I have a new article published on African Loft looking at the netECHO technology developed by InternetSpeech.

The article is available at: www.africanloft.com/audio-internet-%e2%80%93-netecho

Extract:
‘With the release of the $20 phone, the ‘People’s phone’, and the massive success of mobile phones over the last decade of mobile phones in Africa, perhaps this latest development has the potential to connect people to the web who would not have access otherwise. People will be able to access the web without the necessity of more expensive technology such as computers…’

I recently wrote an article about social business for African Loft, which followed on from my article discussing capitalism and anti-capitalism.

Please see the article here.

Extract:
‘Social business is a system which, put simply, is exactly the same as any profit-led business, except for one element – rather than the motivation being profit, the motivation is to help the people the business caters for…perhaps the foundations of social business make it a real potential new system. The fact that it builds on the current system by recognising both the benefits and downfalls of capitalism, and the fact that it accounts for human nature do seem to make it a strong idea.’

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.

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!

Following my post about the West African conference on Satellite broadband, and the recent launch of Nigeria’s first satellite, where I looked at the aims of the conference, the main one being that satellite broadband is apparently considered more cost-effective than other forms, I have just read this post by David Muwanga on AfricanLoft regarding broadband infrastructure development for East Africa via an undersea cable. In the article, a member of IPS, the Industrial Promotion Services, one of the backers of the project, states:

‘The estimated cost of satellite bandwidth on a monthly lease ranges from $1,700 to $6,000 per megabit/second per month. The same bandwidth on the SEACOM cable will be approximately 20% of current costs.’

Now, clearly this contradicts the information that supports the satellite conference which is be taking place today.

What concerns me is not really that I don’t know the answer as to which is going to be cheaper, but that there is such apparent confusion (or disagreement, or lack of communication…) about the matter within the companies who are developing these projects.

Clearly, there is no immediate problem with having both modes operating at once, but which one is going to be cheaper? Not just in terms of immediate cost, but in terms of long-term costs, with issues such as maintenance, further development and speed considered?

Google have placed a representative in South Africa, in preparation for the launch of ‘Google South Africa’ next year.

According to the representative, Stafford Masie, Google recognise that Africa will soon be using the web to a much larger extent, and they clearly want to be a part of it. Apparently, they also believe that the mobile phone use can be productive for them, with the release of Android, Google’s open source OS for phones.

Although currently it appears that Google is concentrating on South Africa in particular, the effects that this could have will surely spread further afield, and will perhaps encourage other foreign companies to consider spending more time and money on African development of technology if they believe it will be profitable, as well as encouraging the development of African-based companies.

It seems that this move is one of the more promising, if a company like Google believe that it is worth their time investing in Africa, then it seems that maybe there really is going to be further positive development of technology and communications. Maybe it will also encourage appropriately developed technology, if representatives are actually being posted to the continent where they will gain inside knowledge on what the area needs.

Along with the satellite broadband that has been launched by Nigeria’s new satellite (see my post on the satellite conference in West Africa), perhaps there will be a viable solution to affordable Internet in the not too distant future.

It will be interesting to watch what Google are up to over the next few months until Google South Africa’s release.

Relevant links:
Google’s Android OS
Matthew Buckland’s blog post

The Connect Africa Summit was held a couple of weeks ago in Rwanda. Over 1000 people took part, and it seems like the results are potentially quite promising.

The driving force behind this Summit, which is one of a series planned across the world, is the need to speed up the development process to attain the goals defined at the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003.

The key point seemed to be that it has been established that ICT must take the lead in development of Africa as a whole, and that broadband is the next big step in this process. The opinion that this can be successfully implemented by a estimated date of 2012 is drawn from consideration of the growing mobile phone market, which is currently surpassing any other country in terms of growth rate (and has been for several years), and had nearly 200m subscribers in Africa at the end of last year.

Funds and Aims Promised:

An estimated total of US$55,892,750,000 has been promised.

US$50b from mobile operators who have committed to increasing connectivity to interconnect all African cities, and strengthen the connection to rest of world, with 90% coverage of the population by 2012.

Over Euro100m of grants, along with over Euro200m of loans from the European Commission to develop projects that have multi-nation impact, either through cross-border projects or country projects that will develop the continent as a whole (this fund is intended to be added to at the end of 2008). This project mentions specifically the use of ICT.

The World Bank Group has not committed to, but has talked about the likelihood that they will increase their US$1b per year to US$2b per year by 2012, which is a fund aimed at development of the private sector.

The Africa Development Bank has committed nearly US$65m towards infrastructure development (and is intending to spend 60% of its resources on infrastructure in the next few years).

These outcomes seem very positive in terms of infrastructure development, and helping to achieve the 2015 goals. However, it does raise a concern that appears to me to be potentially critical in terms of the overall development of Africa through connectivity, which is - whilst it is very positive that there is clearly to be plenty of money and technical progress in terms of this development, what exactly is the connectivity to be used for?

The one target relating to this is one of the 10 connectivity goals from the 2003 Summit which states:
‘encourage the development of content and to put in place technical conditions in order to facilitate the presence and use of all world languages on the Internet’.

This goal seem quite ambiguous in terms of what content they are referring to. Who is going to develop it? Who is it going to be developed for? What are the aims of this content? How are they going to find out what content people want? The list of questions goes on… I have not yet found (and someone please send me links or information if you have the answers to this) any information as to what software or hardware is to be developed specifically to accompany this newfound connectivity.

My concern lies with the fact that technology is only as good as the applications that it supports. People don’t buy a computer because it has the fastest processor, they buy it because that fast processor can make their software run faster.

It is also concerning that this drive may fall into the same trap as many other drives for African development in the past. A factor that could be linked to the cause of these could be the assumptions made by the people, governments and corporations funding or developing the projects as to what is needed to encourage development, whereas perhaps the reality, as seen by the end users of these projects, is very different.

So maybe in the case of African connectivity, the first question should be – What do we specifically want to be able to do that we can’t do now? (And by this, I don’t mean ‘access the internet’, rather, ‘farmers want to communicate directly with buyers in developed countries’ for example). And then secondly - What will enable us to do that in terms of technology?

Otherwise the risk is that perhaps the huge amount of money and time will not be used to their maximum potential, and the goals set out in 2003 will be achieved in theory, but not in practice.

There does appear to be some evidence that corporations have in some cases recognised this need – Nokia’s head of mobile division was quoted last month saying that they see the key as the content the phones deliver to the potential users.

“We are looking as a company as to how to facilitate and participate in creating content that is actually relevant for the consumers in emerging markets… the biggest barrier in emerging markets to people using the mobile internet was lack of interest.” (Kai Oistamo, Oct 2007)

However, if the Nokia 2626 is anything to go by in terms of what Nokia think is appropriate development of technology, then this company policy may not amount to much in practice…(I will be writing a post overviewing emerging market handsets shortly, where I will go into more detail on the phones themselves).

However, another concern regarding this huge investment in infrastructure comes for a conversation I recently had regarding African infrastructure development with a retired managing director for global infrastructure investment at CDC. With regard to developing infrastructure for Africa, he said:

‘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.’

And I would question as to whether many of the coutries being provided with this infrastructure do spend this amount? If they don’t, it appears that any development projects will be futile, as in the long-term, how will they be able to achieve the aims of overall development in the country?

Relevant links:
The Nokia 2626:
Tech Digest article
pocketpicks.co.uk article
The Connect Africa Summit:
allafrica.com article
International Telecoms Union (itu.int) article