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ISSUE NO 30 AFRICA'S DIGERATI

MIKE CHIVHANGA

In the first of a new series in News Update, we look at individuals (both great and small) who are at the sharp of digital developments in Africa and ask them to talk about the realities they face. Articles in this section will either be "first-person" experiences or interviews. This week UK-based Zimbabwean Mike Chivhanga of Comology Ltd, a company that is helping to improve web content in Africa writes about a recent trip to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

"I have just come back from an IICD funded research and development visit to Zambia and Zimbabwe. I was down there for two and half months.I was quite impressed with the uptake of the Internet in Zimbabwe where young people especially in the big towns - Harare and Bulawayo - make huge queues to use the web in Internet cafes. Indeed,a number of young people and professionals are now using the Internet in a big way. Internet facilities have become especially useful for those with relatives living overseas and those that are looking for study and marketing opportunities overseas.

I painstakingly introduced the email and the web to my dad's business colleague who has been trying to sell a number of products to the overseas market. A week after I left, he sent me an email congratulating himself at the ease of using the technology to communicate with his potential customers in the UK.

The success of using these new technologies in Africa is highly dependent on their practical benefits to people there. Most of them will appreciate their beneficial uses after they have seen a reduction in the cost of making international calls and the ease to get new information. As might be expected, the Net experience in Africa is slow such that it becomes frustrating even for the enthusiastic users.I also noticed that many leading Zimbabwean companies have a web presence even though many are still to get into e-commerce proper and they have a sizeable budget for web development.

In Zambia, the situation is somewhat bleak. Internet cafes are there, but I noticed that a majority of users were tourists and these cafes are located in hotels and one or two shopping malls like Manda Hill in Lusaka.

Web sites are still not a major vehicle to transmit information and some big organisations still don't appreciate the value of web sites. It could be that if their audience is Zambian, the chances are that many of the people don't have Internet access and investing in web site is not a wise investment. Organisations that are export oriented expressed a keeness to use the Internet to market their businesses and communicate with overseas customers. A number of them however expressed that local ISP charges are were too high and most of them expressed a need for basic practical Internet training and getting ISPs to do the training for them will cost a fortune as they charge something like US$30 per hour !!

Many of them welcomed international organisations' efforts to build their internet capacities. I was however surprised that despite many donor investments in ICTs, there was very little that could be seen "on the ground" as to how these projects actually benefited local people. In fact most people expressed that the top-down approaches used have been one way and have made very little impact in their lives.

Another key observation is the lack of practical will by decision makers towards encouraging the growth of internet services. In fact I think that there is a serious technological ignorance at the highest level that calls for these people to be humble enough to sit on a desk and be taught the practical benefits of using internet technologies. There is lip service when it comes to implementing ICTs projects as most of the money actually never goes to the intended purposes for which it was sought and is instead spent on administration, attending never ending meetings. I noticed that a lot of executives like attendings meetings, conferences or organising appointments - very little real business is done and a lot of time is wasted through discussing trivialities.

I was particularly intrigued at the reluctance of public institutions to make public information freely and easily available. In fact, printed sources of information are hard to come by in a number of areas for example in agriculture where most farmers noted a visible problem with traditional information services.

To conclude these initial impressions I could just say one statement: there is a direct relationship between web content and traditional information sources/services. If traditional information sources have been effective in providing information - whatever type of information, the chances are also high that when that information is made available via the web, it will maintain the same quality even though the delivery mechanism is different. The dictum is that web content in Africa will be greatly enriched if close attention is paid to the originating source.

News Update is a free e-letter produced by Balancing Act that covers African internet content and infrastructure developments, It goes out to government, the private sector, education and NGOs. To subscribe, send a message saying "I want to subscribe" to info@balancingact-africa.com