Google is nothing if not resourceful in creating new resources. Two days ago, those crafty buggers announced a very large expansion of search languages for their African portal pages. From the site, the rundown was:
Ethiopia got Tigrinya, Oromo and Somali
Nigeria got Yoruba and Hausa
Ghana got Hausa
DR Congo got Lingala
Congo got Lingala
Rwanda got Kinyarwanda
Burundi got Kirundi
This is good news for those who don't necessarily speak the already established Google search languages of English, French, and Swahili that they offer in some capacity to these countries. Naturally, it doesn't solve the issues of connectivity to just get on the internet, but it is definitely something good and I'm pleased to see it. This should of course be no shock to anyone given that when not blogging, I'm busy working to get as many languages as possible running for Maneno.
The biggest thing to me about this announcement from Google is the fact that it was all done by volunteers. This may at first seem quite cheeky given that Google has literally billions of dollars (yes, Dr. Evil would be proud) and they could quite easily pay folks to create these translations. I at first was a bit taken aback by this seemingly crappy way to save a buck, but then, I thought about how it is to run a multi-lingual operation. Yes, you can hire someone to work on it fulltime if there is the need and the money to pay them, but this is more of a piece of occasional work here and there. Plus, you get in to dialectical issues. While I've heard that Tanzanian Kiswahili is said to be better than Kenyan, who am I (pretend I'm someone with an O in my title at Google when I say this) to know the difference? I'm not. So... how do I choose the "one" person to create the translation.
There really are strength in numbers when it comes to these things and instead of having one, single voice that might be wrong for some people, you can potentially get a group to compromise on something that generally works for everyone. Yes, okay, they're "crowdsourcing" the translations, but I have a bit of trouble with this word as it's overused these day and often stops short of the true gravity of a project. While there are groups (maybe not crowds) of people working to create these translations, it doesn't stop there. They are creating a community of their language on the web. And I admit that this is another one of the things that Maneno is trying to do in that we know, as does Google, that there needs to be more content out there in African languages, and it takes a group to make that happen.
In closing, I just want to add that if anyone out there who worked on these Google pieces would like to volunteer their time to work on the Maneno language matrix (it's maybe two hours of work), we'd love to have an Amharic, Akan, Hausa, Lingala, and/or Yoruba version available. I'm just saying!
Lately, the words have been hitting the fan with a large flap over the value of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) organization and the laptop that they make. Cory Doctorow wrote a very nicely thought out article on the whole issue. Walrus started with some shots across the bow. OLPC News answered back. Then of course Africano Blanco, Steve Song, and MobileActive added in to the discussion as well.
I find the discussion to be a worthy one. I really love Jon Evan's points on Walrus as well, with the second one being the most to the point and sadly humorous:
The XO laptop is a piece of crap.
I'm not going to judge the OLPC laptop though. I've never used one and I have nothing to do with the project. I have met a number of people who were involved in the project that have nothing but bad, scornful things to say about it now. I'm not sure if these naysayers are all large personalities who felt they weren't being listened to (and this could easily be the case) or that the OLPC was dead in the water before it even started to rain. Honestly, I think that it could be the best product in the world that all of us wanted and it would still fail. I feel this way because of three things: products such as the relatively cheap CrunchPad, African innovation, and Web 3.0 which I'm officially calling 'Web Free' from this point on.
I think a problem with the OLPC and the reason that people are wanting to say it will fail, because mobiles are the device of choice in developing nations is because a laptop is too complicated for these regions. No, I'm not saying that people can't figure one out. That is ludicrous as they're quite simple when you get down to it. I'm more thinking along the Apple lines that simpler is better. Something along the lines of a CrunchPad is a simple, all-in-one device that is overbuilt as far as durability is concerned. This is what you need. A laptop has too many moving parts and too many points of failure. Sure, you can build to ward off issues that spring up from having a hinged screen and a keyboard, but really, laptops are doomed for failure in demanding elements.
This is one of the reasons everyone turns to the mobile as the "obvious" alternative to the OLPC. We know they're rugged. They stand up to most anything. When I was in DRC last year, my friend, Cédric could whip out his Nokia N95 and check his email anywhere in Kinshasa, whereas I was offline because the humidity had blown out the LCD on Thinkpad X40; not to mention wifi networks aren't just floating around Boulevard du 30 Juin like they are in San Francisco's Mission District.
Needless to say, a mobile is not a laptop. Even my Blackberry Curve 8320 with a full keyboard pales in comparison to even the most basic of laptops. But, with the Nokia N97 or the Apple iPhone, the convergence gets more and more blurry. This is why it will not be strictly a mobile or strictly a laptop that makes information the most available in developing nations, but something in between, which brings me to my next point.
The wealth of information about regions like Sub-Saharan African is biased, based upon "l'atrocité du jour". To say it's unfair is an understatement. Unjust and disgusting would be more fitting words for how I feel about the general coverage of events in Sub-Saharan African by media in developed nations. This is part of the reason why a project like Ushahidi gets so much attention. They're Africans (Kenyans for the most part) who are creating an innovation sourced from Africa. It's also part of the reason I was so happy to see the bus article I wrote about previously.
Africans are incredibly resourceful and when given the opportunity, they create products and tools that work great for where they live. And this is what I see as the main problem of the OLPC in that, from what I gather, while they conduct their needs studies and probably write up those "blessed" white papers, there appear to be no Africans working with them. There are some folks who, based upon name are from South East Asia, but it would have done them well to have real Africans working on the project.
Maybe this was too hard to accomplish or just didn't cross their minds. Whatever the case, they really short-sheeted themselves on this move. Without having people on the staff who really know what works on the ground, they're just working in a vacuum. It harks back to my first point and this is just the observations of some dude who doesn't even live in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it's quite easy to see what works and what doesn't. Again, mobiles work. Laptops are hit and miss. When it comes to the internet, mobiles are king, even if that access costs something and is subject to government censorship. It will be a melding of these two that I inevitably predict some Africa man or woman will pop along with someday. And won't seem like any big thing with a PR campaign around. It will just make sense.
By 'free', I don't mean that the internet is going to be free of charge, but more that it's going to be free to roam. All our flirts with wifi and "cutting the cord" are going to come in to full fruition over the next 1-2 years. This will ultimately give birth to the next iteration of the web, a Version 3 if you will. I don't really like the term 3.0 as I never liked the term 2.0 because 2.0 was a gimmick and was really Web 1.5. 2.0 was a maturing of all the initial technologies we created in the late 1990's, but were impossible to really envision due to bandwidth sucking on very narrow pipes.
Web Free will take everything from the first two generations of the web and make it not only wireless, but mobile, and create a new approach. It's not my web developing ilk who have brought this about though. It's the likes of Apple and Nokia creating true mini-computers which, while not able to run Photoshop (yet) allow easy, mobile interaction and the exchange of knowledge, which is cornerstone of the internet.
But, these companies and the marketing people who will glom on to Web Free aren't the ones who have really brought it about. It's established markets like the highly unwired Japan and Korean markets and the soon to be developed markets such as Sub-Saharan Africa. I know it seems like a sellout to look at Africa as a "market", but money (and to a lesser degree, physics) unfortunately makes the world go round and when it comes to creating new wealth through expansion, that means creating a new market base. The web markets of Europe, the Americas, and Asia are mature. There is little way to create new growth in these. You can add to it, but to stand out from the crowd with a product that improves upon what is there is about the only way you can make it. Africa provides something entirely new. This is the reason Google is quite excited about expanding there. There are literally a billion people who have had extremely little exposure to the web. Only 5.3% of the population has been on the web. This is massive. This a place where businesses can expand. This is a place that calls for Web Free.
There is no possible way to open markets based upon current America/European IT ideology though Computers, let alone electricity, and internet, are hard to come on the continent at large. The mobile rules there for information delivery and communication exchange. But, what does a company do? They're so used to the Web 1.0 and 2.0 models to develop a site. Simple. They go mobile. They deploy for handheld devices which are mobile phones for now and some kind of CrunchPad entity later. They free their sites from the constraints that we've all learned to know, love, and hate. It will truly be something new, not just a rehash of ideas.
Most importantly in all of this though is that they will involve Africans. There are so many qualified people there, who know how to solve the obstacles that they run in to with the kind of fresh thinking that Web Free will need. Don't just grab a fleet of hipsters from the US, send them to Lagos for a week and have them come back ready to "innovate for Africa". No. The solution will rise from people that are there and for the first time in the history of the internet, this Web Free iteration will be all-inclusive, connecting all the world in a fashion that will approach near equality, or better yet, will have Africa as the leading continent in internet usage due to an explosion of new users.
This is what I hope for. How it will materialize remains to be seen. Whatever the case, Web Free will be a mobile web and to some unknown degree, Sub-Saharan Africa will be part of this. 2009 will be a telling year in all of this.
The late breaking news of last night is that they (the Rwandan troops) caught Laurent Nkunda. For those unfamiliar with the giant ball of trouble he and his troops have been, read up.
His arrest is good news to: everyone living in the east of DR Congo, the Congo peace process, the disarmament process, bordering countries of Congo, the UN, gorillas, and well, just about everyone.
His arrest is bad news to: the guys who were kissing his ass in the hopes of a promotion down the road whenever his "victory" (ie reigniting the genocide) was completed. And that's about it. Oh, it's probably not so good for his goat either.
We'll have to see if this sticks. After having finished up "Chief of Station" by Larry Devlin, it goes a long way to show that guys of this much notoriety in the Congo either end up a) dead or b) escaping. Of course a increasingly sexier third option these days is getting to stand before the ICT, so you never know. Again, let's just see if this sticks first.
Back in October, when I was at Barcamp Africa, I was quite surprised at how many Google staff were there who had a vested interest in Africa. I had kind of forgotten about this until an article on White African prodded me toward remembrance me of it. Google has recently released SMS service for Ghana and Nigeria, which is good stuff for folks. They obviously have a long way to go and I'll be interested to see how they handle mapping requests since maps of African countries are a wee bit sparse on Google at the moment and the exact number addresses we're used to in the US and Europe aren't used in the same manner in a lot of places.
It was then that I went back and checked out the main Google Africa Blog and saw that they are indeed keeping it up to date with some good content. Admittedly, this is all Google-related stuff, but still it's news about Africa and what Google is doing there to stimulate (and of course ultimately monetize) the exchange of data within the populations on the African continent. I've added it to my Netvibes just to be a bit better at keeping up to date on everything.
It is interesting to see Google's approach to multi-lingual blog entries wherein they just stick the English and French version of each post directly in to one post. While immediately accessible, it won't fare too well for more than two languages as each post will get very long and unwieldy. I have to say that I am going to blow my own horn and say that I think Maneno's approach is quite a bit better and this is before we release a number of changes that are going to make it even more better, or at least I think so. I'm sure this will be a short-lived triumph as Google will undoubtedly make their system much, much better in short order if it is deemed worthwhile.
Oh, and do yourself a favor and install the font for Ethiopic languages. It makes viewing things a lot friendlier.
Naturally on the day that Barack Obama was getting sworn in as the 44th president of the US, other interesting items in the world are going to get overlooked. This is a shame as the BBC reported that Cote d'Ivoire has started building their own buses within the country to serve the public transportation needs of the capital, Abidjan. I love stories like this as a) there are far too few of them and b) they show Africa in a wickedly unjust shades of war, rape, disease, and famine.
Taking the same line that we've been taking at Maneno, the engineers behind the buses (who are from the African "reaspora" *) had obvious reasons for building to their own specs:
In Europe the technology is very sophisticated with lots of electronic devices. In Africa we don't need this.We just need robust buses because our roads are not very well done like in Europe. This is an African design for Africa.
While portions of the drivetrain are coming from the European company Iveco, I feel it doesn't steal any of the thunder of what they're doing as most every vehicle producers these days has another company building parts of their products. In Cote d'Ivoire, domestic company, Sotra is doing the actual production of the buses. While there is some worry by citizens over the potential reliability of the buses:
If we import buses it's better because we already know their endurance, the pros and cons, so really, I'm a bit hesitant about making buses here.
It's probably not all that justified given that the history of Sotra has been in building "water buses" for use around Abidjan. Given the general layout of the town, it easy to see that these vehicles have been seriously put through their paces. Sure, there are undoubtedly going to be issues down the road, but I'm guessing they'll be a lot less problematic than anything that happens from a standard GM vehicle. And if you don't believe me on that point, go take a test drive of any new GM vehicle. I'll take anything built, tested, and from Africa any day if I want reliability.
* Reaspora: Those who left their original countries, worked and were most likely educated abroad, but have now returned to their country of origin to work and ply their new skills and knowledge.
On my other blog (which by the way, is a Porsche), I have a regular feature I do called, Misworded Mondays. On the most recent post, I wrote about the term, Peacekeeping Force because one day, I leaned back in armchair as I'm wont to do and pondered for bit, mental pipe in hand. Suddenly, I came up with the fact that this term (which surely was US sponsored because it sounds so incredibly cool), is really stupid. Like I said in my article on the other blog, you're either an entity for fighting or an entity for development. There really isn't an in between ground as you can't really do both things at the same time. I mean, how you be destroyin' stuff/people/places while at the same time improvin' the same stuff/people/places.
There isn't much more to add to this other than to say it's possibly part of the reason for our "aid economy" that the Western nations have created through a half century of occupying and keeping an eye on Africa. I got to thinking about all of this in the last week or so with a number of articles and reactions coming out about the salaries that aid workers make. I'm assuming this has been prompted by bottom lines of aid agencies coming up short in these "tough [effin'] times". I still stand by my assertion that free market economic salary systems can absolutely not be be applied to the labor force of aid NGO's as NGO's don't function in a supply and demand model. But in reality, I'm kinda tired of it. As I'm working to form an NGO and working for free to do it, I realize that non of these things are really going to change while we have things like Peacekeeping Forces. There are so many inherent systems that supply the aid money food chain currently that we'll need a complete upheaval of the approach and a replacement of a great many people in order to create something sensible. Will this happen in 2009 once Obama is in office? Will this "savior" and new Lincoln change everything? Eh, probably not, but let's see where things start to go come February.
