TNJ - January 2002 - Feature Story - Africa Makes Strides in Technology

January 2002

Africa Makes Strides in Technology

By Jim Krane

Africa is slowly catching up with the world’s technological revolution. In a cybercafe in Nairobi, Kenya, on a street thumping with rap-blaring minibuses, 22-year-old Alex Njau pecks quietly on a keyboard. A clean-cut man in a crisp white shirt, Njau makes a living designing Web sites in a country where most folk scrape by on 50 cents a day.

In a cybercafe in Nairobi, Kenya, on a street thumping with rap-blaring minibuses, 22-year-old Alex Njau pecks quietly on a keyboard. A clean-cut man in a crisp white shirt, Njau makes a living designing Web sites in a country where most folk scrape by on 50 cents a day.

“I’ve been able to get a job in three different places,” Njau said. “Without the knowledge of computers, I would be miles behind. Life would be hard.”
On July 20, leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized countries convened their annual summit in Genoa, Italy. A top agenda item was a plan seeking to copy the Nairobi programmer’s story billions of times over.

Through his Internet connection, Njau defies the so-called “digital divide”, the technology gap that separates the computer-literate rich from the world’s poorer masses.
Njau learned his trade through African Virtual University, a Washington, DC-based charity that beams technology classes to 15 African countries.

Although the G-8 leaders are expected to endorse the 23-page plan that endeavors to narrow the global technology gap, the issue isn’t free of controversy.

At last year’s G-8 summit in Okinawa, Japan, the group established the Digital Opportunity Task Force, or DOT Force, to prepare the report. Protesters responded by burning computers, saying, in effect, that the world’s poor needed breakfast, not PCs.
The critics found an unlikely ally in Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who said in October that the poor would be served better by technology that brought clean water, electricity and health care.

Backers of the DOT Force report, completed in May, insist that developing countries cannot afford to feed their hungry without adopting information technology and reaping gains in productivity and living standards. In richer countries, productivity has already pushed living standards so far ahead that a permanent gap is in danger of forming.
“The global economy is ruthless about selecting winners and losers,” said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), one of the report’s co-sponsors. “If you want to attract investment, integrating information technology into your economy is critical.”

The DOT Force is long on ideas, but short on funding. Thus far, the only significant pledge came from the Japanese government for $15 billion. Some analysts doubt that other countries will replicate Japan’s largesse.

Without identifying a source of capital, the report urges poorer countries to use satellite and wireless technologies to skip the development stages that richer nations went through when they strung wires along streets and through buildings.

Thus connected, technology proponents say, the poor can improve their lives with Internet access to crop prices, health care and agricultural loans, along with markets for wood carvings and textiles.

The technology could also serve as an incubator for local entrepreneurs such as Kenya’s Njau to fill local business niches.

The task requires more than simply sending PCs to poor countries. More than a third of the world’s population lives without electricity. A larger percentage has never used a phone. Most people, even with proper equipment, cannot dial an Internet service provider without long-distance tolls.

Furthermore, most people cannot read or write. Given a computer, they couldn’t type an e-mail message or read news online.

To get the process rolling, the DOT Force report urges countries to deregulate and privatize their telecoms to spur investments in cheap networks that will reach the world’s poorest regions.

The report also recommends computer training for literate people and voice-recognition software for the illiterate. It asks developing countries to change laws to lure foreign investors and local entrepreneurs.

Proponents believe that technology will create jobs and ultimately help people live longer by providing information about preventing AIDS and other diseases.
The UNDP sent teams of consultants to Bolivia, Tanzania, South Africa and Romania to assess particular needs in technology, training and legislation.To implement the recommendations, Brown said that the UNDP will seek donated equipment and staff from technology firms in the U.S. and elsewhere.

But poorer countries aren’t completely bereft of Internet technology. India, China, Brazil and Mexico brim with computer programmers and technology firms. Although much of their efforts have focused on products for the developed world, an increasing amount is tailored for poorer customers at home.

Companies based in poor and rich countries are beginning to see new customers. Hewlett-Packard Co., whose chief executive sits on the DOT Force board, is building community Internet centers in Senegal and Costa Rica for profit, not for charity.
In India, a group of academicians have developed a handheld computer, the Simputer, aimed at village dwellers. At $200, the machine can be shared by an entire village, with individual accounts accessed by smart cards. It also lets illiterate peasants compute using voice commands.

Across Africa, where few can afford PCs at home, Internet cafes have sprung up. Nairobi counts dozens. In wired countries such as Senegal, the cafes have spread beyond cities into villages.

“You don’t even need to know how to read, you can go to a cafe and someone will type for you and send the message,” said Microsoft’s Jacques Bonjawo, author of a forthcoming book on the Internet in Africa.

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, a pair of Somali immigrants in the U.S. have set up a wireless Internet gateway that allows users to bypass the country’s unreliable phone lines. With $7 million, their company bought service from four satellites and connected 40 companies. It hopes to expand to six other African countries, but like other new companies, it needs money to continue.

Craig Smith, a former U.N. advisor on technology issues, complains that the plan places too much pressure on developing governments to use their own funds.

While DOT Force was the brainchild of the G-8, the body has equal representation from developing countries, charities and private companies. Zoe Baird, president of the Markle Foundation in New York, and a member of the DOT Force board, hopes critics will understand that.

“Much of the opposition to globalization is played out by people who feel their voices are not part of the process,” Baird said. “This body brings these voices into the process.”

Send a Network Journal Greeting Card With Music to a loved one or friend. In preparing to celebrate Black History Month (February) here in America, the theme of our greeting cards for the next two months will feature famous people of color from the last century.

The music to accompany the cards are Motown and Reggae songs.