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This news round-up and snippets comes from the first day of public presentations to the Commonwealth Expert Group on Information Technology looking at ways of tackling the digital divide (5-7 March 2001). This group reports later in the middle of the year and we will cover its conclusions: SOUTH AFRICAN IMMIGRATION BARS COMMONWEALTH EXPERT Pity poor Kenwyn Austin, the Commonwealth expert from Trinidad and Tobago. He was told that a visa was not needed for entry to South Africa as he had a South African government invitation and also a valid passport. His long journey started with a 15 hour flight via New York to Cape Town. Despite showing his official invitation, he was told he needed a visa. He then paid for the visa application and waited for five hours before being told that he was officially denied entry to South Africa. He then had to return to Trinidad on a flight that took a further 18 hours. There were similar difficulties in the UK at the ACT 99 Summit in Cambridge when a number of African delegates were denied entry to the UK. Whilst we understand that Immigration authorities everywhere have a job to do, why do they always fail to play a helpful role just when you need it most? TEN YEARS TO GET CONNECTED - A SENTENCE OR A COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITY? The meeting received a presentation providing a statistical framework for the digital divide within the Commonwealth from the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation. Based on 1998/99 data, it can take up to ten years to get a phone in the following countries: Gambia, Lesotho, Malawi and Zambia. Others that are remarkably slow in providing what their people will actually pay for are: Kenya (6.5 years), Swaziland (5.8), Mozambique (4.2), Nigeria (4.2), Zimbabwe (4.2) and Tanzania (3.6). Whilst there have clearly been improvements in some of these countries since these statistics were provided, others have only made slow progress in offering phone connections. According to the African Telecommunications Union, a phone connection cost four times as much in Africa as it does in the USA (US$2000 as against US$500). This failure to provide landlines has caused a rapid growth in mobile connections. So for example Malawi which is a "fixed line laggard" has experienced faster than average growth rates (200%) in mobile connections. Outside the meeting, one private sector person even told me that his mobile connection out of Nigeria was faster than the landlines there. According to the presentation by Guy Giradet, the CTO’s Special Development Adviser, the cost of internet access (based on 20 hours off-peak use) in Uganda is just under half the price of that found in Kenya. There are of course in the words of UK politician Benjamin Disraeli three kinds of lies:"lies, damned lies and statistics". One person I spoke to at the meeting told me that he was aware of one African country who simply made up the statistics it submitted to the ITU. G8 DOT FORCE - BASKETS OF INITIATIVES TO COME The Commonwealth Meeting was timed to take place just after the G8 Dot Force Meeting also in Cape Town. A wide range of people I spoke to said that the Dot Force has not yet come up with many compelling ideas. The draft report to the meeting provides a remarkably clear analysis of the nature of the problem. It only slightly slips away when the authors offer a three-dimensional matrix of the issues, a device that may lead to an "understanding divide". We should think in three dimensions but few of us do. Should you change the world in this respect or change the matrix? Although the Dot Force has yet to come to recommendations, we believe that it will propose "baskets of initiatives" with broad generic subject headings like human resources. The UK and Canadian private sector representatives put proposals for a tax relief scheme to encourage venture capital investment for those on the other side of the digital divide. The proposal is for tax relief in the host country for investments of this kind in poorer countries. Japan is talking of putting US$15 billion into Dot Force initiatives, however its money is often "tied" to the supply of Japanese products. At the Commonwealth meeting, Chair of the Commonwealth Group Andile Ngcaba came up with an ingenious structural way of addressing the issue:"We can’t develop policies and regulations that are homogenous." So he proposed a "t-rate" (rather like the e-rate for education). Where phone connection levels are below 1-2% of the population, the phone company will offer concessionary rates to telecentres and their equivalents. ALL ROADS LEAD BACK TO TELECENTRES Wherever you start in the digital divide discussion, it’s not long before you find yourself back discussing telecentres or some version of this idea. There were several excellent presentations on telecentres and their like, particularly from South African organisations. According to Peter Benjamin of the University of Witswatersrand Link Centre, there are 547 "community ICT sites" throughout South Africa. In addition there are 2000 Vodacom phoneshops and 2000 Schoolnet sites. The density of this provision makes South Africa an interesting test-bed for the many different approaches to tackling the digital divide. At the heart of the discussion is the thorny problem of who pays: what’s the business model? Guy Giradet of the CTO summarised the advantages and disadvantages of a range of commercial and subsidised approaches. So for example Peru’s commercial Cabinas Publicas have driven down access prices from US$1.40 to US$0.70 and 33% of their users had incomes below the poverty line. NGO telecentres reach poorer people more effectively but have to be paid for. He made the point that ICT access is more than just telephones and needs to include radio and multimedia PCs. Outside of the meeting almost everyone I spoke to about telecentres in South Africa - whether from the private sector or NGOs - was sceptical about how well used they were. One example I was given was of a rural telecentre where the telephone line was not working, it had only 4 PCs and the person running it had not been trained. This not to condemn the idea but only to note that the scale of skills required to make them effective may not always be in place. ICT ACCESS IN SCHOOLS - A HARD NUT TO CRACK Shafika Isaacs of Schoolnet presented a summary of its members’ work across the continent and the preliminary results of a recent evaluation study. Overall Schoolnet has projects in 25 countries, a little over half of the countries on the continent. To give some idea of the scale of the "catch-up" needed in education, in South Africa (one of the continent’s more advanced countries in this respect) Schoolnet SA only has projects in 2000 out of the country’s 25,000 schools. Although the evaluation study of nine schools found that it was "too early to draw conclusions" it raised a series of issues that will need to be addressed. It found that there were problems with providing sufficient teacher training to make equipment effectively used and there were problems with phone lines: in some instances, equipment was still in its boxes. Except in Arab Africa, all school projects are "donor-dependent". This dependency has the effect of disempowering the host countries. Understandably, individuals and organisations take on a "donor dependent" mentality. One African I spoke to summed this up rather well:"(This governmernt department) applied to an international donor for 2 PCs. If its ministers had had simply one less Mercedes Benz, they could have bought 10-20 PCs." At heart, unless African economies are generating more wealth, this dependency will continue to exert a powerful effect on the mindset of those involved in overcoming the digital divide. And by extension the broader problems of their countries. SA DEFENCE DEAL DIVIDEND: ENTER ATELSAT One of the bonuses of South Africa’s recent, controversial defence deals has been the setting up of Atelsat (Pty). Its Swedish Chair Ivan Ofverholm (ex Saab) presented its plans to the meeting. He started his presentation by demonstrating the latest generation of mobile phone. It clips behind the ear and has a lightweight mouthpiece that extends in front of your mouth. It has the effect of making you look like participant in an outer space drama like Star Wars. When he bought it he raised this difficulty with the seller who assured him that in a year everybody would be wearing and it would be quickly accepted. Atelsat is launching in 2003 and aims to manufacture satellitesto provide additional capacity on the continent. Not surprisingly its Chair is bullish about the expansion of capacity in prospect over the next ten years. Atelsat will will work with a local partner, Spatial Technologies (Gideon Njenje). We await developments with interest. OVERHEARD: MARKET PRICING HITS CORRUPTION Whilst waiting to pass through immigration at Cape Town airport, I overheard a fascinating conversation. Two executives were discussing whether or not bribes should be given to obtain business. One of them was complaining:"He asked me for US$10,000 to give to a politician. It was stupid. He knew I couldn’t do that. I only make US$25 (per unit) on that product." QUOTE/UNQUOTE "South Africa is both first world and third worlde... With 5 million cell phones, people tell us we can be a laboratory for the rest of Africa. I’m not sure I want to be a guinea pig!"
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This page last updated on January 28 2004.
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