Posts Tagged ‘Africa’

*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!

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.

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.

[The following is a book review originally written for a development course.]

All too often, the public discourse about the past, present and future of African affairs is dominated by foreigners who lack the nuanced understanding that comes from a lifetime on the continent. That is why smart, eloquent and strongly pro-African voices like that of Wangari Maathai are such a welcome addition to the debates that swirl around Africa. In her new book, Maathai, a Kenyan who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her support of the environment and democracy, continues her tradition of powerful, and at times controversial, visions for the future of Africa. However, The Challenge for Africa: A New Vision suffers from a number of shortcomings, not the least of which is the microcosmic lens, weak researched support and a view of the past that is, for the most part, too rosy.

Maathai’s vision is sweeping. The book aims to establish “a set of principles for what it will take to change the life of [a typical] farmer, who represents 65 percent of Africans who continue to rely on subsistence agriculture.” The framework through which this should be accomplished is described as a three-legged stool where democratic space, sustainable and accountable management of natural resources, and cultures of peace – “fairness, respect, compassion, forgiveness, recompense and justice” – support the development of Africa. Key to this, the author believes, is a “revolution in leadership” for both politicians and citizenry. Her strong denunciations of corruption and negligence are a much-needed refrain, but as to the practicalities of ending the cycle of delinquency, Maathai comes up short. She writes,

“Even the poorest and least empowered of Africa’s citizens need to rid themselves of a culture that tolerates systemic corruption and inefficiency, as well as self-destructive tendencies and selfishness.”

But, not only are those about whom she speaks unlikely to ever read The Challenge for Africa, she ignores the systemic causes of corruption, preferring to trust in worthy leaders and groundswells of civil society to check the possibility of nefarious action.  Unfortunately, this is unlikely to be enough, and, at times, Maathai comes close to acknowledging this point: she provides an important critique of George Ayittey’s concept of a youthful “cheetah” generation rising up to replace the aging “hippo” leaders. As Maathai points out, Ayittey’s cheetahs could very well become hippos – corrupt, stagnant leaders who work not for their citizens, but for themselves. Yet, to the book’s detriment, Maathai does not seriously explore how best to align the social, political and economic context with the goals of honest, fair governance. African history is strewn with heroic leaders who become horrific with age – Robert Mugabe was a heroic leader who has done horrific things to his country. Although donor agencies have done much to make it a meaningless buzzword, there is good reason to focus on governance, as opposed to simple leadership. By discussing the work of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Maathai demonstrates a passing acknowledgement that good governance is more than a cultural feature that can mature, but she misses the opportunity to use her important voice to explain, for example, the economic underpinnings of corruption.

The exciting and all-to-often ignored call for Africans to decide the future of their continent is one of the most important contributions of this book. “Ultimately,” Maathai writes, “the fate of the continent depends on its citizens.” She also recognizes that although her focus is on subsistence farmers, the richness of Africa’s population now extends far beyond the continental borders. Taking India’s lead, Maathai calls for a “collective effort, particularly through the embassies of African states, to provide systems and institutions to support Africans outside of the continent, so they can adjust successfully to their new environment.” Not only is this good governmental stewardship, it will allow African emigrants to become good ambassadors for a continent that suffers from a severe public relations disaster in the global North. Even further, by enabling the international success of Africans, African nations will be more likely to materially improve the country of their birth through remittances, knowledge and investment.

The grand vision of The Challenge for Africa, though, undermines some of her points. Most obvious is Maathai’s pre-occupation with the legacies of colonialism. This is not to dismiss the impact that centuries of foreign occupation and exploitation have, but the call for Africans to make their future is limited by the substantial weight that is placed on colonialism. In fact, these legacies are well known, and dedicating so much time to the past comes with considerable cost in the form of lost opportunities to move the debate in a new, productive direction. Writing about the popular image of Africa, Maathai says it,

“Only reinforces the perception that African solutions for African problems don’t exist, and that Africans are not equally equipped to propose a vision for Africa’s development or provide concrete actions to bring it about.”

This is certainly true and worth repeating, but too often Maathai’s pro-African voice approaches a likeness to autarky and isolation. For example, when she addresses the economic future of Africa, the book suffers from a severe myopia of global economic trends. “Africa has an opportunity to add value to those commodities by generating finished products…. The coltan of Congo could be added to capacitors in the same country it is mined from…” This is far too simplistic of an analysis; even were the DRC able to construct a competitive electronics factory, it likely lacks the infrastructure, business climate, and human capital to compete with the East Asian economies.

When she addresses the Washington Consensus, The Challenge for Africa is not “a new vision,” but an already tired criticism of a flawed endeavor. What’s more, her support of import-substituting industrialization totally ignores its large failures, such as in India where Nehru’s socialist policies created a legacy that still stunts the industrialization and growth of his country. While she notes that private capital flows surpassed aid for the first time in 2000, Maathai does not lend her credibility to the need for economic openness. That is, except when it comes to the new Chinese investors, who she believes are better than European or American firms due to a “common experience with Africa as victims of imperialism.” If Maathai believes that the Chinese investors, using largely Chinese labor, are motivated by historical legacy, as opposed to cold economic reality, she is sorely mistaken.

In fact, Maathai frequently approaches the quixotic when she addresses the global North. She contends that foreign “accoutrements” such as “soap” were “forceful symbols of the intruders’ self-image and power.” What might have been dismissed as the frustration of a genuinely well-intentioned author is shockingly contrasted with her assertion, a mere thirty pages later, that the governments of Africa should “make it their mission to provide a latrine in every household and teach basic hygiene…” Labeling hygienic tools as weapon of oppression is both hypocritical and callous. For example, even more sophisticated hygienic options, though Western in origin, are worthwhile. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Nicholas Kristof notes,

“There’s growing evidence that a cheap way to help keep high-school girls in school is to help them manage menstruation. For fear of embarrassing leaks and stains, girls sometimes stay home during their periods, and the absenteeism puts them behind and eventually leads them to drop out. Aid workers are experimenting with giving African teenage girls sanitary pads, along with access to a toilet where they can change them.”

Surely Maathai does not contend that such “accoutrements” are tools of Western power, as soap once was?

This desire for cultural stagnancy, perhaps even revision, is one of the recurring themes of The Challenge for Africa. Maathai is a strong proponent of traditional African culture, spending considerable time addressing what she sees as a serious misunderstanding of the historic make-up of African society. Preferring the term “micro-nation,” as opposed to tribe – a word she feels has negative connotations – Maathai proposes a full embrace of the micro-nations of Africa. She sees

“The loss of traditional culture as one of the major causes of troubles such as the misuse of alcohol and drugs, behavior toward women and girl children, high secondary school dropout rates, prostitution, theft, the breakup of family relationships, and the commercialization of religion.”

This, obviously, is no small claim, but the support comes more from anecdotes than rigorous study. While I tend to agree that “the tenants of modernity – with its belief that material goods, greater technology, and innovation… – are insufficient to provide an ethical direction for our lives,” that is also insufficient reasons to avoid them. In truth, those tenants of modernity are important inputs for economic growth, a necessary component of development.

Although the author recognizes that “Africans cannot change the past; they can only manage it and determine the future,” considerable effort is spent painting a rosy picture of pre-Colonial times. In fact, Maathai proposes to enshrine cultural identity, as embodied in micro-nation membership, in formal assemblies at the nation-state level. This ignores the fluid, evolving nature of culture and identity and risks institutionalizing barriers that are just as likely to harm, as they are help.

Maathai is, as expected, at her best when she addresses her true passion: environmentalism. Her impassioned appeals for conservation and sustainability are as important today as they were when she began her work with the Green Belt Movement. She rightly points out that environmental degradation, such as the overfishing of African stocks, have very real geo-political implications. She points specifically to the forests of the Congo to demonstrate just how fragile and important ecosystems are. Yet, for all her experience, there is limited time spent addresses the specific mechanisms or steps that can be taken. For example, in the Congo, much of the deforestation is caused by the local population’s reliance on charcoal for fuel. This is a powerful economic reality that will not be overcome by long-term worries about sustainability. Instead, those organizations should create alternatives, such as has been done by Dr. Amy Smith of MIT, whose method of creating biomass charcoal creates real hope that the causes of deforestation may be addressed practically.

Secondly, The Challenge for Africa misses one of the primary trends affecting the environment and global commerce: urbanization. Although she notes that rural farmers are still the majority of the African population, the incredible migration towards cities is occurring fastest in Africa. This brings with it new environmental challenges that thought-leaders like Wangari Maathai must be ready to address. Further, as this book is primarily concerned with the sustainable development of the African continent, it must recognize the changing economic conditions that urbanization will entail. In her desire for the historic roots of Africa, Maathai misses the role that industrialization plays in growth. Factories need not be unsustainable, and as the Chinese population is increasingly absorbed into more sophisticated manufacturing and services, Africa could very well aim to place its newly urbanized in positions of industry.

Three hundred pages is not a lot of room to construct a new vision for Africa, let alone analyze the challenge for the continent, so it is likely that Maathai, whose life has been dedicated to this work, is ready to address these short-comings; however, in attempting to refocus the debate, she frequently misses the mark. That is not to say the book is without merits: the world needs more strong African voices, and Maathai is clearly one of the most important.

Cell phones and the Internet are spreading in Cuba, apparently empowering dissidents. This follows illicit television that has been popular in Cuba for years:

Since the 1990s, television has been the censors’ Achilles heel. Thousands of Cubans, mostly in Havana, watch Spanish-language telecasts from Miami. U.S. State Department officials estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 parabolic antennas are in use in Cuba.

Will two-way communications empower more than TV broadcasts? Or will traditional power structures bring about changes in Cuba?

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Lots of good statistics about Internet usage in China.

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Another piece on the trade vs. aid debate, but with a heavier focus on African entrepreneurship. [For more information, see infoDev's page on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, including this report on the SME Financing Gap.]

I just finished watching Nathan Eagle speak at O’Reilly ETech 2009 about his start up, txteagle.

Dr. Eagle’s interest in mobile phones and their broader roles in society brought him to East Africa where really fascinating innovations are taking place. While there, he saw a number of problems:

1. With unemployment in Kenya hovering a little below 50%, many relatively educated people have lots of idle time. With the exploding popularity of mobile phones, a cell phone is often present during downtime.
2. Cellular operators are searching for ways to increase average revenue per user (ARPU) and to distribute the traffic volumes more evenly (less at peak times).
3. Corporations have millions of tasks that humans can do better than computers and cheap communication networks allow those to be distributed via crowdsourcing.

Dr. Eagle’s elegant solution pays Africans (in airtime or mobile money) to complete simple tasks like surveys, translations and transcriptions. As he says, think of it as “mobile Mechanical Turk.” And as he explains in the second half of his speech, there are a number of exciting secondary effects of this empowerment.

One of the great things about Christmas Break (besides my mom’s cooking and sleeping in) is the ability to catch-up on things I’ve bookmarked, starred or left open in tabs for weeks. Many of these provide for great blog posts.

Andrew McLaughlin is one of those guys who I hope I get to meet at some point because his work seems to align so nicely with my interests. Not only is he in charge of Google’s international public policy work (the topic of a recent paper of mine), he has years of experience with technology, Africa and development.

The latter was the subject of a ten minute talk he gave at BarCamp Africa this past fall. In it, he posits three notes about the role of technology in development. His focus is Africa, but the principles are applicable around the developing world.

His three notes are:

1. Pay attention to the economic ecosystem: OLPC is disrupting domestic business efforts by forcing local entrepreneurs to compete with free. Experience shows that charity isn’t always as sustainable as for-profit markets. A better approach would be to open-source the designs and let manufacturers and distributors compete, bringing profits to the developing world.
2. Ignore statistics: A look at the spending capability of Africans suggests that Safaricom and other carriers in Africa should not be successful. But they are. McLaughlin says ignore the economic indicators and find ways to appeal to African consumers.
3. Realize that some of the most innovative companies are African. McLaughlin points to Nation Media Group, an African media company whose work shows the future of journalism. Stop thinking about Africa as a charity case of disfunction and focus on their capabilites because, as Eric Hersman says, “if it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.“

McLaughlin’s points are salient and smart – I look forward to the rest of the BarCamp Africa vides for more insight.

During the tragic post-election violence in Kenya late last year, a couple of technologists with ties to Kenya created Ushahidi, an innovative web service that allows witnesses to report crisis news from their mobile phone or computer. From the Swahili word for “testimony,” this non-profit has created a platform which allows for the crowdsourcing of reporting. It has already been proven useful in South Africa to track anti-immigration violence, and I’m sure sundry other uses will pop up.

I’m really excited for the possibilities this opens up. Ushahidi was an important tool for making the crisis in Kenya more transparent and capitalizes on the mobile penetration in Africa. Allowing more people to have the ability to express what they see is an important goal and Ushahidi is doing so in an open-source way which will make this as accessible as possible to all. Congratulations to the team!

I just had the pleasure of coming across Chris Abani‘s speeches at the TED Conference. Chris is a Nigerian poet and author who combines wonderful humor with profound thoughtfulness into speeches which are both stunning and inspiring.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCermULRk-I]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrbiIWD_CxI]

As I’ve spent my summer back in the American Midwest, I’ve been frustrated by the seeming distance – geographic and culturally – from the areas in which I’m interested. The developing world’s richness is lost in sterile non-fiction accounts and Chris Abani reminded me that “If you want to know about Africa, read our literature. And not just ‘Things Fall Apart’- that’s like reading ‘Gone With the Wind’ and thinking you know all about America.” Of course! I realized that the cultural understanding I’ve been flirting with in a number of posts, can be found in fiction. I feared, however, that I didn’t know where to start.

Luckily, Chris is easily reachable via email and responded to my inquiry for African book recommendations with the following list:

1. Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun both by Chimamanda Adichie
2. Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
3. The Beautiful Ones Are Not yet Born – Ayi Kwe Armah
4. A Question of Power – Bessie Head
5. Butterflies Burning – Yvonne Vera
6. The Sand Child – Tahar Ben Jelloun
7. Waiting for an Angel – Helon Habila

If you have any other recommendations, leave them in the comments. But, regardless, do yourself a favor and watch his talks.

Yesterday marked the release of Firefox 3 and to raise awareness, the Mozilla Foundation tried to oversee the most downloads of a software program in one day. To this end, they have a cool map showing the number of downloads from different countries. The map interests me because it demonstrates, graphically, the disparities in information and communication technologies around the world. Assuming Firefox is equally desirable across the globe, this map shows the inability for many in countries to learn about and download the open source browser. This is a useful demonstration of the different nature of communication technologies around the world – in Africa and much of Central Asia and South America, not only are there fewer Internet users, there are less PC owners who can make use of downloaded software.

A useful comparison is found in the map below which represents national gross domestic products (though the coloring is the opposite of Firefox’s – red is poor). As you might expect, the poorer countries align with those who downloaded fewer versions of Firefox.