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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.
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
Nestle's CEO states that "Africa does not need bread and water, but Butterfinger and Nescafe".
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
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.
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
Why can't African states bootstrap?
Maybe because of the aid we're giving to them:
"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"
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.
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
... 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.
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.
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.
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 :-)