Development

1. There are other possibilities suggested, for the record. [↩]
2. Riddell’s “Does Foreign Aid Really Work?” provides a comprehensive examination of the question. [↩]
3. Waverman, Meschi & Fuss 2005 (PDF) [↩]
4. WSIS points to 170 studies suggesting this. [↩]

We are told that we live in an information age, a knowledge economy, and a network society. And while these are useful shorthands for pointing towards certain trends, of course, information, knowledge and networks are nothing new to our age, economy and society.

One of the strongest explanations for the historical importance of information and communication technologies to economic dynamism is James Beniger’s Control Revolution which convincingly argues that ICTs were originally necessary not to an information economy of services, but an industrial economy of manufacturing.

The telegraph, and even more mundane innovations like tables, arose in response to a “crisis of control.” The most poignant example of this was how the speed at which trains operated made traditional communication and managerial strategies inadequate. Crashes were frequent until ICTs were developed to overcome the crisis through alerting distant switching stations and tracking repair statuses.

What, then, does the rise of ICTs in developing countries mean for industrialization?

Many people hope that the Indian model, where ICT created an enormous service industry, is replicable (this form of leapfrogging is famously the goal of Rwanda’s President Kagame). But as we strive to use ICTs for productive activities in the developing world, we would be remiss to ignore manufacturing – the sector that stands between agricultural societies and service-based ones. As China becomes increasingly sophisticated, we see the initial stages of poorer countries replacing them as the world’s factory floor. Increasing the productivity and efficiency of industry in the developing world will require ICTs, from cloud computing down to file management systems. While this will mean some service-based businesses providing ICT solutions, I think a potentially more productive change will come as the structure of the economies shift from primarily agricultural to significantly industrial. This, I think, could be one of the more promising roles for ICTs in development.

I like to think of it as a neighbourhood app store – and in many ways it’s the edges of the internet, where entrepreneurs are taking content online and offering it to local, offline and/or technologically illiterate customers. Also these corner shop app stores can be content editors for their community: they filter content they think their customers like, but they also guide what their customers might like as well.

Jan Chipchase writing about street-hacks.

This past semester I took an excellent course entitled Infrastructure Studies: Knowledge, Distribution and Power that took a broad, sociological view of the concept of infrastructure. For the term paper, I examined the GDP through the lens of infrastructure and classification schemes. The paper is embedded below or available for download (under a CC BY license) here.
A “Vulgar” Measure: GDP as Infrastructure
Incidentally, the day before the paper was due, a straightforward introduction to the troubles with GDP was published in the NYT Magazine.

*UPDATE* – We are crowdsourcing the data on a website here.

Mobile Internet is going global and the newest chapter is taking place in developing countries. In order to better understand the paths towards widespread adoption of mobile Internet, Jonathan Donner and I have written a brief note on the availability of prepaid mobile Internet in Africa. Because prepaid models are more appropriate for poorer consumers, we argue that the availability of prepaid mobile data will be a key driver of inclusive mobile Internet usage.

Starting in late 2009, we collected data on the availability of prepaid mobile data in all 53 African countries. Unfortunately, without the budget to travel the continent, we have been unable to conclusively determine the presence of this form of connectivity in every country. So, we’re asking you to help build the database of prepaid mobile data in Africa.

Available here (in PDF) is a draft version of our paper where you can get a sense of our project.

For the crowdsourcing, we’ve created an editable Google Map with entries for each country. Green indicates existing knowledge that prepaid data is offered by at least one provider. Yellow means we have been unable to determine the presence of prepaid mobile data. And Red suggests confidence that it is not available in that country (though if you know otherwise, please do correct us!).

If you know for certain that prepaid data is available for mobile phones from at least one network provider in one of the countries marked Yellow, you can either get in touch directly or login with a Google account to the African Prepaid Mobile Data map and, in the upper right of the left-hand sidebar, click “Edit” to create your citation (the more supporting evidence, including links or your name/affiliation, the better).

This is a small-scale experiment in crowdsourcing data for use in an academic paper, so we’re not sure how much detail we will be able to gather, or what end-state the map will be, but we’re grateful for your help. Thanks!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about privacy protection in Africa, the launch of Facebook Zero – their free mobile services offered with more than 50 operators around the world – has some important implications for developing countries. I wanted to consolidate some comments I’ve made elsewhere about this development.

The Impact on Local Innovation

Let’s be blunt: barring some strange vagary, Facebook Zero is going to be a hit. Facebook is already popular in Africa, and in other developing countries, such as Indonesia, we know that usage is overwhelmingly through mobile devices. The success of MXit in South Africa, as well, is strong evidence of the viability of mobile-based social networking, and with free access to 0.facebook.com, the proposition is even stronger.

What does this mean for Africa’s burgeoning technology entrepreneurs? The mobile phone is an exciting, preexisting platform for services and applications. CellBazaar in Bangladesh and M-PESA in Kenya are standout examples of the value that can be created from building new mobile services. Competing with Facebook is going to be very difficult, especially when so many carriers are picking them and giving them the ability to not charge for data usage on 0.facebook.com. To be clear, I’m not opposed to Facebook competing in this regard. They are clearly doing good business.

But in the midst of doing good business, they could cannibalize African jobs. For example, Safaricom, who has not partnered with Facebook, just announced they are working with MXit to bring the South African service to Kenya. Erik Hersman sees this as a missed opportunity for local entrepreneurs. The real problem, though, is that the operators in Africa can choose winners and losers on their proprietary networks. New entrants (the proverbial “next Google or YouTube”) face very steep transaction costs that limit their scale.

A Caveat?

As Prabhas Pokharel of MobileActive points out, though, there is more to this story. Speaking recently at the GSMA World Congress, a Facebook representative showed that when Vodafone in the UK offered one week of free Facebook, not only did data usage shoot up, it stayed up: “the number of people paying and using data plans increased by 20% from the people that tried it.”

No wonder Facebook was able to partner with so many operators: in time, they will phase out the free access and will have convinced more users to sign up for the lucrative data plans. Is this a good thing? As Steve Song and others have argued, mobile usage costs in Africa can be very high. There might be reasons to worry that people are spending money recklessly on mobiles, to the detriment of savings or “better” consumption.

But there could be a silver lining. Data services provide more flexibility and capability. Oftentimes people do not even know their phone is capable of anything more than SMS and voice. If Facebook Zero encourages people to responsibly use the mobile Internet, there will be opportunities for many more entrepreneurs and delivery of richer services.

Facebook Zero as Africa’s Agora?

Steve Song is more bullish on Facebook Zero, despite having well-founded critics of both Facebook and African telcos. He says,

I think the potential for innovation with Facebook Zero is really about people having conversations, exchanging ideas about any and every aspect of their lives. Those conversations will spawn innovations. Right now, Facebook Zero only covers ten countries in Africa but supposing in covers all or most of them. Think of the scope for new ideas to find their way across the continent or across the road.

This is an interesting angle. Though it is starting to change, Africa lacks participatory media. Facebook, despite being used for plenty of inane purposes, does have the potential to encourage both innovative thinking and, perhaps more likely, political activity and awareness.

But, again, I think there are reasons to be pessimistic. Is Facebook really the platform we want for this? For one, it is another intermediary on which pressure can be placed. Even worse, it is an intermediary that does not have a good track record on safeguarding political speech within its bounds (see Rebecca MacKinnon’s recent post on the human rights implications of content moderation and account suspension). Frustratingly, Facebook has also not joined the Global Network Initiative, an effort by corporations and NGOs to promote self expression and privacy in a digital world through corporate best practices. Entering places like Tunisia with Facebook Zero demands thoughtful reflection on a company’s role in facilitating political activity.

So, it is, of course, too early to tell the implications of what was certainly a big week for mobile and development, but for this specific initiative, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned.

[As always, I'm speaking only for myself on this blog.]

Facebook recently unveiled a new mobile version of their site aimed at developing markets called 0.facebook.com. The site is optimized for mobile networks and devices, but the real coup is that Facebook has partnered with more than 50 mobile operators to offer the service for free. Leaving aside increased fragmentation of the Internet and what this means for local entrepreneurs trying to build the next MXit (both important issues), I wanted to consider the privacy implications of this.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve probably heard that Facebook has an abhorrent record on privacy protection. Stemming from its founder’s quixotic views and a financial incentive to expose user information, Facebook has used frequent policy changes, byzantine controls and double-speak to push the nearly 500 million users to a situation where they have far less ability to control who has access to their personal information. In the U.S., and even more so in Europe, there are institutional manners in which this is partially combated. Regulatory agencies can direct behavior, advocacy organizations can promote change, and the media can raise awareness. While we are certainly not in a perfect situation, I fear the developing world is in far worse shape.

Facebook is already popular in much of Africa. Users already access it from their mobile phones. But free mobile access is likely to even further drive adoption and use throughout the continent. Over the years, Facebook has made its lack of commitment to privacy clear; 0.facebook.com is not going to change that. But do African nations have sufficiently capable consumer protection agencies? Do they have NGOs focused on the emerging issues of digital life? Is the media providing informative commentary on the implications of the Internet? More fundamentally, are there African researchers examining privacy from a local context? And do users of new media have the literacies they need?

It is essential that Africa takes on this issue on its own terms. Privacy norms, practices and expectations may differ between Nigeria and Nebraska; tackling privacy policy should, too. That being said, international NGOs, and even wealthier countries or donor agencies can play a role.

Take, as a comparison, the issue of gay rights. Homosexuality is illegal in at least 37 African countries and two men were just sentenced to 14 years in Malawi. Amnesty International has taken up the case and is drawing public attention to it globally, the independent Center for the Development of People was formed by Malawians to promote change, and the government is fearful of losing donor funding over the issue.

This is the type of confluence of forces that are likely needed for positive change, whether on gay rights or privacy protection. Will Africa reach it for the latter?

[*Apologies, as always, for grouping "Africa" together as one entity. It's not. I know; I'm guilty.]

The arrival of broadband Internet in Africa via the undersea cables is widely hailed as an opportunity for economic advancement due to the power of ICT-enabled businesses. The hopeful look at India’s success in software and services as a model for African growth, but a new meme is emerging that see the interconnections of Africans as a threat to global security. While it is an interesting, and perhaps fruitful, exercise to think through the potential downsides of the Internet in Africa, the way the issue is being framed, largely by Westerners promoting cybersecurity services, strikes me as overwrought and misplaced.

The argument has two versions:

In one, detailed by cybersecurity consultant and author Jeffrey Carr, there is a dangerous fusion of anti-American forces who do, or will soon have, the means, motive and opportunity to unleash cyberwarfare upon American critical infrastructure and commerce. Looking at Somalia, where piracy and terrorism seem to be mixing, Carr argues that the arrival of the EASSy cable will present a dangerous new challenge to international security:

Once Somalia goes digital, it will create a never-before-seen opportunity for local gangs to move their strategic alliances with Al Shabaab onto the Internet. Their twin exports – extortion and terrorism will have unlimited opportunities for profit and mayhem, particularly if they are directed against critical infrastructure such as energy, water, and transportation facilities.

The second version, which is probably a more likely one, is that the combination of broadband connectivity and poor virus protections in Africa will make African computers prime targets for botnet herders who will use them to “paralyze the network infrastructure of a major western nation.” Writing in Foreign Policy, an organizer of a major cybersecurity summit, Franz-Stefan Gady, argues

“[T]he continent is home to the world’s most vulnerable computers. About 80 percent of the African population lacks even rudimentary knowledge of information technologies, according to a recent World Bank survey. Though Internet cafes are widespread, providers often cannot afford proper antivirus software, making computers very easy targets for skilled botnet operators and hackers.”

Moreover, he says, African countries, by and large, lack the legal wherewithal to prosecute cyber-criminals.

As a final datapoint, consider a recent report by the cybersecurity firm Symantec which says South Africa is in the “unenviable” position of receiving better connectivity right when it is hosting the World Cup; this, they say, is a recipe for accelerated cybercrime.

It should be noted at the outset that the people we are not hearing from on this are Africans. Cybersecurity demands international cooperation, but the views of African regulators, businessmen and civil society – who likely have a more nuanced views of the upsides of connectivity – are missing.

I suspect this voice would add context to the above worries. For example, in countries where basic literacy is a challenge yet to be overcome, worrying about the next Kevin Mitnick rising from Mogadishu seems a little silly. Recall that the most sophisticated cyber attacks come from Russia, a country with a long history of technological prowess, and China, where top-notch technical schools are likely the source of the recent Google hacks. In addition to infrastructure, you need computer skills, and as anyone who works to promote ICTs in Africa knows, this is a tough job.

The obvious response to this is that the Somali terrorist-pirates could purchase hacking services. This are widely available and, as I understand it, fairly affordable (though likely much more than a few AK-47s and a boat). But this is also nothing new. Al-Qaeda, an organization which is far more anti-American, far more well-funded, and has far more access to broadband Internet, does not seem to be a fan of cyberattacks. As far as I know, there is no evidence that Al-Qaeda has established offensive cyber capabilities, despite having operatives in broadband-saturated locations.

There are some hints that affiliated people have considered hacking as a means to their end – manuals, for example – but terrorists rely on shock factor to, umm, terrorize. When effective cyberwar is as theoretical as it, risk-averse groups are likely to stick to IEDs and suicide bombers.

Furthermore, the view of the Somali pirates and “terrorists” is ahistorical. It misses the reprehensible waste dumping and illegal fishing that have decimated the Somali economy (of course enabled by the absence of a functioning government). Writing frantic articles about cyber WMDs arising from this position is reckless. Somalia instead needs state-building, legal protection of its sovereignty and job opportunities.

ICTs are a great opportunity and although they do have potential downsides, the whole framing of these African cyberwar (!!!!) pieces leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Update: For a hilarious and spot-on treatment of this subject, see this:

I think that Africans have more to fear from older technology outside their continent than the rest of the world fearing Africa. It would be ironic if at some point in the near future, Nigeria had to block IP addresses from the United States.

He’s right. When Franz-Stefan writes that “skillful cybercriminals operating out of an unregulated Internet café in the slums of Addis Ababa, Lagos, or Maputo” will create the world’s biggest botnets, he shows that he has little understanding of those “slums” – for starters, electricity is a little intermittent to power a cyberwar.

Update 2: A new bill in the US Senate would require punishment for governments who do not control cybercrime allegedly occurring in their country. It would create a list of bad states and could cut aid to them if they don’t align their cyber-policies with American desires. Imagine, if you will, that this ends up like the USTR’s Special 301 list which coerces developing countries to enforce more draconian intellectual property regimes. If, as Jonathan Zittrain argues, innovative networks (“generative” in his parlance) are under threat from cybercrime, then it won’t be long until America is coercing African countries to lock down their networks, perhaps at the behest of the same security consultants who are arguing we need to re-engineer our networks to be more locked down. I don’t like where this is heading.

The Google/China back-and-forth that has played across the media for the past few months has raised the specter of a fragmenting Internet, catchily known as the “splinternet.” The fear, raised in various forms, is that proprietary networks and devices, in addition to censorship and corporate withdrawal from certain nations, are fracturing the unified, standardized Internet that made it such a promising medium for international communication. To add to these fears, exacerbated by the withdrawal of Google from China, GoDaddy has just announced that it will no longer register domains in China due to onerous regulations. This has many arguing that China’s Internet will be a separate entity from the rest of the world.

But was the Internet ever all that unified? Or was it merely a potential, a hope?

The potential to speak, or even the potential to link, does not mean that potential is met. This may seem like an obvious point, but it is often missed in the rhetoric surrounding the transformational effect of the Internet.

The barriers to a unified Internet are far more numerable – and long-standing – than proprietary code or government censorship (though these certainly do have an impact). For one, language is a significant barrier to communicating on an international medium. More fundamentally (and less cured by technological advancement), most people lack either the time or interest to meet the potential of a unified Internet. Even more, as UCT Professor Marion Walton notes, the billions of people excluded from the Internet due to poverty have never been connected to even the hope of a unified Internet.

It is important to be aware and attempt to counteract new divisions between the communicative capacity of humans – among which are censorship and technical incompatibility – but valuing interconnectedness requires a far broader view than most pundits have right now.

Okay, this really annoys me:

[Debates about foreign aid] have largely been the province of Western intellectuals and economists, with Africans in the developing world being passive objects in the exercise — just as the 1980s debate over the United States’ Japan fixation, and the consequent Japan bashing, occurred among Americans while the Japanese themselves stood by silently. Yet now the African silence has been broken by Dambisa Moyo, a young Zambian-born economist with impeccable credentials. [Emphasis added.]

That’s the well-respected and influential development economist Jagdish Bhagwati writing in Foreign Affairs. The article is a review of Dambisa Moyo’s book from last year, Dead Aid, and does a fine job of covering the history of foreign aid, but that assumption, that Africans have been “passive objects” in the debates surrounding development, charity and foreign aid is absolutely absurd.

I don’t claim to be a great Africanist – my time on the continent is limited to a few months, but that alone is enough to know that Africans are not the narrow-minded, unaware objects of a debate carried out only in Western marble-lined hallways. From African intellectuals, of which there are many, to middle-class students, the Africans I know have nuanced, defensible views and opinions on the issues about which Professor Bhagwati gets paid to write and teach.

The views of these Africans didn’t just pop-up liked daisies when Ms. Moyo published her book; they’ve been there for decades. The problem, I fear, is that it took a Westernized, PR-savvy Zambian woman to shake the Bhagwatis and Sachs of the world into paying attention. It also couldn’t hurt that she’s very pretty, right?

If this seems like a small point, and, I dunno, maybe it is, consider it a good excuse to listen to the great Senegalese musician Youssou N’Dour and his song, Wake Up, which makes similar points.