I have just written an article on capitalism and anti-capitalism in terms of africa’s potential for development. It has been made feature story on African Loft, so please take a look here.

Excerpt:

Sub-Saharan Africa is perhaps the greatest example of market failure, indicating that capitalism is necessary but not presently sufficient for development, creating a need for a mixed economy approach. The question that ensues is what system best complements capitalism in a mixed economy.

This subject is not one always considered in terms of affecting Africa’s development. However, this issue is one that has had, and still has, hugely adverse affects on the potential for development within developing countries.

If you have ever run a small company in the UK, or have known anyone who has, you will probably be aware that the issues over Intellectual Property (IP) protection are of particular concern to small businesses. They often cannot afford the £1000-£2000 price tag of trade marking a company name, let alone the price of patenting an idea, which ‘starts’ from £1000.

So imagine how these kinds of prices affect a small business in sub-Saharan Africa.

But this problem actually has had more of an effect that of simply blocking potential innovators from creating wealth for their economies (please see my article on Capitalism for issues regarding innovation and wealth).

It almost goes without saying that whilst the small business struggles to protect its IP, the big businesses flourish, with the costs involved being insignificant in terms of the multi-billion pound enterprises.

‘Under the global patent system, intellectual property can only be produced by people in white lab coats employed by companies with huge amounts of capital at their disposal’ (McLeod 2007:53)

However, this also means that these large businesses can afford to buy out the smaller companies, or buy their ideas. Or, they can just steal them, as they are not protected. This is exactly what happens to knowledge and innovation within developing countries. Giant multi-national corporations have the ability to take those ideas and use them to profit themselves and subsequently the economies they represent, often the West, but recently also Asia.

So in developing countries, these MNC’s (multi-national corporations) have access to ideas and innovatio that are not protected, and in many cases, especially in the past, are held by people who either are not covered by the IP system (which will be discussed shortly) or do not have access to the IP protection system due to lack of money or knowledge.

A good example of this is giant pharmaceutical companies and the use they have made of tribal communities in rain-forest countries. The knowledge held by the people in these communities has been collected and refined over hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and the culmination is that the scientists from MNC’s can reduce their workload by an astonishing amount, changing success rates it is estimated, from one in ten thousand, to one in two.

‘Using the knowledge developed by indigenous people in developing countries increases by 400-fold a scientist’s ability to locate the plants that have specific medicinal uses… by consulting with local communities, bioprospectors can increase their success ratio from one in ten thousand to one in two in their quest to find active ingredients that can be used in medicines.’ (McLeod 2007:52)

Busy Lizzie plant - example of ‘biopiracy’ claim campaigners

However, one of the problems with protecting this knowledge passed down through communities from generation to generation is the practicality. In the society of the West the issues would be along the lines of: who actually owns the patent or who thought of the idea or made the discovery. The idea of community knowledge, or knowledge gained collectively over extensive periods of time is not one that fits into the Western system, and is therefore conveniently ignored.

‘[The system] ignores the collective nature of knowledge and denies communities patent protection… It would be as if someone came along and copyrighted the stories in the Bible…The written version of the testament could not exist without the effort of communities… The same is true of useful plants in Third World countries… Unfortunately, this is not an argument that makes sense in most established theories of economics – so, to paraphrase Woody Guthrie, the poor people lose again.’ (McLeod 2007:54)

In 2006, The Observer carried out some research, and discovered that the UK had allowed at least seven patents to be placed by companies on products that were found naturally in indigenous African plants. (Barnett 2006)

Another major issue, and one that has been particularly prominent in the last decade is that of AIDS and HIV drugs. The major pharmaceutical companies in the West have been providing drugs to places such as Africa, but have also been holding out on the patents they own on the drugs, trying to stop other companies or non-profit organisations making the drugs more affordable. Although in recent times there has been progress in this area, largely due to publicity, public outrage and a fear of profit loss by the companies, the damage that these companies have caused through these patent restrictions is huge.

‘…A price-cutting war …appears to have broken out among drug manufacturers, embarrassed by the outcry in recent weeks over the preventable deaths of millions and afraid of losing the potentially huge African market to copycat generics manufacturers.’ (Boseley 2001)

Zerit - Patented AIDS/HIV drug

Once the problem of lack of access to IP protection in developing countries and the power of MNC’s with access to IP has been considered, there is still another issue regarding this topic that hinders developing countries from developing. It is actually the reverse - that of IP laws being put in place within these countries. Whilst this on the surface may seem to possibly counteract the previously discussed problems, the reality of the situation has actually worsened the problems.

The IP laws that have been placed on these countries under a standard named ‘TRIPS’ (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), have been forced on the countries by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). TRIPS was not written, or even influenced, by any members of the public within the countries to be placed under the standard, and the consequences of the countries not agreeing were severe.

‘TRIPS forces developing countries to adopt intellectual-property laws that often run counter to their national interest, and if they don’t comply, they’re threatened with economic blackmail in the form of trade retaliations.’ (McLeod 2007:57)

The consequences of these IP laws are that it actually decreases people’s ability to innovate, as their markets are flooded with imported goods to which their local industries cannot compete. This is due to a lack access to inventions and knowledge, which would allow the countries to build up their resources, which would allow for a catch-up on other countries such as those in the West.

‘Strengthened intellectual-property laws in developing countries decreases the ability of local communities to gain access to technological information… As poor nations strengthen their intellectual-property regimes, their markets increasingly are dominated by imported goods, because their local industries can’t compete.’ (McLeod 2007:57)

It is important to consider than when countries in the past were developing, including western countries and particularly the US, their IP laws were extremely lax. The process that the West is blocking from developing countries is exactly the one that the West used to build its own economy. Unfortunately, it appears that the West is now stopping the developing world from innovating by manipulation of IP for their own gain.

‘…All developing countries had very weak patent and copyright laws. The United States in particular had extremely lax IP laws at the turn of the twentieth century, which allowed it to freely build up its cultural and scientific resources… Now the United States and other rich countries want strict enforcements of IP laws that ensure developing countries will remain uncompetitive within the globalized economy.’ (McLeod 2007: 60-61)

References

McLeod, K. (2007) Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property (2005 – Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity) USA: University of Minnesota Press

Barnett, A (2006) The Observer ‘The New Piracy: How West ‘steals’ Africa’s Plants’ [online] Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/aug/27/plants.theobserversuknewspages [date accessed: 24 February 2008]

No Author (no date) Taking the poisoned pill - how should the drugs companies play their part in combating the AIDS catastrophe in Africa? [online] Available: http://www.mallenbaker.net/csr/CSRfiles/aids.html [date accessed: 24 February 2008]

Boseley, S (2001) Embarrassed firms slash Aids drug prices [online] Available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4150318,00.html [date accessed: 24 February 2008]

My article on African Loft titled ‘Globalisation and Africa’s Development’… take a look at it here.

‘This article aims to look at what Globalisation is, and provide a brief overview of how Globalisation has changed the way our world works within developed and developing countries. This topic is an important one to be aware of when considering the situation within Africa - how it is developing and interacting with outside organisations whether they be governments, companies or charities.’

I have a new article up an African Loft, entitled ‘New Technology is Key to African Prosperity? Or is it?‘ The article raises the questions of how technology should be introduced, and what the priorities or emphasis should be. It looks at the terms ‘development’ and ‘technology’ and comments ‘It is in some ways a like the chicken and the egg argument – which comes first?’

I have had some great comments on this article, which was what I was hoping for - to get people’s opinions on this issue as they are extremely widespread. Please take a look, the article seems quite popular and the comments are worth a read!

An article I wrote recently for African Loft:

‘The field of user experience design (UXD) within software development is one that is gradually gaining recognition, especially within the developed world. It is broadly defined as the experience that a user has while interacting with a piece of software…Why is this relevant to African development? Over recent years there has been an increased interest, by some specialists in the field of UXD and emerging market development, in the fact that much of the development within areas such as Africa often fails. These specialists have been able to research and conclude that much of the failure, in terms of the technology itself anyway, can be attributed to the lack of application of the ideologies of UXD.’

Take a look here.

The recent dispute between OLPC and Intel over Intel’s involvement with the XO laptop has again brought the issues of the OLPC project much attention.From reading around the topic over the last week, there seem to be several points which are worthy of consideration, many of which have not been clarified by either OLPC or Intel.

The author wrote an article about the XO on 29th November 2007, and this new article aims to take stock of the situation a month and a half later, with the events that have recently occurred.

The Classmate PC

Firstly, a look at the Intel and OLPC debacle.

Intel partnered the OLPC project in July 2007, after months of conflict between the two developers. The addition of Intel to the project meant that the company joined the other 11 companies (inc. google and AMD) who were already partners. From a BBC article in July, it appeared that the intention was for Intel to keep selling the Classmate PC, OLPC to keep selling the XO with the AMD chip, but to have the back up servers using Intel technology, and consideration be given by OLPC to using Intel chips in the XO’s. There was also mention that new software developed would be XO and Classmate compatible. OLPC were quoted in the same BBC article as saying ‘I think we will end up with a family of products that run across a wide variety of needs. Intel will be part of that mix.’

At the very beginning of January 2008, Intel withdrew its support from the OLPC project.

The OLPC rationale, as said by Nick Negroponte, the head of the OLPC project, for this decision was:

‘The biggest single reason was that [Intel] were directly selling their Classmate laptop as opposed to having it be a reference design [for the XO].’ (source)

One of the events mentioned most frequently in support of OLPC, is that a salesperson for Intel in Peru apparently made derogatory remarks about the XO, in an attempt to stop the government buying XO’s and encourage them to buy Classmate PC’s instead.

Therefore, OLPC say that one of their other reasons for having a problem with Intel’s actions is that Intel were criticising the XO to promote the Classmate. If that is the case, it does seem underhand on the part of Intel, and likely goes against the agreement made.

‘OLPC head Nicholas Negroponte has lashed out at the company accusing them of being self-serving and undermining the OLPC programme.’ (source)

However, it appears, and has been mentioned on several articles, that this issue of defamation occurred (or at least has been accepted to have occured) in one case, with one salesperson, in one country. As Negroponte himself said in reference to the boss of Intel:

‘He’s got 100,000 people and he can’t control all of them.’ (source)

So perhaps judgement of Intel’s actual intentions to contradict any agreement in this manner should be withheld, as there appears to be no proof of this as yet.

The XO laptop

Intel’s rationale for the split, as explained by an Intel spokesperson, was that “OLPC had asked Intel to end our support for non-OLPC platforms, including the Classmate PC, and to focus on the OLPC platform exclusively. At the end of the day, we decided we couldn’t accommodate that request.” (source)

Having looked at explanations given by both sides, the issue of the Classmate PC, and competition itself, are seemingly the causes of the problem.

There seems to have been a difference in OLPC and Intel’s views as to how Intel were going to deal with the Classmate PC once the partnership had been made. Without knowing exactly what the agreement stated, it is hard to know what was actually agreed, however it is clear that there was at the very least either misinterpretation, or outright breaking of the agreement on at least one side.

From the BBC article from July 2007 quoted earlier, the impression given was that Intel would continue as before with its sales approach to the Classmate PC. There would be benefits to both sides in terms of cross-compatible software, and potentially Intel chips in the XO as well as the back up servers using Intel technology.

However, Negroponte’s statement quoted earlier, that the Classmate should have been used as a reference design rather than Intel ‘directly selling their laptop’, seems to contradict this.

OLPC’s request that Intel end support for it’s own product the Classmate PC, also appears to directly contradict this.

In summary of this point, the author wonders what OLPC actually thought Intel would do. Did they think Intel would forfeit profit from the Classmate PC and not be ‘self-serving’. Negroponte’s quote mentioned earlier that OLPC ‘thought [they] could move towards [the Classmate PC] being a reference design’, seems significant with the word ‘thought’. Does this mean that Intel never agreed to this for definite? The question seems to be, in short, did OLPC expect Intel to not act like a business?

It does not become apparent from researching around this topic, how exactly OLPC and Intel thought that the partnership could work. The mix of business and not-for-profit is unusual in a situation where both are competing. If we consider what would happen in a business to business situation, the partnership would never have happened. If we consider two not-for-profit enterprises, they would probably collaborate, because they could help each other. However, in this case, OLPC seem to have expected help from Intel, and expected to not only give nothing in return, but also that Intel would sacrifice their aims (of profit) for the OLPC cause.

In terms of the competition between the two, this issue again proves extremely contradictory. Firstly, the two clearly are competitors, otherwise this problem would never have arisen in the first place, and the reasons given by both sides for the split, whilst somewhat different both acknowledge that it was because of competition.

Negroponte again contradicted himself after he stated a few months ago:

‘From my point of view, if the world were to have 30 million” laptops made by competitors “in the hands of children at the end of next year, that to me would be a great success. My goal is not selling laptops. OLPC is not in the laptop business. It’s in the education business.’ (source)

This appears to be in contradiction to his recent approach of asking Intel to stop selling the Classmate PC.

As Negroponte said:

‘When I questioned [Intel] about selling laptops directly, Paul Otellini himself would say that one size doesn’t fit all. And we agree with that, of course. That wasn’t the issue. They cannot compete with OLPC and be a partner.’ (source)

So, although there appears that there was no part of the agreement that stated that Intel could not promote or sell the Classmate PC, OLPC knew they could not be both a competitor and a partner. So exactly what was Intel’s approach supposed to be?

In terms of this issue, perhaps the comment from Paul Otellini that one size doesn’t fit all, was misinterpreted by Negroponte when he stated that it meant that they were not competitors. Whilst consumers clearly choose products for different needs or wants, it does not mean that the products are not competitors. Just because the XO has an ideology of constructivist learning, does that mean that consumers will put the two in different categories? Or does it actually mean that consumers will still look at the product and it’s tangible benefits, over the intangible and theoretical education differences.

It seems to the author that perhaps one of the problems with the OLPC is that whilst they are correct that their approach (constructivism) would be beneficial especially in developing world countries (as it emphasises the users particular social situation (culture, language, logic etc) and encourages collaboration), they are not selling an idea in reality, they are selling a product. And they are selling a product that resides in a hugely competitive market (as discussed in an interesting nextbillion.net article), ruled by giant corporations, ruled by profit. What the author means by ‘in reality’ is not that OLPC are not trying to sell an idea, they clearly are, but that markets are ruled by consumers, not sellers, and maybe an idea that is not status quo in terms of education is not going to feature as a priority when considering one laptop versus another in a society where bridging the digital divide is generally considered a priority. Intel clearly supports the bridging the digital divide initiative, with its World Ahead program of Accessibility, Connectivity, Education, and Content, and it’s clear update and support system for their product.

In conclusion, it seems that the partnership was destined to fail, and that there are just too many differences in the way the two developers work. However, the author does sympathise with Intel (apart from the alleged underhand defamation of the XO), and considers that maybe the OLPC’s ideology based approach needs some sort of reality check on its integration of ideology into reality, without which it seemingly will not reach it’s potential.

If OLPC want to help education through their ideology, that is a good thing and the author does believe that the approach of constructivism could work. However, perhaps OLPC need to consider that the product first needs to be able to compete with the existing products in their market, to allow infiltration of their product. This would allow people to actually understand through first hand experience why the approach is beneficial, rather than OLPC relying on people to trust the theory of constructivism, and the XO interpretation of it, neither of which the buyers or users likely have experience or knowledge of.

Related articles of interest:
Wiki on Constructivism theory
New York Times article ‘Intel Quits Effort to Get Computers to Children’
Nextbillion.net article ‘Next Billion Customers? Intel’s Already a World Ahead’
Nextbillion.net article ‘Reality Check for the $100 laptop’

To continue the series of posts looking at the environment within which technology is developed for use in Africa, the issue of research and development is one that has significant impact.

There is substantial evidence that African governments in general do not give adequate funding or consideration to either the application of research and development groups, or to the use of any of the data or conclusions put forward by these groups.

‘Unfortunately, political leaders in African countries generally only pay lip-service to research; they seem to deliberately forget that research is a vital developmental tool without which governmental, business, and other important institutions in their respective countries can only depend on mere hunches when deriving their policies, decisions and priorities. Moreover, in the majority of cases [this issue is] compounded by the non-use of findings or recommendations of any research projects undertaken.’ (Kyambalesa 2004: 39)

It is generally accepted that without sufficient emphasis being put on this area, there will not be significant innovation, without which there will not be long-term development.

‘We know too well that the affluence being enjoyed today in such countries as Canada, Japan and the United States today is the direct outcome of a relentless quest for innovation and more advanced forms of technology, by individuals and institutions in such countries.’ (Kyambalesa in his book ‘Socio-Economic Challenges: The African Context’)

‘A great deal of research and development needs to be undertaken on a continuous basis if a country is to engender a steady flow of inventions and innovations.’ (Kyambalesa)

One area of R&D is the collection of statistical data. This area is considered particularly important, as shown by this statement, made by a professional in the field of R&D in Africa:

‘My interest and involvement is mainly around governments producing and using statistics for the betterment of their peoples, particularly for poverty reduction, and for those peoples to hold their governments to account. And the lack of and poor quality of data are significant constraints on this…Statistics are poor in developing countries…The reasons are that they are collected by government departments with all of the problems that that entails: low wages, poor equipment, bad management, almost zero non-wage running costs, reliance on donor funding, etc. ‘ (dec 9, 07)

A post on White African some months ago started me thinking about this issue. The article, entitled ‘What a map on drinking age can tell us about Africa’ shows how little data there is available on Africa in general. As the author says:

‘This map… represents a real problem that we face in Africa: the lack of local content (data) available in a digital format.’

The post goes on to suggest a couple of solutions to the problem, which involve the general population providing data online for others to use. Although I can see the author’s point, that other countries with more access to the web have a surplus of information provided by its citizens, I do not necessarily agree that this process would solve the issue of lack of data.

Data is something that needs to be consistent, referenced and trustworthy. One of the problems with the world wide web is that the data provided is not verified or trusted, just look at wikipedia to see that this is true - the fact that for an academic paper you are not allowed to reference from it says it all…

Therefore, it does really come down to the governments of these countries to gather and give access to the information. While private groups, companies etc, could gather this data as they do in more westernised countries, firstly they often charge for the information (so would need to believe they could sell it), and also these companies need a motive for gathering the data in the first place. As the R&D professional I spoke to said:

‘I think company decisions [on collecting statistics] are more likely to be based on considerations other than knowledge of market statistics: eg ease of doing business, low levels of corruption, low risk in getting capital and profits out, etc. As a result, significant foreign private sector investment is concentrated on very few developing countries.’

So, whilst it is recognised that governments need to emphasise research and development to help their countries in the long-term, it is a fact that currently:

‘…Developing countries only account for 6 percent of global research and development expenditures.’ (Kembrew McLeod in his book ‘Freedom of Expression’)

TradeNet is a service developed in Ghana by Mark Davies, a British business man who founded MetroBeat during the dotcom boom, and moved to Ghana in 2000. Development was funded by Mark Davies (US$800,000 investment), and also by aid agency USAID (approx US$200,000 investment).

The concept is comparible in some ways to Ebay - it is a place where people buy and sell goods online. TradeNet however is designed specifically for the market within Africa, targeting those who do not necessarily have access to the Internet, by giving them access to these services via SMS instead. It almost goes without saying that SMS is the most suitable way to implement a service such as this in Africa, with the statistics for mobile usage rising massively over the last few years, and predicted to rise further.

The service has been developed for the exchange of agricultural products, and allows users to submit information about products they have to sell, subscribe to allow users to request what kind of products they are interested in, and then allows the potential buyers and sellers to communicate directly to make a sale. The issue of facilities for farmers to buy and sell efficiently is one that has been widely identified as a need (for example, this blog post from the VeSel group).

The service is free to the buyers and sellers (submitting sale information and receiving SMS) and the sellers get to set up their own webpages with their information if they wish.

TradeNet’s Vision:

‘Our goal is to increase revenues for farmers and traders by making markets more transparent, and by shifting the balance of power slightly towards producers who suffer from the thinnest margins on what they trade. We also aim to assist projects and associations to serve their members with better and current information to sell more and buy better, and to market their products to a global audience. More recent tools enable producers to enhance their yields and find better buyers by managing their information networks more effectively.’ (source)

So, why is this service deemed to be so potentially successful? What makes it different from others such as Trade at Hand funded by the UN.

The business model behind TradeNet is one that it seems has not been implemented before. There are two areas of the project that are unique to TradeNet and it is these that make it a more viable long-term solution.

The first is that TradeNet not only make money from advertisements posted into the SMS that the users receive (good point regarding this raised in Trisignia’s article, asking how all that fits into one SMS?), but they also make money from selling data that it collects from the users (their personal info - telephone numbers, names, locations etc) to advertisers.

This concept of collecting and selling data is one that seems to have different interpretations from different people. The Economist’s opinion is:

‘The price of economic development may be junk mail by mobile phone.’ (source)

Whereas Trisignia’s article sees it as:

The service is…gathering valuable economic data about the marketplace it’s helping develop, and it’s leveraging its knowledge about the marketplace to sell more ads. (source)

Whilst both these articles recognise that the collection of the data helps to sell more adverts, the Economist see the data as enabling junk mail, whereas Trisignia see it a collecting valuable data. My question would be, exactly what data are they collecting? Because that question has not really been answered from the research I have done. How can that data be used in the future? Who can have access to it?

In short, there is a recognised problem in Africa that there is a lack of data available, and it seems that potentially this service may be helping that issue (White African blog wrote a post about it a while back). But I would want to know a lot more about what data, and how it could be used or accessed before making that judgement. (Although that is not to say that if the data is not going to be of direct benefit to Africa itself, but solely to advertisers, that it is a bad thing. It is still enabling development through enabling this service to run and therefore may be a necessary evil.)

The second area that gives TradeNet an edge over other comparative services, is that the company is making it’s software available for use by other projects. This means that the concept can be applied to other markets and uses, by other developers having the ability to create their own websites using the same back-end software. However, I have not been able to find a lot of information on this area on the web, but am going to do some investigating and will post again when I find out more about this.

Overall, TradeNet seems like a very positive step in development within Africa and I will be extremely keen to find out more about its progress. A comment that Mark Davies made on White African’s post made me even more positive, as it seems that his ideology and approach to the project have a solid foundation which is something I believe is crucial:

‘This must be a profitable venture, a service-based venture, a customer focussed venture, and it must unleash what i imagine is loads of commerce opportunities leading to wealth generation. I’m skeptical about technology ’solving’ things, but it’s one contribution to the debate.’

The impact that both slavery and then colonisation have had on Africa is still evident today. There are many issues with respect of this, but the ones I am considering are the stifling of innovation, forced migration, and lack of self-esteem.
Firstly, pre-colonial trade has been recognised as stifling innovation, which was perpetuated by the subsequent colonisation, as described by Kyambalesa in his book ‘Socio-Econonic Challenges: The African Context’:

‘There is general consensus that pre-colonial trade in both goods and humans… seriously undermined Africa’s potential for indigenous-based technological advancement…European industries contributed to the weakening of the indigenous skills, expertise and know-how of communities in Africa…It is widely held that…[this] partly led to the creation of conditions for persistent technological stagnation, retrogression and protracted dependency…

European colonialism…further suppressed creativity and innovation among indigenous African’s… [which] effectively precluded the potential for further improvements in existing indigenous technologies and the generation of new forms of technology.’

The diasporas created by slavery can be analysed in comparison to the migration in the Western world from Europe to Australia, Canada and the USA. However, the significant difference between the two is that the western migration took place after the countries had implemented and developed a strong economy. Africa on the other hand, had not, and the migration created many problems such as:

‘…Coercion and violence, and, as such, was disruptive to the existing, as well as the potential transformation of the, political, economic and technological facets of African life.’

This problem was only made worse by the subsequent colonisation, which did not allow for the problems to be addresses, and they therefore became further ingrained.

My last point is that of self-esteem, by which I mean the faith that a country’s leaders have in their own people. The era of colonisation has arguably left its mark through the pre-conceived notions of local people that foreigners are more proficient at their jobs than locals, which leads to dependence on foreigners for development, particularly in areas such as technology.

This appears to be made worse by the lack of education and training of the local people in the present. Moreover, it appears that it is largely this lack of education and training, which can be blamed on the governments of the countries, that is causing this lingering problem, and if the governments dealt with the issue of education and training, they would also solve this one.

‘[There is]… unwanted preference of some government leaders in Africa for foreign experts, particularly those leaders who have… claimed that locally trained experts are half-baked… But if this state of affairs is true, then it is the government leaders themselves who are to blame for not having [enabled]… training of citizens.’ (Kyambalesa)

The attitude and priority that a government gives to investing in infrastructure is one that is deemed necessary of consideration prior to any plans for infrastructure development, whether it be funded and developed by external or internal groups of any kind. The term used to describe this is the ‘absorbative capacity’ of a country, which is defined as the capability to use, maintain and develop an infrastructure. The requirements that are needed to allow a sufficient absorbative capacity are defined by retired managing director for global infrastructure investment at the UK CDC with the following quote:

‘There is lots of evidence that unless a country is spending 4-5% of its GDP on infrastructure development, they will not sustain any increase in GDP per capita.’

As an increase in GDP per capita is a key indication of a country’s increasing development, this appears to demonstrate that unless a country is spending the required amount to have an adequate absorbative capacity, there is little point in other external, or private groups developing an infrastructure, as it will not be able to aid development in the country in the long run, as the country will not be able to maintain or develop it further. This point seems particularly relevant to my post about the Connect Africa summit, and its outcomes, which are to develop an infrastructure within Africa. It also seems relevant in light of the East African Submarine Cable system agreed investment over the last few days (talked about in an AfricanLoft article titled ‘East African Submarine Cable System Receives a Boost).

In conclusion, to reiterate the importance of infrastructure investment, I want to show the diagram provided by Henry Kyambalesa in his book ‘Socio-Economic Challenges: The African Context’, of the symbiotic relationship created by infrastructure development: