Shared Hosting Tips in Ethiopia

Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is located in the Eastern Africa and is the oldest independent country in the continent. Many probably are clues that Ethiopia is considered to be the birthplace of coffee and every sip of the morning energy drink that immediately wakes you up actually brings you a bit closer to the country’s culture. We met with Abrham Assefa, CEO and founder of Ahaduweb.com to speak about shared hosting, domains, websites and other things in the hope of catching a remote glimpse of what Ethiopia is all about.

Ethiopia in Numbers

There are about 120M people living in Ethiopia, which makes it the 2nd most populous country in Africa (after Nigeria) and the 13th most populous country in the whole world. Despite the large number of people living in Ethiopia, the country is lagging behind in terms of using the digital space. There are only about 7.2M people who are engaged in social media (mostly Facebook, Messenger and YouTube) while internet penetration is not more than 30%. The average web hosting price for a basic plan in Ethiopia is from 500 to 1200 Birr, which is about $20 per year. The price for cctld .et domain is around 1300 Birr, which is about $25. All in all, Abrham says that hopefully the number of internet users will soon increase because more and more people are familiarising with and starting to drive along the information superhighway.

Brand Awareness and Customer Acquisition

Before the appearance of the means of information transmission, people around the world used to pass news by word of mouth. In this respect time seems to have stopped in Ethiopia, because the most usual way of making people aware of your product or services is when your existing or previous customers recommend you to their friends, relatives, or acquaintances. Recommendations is one of the main options of how to get customers and make your brand recognisable.
Having worked in website, web hosting and mobile development for 7 years, the founder of Ahaduweb.com conceded that most of his customers also got to know about his establishment when they were using Google search to find a website design company. Other technically advanced private and business companies also place information on the Internet about their need to employ a developer or create a website and those who do use computers can quickly learn about that and react respectively.

Growth of Websites

It has been already mentioned that Ethiopia is moving not as fast in terms of digital technology as it should, because website development is still in the stage of growth. Not only don’t many people and businesses have their personal pages for their own use, but as a matter of fact they also don’t quite visit other pages. The problem was and is acknowledged by the government, which is eagerly pushing business communities, especially industries related to the tourism sector (accommodation, entertainment), to get a license and have a website where they could advertise their products or services. Most often websites are developed by content management systems, such as WordPress, Joomla, Laravel, Juzaweb, etc.

Taking into account that there are between 40 and 90 languages spoken in Ethiopia, including Amharic, Somali, Oromo, Tigrinya, and Afar, when it comes to businesses that have online presence, technical support is usually provided during working hours in Amharic and American English.

Payment Gateways

Due to some difficulties faced by the local community in relation to opening and managing a bank account, it is not surprising that Ethiopia is largely considered a cash-based country. When it comes to making payments, the vast majority of money transactions are made in cash, with credit cards being accepted at only a few outlets, mostly visited by tourists.
Another way of paying for goods or services, which is highly developed in African countries compared to the European ones, is the use of the mobile money service launched by the local telecom in 2021. Locals use digital cash — telebirr — to pay for the things they need or want.

Price vs Quality

Many people, including those far from literature, in one context or another must have heard the famous Hamlet’s question ‘to be or not to be?’ When speaking about customers, website development and hosting services, the question that has the same level of importance is ‘price or quality?’. Indeed, both are important: price greatly affects sales while quality greatly affects customers’ satisfaction. People in Ethiopia place greater emphasis on price.
Abraham notices that a good price attracts many people, but what is good can also be understood in different ways. Simply playing with the price will allow you to find the best market fit, because sometimes lowering the price and making it accessible to everyone can have the opposite effect. Low price can even scare the customer away: people might think that the product is not so good and/or not something they need. A slight increase in the price can provide the effect that you wanted, because people will think that among similar services offered in the market the one with a higher price means better quality.

Wrapping Up

Despite of being a country that provides energy in the form of coffee to people all around the world, the pace of life in Ethiopia is slower than usual and it generally takes more time to introduce or achieve something. Nonetheless, website hosting businesses have strong faith in the future of cyberspace growth and taking into account Abrham’s plan “to promote and make every business owner have online presence”, there is no doubt that in the near future we’ll be hearing about Ethiopia more and more.