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Essay: Perspectives of African FOSS developers
philipp_at_bridges_dot_org writes "Bridges.org has just released an essay about FOSS issues in Africa, Straight from the Source: Perspectives from the African Free and Open Source Software Movement. It highlights a perspective that is often overlooked in the discussion of how FOSS can benefit developing countries: that of software developers themselves. The essay describes the conditions African FOSS developers work in and the difficulties they face, mostly letting quotes and personal impressions speak for themselves. The issues are very different from what I am reading in the typical slashdot discussions. It maybe an interesting perspective for your audience to see what others, who share the believe in freedom of source code are struggling with - hopefully to encourage thinking around solutions for these problems."
Here is a copy of the summary from http://www.bridges.org/africasource/summary.html
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Straight from the Source: Perspectives from the African Free and Open Source Software Movement
A bridges.org article in collaboration with the Tactical Technology Collective.
For a software developer working in Africa, Philip Mbogo's problem is as basic as it gets: "I don't have a computer," he said. "I have to go for unpaid work in order just to get on a computer." Internet access is also an expensive rarity, so he counts himself fortunate to work as an intern at an Internet service provider where he takes as much advantage of the bandwidth as he can. "Anything I can get I download. I even got [a Linux distribution called] Debian, which takes two days [to download]."
African software developers face many obstacles as they struggle to work in this field. But these "coders", as a group, form a community marked less by their frustration and isolation than by their perseverance and resolve. This theme dominated AfricaSource, a workshop held in Namibia in March 2004 and organised by the Tactical Technology Collective, AllAfrica Foundation and SchoolNet Namibia. The meeting in the small town of Okahandja of 40 software developers from 25 countries was for many the first chance to collaborate and compare notes.
Lack of access to the means and tools of production is the issue African programmers most commonly identify as the greatest barrier to success in their work. But at this event, coders got a chance to share the innovative ways they work around the problem. "We buy computer parts bit by bit. In the space of three or four months we have a computer," says Ayeni Samuel Olaoluwa, a web developer from Nigeria, who saves up to 50% this way. Another method he has devised is keeping his freelance clients' work on computers he uses as part of his day job. "I am able to hide stuff on the server, but when I leave the company I'm in trouble."
The prohibitive costs of bandwidth and hardware are an obstruction most programmers face, but it affects coders most seriously at the time they are preparing to enter the job market. Without the opportunity to earn salaries that would help them afford equipment of their own, ambitious market entrants eager for work face the prospect of successive, often unpaid, internships just to prove their skills.
This predicament is widespread across Africa, says Ghanaian Guido Sohne, "There are not enough projects available to work on to employ the available talent.... In most African countries IT is not part of the economic production process. It's actually more expensive to computerise your accounting system than to hire more people to do it manually." So when programmers do find jobs, a large percentage tend to find themselves ushered into system administration and technical roles, where they are overworked and their skills are underutilised.
This situation might be a consequence of the fact that a coder's skill is not accorded the value it deserves. Isaiah Makwakwa finds himself in this bind. When the computer science graduate first joined SDNP Malawi, the UN's sustainable development program, his work stimulated him. He automated a billing system for the administration of the
The flood of work helping people solve problems on their desktops gradually overshadowed his programming duties, but Makwakwa's manager failed to implement a plan that would have protected and leveraged the value of Makwakwa's skills, which are rarer and far less transferable than the troubleshooting talent he was being called upon to use.
Makwakwa's case is not unique, and it certainly is not exclusive to Africa. As the number of computerised workpl
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
Methinks there are a lot of people in the mainstream developer community that don't want to hear from the likes of these people. The mainstream FOSS developer community is blazing, full-steam ahead, writing resource-intensive software that requires relatively rich hardware to run decently. They don't want to hear about the exigencies of people that don't have the advantage of being able to afford nice hardware. Such people just get in the way, with their talk of writing code that doesn't require inordinate resources to function well.
and with Cuba cracking down on internet access, make sure you bring a few copies of various Linux distros inside your "music" CD holder when you visit.
Too bad that people from "the land of the free" aren't allowed to visit Cuba.
Though it may take years for any software platform in a Third World continent -- whether open source or proprietary -- to become commercially viable on the same scale as in the United States and European markets, some of the factors that have impeded the fast adoption of Linux will make Africa an interesting battleground for the open-source movement.
"Too bad that people from "the land of the free" aren't allowed to visit Cuba"
lots of Canadians go to Cuba each year, and last I heard, a lot of Americans go too, but they have to pretend they're going to Mexico instead. Alternatively, if said Americans are from States that border Canada, they can come here to catch a flight to Cuba.
Cuban customs officer routinely avoid stamping US passports so Americans wont get in trouble with their own government for visiting Cuba and bringing in much needed US currency there.
And if you bring software CDs there, make sure you "forget" them in a place they're likely to be found by people who will appreciate them.
I would prefer the US model, but would like it even more if NTL, who have been ripping me off with a digital cable TV box for several years now, would finally deliver their promise of broadband. Now, that would be somewhat more expensive, but not timed, although they have been rumoured to be capping the monthly download.
None of us has a perfect system, but I do feel sorry for these guys in Zimbabwe, with a useless, malevolent dictator like Mugabe, who is at least as evil as Saddam, they are not likely to get their internet arrangements improved any time soon.
I hope someone discovers oil in Zimbabwe, so the cretin Dubya and his puppet Tony B. Liar have an excuse to rid the world of him, preferably with a single bullet, without involving the country in a war. The people of Zimbabwe deserve to have the same human rights as anyone else, they should be able to rely on someone to rid them of that monster. Now, we say the other day that in Lithuania, internet access is regarded as a basic human right.....
There is a growing open source community in Morocco, there is even a Moroccan Linux distribution, we have also have a local Lug and we organize install fests and some compagnies are begining to specialize in open source support and installation, specific Moroccan programs are begining to appear, although they are still few and far between.
Oh and by the way I am surfing on a DSL connection, we have DSL since the begining of 2004. 128 kbs/s costs 30$ without any in volume limitation
Alas Microsoft is very very strong here, and 99% of the people still believe that Bill Gates invented the Internet. MS is very strong in goverenement too and they have recently offered bargain prices to install Linux in schools.
But overall things are not that bad, and I see a very bright future for Linux and open source here, as MS Office price nearly equals a middle wage here.
The lack of cheap internet access is holding back Africa in a big way. Take South Africa as example (because I'm from SA and can speak from experience). Only recently (about a year ago) did the telephone company Telkom (a monopoly, without any competition, because the government is taking YEARS just to award a second network operator license) start rolling out ADSL. They charge a ridiculous amount of money for it. Currently they charge the equivalent of about $130 per month for it, and remember, it's even higher than it sounds compared to average wages. On top of that they put a 3 gig monthly cap on international traffic! Phone calls are expensive, and you pay per minute even for local calls. Basically the government needs to realize that if we can get proper, cheap internet access, it WILL do the economy good. South Africa has many engineers and programmers educated at world class universities (also talking from experience, I'm currently working at a U.K. university that's regarded as pretty good, and the education I got in SA was of a very high standard compared to this), but to compete in the global market as an entrepreneur, you need to be able to communicate cheaply. If it wasn't for the law protecting Telkom, it would be sooooo easy to start a decent phone company and run them out of business. I get so frustrated thinking and talking about this, I could blow a fuse!
If someone in the Department of Communication reads this: Stop over regulating communications. Set it free and let it thrive, PLEASE.
Thanks for an extremely informative and well thought-out reply. But wouldn't drastically reducing foreign aid like you suggest lead to a greater percentage of any remaining resources being embezzled by whoever is in charge? If government officials are as corrupt as you've wrote, I'm assuming they won't care about breaking contracts and won't pay attention to international sanctions.
Thanks for your reply. Well, a reasonable estimate of the percentage of aid that gets diverted is around 90 - 95 %. This is from what I have seen, and from members of family that have done work for NGOs. There's not much more for them to steal; if you cut aid by more than 5% they would feel it. Many of those officials only have power because of the resources they steal. The others wouldn't be there if there weren't so much low-hanging fruit.
The government officials we are talking about regularly break contracts because they know there is no downside. Tomorrow they can fleece another aid program.
It's true that they would ignore international criticism, but at least it would get the word out to the rest of the world about what should and should not be tolerated.
It is true that no one thing I have suggested will help. Things have to happen in concert.
In addition, won't what you suggest only help countries which already have the basic facilities to support foreign investment? IT requires quite a large infrastructure behind it, and I had assumed that the discussion here was supposed to discuss only the poorest of African countries. For example, the only country mentioned in the article (Uganda) qualified for Highly Indebted Poor Countries relief; South Africa and Nigeria (the only African countries I can think of off the top of my head with a sizable telecom base, sorry) are not in nearly as bad a shape. Admittedly I don't know a whole lot about African socioeconomics, but wouldn't basic necessities take precedence over things like Internet presence?
The only facility required for foreign investment is someone honest to manage the money locally, and a some form of negative feedback for malefactors. I speak as someone who knows people that have done business in Africa by smuggling American dollars across African borders, and make deals on a handshake.
It's true that investment in High Tech alone will not help, but you suggested diverting the money from such investment into basic sanitation facilities, which I think is a bad idea.
My experience is that if you build such facilities for people in Africa that need them, they won't use them, because they don't believe they need them. If they thought they needed them, they would have made the effort themselves. You can only tempt them with wealth given in exchange for honest work, and help them help themselves.
It is not for you or me to decide what they consider their basic necessities. Their choices would surprise us both. Plus, I don't see how you could arrange for them to get these necessities without giving them to them, and that is a well trodden path to disaster, as I have already shown.
I think in the end all you can do is offer honest money in exchange for honest effort, in a system geared to reward those who provide value, and punish those who attempt to steal. Such investment would happen wherever there would be money to be made by investors, which I think would cover the entire spectrum of goods and services.
I make no claim to be the mystical purveyor of a perfect solution, but I think the points I outlined in the post you replied to are a vast improvement over the status quo.
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