New subject: [Skunkworks] A week of Africa Eric Schmidt's assessment of Africa

24 Jan 2013

      Here's a post that Eric Schmidt made after visiting Africa last week.  I
think it is a worthwhile read.

A Week of Africa

After a week of business meetings in the cities of sub-saharan africa, we
can surely say three things are new for the continent:

a) the despotic leadership in Africa from the 1970s and 1980 is in decline,
replaced by younger and more democratic leaders
b) a huge youth demographic boom is underway, with a majority of the
population of 25, or even under 20
c) mobile phones are everywhere, and the Internet in Africa will be
primarily a mobile one

Many of the older problems are still severe, including a lack of electric
power, the general trend of rural to urban migration, and pervasive
corruption.  Every country we visited had an internal security problem, or
a significant border problem, and the elites are sheltered from this
pervasive concern behind guarded walls, hotels and restaurants with gates
and security checks, and ubiquitous guards.  I try to imagine what the US
would be if we had the types of security problems in Africa.. how would WE
deal with such threats?

Connectivity is much more important for security than many analysts think.
 Societies who are not connected lack opposing viewpoints and are much more
subject to easy radicalization.  The virtue of having more connectivity is
that people will have more choices, and more choices lead a better
understanding of the value to go to school, the need to treat women
equally, the choice to not demonize others, etc.

Nairobi has emerged as a serious tech hub and may become the African
leader.  A combination of relatively stable politics, the British legal
system, and a benign climate seem to attract a significant share of foreign
investment.  Incubators are hosting potential solutions to many problems,
including connecting M-Pesa (their mobile money solution on simple phones
using SMS) with payment systems for local stores.  If they manage to get
through the upcoming March elections without significant conflict, they
will grow quickly.

Rwanda is a jewel with a terrible past.  High economic growth and the
development of a significant middle class is threatened by the withdrawal
of aid due to UN complaints over the Congo.  Rwanda feels like Singapore,
an island inside of Africa whose small size allows great focus and a
dynamic, stable government.    A visit to the Genocide Museum in Kigali,
and a trip to the Volcanic National Park where eight groups of eight can
trek to see the gorillas made famous by Diana Fossey, are well worth it.
 Gorilla treks are also available through Uganda and the Congo, over the
same mountains.

After fifty years of war, South Sudan is the worlds newest country.  In a
country where every issue is an urgent one, mobile networks can unify a
poor country with isolated villages, significant flooding in the rainy
season, and the constant threat of attacks from rebels from the north.  A
courageous group, the Satellite Sentinel project. uses satellite data and
other sources to document ethnic cleansing in remote areas of Sudan (the
northern Sudan) and serve as a record of the terrible ongoing violence
against innocents.

Chad is a poor petro-state, with a long history of conflict and one
pipeline and one fiber link.  Africa has submarine fiber cables on the west
and eastern side.  Landlocked countries are at the mercy of their
neighbors, and all have learned that competition with multiple fiber
connections from differing borders dramatically reduces costs.  Chad like
some others, has determined that future spectrum should not be auctioned as
that only increases the eventual mobile costs and are simply allocating it
to a set of competitive carriers.  Less than 1% of Chad has electricity.

Nigeria, known as a land of oil corruption and the ubiquitous 419 email
scams, is the biggest surprise to a first time visitor.  Nigerians are
entrepreneurial, stylish, educated, and have the belief that their country
can emerge as the next Brazil.  With 170 million citizens, and a record
breaking eleven years of civilian elected government, the compound growth
and the shared memory of real internal conflict almost guarantees their
short term success.  Future growth of Nigeria should help with its
international image problem, as the real story of its success gets out.

The emergent model of the African internet is a set of competitive fiber
suppliers to the capital, a set of fiber rings owned by local telco's, and
3G and 4G networks.  Some of the countries are late with licensing plans
for 3G and 4G, a costly delay for countries that have very little
residential broadband.  Solar charging can help with the power needs of
handsets, but the electricity needs to be more reliable or costly backup
systems will be built at each tower.  Many of these countries have
telecommunications as a major contributor to their GPD (Cote d'Ivory is
about 12%) and even Somalia, which we did not visit this time, has a
profitable competitive telecommunications industry.. the most profitable
legal industry in that country.  Some countries are reluctant to turn on
the data portion of their telecommunications industry, another costly delay
to their future digital commerce, education and entertainment industries.

Many Africans will be last, unfortunately, to be connected to the rest of
us.  For them, the best short term outcome will be feature phones
(inexpensive voice and SMS phones) and a private network of microSD cards
that can be traded behind oppressive authorities to get information in and
out of trapped, occupied and remote locations.  Information is power, and
more information means more choices.  Documenting abuses, getting pressure
from outside to fix real problems, and solving illiteracy are just a few
functions of even the most limited of feature phones.

The demographic dividend in Africa of young people is their greatest hope,
in my opinion.  Today high rates of unemployment show an economy
underperforming to its true potential.  This new generation expects more,
and will use mobile computing to get it.  Optimism is appropriate for
Africa, as the people we met will do much more with less than we can
imagine, and the devices and systems built in the first world will be used
in the most creative ways in the emerging new world of Africa.

-- 
Kind regards,
Alex Nyika

A week of Africa Eric Schmidt's assessment of Africa

Alex Nyika

Claude D'souza

ndungu stephen

TheBigBoss

Kevin Omondi

Dennis Kioko

James Muendo

Joram Mwinamo

Mark Mwangi

James Muendo

Timothy Mutugi

Odhiambo Washington

Moses Muya

TheBigBoss

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