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Life As An African Web Developer 327

Posted by timothy from the grass-is-drier dept.
There's an interesting look at the realities of high-tech in Africa running on NewsForge -- specifically, one writer's account of starting a web development company in Ghana, dealing with obstacles including power problems worse than the norm in deepest California.
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Life As An African Web Developer More

Life As An African Web Developer

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  • Going up? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Blaine Hilton ( 626259 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @01:52AM (#5779036) Homepage
    Here in the states the economics of being a programmer or anything in the IT industry is pretty bad, but from the article it seems Africa is much worse. We take most of their problems for granted here. I think this is a large problem for Americans, we don't really realize how good we have. The same thing can be said for gasoline, in Europe they are paying double, triple or more then what we are paying, even when we think its so "expensive".

    I do believe there is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel though for the Internet economy through out the whole world. We are coming to the point where computers are as common as televisions, and a computer really isn't a computer with out being able to access the Internet. This is going to redefine what we now know as a global economy. Borders are going to become looser, and ideas will be freely exchanged. Another thing is since the .dom crash many people have decided to switch careers, and thus the workflow is going to equalize, and I believe that is going to happen sooner rather then later.

    Go calculate [webcalc.net] something.

    • Re:Going up? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Scarblac ( 122480 ) <slashdot@gerlich.nl> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:26AM (#5779162) Homepage

      Here in the states the economics of being a programmer or anything in the IT industry is pretty bad, but from the article it seems Africa is much worse.

      Well, DUH. Talk about obvious.

      There are a few major problems in Africa, and the price of gasoline or the lack of $60k jobs isn't one of them.

      One is drinking water. Another is AIDS. Civil war is also quite common.

      In some countries, school teachers are dying of AIDS faster than they can be trained. In some countries, people pay more than half their daily income for fresh water. Saying that "it seems" the problems in US IT industry are not the worst in the world is rather offensive, in my opinion.

      • Re:Going up? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by stinky wizzleteats ( 552063 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @08:49AM (#5780179) Homepage Journal

        Let's have a history lesson...


        One is drinking water. Another is AIDS. Civil war is also quite common.


        Poor sanitation, disease, and civil war. United States, late 19th century. What did we do to overcome these problems? Did an international outreach of concerned Europeans build sewers and hospitals for us? Did English peacekeepers prevent the savagery of our civil war?


        As evidenced by this statement: "...is rather offensive, in my opinion.", you clearly intend for the reader to assume responsibility for the conditions of those living in -insert impoverished country here- when history clearly demonstrates that such concern is idiotically ill-conceived. If the concern you are offended that we don't have cannot make the changes you would intend, then what possible good can come of those purposes in the first place, except to shock and paralyze soccer moms into believing that they can't walk outside without harming the world in some way?


        What got us out of the squalor and suffering of our early days is the same thing that can get them out - the personal struggle to overcome. And if you wake up in the morning, and find reason not to pursue excellence because people in Africa don't have clean drinking water, then you, sir, offend me.

        • Re:Going up? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by HanzoSan ( 251665 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @09:54AM (#5780515) Homepage Journal


          The US created their own Civil War, the Africans were given chaos by European invaders in the same way Iraq was given Chaos/.
          • "Yep, you gotta say one thing about that there Saddam. He sure knew how to keep order. Can't be having that chaos running around. Yep, killing hundreds of thousands of his own citizens, yessir, just because they didn't agree with him. Nope, no sir, it's one thing we like and that's order, to hell with "rights"."

            Europeans invaders just gave the already warring factions methods and tools to wage war more indiscriminately and more deadly.

        • Re:Going up? (Score:2, Informative)

          by fulana_lover ( 652004 )
          Poor sanitation, disease, and civil war. United States, late 19th century. What did we do to overcome these problems? Did an international outreach of concerned Europeans build sewers and hospitals for us? Did English peacekeepers prevent the savagery of our civil war? Umm, we brought over millions of slaves from Africa to do all the dangerous, hard work for no wages? Oh, so you are suggesting Africans should go invade europe? kidding aside, i mostly agree with you, but it is much, much, much more diffic

          • Umm, we brought over millions of slaves from Africa to do all the dangerous, hard work for no wages?

            You overlooked the purpose for having fought that civil war in the first place. The blood of nearly a million Americans was spilt removing the crime of slavery from the American culture, so you'll forgive me if I feel unmoved by the addition of your tears or mine. I consider it the most fundamental respect to the memory of those fallen to live in harmony today, thus, I do not believe in continuing to fig

          • scripsit fulana_lover:

            I do feel Africa squandered their biggest opportunity, the cold war.

            That's an interesting statement; what it brings to mind is Angola, with right-wing South Africans (U.S. proxy) fighting left-wing Cubans (Soviet proxy)... The Cold War doesn't seem like it helped Angola very much, but I'm sure that's not the model you had in mind.

            What sort of opportunity did the Cold War offer Africa, and how did they squanderit?

        • As evidenced by this statement: "...is rather offensive, in my opinion.", you clearly intend for the reader to assume responsibility for the conditions of those living in -insert impoverished country here- when history clearly demonstrates that such concern is idiotically ill-conceived.

          What was offensive to me is that it was suggested that the current "problems" of IT in America are similar to the problems that Africa faces. I completely agree that more "help" by Western states is the last thing they ne

        • Poor sanitation, disease, and civil war. United States, late 19th century. What did we do to overcome these problems? Did an international outreach of concerned Europeans build sewers and hospitals for us? Did English peacekeepers prevent the savagery of our civil war?

          We tapped our natural resources. We poured money into our industrial infrastructure. We started founding state universities.

          Now, why don't those sill Africans just do that?
          • Note: the "sarcasm" quotes around that last sentence got lopped off. My bad. Hopefully people will figure it out.

            Also, I forgot to mention that in the late 1800s, personal machineguns didn't exist. You know, those weapons which African dictators arm their militias with? That's a pretty major difference.

        • I'll tell you what the US did: it had a copyright and patent regime that refused to recognize foreign copyrights and patents, and proceeded to "steal" British "intellectual property" to create an American industry. It passed high tariffs, to keep out foreign competition. In other words, it did the very things that the US (through its organs, the IMF, World Bank, and WTO) forbids developing countries to do.

          No country ever got rich by opening itself for exploitation by foreign companies and by practicing

          • No country ever got rich by opening itself for exploitation by foreign companies and by practicing "free trade".

            This statement is clearly correct, but that is because there is a difference between a rich nation and a prosperous people.

            The rest of your comment is half-right. Clearly, US IP policy is hypocritical when compared to its past behavior. The only ones who want IP enforcement are those who own IP, and we (or M$, **aa, and their paid for government buddies) are proving no exception to that rule


      • In some countries, school teachers are dying of AIDS faster than they can be trained.

        Worse, in one African country local superstition has resulted in some schoolteachers being killed outright [debaser.us]for casting Ebola spells.

        Now that's the kind of problem that is like burning your seed corn.

        As you note, IT problems in Africa are the least of their problems.

      • Re:Going up? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by de la mettrie ( 27199 )
        I completely agree with your statements, but...

        In some countries, school teachers are dying of AIDS faster than they can be trained

        AIDS is not inevitable (except in rare cases: infected blood serum etc). A person that is ignorant or stupid enough not to use condoms is not a person that should be teaching kids anyway.

    • Re:Going up? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by @madeus ( 24818 ) <slashdot_24818@mac.com> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:30AM (#5779181)
      Here in the states the economics of being a programmer or anything in the IT industry is pretty bad, but from the article it seems Africa is much worse. We take most of their problems for granted here. I think this is a large problem for Americans, we don't really realize how good we have. The same thing can be said for gasoline, in Europe they are paying double, triple or more then what we are paying, even when we think its so "expensive".

      While I quite agree with the rest of this paragraph I take strong issue with your opening sentence.

      Specifically with:

      Here in the states the economics of being a programmer or anything in the IT industry is pretty bad

      Workers in the IT industry are still earning above the national average, for a job that's really not that demanding (your actual milage may vary of course, but by and large it's not that taxing if you know what your doing).

      I think the IT industry is a great one to be in - certainly as far a salarys & formal prerequisites to employment go, especially for a job that requires almost zero physical labour and has almost endless scope for career development (by which I mean there are so many roles you could do you couldn't possibly hope to do them all in one lifetime).

      The only problem this sector ever had was the influx of mid 90's 'get rich quick' lusers turned sysadmins/developers/web designers who wouldn't know a clue-by-four if they were larted on the head with it.

      Most of them are still unemployed now, but if your a *real* sysadmin/developer/etc - and your reasonably flexible - then your simply not going to be unemployed for huge length of time (>6 months) unless you live in an area where there is amazingly stiff competion (like say, the bay area).

    • Re:Going up? (Score:5, Funny)

      by DCowern ( 182668 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @03:25AM (#5779348) Homepage

      Crap... I think I clicked the "read more" link and ended up back in 1996... A few words from the future (April of 2003):

      • Most areas of the US still face the "last mile" problem
      • Linux STILL isn't on everyone's desktop
      • Microsoft is still one big bully of a company
      • A bunch of aliens came and tried to enslave half the population but we beat them all back with garden hoses. REMEMBER TO STOCK UP.

      All in all things aren't that different in the future :-P

    • Why all the time people use terms like African this and African that. I mean why not European American and European Australian.???
      • Errr...

        You've never read the article, haven't you?

        The article is by and about a web developer that lives and works in Ghana. Last time I checked, Ghana was part of the African continent.

        And then, someone moded you up "Insightful" when you should have been moded "go read the article / check your geography".

        Jeeeeez!

    • America's got its problems too (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bfinuc ( 162950 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @04:24AM (#5779479) Homepage Journal
      Americans... don't really realize how good [they] have.

      True. Or how bad. I tried wholesaling UPSs in Germany, but there is no market for them. Why? No power outages. Meanwhile, my sister in law in Lexington, KY reports that after a recent ice storm, they went three days without power and there was widespread looting. She lost her TV and stereo. No wonder those rednecks running (or not running) Iraq take such a relaxed attitude. It's just like home. The solution is to run the power lines underground, but that would require investment in infrastructure.

      Europeans cope with ridiculous gasoline prices (1 a quart!) by buying fuel efficient cars. Americans cope with their awful electricity infrastructure buying USPs and guns. Poles and Russians can repair just about anything. It is impossible to try to explain to your average Korean what a dump Seoul is, because he can't imagine a city that is actually pleasant.

      Poor countries have spurts of growth unimagineable in rich counties. Look what's going on in China. It's partly because they see rich countries in other places and know things could be better. Backwards places like Pakistan don't progress partly because they don't see the need to. They can't imagine a better place. There was a huge debate in India among Hindu fundamentalists about whether the flyover pictures of Southern California in a popular TV series showing all the swimming pools were real or just CIA backed propaganda.

      Once the entire world is equalized, and every talks to everyone, the will be a burst of growth and then all progress will stop, because no one will aspire to anything better.

  • Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Khakionion ( 544166 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @01:53AM (#5779040)
    Try developing in Arkansas...

    Can't you ever get a real job? This computer stuff's going nowhere.
    • You know the best thing to ever come out of Arkansas?
      I-40 :P

  • Countries with developing infrastructures (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:09AM (#5779091) Homepage
    In a semi-similar vain of trying to get IT going in, I don't want to say underdevloped, but countries which don't necessarily have the same infrastructure the UN setup NetAid [netaid.org] to allow people to voulenteer on-line to provide IT support for these areas in the world. Signup,. Its Free and you don't even have to get out of your chair

    Rus

  • Ghana and West Africa (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Scarblac ( 122480 ) <slashdot@gerlich.nl> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:12AM (#5779106) Homepage

    A friend of mine grew up in West Africa and is sometimes raving about how cheap labour is there and how hard people want to work. Since I need some project to dream about sometimes, I started learning about WA, a region I never knew about. It's beautiful. The problems are huge. The world's nine poorest countries are in the region, iirc. Ghana is, as far as I could judge, actually the best of them for the long term(Nigeria seems to be going downhill rather rapidly).

    But the problems he describes are hard, they mirror the difficulties I found out about in my research. Basically the infrastructure isn't there, the education isn't there yet (and what he describes is Accra, the capital!), and the customers aren't there.

    People who always say "shouldn't we start with something important first" when there is news of some third world country getting the Internet miss the point - knowledge of IT is one of the few things that might drag these countries out of the mess. Cheapest form of education.

    That's the type of business you could start for overseas customers. Selling to the locals is hard - clean water is in great demand, is necessary, making it is a known process - but the population can't afford your product. That's right people, citizens of rural Ghana can hardly afford clean water, and other countries are worse.

    But they're very cheap labour, and they want to work hard. Eventually they'll get there, eventually they can outcompete some others. But it'll take a long time. Maybe I'll go there some day, perhaps to teach or so...

    If you want to read about West Africa, I recommend the Lonely Planet Guide [amazon.com], if you want to read news about Africa I recommend www.allafrica.com [allafrica.com].

    As a side note, it's amazingly annoying how the thread of replies to that story immediately turned into an anti-/pro-US flamewar. What are those people thinking...

    • No, you exploit the population for cheap labor and sell it in America and Europe. You do not plan on actually moving there yourself. This is the new wave of greed thats comming around where stockbrokers and beancounters and not CEO's with a sense of ethics run the worlds bussinesses.

      • No, you exploit the population for cheap labor and sell it in America and Europe. You do not plan on actually moving there yourself.

        I do, in fact. You don't know me. I'm not even American. I work 20 hours a week because that's enough to feed me and otherwise I'd rather study and have free time than work. I rather fancy moving to Africa for some years, as long as I can make a living. But of course I'd be trying to make a profit - more welfare won't get these countries anywhere. They need an actual econom

        • I heard Egypt has the strongest economy is Africa and yes Arab countries are rapidly becomming wired and there is a demand for programmers there. OF course you need to know arabic and thats the downside.

      • ...are a rare thing indeed these days.
      • And you know what? These people are worse off without American jobs. If there were no American jobs, there would be no jobs. The situation is shit before and a bit less shit after, so some good would actually come of it. So from an ethical standpoint, we get something, they get something they wouldn't have had without us, so everyone wins. If we pick up and leave, the economy really can't get too much worse than it was before, so they're no worse for wear. That's the way it goes.

    • The problems are huge. The world's nine poorest countries are in the region, iirc.

      Most of India is just as poor as Africa, and yet we resent our jobs going to India, but when Africans are taking our jobs - well wow what a crisis of conscience.... Looks like India is paying the price for falsely marketing itself as a rich country when IT IS NOT!

      Even here the H-1Bs live in very poor conditions [jrf.org.uk]. And in India 700 million Indians cannot feed themselves [hindustantimes.com]. To me it's clear that every American that wants IT job

    • I started learning about WA, a region I never knew about. It's beautiful. The problems are huge

      You are not wrong there: Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond...

  • uhh ... power problems ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:12AM (#5779107) Homepage
    Shouldn't it be "deepest darkest california" when referring to power issues? :)

  • Similar article (Score:4, Informative)

    by RushMoom ( 109860 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:17AM (#5779122) Homepage
    A similar article, entitled Ghana's Digital Dilemma [technologyreview.com] appeared in MIT's Technology Review [technologyreview.com] in July of last year. (subscription required for full content)

  • Software Programmers in Ghana... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by timjones ( 78467 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:17AM (#5779125) Homepage
    And you thought we had competition from steaming legions of Indian and Chinese programmers?

    Most of the executive set I know (yes, in the USA) wouldn't consider buying an AUTOMOBILE from a third-world country like that, but they will do anything to have IT design (at least as complicated, when done properly) done in such places.

    Something to think about...

    • The answer's pretty obvious, if you do actually think about it.
      First up, making an automobile takes not just man (woman?) power, but also metal and machinery and what-not. Given a reasonably good PC & UPS (to deal with blackouts), all it takes to write good code is a good brain, or a good codewriting brain to be specific.
      Developing countries have terrible infrastructure, badly depreciated machinery, and poor maintenance of said machines. So, to put it simply, an automobile made there would be more l

    • Precisely. Now you know why all these so-called third-world nations are so excited about IT; most believe it's their ticket to first-world-dom, whether on a personal level (ie jump hop to US/Europe), or on a societal level.

    • I am trying to picture steaming legions of Indian and Chinese programmers.

      Somehow it doesn't come into focus.

      When you talk about "legions" of programmers, I think you miss the point that programmers are fairly high up the professional scale there too.

      And as for "steaming" I have no idea what you mean, since I'm sure you don't mean to sound racist here.

  • I know Guido (Score:5, Informative)

    by sbwoodside ( 134679 ) <sbwoodside@yahoo.com> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:18AM (#5779131) Homepage
    It just happens that I know Guido. I hope he doesn't mind if I talk about him and what I think about his situation. I want to say these things about him.

    First, he WANTS to be in Ghana. This is a personal decision on his part, it's his home, it's where he grew up. So it's not like he's stranded there, you know, he went to university in the states and could easily be pulling in 100K if he were there, but he voluntarily returned to africa.

    The biggest problem for him in Ghana is that his talent simply isn't recognized. The people who hire in Ghana aren't talented enough themselves to recognize a quality programmer. Most of the western companies that drop in shops in a place like that ship their own talent in as well, and they're not going to be looking for a top-notch coder/ sysadmin / webdesigner / all around talent to be found in-country. So getting a job that's worthy of his talent at all is tough.

    Pay? The cost of living in Ghana is dirt-cheap compared to where I am (canada). I think that he would probably be well off at 10K a year (not a month!) and would be above average at half that. Think about that for a minute, if you're looking to hire a web developer he could be doing the work for 1/5 the price.

    Unfortunately there are serious, serious problems with being located in Ghana. Just try to get internet access. Sure, there's an 80Gbps (yes, that's GIGA) pipe running JUST OFF SHORE ... the SAT-3/SAFE/WASC line that runs down the western coast of Africa to SA, and then over to india. But can Guido get access to that? Yeah, right! Instead the most reliable internet access is 2Kbps over a VSAT connection at BusyInternet. Anything else is very much intermittent. How can you work in conditions like that?

    He'd have to pay $1500 to get his own VSAT (very small aperture terminal) and then $100s a month for a measly 32Kbps or less connection, ironically. Even though the people are poorer there, the bandwidth costs so much more. And could he run VoIP on that and save himself on longdistance? Not without running afoul of Ghana Telecom ... not yet.

    It's a chicken and an egg problem. I have a lot of respect for Guido for being there and doing what he's doing. He's just a guy who wants to write code.

    simon

    PS If anyone reading this can push the right people to give up access to the SAT-3 fat pipe, please do...

    • Re:I know Guido (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:44AM (#5779237)
      I come from Ghana and the lack of a good telecom infrastructure has always been my major challenge.

      I tried to open an internet cafe and felt so sad at the speed that I closed it down.

      The bottom line: Please anyone who can help us in Ghana legally tap from the GIGA offshore, I would be indeed very happy. The truth is a lot of us want to go back to Ghana to help, but the current conditions it makes life very tough for us all these excellent talents but NO INFRASTRUCTURE!!!

      Thanks,
      kwasi tawia
      • The bottom line: Please anyone who can help us in Ghana legally tap from the GIGA offshore, I would be indeed very happy. The truth is a lot of us want to go back to Ghana to help, but the current conditions it makes life very tough for us all these excellent talents but NO INFRASTRUCTURE!!!

        Yeah ... I talk about the gigabit pipe in another post [slashdot.org]. People who know people, please push them to free it up.

        I'd mod you up but I already posted ...

        simon

  • GeekCorps: Accra, Ghana (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jvarsoke ( 80870 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:19AM (#5779136)
    I was a volunteer in 2000 for GeekCorps [geekcorps.org]. And I can affirm most of what this guy was talking about is true. My job was to teach one guy how to code in Perl or PHP in 3 months. No problem, right? Heh.

    For one thing the educational system in Ghana is completely based on rhote memorization. In programming you never see the exact same thing twice. Oh, you might see something similar, but never the exact same thing. Well, my Ghanian counterpart would sit there in front of a problem and just blindly try to apply the last thing I taught him. It took a lot of drawn out silences and lots of me sitting on my hands to get him to be a beginner programmer. But this was a success story, a year later he got into an American university for CS. And this year competed in an ACM contest. Wow.

    Other things that the article doesn't really go into are aspects of doing business w/o contract law, not getting paid for 4 months, and often work only comes if you're aligned with the political party in vogue at the moment.

    And getting a straight business plan or a requirements document out of Ghanians is impossible. These people want to do video conferencing via 14.4k modem, real-time purchases w/o credit cards, and door-to-door shipping when no place has a street address.

    but don't get me wrong, best 4 months I ever spent. I'd go back in a second.

    If you want to know more about it, check out: Geekhalla.org [geekhalla.org].

    -j
    • Hell, I've been coding for years and you couldn't teach me perl in 3 month :)

    • I'm having very similar experiences right now.

      All the techs here learn by rote, not by principles.

      They're good at networking stuff like routers and whatnot. I'm teaching them to be passable at Linux administration, considering I got everything set up and running fine, and they just need to make sure nothing breaks.

      But they have no concept on how to code, and I don't think it's something I'll be able to teach them.

      I cannot emphasize how true it is that they just try to apply the exact same solution to e
    • I taught computer science in a Ghanaian university in the early 80s, and had a number of smart, competent students. But the educational environment didn't give them much of a chance:
      1. We used an IBM 370 with punch cards. The card reader was frequently broken so the students had to write out the programs and I graded them by hand. They were never run.
      2. University students have to apply to a specific department to be admitted, not the university itself. The CS department was considered easier to get in
    • Well, my Ghanian counterpart would sit there in front of a problem and just blindly try to apply the last thing I taught him.

      Richard Feynman might agree: [feep.org]

      After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything, but they didn't know what anything meant. When they heard "light that is reflected from a medium with an index," they didn't know that it meant a material such as water.

      simon

  • I know what its like (Score:5, Interesting)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:24AM (#5779156) Homepage Journal
    ... for power to fail all the time.

    we had to endure the infamous "load-shedding" -- a practice of cutting off electricity to whole sections of the city in order to conserve power.

    They do that here in India too. Especially in the summer. The next few months are going to be pretty bad. It sucks, especially because I'm running a server on my lil' machine at home. (As if enduring 44 degrees C and near 100% humidity for a whole day weren't bad enough.)

    • Which raises a very curious point about energy. Yes, the world's masses are without power, telephone etc, yes, all that's necessary for *regular* IT development, but the question is, on ecological basis, can we sustain, say, American, energy levels on a global scale?

      PS:- From India myself; I know what you're speaking about. My solution:- move to Delhi/Hyderabad! :-D

  • ...from now on, I'm forgetting all my dreams of turning Ghana into the Software Capital of the World.
    I'll be staying in California. Thank you very much.

  • Easy Funding (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    At least getting operating capital should be easy, with so many business people and government officials offering to pay well for a little help.

    Why, I have six business offers in my email just this morning! It would be so much easier to help those people when you're on the same continent.

  • What can be done? SAT-3/WASC/SAFE (Score:5, Informative)

    by sbwoodside ( 134679 ) <sbwoodside@yahoo.com> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @02:54AM (#5779271) Homepage
    You probably haven't heard about it, but there's a fat pipe running down the coast of Africa with 20Gbps (yes, that's GIGA) of capacity. I've been following this story, and it's being wasted.

    Home Page [safe-sat3.co.za]

    Map [safe-sat3.co.za]

    The max capacity of the cable is 120Gbps. It cost 0.65 billion to build and was a monumental sign of pan-african development 6 years ago when they bought it. Now it's finally in place.

    technical [prdomain.com]

    It's being wasted! It's a fat pipe, it's got something like 20x the bandwidth previously available in Africa (seriously...) but despite the obvious -- to me -- benefits to start using it Right Now, instead nothing seems to be happening.

    Analysis [worldmarketsanalysis.com]: "...the benefits of this new capacity will not be unleashed on the national business environment"

    The state telcoms in all these countries that control the access ... they are just going to sit on their hands because they have no vested interest. It's not on their radar screen to do anything with this cable, or to start selling access to regular people, like Guido. Instead, they are all slowly or quickly going out of business and dragging the market down with them. Installing the cable was only half of it. The other half is freeing the bandwidth.

    simon

    ::: Check out rural wireless 802.11 on the wireless-longhaul@openict.net mailing list. subscribe [openict.net] or check out the project page [openict.net] :::

  • exhibit of power of human (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @03:18AM (#5779332) Homepage Journal
    a practice of cutting off electricity to whole sections of the city in order to conserve power.

    It's not the worse thing you could find in Africa. I've seen how they work with a donated SUN workstation in a school where electricity is inaccessible.

    To use the workstation you must have another one power it up with bicycle-dynamo. The user gotta type real fast before your partner exhausted - that means playing game is out of question. :)

    That's how many of those donated workstations are being used. I'm very impressed by their eagerness of learning. In them I see what real geeks look like. :)

  • Learn more (Score:4, Informative)

    by sbwoodside ( 134679 ) <sbwoodside@yahoo.com> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @03:19AM (#5779333) Homepage
    Obviously I'm really into the whole situation of IT in Africa (they call it ICT .. the C is for communications). Here are some links for you to look at. A lot of them are really oriented towards WiFi too since I think that's the "last best hope" for the internet in Africa

    Weblogs:
    riptari filter [riptari.net]

    m u l t i p l i c i t y [multiplicity.dk]

    R Alden [ralden.com]

    News

    Balancing Act: Africa [balancingact-africa.com] This looks dense but it's the BEST news source about ICT in africa and getting better all the time. Very reliable too.

    Shameless plug
    I wrote about using the open source model for (ICT) development here [simonwoodside.com] and some other stuff from here [simonwoodside.com].

    Stories

    Laos [sfgate.com]

    You've already heard about that ... but this much more story and pictures about another project:

    Pictures, stories, of setting up the real thing in Bhutan [bhutan-notes.com] a country you've maybe never even heard of ... but they have a WiFi based VoIP long-distance system that doesn't even need electrical grid to work.

    I'll leave you with one that's going on right now ... the Digital Plains [iitk.ac.in] of India.

    simon

  • Vim (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by mackstann ( 586043 )
    Vim - you know, Vi Improved? You ever actually read the :help iccf it tells you about when you start it up?


    VIM - Vi IMproved

    version 6.1.48
    by Bram Moolenaar et al.
    Vim is open source and freely distributable

    Help poor children in Uganda!
    type :help iccf for information

    type :q to exit
    type :help or for on-line help
    type :help version6 for version info
    (slashcode insisted on fucking that up, oh well, you get the point)

    G

  • Power problems aren't that bad here in Califo#%*(!.

  • I'm currently in Nigeria. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lachrymite ( 115440 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @04:12AM (#5779452)
    I'm currently in Nigeria, working for a company that's an ISP with plans to expand into fixed wireless phone stuff as well. I'm pretty much their head (and debateably only) technical person, and the only other non-Nigerian here besides the head of the company. The Nigerian techs are okay at what they do (mainly making sure the routers and satellite connection are fine), but fall apart on anything related to configuring the Linux servers. They're enthusiastic learners though, even if they lack the technical background to pick things up very quickly. I was specifically imported for this purpose, setting up their servers, making sure everything runs smoothly, and helping the Nigerian techs learn how to keep the machines running. My role has expanded to include web development of internal apps as well, since I have a very strong background with web dev stuff.

    That said, working in Nigeria is absurd, both frustrating and amusing at the same time.

    The biggest problem here is the power. The power goes out between three and twenty times a day. We have an extensive UPS and generator system that keeps all our machines online.

    We have a side division of our company that does major installs of networks for local companies and government agencies. I was brought to a site to survey putting a 300 machine network into a building with no roof. All of the individual offices did have roofs, but the main part of the building with the hallways connecting everything together was completely open to the elements. Furthermore, the doors of the offices were of very poor construction, so dust and rain could easily come from underneath and mess up everything inside. We're trying to convince them to put a roof on the building, just even a glass one or something, but it looks like they're just going to be having a lot of inhospitable operating conditions for their hardware instead.

    The strangest part is that this isn't at all unusual... In another instance, a company wanted a 20 machine network installed, and freaked out when they saw cabling and routers on the bill. They said they didn't ask for that. They didn't understand you needed these things to actually connect the computers together on the network.

    It's a good thing I'm incredibly laid back and just find everything kind of funny, or I probably would have jumped off a roof by now.

    Assuming I could find a building with a roof...

  • A thought... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Isldeur ( 125133 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @04:46AM (#5779516)

    [I posted this over there at newsforge. Hopefully it will reach the author.]

    Greetings to Ghana! It was only 2 years ago that I spent a super month working in a hospital in Kenya. Great people, and I salute you!

    The author here mentions an interesting point about paying to train/teach students. This gave me a thought. The first being that every job is, naturally, always training its employees in it's methods and ways from when they start work.

    Now that wasn't wat the author meant, I know. But how about this: I'm just about (hopefully!) to finish medical school. I'll then enter a period called a residency where I'm being paid, but the learning experience is far from over. Most people believe that residents are still students, and I'd have to agree. It's the first time we actually get to treat people largely ourselves, with the watchful eye of our superiors, naturally.

    Medicine dictates that. It needs to start paying these "students" because few if any could hold out any more without a paycheque. Perhaps that's the mentality the author needs in Ghana?

    Find some people who really *want* to learn and have that drive. Maybe they never had the opportunities at this college. They will be the ones who stand to you.

    Best wishes & greetings!

    • I have to add something to that which is posted above. I feel for that guys infrastructural problems. I really do. When we were in Kenya for that month, checking email was a revelation. It would literally take anywhere from 5 - 10 minutes to even load up my webmail app (neomail - hardly bandwidth heavy).

      I can feel what he's going through. I only wish whatever ponces could get off their hands and open up that pipe running down the West coast.
  • #1 Read Slashdot.
    #2 Set up company exporting cheap UPS' to Ghana.
    #3 Profit!

  • Put Ghana's extra money to work (Score:4, Funny)

    by bruthasj ( 175228 ) <bruthasj@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @05:23AM (#5779594) Homepage Journal
    This one guy told me they had millions of dollars in a Swiss account that they wanted to forward to me -- he had some connection with the government I think. Could we somehow utilize this seemingly untapped resource sitting in the hands of locals to fund better resources for the country as a whole?

    t-i-c.
  • Jeez, with things this bad, you'd think they'd stop trying to URGENT!!!! ship THE SUM OF $US 25 MILLION DOLLARS!!!!! out of six countries from a hundred SON | WIFE OF MURDERED FORMER LEADER!!!! twenty times a day to my mailbox alone. BTW I already tried telling them to call (202) 324-3000 (FBI HQ) - they don't get it.
  • Let's see some wimpy American geek deal with a router that's been gored by a rhinoceros.

    Think anyone at Yahoo! has had to deal with a lion stalking around their server farm? Ha!

    Hey, you know those clicking noises in the Bushman language? Are there HTML codes for those?

    • scripsit HarveyBirdman:

      Hey, you know those clicking noises in the Bushman language? Are there HTML codes for those?

      Well, checking the Unicode pages, I find:

      • LATIN LETTER DENTAL CLICK: &#x01c0;
      • LATIN LETTER LATERAL CLICK: &#x01c1;
      • LATIN LETTER ALVEOLAR CLICK: &#x01c2;
      • LATIN LETTER RETROFLEX CLICK: &#x01c3;

      So yes, there are. I note, however, that in Zulu orthography the first two and the last can be rendered with x, c, and q, respectively. Cake. See the Latin Extended-B [unicode.org] code page.

  • Is this King Mobutu guy from the Congo (or was it Nigera?)

    Anyways, he desperatly wants to insert 10 million into my bank account. In fact there are like tons of Africans who like to insert money into peoples' north american bank accounts!

    Africa rulez!!!

    --Zuchini

  • If you want to see crooks running countries into the ground and getting themselves and their friends rich, Africa is a great place to go. Most of those African countries would've been much better staying colonies.

    Witold
    www.witold.org

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