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Microsoft Thinks Africa Doesn't Need Free Software
DIY News writes "Microsoft has claimed the cost of software is not an important issue in the developing world. According to MS, while you can give people free software or computers, they won't have the expertise to use it."
In many cases, what they need is food, clean drinking water, and shelter. Let's get those bases covered before we start doling out the software, shall we?
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
According to MS, while you can give people free software or computers, they won't have the expertise to use it."
Well, you've got to start somewhere.
Maybe they do need training, but once a few of them are trained, they could train others, and so on and on. Plus, they are smart people, I'm sure they are quite capable of teaching themselves.
...they'll never get any expertise using it at all if they have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for an OS and office suite.
Move Sig, for great justice.
Linux can cure hunger.
If anything - this shows the level of stupidity at Microsoft.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
They seem to know how to use computers already! Excuse me while I go fax my banking information to the attorney of an imprisoned Prince whose country recently went into anarchy, I need to help transfer funds for him!
Well, sure, if you give them the software for free they might lack the expertise to use it.
But if you charge them for it instead, then you've gotten a tiny amount of cash, they've lost (~)months of their savings, and they STILL lack the expertise to use it!
-:sigma.SB
P.S. Interesting. Firefox "parses" </?P> tags. :S
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
Newsflash: Most Africans do not live in huts on the savannah.
They live in cities and towns. They have access to technology. They're just as smart as you and I.
While I did attend a few hours of BASIC training way back in the dark ages of computing, I learned most of it myself by just having access to my computer. These days, computers are (more) user friendly so the story just strikes me as being stupid bordering to racist.
And by keeping the software expensive you drain resources from training. And its not the case that all africans are computer illiterate. Many, especially the well educated, know damn well how a computer works. I hate this Western arrogance and ignorance, treating Africa like one giant homogenous mess. That's not true. Ok, so we need IT training, but we also need cheap software, roads, medical infrastructure, improved schooling, decent terms of trade, and much much more. Not because we're a basketcase, but because the west screwed us over. an angry african
Microsoft will see less profit if Africa uses competing software.
Nope, wasn't him.
"640K ought to be enough for everyone" is attributed to him but likely an urban legend.
But "Internet is just a passing fancy" was him.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Nestle's CEO states that "Africa does not need bread and water, but Butterfinger and Nescafe".
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
but you can't make them think?
Shame on you MS!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
RTFA. It's about how even after giving the people the software, it's not the important part, the training is and how Microsoft is spending efforts on training the people in Africa to use information technology. It's not about how Microsoft hates Africans or anything like that. It's not about how Microsoft is trying to exploit poor Africans by selling them software. It's simply bringing up the surprising fact that the primary barrier in Africa isn't the cost (though cost is a barrier), it's the fact that the people need training that is the main barrier to adoption according to MS. Considering how often people complain about FUD, it's quite annoying to see it from the /. crowd as well.
Microsoft still doesn't get free software. Free software isn't about the cost, it's about the freedom. Consequently the MS rep is right when he says costs isn't the major issue, and his arguments about expertise strengthen the position of free software.
Free software gives Africans a better chance of learning how to use software and build a local industry modifying it.
I bet the next generation of African mechanics already spend their days under the bonnet of any car they can get access to. These are the people who will own small mechanics business in tomorrow's Africa. Tough luck if your car is a Microsoft car with the bonnet welded shut.
Microsoft's aim is to keep Africa dependent on Microsoft.
Some people are using the 'give them food before computers' argument. The philosophy behind free software is larger than computer software. It's about the abilityto determine your own course in life. I'm sure Monsanto is using the same arguments as Microsoft about the sterile seed they sell.
Just teach them to use bittorrent.
My soon to be wife has lived for years in Africa as a exchange student through her church - West africa, not the tourist spots that get cleaned up to look better so they attrract more tourist money - so I know a little something about this.
Water is a rare resource there. If you get bitten by a bug for example, you wipe the bloody sore on the wall to scratch it because if you use your water for the day on it, you dont drink.
A person can live - barely - on about 2 bucks american a day for food and basic needs - and no that does not include toothbrushes or soap as they are luxuries - in Africa if they have a home; Unfortunately most dont even have 50 cents american per day.
It is a fact that electricity is only available in the larger cities if at all, and without electricity you are not going to be able to boot a computer much less use any software on it open source or not. The African people are cunning in the way that they can usually do what it takes to survive - survival of the fittest being a cruel but true thing in the extreme land and political environment and all the civil wars they have gone through - but they can not use electronics without electricity.
But they do know how to use the tools when they are available. The biggest thing over there - and the one thing every African knows how to use - is the windows based computers at the internet cafes in the larger cities. People walk days just to use them. Saying that they do not have the knowledge to use computers is not only an insult to them and a racist comment in itself, but completely goes against the standing facts that keep Spam filters against Nigerian - yes Nigeria is in Africa - Spam from hitting your inbox.
My fiance has personaly known some of these africans and talked to them, and do you really think that nigerians would be sending you spam and trying to get money from you if they where not so damn poor with no other option? Sure once it works it may just be greed that keeps them going, but in such a sorry state of existance and in such a poor country if it works and keeps them fed and clothed, what else are they going to do to survive? I am not saying spam is good - its bad and the people who send it have very low to non-existant ethics - but what other choice do some of these people have thanks to companies like microsoft not even wanting to try to help africa be developed enough to be self supporting?
Microsoft is just splitting hairs and insulting people, as well as lying through there fscking teeth. They have the power to make not only Africa as a developing natuion but the entire world a better place, and they will not do it because they are too damn greedy to think of anybody else but there own profit margins. The funny thing is they say they are against spam, so you would think they would want to help develop africa - and nigeria - enough to allow the spammers alone to have other options. That in itself would make the world a better place.
- d
That's quite a biased way to put the very real problem that flooding a country with extremely low-cost foreign products means that local producers can't even hope to compete. You know, investing resources to produce something you can't sell is not exactly financially smart. You're better off doing nothing.
And this sort of stuff has happened in the USA, too, and in an even more absurd manner--the stereotypical economic depression scenario where there's a food shortage in the cities when agriculture overproduces, because the price that could be obtained for food is just too low to justify spending more on production and distribution. Which led to those New Deal government incentives for farmers to actually reduce yields...
Are you adequate?
Yikes, Disinformation. Yes, North Africa was a part of the Greco-Roman sphere of influence. Alexandria was in Africa, Egypt was an African empire. Many great thinkers lived in North Africa, for example St. Augustine. In Central and West Africa, many kingdoms flourished, and these kingdoms were as advanced as many in Europe. Ethiopia has a proud tradition of independence and civilization. What set Africa back were slavery, first Arab and then Western slavery. Then cam colonization (read rape&pillage), and the disastrous decolonization, a process in which many countries have been carved accross tribal lines, and some, like Niger, are not really viable as countries due to geography and climate. Followed by the west programmes in the 70s and 80s, loaning giant sums of money, but imposing economic reforms which led to worse terms of trade, and resulted in negative growth. Thus saddling the african countries with debt and a smaller economy through which to raise the repayments. Oh oops - and servicing the debt means less money for education and healthcare. Coupled with a fall in prices of primary goods, the main African exports, such as agricultural and mining goods, means less income. And competing with the heavily subsidized agricultural industry in North America and Europe is impossible. African poverty is a complex situation, but one in which the West holds a lot of responsibility. And, by the way, the US is showing signs of terminal tribal warlording the past 50 years or so too.
on biz, and I see a lot of pirated software in the banks where I'm working on client site.
I'm against pirating software in general, but with attitudes like this, well let's just say Africans are ok pirating MS software in my book.
Down in Africa those folks are just doing the best they can with what they got. This attitude that "if they can't pay they don't deserve" is mind boggling. MS could do a lot of good down there, but no.
On the plus side, I'm seeing lots more banks deploying Open Office on the desktop with Liunx and MySQL on the Enterprise side. This whole controversy will be rendered academic in perhaps ten years.
Who the hell would accept MS crapware when they've spent the formative years on their careers using Open Source?
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Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
While Bill is write that the price of software is not important (in fact software/hardware in general), he is talking about the educated elite in these countries and not the farmer working 12 hours in a field somewhere for 6 bucks a month.
Food, water and shelter are a good start, but so is education. What is the west afraid of (or is THAT a silly question)...
Karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Why can't African states bootstrap?
Maybe because of the aid we're giving to them:
"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"
Microsoft is saying that because X is true, Y must be false. Well that only works when the two are mutually exclusive. When the two are not then the logic breaks down. In situations like this one, where the two issues are only tangentially related at best, the logic breaks down before it even gets started.
Aquiring the expertise to know how to use computers is a necessary prerequisite to being able to benefit from computers and the software that they run, regardless of whether that software is free or proprietary. Microsoft is correct in stating that these people would not be able to benefit from free software at this point, but then they're no better equipped to be able to benefit from anything Microsoft has to offer either.
Listening to Microsoft when it comes to computer software is like asking Ford or GM what brand of car you should buy.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Some comments from an African: 1. Anyone heard of Ubuntu? Does that sound like an english word? "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". The person driving it (Mark Shuttleworth) is an African and the business he built and sold was developed in Africa. 2. Africa is a big place, don't generalise. Some Africans live on a $1 a day, whereas I live a first-world lifestyle. 3. Microsoft ignores the developing world at its own peril. A true competitor for MS will probably emerge from a developing country, where people and governments are not prepared to pay expensive licenses for functionality they can get for free.
Why can't African states bootstrap?
Colonialism ended less than half a century ago; it takes a lot longer to develop even under ideal conditions.
And conditions are hardly ideal: Africa's most natural exports are heavily disadvantaged by Western subsidies, and economic exploitation of Africa and propping up of undemocratic regimes in Africa by powerful nations continues to this day. Even our so-called economic aid is usually tied to specific purchases from the donor nations, so it isn't very effective, and what isn't tied up that way disappears in corrupt regimes, usually with knowledge of the Western donors.
Microsoft has claimed the cost of software is not an important issue in the developing world.
Just like the cost of food isn't important to those who want to grow up healthy?
even though he admitted that the average annual salary in the West African country is only $160 (£91).
Yes, I'm sure that Africans wouldn't mind starving for a few years, so that they can buy Microsoft's software - which I'm sure Microsoft would offer at a discount rate for the first year.
"It's not about the cost of the software, it's about how you take your expertise to people. We are sharing our expertise, particularly with governments in emerging markets. Cost is not the barrier here -- expertise is," said Holloway.
Most commendable. My hat is off to Microsoft, having ripped off those who can afford its software, it spends some of the excess on locking poor people into its proprietary solutions.
If Microsoft was to give everybody in Africa free PCs running the latest version of Windows, what would they do when they had to upgrade? And, if they couldn't afford to upgrade, what good would their expertise in an old, out-dated operating system do?
Microsoft seems to be getting right back into 'Linux is a cancer!' mode with this textual outburst of desperation.
The thing is, many Africans have time to spend learning how to use software, but they don't have money to spend buying software. Using Open Source seems the better option, especially when there is a need to keep up with upgrades.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
If you give the computers to the children they will learn it and the perceived difficulty is irrelavent.
When a child is born it understands no language yet learns one. Windows isn't easy for a complete beginner either, inexperienced computer users ask millions of questions about Windows every day.
I am an African, and very proudly so. Let's give a few examples: Squid - Written by Africans. Ubuntu Linux - Made by Africans.
It's crystal clear that 95% of the people here have not only not been to Africa, but did not even Read The Freakin' Article. Anyway, I have been to Mauritius (island off the coast of Africa) and no, people weren't batting flies off their heads. Developing countries do have a lot of poor people involved in low-wage agriculture struggling to get by, but they also have the beginnings of a professional class, the people who work in offices and run the governments, banks, etc. They all have computers, if not in their desks then in their offices, and those computers run software. But what, as Microsoft says, they do not have is enough people to maintain those computers, hence the lack of expertise it cites. Which brings up a good point that if you gave computers running Linux to people, they would have a very hard time maintaining it, because if the Microsoft expertise isn't there, then the Linux expertise definitely won't be there, because it's rarer. Scarce expertise may push people away from diverse OSs and towards the market leader (Microsoft).
So there's some interesting stuff worth discussing if people bother to RTFA before they post "Bill Gates doesn't care about African people" or whatever all the junk was I had to wade through while I was trying to spend my last mod point.
Tristan Yates
People in developing countries are probably better able to pay for software than most of us realise - they're not all starving nomads in the savannah. However, what a developing country really doesn't need is for its economy, industry, government and workforce to be locked into a foreign company's software. RMS's "Free as in speech" argument is at least as applicable and probably even more so when it's applied to a country that doesn't yet have all the normal country-running mechanisms in place.
When the United States industrialized, we did it on our own. Even though all the major industries were owned by robber barons, at least they were American robber barons. The products and the profits stayed here.
So now we have all these little African countries trying to have their own industrial revolutions. But instead of enriching themselves, Africans are working in factories owned by Asians, making products that will be shipped off to the United States. That's why they can't "bootstrap."
See, the world doesn't have to be all MS software.
Look at the car industry for a comparison. Not everyone drives a Ferrari. Precisely _because_ not everyone can afford a Ferrari, and they can't just pirate one, some will go buy a cheaper Ford Fiesta instead.
Or, and here's the most important part: in some of those countries they'll go buy a locally produced car, creating employment and taxes in their own economy. E.g., if a citizen of Russia can't afford a Ferrari, maybe maybe they can afford a locally produced Lada instead. Pretty good cars too, and they're creating employment and taxes in their own country. (Ok, I know Russia not quite a developping country, but it's the only one I know a car brand from, so for this example it will have to do.)
The same applies for other products too. E.g., Via sells a lot of their CPUs in China. If a Chinese family (earning about 1000$ a year) can't afford the latest dual-core Opteron, they'll buy a dirt-cheap C3 instead.
Yet invariably the same countries don't have much of an internal software market (and pretty much no retail boxed software market), because they pirate MS software instead. There's a bunch of jobs which never were created, because everyone downloaded a cracked version of Windows and Office.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
And while, Free (as in Freedom or Independence) is helped along by Free or Open Source Software, open protocols and data formats are the foundations of that. Most importantly open protocols and data formats can allow both open and closed source systems to work together, even an egregious example of the latter as MS.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
... that many people here in /. very often show a complete lack of understanding of the African continent.
People may have their stereotypes about the US, but I think roughly are better informed about how the US really is (we would not assume that having computers or access to technology is an imposibility for most USians) than USians are about Africa.
Just check this thread later. The comment "but they need food/medicine/whatever first" will inevitably show up.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Nestle's CEO states that "Africa does not need bread and water, but Butterfinger and Nescafe".
You'd be surprised that in a region, West Africa, which produces a hell of lot of coffe and has a coffe culture which is on par with Italian coffe, "coffe" surprisingly often means Nescafé.
In a region where money is scarce and time and coffe beans are plenty, people drink Nescafé. It makes your head spin.
But if you charge them for it instead, then you've gotten a tiny amount of cash, they've lost (~)months of their savings, and they STILL lack the expertise to use it!
Which in my experience, really, is exactly what happens in the first world...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Training without infrastrucutre is worth squat.
The initial barrier of entry is the cost of the infrastructure, and nowadays the software (the commercial one I mean) is perhaps the biggest cost of having a working computer.
This is even more true if you consider that you can have preety cutting edge machines from a computational point of view in old hardware with the lastest FLOSS software.
Assuming the cost of training is the same no matter what software you use (I will ignore the wide availability of training, help and advice in the FLOSS world) then at the end all goes down to cost.
If you use second hand hardware (the most likely situation if you are trying to introduce computing in a poor country) then you are only faced with the cost of which software to use.
And this makes it a no brainer, you can get a FLOSS OS, with any kind of application you can think of for $0. Windows (or MacOS, when it shows up for generic x86 boxes) will set you a substantial amount of money.
When you realize that very often the price of one license of WIndows is the equivalent to one month salary of a trianed person in some countries, then the argument of this individual (and by extension yours) collapses like a house of cards.
Why should anybody spend money in commercial software when that money could be better spent in paying for the training you will obviously need?
To say that this guy's argument is stupid, self serving and contradictory in the view of the existence of FLOSS is an obious understament.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Computerisation only helps when production is at the scale when the effort of organisation and administration reach an onerous level. Small scale producers don't really need it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What they could really use is total access to technology, Africa is one of the most resource rich countries in the world.
There are few reasons to assume if they had access to technical documentation they couldn't develop their own manufacturing and help themselves, even more disturbing is the seeming lack of outside trade, Africa has oil and precious stones which are sold through other countries who pay them a pitance, admittedly the Africans didn't have enough capiltal to start their own industry but if they have access to the technical information at least they'd have an idea of the complexities involved.
Free informtation would be good for progress around the world, it would challenge companies to be original year over year, but the effects on developing countries would me increadible.
So how does the cost of a random piece of software relate to the level of expertise required to use it? On a more positive side if Microsoft believes this they wont be supplying free computers and software to developing countries. ( Which is probably a good thing in the long run)
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Yea but if they bought copies of Windows they still wont have the expertise and training to use that too, and in that case they will be vulnerable to viruses and spyware, until they understand the software. Most Linux distributions are Good enough right now for a person who wants to learn how to use a computer can figure it out in time and it probably will take as long to learn linux then it will take to learn windows if you are starting from an empty plate. But in many of the poorer African countries $100 for a windows license can go real far for something more useful. Like food for a year.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
See, you're just as bad. They want you to talk about cost. They want you to yell from the rooftops that Linux is cheaper than Windows. They want you to waste time doing analysis on total cost of ownership and employee training. Every time someone mentions the freedom to share software with their neighbour, Microsoft will claim Windows costs less than Linux. Every time someone mentions the freedom to hire a programmer to fix a bug instead of waiting for the next service pack release, Microsoft will claim Windows has better support than Linux. Every time someone mentions the freedom to understand how the software they use works, Microsoft will claim Windows is more secure than Linux. It doesn't matter whether or not all these pragmatic claims are true.. all it matters is that we're talking about them instead of talking about what really matters: software freedom.
How we know is more important than what we know.
To start, I’m African, in fact a Nigerian. To say Africa does not need open source or lacks the necessary expertise to support opensource or other licensed platforms, is a total MISCONCEPTION. I'm also disappointed @ Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria claims. I have worked as a freelancer programer both in the grassroots and the corporate level, and I can tell all not to be misconstrued by the "poverty commercials".
There are people, i mean professionals, who can match up. So much development has been happening here in Nigeria, Much of the business processes these days are computer streamlined and backup by either local and Open source software.
Almost all web applications used in Nigeria are developed locally. Almost all customised software, including Opensourced is developed locally, so what’s Microsoft’s problem?
Africans are survivors. African can survive and would do anything to survive. We do not have Natural Disasters like the west; all we have is Human disasters. The Govts have been criminal these years past, leaving Africa impoverished.
The poverty level is high, but that’s stale news. Most Nigerians have put that (poverty issue) behind them, in a bid move on. So they result to different mediums like software piracy (Apart from Spam and scam mailing, Nigeria is a den of software piracy), spamming using advance-fee fraud and so and so.
Would you say that someone who knows how to hack and crack a piece of software with a long list, and someone who goes to buy this software knowing its use the implications and how to bypass it, IT Illiterate?
Or would you categorise some one who knows how to cook-up a good story, sniff out a looooooooong email list and start a criminal spamming business as illiterate?
In the wake of the millennium, SPAM was king here in Nigeria (This has dropped drastically, as govt is out with different schemes as a crackdown). In those days when there where no Law enforcements, you would see young people, aged 16, 17, in their teens sending spam mails in cybercafés. a lot of them.
I am not saying these criminal activities are justifiable, but does Microsoft expect Nigerians to buy software with their entire monthly salary? Microsoft claims to be supportive through NEPAD; I’m sorry, i disagree! Microsoft Makes a lot of money from direct sales to corporate office in Nigeria (NO WONDER THEY ONLY OPENED A SALES OFFICE IN NIGERIA NOT EVEN ONE FOR SUPPORT), they also have anti-piracy networks and other surveillance systems. They make Money from their sale of software! A lot of it. So for them its all about more sales!
The grassroots are not affected in anyway! How many people can claim they benefited from Microsoft generous offers? Rather people scramble for pirated windows software that they can afford, scramble for junk computers and IT components gladly donated by the west at a price or buy IT components all brought in from Taiwan. Let microsuck make these softwares affordable and people would buy!Let them get involved in grassroots support, projects, and people would appreciate them.
The openSource Cloud here is enormous for example close to 80% of cybercafes in Nigeria use LINUX boxes for their routers. If Microsoft says they want to keep their pitch, let them go ahead, the open source is an alternative with a lot of local support.
Bill Gates doesn't care about African people, or US people, or Europiens or anyone who is not whole heartedly feeding his corporate empire. I wasn't aware that this was still an argument.
"article is about lack of expertise"
The article is pointless. Building a countries infrastructure on proprietary software is dumb enough. Building a country on another countries proprietary software is national suicide. Witness just about the entire worlds realization of this as they invest heavily in Linux localization and application development. Whats right for the first world isn't appariently right for the so called third world?
The lack of expertise argument is one that could be solved very easily if Bill Gates simply donated a few million to educating people in Africa about OSS. But then Bill really doesn't give a scandisk about people now, does he?
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Ethiopia was a colony for only 7 years (1936-1943 under Italy).
Maybe, just maybe, over 60 years after that 7-year period it's time to stop waiting for handouts and start to solve the problems themselves.
Just look at China: It was much worse off than many African nations after the war (and the civil-war that followed) and the Japanese were also much more brutal. But did China wait for handouts? No. They tried to do it themselves and failed first (Mao's big leap forward has made matters even worse) but they learned from their mistakes, got the population under control and exactly those regions that were "colonized" by Japan over 60 years ago are now the most wealthy and industrialized.
Similar stories can be told for Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore.
All those nations built up an industry almost from scratch in less than 20 years and a very healthy economy in less than 40 years. Actually Japan, Germany and to a lesser extent France and Italy were also almost completely destroyed after the war and also were able to built up an adequate industry in less than 20 years. (Athough the apologists will say that Western Europe and Japan had the know-how, that isn't true for Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and coastal China: All these countries were mostly agrarian 50-60 years ago)
So your claim that it takes longer than half a century is just plain wrong. It takes one human generation to develop an industry (like in today's China) and 2 generations to generate wealth and luxury similar to western standards (like in Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and Japan today).
An no, I don't want to give you money from my former prince/master/dictator whatever. I'm South African, I haven't lived in SA for over 15 years, but I was an IBM mainframe operator there in the 80's and I still visit regularly and have family and friends there. The plus side of the racist white minority rule in SA is that the country got the best infrastructure in Africa, which it still has except that the current government caters to more than a small white minority and thus has other pressing problems as well to deal with.
South Africa is the original home of Mark Shuttleworth and his foundation Ubuntu has an ongoing task in South Africa to teach and install Ubuntu in schools (Hint to Microsoft: It's one fuck of a lot cheaper than a Windows solution). I chat regularly with my mom down there who has a Windows PC. South Africa's biggest problem is a monopoly telecommunication company that refuses to allow competition or lower prices on internet access, thus ensuring some of the highest access prices in the world.
However, if you go accross the border to the north, in Zimbabwe, which is in total financial ruin with an autocratic president who hates whites and the blames everyone but himself for the crap that is going on there, you'll find an infrastructure that was similarly built up by the original white minority government, but one that has almost no new investment since Mugabe came to power ensuring that growth in the IT sector there is non existent.
And that is the case all over Africa, you have some countries which have fairly decent political systems, such as South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, etc and you have others which are either run by despotic tyrants, plagued by tribal warfare or thoroughly corrupt or a mixture of these.
In those countries where there is a semi decent system, the education is usually quite good. In those which are chaotic the people are lucky if they can read or write and those who do know the internet, know it usually from an internet cafe.
Linux has advantages due to its flexibility and low price. Claiming that teaching people Microsoft is better because there are more Microsoft trained people is only true if there really are trained Microsoft people around. Usually, the level of trained Microsoft people doesn't reach the level of even an MCSE, since we all know what an MCSE POS costs, so that advantage is null. Training people from scratch with Linux is in my opinion better since a basic grasp of Linux will enable someone to manage in extremely difficult circumstances where hardware and other constraints would make it extremely difficult to keep a system running with Windows.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06 -poll-iraq_x.htm
Damn right. That expertise is the critical factor; you can't do squat with computers without high-priced training and consultants.
That's why Bill Gates' recognized expertise, formal training, and extensive hands-on experience with the Altair the critical factor that made his implementation of BASIC such a success.
In the same way, his vast experience with OS development was the critical factor to IBM selecting him to produce MS-DOS 1.0 as the OS for the IBM PC.
And that's just how it happened. Bill Gates says so, so it must be true.
[insert loud, long raspberry here]
There are many issues to be worked out here. I was on the main road across the country last week, however it was tortuously rough pavement with car-eating potholes.
There is a huge unemployed population here. Most businesses employ more people than they need. You go to the greengrocers in the city and someone will push your cart, select the best produce, and carry your bags to your car -- for the quarter tip you give them -- which is likely what they work for.
The two people we employ in our house went through 8th grade(standard primary school), speak at least three languages, read what they can (although a newspaper costs an hour's wages). We pay them a pittance by North American standards, but they work well and happily and are glad to be employed.
A friend has set up one computer center to help give some kids a leg up in the job world. He has funding for 9 more, but construction is going a bit slow. The school it is at has no water or electricity. The center is solar powered for 10 laptops, and the kids are thrilled to have a chance to learn.
Does Linux make sense? Absolutely! Why should Kenya be paying the US for something that it can get for free? Is my friend using Linux? No. I couldn't convince him to do that, he worked for Compaq and Oracle and believes that windows is the future.
On the other hand I was given a new Linux mailserver to administer this week and there is certainly some expertise in the country to use is, I just wish education of Linux could be more widespread.
Oh, and I'm on a 256kb connection for about 1000 users. We are doing some testing with VSAT connections, but politics and Kenyan procurement seems to stretch things for weeks and months.
Michael
Being from Africa (South Africa to be precise) I feel compelled to add some perspective. South Africa is considered to be the most advanced country on the continent and we have access to all Microsoft products.
There is a Microsoft regional office here that provides training and seminars. We even have a launch event scheduled for VS 2005. The point is we have most infrastrcuture in place.
The biggest problem that is holding us and other African countries back is internet connection speed and connectivity in general. Even here in technologically advanced South Africa ADSL is ridiculously expensive. Currently a 512k connection costs roughly the equivalent of $100/month plus the line is capped at 3GB.
Getting to online training sessions and even just MSDN is a major problem for most rural communities that still use modem connections since our main telecomunnications provider (Telkom) http://www.telkom.co.za/ also charges per minute for phone calls.
I think to help with training and advance Africa a better option would be to help local telecommunication companies reduce costs so that internet connections can become cheaper.
I agree with your post and most educated africans do too. However, as long as we are in a global economy and the intelligent and educated africans (read sub-saharan africa) have the opportunity to leave their countries, they will continue to do so in record numbers. I'm nigerian and live in the U.S. and I can tell you that in nigeria there are probably less than 5 neurosurgeons, but there are nigerian neurosurgeons all over the world. The same goes for experts in every field including IT.
Why don't they go home and build their continent you ask? They don't, mostly because of self-preservation (it only costs about $50 to hire an assassin in Nigeria and a country whose attorney general was assassinated without fear of reprisals is not a country anyone with a choice wants to live in).
Let me break it down for most people who don't get it like this. The dictators and political elite so-called that rule in most African countries KNOW that, most people don't want to die for a country they don't have a stake in (wrong but common perception due to the fact that they don't see the gains of those who died before them) but they are willing to kill to hold on to power. As long as that imbalance exists, sub-saharan africa will continue to be the beautiful wasteland that it presently is.
The fault as much as some would like to make it is not the Wests (it's expected that they will look after themselves first i.e. the purpose of a business is to make profit all other considerations come after), it lies solely at the feet of those of us who keep quiet or run away because we don't want to die. Or as one, now dead, but popular nigerian musician (Fela Anikulapo-Kuti) once put it in a track apprioprately titled "Sorrow tears and blood", 'My people sef too dey fear, den no wan die....' .
All straight things must come to a bend
In Africa, like much of the world, Microsoft products are free. You call up your cousin Julia, who is more than happy to burn you a CD, or you go to the town market where you can buy Windows XP Pro for $1.25 US on a CD or you go to the internet cafe where they will sell you a XP Pro CD for $1.25.
You can get Adobe photoshop for $1.25 too!
The only people in third world countries who pay for Microsoft products are government bueracracies who's managers have a cousin who is the Microsoft rep for that country.
In the third world, Microsoft and Linux compete toe to toe in the same market, freeware!
You only have to look at some of our achievements to see how misled the average westener is. Ask yourself these questions: Who was the *second* space tourist (and the first to perform actual useful scientific experiments for the kids in Africa)? Who developed the safest nuclear reactor (the pepple-bed reactor) in the world? Who pioneered and actively uses a process to generate fuel for card from coal? Who has developed the technology to create the deepest mines in the world? These are but a few of the many things coming out of Africa.
Africa has the most beautiful landscapes in the world, not to mention rich vistas of animal life. We receive 1000's of tourists that come to see real african elephants, lions, rhinoceros, etc. The western world has to come here for that experience.
Africa has many well-established, modern cellular networks that operate on a single standard (the GSM standard) in just about all the african countries. South Africa alone has 43 million people of which more than 20 million have cellphones. Does this sound like the "starving kids" picture you get fed by the media every day?
Countries like South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Uganda have stable and growing economies. There are sore thumbs to the picture, but they remain thumbs, and they will be sorted out by the rest of the body that is Africa. If the west would stop meddling in African affairs, the corruption level would be a lot lower, since there wouldn't be any bribary money to throw around.
More on topic: if Microsoft thinks that Africans don't know how to operate OSs and software, they (MS) have another thing coming. If they don't want to market and make money here, there will be 100's of millions of Africans growing up with Linux, learning to rather work with Linux (or any other manufacturer that bothers to market their stuff here). I agree with another poster in the thread.. MS's assumption is simply racist.
Africa is certainly not utopia, but it's not nearly as backwater as people are led to believe either. Let's rather say it has healthy diversity :-)
I hate the way Africans are portrayed on the Western media. Tom Delay gets convicted of "campaign finance irregularties" [...]
I hate the way Republicans get portrayed in the Western media, too.
In case you hadn't noticed, Delay hasn't been convicted of ANYTHING. He has been Indicted. (That means he convinced a grand jury that there might be enough evidence to justify actually holding a trial.)
If being indicted means he's guilty, it means Clinton was guilty when he was impeached by the House (the equivalent at that level) and they didn't need to hold the trial in the Senate that acquitted him. It also means you're guilty of anything the traffic cop says you did once he writes that ticket.
Delay was forced to step down by Republican party rules that won't let someone under indictment for a felony hold a leadership position. (If Democrats had had a similar rule for Presidents, Clinton would have had to resign and let Gore run the country when he was impeached.)
Delay's indictment was driven by a prosecutor who has a long track record of using his office to prosecute his political opponents in either party. Who had to go to multiple grand juries before he could find one that would actually indict. And who then had to go get ANOTHER indictment after it was discovered that the stuff he CLAIMED Delay did WASN'T A CRIME at the time he claimed he did it.
Meanwhile, the Western Media continues pushing their own propaganda templates: All (not just some) African leaders are corrupt. All Republicans are crooks/racists/male chauvanists. All users of peer-to-peer tools are thieves. All hackers are crackers/pirates/vandals. All rural/southern people are booze-swilling, negro-lynching, low IQ "good old boys". All legal gunowners are foaming-at-the-mouth rambos. All violent felons are just misunderstood kids who had a hard childhood. All US citizens refuse to do the jobs they USED to do for decent wages in now-long-gone unionts that "undocumented immigrants" now do for less than the minimum wage contractors are ALLOWED to pay someone who has a paper trail. And so on.
They use these templates because they sway minds and advance their political agenda. Look how they swayed your mind: You thought Delay was convicted and that his behavior was typical of Republican politicians, didn't you?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Parent is right, you don't need high technology to be competitive in global agricultural markets. Because of exchange rates, in most parts of Africa, they can produce more cotton, for example, per dollar input, than American farmers using complex machinery. The only reason we have so many American farmers when Africans can do it cheaper is because of big agricultural subsidies. If we would just end them, individual Africans (not corrupt dictators) would get a huge infusion of cash from their crops. (source: some game at libertyarcade.org, but I'm sure you can verify that elsewhere)
::rolls eyes::
So why do we are we subsidizing Africans out of business, when they can compete perfectly fine on their own? Oh, that's right: because if we didn't subsidize American farmers, we'd run out of crops.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531