I didn't change my Twitter account to have a green background, nor did I change my location to Tehran, but when the protests erupted after the recent elections, there were great cadres of people ready to show their support and "Iran-ify" their Twitter. This has been one of the great strengths of social media in social causes in that people are are able to start grassroots movements for no costs. It's a wondrous thing and it's interesting to note what happened with Iran as it's one of the first moments that I recall a unified, immediate force trying to contend with injustice in the world.
It's going to take a long time to find out of if these types of movements will actually have any effect. They are often spearheaded by those not in the country from the safety of their own home and getting that to manifest in to something physical in the real world can be a really tricky conversion. For instance, despite all recent movements (digital or physical), Tibet is still part of China, Ahmadinejad was re-elected to be president of Iran, and Darfur is still part of Sudan, just to name a few.
But it's interesting to note in all of this that African causes have yet to really see any online movements form around them. The obvious exception is the aforementioned Darfur, but many are saying that's just because it's been marketed well and while I'm in no position to pass judgment, it is true that most things Darfur-related have not grown up organically. I'm talking more about situations like the recent elections in Gabon (dead president's son won; results disputed), upcoming elections in Cote d'Ivoire (current president has been in power without being properly elected for five years) and most importantly Guinea, where a military coup took place at the end of last year and elections are supposed to happen in January.
These injustices are not only largely unreported in popular media, but are often avoided in social media as well. I'm curious as to why this is the case, especially as I've been doing what I can to help a number of people who have been writing on Konakry Express to try and at least have some information out there about Guinea as there is very, very little in general. This is especially sad given that nearly 200 people were killed in an opposition protest just last month.
What is the "critical meme" that needs to be reached before a movement will "go Iran" and maintain a mass of individuals interested in reaching out digitally to support a group of people in the world? I would say that it's when the affected area is English speaking and thus the reason why problems in Francophone Africa are unknown, but Iranians speak Persian, so that can't be it, although I'm sure it has some effect depending on the region.
Is it that it has to start with people living in Europe and North America? Or is it that the digital movement needs to be prodded by traditional television and print media? This would make sense in Iran as it is often covered. It would also make sense why issues in Africa go uncovered as the traditional media cares little about what happens there, often reporting things vastly wrong because news desks are copying each other (that's a damned good read) and have basically stopped reporting.
The perfect victim is a white male professional, 40 years old, at the height of his earning power, struck down at his prime.
That is from the beginning of A Civil Action and it is the perfect personal injury lawsuit. On that note, but in a completely different vein, I would put forth what it seems is the perfect storm for social media to take off on an African issue:
1) English speaking or a large number of people in the group being able to speak English.
2) Large pre-established blogging/twitter presence around the issue/region.
3) Established traditional media coverage of the affected region.
4) Possibly being a former British colony as that often fires up the BBC to report.
5) ?
As you can probably see, Kenya fits this profile quite well, which would go to show why we heard so much about the post-election violence in 2007 and had Twitter been more popular, it could very well have taken off in digital circles like Iran did. It also explains why Guinea is being ignored due to their being a Francophone country, having very little in the way of blogging and social media community, and not having large media outlets covering it. As another example, Congo has traditional media coverage, but no blogging community (only a few traditional journalists doing blogging as a side affair) and is also a French speaking country.
I believe that it's imperative for blogging/twitter to be established for a digital movement to build upon. This can be fired up a good deal by traditional media being established, but it doesn't have to be. Blogging is free (beyond the cost of an internet connection of course) and it can start wherever it has to. Maybe once it does, we'll see more movements grow around African issues when they arise because I don't want to think that these problems going unnoticed is just because people don't care and more that they just don't have access to real, personal information.
A great deal of articles have been written about all the East African cables being deployed. Rightly so, given that connectivity is paltry and slow at the moment and about to get a good deal faster (hopefully.) But while this is all good, when you read about how fast the cable is laid out in the ocean (10+km a day), you realize that it's really the inland part that's tricky and there's a lot of inland land in Africa. Sure, you don't need a boat to make it happen and the ever-present media-spawned threat of pirates is less, but the issue of cutting across fields, farms, and most importantly, international borders on land is pretty daunting.
I suppose it's because they haven't broken ground on the project yet, or probably more to the point that the majority of coverage has been in French, but the Central African Backbone is starting to gain a bit of momentum. (Please add to the Wikipedia link if you know more as I had to create it when writing this article.)
A good deal of what I know came from this article on ZDNet in French which covers the basic layout of the cable and the fact that it will most likely start in Algeria and connect to Europe to the north and Sub-Saharan Africa to the south. While there was a little bit mentioned about this last February, it's the fact that Algeria has decided to really set forth and start laying the cable that has garnered more worthwhile attention lately. Their Information Minister is pushing it in the name of getting rid of the satellite connections and helping Algerians better connect to the internet. But in reality, anyone smart knows that this is going to be a major cash cow for Algeria once they punch through to the other countries including Chad, Cameroon, and CAR. All of that comprises Phase 1 of the project and I'm not exactly sure how they're planning to connect Chad with Algeria and not be connecting Niger which lies between the two. Apparently there is a bit of a "and then a miracle occurs" aspect to the planning currently.
Phase 2 of CAB is even more in the Wild West portion of planning as a great number of countries have been tossed around in the mix to connect. While Nigeria might be there, the most probable candidates are Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé, and Congo-Brazzaville. Congo-Kinshasa is also on the list to possibly be connected. Of course, Kinshasa could be very well have its own link very soon, so it's not quite as crucial for that area. What would be more impressive is if Northern Congo-Kin could get in on the link coming in to CAR assuming that they would naturally run any fiber link to Bangui, the capital, which sits against the border with Congo. If only Mobutu would have lived to see the day when Mad Men could be live streamed at Gbadolite...
Unlike the Globacom cable, this initiative is indeed being financed be foreigners, namely the World Bank. You can view a brief overview of the loan, here. They quote Phase 1 as being $30 million USD. The ZDNet article quotes it as being €17 million, so I don't really know which figure is for certain. Phase 2 is set to cost in the neighborhood of $160 million, so obviously due to the amount and the number of countries involved, it can be understood as to why it's so undecided at this point.
However the pieces fall, once the links start getting put in to place from Algeria, there will be a world of change for the interior of Africa which usually relies solely on VSAT connections that are obviously better than nothing, but still suck. As to speed for CAB, I couldn't find any hard figures. It is said that Cameroon will have 12 optical fibers and Chad will have six, which doesn't make a lot of sense, nor does it really say much about speed. I guess once things actually start happening over the next year, we'll get a better sense of all this.
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.
