Africa, said she has seen bankers' "eyes watering when they thought about how much they had lent" to Mr. Dangote at rock-bottom interest rates compared with other companies. Still, the bankers "couldn't stand not to be a part of the biggest debt deal in Africa," she said.
Mr. Dangote now is trying to line up oil to feed his refinery. Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC are selling oil fields along Nigeria's coast after long battles with kidnappers and pipeline-bombing oil thieves.
The billionaire wants to buy the two companies' tracts of oil-rich swamp. To protect the oil from bandits, he will bury pipelines to and from the refinery. Chevron and Shell declined to comment.
The billionaire hasn't announced any deals to sell the gasoline, plastic and other fuel products that will be made by his refinery.
He likely will have to lure away customers from state-owned oil company Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. It controls the four rundown refineries that dominate Nigeria's oil industry. Government leaders have denounced the company as opaque and unscrupulous.
"It's a waste pipe of corruption," said Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., a spokesman for Mr. Jonathan, Nigeria's president. An NNPC spokeswoman couldn't be reached for comment.
Mr. Dangote hasn't had a vacation since he took 18 children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces to Walt Disney World in Florida last year. That was his first vacation in 17 years, and he has no plans for another one. The refinery is keeping him too busy.
"If there is anything higher than the national honor that the president gave me two years ago, which I do appreciate very much, then he obviously needs to give me another national honor for building a refinery that we never, ever dreamt about," he said.
The billionaire's private jet was landing in Lagos at 1 a.m. last month when his pilot got a call from air-traffic controllers. Mr. Gates, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder and one of the world's richest men, had just spent two days with Mr. Dangote but was stranded 400 miles away by a broken-down plane.
Mr. Dangote told his pilot to turn around, pick up Mr. Gates and fly back to Lagos. Mr. Dangote got home at 4 a.m. and was at his desk by 7:30.
Africa's Challenges Are Tech Startups' Opportunities
Philip Walton, Left, And Reg Orton Designed A
Battery-Powered Wireless Router For Kenyan Customers
Battery-Powered Wireless Router For Kenyan Customers
Local Entrepreneurs Develop Sturdier Products Tailored to Continent's Technological Needs
NAIROBI, Kenya—About a year ago, a nationwide blackout and accompanying power surge sent a jolt of electricity through this city's grid that fried computers and other electronic devices. What was a catastrophe for many companies here presented an opportunity for another.
Nairobi-based BRCK Inc. is about to release a surge-resistant, battery-powered router that can access data via cellular connections, in the latest example of local technology companies coming up with new commercial products specifically designed to address African problems.
"We said, 'What if we had a device that when the power went out, it kicked in?'" said Philip Walton, BRCK's 40-year old American co-founder, when describing the brick-sized router, which founders dubbed the "backup generator for the Internet." BRCK will ship its first 700 units next week.
Like other startups in Nairobi, BRCK is betting the future of technology innovation is on the African continent—and that there is money to be made addressing the technological needs of the so-called "bottom billion."
M-Kopa Kenya Ltd. sells solar panels equipped with prepaid meters to villagers who are far from any sort of power grid. With the system, villagers are able to power a light bulb for less money than they would spend on fuel for a kerosene lamp. The customers pay a deposit for the equipment, then load money onto their account, which is debited every day they use the system. Once their accumulated payments surpass the cost of the solar panel, they get free electricity.
Another tech startup, Nasoft Technologies Ltd., has set its sights on tackling Nairobi's traffic problems. Its platform, Ma3Route, aggregates tweets and text messages from motorists on Nairobi's clogged streets for traffic updates via mobile phone.
Even deep-pocketed multinationals are piling into Kenya and the rest of Africa.
International Business Machines Corp. set up a research facility on the outskirts of Nairobi looking for technological solutions to African problems. One service it developed, called Flashcast, provides targeted ads for small businesses. The service uses GPS to put adds on digital screens in public buses passing by the shops, and on text messages to passengers' phones.
Microsoft Corp. last month started offering help to entrepreneurs—at no charge—looking to register intellectual property developed in Kenya, a step to encourage more software development in Africa. And General Electric Co. is funding a series of prototype-development labs called GE Garages in Africa that will offer inventors machining and design equipment.
"There is so much innovation that you see going on here in Nairobi," said Deo Onyango, a GE executive in Nairobi. "There are ideas that could be built out of Africa that we don't know yet."
Many ideas have surfaced from a small but growing group of technology entrepreneurs in Nairobi. They gather in the city's shared office spaces and coffee shops with free wireless Internet. All aim to design the next product that will "leapfrog" the current generation of technology, similar to how mobile phones replaced the need to build landlines in much of Africa.
At the BRCK offices, a dozen young engineers and designers hunch over laptops at white Ikea-style tables, fueled by espresso from the coffee shop downstairs. Though it may feel like Palo Alto, Calif., Kenya is the ever-present backdrop. The building has a backup generator because power failures are so frequent.
The Brck's Creators Dubbed It The
'backup Generator For The Internet.'
'backup Generator For The Internet.'
Kenya's difficult conditions actually helped shape BRCK's final product: Engineers had to cope with last year's power surge, and came to realize that the country's cell towers sometimes gave off a signal without having a real data connection. They made sure the BRCK would be able to make that distinction.
"We wanted our engineers to feel the pain," said New Zealander Reg Orton, one of BRCK's three founders along with Mr. Walton and Erik Hersman —both of them Americans raised in Africa. Mr. Hersman grew up in Kenya and Sudan, the son of missionaries. Mr. Walton's father was a university professor in Burkina Faso.
The trio wanted a product that would allow people to get online—and stay online—anywhere they could get a mobile data connection.
During late-night brainstorming sessions, they came up with more ideas for what the little black box could do: Collect weather data; create a secure network in the middle of nowhere; allow remote repairs via the cloud.
They raised $172,000 in an initial campaign last year, then another $1.2 million from angel investors and venture-capital firms, including Boston-based Invested Development. The new product can be charged off anything from a computer to a car battery. It retails for about $200—less than the cost of buying a surge-protected battery and a Wi-Fi router separately.
Though the initial marketing focus has been to small and medium businesses in Kenya, the product is attracting customers globally. Buyers of the first 700 BRCKs come from 45 countries and include biotech and nonprofit firms working across the developing world.
The challenges that technology companies face in targeting the African market are formidable, particularly for those who need to manufacture a product rather than just develop an app. The BRCK router might have been designed in Kenya, but parts come from China and assembly is done in Austin, Texas.
The entrepreneurs chose to make the BRCK in the U.S. because Texas contractor Silicon Hills Design Inc. was flexible with design changes during the manufacturing process, executives say. That proved a prescient decision when last year's massive surge hit Nairobi.
The original BRCK was designed for Kenya's normal 220 voltage. After the surge, the three founders realized they needed something tougher.
"Let's make sure it can withstand 400 volts without frying," Mr. Hersman recalled Mr. Orton telling the team.
The startup has had its share of hiccups. BRCK executives struggled to find skilled electrical engineers. Every component had to be imported. And every time they tweaked the design, BRCK had to bring in more parts from abroad—often paying more than $100 in shipping and customs duties for a $15 component for prototypes that were produced in Kenya.
But the founders are confident they've hit a niche: "infrastructure-poor" places. "People who live in the U.S. or Europe don't 'get it,'" Mr. Hersman says. "But anyone who lives in the emerging markets, their question is 'When do I get to buy it?'
Monty Henry, Owner
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Watch your child's caregiver while sitting at a traffic light or lunch meeting, or check on your business security from the other side of the world. Our built-in hidden video features all digital transmissions providing a crystal clear image with zero interference. With the IP receiver stream your video over the internet through your router, and view on either a PC or smart phone. Designed exclusively for DPL-Surveillance-Equipment, these IP hidden wireless cameras come with multiple features to make the user's experience hassle-free.
NOW, look in on your home, second home, lake house or office anytime, anywhere from any internet connected PC/Lap-top or Internet active cell phone, including iphone or PDA: http://www.dpl-surveillance-equipment.com/wireless_hidden_cameras.html
Watch your child's caregiver while sitting at a traffic light or lunch meeting, or check on your business security from the other side of the world. Our built-in hidden video features all digital transmissions providing a crystal clear image with zero interference. With the IP receiver stream your video over the internet through your router, and view on either a PC or smart phone. Designed exclusively for DPL-Surveillance-Equipment, these IP hidden wireless cameras come with multiple features to make the user's experience hassle-free.
• Remote Video Access
• Video is Recorded Locally To An Installed SD Card (2GB SD Card included)
• Email Notifications (Motion Alerts, Camera Failure, IP Address Change, SD Card Full)
• Live Monitoring, Recording And Event Playback Via Internet
• Back-up SD Storage Up To 32GB (SD Not Included)
• Digital Wireless Transmission (No Camera Interference)
• View LIVE On Your SmartPhone!
Includes:
* Nanny Cameras w/ Remote View
* Wireless IP Receiver
* Remote Control
* A/C Adaptor
* 2GB SD Card
* USB Receiver
FACT SHEET: HIDDEN NANNY-SPY (VIEW VIA THE INTERNET) CAMERAS
Specifications:
Receiver Specs:
* Transmission Range of 500 ft Line Of Sight
* Uses 53 Channels Resulting In No Interference
* 12V Power Consumption
* RCA Output
* Supports up to 32gig SD
Camera Specs:
* 640x480 / 320x240 up to 30fps
* Image Sensor: 1/4" Micron Sensor
* Resolution: 720x480 Pixels
* S/N Ratio: 45 db
* Sensitivity: 11.5V/lux-s @ 550nm
* Video System: NTSC
* White Balance: Auto Tracking
• Video is Recorded Locally To An Installed SD Card (2GB SD Card included)
• Email Notifications (Motion Alerts, Camera Failure, IP Address Change, SD Card Full)
• Live Monitoring, Recording And Event Playback Via Internet
• Back-up SD Storage Up To 32GB (SD Not Included)
• Digital Wireless Transmission (No Camera Interference)
• View LIVE On Your SmartPhone!
Includes:
* Nanny Cameras w/ Remote View
* Wireless IP Receiver
* Remote Control
* A/C Adaptor
* 2GB SD Card
* USB Receiver
FACT SHEET: HIDDEN NANNY-SPY (VIEW VIA THE INTERNET) CAMERAS
Specifications:
Receiver Specs:
* Transmission Range of 500 ft Line Of Sight
* Uses 53 Channels Resulting In No Interference
* 12V Power Consumption
* RCA Output
* Supports up to 32gig SD
Camera Specs:
* 640x480 / 320x240 up to 30fps
* Image Sensor: 1/4" Micron Sensor
* Resolution: 720x480 Pixels
* S/N Ratio: 45 db
* Sensitivity: 11.5V/lux-s @ 550nm
* Video System: NTSC
* White Balance: Auto Tracking
Make Your Own Nanny Cameras: Make Tons Of Money In A Booming, Nearly Recession-Proof Industry!
Your Primary Customers Include But Are Not Limited To Anyone In The Private Investigator, Government, Law Enforcement And/Or Intelligence Agencies Fields!
* You Buy Our DVR Boards And We'll Build Your Products! (Optional)
* You Buy Our DVR Boards And We'll Build Your Products! (Optional)
Our New Layaway Plan Adds Convenience For Online Shoppers
DPL-Surveillance-Equipment's
layaway plan makes it easy for you to buy the products and services
that you want by paying for them through manageable monthly payments
that you set. Our intuitive calculator allows you to break down your
order's purchase price into smaller payment amounts. Payments can be
automatically deducted from your bank account or made in cash using
MoneyGram® ExpressPayment® Services and you will receive your order once
it's paid in full. Use it to plan and budget for holiday purchases,
anniversaries, birthdays, vacations and more!
DPL-Surveillance-Equipment's
Customers can now use the convenience of layaway online to help them
get through these tough economic times.
We all shop now
and then just to face a hard reality -- big credit card bills. However,
our latest financing innovation can help you avoid that. Find out why
more and more shoppers are checking out DPL-Surveillance-Equipment's
e-layaway plan.
If you're drooling over a new nanny
camera, longing for a GPS tracker, or wishing for that spy watch, but
you're strapped for cash and can't afford to do credit, do what Jennie
Kheen did. She bought her iPod docking station (hidden camera
w/motion-activated DVR) online using our convenient lay-away plan.
Our
online layaway plan works like the old-fashioned service stores used to
offer. But, in Kheen's case, she went to
DPL-Surveillance-Equipment.com, found the iPod docking station (hidden
camera w/motion-activated DVR), then set up a payment plan.
"It's automatically drawn from my account," she said. "I have a budget, $208.00 a month.
In
three months, Kheen had paid off the $650.00 iPod docking station. She
paid another 3.9 percent service fee, which amounted to about $25.35
(plus $12.00 for shipping) for a total of $687.35.
"You
pay a little bit each month," Kheen said. "It's paid off when you get
it and you don't have it lingering over your head. It's great."
Flexible
payment terms and automated payments make our layaway plan an
affordable and fiscally responsible alternative to credit cards.
1. Register:
It's quick, easy and FREE! No credit check required!
2. Shop:
Select
the items or service you want and choose "e-layaway" as your payment
option. Our payment calculator makes it easy for you to set up your
payment terms.
3. Make Payments:
Payments are made on the schedule YOU set. Check your order status or adjust your payments online in a secure environment.
4. Receive Products:
Receive the product shortly after your last payment. The best part, it's paid in full... NO DEBT.
More Buying Power:
*
Our lay-away plan offers a safe and affordable payment alternative
without tying up your credit or subjecting the purchase to high-interest
credit card fees.
No Credit Checks or Special Qualifications:
* Anyone 18 years old or older can join. All you need is an active bank account.
Freedom From Credit Cards:
*
If you are near or beyond your credit limit or simply want to avoid
high interest credit card fees, our e-layaway is the smart choice for
you.
Flexible Payment Schedules:
*
Similar to traditional layaway, e-layaway lets you make regular payments
towards merchandise, with delivery upon payment in full. Payments are
automatically deducted from your bank account or made in cash using
MoneyGram® ExpressPayment®
A Tool for Planning Ahead:
*
Our e-layaway makes it easy for smart shoppers like you to plan ahead
and buy items such as bug detectors, nanny cameras, audio bugs, gps
trackers, and more!
No Hidden Charges or Mounting Interest:
Our
e-layaway makes shopping painless by eliminating hidden charges and
monthly interest fees. Our customers pay a flat transaction fee on the
initial purchase price.
NO RISK:
* You have the right to cancel any purchase and will receive a refund less a cancellation fee. See website for details.
Security and Identity Protection:
DPL-Surveillance-Equipment
has partnered with trusted experts like McAfee and IDology to ensure
the security and integrity of every transaction. Identity verification
measures are integrated into our e-layaway system to prevent fraudulent
purchases.
Note: Simply Choose e-Lay-Away as a "Payment Option" in The Shopping Cart
DPL-Surveillance-Equipment.com
is a world leader in providing surveillance and security products and
services to Government, Law Enforcement, Private Investigators, small
and large companies worldwide. We have one of the largest varieties of
state-of-the-art surveillance and counter-surveillance equipment
including Personal Protection
and Bug Detection Products.
Buy, rent or lease the same
state-of-the-art surveillance and security equipment Detectives, PI's,
the CIA and FBI use. Take back control!
DPL-Surveillance-Equipment.com
Phone: (1888) 344-3742 Toll Free USA
Local: (818) 344-3742
Fax (775) 249-9320
Monty@DPL-Surveillance-Equipment.com
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Phone: (1888) 344-3742 Toll Free USA
Local: (818) 344-3742
Fax (775) 249-9320
Monty@DPL-Surveillance-Equipment.com
Google+ and Gmail
DPLSURVE
DPLSURVE
MSN
Monty@DPL-Surveillance-Equipment.com
AOL Instant Messenger
DPLSURVE32
Skype
Montyl32
Yahoo Instant Messenger
Montyi32
Alternate Email Address
montyi32@yahoo.com
Join my Yahoo Group!
My RSS Feed
posted by DPL-Surveillance-Equipment | 9:48 AM
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