What can Africa teach the World about Technology?
Author: Alasdair Munn
After attending Africa Gathering this weekend, the central key words and phrases I gained were:
- Relevance
- Solution based approach
- Context
- Understanding your stakeholders.
- Sustainable (All four cornerstones)
In the West, particularly the US, the most publicised and most visible business model for the development of collaborative and people-connecting technologies have been the social network models.
There is a perception (right or wrong) that the model to replicate is the one that is built on ‘the great idea that takes off’.
- Have a great idea
- Obtain funding
- Build it using smart technology
- Gain user buy in and critical mass
- Figure out the business models later
- New, unexpected business models will appear as you go along.
What these models have proved to us is that there is power in connecting people, in collaboration and allowing people to add value and perspectives. Some amazing technologies have resulted from this and new ways of looking at how we can use these tools have been unexpected by products. There is no denying that these have changed the way we do things, and have a huge capacity to ensure the way we do business changes for the better.
These models came about in a time of comparative wealth and excess. As resources become increasingly scarce, people are looking towards business models based upon relevance and context.
It has always been the case within Africa that development resources have been scarce. One thing the people of Africa understand is how to make the most of their limited resources. AfriGadget, a blog that explores the way in which the people of Africa solve everyday problems with ingenuity illustrates this very well.
In the West there is a tendency to try and replicated what is out there. There is a preoccupation on talking about the various ways in which existing platforms or networks can be best “leveraged”. Hands up those who have not written or read numerous blogs on how to get the most out of twitter?
Technology solutions coming out of Africa are built with purpose, against objectives and within the boundaries of their resources. It is a solutions based approach. It is also a stripped down approach where only the relevant resources and tools are used. Simple works because less can go wrong and if it does go wrong, simple is easier to fix. There is a shift in the way tools and technologies are looked at.
A good example of this is what Ushahidi did in Kenya. Ushahidi is an opensource platform that crowdsources crisis information. They took a widely used and available piece of technology, texting on mobile phones and applied it to a Google Maps mashup. This was built in Kenya using local knowledge and technologists in response to post election violence. This provided a real time map of violence hotspots with an understanding of the types of violence in those areas. The interesting part is they quickly recognised that citizen reporting leads to an overload of incoming information. Using social media tools most people take for granted, or seldom consider outside the context of specific social networks, they are creating a crowdsource filter. Using tools such as rating, both content and people and word, language and phrase filters, for example, sense can be made out of this overload. Considering profiles to have a deeper significance than a means to tell people who you are, real value can be added to content. Check out Erik Hersman’s TED talk here.
As the West, and the developed world continue to struggle against scarcity of resources, they can learn from Africa’s approach. Shifting the way resources are looked at and challenging old business models are essential. Context and relevance are no longer just buzz words.
I have just found these links to blogs on Africa Gathering thanks to Juergen Eichholz
- My Take on AfricaGathering in London - Juergen Eichholz
- ICT4D.at – Africa Gathering: Talk 1 summary
- ICT4D.at – Africa Gathering: Talk 2 summary
- ICT4D.at – Africa Gathering: Talk 3 summary
- ICT4D.at – Africa Gathering: Talk 4 summary
- ICT4D.at – Africa Gathering: panel discussion
- Karola Riegler’s Flickr Photoset on AfricaGathering
- Africa Gathering: The Recap
I appreciate your points about ’simple works better in Africa’. We all know that everything is relative. In Africa at present the basic needs of communities are not only relative to their survival but to what is actually practical in terms of supply and available infrastructure.
I think the buzz words should be understanding local knowledge and culture first. Only then can one implant meaningful technology into communities, presently struggling to communicate and survive using what are fast becoming impractical traditional methods.
I am interested to learn what sort of people and organizations attended the Africa Gathering held in London this weekend.
I presume it was supported by NGOs, Trusts, Charitable organizations and consultants dealing in social needs.
Were there any members of African Governments present? I would have thought that a gathering of this nature would benefit from input, understanding and dialogue from governments or civil servants who are hands on and involved in the day to day management and distribution of financial aid and development projects in their own African countries. Such personnel would also undoubtedly gain from listening and learning to the problems that donor agencies face in Africa.
The model for the great idea in Africa is to let the Africans have a chance to help themselves. Pride is a very important part of African culture, pride in one’s self, one’s family, one’s tribe, one’s country. Pride in being able to work and produce for one’s own community and pride in being able to pay one’s own bills without charity.
@Tomlin Those who attended where the ones who registered @ africagathering.org.uk and managed to get a ticket. The Gathering certainly wasnt about dealing with Government officials and not about financial aid or development projects even though some folks talked about their projects.
This practise of giving also has to stop and Gov. officials also need to learn how to say NO to dev aid – instead of skimming this aid to cover up their own administrative failures.
In my understanding, we used AfricaGathering to pool everyone interested in exchanging ideas and views on what’s really a way forward – and this obviously means less help from the outside and more local solutions and creating an understanding that there is a new generation of Africans that is ready to compete with the rest of the world.
Thanks Alasdair. I missed the Africa Gathering – didn’t even know about it unfortunately. But appreciate your synopsis – it helps me articulate my thinking with regard to what progress can be made if we get beyond our inate ethnocentricity. ‘The Geography of Thought’ by Richard E. Nisbett also speaks about what can be achieved if we acknowledge the different approach each culture will use to deal with issues, thus making a uniquely contribution.
@Tomlin jke is absolutely right in describing the event as an ideas pool rather than another forum for aid agencies to beat a familiar and patronizing drum. What was great about it was it concentrated for the most part on what ICT projects were working and what more is needed in this regard. And the projects that were working were ones that were being managed locally and without government and many times NGO support.
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