Slashdot Mirror
More Thoughts On How to Wire Senegal
An anonymous reader submits "Last month Slashdot published a story on the Peace Corps' plans to wire Senegal. Now Peace Corps Online has published an article by a volunteer who taught computers in West Africa for two years who recommends that the White House's Digital Freedom Initiative abandon the Western paradigm of 'a computer on every desk' and borrow a lesson from telephony in third-world countries. Since a residential telephone line is a luxury item in West Africa, the 'communication center' has flourished as a private business even in the smallest of towns where it generates profits while sharing the high cost of telecommunication among the whole community. This user model coupled with deregulation of VoIP can be the key to implementation of computer technology in poor countries."
Trying to put a computer in every home? Try getting clean water in every home first. For now lets work on that. We can put in computers once we can help them READ.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
In impoverished countries, why don't they just feed these people instead of trying to get them to try q2 deathmatch? Who cares about this shit?
I'd say FEED ME before FRAG ME any day.
I swear, the priorities of Governments...
A computer on every desk does indeed sound like somebody has warped priorities.
Let's look into getting the infant mortality below 20% first.
Computer on every desk? How about getting everyone a desk first? Or prehaps decent housing to put the desk in? Or decent medical care? Or water and food? Surely that sort of thing would come first?
rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Having lived in Africa for a short period, I can say that "a computer in every home" is NOT what those people need.
To repeat some of the previous posts, they need clean water, food, medical supplies, and other basic humanitarian goods.
This is not to say that they have no use for computers. For this is certainly not the case. Something along the lines of an internet cafe (but not so trendy) is what they would benefit from. Just as the article says, the people can share the cost of an inexpensive comm link. Combine this with a few donated PC's running Linux and bingo - the towns people will begin to become computer literate.
These people have a genuine desire to learn, but things like this must fit within the economic and humanitarian reality of their locale. A "community" net enabled PC would fit the bill nicely.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
I was in Tanzania last month. As the story says is the case in W Africa, community internet access is very popular. Its patronizing and simplistic to assume that just because these are poor people, they have no other needs than food/water (as other posters have commented). If nothing else, in the Maasai village I was staying in, people were using the internet to get farming/weather information that was otherwise unavailable. More relevantly, they were trying to contact the Houston company (http://www.tgts.com) that was shooting the leopards, lions and buffaloes on their land without permission. They were also starting their own school, using internet as a tool. All of this can be seen in a community context, which might explain why community-level internet access might be successful.
Done right, technology will provide the information that will allow people to help themselves - much better than the normal aid dependency syndrome.
Reply to another comment: I don't think Quake is so exciting for Maasai who have to kill a lion with a sharp stick before being allowed to marry.
The community "Computer & Communications" idea is fantastic, not only does the cost get shared on a user pays basis, it also brings together like minded individuals where they can teach/learn from each other, rather than struggle to learn alone.
Having lived in Africa most of my life, I'd like to point out just how silly the parent's viewpoint is.
It is perfectly reasonable to give them what resources we can; just because
they are short on food doesn't mean that they can't use the internet to
perhaps announce what's happening to food shipments (bandits, floods, bad
roads or any other reason) or to request what's needed most or even to try
to up revenue (such as tourism) or improve financial communications.
The funny thing: most food shortages in Africa are manmade. Most of Africa
is not starving, and where they are starving there are other problems
causing the starvation which might well be alleviated by better literacy,
better communications or even just better infrastructure in general. Lord
knows a little useful agronomy online might help, or online diagnostic
information, or online purchase rather than having to go a week without
someone's labour JUST so that they can go far enough to buy whatever it is
that they need.
Sure, it would be more useful if they all had doctorates in CS and were working
out of their mahogany offices; can't you imagine how useless the internet is
for actually organising things people need? Haha, the very idea.
Guess what: people in africa use wireless telephony. They aren't just given
it; they USE it. It's made a lot of activity a lot more efficient.
Go ahead, great dictator, tell people on the other side of the world what
problems they have or don't have, tell them what they need and don't need.
They will quite rightly be sickened and disgusted by your blind arrogance. Chances are, you're behind a firewall or proxy, or clicked the Back button to accidentally reuse a form. Please try again. If the problem persists, and all other options have been tried, contact the site administrator.
Contrary to what many of you believe, Senegal is not one of the most impoverished nations in Africa (try Sierra Leone)...
As much as I applaud foreign aid, the way we've been doing it DOESN'T WORK. When we go in and feed people, guess what happens when we leave (and leave we will!)? They starve again. If anything, they're worse off, because they've gotten used to a steady stream of aid.
This is why we need to educate them, and computers is a good way to provide maximum education/$. Right now, in the third world, there is no meritocracy - so there are, quite likely, very intelligent people who don't have any means of improving themselves. However, they could do very well with some investment in education in these countries.
So, what we need is to educate the populace while we feed them. Give them a chance to learn either a trade skill, or to go to university. Then, the educated can help rebuild the country. Admittedly, computers aren't the sole answer to this, but it would be a part. Those who have the intelligence and literacy would be able to teach themselves, and as other posters have said, Google is a better textbook than nothing for schools that lack resources.
Yes, Africa needs food....but it might need civil engineers even more. That's why we need to work really hard to educate them. If you wait to educate until no one is starving, no one will ever be educated and everyone will starve when we stop spoon-feeding them. That's why it has to be a concerted effort.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
It's certainly true that people can get too carried away with high-tech needs when low-tech needs are unmet, and I agree about the importance of health issues. But it's also true that westerners make too many blanket assumptions about Africa. Look at Senegal specifically -- here's some good info: these stats. All those comments below about how they can't read over there are pretty uninformed. Literacy is over 50%.
Who is regulating VoIP? To what specific problems does this phrase apply?
I don't see where the Digital Freedom Initiative wants to put a computer on every desk. In fact, their agenda sounds pretty much the same as the proposed alternative, namely to leverage the Internet cafes already there.
When you're talking about computers in Africa, every city is a village.
This is a nice line. Nice in the style of political campaign slogans. Bumper Sticker Verbiage. All I get from it is that Africa is behind in computer technology.
The Peace Corps has got to stop acting like Christian missionaries. The way to help African countries is to help those who manage the country. Let them manage their own lives. The conservative politics of the current administration assume that we Americans -- including the Peace Corps. -- are better equipped to run things than the people we are supposed to be helping. That approach is doomed to fail -- see the history of colonialism.
I was especially offended by the pro-commerce tone of the DFI web site. Classic conservatism, use taxpayer's money to further "private" enterprise:
The Digital Freedom Initiative (DFI) will help meet the challenge by promoting free market based regulatory and legal structures and placing volunteers in businesses and community centers to provide small businesses and entrepreneurs with the information and communications technology skills and knowledge to operate more efficiently while competing in the global economy. These objectives can be achieved in partnership with U.S. business entities whose voluntary, innovative and entrepreneurial participation in the DFI provides access to new markets and competitive opportunities for developing products and services in emerging economies.
Whatever happened to population control, sanitation, natural resource management, and basic education? Since when is it my government's job to help business entrepreneurs in other countries get to market? So Walmart can sell more cheap clothes? The Peace Corps needs to get back to basics of helping to ensure a fundamental level of safety, health, and liberty for every human being.
Fear Pox Americana.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Every time i read something like this i think of George Washington, the man who would not be king. The more and more we see of democracies, the more we see how hard it is to start them up (at least starting through a violent revolution) without the leader of that revolution seizing power and smashing the democracy. We can thank Washington for our stable democracy(the man, not the city ;-) .