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Ghana's Digital Dilemma
Some random reader writes: "Here is a fascinating Technology Review article about information technology in the West African nation of Ghana. It's an illustration of how new technology relies on, and can be hampered by, old technology. It's also a testament to the ingenuity of the people there who are working to maintain and update the country's IT infrastructure. These folks are working with a terrible phone system and frequent power outages, but they still manage to succeed."
The article talked about a Ghanaian man who was interested in IT and who was biding his time in a data entry position, gleaning as much technical knowledge as he could absorb. Along comes some bureaucrat from some NGO saying that data entry is a dead end position and wasting the many talents of the workers.
I see this as completely backwards. Obviously they don't have either the infrastructure or the technical resources to be a computerized society, but they do have some investment in the form of Aetna putting in a somewhat technically advanced data center where locals can get a job entering data. They aren't going to be able to step up to bat at the IT table until they get the necessary infrastructure and educational systems in place.
When these NGOs look at a country like Ghana and proclaim that investment isn't enough because more people aren't living at the same level as their Western counterparts, they are looking through their own paternal prizm which is in itself racist.
I have been pwned because my
What normally would go for (at least) 6.00 an hour (more in most places) in the states is happening at _dollars per day_. This has nothing to do with "giving technology to the masses" -- it is a corporate strategy to get more "bang for their buck" -my US $0.02 (In Ghana thats $0.000000002)
You have completely misunderstood the difference in currencies. In the US, you pay $4 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. A cup of coffee in a third world nation costs a fraction of a cent. People aren't working 8 hrs a day to afford a single Big Mac, in their local currency, they are well off! The reason for this is that their currencies aren't "hard", they are volatile, and hence FX market participants who hold hard currencies (USD, GBP, CHF, EUR and JPY) are relucant to exchange them for the local currency. The law of supply and demand means that you can buy a lot of local currency for a small amount of hard currency. Why would you want to? Either you want to spend some money in that country, or you are in that country and want to buy something outside of it. Since that doesn't happen much, relative to the rest of the global economy, hard currencies command a premium.
You are also forgetting that these workers would otherwise be unemployed, and that they are happy to have the work. They have changed the weakness of their currency from a burden to an advantage by exploiting the comparative purchasing power of their economy. This scenario is win-win: the locals are employed and have revenue coming in, the multinationals get their work done for a lower cost, and can therefore provide consumers in the West with cheaper products.
Eventually, as has happened in India, local tech skills will develop, and they will move up the value chain from data entry, to technical support, to programming, to complete systems development. Then you will find that these "poor, exploited" people are competing on a level playing field with Americans, and if they manage their economy skillfully, they will be able to do it while still remaining cheaper.