That’s the first time I’ve seen a non-tacky product demo with a black hand. All the explainer-video-as-a-service platforms I’ve seen African startups use often have white hands, which is ALWAYS jarring considering the market context. Which reminds me, @akindolu’s Foto.ng might wanna think about creating ethnic product demo templates like this one.
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cc : @sugabelly 
I’ve been complaining about this since forever, and people have been insulting me and calling me a hater. I remember I complained to @OoTheNigerian that the hand using the typewriter on WriteRack’s Android homescreen was white.
@OoTheNigerian Why would an app created by two Nigerians have oyibo hands typing on the typewriter? Why can't the default user look like us?
— Sugabelly (@sugabelly) April 15, 2015
@OoTheNigerian Can you please change it? It's so problematic that even Africans don't see the default human as anything other than white.
— Sugabelly (@sugabelly) April 16, 2015
@OoTheNigerian @AfroVII It sends a massively negative message. That three Nigerians are involved in making an app, but the default is white
— Sugabelly (@sugabelly) April 16, 2015
Some people came to call me bad belle, and a hater.
Sha, in the end someone said they had a black hand using a typewriter, and I think they emailed the photo to Osita to change it.
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I think your point is valid. But let me play devils advocate. Firstly, this type of behavior isn’t unique to Nigeria. China for example, is notorious for using white people to market products. Secondly, Nigerians tend to look down on things that are homegrown. So creators who might not be so idealistic, will go for the reality; that people will respond their service/product more favorably when marketed with ‘white hands’ than ‘black hands’.
I think I can weigh in here cos my team has done several demos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdmPqTvLW_U and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUrxF0SFoZQ
First of all, the audio comes from a radio presenter. Are we supposed to specify to the presenter that we want Calabar or Yoruba or Ibo accent in the audio? or should we make the audio in those languages to reflect ethnic sensibilities?
Okay, “the hand”.
To get a good hand picture, you have to put all the studio lights on the hand and how black can Notorious B.I.G or Rick Ross look under those same lights in music videos.
Ethnic sensibilities, then again Quick Airtime App we made in Ibo, Hausa and Yoruba, and of the cumulative close to a hundred thousand users across Symbian, android, ios, windows, blackberry6/7 and blackberry 10, not one single user is on any of those local language modes.
Is there really room for ethnicity in the future in anything?
I will do an experiment on our upcoming product demos using different languages and find a way to evaluate conversion. Who knows? I might learn a thing or two.
I don’t think that just because person A is doing something, everybody else should follow suit. We need to learn to stop copying others and carve a path for ourselves. It’s hard, I know. But if we don’t force the general public to change their mentality about associating the black man and his product with class, nobody else is going to do it for us. We will be where we are 100 years from now.
In North America, minorities are constantly fighting for fair representation in media and the like. Are we going to have to fight for representation at home too?
It all starts with us, really. If you have the power to do so, please use African hands/faces/clothing/etc in your product demos. Let that little kid who’s watching know that he is represented by something cool.
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IGBO not Ibo.
Igbo = language, people, culture, etc
Ibo = door.
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I just want to say that market women in Lagos would love an app that talks back to them in their Language. This language thing is the reason they stay away from banks in the first place.
It’s pretty important.
Not exactly sure they will be willing to pay $0.001 every time the app speaks back at them. Plus creating a library that can serve them will take some work.