Dear Dora, Don’t Do This.

BusinessDay reports that the Federal executive council is planning to spend 3.6 billion Naira on computers and internet connectivity in 260 schools around the nation. Professor Dora Akunyili made the announcement, no doubt because it’s her job to share the word, but also because her ministry would probably be responsible for making it happen.

I’m a firm believer that every Nigerian should have internet access for education, commerce, communication and entertainment. Such a plan shows that our leaders are turning their minds to the future and realising the necessity of raising our children on the technologies that will elevate them to prime position among their peers. Nevertheless, I think it is a rotten idea and I’ll tell you why.

Of Viruses and Acid Rain

I am one of the lucky Nigerians who don’t need to drive long distances to get to work. One effect of this is that I don’t spend much time listening to my car radio. However, one radio show I do get to hear and really enjoy listening to is the Daily Guide on Star 101 FM from 7.15 am and 7.30 am. I seriously love Moyo and Mofe Oyatogun’s take on the news. This isn’t because their reports are necessarily of scintillating intellectual content or breathtaking in vision. Instead, I like their news show because they bring texture to what is traditionally dry and monotonous. Their back and forth makes the news fun to listen to.

On two occasions however, they quite annoyed me. Late last year, December I believe it was, Mofe reported on a computer virus that was making the rounds. This virus was supposedly the most dangerous virus ever known. Microsoft and CNN were apparently both reporting it as the virus to end all viruses. For those familiar with such things, it was clearly a tried and tired hoax. And it was being reported as fact over a radio show that is listened to by thousands if not hundreds of thousands of uninformed listeners. This particular hoax has been recycled repeatedly since the last century. I wrote about it earlier in my blog post on hoaxes and talked about how to validate and verify those kinds of reports.

Act two. A couple of weeks ago, the Acid Rain hoax filled the airwaves. Apparently a text message had gone around Lagos that a rain of acid was coming and people should take cover. Again my second favourite (Dan Foster’s my first) radio personalities reported it as news. Let’s give them credit this time. They brought some skepticism to the story and followed up with a bit of journalistic fact-finding to “to see if these things were true”. Still, the results they came back with did much less that clear up the issue or expose it as the hoax it clearly was.

Both these incidents worry me because of several things. First, as I said wrong information was reported as news. The journalist apparently received the information about the virus in an email message. As a good citizen who wanted to make sure people she knew didn’t get their computers infected, she decided to let as many people as she knew know about it. For most of us that would have meant forwarding the email to as many people as we could and asking them to do the same (creating the flood of messages that was the hoaxer’s intent). My Daily Guide folks, being radio journalists, just happened to be in a position to share this hoax with all her teeming radio fans.

Most people in Nigeria don’t know computers. Beyond the basic uses they put their PCs to, they really know just enough to get into trouble. So those of us who speak to the public in any form or fashion (radio or blogs) need to be as sure as we can that we are not spreading misinformation. Because someone will believe us. The public sound of our voice gives us the fallacy of legitimacy. Consequently we have a greater duty to ensure veracity. I kind of hold myself responsible for not calling into the station or sending them an email debunking the first story. As a blogger and computer professional, I should have done what I could to get the word out over the same medium the hoax was spread.

The second incident is the more chilling one. This isn’t really a computer issue and the domain knowledge needed to debunk the hoax is different. Still secondary school encyclopedia reading was all the information I needed to be sure it was a hoax. The initial word went out over SMS before being picked up by the news media. Nigeria is a cell phone nation. The increase in our tele-density over the past decade has been off the charts. Many technology and developmental thinkers have recognised that the cell phone, for most of our population, is the equivalent of the computer and the internet. The great thing about cell-phones is that they are so cheap that most people independent of income or education can afford one. What makes them great also makes them a huge problem. If you want to reach most Nigerians as individuals you sent mass SMS. Those messages resonate more and somehow seem more authentic to many than a news broadcast. Possibly because text messages carry a sense of personal communications with them.

A similar, and worse incident, was the text about a large influx of northerners into Lagos with nefarious intent. I didn’t get that text either, but I did get the text debunking it. I must commend the security services and whoever they partnered with in getting the word out. Still, how do we know the first wasn’t true and the second wasn’t a lie to deceive us? You see the problem? We are now in age where mass communication can be done anonymously with near impunity that can have all sorts of impact on our populace.

Which is why I am concerned about what our radio and TV broadcasters present. They are in the unique position of being able to instantly spread the word to counteract false information or become the unwittingly agents of a wildfire of misinformation. They need to know and use the tools available to get the right information into people’s hands when someone else is doing their best, whether maliciously or misguidedly, to rain acidic information on us all.

Dej.

Photo courtesy of Eremi at flickr.com

No Limits: Nigerian Internet Business is Only Beginning (and I don’t mean 419)

  Last week, on the 26th of March, I was privileged to be part of an open discussion on Nigerian Internet Business Opportunities hosted on Skype Public Chat by Wayan Vota of ICTWorks.org. Don’t be fooled by my being one of the headliners (noted internet expert ???), I was certainly the least of the cast of participants in the discussion. I’m just a blogger while most of the people in the “room” were entrepreneurs, developers, designers, and ICT4D (information and communication technology for development) professionals. There was quite a bit of valuable material from this session to fuel discussions for some time to come. I expect to have several posts that feed off that session. I have included the link to the transcript of the discussion here.

The conversation was really multiple streams and recapping it as such just won’t work. The only way I can think to do this is to list what I consider the high points and try and treat different ones in greater depth in my future writings. So, in no particularly coherent order, here goes…

• Like in so many other areas, there is no limit to the opportunity for creative and successful internet-oriented, internet-hosted and social development-focused internet business in Nigeria.
• There is quite a bit of narrowness in the way we look at the internet as a business environment in Nigeria. In addition to building our own solutions that face our own Nigerian society, we can outsource design and development skills internationally for a living wage. You could be here in Nigeria and earn Euros and dollars with your PHP skill sets. We need to look beyond what we have seen people do here in Nigeria and explore what other people all over the world are doing such as developing solutions for devices like the iPhone and Blackberry.
• Like the Alaba traders collaborate to get you that shoe from their warehouse (also known as the guy down the road’s shop), internet entrepreneurs need to collaborate in sharing talent, ideas and lending support to each other in order to make a challenging task easier.
• In order to take ourselves to the heights we can attain, we need to take the long view on this industry. Instant monetisation should not be a target as it will not build a business that can stand the test of time.
• The Nigerian internet entrepreneur needs to focus on identifying real problems that can be solved with ICT, solve those and expect to see the cash come in down the road. We really have more important needs to address than creating pure web offerings (“frothware”) that do not enhance us developmentally, economically, culturally or politically.
• We need to partner with thinkers and doers all over the world including Nigerians in the Diaspora, expatriates invested in seeing development in Africa and local people on the ground already addressing real world problems and determine how we can make them more effective with ICT.
• ICT is only one component of an arsenal that needs to be brought to bear on our myriad problems in Africa. In my role in corporate IT, I am constantly reminded that IT’s only value is in what it can do in solving real world problems. We must never think that ICT is a silver bullet that slay all demons. At it’s core, ICT’s role is to help us communicate, help us capture and store data, and help us transform data into information usable for decision-making.
• Those of us passionate about IT need to help as many people as we can become capable of creating things using the technologies we love.
• The technically minded types among us can look beyond ICT to other technical challenges such as cheap and sustainable electricity provision, healthcare innovations, agriculture, and many more.
• We need to match technologists with business experts in order to get the best of both skill-sets.
• There are multiple tiers to the technology possibilities. As much as the Web is the richest, we should not ignore SMS, voice and low-bandwidth optimised internet solutions.
• Rather than building things from scratch we should take advantage of existing platforms, code libraries and APIs in order to extend existing functionality.
• Indeed we need schools and incubation programs to better prepare our young people (and the not-so young) to take bright ideas and turn them into viable real world solutions.
• While governments are a significant factor (even if it is only so we can duck when we see them coming doing the road) in providing some amount of infrastructure and regulation, and providing a stable polity, we cannot wait on them to provide anything and must embark on our missions, whatever they are as if the obstacles will melt away at approach.
• When we do come face to face with those obstacles, right there is a business opportunity for us or someone else to solve.

There are a lot of very smart technologists out there that are ethnologically, socially, economically and emotionally invested in Nigeria. In the one hour or so that I spent chatting with them I was impressed with the talent in the room and convinced that if more people like this are brought together more often and in ways that we can work on things together, we can make all the difference in the world.

@wayan: you still owe me a knockdown, drag out debate on the East Coast versus West Coast start-ups thing.

Dej.

ICT4D Skype Chat: Nigerian Internet Business Opportunities

Nigeria is a huge nation by any measure. Largest population in Africa, stupendous mobile phone adoption rate and 11 million internet users. The nation is a ripe platform for internet and communication services for transformation in Education, Commerce, Security and other aspects of national development. However, it doesn’t seem to be happening like it should. If anything, other African nations seem to have a better handle on this than we do.
Wayan Vota over at ICTWorks.org lit a bit of a fire when he blogged “Is Kenya beating Nigeria in Internet Business Opportunities?”. We Nigerians never take such things lying down and the debate in the comments section of his blog about his assertion got so heated, we decided to take the discussion live during ICT Works’ monthly ICT4D Chat.
A group of tech experts, bloggers, internet entrepreneurs and industry watchers will be getting together online using Skype Public Chat to tear into the subject of the whys and wherefores of the Nigerian internet industry. The discussions will be about why we are the way we are, the opportunities there are out there and the challenges to overcome.
Hosting the discussion is Wayan Vota and featured Nigerian internet experts and pundits include

• Loy Okezie of StartupsNigeria
• Oladejo Fabolude of Digital Crossings
• Sheriff Shittu O. of WebTrends Nigeria
• Oluniyi David Ajao of Web4Africa

The discussions are wide open for everyone to get a word in so why not join us at the next ICT4D Public Skype Chat:
Nigeria Internet Business Opportunities
ICT4D Skype Public Chat
6pm, Lagos Time, March 26th
(find  in your timezone)
The official press release for the event is right here. So what are you waiting for? Put the ICT4D Skype Chat in your calender now!
 Dej.
The picture of five was shamelessly liberated from www.loyokezie.com who shamelessly used our pictures.

An African iPad Part 2: Why We Must Build Our Own

  Children using their XO Laptops

We should build our own iPad. As I said in part 1, Apple’s business model is not in anyway Africa-friendly. It doesn’t have to be, but it does mean that we either do it Apple’s way or we develop our way. We have consistently seen too many “outsiders” come and try to make us do it their way.

Over the years, Africa has been on the receiving end of various schemes to make computing accessible (read “cheap”) to us. These schemes have taken a variety of forms. First there’s the second hand computer approach. Old and disused computers are cleaned up and brought over here and sold for low prices. One of the biggest downsides is that it ended up as a scheme for businesses in developed countries to get rid of their toxic junk and earn tax credits as well as good PR in the process. Then there’s the scheme that looks for low cost components that ends up building a cheap and subpar computer with minimal memory and a retarded operating system. Even Microsoft got in on the act with a version of Windows XP for sale in developing nations.

Nicholas Negroponte and his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project took a different approach. He set out to produce a high-quality, low-cost computer for children in the developing world. What’s interesting about his approach was that rather than looking for a bunch of cheap components, slamming them into a thin plastic casing and dumping Windows 3.1 on the box, his team developed some significant technological advancements in their bid to meet a design goal without compromising on quality. Sure their laptop, named the “XO”, had to compromise on things like storage, memory (which is expandable with USB and SD anyway) and raw processing power, but these “compromises” were made up for with what actually made it into the box.

This device contained technology that made it very readable in bright sunlight. Try that with your MacBook. It could use mains power, could be charged using a hand crank, or even by solar power. It is a convertible tablet device (though not touch-screen) and had extensive battery life. The XO implemented an innovative wireless mesh network technology that boosted connectivity the more computers there were on the network. A whole new operating system interface was developed for this device that focused on the tasks of learning with valuable software delivered by creative minds. Being shock and spill resistant, it could be used by children, those destructive monsters, for up to 5 years and live to tell the tale.

This thing had features in it that high end computers today still don’t have. It spawned competitors like the Intel Classmate PC and had Microsoft trying to figure out how to get Windows on it. Though they didn’t make their target of a hundred dollars per unit, it still came in at under two hundred dollars.

Then the OLPC went and ruined it.

This device is only available by three means. First they made deals with governments and these governments bought and distributed it. I don’t need to say anything about governments and their ability to get things that we want or need into our hands. Second was a scheme where Americans (you know, people with credit cards) could buy two on Amazon.com, one for themselves and one as a gift to a child in a developing nation (and only  once a year at Christmas). The third method? Buy one off someone on eBay. So a high quality device that could change the computing landscape as we know it is made extremely constrained by its distribution model. The OLPC organisation have their reasons for doing this, but it does show that the dreamers of this product are outsiders looking in and trying to define for us how best to get our computing.

Not so the Indians. The “Hole In The Wall” computer project came about from an Indian computer scientist thinking about educating the street kids (think “Slumdog Millionaire”) of India.

Dr. Mitra heads research and development at NIIT, a leading computer software and training company in New Delhi. Just outside his office is a wall that separates his air-conditioned 21st-century office from a slum. Mitra decided to place a high-speed computer in the wall, connect it to the Internet, and watch who, if anyone, might use it. To his delight, curious children were immediately attracted to the strange new machine. "When they said, 'Can we touch it?'" Mitra recalls, "I said, 'It's on your side of the wall.' The rules say whatever is on their side, they can touch, so they touched it."

Within minutes, children figured out how to point and click. By the end of the day they were browsing. "Given access and opportunity," observes O'Connor, "the children quickly taught themselves the rudiments of computer literacy."

One boy in particular, Rajinder, has become a computer whiz and a celebrity in India. "Mainly I go to the Disney site," Rajinder tells FRONTLINE/World, but he also regularly visits news sites and likes to use computer paint tools. His teacher says that Rajinder is a much better student now: "He has become quite bold and expressive. I've got great hopes for this child."

While he didn’t create a new technology, Dr. Mitra did present technology to people who would never have been given the opportunity access to it. His experiment has been replicated in lots of Indian communities improving the quality of education of the affected children. He bridged the divide.

We don’t need to copy Dr. Mitra’s exact experiment, but we do need to copy his method of looking inward to addressing this problem and, in our different African societies, come up with ways to bring technology to our people that results in rapid adoption and a marked increase in applicable education.

One technology that is rapidly becoming ubiquitous across social strata and geographical location is the humble mobile phone. This device has amazing potential. It can and is delivering some of what we need, but its form factor and associated technologies can only go so far. I believe one of the ways get to where we need to be is to borrow a leaf from the OLPC, take the design lessons from the iPad feature set and build our own device. Having said all that, I do not believe we actually have to start from scratch to create an African product that has the design values of the iPad or the XO. The core of any computing product is the operating system and several viable options already exist. One possible operating system option is currently seeing increasing adoption on non-PC form factor devices. This OS is free. Its creators are ready and willing to support its use anywhere we want to put it. We can build any business model we choose around it. One that suits us. It even has Apple running scared.

This operating system is called Android.

To be continued…

Dej.

Picture courtesy of flickr.com