Bamako is severely lacking in bars and cafés. Coming from Côte d'Ivoire for this visit, it has taken a bit to get used to as the Malian culture doesn't seem to focus around this aspect of casual life as it does for the Ivorians. What you do see are a group of guys sitting around a small street stove that is boiling a pot of tea that they then serve, drinking with this slurping sound that quite honestly drives me a bit nuts, but seems to be the only way to drink tea here as it's quite hot once poured.
While my wife and I were rummaging through the many excellent jewelry shops just West of the center (I highly recommend checking them out if in Bamako), I noticed that the owners of one shop understood very well how convection works in fires. Obviously having grown tired of fanning the flames, which I know is quite a bother when I'm firing up in the barbecue back home, they decided to use a forge.
Now, I'm not quite sure if this forge is generally used for jewelry making, but I only saw it used for tea making. Essentially, it's a raised bed of coals that sit above an air path that has air forced in to it by a blower they picked up from lord knows where, that they crank with a re-purposed bicycle wheel. In a word, it's a genius as it works exceedingly well. For those familiar with how a forge typically works, they've greatly improved upon the hand-pumped bellows. It heats up the coals and thus, the tea, incredibly fast.
I love tea and so of course I took the chance to try the Malian take on boiling the magic leaves. Mother if it's not strong. It's like an espresso shot in each of those small glasses. It's highly bitter as well which is most likely why they sweeten the bejesus out of it. It's still good though, in the way that Turkish coffee is good and this touch with the forge makes it all the more cool.
One of the first sessions at Maker Faire Africa on the first day was a panel discussion about "What drives innovation in Africa?" The initial reasons are obvious with things such as necessity, curiosity, and information coming to the forefront. But of course, these are common to most anywhere and say nothing specifically about Africa.
When it comes down to it in Africa, most of panelists came to the conclusion that it really is a need to create and the fact that you have to be incredibly determined in Africa in order to create that drives the successful innovation on the African continent. While those living in the US or Europe are used to the older generation holding back their new ideas, the case for this is apparently even more pronounced. Nana (a photographer in Ghana) pointed to the fact that a great many of the least creative people in Ghanaian society tend to fall in to teaching. These people then stifle innovation and those who might strive for creativity at an early age. It's the same for government as well, where an old guard holds back new ideas. William (the windmill maker from Malawi) concurred with this in the fact that people in his village thought he was crazy when he was working to construct his windmills out of what was for all purposes, garbage.
This brought up the fact that there is a point of critical mass where what is seen as new and not to be accepted suddenly becomes commonplace and very much needed. In William's case, his windmills went from a crazy idea to being able to provide water, electricity as well as a charging station for neighbors' cellphones. He went from just a regular villager to outright celebrity not only in his village, but also his country, and internationally. Much like when smelting metal, if you reach that point, you can do most anything you want. If you don't you are stuck with things exactly as they are.
But this point in the conversation brought about what I felt was one of the best questions from the audience. A girl who was trying to work in film making in the US asked a question to the effect of, "How can you convince people to fund your films when they disregard them because of the look?" I assume she was asking in regard to having lower production values on your first films. Naturally for me, in having tried my hand at film making, I know very well how this goes and it's the same exact problem in the US as it is in Africa.
Rightly so, given the focus of this event, that point didn't need to be raised as Emeka (the moderator) and others (such as a photographer/filmmaker from Cote d'Ivoire) made two very salient points. First, you need to influence those who can influence others in to believing in your projects. That point is true most everywhere. The second point is a much larger issue which is very true in that Africa should be looking at Africa for a market as Africa understands Africa. A producer from France or the US isn't going to understand why people are doing what they're doing in most Nigerian films, but people in Mali or Cameroon or a slew of other countries most likely well.
So in the end, what came out of the discussion was the fact that the model for African innovation and success shouldn't follow models that are used in US or Europe and that it is the hope people will be able to get connections and encouragement at Maker Faire and other events to make this possible. Following the tail of the Dollar or Euro isn't going to do much for Africa.
I'm currently in Spain, eventually en route to Maker Faire Africa in Accra, Ghana. This should be big. Not my attendance on behalf of Maneno per se, but the actual fair itself. The whole idea of celebrating African innovation has been long needed. I'll be writing as much as I can from there, as well as photographing everything in sight. Still in the need to find lodging, especially as I arrive a few days before everyone else and I plan to meander around the country a for some days prior to the fair.
One bit I noticed on the BBC, was an article about African innovation, which had a decently lengthy interview with William Kamkwamba. While they didn't mention Maker Faire in the article, it was nice to see a positive article about Africa on the BBC for once. Typically, their coverage is atrocious and they even search off the continent and go out of their way to find negative things, such as this article which is about something that happened in the US.
At any rate, I've got about two weeks to go before hitting the streets of Ghana and fattening up because the food looks delicious. In case you don't believe me, check out the No Reservations series on Ghana that someone kindly broke down in to five parts and scrumptiously posted to YouTube.
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.
