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
A computer on every desk does indeed sound like somebody has warped priorities.
Let's look into getting the infant mortality below 20% first.
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.
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
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 ;-) .