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CES: Bringing Electronics Assembly and Distribution to Central Africa (Video)
"When you think about electronics manufacturing, you probably don’t automatically think about Africa. You are about to meet somebody who would like to change your mind about that. His name is Tony Smith, and he is the CEO and Founder of Limitless Electronics." That's how Slashdot Editor Timothy Lord introduces this video. And that's what it's about: Former Microsoft employee Tony Smith at CES 2013 talking about his efforts to bring electronics assembly and distribution to his native country, Cameroon, through his company, Limitless Electronics.
If this guy worked on Windows 8 by chance. That would make a lot of sense.
The poor people in east and south Asia aren't as desperate as they once were and are starting to demand better treatment and higher wages and the right to organize unions and such. The poor people in central Africa, on the other hand, are quite desperate for work, and the governments have things enough under control that it's relatively safe to set up a factory.
That's one of the effects of globalization: Manufacturing jobs move towards desperation, because that's the cheapest place to hire people and bribe the government into doing the company's bidding.
I am officially gone from
Africa needs to have a significant boast to their standard of living to reduce war, poverty, unwanted births, death, and disease.
China, still has bad working conditions yes, but as a whole being a chinesse citizen today is insanely better than being a citizen 30 years ago. Where before an average farmer never had a dirt floor and no more than $10 in his whole life in addition to an average food stable of just one serving a meat a week shared with rice for the whole family to tiles on their floors, meat 5 times a week, $100 if you saved for a good month, with huge metropolitan changes like cars, highways, and modern 21st century living.
Yes, working 14 hours a day in a factory really does suck. But that is the first process to move up economic wise and everyone benefits.
Africans are pirating ships in Somalia not because they want to be thugs, but because there is no money to buy food. Africa has more natural resources than China and could be even more powerful than China or India if they get their shit together with infrastructure and education.
If it were not for wars, lack of infrastructure like electricity/roads, lack of education, Africa would be rich and China still poor. China has the benefits of educated citizens and infrastructure with a large population of potential consumers. It is not just because they are willing to work for cheaper.
Africa has the resources. China has some rare earth metals and some fisheries and that is about it.
http://saveie6.com/
If you would actually listen to what the man says, he highlight that ther flagship tablet is one of the few in the industry that gives the user a choice in what OS they want loaded on their device. Of which one is Ubuntu (!).
Moreover, their products aim is to be high quality and affordable as apposed to just being as cheap as possible.
And please, this is exactly the kind of thing that needs to happen to bring "the last" continent out of it's poverty. It should be applauded. And what the hell is up with all the racism and calling names (trolling, but nevertheless, wtf).
It will be interesting to see what the price will be for the tablet. I am quite interested having Linux on my devices instead of Android or Windows, which both have privacy issues and lack of total user control of the device.
Devices like this. is something that other continents need as well. It hope this starts new trend which helps to grow market share of (pure) Linux devices.
Chinese labour costs are rising. It's time to move to a new country.
The only problem is the lack of existing infrastructure. You need mines, factories, transport and power.
Don't get me wrong: I view this tendency more as a sad fact of life, not a moral evil.
Now, what is in my view a moral evil is that while Africa has all sorts of valuable natural resources, very few of those resources are owned by Africans. The effect of that is significant: In, say, a South African gold mine, for $1000 worth of gold ore, the miners might get $1, his bosses gets $3, the government of South Africa gets $1, and investors in New York and London get $995. Now, getting that $5 into the South African economy improves the economy of South Africa, but it also sucks out $995 worth of natural resources that can't be replaced. It's one of the remnants of European colonialism that is not likely to go away anytime soon.
I am officially gone from
Africans are pirating ships in Somalia not because they want to be thugs, but because there is no money to buy food.
I think you'll find that the Somalian pirates used to be fishermen - there was lots of food untill industrial fishing fleets came from the west and asia and sucked all the fish up.
Watch this Heartland Institute video