Most anyone who follows what is happening with Twitter has undoubtedly heard about the whole stunt wherein Ashton Kutcher was vying to get one million followers before CNN. In the end, he won and in winning he vowed to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to Malaria No More, an NGO that shows no shame in using the helpless African child model for its revenue model. I'm not joking, look at the site, there are five of them on the front page alone.
For Kutcher's part, it's a cheap shot, but at the same time, it's an ingenious shot because in this mad, mad race towards this ultimate pointless goal, he has made everyone feel like they've been part of this. The phrase, "it's for a good cause" has come up on many a website as a reason to support Kutcher in this. Americans love this phrase as it's so much easier to contribute funds to somewhere else in order to help people rather than to actually do it yourself. Does this make Kutcher a "social media expert" (see # 4)? No, not at all. He's just a celebrity riding a wave of popularity for his perceived generosity. The donation of mosquito nets along with his new accessibility on Twitter only give him more "real cred" in the eyes of his fans. And who knows, maybe this will lead to his acting in a movie that doesn't go straight to video someday.
I'm saying little new here and it's obvious that I'm not a fan of this stunt, just as I'm not a fan of any of these celebrity stunts. The main reason I bring it up was because of this article on TechCrunch where they were under the impression that Kutcher's Twitter stunt would improve knowledge of malaria. The net result remains to be seen in that, but even on this site, where there are in theory, intelligent people in technology, the comments were littered with the "it's for a good cause" and people are now "armed with information" crap.
Thankfully, TMS Ruge, whose name I don't know how to say right, but can be followed on Twitter in all his shirtless glory, chimed in. Thankfully, being that he is an African from Africa, people actually listened to him and don't immediately write off his comments with the, "Oh yeah, what are you doing?!!" idiocy. I happen to like what TMS writes a good deal and most of what he says here is part of a quite excellent, larger article that addresses not only the Kutcher stunt, but also celebrity charity stunts in general. While I think it's a great read overall, one particular paragraph really stands out:
The solution to malaria, much like varied solutions to ending our addiction to aid, can be found within Africa. My problem with the strategy of dealing with malaria employed by Malaria No More, Nothing but Nets, et al is that it erodes the ability of local capacity to deal with this problem. It is also not infinitely sustainable, and dare I say it, smacks of paternalistic ethos. It’s a band-aid on a gashing wound. It’s the “fly-to-Africa-and-adopt-a-brown-baby-instead-of-investing-in-a-sustainable-business-that-can-help-the-entire-family” syndrome.
It really is a shame that celebrities have decided that they need to invest themselves in new forms of technology to spread their supposed giving to Africa. Hugh Jackman has done this as well although it was leagues less annoying probably just because it's Hugh Jackman. Obviously, this move was inevitable given that newspapers are dying off and that was the main place a celeb could flash their "amazingness" to the world. I'm sure that iPhone apps are next and I'm already cringing that one with Beyonce patting the head of a poor African child will soon be available for download; with all the proceeds from purchases going to charity of her choosing of course (charity: water get on that now!) This app won't do anything I might add other than show that picture with Single Ladies playing in the background. It will just loop constantly so that you can be warmed by Beyonce's giving all through your otherwise dreary workday.
A very recent article on the US blog rag (can I perhaps say, 'blag'?), Huffington Post talks about how much the mobile phone could mean for developing nations. Um, yeah. I think that every tech pundit in the US/Europe sphere has been talking about this for the last six months if not the last year. Once economies started to falter, people began to look for new markets to bolster failing earnings and many saw what is a fact in that mobile markets in Asia and especially Africa are going to do nothing but grow. Whether this will translate in to actual revenue or just more connectivity no one really can say for sure though. Personally, I'm just hoping for more access to information.
The article does next to nothing to really illuminate any new points. The author talks in broad strokes, primarily about Obopay, which I'm not that familiar with to be honest as it appears to be mostly India-based. But one part that was quite ridiculous was when she mentioned, "With the ever-popular Twitter now readily available via mobile phones, we're now seeing those who never had a voice really take on government." She seems to have forgotten that Twitter is quite a luxury now that they cut off their local access numbers outside the US, Canada, and India. I guess that part was overlooked while the author was busy pitching her investment strategies...
When talking about Maneno, I will refer to this map which shows the rather squalid penetration of internet on the African continent. The map is actually a bit generous as in reality, the population in most African countries with access to internet is 3-5%. That means there are a whole lot of people who are left out of the cyberspace thing, given that there are around one billion people living in Africa.
Of course, one thing to note is that those with connectivity have quite slow connections. This is a big part of the reason why Maneno has been built to have as light a footprint as possible so that there is less for users to download and the site is more responsive. For awhile, I thought that the situation in South, Central (some parts), and West Africa was a bit better as they actually have real cable along the ocean floor connecting them up. While this is a great deal better than a VSAT connection, it is still apparently not that good and the connection speeds are decent, but not all that great.
Eastern Africa was a whole different story with their connectivity being nearly all from VSAT connections, which are better than nothing, but pretty lousy overall as it takes time for a data signal to go from the ground to space and then back to the ground. As reported on BBC though, this is changing a great deal.
There are currently three companies (Seacom, Eassy and TEAMS) working to lay proper undersea cable along the eastern shores of Africa linking up the east side of South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, and Sudan. For these countries, this is great news. In addition to the speed bump, it has the possibility of dropping internet costs to 1/3 of what they currently are and they're making fast progress, although not as fast as one distasteful April Fool's Day joke claimed.
People are cautiously optimistic though. For starters, these companies aren't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. They're doing it for a profit and some worry that this will be reflected in the cost. People are worried that this will be out of reach to most people living in the areas where these new linkups will happen. I agree that this is an issue, but this is always the issue. Early adoption is always expensive. There will be some that take advantage of it immediately, like foreign aid groups and companies who will gladly pay the cost to have stable, fast internet. This in turn will create a demand and will drive down cost. As a comparison, we saw this happen in the US. When DSL broadband first came about, it was $150 a month or more. I couldn't even afford a DSL account until 2001 when it was a "mere" $50 a month. Now it's $15 because enough people have adopted the technology. The economy of scale can be a blessed thing.
Maybe something similar to this will happen in East Africa, but only time will tell. The real problem will be to get the adoption rates to grow because the point where these cable lines tie in are all going to be on the coasts. It's up to the country to then drag it inland and Kenya appears to be the main exception where they are making strides to tie up the inland country. Most likely there will be a speedy link up from Mombasa to Nairobi as that is quite crucial. For other areas, who knows and it's there that we may see a good chunk of time go by before these links hit the secondary cities in most countries.
It's rather interesting to note that a lot of this cable work is being timed to coincide with the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Apparently, folks thought it was high time to get some better speeds down there for what will undoubtedly be a massive invasion of internet horny foreigners. I wouldn't be surprised if they take advantage of these lines for broadcasting as well, but I haven't a clue in that department.
Oh, for all the Americans worrying that Somalian pirates might chase down and overcome the cabling ships, world navies are patrolling the cable ship. Also, in the case of TEAMS project, which is running just from Kenya to UAE, they've moved the line to be 200km away from the shore of Somalia, just to be sure. So sleep easy. People know what they're doing.
Word around the way has come to me that the US Department of Homeland Security, is specifically seeking out translators for Kinyarwanda, an official language of Rwanda as well as one that is spoken in Uganda and DR Congo. From all accounts, I've heard that this is a rather difficult language to learn. For those who don't know, it is extremely different from other languages in the region, so someone who speaks Swahili or Luganda can't just pick it up as easily as say someone who speaks Spanish learning Italian.
The fact that DHS is looking for translators isn't really a shock. They employ a great many translators of African languages as they apparently place importance in understanding what people in Africa are saying. I'm not sure whether to take it as a good sign that they are now more interested in African languages because they place for importance in Africa due to a new, more enlightened administration or a bad sign that they are now more interested because in having failed at every military incursion in the Middle East, they are going to say that Africa is a new "hotbed of terrorist extremists". I guess time will tell in the matter and let's hope it's not that later assumption.
Like I said, it's not strange that they're looking for translators. At the talk I gave two nights ago, an attendee there mentioned that a friend worked for DHS translating Akan if I remember correctly. What is weird about all of this is that DHS specifically asked Amnesty International if they knew of anyone. The implications of this are just bizarre. I suppose in one sense, DHS just assumes that AI would know of some folks because they have operated in Rwanda. In another sense, I'm wondering if DHS is just pitching this out to a great many NGOs that work in Africa because they went and tried Craigslist or some other ad website only to get no response. Whatever the case, it has to be one of the more bizarre hiring methods I've seen by a governmental agency in the US.
Despite the state of the world economy, 2009 is most likely going to shape up as a watershed year for mobile phones and the mobile web. It's a push coming from all parts of the globe. As always, there are a great number of applications and technologies coming out of North America and Europe. But, it's also the case that a great many people are developing interesting ideas from Africa as well where the mobile is king for data transmission and collection. With that in mind, it's interesting to note some of the high-end devices that are being created for the burgeoning mobile web which are mostly due to Apple firing the opening volley with the iPhone.
Obviously, a device like the iPhone isn't going to be a commonly found phone for a user in Sub-Saharan Africa where currently most phones in use are under $20 USD. This isn't to say that a lot of the ideas and technologies in the high-end phones won't be trickling down to lower end models over the next couple of years.
Beyond the iPhone and Blackberry Storm, two other phones are coming on to the market which may finally allow people to make that ever present leap to having a full and proper computer in their pocket when on the go. The Palm Pre is at the top over everyone's list as the "next big thing" in mobile computing. I'm not so sure about that as it's only going to be a CDMA network phone, when GSM is really the big network around the world. Also, in the US, it's going to be released with Sprint who are really no one's favorite network provider.
The other phone that's going to be big and is the one that I've been waiting for is the Nokia N97. I have huge fingers, so I love a proper keyboard. The "keyboard" on the screen of the iPhone does nothing for me and so I've been very tantalized by this device as a piece of equipment that I can take on travels to Africa with me that will allow me to not bother taking a laptop.
While intrigued since its announcement, I haven't had a chance to really mess about with the phone, but got the chance at the Nokia booth in the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco two weeks ago. My overall impression with the phone is that I liked it a good deal. It's solid and has that great Nokia durable feel to it. It's a nice size and to be honest, while the touchscreen is groove-tastic, I almost feel like I would be using the slideout keyboard a great deal more. It's a nice keyboard. The keys could possibly be a bit more raised, but the size is a huge step over most of the other QWERTY keyboards I've used on mobiles. The interface was a bit muddy, which was undoubtedly due to everyone else at the conference messing with it. I mean, the amount of pictures that were of the ceiling or some grinning idiot in a blue shirt with khaki pants were innumerable. This would require more testing.
But the number one thing going in this device's favor is battery life. Even with being fondled for three days on end with the screen at full brightness, the phone still had a charge. This is key. In a place where mobile signals are often much more plentiful than power, being able to have a strong, long charge like that is a huge deal. I can easily see this replacing the N95 in the Reuter's Mobile Journalism Kit and allowing the load to be lightened a bit.
More time will need to be spent with this phone for everyone to see how it shakes down, but it has all the makings of being much more popular on the international side of things than the iPhone or Palm Pre.
Ubiquitous in production across Central and West Africa (as well as other regions of the world), palm oil has been lubing and frying things around the world for a couple of centuries now. It is such a cheap oil in a world sense that it can be found just about everywhere. Of course, the debate rages on as to whether it is healthy or not, can be a sustainable agricultural product or not, or can be used for biofuels... or not.
I have no interest in getting in to that, but since my family has started producing a very small amount of olive oil just recently, I've gone cuckoo for oil different oil production methods. I'm sure that some videos exist showing palm oil production in full, but the BBC has a nice photo montage showing the preparation process on the local scale in Nigeria from picking to pressing.
Oh, as a small note, it was interesting to read in that Wikipedia article I linked to above that, much as is the case with olive oil, the unrefined palm oil is much healthier than the refined. Something to keep in mind the next time you're making sambusas, one of my personal favorite snack foods, although I often make a meal out of them.
As the BBC reported, the country of Benin now has the dubious distinction in joining the EU no fly list. I say the country because every single airline has been banned from flying in to the EU on account of safety issues. This is not the first time this has happened to an entire country in Africa unfortunately:
The list also imposes a total ban on airlines based in Equatorial Guinea, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Gabon - save for Gabon Airlines and Afrijet, which have exemptions for a small number of aircraft.
You'll notice Kyrgyzstan in that list and Kazakhstan has also had most of its airlines banned. So, it's not like the regulators are singling out the continent of Africa, it just so happens that they majority of their list is based there. It also happens that there are a greater number of European-based flights to Africa than to Central Asia and lemme tell ya, they ain't cheap.
Is this list justified? Probably to some extent. As shown with accidents on this one from Angola will probably never make you want to fly again. But, the US and Europe aren't without their accidents. Percentage-wise, they definitely have less than Africa as a whole and if given the choice, I would rather not fly on most African airlines with the exceptions of Kenya Airways or South African Airways.
It does make me wonder if it's just a wee bit profit driven because if the only airline that can fly from Benin to Europe is Air France it does make it easy for them to charge whatever they want as there is next to no competition. Such is life I suppose and to be honest, the only serious crash in Benin I can find on the interweb was back in 2003 which was a Lebanese charter flight. Maybe the Benin airlines are indeed problematic. Maybe it's a money grab. Whatever the case, it's a rather severe limiting of options for the people of Benin to connect with the rest of the world.
About two weeks ago, there was a good deal of buzz around Nathan Eagle's talk at the ETech Conference (or more properly: O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference). His talk was about txteagle, a new venture that he has started in Africa that could potentially change a great number of ways that people work in Africa.
While I was very much aware of the talk, I didn't have much of a chance to really sit down, watch it, read some reactions, think about it, and toss together some of my own thoughts on it due to Maneno getting a bit of press (thanks again to everyone) around the same time and taking up my days because of it. Now I've had a chance to finally get back around to all of this. Maybe you didn't see the talk either? It's almost 39 minutes long, but if you're having a slow day, I highly recommend giving it a watch as whatever you may think about txteagle, Nathan brings up some good facts:
All done? Great, because there are a great number of points in there that are worth discussing.
Eagle is creating a very innovative system. I like that. I like that he's found an area where there is a need and a possibility for growth. Obviously, paying people to do small tasks isn't an original idea. Amazon really fired up the idea by starting their Mechanical Turk system. Eagle admitted in the talk that he was told the best way to explain what he was trying to do was a "Mechanical Turk for the mobile phone". It's an apt comparison, although I got the feeling he wasn't too keen on it.
There is a massive amount of growth for a system such as this. Mobile phone usage is exponential in the developing world and as he pointed out, the majority of mobile phone users in the world are indeed in developing nations. txteagle takes advantage of a perceived abundance of time for people in these areas, a lack of work, a need for people to work small, low-paying tasks, and a dearth of extra network capacity (although he obviously didn't want to get in to beeping which takes up some of that perceived "extra" network.) This all seems like it's pretty much a win-win for everyone involved, but there were a couple of things that stuck out a rather nasty thorns which Eagle seems to want to pretend aren't there.
Like I said at the beginning of this article, I was interested in seeing what other people said about this talk. It was surprising to see that all of my regular reads, whom most anyone in to Africa and technology would know, didn't mention a thing about it. Maybe they were busy, or maybe they just didn't want to say some of the harsh things that probably should be said. Luckily for me, Steve Song summarized just about every large-scale issue I had with that talk:
Nathan makes an important point when he says the fact that no one in Kenya can afford not to have a mobile phone. Even if you are digging a ditch by the side of the road, day labour is now organised via SMS. This means that mobile operators have Kenyans by the throat.He gives another example about a water pump manufacturer in Kenya who, by combining a mobile-mPesa-enabled, solar-powered metering system with their water pumps, have completely changed their business model. They are now able to give water pumps away for free (if I understand correctly) and then make a profit by selling access to water via Safaricom’s mPesa service. Send the pump 20 Ksh and it pumps 20 litres of water for you.
...Am I the only one who finds this a little disturbing? When a single mobile operator is a gatekeeper to water supply, something is wrong. For any village in this situation, Safaricom can charge whatever they like.
The failure of communication regulators in Africa to either license sufficient new market entrants or to curb the excesses of incumbents with significant market power has led to a situation where existing operators collude to maintain high profits.
Steve perfectly nailed the biggest issue in all of this to me. Basically, it is allowing monopoly control of resources. This is nasty. Obviously, there is no way for txteagle to function without working with the major mobile operators, but I have to question as to whether this will ultimately be a good thing, or as Steve says, "have Kenyans by the throat".
I also have to say that I'm a bit perturbed by txteagle's eventual acting as a small fringe bank. One of things that Eagle proposes is to have people be able to collect credits and then roll them over in to an actual bank at some point. At no time during this will txteagle be considered an actual bank as they are actually just classified as a "financial creditor". He says that you don't want to be a bank in Eastern Africa because of all the undue regulation. Sitting here in the crumbling economies of the developed world, I have to ask, how is regulation of a monetary holding company a bad thing? These regulations, while burdensome, exist to aid the citizen, not the institution. Allowing txteagle to work outside this is rather shady in my book.
A question that I've been asked on one or two occasions (and probably more in the future I would hope as it's a good question), is, "What is the incentive for people in Africa to use Maneno?" To this, I usually give the same response, which is, "The same as for anyone in North America, Europe, or Asia." People find their own incentives to blog whether they be response in the form of comments, visibility, informing a greater audience, activism, or any number of other items. Within a community, there will always be individuals who wish to act at the historian, chronicler, crier, or journalist. Those are the people I want to be able to give access to Maneno so they can act on those desires if they wish.
I bring this up because we're approaching Maneno from a very hand's on, functional point of view, not an academic, theoretical point of view. This difference is rather critical in that I think that txteagle is based too strongly on the theory and not enough the practical. Don't get me wrong, I still love the innovation, but it appears to have been created first to try and fill a need (the SMS Bloodbank example he mentioned in the beginning), which it couldn't fill without introduction of a practical element--payment. Eagle then went on to develop the theory out further without taking in to account the fact that there were two needs to the equation which were constantly uknown and changing variables: a source of work/tasks and a source of revenue. He was focused mostly on the primary issue that there is an abundance of waiting labor. He said that in the pilot, they've "run out of tasks". This is an tremendous issue because if people start to rely on these tasks for income and then they suddenly dry up, then this is in some ways worse for people than their current situations.
It is true that txteagle could end up with a good deal of work from companies in need of such small task work. Like Eagle pointed out, medical transcription is a huge market, which I guess someone would listen to, write down, and then text back. Could work. The surveys seem a lot more promising, albeit limited. Same goes for the advertisement calls. But, the one big, big area with the most potential for short task work like this is object identification in videos and images (or any binary, non-textual file.) In a past "sometimes office" I worked for, they had to send the piles of video they had off to the Philippines for matching the products which were shown in the video. There is huge potential in this, but it is simply not possible over SMS. In fact, it's barely possible over modern mobile data connections. So, I have to question as to where this is all going and if it could potentially be much more harmful than beneficial given the collusion with large mobile operators, possible shortage of work, and the technological hurdles that are simple not possible to overcome at the moment. If txteagle can get past all of these issues, then it will indeed be a fantastic service. I suppose only time will tell at this point.
I think the main driving force in my life outside of technology and its affiliated gadgetry is food and wine. Being currently based in California with regular trips to North Eastern Spain, the wine angle is pretty much taken care of in any number of ways. For food though, I'm always on the lookout for new places to try (although again, California and Spain don't let me down.)
Someday, somehow, I'm going to put aside the time to get over to Taste of Africa in Berkeley. People all around say that while the service is pretty hit and miss, the West African dishes they serve are nothing short of perfection. Of course these reviews are on Yelp for the most part, which should always be taken with a drop of chili oil.
In San Francisco though, there are a decent number of options, especially in the Ethiopian department. It's rare that you actually find one that specifically calls itself Eritrean. For those unfamiliar, Eritrea is a small country along the Red Sea, which was part of Ethiopia at various points in history until that was all settled by the quite nasty Eritrean-Ethiopian War. Because of this intertwined history, obviously the food is going to be similar in these two countries. For example, the staple of any good Eritrean or Ethiopian meal is the injera bread which you use to scoop up all of the food, sans utensils.
I encountered all of this at Assab Eritrean, a small restaurant perched out on Geary Blvd, in the Richmond District of San Francisco. The decor of the place is basic overall with touches of African objects here and there to give it more of a flair. The good is, after all what one is there for and they have a great, extensive menu of meat and vegetarian dishes to choose from. Surprisingly, there isn't a lot of seafood, given that Eritrea has quite a good deal of coast, I was under the impression that was one of the main distinctions from Ethiopian dishes, but apparently not at Assab.
The staff are nice, but the wait can take a bit for the food, which didn't bother me all that much as they're a pretty small operation and I'll take that any day over something more akin to MacEritrea Bell. When it comes to the food itself it is quite, quite good. Flavors of any and all dishes, whether simple lentils or beef, are deep and varied. They don't just crank up the heat and leave out the flavors. No, things are fresh, good and enjoyable. While it would seem elementary, the injera was perfect and worked to complement the food exactly how it should. Probably my only warning would be that if you're not a fan of spicy foods to order carefully as some dishes can pack quite a punch. Otherwise a good stop in San Francisco when one is craving East African vittles.
