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GNU is Not Unix Software

Essay: Perspectives of African FOSS developers 132

Posted by michael from the visualize-world-peas dept.
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."
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Essay: Perspectives of African FOSS developers More

Essay: Perspectives of African FOSS developers

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  • Zimbabwe (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crossconnects ( 140996 ) <.crossconnects. .at. .gmail.com.> on Friday May 07, 2004 @01:54PM (#9086797) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:19PM (#9087117)
      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..
      • Africans are being screwed.

        Perhaps, but keep in mind that they don't have the telecom infrastructure you do in N. America or most of Europe and Asia. There is substantial cost involved in developing and maintaining that infrastructure. Plus, there is less population (particularly in terms of users) density to offset those higher costs.

      • Re:Morocco (Score:5, Informative)

        by Khalid ( 31037 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @03:10PM (#9087769) Homepage
        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 (Score:4, Informative)

      by tiger99 ( 725715 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:34PM (#9087302)
      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.....

      • Quote:

        "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"

        God it feels so good to see that people actually think GWB is a cretin !

      • Re:Zimbabwe (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward


        MOD PARENT UP, YOU COCKS!

        Africa's a third-world dirthole because at the end of the day, we *and* our government find it all too easy to write off a whole continent than look at the ugly truth about what's going on over there. We got our asses handed to us in Somalia and ever since then it's been "see no evil, hear no evil" towards ANYTHING that happens in Africa as long as it's south of Libya. How many people were killed in the Hutu/Tutsi conflict? A fucking MILLION? And what did we do for them? Hell, we

        • Re:Zimbabwe (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          "Africa's a third-world dirthole because at the end of the day, we *and* our government find it all too easy to write off a whole continent than look at the ugly truth about what's going on over there."

          Yes, and USA and Europe both have both fsckd up African people. When you look at the powerty and dictatorship stemming from power vacuum left by the European colonialists, lack of interest (except from the oil) and denial, you essentially get a 3rd world continent created by you. I think it's about time we t

  • Issues not limited to FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Raindance ( 680694 ) * <johnsonmx@@@gmail...com> on Friday May 07, 2004 @01:59PM (#9086870) Homepage Journal
    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
    • I wouldn't, personally, call it spin. The point is that FLOSS has the greatest potential to affect change, vs. commercial licenses. Because they're not selling their software, it is more able to affect change, but for the same reason, they don't have some of the resources other developers do to overcome the chalanges listed.

      A for profit small scale software shop could theoretically get a loan that would be paid off through sales.

      However, a well organized team of FLOSS developers could apply for grants th

  • Summary (Score:4, Informative)

    by CodeMonkey4Hire ( 773870 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:02PM (#9086911)
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:03PM (#9086920) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:08PM (#9086987)
      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 (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        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.

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

        • Re:Whoa (Score:4, Informative)

          by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:24PM (#9087187)
          "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 (Score:1)

          by N1KO ( 13435 )
          They're also not allowed to fund the Taliban. Your point?
          • The Taliban are (were) bad people. The Cubans aren't. There are other countries with regimes much more oppressive than Castro's, but Americans can visit them.

            All hell will break loose when Castro dies. The U.S. should take steps now to ease the transition, rather than pretend the Bay of Pigs was recent history.

    • Re:Whoa (Score:4, Interesting)

      by illusion_2K ( 187951 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMdissolve.ca> on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:28PM (#9087235) Homepage

      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.

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

      That isn't so strange really, I've been buying my computers in the same manner for about six years now. Every three or four months I buy a piece of hardware and put it in my machine, and sooner or later I end up with enough "old" parts that I have another computer. You could argue that I am just upgrading my current computer, but by the time I've upgraded everything in it I've bought a new one, right?

      • Re:Whoa (Score:2)

        by nizo ( 81281 )
        True, but just imagine having no computer when you started the buying process :-( Whoohoo, bought a used video card today, now all I need is the rest of the machine, which I will have in 3-4 months.....
    • I guess, you weren't around 10 to 15 years ago.
    • Damn. It takes me a week to download a ISO.

  • Nice Quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by mopslik ( 688435 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:05PM (#9086949)

    "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. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:05PM (#9086950)
    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. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CreatureComfort ( 741652 ) * on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:43PM (#9087417)

      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.

  • 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 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by foidulus ( 743482 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:11PM (#9087037)
    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 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by News for nerds ( 448130 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:42PM (#9087413) Homepage
      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.
      • I wasn't suggesting that they export their way out of trouble, that is not the only way to economic advantages from software. An investment in infrastructure could lead to a FOSS movement that would address local problems. A good infrastructure can inspire economic benefits in other ways than selling code. African factories are not exactly the beacon of quality of efficiency. With a good boost of knowledge transfer from outside, once again along with infrastructure(that involves OSS), they could make th

    • Re:Hopefully the government can take a cue from In (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tiger99 ( 725715 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @03:01PM (#9087651)
      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? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PurifyYourMind ( 776223 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:13PM (#9087056) Homepage
    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.
    • Sadly enough, everyone knows who needs aid, and where they need it. The problem are political issues both in those countries, and in the first world countries who could actually offer help.

    • As someone pointed out, the problems are not that we don't know 'who needs aid where' or where problems are flaring up. We have that information. The problem is not technological, it's sociological - people just do not give a f*(k. The developed world doesn't care, and it's time to stop this annoying pretense that we really care, because we don't. The world was full well aware of what was happening in Rwanda 10 years ago, and did nothing anyway. And this was not an isolated incident, it's endemic, and occur

  • Slashdot needs more articles like this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fiannaFailMan ( 702447 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:13PM (#9087061) Journal
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sisukapalli1 ( 471175 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:28PM (#9087224)
      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
    • it's good that African economies can develop intellectual property for export if natural resources are not abundant


      Too bad your otherwise insightful post will be shouted down because you dared to use the words "intellectual property". ;-)

    • 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 W
      • What I'm saying is that they have towns, roads, electricity and a middle class in Africa too. Some people post here as if the entire continent is a disease-ridden refugee camp.

      • Re:Slashdot needs more articles like this (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Nurf ( 11774 ) * on Friday May 07, 2004 @05:36PM (#9089397) Homepage

        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 (Score:4, Interesting)

          by X_Bones ( 93097 ) <danorz13&yahoo,com> on Friday May 07, 2004 @06:25PM (#9089753) Homepage Journal
          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?
          • 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.

            Thanks for your reply. Well, a reasonable estimate of the percentage of aid that gets diverted is around 90 - 95 %. This is f
        • Best argued post I've read all day.

    • Re:Slashdot needs more articles like this (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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.

      I'm a bit surprised this wasn't modded as flamebait. Although focusing only on short term issues like food is not in fact a good idea, I don't see any argument here for why promoting the IT business is so great either.

      Perhaps y

    • sustenance was a more pressing priority

      Of course, it is; but that is true anywhere, even in the US. They are not mutually exclusive. I can only see it as a positive for the African countries that they are advancing technologically.

      that the west should concentrate on sending food aid

      IMHO, if "the west" wants to help, they should concentrate on helping them grow their own food. Teach a man to fish.

      A bit like the clueless anti-globalisation protestors

      Perhaps I am clueless, but I can't help but think that c

  • I hate the acronym FOSS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by h00pla ( 532294 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:13PM (#9087063) Homepage
    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.

  • Relevant Wired Article (Score:4, Informative)

    by MisterLawyer ( 770687 ) <mikelawyer AT gmail DOT com> on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:18PM (#9087104)
    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? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @02:36PM (#9087324) Homepage
    1. "They don't ask if you can program. They ask, 'do you know (Microsoft) Visual Basic?'"

    I feel African already.

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

  • 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

  • Internet access is the key (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rico_za ( 702279 ) on Friday May 07, 2004 @03:46PM (#9088164)
    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.

    • You're right, Telkom is putting something of 'handbrake' on the South African economy with their monopoly pricing, terrible and slow service roll-out, and artificially created bandwidth scarcity (they have a lot of international bandwidth on an undersea fiber cable that is literally unused because they heavily limit ISPs access to the bandwidth in order to drive up prices). But:

      If someone in the Department of Communication reads this: Stop over regulating communications.

      Writing on /. is not going to help

  • > 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!

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

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