This article on Koranteng's Toli was a great read. Actually, in general, his blog is a great read, but this article really stuck out as it's about the fact that Ghana doesn't appear to exist in the world of Apple:
Yes, take your i-something, open the Contacts App, create a new contact and add a new address. Alternatively just try to edit an existing address. Now try to change the country field to Ghana. Note, if you will, the result: Ghana is not in the list of countries. Search under "Africa (Western)" and you'll see nary a trace of Ghana.
He goes on to talk about how it's probably just a bug and that it will be updated at some point in the near future, especially if a stink is to be raised about it. But, it begs that question as to why it's not there in the first place. It's not like the list of all 193 countries in the world is that hard to find and yes, Ghana is on that list.
I could buy the bug issue as I saw this first hand when working at a company and looking at their international shipping to see that my country, Croatia wasn't in the list. I really scanned through the list and then found it under Hrvatska, which is how you say Croatia in Croatian. But, this was the only country like that. There was no España or Deutschland in the list. I asked my manager what the deal with that was and he admitted that they had just cut and paste the list from another site. So, in this case it was abject laziness and it could be in the Apple iApp situation that the same applies because Americans and by association, American coders are often unaware that Africa is a continent and not a country, they probably just screwed up.
But then there rises the issue that Jean-Patrick Ehouman ran in to when trying to run ads on Facebook in that when you choose a country to target in their system, Côte d'Ivoire is not in the list. Oddly enough, in this instance, Ghana is in the list as well as Nigeria. But, in West Africa the following countries are not available for ad targeting on Facebook: Mali, Cameroon, Liberia, Benin, Togo, Guinea, Senegal, The Gambia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, and Mauritania. That's a big list and I didn't even check for the rest of Africa.
So here is where you get in to a chicken and egg problem. Businesses will claim that there is no market for them in Africa. But, they are in effect creating the barriers to any kind of market developing by simple acts of non-inclusion. If Apple does some kind of Big Brother thing (which I wouldn't put past them) and looks at all the contacts that all their iPhone users have registered, they'll see none in Ghana and assume that there is no business in Ghana. The same goes for Facebook. They can easily say that they won't bother with West Africa because no one is buying ads for the region. Likewise, Google can claim that AdWords in Africa don't work because you can't register or get paid for running AdWords for most everyone on the continent.
The solution to all of this is basically for companies to stop sticking their heads in the sand when it comes to Africa. As I've said before, Google is making a good deal of headway in this department, although it's slow going. Facebook, Apple, and a great number of others still have some way to go. But just having all the countries in the world available as options would be a rather massive first step. An important second step would be to incorporate more languages. So what if you don't see any French or Spanish users on your site or for your product? Maybe if that version is made available the market will suddenly explode.
It all boils down to the fact that at some point, you gotta say screw it, roast the chicken, boil the eggs, and take a chance that in all likelihood will pay off big time.
I am typing this on a laptop that is just nearly four years old. This day and age, I can easily afford to upgrade. I mean, I could purchase a new Thinkpad (my preferred model) for as little as $450 USD, which is an amount that most any American can afford, even in this deep economic crisis that the country is in, albeit maybe spread over a couple of months' payment. Obviously, the more you spend, the fancier the laptop you get and further down the road potential upgrades might be, but that's not the point. The fact is that I could have upgraded manytimes by now, but I haven't.
There are many reasons for this, the first being that everything still works very well on this Thinkpad Z60m. I can edit video/photos fine and for web programming, it's a champ. It's still running Windows XP. I don't see it running Windows 7 though and at some point in the future, I will indeed have to upgrade, but until Windows XP user percentages drop below their current numbers by a large degree, that isn't going to happen.
But, the main reason I keep it around is waste. Andrew McConnell has a superb photo gallery up on his site about an electronics dump in Ghana, just outside of Accra. I've seen this dump and the cloud of horrid smoke that rises from it. If you had seen it and knew what it was, you would probably hang on to your electronics longer as well.
This is a big problem and it's only going to get bigger. It's one of the things that makes me truly cringe about the information age in that the leftover components are all getting dumped in countries such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa. People have few ways to fight back other than to deal with what is dumped upon their shores. And when they do fight back, suddenly, they're called pirates.
I despise the electronics industry for their constant push for people to upgrade and yes, I will bash on Apple right now as most any avid Apple enthusiast will tell me that when you have problems with the machine, that means it's time for an upgrade. An upgrade means more waste. More waste means more toxins shoved off to foreign lands on people who just have to take it and deal with the health consequences of toxin-laced groundwater and air.
For anyone who thinks that they need the latest iPod/iPhone, or laptop marvel, they should come and stay for awhile in rural areas in Africa where the trash is burned daily and you're breathing in an ungodly amount of things you'd rather not know about (mainly damnable petrochemicals.) For me, in a few months, I won't breath this anymore, but for the people here, it's constantly in the air and it's only growing more. Think the next time you buy an electronics item, stop and think if you really and truly need it. I doubt that most will heed this, as people like whatever is new and shiny, but if we can just even slow down consumption, we can buy time to deal with this growing mass of waste.
As a carbon-related side note, how much carbon waste is being generated in Africa with this Africa Carbon Forum and how much carbon will it reduce? I would like to put forth the strengths of teleconferencing, although I know that means a number of people won't get to travel business class to do it...
There is nothing that media in general loves more than a catchy, snappy title to an event. Thus, their calling the dissolution of Côte d'Ivoire's government, "The Valentine's Crisis" looked to be the defining term for the event, at least in the local media. Naturally, this was flawed from the start given that the announcement was made on February 12th and due to that being a Friday, there was assuredly going to be no resolution until at least Monday, the 15th. Still, they ever-so-badly wanted the Valentine's moniker to stick.
It may yet well stay, but it will depend on a great many things; namely a resolution to the current crisis at some time in the foreseeable future, which seems rather unlikely. Things are heating up and protests are growing around the country. I've found that the media blows these a bit out of proportion, but still, the fact is that to date, eight people have been killed in three different cities due to the police using live ammunition on the crowds when the go-to tear gas wouldn't disperse them as it did where I am in Abengourou last week.
The more alarming aspect in all of this is that the government's approach to the situation could be transposed on just about any time over the last 50 years. Violent repression of assembled crowds. Making state television avoid the issues. Suppression of outside voices. Repression of opposition newspapers. This is old stuff and it belies the fact that you're dealing with an old regime that has yet to really wake up to how Ivorians get their information. In doing what they're doing, they are only making people more angry and are not controlling the message. To do that, they would have to shut down the internet, television, and mobile networks. In doing that, they would make a great many enemies with those who matter most: foreign companies with deep pockets.
One of the prime sources of information through all of this has been Facebook. I didn't learn about the France24 blockage through their site, but actually through an update of a Ivorian friend on the site. Twitter is useful, but only insofar as the amount of users on it and this has been greatly stunted by the fact that if you are trying to SMS the system with a +225 number, you aren't allowed. I made a request to change this, but as you can see, I don't have much sway on that company.
Blogs are in a different state. I really wish that Ivoire Blog would pull together some kind of coverage section in regards to these events, but it has not yet come to pass. They have more Ivorian bloggers than anywhere else, so it would seem that they would be a good, direct source of information. Otherwise, I have seen few reactions to the state of affairs. I'm not sure if this isn't because there is a lack of political commentators in blogs (which are in much greater supply in other countries, African or not) or just because people don't really want to comment on it just yet due to their being no absolutes in the process and it being an ongoing issue with no solution in sight.
Whatever the case, this has been a sudden change of events in what has been a very long, ongoing process. To dub it a Valentine's anything is ridiculous. Like other crises that arise, there is no simplification of the process and it very well could end up taking the rest of the year for this to sort out.
I was lucky in coming to Côte d'Ivoire as my wife arrived before I did and took care of a great many of the tedious things such as finding a house, buying furniture, and killing the cockroaches from the rainy season. I had to take on the fun things such as subletting our apartment in the US, bringing a meager ration of wine, Italian cured meats, and a proper toilet seat.
There's just one problem in that you have one of two choices in furniture. The first is go the plastic route, which is great for those who enjoy white home furnishing that stick to you in the heat and will end up as landfill in short order. The other is to have your furniture built locally from the Ivoirian hardwoods. There is a very large industry of carpenters here. Some are pretty basic and others are amazing craftsmen that produce some of the finest wood work I've ever seen.
Our main working table and the chairs came from a fellow who definitely knew what he was doing, but had his own mind as to how to do it. For starters, the table was about 10cm too low. I couldn't get my legs under it and after two weeks of doing everything on it from a sideways vantage, we finally had it raised a bit with some incredibly stylish new feet. That left the chair. Woe is the chair.
At first glance in the photo, it appears fine, but it is actually incredibly narrow. I have bruises on my hip bones from squeezing in and out of it, often forgetting the magic angle of approach to achieve seating bliss. Then of course, the arms are too low, but this was the case even when the table was lower, so I don't get it. Then there is the fact my elbow starts bitching after a few hours of work, so I've "praved" a bit of a cushion there with some dish towel I found.
Why do I stick with this miserable contraption that gets up with me when I stand? Well, I've only got about four months left here at this point and it makes little sense to buy another chair, although the though has cross my mind. I'm sure it will cross even more forcefully if the chair were to collapse on me one day as it seems to be threatening to do. That and if we got two incredibly awesome chairs, we'd have a hard time not shipping them home when we leave.
A very mighty nod to Sean whose title I re-appropriated.
"Je suis low batt." In French, this literally means, "I am low battery." It doesn't make much sense on its own, but in the context of how Michaela Wrong talked about it in her book, "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" it is a phrase that she uses to sum up the great wealth of issues which plague the Congo. It harks back to when the first mobiles arrived in the country, which had a very annoying tendency to die after some 20 minutes of talking. Thus, the speaker would typically always have to tell the listener that they were out of battery and had to either switch phones or go charge. The term took on something of a life of its own and came to mean that something in general had run down.
We are at a point now here in Abengourou where the power cuts (or délestage if you will) have become regimented in that they're from 01:00 to 09:00 every day which coincides with no water during that time plus another 3-5 hours afterward as the system rebuilds pressure. Living life around this schedule is not what I would call choice, but it is doable, especially as you know that it's coming.
It just so happens that for the first time today, I heard of someone being asked how late he was out last night to which he replied, "Oh, we were out past-cut." meaning past 01:00. I'm sure that others are saying to make sure not flush the toilet until post-cut as well. As this way of life has become unfortunately ordinary (which is a shame as the resources do indeed exist) we have taken to incorporating it in to everyday language. No one probably even notices this, but happens all the time like when we say, "go Google it" when we mean to look something up online or "grab a Kleenex" when we mean a tissue.
I don't have the perception that people in Africa do this any more or any less than anywhere else in the world, but I find it more noticeable given that when it happens, it's usually a bending of pre-existing words or phrases, whereas in North America or Europe, it's the straight up adoption of a product name given the constant media and marketing blasts that permeate those societies a good deal more. Of course, many people here in Côte d'Ivoire keep insisting that the word for pen is "bic" instead of "stylo" or to grab a "Lotus" (a local brand) instead of a "mouchoir" so, I suppose the jury is out to some degree even still. We humans do enjoy our products; the power cuts, not so much.
A quick message to say that I'll be taking advantage of having owned subsaharska.com for some time in that I'm changing the blog address to be one Maneno's newest hosted blog and use the abilities that affords. All the old links will still work and forward to this domain as the platform has been created to be flexible in this manner. The main thing to take note of, is that if you follow my feed, that address will be changing to subsaharska.com/eng/feed/ so take update your feed readers if you'd like to get notice of my article updates. I'll probably put this in place later today, cheers.
Friday had been off to a weird start. We had gotten up at 5:30 (which I believe is illegal in some parts of the world) to get to down Abidjan before traffic got [more] bad. Once there and throughout the day, there were countless armed police escorts taking official cars with tinted windows and fluttering Ivorian flags across the city at a breakneck pace. But, overall, things were normal, traffic was full, and kids were selling everything under the sun through car windows. I would have loved to twit about what I was seeing that day, but Twitter has decided for some asinine reason to lock out international numbers completely and irrevocably, which I don't get as it cost them nothing; the international text cost is on us. Bring this back Twitter!
For most official channels, the day had been off to a normal start. I heard that morning briefings were light for friends at the sleepy ONUCI mission. No one had any idea as to how the day would end, least of all us, as we strived to coordinate meeting up with friends for dinner. But, when having a chat with the BBC correspondent in Abidjan at his office (more on that later) strange messages started popping up, which he then began tweeting.
In a country where official elections have been stalled for the last five years, rumors are quick to spread and at first, it seemed that this was going to be yet another about the president dissolving the government or a coup d'etat happening that evening. Turns out, it was all correct. Well the coup d'etat part only technically correct.
At 20:00, a special announcement from the president was broadcast in which has said that he was indeed dissolving the current government as well as the electoral commission (which has been accused of perpetrating a great deal of registration fraud lately.) The actual details in all of this were sparse and were left that way, only to see the news then pick up with their "regularly scheduled program" after the announcement.
Unfortunately, where there should have been 1,000+ bloggers writing about and commenting on this, there weren't. While there are a number of dedicated bloggers in Côte d'Ivoire (such as Theophile, Nadine, Edith, and others) blogging has not yet come about in a large enough degree in Côte d'Ivoire to create a citizen journalism counterpoint to what the larger media broadcasts. Traditional media felt no obligation to take the charge and have any kind of commentary on the announcement, which I might add was pre-recorded four hours prior to the actual broadcast, giving them plenty of time to prepare nothing.
Then on another point, SMS and mobile failed. Endlessly, I hear about how mobile phones are the driving force of information and data delivery in Africa. Do any of the people espousing this actually use SMS or the mobile internet in Africa on a regular basis? Every network I've used has always been overloaded and spotty at best. Sure, it's better than nothing, but as to it being something you can rely on in an emergency? You'd better have a backup plan to this backup plan, because the minute Gbagbo hit the airwaves all the mobile networks were too clogged to be of any use. The data connections were actually the savior in this as they remained able to handle traffic and had there been any violence breaking out, the news of which would have been carried via IP, not SMS.
Oddly enough, the town where I'm staying in Abengourou saw one of the only reported outbreaks of anything on Monday. A protest was staged that was officially against high fuel prices (and yes, they're high here) but was in theory much more against Gbagbo's announcement. According to the rather dry account in Reuters, you'd probably imagine it to be much bigger than what it was. I say this because we accidentally ended up driving through it in the morning, arriving back from Abidjan. There were a few people about and some trash fires lit in the middle of the road, but that was it. It was a small protest and it ended very quickly.
All of this news isn't as bad as it may seem given that the unity government is still functioning and in theory working towards elections that obviously aren't going to happen this year. People are a bit tired of the stalling, as they should be and we'll see if there is more of a citizen reaction to all of this on Wednesday. Stay tuned for larger news from Côte d'Ivoire and I encourage folks to add to this article and help to increase information dissemination of these events.
Twitter had it's usually data twasm when Google announced their new Buzz application which marks Google's hard push in to some form of social media dominance (Don't be seem evil?) Buzz might very well be useful for collaboration, but it seems like a lot of hype over integration of tools that already exist. I'd be like if I put a hammer, a wrench, and two screwdrivers in a box, held a press conference and told the world that I'd just created the ultimate tool, which I call the BuzzBox. In fact, Microsoft and Yahoo! are already asking what the big deal is as they've had these options available in their email systems for some time now. Of course, they aren't good Google. Microsoft is the neighborhood bully and Yahoo! is the kind of quiet little brother that just sort of goes along with what over-achieving bigger brother Google is doing.
But all this reminded me of the last hypefest with Google in the form of Wave. The much sought after, invitation-only product that Google showed off to thunderous applause, that once the great majority of us got access, we just looked at it and thought, "Hmm, okay, might be worthwhile in awhile; a long while." But, I bring up mention of Wave as when I first accessed it, I was in San Francisco, bopping along on my low-latency 3Mb connection. Now I'm in Côte d'Ivoire on what is in theory a 1.2Mb line which feels more like a 256Kb (or less) line that oft drowns in latency. Then there is now, when I'm writing this offline, as the connection is completely dead.
What I am about to say should not come as a surprise in that Google Wave sucks a great deal from here. It takes about two minutes for the main interface to load and from there on it's quite lagging. Unfortunately, as everyone I know threw in the towel on Wave, it's hard to test out any real conversations on the thing. One thing is clear though in that as more applications like Wave are developed (and there will be more) the barriers to information access will go up. I covered all of this in an older article because it's a rather massive problem that no one is addressing. People are just more in awe of postulating about what The Cloud will mean to data when they should be asking how hard it will screw the vast majority of the world in accessing their data.
Where I am, with this connection, I am lucky. It's generally okay for web and email interactions. I can even call my family (sparingly) on Skype. Video is a hit and miss affair depending on the time of day. But for these ajax-heavy, GUI-rich environments, it nose dives. And this is a really good connection outside of North America or Europe. Imagine for people on satellite or other systems.
So, how do we address this? Despite the good counter articles by Steve and Andi, the answer is not SMS in any way shape or form. The final answer is information technology deployment for connectivity around the world. This is not only expensive, but will also take a great deal of time and many nations are already missing out on certain elements of it, such as Côte d'Ivoire who didn't get a landing node for the new GLO-1 cable, which is going to seriously bite their decently strong technology scene in the digital butt.
But, until the day arrives when the billions of us have immediate information access to the entire wealth of human knowledge, developers need to be mindful in maintaining an accessible internet. We need to optimize sites for those with slower connections to guarantee them access until the day that their throughput catches up. I know it sucks to create multiple versions of a site, but think of it as a more worthwhile expenditure of time. Much like being multilingual, multi-bandwidth is a method to get your system and product in to the hands of more people, because really, the internet markets are quite saturated in North America and Europe. A first half of the 21st Century business model needs to develop for multiple tiers of bandwidth. Despite the clunkiness of Wave, Google gets this with their current, live products. Twitter gets this as well. Facebook also gets this. If your company doesn't, then you have problems.
In talking with a number of the UN folks here in Abengourou (who in turn have talked to other folks/officials in the area and beyond) a larger picture of what is happening with d'Off d'10 emerges.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some rather large problems with the Azito power station in Abidjan. This actually wasn't news as the station has been under repair for some time now. The repairs took awhile to get going, not because of any issues at a local level, but because this station is owned by a French company who appeared to be a bit lax in getting around to making the repairs. They are indeed underway now and if all goes well, the station should be back up to full potential by mid-March. This is an optimistic estimate, albeit one tinged with a degree of sensibility as even if this station is back up to full potential, there will still be cuts, but only in the neighborhood of four hours a day or so. Personally, I'm hoping that however they end up being, there is at least power through the night as sleeping fanless is funless.
But this power station wasn't the only electrical issue in all of this and the power cuts should have started some time back. It just so happened that there was an event you might have heard of called the African Cup of Nations which finished last week, crowning Egypt as the champions. Once over, the cuts happened. Coincidence? Not at all. For those in the US, it is probably difficult to understand that much as Eddie Izzard proclaimed, "Cake or Death!" it is "Football or Death!" for the rest of the world when it comes to watching the game. If Côte d'Ivoire blacked out during those matches, there would have been riots. People can drink warm beer a lot happier than watching no football, so given this disposition, the authorities realized that more power needed to appear as it wasn't coming from Azito. They turned to their minority power production that exists in the form of hydroelectricity. The dams were opened fuller than they should have been to run the turbines higher and generate more power. While this worked, it has severely reduced the banked supply of energy which is why once Azito comes back online, there still won't be enough power. All the cost of a Football Now, Sweat Later platform in government. So Populist...
Eventually, the rains will come to the far North of the country and the dams will be refilled to produce all the power that is needed. Unfortunately, this happens in May. Until then, it is what it is and the soft, purring sound of diesel generators shall be heard lulling many an Ivorian to sleep.
As a footnote very much worth mentioning, the elections that were supposed to happen for the last five years, but were truly and like, so totally going to happen last November, probably won't even happen in 2010 now. Some estimates even put them at March of 2011. The reason for this being that the president of the Election Commission was found fraudulently adding 429,000 people to the rolls that didn't exist. Naturally, it makes sense that this fellow was a member of the opposition, but this doesn't do too much for the cause of the opposition as he is now going to jail and large chunks if not all of the electoral process need to be restarted, delaying this election; which the process of having is much like distilling molasses in the middle of January, in Canada, by a couple of moose, who are holidaying in Cuba, watching the Cup of Nations, with full air conditioning through the night.
I was spoiled. Côte d'Ivoire seemed like a tropical vacation initially. Hot yes, but not insanely humid in the current season. A pleasant breeze washes across many places (especially Abidjan) in the evening and it is in general, quite pleasant. I'm here for work, but despite jetlag, I felt like I was on vacation for my first week here.
And then Tuesday hit. Without warning, in the middle of the night, the power went off and with it the water. The two systems are completely intertwined and it appears that there is no backup generator to keep the water pumping once the power stops and thus, the chateau d'eau drains quite fast leaving you in the dark and unable to wash, rinse, or flush.
Honestly, while it means stooping to heavy generalization, I should have known better. I've been to Kinshasa and the friend's place I stayed at, while having a lovely, 10th floor view of Brazzaville across the Congo River, was prone to water outages. They were prepared though and had what must have been a 500L reserve tank as high up as they could place it in the apartment to gravity feed when the water went off. Tuesday, I had no such setup and while there are buckets at my place, my wife and I had neglected to fill them. Dumb was us, but filled from henceforth they shall be.
It is an easy assumption to make that while in Côte d'Ivoire, things such as water and power wouldn't be a problem. The infrastructure is overall, very good. While something like 7,000 (presumably small) villages aren't electrified, all the main cities are properly wired and the grid, at normal times functions quite well. There is also stable internet--at home I might add. The roads are good. The Abidjan airport is very modern and even tops Kotoka in neighboring Ghana. And yes, the railroad, while only for cargo, still functions well. You would never know that the country is technically a divided one, emerged from a civil war less than a decade ago, and has the telltale white SUVs of the UN Mission flitting about the countryside.
Apparently, Côte d'Ivoire has the ability to generate 0.89 gigawatts of power. Not bad, but if they were to make full usage of all the hydroelectric power available, then they would have 2 gigawatts at the ready. The issue is that currently, they're not and on top of that, there is a large degree of electricity being exported to Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo. You can draw your own conclusions as to why this might be when there is currently a 150 megawatt deficit in the country. Naturally, it rubs me the wrong way, having lived in California during the rolling blockouts there that ended up costing the state billions of dollars in corruption waste to companies such as the now defunct Enron. This is on a smaller scale monetarily, but still the same thing.
But, what specifically happened Tuesday?
...a failure occurred on a group of central heat [no idea what this means in French] Azito. "We will be without this group until May. During this period, the country will experience a shortfall in electricity production of about 150 megawatts. So there will be disruption on the network…"
Azito is a gas-powered station in the suburbs of Abidjan. I am unclear as to what "la centrale thermique" is, but whatever the case, it isn't functioning and thus, because of this, there isn't enough electricity. The weird part in all of this is apparently a third turbine is being readied at this station, but they are waiting until demand is high enough to use it. It would seem that domestic demand is not only high enough, but due to it growing at 10% a year; it has exceeded any possible supply that is currently available. I can only figure that they must mean that they're waiting for international demand to be great enough to get this going, since that appears to be who they cater to.
I've no idea how all this plays out, but it appears that it should all get straightened out just about the same time I'm scheduled to leave the country, which seems fitting, given that I'm to blame for the troubles in the first place. It the meanwhile, I just hope that they somewhat stick to the blackout schedule and I remember to keep buckets and jerry cans full.
Until Our Independence also has a take on the situation as well.
