

Africa: off the tech map? - nagoff
http://appfrica.net/blog/2010/06/04/great-african-singularities/

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maxklein
One problem may also be this - the links between African countries is weak.
For example, if I have an office in Singapore, I am basically covering all of
South East Asian very effectively. I can move people and resources across SE
Asia from this office.

If you have an office in Lagos, your reach is limited to Nigeria, Ghana and a
few other West African countries. The link between Nigeria and Cameroun is
weak, and Nigeria to Congo is a difficult journey. To make a trip from
Cameroun to Angola, it is probably cheaper to first fly to Portugal and then
back.

Africa is a huge place and there are regional circles. So if you bother to
make an office in a particular country, you are not covering the whole of
Africa (which, combined, probably comprise a good chunk of customers), you are
covering just the regional zone that has relationships with that country, and
these are probably a much smaller group of people, making it not worth it to
have such an office.

~~~
Maktab
Great point. For historical reasons, many African countries established better
links between themselves and their former Colonial rulers than they did
between themselves, with inter-country links being neglected.

Immediately after independence this made sense, as those links back to Europe
were already well-established and they were to countries with far higher
trading capacities than neighbouring African countries, but in the long-run it
retarded the growth of African trading regions and the diversification of
industry in many parts of the continent.

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richardw
Some cities are pretty much first world, but 100km out of town you're in the
3rd world. Cellphone coverage over my whole country, I'm typing this on a
notebook attached to a 23" LED screen and a docked iPhone. I'm writing C# for
the day job while telecommuting from home. My guide up Kilimanjaro friended me
on Facebook the other day. But I'll be donating blankets to some very cold
people this winter - people who have never typed on a keyboard. Huge
differences.

~~~
tlack
Tell us more! What country are you in? Were you raised there, or did you move
there by choice for some reason?

~~~
richardw
Pretty boring by African standards - born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Lived
in various parts of the country, visited Zimbabwe, Tanzania (climbing
Kilimanjaro), Mozambique (scuba diving), Lesotho (cycling trip). Taste of the
kili trip: <http://picasaweb.google.com/richard.watson/Kilimanjaro>

South Africa has really transformed, but still a long way to go. I think the
really interesting places are those that are emerging now. I've heard Ghana is
fantastic - great people, very friendly.

~~~
tlack
How's the tech scene in South Africa? I would imagine it has its share of
startups and investors, etc.

~~~
kilps
There is some info at <http://www.siliconcape.com/> (Cape Town focused).

~~~
richardw
I've known about it for ages, but assumed it was very CT-focused so only now
really dug into the site and registered. It does look like the go-to place for
local startupy types, thanks!

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Maktab
Africa's an awfully big place to make generalisations about. Some cities,
Johannesburg and Cape Town for instance, are near first world in their
sophistication and living standards and have well-established tech industries,
quite different from the stereotypical villages without running water,
electricity or any tech whatsoever.

Making blanket statements and offering one-size-fits-all solutions for the
entire continent are as silly as pretending that the US and Western Europe
share the same problems and need the same solutions as the poorest corner of
Madagascar. The problems Johannesburg faces and the solutions it needs are
closer to that of any major Western city and are light years removed from the
problems and solutions of your average rural village.

South Africa more than 2 million Facebook users, its own Google search,
YouTube, Maps, Street View (launching Tuesday) domains and services, its own
Apple AppStore, its start-up industry is growing and has produced at various
points the 3rd largest payment processing software supplier and 2nd largest
Certificate Authority and Amazon's EC2 was developed mostly at its Development
Centre in Cape Town. I recently did some work for a local team that wrote and
maintains pretty much the entire software infrastructure for a large British
retailer, a product they're now expanding to other international retailers.
Not hugely impressive by most standards, I'll admit, but surely its evidence
that Africans are definitely on the tech map. And that's not even taking into
account the thriving tech communities in places like Kampala and Nairobi or
other tech-related industries in Africa.

Point being, I think some of the people commenting missed the point of the
article because of their misconception about what Africa is about.

------
junklight
So yes - the western consumer machine has not penetrated so well.

But that does not mean they are not on the map at all - if you saw any of the
recent "Africa" season on BBC 4 in the uk it was clear that mobile phone usage
is high, there are big cities (like Lagos) with loads going on, film industry,
music industry.

It all seems a bit chaotic to my western eyes but its clearly vibrant and
resourceful and there is a huge amount of drive. In the Lagos programs a lot
of the people featured had the endless inventiveness and ability to rise to
challenges we would all think was fantastic in an entrepreneur.

I suspect that Africa will emerge with its own technology ecosystem - not
dissimilar to ours but with an African slant. I also suspect it has probably
had enough of the west coming and telling it how and what to do.

~~~
djb_hackernews
> if you saw any of the recent "Africa" season on BBC 4 in the uk

could you pass a long a link for that program? I tried to do a search but
nothing relevant came up.

~~~
junklight
iplayer irritatingly only has stuff on for 6 days after transmission. BBC 4
does repeat their material pretty regularly. It will say on this pages when it
does:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s3vdm>

(in fact it looks like it was already repeated on BBC 2 from that page but it
will come up again).

Would also highly recommend:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/music/features/african-
rock.sht...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/music/features/african-rock.shtml)

Fascinating stuff on people like Youssou N'Dour (to pick one of many examples)
who have gone back to Africa after western success and are now building Africa
labels for African artists.

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anamax
According to Max Seybold (cherrypal), over the years, there have been lots of
"bring technology to Africa" efforts which resulted lots of unused equipment.
However, it's starting to get used, especially as locals figure out how to
make money from it.

He tells of one guy who makes a living sending e-mail for his village. During
the week, said e-mail is entered into his laptop. He then walks to a bigger
town, uploads and delivers the new mail, downloads e-mail to folks in his
down, and walks back to his town. He then delivers what he downloaded.

~~~
elblanco
It's like sending a telegram in the old days.

------
akadruid
This article bugs me a bit, since it seems to be a "Big Tech Hates Africa"
article, whereas I think the reality is more "all large companies are spending
minimal resources on poorer areas of the world". It certainly does make Africa
look a left out on a map, but large areas of Asia are equally not targeted by
large companies, but the geo-political layout is different.

While it is odd that so many large tech companies haven't highlighted their
presence in Africa, there are some notable omissions from that list.
Microsoft, for example, have clearly listed contact points and targeted
support pages all over Africa, including Kenya[1], and SAP has a number of
operations across Africa[2].

The reason for Google not listing their Kenya office seems to be to do with
the type of office it is[3]. They do have quite a few jobs listed in both
Kenya, and the author's own city: Kampala in Uganda[4].

Perhaps when the tech industry matures, we'll see the kind of coverage a large
manufacturing company has[5].

[1]
[http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/phone/contact.aspx?countr...](http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/phone/contact.aspx?country=Kenya)
[2] <http://www.sap.com/contactsap/countries/index.epx> [3]
[http://whiteafrican.com/2008/07/04/google-kenya-and-the-
goog...](http://whiteafrican.com/2008/07/04/google-kenya-and-the-google-
global-cache/) [4] <http://www.google.com/jobs/africa/> [5] <http://toyota-
africa.com/cars/new_cars/index.asp>

~~~
c1sc0
I hate to be blunt, but why would a company open branch offices in countries
that are both poor AND not growth countries when there are so many easier
opportunities in e.g. asia, eastern europe or south america? Just a matter of
priorities ...

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bradhe
Note that there is a Google data center in Uganda. When I was there a few
years ago, uplinks back to the US were incredibly slow; however, any time I
wanted to hit Google, it was pretty damn fast (considering it was a 64k shared
DSL line that served an entire business park).

------
houseabsolute
Africa has bigger problems than not being able to influence the future of the
internet.

~~~
bradhe
Perhaps if it was able to influence the future of the internet, some of it's
other problems would be solved?

I would argue that Africa actually _will_ influence the future of the
internet. Considering there's about 15% of the worlds population there, that's
over 1 billion potential customers!

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joubert
I think there is a boatload of opportunity in Africa.

~~~
rythie
Though I expect the solutions aren't the same as in the west. I think at least
one of the reasons that Google is in several countries is to cover support in
many timezones (from talking to them) but the timezones in that area are
already well covered by Europe.

One of the problems in Africa as a market is that there is less than 1%
broadband penetration and reliable electricity still only reaches 5%:
[http://appfrica.net/blog/2008/08/16/the-current-state-of-
int...](http://appfrica.net/blog/2008/08/16/the-current-state-of-internet-
penetration-in-africa/)

Apple's products are surely too expensive for the vast majority in Africa, the
products can be sold there but it doesn't mean they need offices there.

Google, Yahoo and Facebook need more computers there or to expand more into to
mobile there.

~~~
djb_hackernews
I think you are proving parents point. Room for a tremendous amount of growth.

~~~
rythie
I agree but it's going to take a lot longer and require different solutions to
the ones they have already developed.

