We all know that Nigerians don’t use local apps. Some will download the app but will never use it afterwards. Some don’t even download.
Is it that there are no good apps? Is it lack of good publicity? What is the problem?
Note : when i said local apps , i don’t mean apps by Banks and startups. I mean apps that are not affiliated with any startup.
I’d say UI. A friend wrote a news aggregator app. I asked myself what made it different from Flipboard or linkedin’s pulse? Just UI.
And our big local apps in Africa are mostly apps that solve big problems (payments/banking mostly), not one you’d always be on (social, dating, search).
Edit: When you say apps by non-banks and non-startups, could you give an example?
I think the problem is that most local apps don’t address a real pain point. Granted, they get buried in that massive ocean of apps on google play and app store, but if an app solves a real problem and imaginatively too, it’ll get its screen time on Nigerian phones or phone of any nationality for that matter; think the constitution app from back in the days - people still use it in fact - and topup genie.
Visibility will definitely help - a problem Hugo at Maliyo is already trying to solve with Gidiapps [Radar thread], but if these apps are only as useful as NipAlert, then no one will waste their precious RAM on there. I won’t.
Apps like crocodile browser , Okada books , Topup Genie , Topup Africa
I think size of an app also matters a lot , considering how expensive data is.
Imagine shelling out 20mb+ just to download one app.
We may have to redefine ‘local apps’. Apps are ‘usually’ affiliated with startups like 100% of the time. So which other class of local apps are we talking about?
Definition aside, ‘local apps’ tend to suffer the ultimate product-market fit conundrum. Most ‘local apps’ are most likely to want to solve first world problems as against third world problems (let’s call it ‘local problems’).
A case in point, who wants to download and regularly use a ‘local music app’ when there are zillions of better music apps that will likely cater for ‘local songs’. Apps should solve real problems and should not be novelties. Novelty apps will generate the buzz and the ‘local people’ will move on. (reminds me of the marriage app that made waves last year).
Nairaland/LIB (though not apps in the correct sense of the word, they serve ‘local problem’ of our appetite for information and gossip on ‘local matter’). Hotels.ng (serves a real problem which is ‘local’ - hotels in Nigeria. It makes sense to include web apps as local mobile apps are scarce)
UI/UX, Marketing/Publicity are secondary issues i think
I agree with @princehumprey. I have several local apps on the store, but the only one that have 5k+ downloads is Exam Prep (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=elvis10ten.com.past_questions), haven’t done much marketing on it tho, just depending on organic traffic.
5k for organic traffic is decent, well done. You may need to reconsider the marketing thing (read up Growth Hacking - Neil Patel is very good on this). You don’t need to spend truck load on marketing though
I was just thinking about this. Maybe we have inferior complex towards our developers or anything made by our people. Maybe we think that things made not by our people or by asian or whites are better. What do you think?
Lol. That’s not true at ALL