Burundi: Shared Hosting and the Future of Africa

Site.pro is slowly but surely getting into every corner of the African continent. This time, Filip Borcov visited Burundi and met with Igor Ciza, CEO of Afriregister.com. They discussed rises and downfalls of their companies, what makes Burundi market unique, and the future potential of the African continent.

Site.pro in Burundi

About Afriregister.com

Afriregister.com is an accredited registrar group from Burundi. Over the years, it has expanded throughout Africa and Europe and now has a presence in roughly 20 countries. Recently Afriregister expanded to the United States as well.

In many countries, Afriregister is among the market leaders — including Rwanda, Senegal, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ivory Coast. It is also possibly the only registrar working in Chad.

Operations also exist in Benin, Burkina Faso, Sudan, and South Sudan, where Afriregistrar works as a franchise with local companies.

Digital Landscape of Burundi

Internet Penetration in Burundi

Burundi’s population is around 13–14 million people, but the number of Internet penetration hovers between 25–30%. Igor explained that the reality is even more complicated. He estimates the number of computer literate people to be fewer than 500 000 – less than 4%.

And when it comes to this 4%, many of them work for corporations instead of opening their own businesses. So only big companies have an online presence, while small ones can’t afford it. They operate physically and wait for customers to find them in person.

Local domains

The local market for .bi domains is close to 4000-5000. .com, .net, and other gTLD are popular, but Burundian businesses have a stronger preference towards their local domain. Curiously, this tendency doesn’t apply to hotels. They tend to choose .com instead.

.bi ccTLD costs around 50 000 Burundian francs/year, which is slightly under $10. But this price is relevant only for Burundian citizens. For foreigners, it may cost $25 or more.

Support languages

Kirundi is the national language in Burundi, so it is a common language used in tickets. Kirundi is very similar to Rwanda’s Kinyarwanda language. Speakers from both countries can generally understand each other without translators.

But in the professional business environment and in bureaucracy, French is dominating. English is also becoming widespread due to globalisation — it became the third official language of Burundi in 2014.

Payment gateways

One of the Afriregister’s most important projects is its proprietary payment gateway platform. The system integrates:

It’s almost like an African Stripe, designed specifically around local African payment systems rather than Western banking models.

Problems of Hosting in Burundi

Hosting services in Burundi are considered neither cheap nor very expensive by locals. Most of Afriregister's clients are small businesses that pay ~$50/year for VPS, while corporations with bigger demands pay ~$600/year.

One of the biggest problems is that it isn’t possible to host servers locally, hence the speed is lower and less stable. The reason is issues with infrastructure and electricity shortage. Afriregister is considering investing into solar energy to counter this problem and get a more sustained power source. They are hoping to set up a small datacenter in the next year with the help of Starlink.

The project is ambitious, but it’s not unrealistic. After all, Mount Heha is high enough to be a decent location for a datacenter — natural cooling, close to Starlink network, all that stuff.

The company aims to first power Burundi, then move to other markets Afriregister works in.

Website Builders and DIY Websites

In Burundi, most users still need technical assistance to build websites. Many businesses continue relying on web designers. However, countries such as Rwanda experienced strong growth during the COVID-19, when lockdowns increased demand for online stores and delivery systems.

Although that growth slowed after COVID, African markets have become more ready for digital services. Igor believes that affordable website builders have big potential across Africa because many businesses cannot afford expensive development agencies.

Learn from Failures

Operating businesses across multiple African countries is notoriously difficult. There are a lots of challenges a company has to go through, including government bureaucracy, corruption and long-term operational uncertainty

Successful expansion in Africa requires patience and long-term thinking. Failures are unavoidable, but it doesn’t mean that a company is doomed.

Fail #1: Investment in Congo

.cd (Congo’s ccTLD) became Afriresregister’s biggest disappointment.
The company initially saw potential in the country and invested heavily. At one point, they even helped support the registry’s CoCCA infrastructure.

However, political disputes ruined the project. As a result:

Fail #2: Wrong branding priorities

Site.pro historically invested into worldwide marketing. It resulted in the brand being somewhat known everywhere, but it didn’t truly become a leader in new markets.

This is the thing with almost any brand. You know Snickers chocolate bar, you know what to expect from it, so you’re likely to buy it. You'll be far less likely to choose an unknown brand.

That’s why global companies with strong brands have it easier — GoDaddy, Hostinger, etc. are already well-known hosting providers. People recommend them online, they have a lot of reviews, which results in better SEO and GEO, more registrations, and more sales.

Marketing Lifehacks

Despite technological progress, both participants agreed that traditional marketing methods remain extremely effective in many African markets.

Lifehack #1: Explore new markets

Afriregister has recently expanded to Burkina Faso, and it went really well. The country doesn’t have a lot of competition, and the need for Afriregister services is high. Before, the registry worked manually, but the implementation of CoCCA made things a lot faster.

Afriregister is one of the few companies that has its processes automated in Burkina Faso. Now, they’re looking into opportunities of integrations with Orange Money to facilitate registrations even further.

Lifehack #2: Old-school marketing

The most important part of developing a brand is to conquer the core users of your product by any means. Site.pro is currently in the process of expanding to the UAE, and the competition is fierce. CPC is more than a dollar for free accounting software. Influencers are extremely expensive as well — with at least $3000-5000 per post.

So, Site.pro’s marketing team decided to go the old-fashioned way — advertising via calls and messaging people directly on LinkedIn (with an automated system, of course). A moderate spam actually works surprisingly well.

Lifehack #3: Develop your own platform

cPanel became more expensive after changes involving WHMCS. Because of rising licensing costs, Afriregister decided to begin developing its own systems.
The company is now building its own hosting management platform, billing systems and registry management software Development is handled by teams from Kenya, the testing is already in progress.

The company’s long-term vision is not only to use the software internally, but also to provide affordable alternatives for African registrars and registries.

Lifehack #4: Offer alternatives

Many African registries currently rely on CoCCA and FRED. However, these systems are becoming too expensive for smaller African markets.

To solve this, Igor’s company has started offering its own lower-cost registry platform to Rwanda, Sudan and Malawi. So, African markets have a way to support each other’s growth and become stronger as a whole.

Go, Africa!

The African continent’s demographics doubled in the last 25 years, which makes it one of most fast-growing regions globally. The economy and the Internet penetration gets better every year.

Meanwhile, more developed regions' GDP is going down despite having millions of well-educated people. The future is Africa, and Afriregister with Site.pro are supporting it already.