Slashdot Mirror
Life As An African Web Developer
There's an interesting look at the realities of high-tech in Africa running on NewsForge -- specifically, one writer's account of starting a web development company in Ghana, dealing with obstacles including power problems worse than the norm in deepest California.
It just happens that I know Guido. I hope he doesn't mind if I talk about him and what I think about his situation. I want to say these things about him.
... the SAT-3/SAFE/WASC line that runs down the western coast of Africa to SA, and then over to india. But can Guido get access to that? Yeah, right! Instead the most reliable internet access is 2Kbps over a VSAT connection at BusyInternet. Anything else is very much intermittent. How can you work in conditions like that?
... not yet.
First, he WANTS to be in Ghana. This is a personal decision on his part, it's his home, it's where he grew up. So it's not like he's stranded there, you know, he went to university in the states and could easily be pulling in 100K if he were there, but he voluntarily returned to africa.
The biggest problem for him in Ghana is that his talent simply isn't recognized. The people who hire in Ghana aren't talented enough themselves to recognize a quality programmer. Most of the western companies that drop in shops in a place like that ship their own talent in as well, and they're not going to be looking for a top-notch coder/ sysadmin / webdesigner / all around talent to be found in-country. So getting a job that's worthy of his talent at all is tough.
Pay? The cost of living in Ghana is dirt-cheap compared to where I am (canada). I think that he would probably be well off at 10K a year (not a month!) and would be above average at half that. Think about that for a minute, if you're looking to hire a web developer he could be doing the work for 1/5 the price.
Unfortunately there are serious, serious problems with being located in Ghana. Just try to get internet access. Sure, there's an 80Gbps (yes, that's GIGA) pipe running JUST OFF SHORE
He'd have to pay $1500 to get his own VSAT (very small aperture terminal) and then $100s a month for a measly 32Kbps or less connection, ironically. Even though the people are poorer there, the bandwidth costs so much more. And could he run VoIP on that and save himself on longdistance? Not without running afoul of Ghana Telecom
It's a chicken and an egg problem. I have a lot of respect for Guido for being there and doing what he's doing. He's just a guy who wants to write code.
simon
PS If anyone reading this can push the right people to give up access to the SAT-3 fat pipe, please do...
home page
You probably haven't heard about it, but there's a fat pipe running down the coast of Africa with 20Gbps (yes, that's GIGA) of capacity. I've been following this story, and it's being wasted.
... they are just going to sit on their hands because they have no vested interest. It's not on their radar screen to do anything with this cable, or to start selling access to regular people, like Guido. Instead, they are all slowly or quickly going out of business and dragging the market down with them. Installing the cable was only half of it. The other half is freeing the bandwidth.
:::
Home Page
Map
The max capacity of the cable is 120Gbps. It cost 0.65 billion to build and was a monumental sign of pan-african development 6 years ago when they bought it. Now it's finally in place.
technical
It's being wasted! It's a fat pipe, it's got something like 20x the bandwidth previously available in Africa (seriously...) but despite the obvious -- to me -- benefits to start using it Right Now, instead nothing seems to be happening.
Analysis: "...the benefits of this new capacity will not be unleashed on the national business environment"
The state telcoms in all these countries that control the access
simon
::: Check out rural wireless 802.11 on the wireless-longhaul@openict.net mailing list. subscribe or check out the project page
home page
Obviously I'm really into the whole situation of IT in Africa (they call it ICT .. the C is for communications). Here are some links for you to look at. A lot of them are really oriented towards WiFi too since I think that's the "last best hope" for the internet in Africa
... but this much more story and pictures about another project:
... but they have a WiFi based VoIP long-distance system that doesn't even need electrical grid to work.
... the Digital Plains of India.
Weblogs:
riptari filter
m u l t i p l i c i t y
R Alden
News
Balancing Act: Africa This looks dense but it's the BEST news source about ICT in africa and getting better all the time. Very reliable too.
Shameless plug
I wrote about using the open source model for (ICT) development here and some other stuff from here.
Stories
Laos
You've already heard about that
Pictures, stories, of setting up the real thing in Bhutan a country you've maybe never even heard of
I'll leave you with one that's going on right now
simon
home page
The electricity company in Cameroon, Nigeria's eastern neighbour is owned by an American company. Yet things are not any better wrt power failures.
Your assessment of the problem in Africa is insulting, or fallacious at best. Colonialism is the root of the problem. However, the problem is not because Africans can't cope with modernity, or don't understand it, but because of lack of accountable governments, which were put in place by the colonialists when they left. It's been almost half a century and most of the governments are still in place. It is very difficult to replace such governments. Most people fail to realise that African countries are not poor. Power failures are not due to lack of enough electricity. All the problems can be traced to lack of accountability of the government. The electric company does not care about maintaining hardware because there is nobody to hold them acountable for it. All these problems gradually disappear in a true democracy. Show me a true democracy in central/west Africa and I'll show you a functioning society.
I'm an African, and I'm currently in Sweden where I work as a Sysadmin. Where I work nobody knows shit about computers. I don't expect them to understand what routers are, so you should expect to explain technical details to your client in understandable language irrespective of wether they are african or not.
I refuse to believe that all offices in Nigeria are built to the specification the parent poster cited. It's not every house in the US or Europe that would be free from flood or fire or any other disaster. Just because the poster has encountered a bad case does not justify generalising in that manner. Just because the poster claims to be in Nigeria does not make him an authority on nigerian affairs either!
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
Poor sanitation, disease, and civil war. United States, late 19th century. What did we do to overcome these problems? Did an international outreach of concerned Europeans build sewers and hospitals for us? Did English peacekeepers prevent the savagery of our civil war? Umm, we brought over millions of slaves from Africa to do all the dangerous, hard work for no wages? Oh, so you are suggesting Africans should go invade europe? kidding aside, i mostly agree with you, but it is much, much, much more difficult for countries nowadays to "hoist themselves by their petards" than it was 100 years ago. China and India have managed to putter along pretty well, many people believe because they have accepted little to no IMF funds and are able to set their own economic policies. Don't also forget that 1st world countries currently subsidize their farmers heavily, which means 3d world farmers have a very tough time profiting from farming (long story, Europe is most guilty of this). I do feel Africa squandered their biggest opportunity, the cold war. Now that its over, only the countries with valuable resources (oil, gold, diamonds) are getting vague interest.