Slashdot Mirror
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."
Some of the issues the article raises (little money to purchase home equipment for software development) hit FOSS developers harder, but the majority of the article seems really applicable to all of the African software industry, especially small-scale software developers using any software license.
Slightly misleading spin, but very interesting information.
RD
- They buy computers in pieces over a 3-4 month timespan.
- Internet access is hard to find, though one happy guys states he got Debian, "after a two day download".
I will never complain about my computer or net access ever again.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
We can do without shit like that here.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
By investing heavily in things like broadband infrastructure etc. Large parts of Africa doesn't even have electricity or running water, much like India used to. Now India has a thriving, if not overly large IT sector(and they actually do produce stuff to help out the poor etc, though most of the /.ers focus on outsourcing).
It's not exactly an identical situation though. The problems facing Africa are different from those facing India. Decades of civil wars, the devastation of AIDS, and inability to gather wealth from their vast raw materials, and a poor education system in large parts of the continent(people cannot even read their own language, let alone English) have left Africa the poorest area on earth.
Hopefully with a bit of investment in broadband, electr and some donations of usable hardware, the Africans can use FOSS to help mitigate some of the problems facing their continent.
We've all heard about Rwanda, the civil war in Congo/Zaire, and the like. Is there any way that wireless networking + FOSS programs (e.g. weblogging tools) could be used to transmit live reports of need for aid, etc.? Throwing GPS into the mix couldn't hurt either. I wonder if wireless is cheap enough for this purpose yet, though.
They have excellent natural resources. That has become the curse. Nigeria, for example, has large oil/natural gas supplies, but the local people cannot afford oil.
The tale of natural resources in poor countries is similar to the tales of evil kings... In those tales, the parents with beautiful children suffer (the children suffer too) because the local king takes fancy to them and makes them concubines.
Things will not be very different if the economies develop "intellectual property" too. Property is easily stolen and can be restricted (for example, the patenting of turmeric and basmati rice). A well educated population with diverse skill set is a way forward because then the local people themselves are the assets, and multinational corporations have a vested interest in aiding peace in such regions. If it's just a matter of resources, multinational companies benefit more if there is poverty and bloodshed -- if the local people kill themselves, the corporation can just keep the resources to themselves!
S
What makes India today as a large IT outsourcing destination is their secondary official language which is English, and their inherent strength in math. For salary-wise Africa is superior, but considering other difficulties you can't expect growth of Africa in the IT sector so soon.
But that is the great thing about OSS, both sides can get (and give) what they want. The resource-hog, include-every-last-imaginable-feature crew can program what they want, and the I-only-have-this-solar-powered-TRS-80 can take the parts they need and recompile.
The ones that really do not want to hear from these people are the closed source, make-a-buck-from-every-line-of-code companies.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
It is far too late to stop the perceived problems spreading to Europe, in fact many of the problems of Africa came from Europe in the first place. And don't use the word "nigger", you can face prosecution for doing so, certainly in the UK.
And before you ask, I am white, not that it should matter, any decent person would feel the same about your vile attitude.
Someone please moderate this imbecile into oblivion.
If we need a new category it should be "Vile Scumbags" and you should be sent there at once.
MOD PARENT UP, YOU COCKS!
Africa's a third-world dirthole because at the end of the day, we *and* our government find it all too easy to write off a whole continent than look at the ugly truth about what's going on over there. We got our asses handed to us in Somalia and ever since then it's been "see no evil, hear no evil" towards ANYTHING that happens in Africa as long as it's south of Libya. How many people were killed in the Hutu/Tutsi conflict? A fucking MILLION? And what did we do for them? Hell, we had *press access* to the slaughter and didn't do a goddamned thing. All we had was third-hand stories about Saddam's atrocities and look what we did to stop them. CNN had fucking *film* of people hatcheting each other to death over there, and at the end of the day they got an *apology* from the UN. An *APOLOGY* over a million dead Africans. We should be ashamed, our government should be ashamed, and so-called "African-American" leaders like Maxine Waters and Jesse Jackson should be double-plus-ultra-fucking-ashamed at sitting idly by while all this happened. We wear the "African-American" badge with pride, but if we're so fucking African then where were *we* when all that went down, huh? Give it up, my brothers. From now on, I'm just going to be an " -American," because at the end of the day, being African is just too goddamned hard.
Mod me down because I've earned it. Mod me up because I speak the fucking truth. As a nation, we're pissing on the promise that this country once had.
End rant.
A standard configuration of Linux with OpenOffice, Mozilla, and other useful things could be put together quite easily, volunteers could copy a few CDs to help the effort.....
Give them network cards and they can learn about networking, even if they don't have a decent link to the outside world, the local community can still have its own web server. It would have educational use, particularly health education. I don't think that there are all that many developers yet in Africa, but give them the tools and in a few years the next generation will be. But first, or in parallel with this, they need to be rid of murderous scumbags like Mugabe, they need reliable supplies of water and food, etc.
It would not actually cost the western world very much to set the ball rolling in these areas. The African continent is fully capable of being self-sufficient if it was allowed to be, with a bit of guidance along the way. They have the potential for producing food, energy and vital raw materials.
> From the article: "Documentation is mostly done by geeks and testers, yet... it's useless... [The task of] documentation must be given to professionals."
One question... Where are all of these paid Open Source documentation jobs?
The road to better Open Source documentation begins with respect for the volunteers. Just replace "documentation" with "software" in the quoted text and see how you like it!
I had posted a comment on another site as a contribution as to why I think Microsofts products will be the leading choice in Africa for at least another 5-10 years if not longer. Here are some points why I think this will be so. To create Open Source products some things have to be in place.
1.Broadband internet connection. Anything else is too cumbersome and time consuming if not expensive. In Africa broadband still has a long way to go. If its there its terribly expensive. The use of wireless connections could help bridge this gap but it is still not as fast as DSL. Although of late 100MB wireless cards have been introduced to the market and have to be adapted in Africa.
2. Knowledge. With this I mean that there are very few people in Africa who have a true inner working knowledge of Open Source products like Linux. There are quite a number of Linux users (mostly ISPs and maybe a few Universities) but few real hackers who mess with the source code. In short Africa needs guys with good knowledge in C and Cplusplus.
3.Education. If you check most computer colleges and schools in Africa, they all offer lessons on Microsoft products but none in Open Source products. There are hardly any computer books to be bought in Africa and when you get them they are terriblly shallow, outdated and expensive. There are some efforts to donate books where corruption and government policy comes in creating difficulties so that in the end there is no real solution, the price has to be paid! Open Source development depends on many people who educate themselves, which means they pick up books and learn the tricks themselves and through mentors over the internet.
4. Brands. Most Africans are brand conscious! This will surprise alot of people but that is the fact when it comes to IT issues. People go for known names like IBM, DELL, HP and such and naturally Microsoft for most software solutions. Its not easy to get people to migrate to Open Office even though its free for example.
This are the real hurdles that I think Africa is facing in the adaptation of Open Source products.
How will you feed, house, deliver basic utilities to, and do the hundred other things that this new workforce needs to do their jobs? What happens in five, ten, twenty years when the equipment they've invested in is hopelessly obsolete and these countries are once again on the brink of disaster? How will new handouts be paid for? And who says they're even going to be interested in doing IT in the first place? No, I think that's one of the worst ways to go about helping Africa.
The first step for Third World recovery is to write off the debts as they stand right now. Next, instead of subsidizing Midwest farmers to grow weeds instead of food, have them grow actual food and ship it overseas; the destination countries only pay transportation costs (a way to collect even just a little on the previous debts). Then take any funds earmarked for high-tech investment and put them towards basic sanitation facilities instead and you'd have a good start.
Eeek. I was born in Zimbabwe and have lived there and South Africa. Please whatever you do, DONT do what you suggest above.
One of the MAJOR things holding back Africa is foreign aid. The two strongest economies in Southern Africa were at their peak during sanctions. The problem boils down to the following:
1) Forgiving debt wont make any difference, because any spare cash will be stolen by corrupt government officials. They will waste any money available and demand you forgive their debt again.
2) Foreign aid is encouraged by African government officials because the checks and balances on stealing that aid for personal gain are much lower. This is exacerbated by aid people holding the opinion "that as long as something gets through, we're helping". This is not the case.
3) The best way to ensure that local farmers will not grow food is to ship them food, and by so doing, completely destroy local market prices for that food.
4) Much foreign aid is provided through organisations that benefit from skimming a small amount of the aid for "operating costs". Those organisations do not want to help people - they want people to be dependent on them, so they can ship more aid next year. "Give a man a fish a day for a week, and he'll forget how to fish"
Your suggestion of rerouting aid for high tech investment to sanitation is an awful idea. Africa needs investment, not aid. Investment of real money by people that expect real returns, meaning that kleptocrats will not be tolerated. The people that die for lack of sanitation often do so for culteral reasons, not lack of facilities.
One of the problems in Africa is that modern health care guarantees a low death rate amongst children. Coupled with a third world cultural outlook on children, this results in an explosion of young people, which strains education systems. The only real solution to this is to bring the standard of living up to a point where people decide they would rather have a few well-educated children rather than many children to till farmland.
Those children will be there regardless. If they are somehow drawn in real industry instead of subsistance farming, their children and their country benefits. Don't forget that they can support themselves and their families for a year on a hundredth of your salary.
Africa does not need people destroying their markets, and paying their officials to be corrupt and cling to power. It needs:
a) A cessation of foreign aid, unless it is foreign aid with extremely harsh strings attached, and it is provided in such a way that it does not damage local economies, or prop up corrupt governments.
b) Strong investment in countries that make strong attempts to rein in kleptocrats. Hopefully this should end a positive feedback loop.
c) Nothing for nothing and nothing for free, coupled with very harsh criticism and diplomatic pressure when an official is caught embezzling. Put strings on everything.
d) Very strong international criticism of non-democratic govern
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"Africa's a third-world dirthole because at the end of the day, we *and* our government find it all too easy to write off a whole continent than look at the ugly truth about what's going on over there."
Yes, and USA and Europe both have both fsckd up African people. When you look at the powerty and dictatorship stemming from power vacuum left by the European colonialists, lack of interest (except from the oil) and denial, you essentially get a 3rd world continent created by you. I think it's about time we take some responsibility of our wrong-doings. What the western "civilized" countries are doing is deprivating African people from their *own* natural resources, denying them from the prosperity that belongs to *them*. Well, I'll just have another cup of cheap coffee and STFU.