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Bridging the Digital Divide In Uganda, By Freight
jtrust27 writes "Slow or non-existent Internet connections have meant that the people of Uganda have not been able to harness the many advantages of the online economy. This social and economic exclusion of the poorest of the poor was further accentuated by the impossibility for a Ugandan to obtain a credit card or make PayPal payments — a simple requirement to be able to pay for goods and services online. Most merchants and payment gateway providers automatically block all credit cards from Africa, and it is not possible to get a verified PayPal account in many African nations."
Now, a Ugandan company called EasyPayUganda is helping people sidestep these restrictions, by allowing customers to make online payments by proxy in order to pay for services and goods. EasyPayUganda is also providing a logistics solution, forwarding customers' shipments to Uganda, as most online merchants will not ship to Africa.
People in the USA have the weird experience of public schools going on about Africa having wonderful culture and natural resources, then as adults slowly realizing that the place is totally fucked up.
> and sold the item to you with a markup. That's how it worked back in the days of sailing ships.
It is the same with Paypal and credit cards with the difference that the merchant pays the markup.
In the end, merchants adjust their prices to compensate for the paid markup. The consumer always end up paying in any business model.
As I stated in another post, I hope those people are reliable and that they won't abuse anybody because of their positioning. Given the fact that some people complain about the way Paypal behaves, it seems like a reasonable wish to make.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1630376&cid=31971982
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Dear Mr./Mrs.,
First, we must solicit your strict confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential.
We represent the poor people of Uganda and we need your help with some online transactions. We have created this site to allow the poor people of Uganda to take part on the online economy, but worldwide distrust won't allow us to continue.
We have got the ammount of two Million Dollars, but we need the help of an american citizen to receive the money. After careful research we have chosen you to help us.
As part of this business you will be allowed to keep one quarter of the total money, while using the rest to buy the goods for our clients. We only need 2 thousand dollars for legal fees to transfer the money, which will given back at the end of business.
Yours Faythfully,
Dr Clement Okon
It's interesting that people complain how Africa is a third world country and how we should help them, but interestingly everyone sets artificial restrictions on them and restricts them from the other world.
It's not that interesting, because you are talking about two different sets of people. The people upset about poverty in Africa are not the same people who run financial institutions that block Africa from global participation.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I've been there several times, and Uganda - like most former colonies in Africa - isn't so much fucked up as it was fucked over. Faced with the lack of a middle-class (since of course they didn't want to stoop to being middle class, nor did they want any of the Africans to rise to that status) the British empire imported Indians by the score. Post-independence, there was all kinds of unrest, eventually culminating with Idi Amin kicking out all the Indians, which of course failed to solve anything because it wasn't like the locals were ready to take over their jobs or anything. Cue another 10-15 years of unrest, a couple coups, Museveni lets the Indians back in, they go right back to business and become more wealthy and powerful than ever, and aside from lingering problems with transboundary rebel groups in the far northwest near the borders with Sudan and Congo, the place has actually been relatively peaceful and stable for 25 years.
Unfortunately, given the history 1960-1985, development was starting from a pretty bad position - but it's been developing crazy-fast. The African Union's NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development) project has been pushing good governance, anti-corruption, computers in schools and all that stuff, and Uganda's national planning authority just released a 5-year development plan, written by development professionals without consulting the parliament (which the parliament are pissed about, hehe!), and emphasizing electrification, high-tech industry, mass transit, and a bunch of other good ideas.
Of course, Uganda's still less developed than anywhere in the US except for maybe some back-woods hillbilly shack - my fiancée helped with editing the 5-year plan, and her apartment, just a few km from downtown Kampala, is at the end of a dirt lane, off another dirt lane, off a dirt road, off a paved road. And it's more surprising if the power stays on all day than if it doesn't.
The good news, though, is that thanks to some development aid partners (like Norway), it's being given development options other than "get as much oil as possible and build your economy around it" (a.k.a. the US-China model). Norway is huge on hydropower, and Uganda has a lot of potential in that area. Straddling the equator, there's plenty of solar potential too. So there's hope, at least, to preserve some of the environment, which of course is being exploited through eco-tourism.
As far as getting goods to Uganda, though... sheez, this is dead on. Never, ever try to mail anything there. I don't know whether it's customs or the postal service that's corrupt, but it's like mailing things into a black hole. I think one or two postcards I sent might have made it through. Even Express Mail doesn't get any respect. If you want to get anything to anyone, it's FedEx/DHL or bust.
The goods sold in stores have pretty much been shipped overland from Mombasa (in a barroom, drinking gin *weeps for Warren*). Former UK colony, so they're all UK-spec electrically. In '05 or '06, a clock-radio you'd pay $19 for at WalMart cost $100 due to all that shipping. Thankfully, things have gotten a little better now, but an unlocked iPhone 3G S is still $1200+. Oh, yes, there are iPhones. There's an Apple authorized reseller right downtown in Kampala, although there's an unhealthy lag for them to actually get each new revision of things in-stock. Some of the bigger regional supermarkets even carry US brands.
But credit cards... yeah, they're a novelty over there. Ugandans hardly use credit. A young man will bust his ass to get through school, then work like crazy and live on almost nothing, until he saves up enough cash to buy land and build enough of his dream house to live in. They're insanely hard-working. So basically you either meet people who have nothing (because they're working and saving) or you meet guys who are 25 and already have a large house, nice car, etc. Not so much in-between. And not on credit.
4 years ago, you could walk aroun
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
How in the world would another nation or continent regress simply because conditions in Africa improve? I guess you could make an argument that there are limited resources in the world - but I seriously doubt that another developing or developed nation would suddenly plummet into the stone age simply because Africa is catching up with the rest of the world. Whether or not the rest of the developed world wants to share any of its resources with Africa is another story, however... how many Americans would give up their oversized homes and cars and reduce their ridiculous consumption of meat, water, and so on just so that some far-off distant nation can fare a little better?
A programmer is a machine for turning pizza into code.
Now the tables have turned:
I am an American prince and I need your help to access my millions of dollars being held in a bank, and in return I will let you keep 10%.
All you have to do to get you share of the money is to wire me $3000 for the unlocking fee at the bank.
Patent nonsense.
Most regions of Africa don't need food aid.
Most regions of African don't have ongoing armed conflict.
So you campaign for open borders?
Most of the inhabited regions of Africa are not deserts. Things grow.
Africa has problems, but it is not the starving hell-hole you seem to think it is.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Anyone who complains about foreign companies not "helping Uganda" or Africa in general by denying sales transactions with them has obviously never seriously ran an online business. I ran a moderate ecommerce site (google PR6 at the time) and during the 5 years I had it I received about 10 fake or bad orders from Africa daily. Of course, they were all from Nigeria and wanted ridiculous shipping requests (mail to lagarda bus stop (or something like that)) and for exorbitant amounts (40 DVD players) with insane shipping charges (international UPS expedited!). You can't blame a merchant for not wanting to take the risks of dealing with Africa. One bad experience can cost you quite a bit and credit card companies will never side with the merchant. If you want to blame somebody, blame the credit card companies who place most of the blame on merchants for any fraud that occurs.
We had war-torn countries before. Europe was in a bad mess after WW2. My own country, Holland had to build up from mass starvation in the last winter of the war to a modern western nation. But that did NOT happen at once. Dutch living standards took decades to reach American living standards. And in those decades, people did NOT have huge American cars or huge American style homes or living on credit. The post war years were spend working hard and saving lots and then buying modest AND domestic.
And that seems to be missing in your story. Granted, the working hard is there, but then they buy a iPhone and a big car... understandable, everyone else in the world has it, but it means local industry can't develop. If you buy a Chinese clock radio instead of an african windup clock, then that African factory can never develop to build clock radio's. Why do you think the tiger economies were so hot on producing cars, their own cars? Because if they had just bought American, they would never have developed their own economy long term.
The African economies/cultures seem to be close to cargo-cults.
A lot is made of the fact that Africa is skipping the landline and a lot of westerners think this is a great thing. WRONG.
What pacified the west? The telegraph. Telegraph lines were an essential part of conquering America, they had to be kept safe and so as a side result, any land with a line on it became safe. Same with the rail lines. As the network spread, the lands around them were made safer and became safer.
If landlines can't be installed in Africa because it is not safe, then installing a wireless network is NOT dealing with this safety issue. It doesn't matter wheter you attribute the taming of the west to train, the postal service or the telegraph. The building of these networks and the need to protect this network protected the lands around it.
When something is beyond the pale. What does that mean? Hignfy refreshed my mind on the recently, it refers to the old european punishment of putting wrong do'ers beyond the city limits. Not so long ago, being outside a city and its protection was a serious form of punishment.
If you can understand the difference that has come over europe were we can't even see why that would be a bad thing, we leave the city for FUN!!!!!, then you can't understand how Africa where lawlessness reigns is missing an essential foundation, an infrastructure for its development.
It is like building a skycraper on sand. It might look the part, but an essential part is missing, the foundation.
While this new service might sound like a good idea, I think it is very wrong indeed. It is shipping in western goods and skipping the development of the local economy, industry, infrastructure to truly support it. That you mention you need to use FOREIGN postal services to ship anything is telling enough.
The postal service is the most fundemental service of any country. Without it, nothing else can function. There is not a single developed country that did not have its own postal service and most still do.
Skip it and you are a cargo-cult, completly dependent on a foreign entity, who may bear you no malice but simply might one day not come around anymore. An African buying an iPhone at inflated prices is NOT a sign of progress.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
To promote aid in most regions of Africa, you have to be prepared to deliver that aid against armed resistance, or accept that that aid might be coopted to feed the army that oppresses people who need aid. That's not really helping.
I've worked in medical/humanitarian for the better part of a decade, mostly in Africa, in some of the most active conflict areas. I have worked in Darfur, eastern Congo/the Kivus, northern Uganda, etc during some of the peaks in violence and insecurity. I have never delivered aid against armed resistance, nor do I know anyone or any organization who has. That's movie/TV stuff, not reality.
Second, of course aid will be coopted, redirected or siphoned to various armed groups. That is the nature of armed groups, to take by force.
The "not really helping" comment - actually, the entire paragraph reveals your naivety - it is impossible to provide aid without a diversion, either into the grey/black markets, pockets of armed factions, open markets.
I really do want to help these folk, and I can think of no better way to do that than to repeat the message of the great (and missed) Sam Kinnison: Move to where the food is. You're in a freaking desert where things don't grow. MOVE.
An ignorant joke that only makes sense or is funny when the listener has no knowledge of the subject.
The mostly heavily populated areas of Africa are temperate. Humans evolved on the African high plains. Think about it.