Essay: Perspectives of African FOSS developers

philipp_at_bridges_dot_org writes "Bridges.org has just released an essay about FOSS issues in Africa, Straight from the Source: Perspectives from the African Free and Open Source Software Movement. It highlights a perspective that is often overlooked in the discussion of how FOSS can benefit developing countries: that of software developers themselves. The essay describes the conditions African FOSS developers work in and the difficulties they face, mostly letting quotes and personal impressions speak for themselves. The issues are very different from what I am reading in the typical slashdot discussions. It maybe an interesting perspective for your audience to see what others, who share the believe in freedom of source code are struggling with - hopefully to encourage thinking around solutions for these problems."

Zimbabwe

I have a friend in Zimbabwe who does web development, but has to pay for internet access by the minute, partly because he has to pay for phone service by the minute.

Re:Zimbabwe/Uganda

That is also true for Uganda, but in its case, the ISP over there dedicated a special number to use in connecting to the Internet at a special low rate. When I was there, I setup a wireless Internet service for some government organization with a Red Hat box acting as a gateway/mail server. To my surprise, the service provider charged US$275 (yes, two hundred seventy-five US dollars) for a dedicated 4K bandwidth! His reasoning was that he has to sign an agreement with a provider from whom he buys the bandwidth, that he has to purchase a certain amount no matter what conditions the market dictates. Here in Canada, I pay US$32 for a 1Mb which sometimes could shoot up to 3Mb/s. Africans are being screwed. I must admit though, that most of the leaders I met did not even understand what the Internet can do for them. One official who had been attacked by a virus told me "Officer, my computer now does not have Microsoft!". It took me long to understand what he meant. Do not get me wrong....the technology is there but it's very expensive for most individuals. As an example, a tea girl at that organization was being paid a salary of US$80 per month and the System Admin's salary was US$420.

Cb..

Re:Morocco

There is a growing open source community in Morocco, there is even a Moroccan Linux distribution, we have also have a local Lug and we organize install fests and some compagnies are begining to specialize in open source support and installation, specific Moroccan programs are begining to appear, although they are still few and far between.

Oh and by the way I am surfing on a DSL connection, we have DSL since the begining of 2004. 128 kbs/s costs 30$ without any in volume limitation

Alas Microsoft is very very strong here, and 99% of the people still believe that Bill Gates invented the Internet. MS is very strong in goverenement too and they have recently offered bargain prices to install Linux in schools.

But overall things are not that bad, and I see a very bright future for Linux and open source here, as MS Office price nearly equals a middle wage here.

Re:Zimbabwe

I guess you live in the US, where you seem to have had free, or at least fixed-price, unlimited time local calls since you had telephones (well maybe not quite...). Most of the world actually pays by the minute, in the UK, BT and the useless cable company NTL charge by the minute for telephone calls, however many ISPs have an 0800 number which gives you free calls to them, that is paid for out of your monthly fee to the ISP instead. However, only serious internet users pay for their ISP, most have a "free" ISP and pay for the phone call, on a 0845 number, the ISP then gets paid a small amount by the phone company.

I would prefer the US model, but would like it even more if NTL, who have been ripping me off with a digital cable TV box for several years now, would finally deliver their promise of broadband. Now, that would be somewhat more expensive, but not timed, although they have been rumoured to be capping the monthly download.

None of us has a perfect system, but I do feel sorry for these guys in Zimbabwe, with a useless, malevolent dictator like Mugabe, who is at least as evil as Saddam, they are not likely to get their internet arrangements improved any time soon.

I hope someone discovers oil in Zimbabwe, so the cretin Dubya and his puppet Tony B. Liar have an excuse to rid the world of him, preferably with a single bullet, without involving the country in a war. The people of Zimbabwe deserve to have the same human rights as anyone else, they should be able to rely on someone to rid them of that monster. Now, we say the other day that in Lithuania, internet access is regarded as a basic human right.....

Issues not limited to FOSS

Some of the issues the article raises (little money to purchase home equipment for software development) hit FOSS developers harder, but the majority of the article seems really applicable to all of the African software industry, especially small-scale software developers using any software license.

Slightly misleading spin, but very interesting information.

RD

Summary

Here is a copy of the summary from http://www.bridges.org/africasource/summary.html [bridges.org]


Straight from the Source: Perspectives from the African Free and Open Source Software Movement
A bridges.org article in collaboration with the Tactical Technology Collective.

For a software developer working in Africa, Philip Mbogo's problem is as basic as it gets: "I don't have a computer," he said. "I have to go for unpaid work in order just to get on a computer." Internet access is also an expensive rarity, so he counts himself fortunate to work as an intern at an Internet service provider where he takes as much advantage of the bandwidth as he can. "Anything I can get I download. I even got [a Linux distribution called] Debian, which takes two days [to download]."

African software developers face many obstacles as they struggle to work in this field. But these "coders", as a group, form a community marked less by their frustration and isolation than by their perseverance and resolve. This theme dominated AfricaSource, a workshop held in Namibia in March 2004 and organised by the Tactical Technology Collective, AllAfrica Foundation and SchoolNet Namibia. The meeting in the small town of Okahandja of 40 software developers from 25 countries was for many the first chance to collaborate and compare notes.

Lack of access to the means and tools of production is the issue African programmers most commonly identify as the greatest barrier to success in their work. But at this event, coders got a chance to share the innovative ways they work around the problem. "We buy computer parts bit by bit. In the space of three or four months we have a computer," says Ayeni Samuel Olaoluwa, a web developer from Nigeria, who saves up to 50% this way. Another method he has devised is keeping his freelance clients' work on computers he uses as part of his day job. "I am able to hide stuff on the server, but when I leave the company I'm in trouble."

The prohibitive costs of bandwidth and hardware are an obstruction most programmers face, but it affects coders most seriously at the time they are preparing to enter the job market. Without the opportunity to earn salaries that would help them afford equipment of their own, ambitious market entrants eager for work face the prospect of successive, often unpaid, internships just to prove their skills.

This predicament is widespread across Africa, says Ghanaian Guido Sohne, "There are not enough projects available to work on to employ the available talent.... In most African countries IT is not part of the economic production process. It's actually more expensive to computerise your accounting system than to hire more people to do it manually." So when programmers do find jobs, a large percentage tend to find themselves ushered into system administration and technical roles, where they are overworked and their skills are underutilised.

This situation might be a consequence of the fact that a coder's skill is not accorded the value it deserves. Isaiah Makwakwa finds himself in this bind. When the computer science graduate first joined SDNP Malawi, the UN's sustainable development program, his work stimulated him. He automated a billing system for the administration of the .mw domain and maintained the webserver and mail systems. However, over time and as budgets became tighter, managers added client support to his job description. "User support grew to be the biggest part of my job," he says.

The flood of work helping people solve problems on their desktops gradually overshadowed his programming duties, but Makwakwa's manager failed to implement a plan that would have protected and leveraged the value of Makwakwa's skills, which are rarer and far less transferable than the troubleshooting talent he was being called upon to use.

Makwakwa's case is not unique, and it certainly is not exclusive to Africa. As the number of computerised workpl

Whoa

From the article:

- They buy computers in pieces over a 3-4 month timespan.

- Internet access is hard to find, though one happy guys states he got Debian, "after a two day download".

I will never complain about my computer or net access ever again.

Re:Whoa

and with Cuba cracking down on internet access, make sure you bring a few copies of various Linux distros inside your "music" CD holder when you visit.

Re:Whoa

"Too bad that people from "the land of the free" aren't allowed to visit Cuba"

lots of Canadians go to Cuba each year, and last I heard, a lot of Americans go too, but they have to pretend they're going to Mexico instead. Alternatively, if said Americans are from States that border Canada, they can come here to catch a flight to Cuba.

Cuban customs officer routinely avoid stamping US passports so Americans wont get in trouble with their own government for visiting Cuba and bringing in much needed US currency there.

And if you bring software CDs there, make sure you "forget" them in a place they're likely to be found by people who will appreciate them.

Re:Whoa

It's so true.

Back when I was working in Zambia on a development project with a government agency, the internet access was awful. I'd say that they're probably about ten years behind north america in terms of bandwidth availibility down there.

As for two days spent downloading Debian - that sounds very reasonable. At the place I was working, we had a microwave link with a local ISP who were OK. DSL links were about $1000USD/Month - way out of the budget of most organizations there. As to buying in pieces, I never really had to deal with that. All the computers that were bought where I was working were done with aid money so they all came together. Still, issues with the power system and so on did undermine the full potential of IT.

Nice Quote

"They don't ask if you can program. They ask, 'do you know (Microsoft) Visual Basic?'"

Good to see they differentiate between the two there as well.

Don't want to hear it.

Methinks there are a lot of people in the mainstream developer community that don't want to hear from the likes of these people. The mainstream FOSS developer community is blazing, full-steam ahead, writing resource-intensive software that requires relatively rich hardware to run decently. They don't want to hear about the exigencies of people that don't have the advantage of being able to afford nice hardware. Such people just get in the way, with their talk of writing code that doesn't require inordinate resources to function well.

Re:Don't want to hear it.

But that is the great thing about OSS, both sides can get (and give) what they want. The resource-hog, include-every-last-imaginable-feature crew can program what they want, and the I-only-have-this-solar-powered-TRS-80 can take the parts they need and recompile.

The ones that really do not want to hear from these people are the closed source, make-a-buck-from-every-line-of-code companies.

South Africa

From a fellow African. Guys I know how it feels but keep up the good work!

Hopefully the government can take a cue from India

By investing heavily in things like broadband infrastructure etc. Large parts of Africa doesn't even have electricity or running water, much like India used to. Now India has a thriving, if not overly large IT sector(and they actually do produce stuff to help out the poor etc, though most of the /.ers focus on outsourcing).
It's not exactly an identical situation though. The problems facing Africa are different from those facing India. Decades of civil wars, the devastation of AIDS, and inability to gather wealth from their vast raw materials, and a poor education system in large parts of the continent(people cannot even read their own language, let alone English) have left Africa the poorest area on earth.
Hopefully with a bit of investment in broadband, electr and some donations of usable hardware, the Africans can use FOSS to help mitigate some of the problems facing their continent.

Re:Hopefully the government can take a cue from In

What makes India today as a large IT outsourcing destination is their secondary official language which is English, and their inherent strength in math. For salary-wise Africa is superior, but considering other difficulties you can't expect growth of Africa in the IT sector so soon.

Re:Hopefully the government can take a cue from In

There are organisations who collect old PCs (often not very old, certainly even 500MHz machines are being chucked out by large organisations who are upgrading) and ship them out to Africa etc. Now, maybe someone should organise the software side a bit better. No point burdening the non-existent economy with the cost of a windoze licence.

A standard configuration of Linux with OpenOffice, Mozilla, and other useful things could be put together quite easily, volunteers could copy a few CDs to help the effort.....

Give them network cards and they can learn about networking, even if they don't have a decent link to the outside world, the local community can still have its own web server. It would have educational use, particularly health education. I don't think that there are all that many developers yet in Africa, but give them the tools and in a few years the next generation will be. But first, or in parallel with this, they need to be rid of murderous scumbags like Mugabe, they need reliable supplies of water and food, etc.

It would not actually cost the western world very much to set the ball rolling in these areas. The African continent is fully capable of being self-sufficient if it was allowed to be, with a bit of guidance along the way. They have the potential for producing food, energy and vital raw materials.

Preventing atrocities?

We've all heard about Rwanda, the civil war in Congo/Zaire, and the like. Is there any way that wireless networking + FOSS programs (e.g. weblogging tools) could be used to transmit live reports of need for aid, etc.? Throwing GPS into the mix couldn't hurt either. I wonder if wireless is cheap enough for this purpose yet, though.

Slashdot needs more articles like this

The last time the IT business in Africa was mentioned, this place was bombarded by ignorant and short-sighted comments about how sustenance was a more pressing priority and that the west should concentrate on sending food aid rather than stimulating growth in industries like this. A bit like the clueless anti-globalisation protestors:

Members of Jubilee 2000 burned a laptop computer on a beach here in Okinawa to show their disappointment with G8's failure to fulfill last year's promise to cancel up to $100 billion in Third World debt. So far, just nine countries have qualified for debt relief of up to $15 billion. Jubilee 2000 says debt relief is the first step to ending the cycle of poverty, since poor countries are spend- ing more money to pay back debt than on basic needs. "You can't eat a laptop," said Barrett. "It's a crisis, it's an emergency, and it's something that they've failed to deal with this weekend."

Don't get me wrong, canceling debt can be a good thing, but it's good that African economies can develop intellectual property for export if natural resources are not abundant.

Re:Slashdot needs more articles like this

They have excellent natural resources. That has become the curse. Nigeria, for example, has large oil/natural gas supplies, but the local people cannot afford oil.

The tale of natural resources in poor countries is similar to the tales of evil kings... In those tales, the parents with beautiful children suffer (the children suffer too) because the local king takes fancy to them and makes them concubines.

Things will not be very different if the economies develop "intellectual property" too. Property is easily stolen and can be restricted (for example, the patenting of turmeric and basmati rice). A well educated population with diverse skill set is a way forward because then the local people themselves are the assets, and multinational corporations have a vested interest in aiding peace in such regions. If it's just a matter of resources, multinational companies benefit more if there is poverty and bloodshed -- if the local people kill themselves, the corporation can just keep the resources to themselves!

S

Re:Slashdot needs more articles like this

How will you feed, house, deliver basic utilities to, and do the hundred other things that this new workforce needs to do their jobs? What happens in five, ten, twenty years when the equipment they've invested in is hopelessly obsolete and these countries are once again on the brink of disaster? How will new handouts be paid for? And who says they're even going to be interested in doing IT in the first place? No, I think that's one of the worst ways to go about helping Africa.

The first step for Third World recovery is to write off the debts as they stand right now. Next, instead of subsidizing Midwest farmers to grow weeds instead of food, have them grow actual food and ship it overseas; the destination countries only pay transportation costs (a way to collect even just a little on the previous debts). Then take any funds earmarked for high-tech investment and put them towards basic sanitation facilities instead and you'd have a good start.

Eeek. I was born in Zimbabwe and have lived there and South Africa. Please whatever you do, DONT do what you suggest above.

One of the MAJOR things holding back Africa is foreign aid. The two strongest economies in Southern Africa were at their peak during sanctions. The problem boils down to the following:

1) Forgiving debt wont make any difference, because any spare cash will be stolen by corrupt government officials. They will waste any money available and demand you forgive their debt again.

2) Foreign aid is encouraged by African government officials because the checks and balances on stealing that aid for personal gain are much lower. This is exacerbated by aid people holding the opinion "that as long as something gets through, we're helping". This is not the case.

3) The best way to ensure that local farmers will not grow food is to ship them food, and by so doing, completely destroy local market prices for that food.

4) Much foreign aid is provided through organisations that benefit from skimming a small amount of the aid for "operating costs". Those organisations do not want to help people - they want people to be dependent on them, so they can ship more aid next year. "Give a man a fish a day for a week, and he'll forget how to fish"

Your suggestion of rerouting aid for high tech investment to sanitation is an awful idea. Africa needs investment, not aid. Investment of real money by people that expect real returns, meaning that kleptocrats will not be tolerated. The people that die for lack of sanitation often do so for culteral reasons, not lack of facilities.

One of the problems in Africa is that modern health care guarantees a low death rate amongst children. Coupled with a third world cultural outlook on children, this results in an explosion of young people, which strains education systems. The only real solution to this is to bring the standard of living up to a point where people decide they would rather have a few well-educated children rather than many children to till farmland.

Those children will be there regardless. If they are somehow drawn in real industry instead of subsistance farming, their children and their country benefits. Don't forget that they can support themselves and their families for a year on a hundredth of your salary.

Africa does not need people destroying their markets, and paying their officials to be corrupt and cling to power. It needs:

a) A cessation of foreign aid, unless it is foreign aid with extremely harsh strings attached, and it is provided in such a way that it does not damage local economies, or prop up corrupt governments.

b) Strong investment in countries that make strong attempts to rein in kleptocrats. Hopefully this should end a positive feedback loop.

c) Nothing for nothing and nothing for free, coupled with very harsh criticism and diplomatic pressure when an official is caught embezzling. Put strings on everything.

d) Very strong international criticism of non-democratic govern

Re:Slashdot needs more articles like this

Thanks for an extremely informative and well thought-out reply. But wouldn't drastically reducing foreign aid like you suggest lead to a greater percentage of any remaining resources being embezzled by whoever is in charge? If government officials are as corrupt as you've wrote, I'm assuming they won't care about breaking contracts and won't pay attention to international sanctions.

In addition, won't what you suggest only help countries which already have the basic facilities to support foreign investment? IT requires quite a large infrastructure behind it, and I had assumed that the discussion here was supposed to discuss only the poorest of African countries. For example, the only country mentioned in the article (Uganda) qualified for Highly Indebted Poor Countries relief; South Africa and Nigeria (the only African countries I can think of off the top of my head with a sizable telecom base, sorry) are not in nearly as bad a shape. Admittedly I don't know a whole lot about African socioeconomics, but wouldn't basic necessities take precedence over things like Internet presence?

I hate the acronym FOSS

I'm sorry, but I just had to say it. I often wonder why everything needs to be converted into an acronym. FOSS is one of the most annoying ones.

Man 1: What do you do?
Man 2: I'm a FOSS developer
Man 1: Yeh... that, um, well... great.

Carry it out a little farther

Man 1: What do you do?
Man 2: I'm a FOSS developer
Man 1: Yeh... that, um, well... great.

Man 2: Got any spare change?

Relevant Wired Article

It's interesting to see another, more skeptical, perspective [wired.com] on Africa and open source:

Though it may take years for any software platform in a Third World continent -- whether open source or proprietary -- to become commercially viable on the same scale as in the United States and European markets, some of the factors that have impeded the fast adoption of Linux will make Africa an interesting battleground for the open-source movement.

Do you know Visual Basic?

1. "They don't ask if you can program. They ask, 'do you know (Microsoft) Visual Basic?'"

I feel African already.

Africa and America: Much in Common

[the] predicament is widespread across Africa, says Ghanaian Guido Sohne, "There are not enough projects available to work on to employ the available talent..."

Same problem in America: not enough projects to employ the available talent.

-kgj

Whoa!

Get out... they released the source for 419 lead generators?

Progress in South Africa

Wired has a few interesting articles about the issues affecting technology's progress in South Africa:

Racism Holds South Africa Back [wired.com]
South Africa Struggles to Rebuild [wired.com]

The best thing - You don't have to start from zero

I would think the best thing about FOSS is that each project doesn't have to start from zero.

It sounds like most of their projects are marginal as far a revenue. Having something close from to start from would be big plus.

Second point. Do the developers realy need a go between to connect them with users? Maybe they need tech fairs for getting the geeks and the non-geeks togeather.

Third point. If there is little money for anything in thier market, all the more reason for promoting respect for IP. The way to stay alive may not be fat contracts but decent residuals.

Internet access is the key

The lack of cheap internet access is holding back Africa in a big way. Take South Africa as example (because I'm from SA and can speak from experience). Only recently (about a year ago) did the telephone company Telkom (a monopoly, without any competition, because the government is taking YEARS just to award a second network operator license) start rolling out ADSL. They charge a ridiculous amount of money for it. Currently they charge the equivalent of about $130 per month for it, and remember, it's even higher than it sounds compared to average wages. On top of that they put a 3 gig monthly cap on international traffic! Phone calls are expensive, and you pay per minute even for local calls. Basically the government needs to realize that if we can get proper, cheap internet access, it WILL do the economy good. South Africa has many engineers and programmers educated at world class universities (also talking from experience, I'm currently working at a U.K. university that's regarded as pretty good, and the education I got in SA was of a very high standard compared to this), but to compete in the global market as an entrepreneur, you need to be able to communicate cheaply. If it wasn't for the law protecting Telkom, it would be sooooo easy to start a decent phone company and run them out of business. I get so frustrated thinking and talking about this, I could blow a fuse!

If someone in the Department of Communication reads this: Stop over regulating communications. Set it free and let it thrive, PLEASE.

Another diss for FOSS documentation volunteers.

> From the article: "Documentation is mostly done by geeks and testers, yet... it's useless... [The task of] documentation must be given to professionals."

One question... Where are all of these paid Open Source documentation jobs?

The road to better Open Source documentation begins with respect for the volunteers. Just replace "documentation" with "software" in the quoted text and see how you like it!

Microsoft vs Open Source

I had posted a comment on another site as a contribution as to why I think Microsofts products will be the leading choice in Africa for at least another 5-10 years if not longer. Here are some points why I think this will be so. To create Open Source products some things have to be in place.

1.Broadband internet connection. Anything else is too cumbersome and time consuming if not expensive. In Africa broadband still has a long way to go. If its there its terribly expensive. The use of wireless connections could help bridge this gap but it is still not as fast as DSL. Although of late 100MB wireless cards have been introduced to the market and have to be adapted in Africa.

2. Knowledge. With this I mean that there are very few people in Africa who have a true inner working knowledge of Open Source products like Linux. There are quite a number of Linux users (mostly ISPs and maybe a few Universities) but few real hackers who mess with the source code. In short Africa needs guys with good knowledge in C and Cplusplus.

3.Education. If you check most computer colleges and schools in Africa, they all offer lessons on Microsoft products but none in Open Source products. There are hardly any computer books to be bought in Africa and when you get them they are terriblly shallow, outdated and expensive. There are some efforts to donate books where corruption and government policy comes in creating difficulties so that in the end there is no real solution, the price has to be paid! Open Source development depends on many people who educate themselves, which means they pick up books and learn the tricks themselves and through mentors over the internet.

4. Brands. Most Africans are brand conscious! This will surprise alot of people but that is the fact when it comes to IT issues. People go for known names like IBM, DELL, HP and such and naturally Microsoft for most software solutions. Its not easy to get people to migrate to Open Office even though its free for example.

This are the real hurdles that I think Africa is facing in the adaptation of Open Source products.

I'm disappointed

Africa is where Linux can make a real difference.

I've been informed that corruption is inherent in some countries (Nigeria was specifically mentioned by an ex-resident) and believe it or not, this is the "front line" for market share with pirated Windows 2000 and Linux boxes. But 46 posts at a +2 threshold? That's low.

Is that it? Slashbots are happy to whinge that C# isn't as crap as they hoped yet they're not willing to post about Linux's future mindshare?

This is why I post less on Slashdot than I used to. People post like they're fighting a higher cause but they're actually just whoring.

Priorities...

Slashdot, phat bandwidth, internet gaming, ecommerce ... these are the things the people of Africa need. Food, water, shelter and stable government are relatively unimportant.

Kunta Kinte

Hmmm... The Kunta Kinte of software development.

For those of you too young to know/remember, there was a marvelous miniseries on television back in the 70's about Kunta Kinte, showing his life in Africa, how he got caught and brought to America to be a slave, etc. That was the show that started Levar Burton's success as an actor.

Funny, I was just thinking about that today.

Mod parent troll

We can do without shit like that here.

Re:New category, please

It is because of nasty, evil, self-opinionated, racist morons like you, whom I suspect of being white, and other nasty, evil, self-opinionated, racist morons like Mugabe, who as we know is black, that the problems of Africa continue. Cut it out now, this blatant racism has gone far enough. There is no need to hate people of a different colour, or in Mugabe's case, same colour, different tribe. It achieves nothing except death and destruction in the end.

It is far too late to stop the perceived problems spreading to Europe, in fact many of the problems of Africa came from Europe in the first place. And don't use the word "nigger", you can face prosecution for doing so, certainly in the UK.

And before you ask, I am white, not that it should matter, any decent person would feel the same about your vile attitude.

Someone please moderate this imbecile into oblivion.

If we need a new category it should be "Vile Scumbags" and you should be sent there at once.

Re:Free Open Source Software Independent Laborator

I don't think that the pernicious evil of communism has anything to do with this, but a lot more to do with the state extracting as much work as possible, and then a bit more, from each individual, while providing as little reward as possible, lots of compulsion but no incentives. That is why the industry in communist countries was a bad joke, the output was trash.... (Actually that reminds me of an organisation in Redmond, I wonder if Sir B. is a latent communist, the company output is certainly trash, as usually is his own verbal output...) FOSS works because individuals do what they want, when they want, to make it work, with no compulsion whatsoever (except for the few paid developers, who are not actually necessary to the process, although it helps that people like IBM do pay developers...). Most of these guys have another job, often a fairly well paid one, because they are of above average ability. they develop software in their own time, often because they have a need than canot be filled by the junk products of a rotten industry controlled by a single Criminal Monopoly of very low technical ability.

FOSS will be around long after Microtrash is forgotten.