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Life As An African Web Developer

Posted by timothy on from the grass-is-drier dept.

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.

3 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Going up? by Blaine+Hilton · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Here in the states the economics of being a programmer or anything in the IT industry is pretty bad, but from the article it seems Africa is much worse. We take most of their problems for granted here. I think this is a large problem for Americans, we don't really realize how good we have. The same thing can be said for gasoline, in Europe they are paying double, triple or more then what we are paying, even when we think its so "expensive".

    I do believe there is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel though for the Internet economy through out the whole world. We are coming to the point where computers are as common as televisions, and a computer really isn't a computer with out being able to access the Internet. This is going to redefine what we now know as a global economy. Borders are going to become looser, and ideas will be freely exchanged. Another thing is since the .dom crash many people have decided to switch careers, and thus the workflow is going to equalize, and I believe that is going to happen sooner rather then later.

    Go calculate something.

    1. Re:Going up? by HanzoSan · · Score: 4, Insightful



      The US created their own Civil War, the Africans were given chaos by European invaders in the same way Iraq was given Chaos/.

      --
      If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
  2. Software Programmers in Ghana... by timjones · · Score: 5, Insightful
    And you thought we had competition from steaming legions of Indian and Chinese programmers?

    Most of the executive set I know (yes, in the USA) wouldn't consider buying an AUTOMOBILE from a third-world country like that, but they will do anything to have IT design (at least as complicated, when done properly) done in such places.

    Something to think about...