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Africa - Offline And Waiting for the Web
The nytfeed provides us with an article about the current state of internet connectivity on the African continent. Only 4 percent of Africa's population has regular access to the internet, with most of those people living in North African countries, or the country of South Africa. This might seem like a market ripe for development, but the article explains that there are numerous difficulties involved getting an infrastructure project off the ground. "Africa's only connection to the network of computers and fiber optic cables that are the Internet's backbone is a $600 million undersea cable running from Portugal down the west coast of Africa. Built in 2002, the cable was supposed to provide cheaper and faster Web access, but so far that has not happened. Prices remain high because the national telecommunications linked to the cable maintain a monopoly over access, squeezing out potential competitors. And plans for a fiber optic cable along the East African coast have stalled over similar access issues. Most countries in Eastern Africa, like Rwanda, depend on slower satellite technology for Internet service." The good news is that, of course, progress is being made. Just ... slowly.
Yeah, the internet is one of the last things Africa needs.
I'd say that Social, Political, and Agricultural reforms are FAR more important to the average African than the good old WWW.
Africa is living proof that imposition of a foreign structure and hierarchy followed by throwing fists-full of aid money is not enough to improve the lives of a people.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
I heard, Nigeria is about to be connected. I received mail from my new business partner down there today. If all overdue money transfers go through well, fiber optic broadband for the people is just around the corner. Or so I'm told.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
Those parts that are connected are using it to fight corruption. Why just yesterday I got my third e-mail from the widow of a former government employee who needed my help to move some funds out of Nigeria so that the corrupt government couldn't get its hands on it. All they needed was my bank account number.
Truly enough, the traditional monopolies of the telecom companies are what's keeping the prices high up. To talk about the case I know best, the Moroccan telecom company IAM (Maroc Telecom) abuses its monopoly in so many ways that citing them would require a whole article. The people benefiting from that are, of course, the political and business elite. It wouldn't surprise me that the government is purposely keeping the masses off the Web to keep them blindfolded. Aware citizens would certainly demand change from the dictatorial regimes Africa's infested with.
Res publica non dominetur
A bit off-topic here: I also got educated in a way...that is...I realized that it is actually hotter in USA (Texas) than in some of these African countries that we think are way too hot. Temperatures never went above 86 degrees F, in the capital (Kampala)...compared to the 113 degrees in some parts of the US lately.
I love the irony that there is a thread also on the front page about the few OLPCs that are being sent to Africa are being used to surf porn. How can you rich westerners downloading your terrabytes of porn just stand by while the poor children of Africa are smacking it to dial-up?!
The internet may not be a top priority (food, medicine, etc). But, bringing the internet to people may help with these things. What if poor farmers could learn new agricultural techniques using the internet? Or what about spreading better disease awareness? Not to mention the potential freedom it could bring once people realize there are alternative forms of government. Instead of just throwing fistfulls of money and medicine at these countries, open internet access could help them start doing more for themselves. No, I wouldn't say bringing the internet to third world countries is the top priority, but it certainly won't hurt.
Yeah, my Internet service provider commercially exploits me every month. What a ripoff. I get high-speed Internet and they want to get paid for it!!?!?
Why would anyone in Africa want that? High speed internet -- who needs it! Someone might make some money by providing it to people. Money! They should work for love! They should make fiber optic cables out of their own altruism and power the routers with the self-satisfaction they get from doing good.
What evil thing will those exploiters do next? Commercially exploit hunger by selling good, healthy food at a small profit? Better to starve than allow such exploitation!
Most of the people who left Africa in prehistoric times did so accidentally, with pretty much no knowledge that they were in Africa to begin with--it was pretty much random human migration, nothing more. Also, how on earth has some thinly-veiled racist remark gotten modded up a 3, Insightful?
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
As a South-African citizen I believe that progress is finally taking place, I also believe that South-Africa specifically is on the verge of a dramatic internet boom. Hopefully, other sub-Sahara country's will follow, but also learn from our mistakes. Up until a few years ago Telkom, the monopolizing, mainly government owned telecoms operator was the only company in South Africa that was allowed, by law, to provide landline-based services and VOIP was illegal. Since the beginning of the new Government in 1994 the tale of South-African public internet-connectivity has been a long and tragic tale that has been told many times over. (check hellkom.co.za) But finally we are beginning to see some progress : Telkom now has a competitor, Neotel, and since their licensing, broadband prices started to fall dramatically, and it is continuing to do so. Telkom claims that it will have 1 million broadband subscribers by 2009 and for us, although most people are skeptical, that is a HUGE leap forward. With our growing economy and WIMAX just around the corner, proper broadband internet connectivity might just become one of the most successful tools for education, and most experts these days agree that education is the best weapon that we can use to fight our problems like HIV/AIDS and crime.
They're putting them in the hands of kids in Africa and elsewhere, but the OLPC and other pervasive technologies are going to be a big part of education-driven social and political reform in 3rd world countries. And that reform will have to take place before wired telephone and internet connections are available everywhere...
The fact that children in Africa are accessing porn is a good sign. It's f*cking AMAZING! Why? Because that means that for the first time these children are reaching out and interacting with websites and other people across the globe. If they are connected, then can receive information and they can SEND information.
Africa has huge issues with corruption. Africa has huge issues with genocide, rape, tribal warfare, dictatorships... and the list goes on. But the really great thing about technology is that while it can enable people to have guns and bullets and other tools of war, it can also give them cell phones and tiny laptops.
If more and more villages in Africa have access to technology that is not dependent upon the grid for power or for an internet connection (solar or manual power, satellite or some kind of ad-hoc network for Internet access), then that will enable communities to unite, it will enable people to be educated about relevant health, political, and social issues, and it will (hopefully) enable groups of spread-out people to push through reform of governments and pave the way for new infrastructure.
If you see a homeless person on the street, giving them a few cents might help them for a day, but the best thing you could do for them is to help them find the right path for them to take to earn money and become a contributing member of society.
There are a number of possible ways that we in the Western world could help starving children in Africa. The best way for us to help people in 3rd world countries is to give the individual people tools which enable them to organize their communities, reform their governments and companies, and build up their countries from the inside out. A generation of children communicating through small, portable, rugged computers seems like an excellent tool to jumpstart the organize-reform-build process.
And then when they are a first-world country they can have spiffy fiber-to-the-premises broadband for all, just like we do in America. Oh wait.
Hmmm... perhaps we need to start encouraging OUR kids to do some social/political reform as well!
coding is life
Africa has 200 million cellphone users (about the same as the number of US cell phone users, and 10x the number of fixed phone lines in Africa). To me that seems like the obvious answer for last mile connectivity. Some might hook those phones up to computers with bluetooth, but maybe they should just skip that step and use smartphones without computers. Already Africa is using cellphones to increase productivity, such as cell phone banking.
Well, I farm and I use the net all the time for information I need. Everything from finding the best deals on repair parts to looking up plants and diseases and treatments, various livestock care information (we have quite a variety now beyond cattle and poultry, just this past few weeks we added ducks, quail and now rabbits), there's always new seeds and plants to order, I'm doing the research on making our own biofuel now-picked up an old datsun diesel pickup today in fact, because I wanted one, finally found one in decent running shape for cheap-45 mpg!- and that will be the guinea pig for my home made fuel, and, etc, besides having the handy weather applet. Tons of stuff. Granted, there are workarounds like always for lack of web access, but it sure speeds things up considerably for me. A very rough average, but I probably use the net for something to do with this profession 5 times a week or so. I'd frikken *hate* to have to drive to town to go to the library for this. Frankly, I don't even like going to town, our main goal is to get as independent as possible so we don't have to except maybe 4 times a year or something. We live rural because that is where we like it better, the net helps us stay here and stay in the black.
Ya, we have stacks of farm mags, it still isn't the same as having a global library and informational resource at your fingertips. And that's leaving out the economic and political news. I do shortwave, too, always have since floor model tube jobs that doubled as living room heaters, but the net is like instant what you want when you want it, your schedule, not some one else's schedule.
Bottom line is, it's a fantastic tool if used as a tool. And if it is affordable and available, it will help our poorer brothers over in who_know's_where_istan as well. They'll find uses for it.
Wow, Troll over something obviously funny and almost neccesary.
Anyways, it isn't limited to the internet. I started getting phone calls that would ring once or twice and then hang up. The numbers were my own Cell Phone number with a Nigerian country and area code in front of it. I didn't find this out until after I got a letter from the government.
I had freaked out and called my cell provider and they claim they didn't even have a record of me getting a call at the times it was on the phone and then said someone must be playing games with a computer. I didn't like that answer and was thinking that some terrorist cell was cloning and using my phone and calling over seas or something. So I called the homeland security tip line and told them about it so I didn't get one of those all expenses paid trips to club gitmo for a couple of years by accident. I recieved a letter saying it was a scam where If I called back, I would get placed on hold for something like $50 to $100 a minute.
I work in Angola, in telecoms/networking. I've been working with the guys in various African countries for the past 10 years, but I've only been working in-country for the past 18 months.
I expected the worst when I got here, and I wasn't dissapointed. Everything they say in the article about lack of satellite capacity and high costs of SAT-3 is true. We're just about to pay a company $1MM Euros/yr. for 6Mb of bandwidth out of here - compare that to your home DSL line. The in-country infrastructure is a disaster, and it's unlikely to improve soon. Just imagine what would happen if you put Texas through 30 years of civil war, then gave it 6 years to rebuild infrastructure. It's unrealistic to think everything will change overnight.
I hear the "fix the society first" bit a lot, including from local government officials. I see it a little differently. I'd like people to look at Internet connectivity in the same way that they now look at mobile phone usage. The main reason that mobile phones have been so popular in Africa is that the infrastructure is such a mess. Now, putting wired infrastructure in the ground in many citys just isn't a big priority - everyone has a mobile phone.
I think the same thing is possible with Internet connectivity and leveraging projects like OLPC. The society can leap-frog over the issues of lack of school books, teachers, and maybe even brick-and-mortar schools. Wireless can work where DSL will never be. Books are delivered online, and maybe even teaching. Rechargeable, battery powered devices are mandatory.
Still, that means that the main issue of wider connectivity needs to be solved. Satellite capacity over Africa is extremely limited, but getting better. We're unlikely to have another SAT-3 for quite a while.
Greetings. I live and work in Africa (http://therandymon.com/content/view/104/59/), so I happen to know a little something about the way things are. Frankly, I don't see the scandal in the fact that Africa doesn't have good access to the Internet, and reject this article on the grounds that (a) as usual, the story is focused on lack of infrastructure, which is not the correct focus, and (b) as usual paints a bleaker picture than neecssary.
It's true service is slower and more expensive but in the capitals and in major cities there is more than enough to go around. In Benin there is dial up service for about $15 per month plus the cost of the phone call, ADSL service in the capital for about $75 a month for 256/128, and if that's not good enough you can pay more (up to $200/month) for greater bandwidth. It's more expensive than I'd like and the service is occasionally down for service, not to mention phone line trouble, saturated networks, and so on, but that's another story. The point is, I've got Internet in the capital (Cotonou, if you care) and it's essentially satisfactory. Inland in places like Burkina Faso and Mali they've got internet connections as well, but they are more expensive and the bandwidth isn't as good, since the network goes through the coastal nations - Ghana, Togo, and Benin. The big agencies - UN, embassies, major companies working in the region - also have available satellite internet at much higher prices.
Lack of infrastructure is not the problem. Lack of a market willing to pay for the service that demands that infrastructure is, and as the market develops the infrastructure will suddenly seem like a worthwhile investment. You don't get Africans connected by building a bunch of equipment and hoping they show up. The second factor is regulation, which is clearly an area where African governments have some growing to do. To build a telecommunications sector (and make no mistake about it, if you put in cable and connections you're building the sector) you need effective government regulation. Unfortunately that has to happen from within, and no multinational company can effectively impose good government (and thus good government oversight) on a nation. The article's story about Kigali is a perfect example of this point.
In the meantime, where's the scandal? I have friends and colleagues who live in small villages inland, not in the capital. Every one of them has a hotmail/yahoo.fr/gmail account, and when they need to use the Internet they go to a cybercafe for a quick hour or two. That fits their budget and works well.
If you want to connect Africa, help educate the people so they can improve their own economic situation. They will form the basis for a stronger economic market for these services, and the system will be sustainable. Impose on these growing countries the infrastructure before they are ready to sustain it and you will just perpetuate the development myth.
Before leaving this post, I highly recommend you read White Man's Burden by William Easterly, if the idea of development interests you. After 40 years of investing in growing countries we know a lot more about it than before, and there are many lessons to be learned.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Ghana Telecom is now destroying competition with their new DSL service. I just got it hooked up to the school im doing a project for and it is not what was advertised as far as speed goes, but is a major improvement over the previous 600 USD a month 64kbps ISDN over radio connection from Africa Online (perhaps the worst provider in Ghana at the moment). We currently pay 90 USD a month for about 300kbps DSL (supposed to be 2mbit, but we aren't in the capital where 2mbit is working, we are 150miles north or so where the service just came out).
Yes we are on the west coast, and are a former British colony with natural resources, but the problems discussed in the article are pretty much standard anywhere in Africa. Lets take a very advanced technology and impliment it before we have roads, reliable water or reliable electrical power. I arrived in Ghana 1 month after load shedding started (due to either poor management/lack of maintenance of the Akosombo Dam, or slight drought conditions the year before), the school I am at has expanded a bit more than it should have, so we had some water problems (although the whole village has had water problems, due to boreholes not being dug deep enough), so I experienced first hand both sides of Mr. Wyler's plight.
Africa Online is the most horrible service I can imagine, their squid transparent proxy cache server has craches several times, their DNS server's barely function, and their routing is faster when their main fibre connection fails and the backup satellite connection is switched to. They have been here for 10 years or so, and charge customers through the nose as they were the only game in town. Now they have a huge amount of competition and will learn very quickly they need to upgrade, repair, and plan new network expansion.
On the other side, getting Ghana Telecom DSL was a massive pain, 3 months after being told "Next week" they would come for installation (this is common, it is referred to as Ghana Maybe time, or GMT for short). But when we finally got it, the service isn't up to spec, but just by having a decent (new) network, and working DNS servers it is a thousand times better, and they do seem to be attempting to fix their problems. Also, saving over 500 USD a month is very nice, over 6000 USD a year.
Now my computer lab has the best internet connection in probably 100 miles or more, and is offering something not really available before to the children. Google Earth functions now, kids can download videos of their favorite hip hop artists on youtube, and can upload art/other stuff to community sites like flickr/deviant art/etc. There is definitely a tech boom here in Ghana.
Now if only I didn't have electricity off tomorrow from 6am to 6pm.
Sleep is for the weak.