
Agony of an African Programmer (2014) - iafrikan
https://www.iafrikan.com/2014/04/03/agony-of-an-african-programmer/
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mmsimanga
As an African I often wonder if we are solving problems in the right sequence.
The Internet makes it easy to feel like one is connected to someone in SV but
the reality is we live in very different environments. I presume most people
in SV have running water and pretty reliable electricity, decent roads and
hospitals (yes I know there are issues with healthcare funding but the
hospitals are there, in Africa we don't have the building). As a developer in
Africa you have to contend with the underlying infrastructure issues and keep
up with the latest JS framework :-).

~~~
gowld
One of Africa's greatest technical achievements was going "out of sequence" to
go all-in on cellular Internet and mobile apps, skipping landline rollout to
the home.

wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

~~~
lapinot
Is this an achievement of the locals or an achievement of Orange, Vodafone,
MTN and Maroc Telecom, eg mostly non-african mega-corps vampirizing the
market? Mobile networks are notoriously much more monopolistic and efficient
at keeping out small actors and regulations than cabled telcos. And: mobile
devices themselves also are much more blackbox-like than laptops and desktop
boxes. No wonder OP laments about people not understanding "what's going on
inside the tech" if the only thing they get exposed to is something based on
vendor lock-in, with no file browser or text editor. (note that the same
phenomenon is currently going on here in the west)

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thanatropism
The "moral of the story" is hidden in a non-linebreaking long paragraph
formatted as pseudocode. Most of the content of the essay is there, yet you
can't read it unless you think to inspect the source code.

You probably missed or didn't take the time: \---

System.out.println (“ It's not easy being an African software developer. Don't
give up and always Ask God for directions. Use the right technologies for the
right tasks. The future of the African software industry lies in enabling the
scattered bunches of individual hobbyist programmers. Those people who would
be coding even if it didn't pay because that is what they like doing. People
like that should be given a chance, should be given work to do, encouraged to
stick it out. When there are enough programmers around and working as a
programmer is a viable occupation that can buy a car and build a house, the
industry will have grown up. Until then, it is dog eat dog -- monkey go work,
baboon go chop... “);

\-------

... I really want to find something positive to say.

~~~
nixpulvis
This is why we need to be supporting open and free hardware, everything else
is some form of compromise.

EDIT: Kodos for the moral, I'm on mobile and couldn't read it since the
formatting is a little off, and my iPhone can't easily inspect element. See
what I mean?

~~~
arcticbull
Skimming, the salient point to me was that the perspective of people there is
"hardware comes in a box" rather than (in my words) "coming from the ingenuity
and hard work of engineers, who are just normal people with experience in
building things."

It's easy to overlook, though I can point to that moment for myself when I
realized this was something I loved doing: 10-year-old me going to a camp
where they showed us how we could use qbasic plus some breadboards to build
security systems, launch rockets, make a musical instrument -- with
electronics. That's what showed me both that people make it, and that I could
make it too.

Whether hardware is totally open or not, if you don't have that spark, the
moment that connection forms, it doesn't matter. The technology that got me
going was far from open, ti was some 1990s era Compaq with a parallel port
break-out most likely. I think Arduinos are 10X more powerful for getting
people into this world than an open computer they couldnt even begin to
understand. That's learning to sprint before you can crawl. Both matter,
though.

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benzoate
> A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars
> per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least
> $100,000 dollars per year.

This is nowhere near true for Europe, the floor is more like $30,000, probably
less in some areas.

~~~
emsy
Before or after taxes? 30k before seems rather low for western Europe

~~~
loopbit
That's a decent mid-level developer salary in many parts of western europe.

~~~
ido
That's just over €2.2k per month (after USD->EUR conversion). It's on the low
end for junior devs in Berlin but not unheard of (although even among entry
level positions many would start higher than that). I earned less when I just
started working as a programmer (albeit awhile ago).

However, after a couple years you can expect to earn significantly more:
within about ~15 years I went from ~€2k/m to ~€6k & I'm pretty sure I haven't
yet reached my salary ceiling.

I'm sure in "bad" markets (Southern Europe and/or smaller towns) you will have
worse pay but I would bet in most or all major (North-)Western European cities
my experience will not be untypical.

I think the main issue is that the term "Western Europe" couples the badly
paid south with the better paid north.

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Ahmed90
Replace Africa with MiddleEast and it's the same, $8500 is the average salary,
only a few private companies actually pay a reasonable salary, bad education,
no training, expensive electronics/internet, and non-techy bosses/clients (the
worse!!)

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Scoundreller
Thinking of « Africa » as one place is just as poor a decision as thinking of
« Middle East » as one place.

I’m sure things vary drastically between Israel, Iran and UAE.

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Ahmed90
Not sure about Iran, but Israel got support and kind of an open market with
silicon valley and it's an isolated part of the ME anyway it's not like an
Iraqi dev would casually go to Isreal to work lol, UAE not really special,
most of the working force in tech is imported talent so the local
circumstances are irrelevant.

~~~
shard972
> Iraqi dev would casually go to Isreal to work lol

Why not? Do they not have work visas like America does?

I mean considering how many undocumented people make it to America from the
middle east I can't imagine it would be too hard to get into Israel.

~~~
kochikame
You must know enough of the politics and history f the region to realize how
unlikely it would be for an Iraqi or Iranian of any profession to simply "go
work in Israel"

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mruts
I live in Tanzania and a salary of 10-20k USD is a pretty lux life here. You
could get a housekeeper, gardener, and a gated property and still have a lot
left over. Moreover, no income tax! The problem is that imported goods have a
50% tax on them, so laptops and stuff are pretty expensive.

I moved from NYC to Tanzania to help run a school that my wife founded here
and Tanzania is a long long way off from becoming an information economy. I
teach a computer science class and am regularly shocked by the lack of basic
information my students have about technology and the world.

I'm not sure what to do about it, and really try to get my students interested
in the world and ask questions. But it's hard to ask reasonable questions when
you have no books and no/limited access to information.

Moreover, there aren't any unlimited data bundles and almost no one has
computers at one. When I first arrived in Tanzania and began teaching I
thought the solution was simple: provide free access to information via a
community library we built with always on computers and internet.
Unfortunately, the library became the go-to place to watch youtube videos all
day long. So I had to turn the internet off and just have it when I or another
teacher is there.

The approach that has worked best is guided computer use. Something like "give
me a list of questions you have about something and then go find the answers
in a 2 hour period."

If I was going to hire a Tanzanian developer (and I hate to say this, but I
probably wouldn't), I would judge him just on his raw intelligence, not his
skills. Skill/knowledge-wise, even the smartest Tanzanians are at a huge
information disadvantage. You gotta just find the smartest guys (and there's a
lot of untapped talent just sitting around) and train them yourself.

tl;dr: when you have a group of people who are systematically information
disadvantaged, you will always be disappointed by their knowledge/skills.
Instead judge them on pure smarts, and realize you will have to make a big
long-term investment in them.

~~~
iamleppert
What’s wrong with people using your library to watch YouTube videos all day
long?

Can you tell me you’ve never done that? There’s nothing wrong with it, even if
it wasn’t the intended purpose. Maybe one of those kids would stumble upon a
video that gave them so critical knowledge or sparked their passion in
something?

As long as the kids weren’t displacing others or damaging the equipment I
don’t see what’s wrong with it.

~~~
mmsimanga
Not OP but I can only guess being from Africa. 1) Data is expensive and
watching videos uses up a fair amount of data. 2) Usually, the number of
computers is limited. Someone can watch videos for the whole day whilst other
people wait to use the computer. I get it that there is some useful
information on Youtube but if left unchecked people tend to drift towards the
trending views, music videos and so on.

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james_s_tayler
Aside from the lack of load shedding and decent access to cheap technology and
loads of bandwidth...

I feel everything else is the same for anyone outside SV. Can't meet deadlines
(but that's because everything takes longer than you think it will, even when
you account for hoffstadter's (sp?) law) and trying to bootstrap stuff in your
spare time is next to impossible. Not impossible, but It's right up there with
the most difficult things you could try and do.

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m0skit0
As an African, I think everything laid down in this article is applicable to
any job. The main problem here imho is the economic system. Africa cannot
capitalism like its Europe or Latin America. Private firms and investment will
not solve our problems, this has been demonstrated for more than a century
now. We just get predated over our natural resources. We don't have other
countries to sack or attract a lot of qualified work from other countries.
Nobody invests in Africa and if they do, intermediaries and corrupt
governments steal most of it to live lavishly. And most of the highly
qualified Africans just run away to have a decent living somewhere else. I
feel very sad about my continent, the cradle of humanity :(

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xupybd
At 20K a year it would seem African developers would be a competitive
outsourcing option for wealthier nations. Is there a reason they're not a well
known name in outsourcing?

I'm guessing it might have something to do with infrastructure, when countries
like India and China can compete at these prices but have the infrastructure
to support working remotely.

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sytelus
TLDR; Being a developer in Africa means paying 2X-4X in hardware prices, no
viable Internet packages, hard to build team, unreliable electricity, no angel
investment, 10X lower salary compared to US, hard to find learning resources,
ban from PayPal.

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marmaduke
I was reading in the section about power cuts, and I was wondering if there
are any data centers in Africa?

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selimthegrim
I remember reading about Cloudflare setting some up?

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Kalium
Lagos for sure, Johannesburg, and maybe some others I'm forgetting?

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javier2
2014? Would be cool with an update

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segmondy
$20k per year in Africa is balling out of control.

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lesiki
It is not. Source: African.

Unless of course you're comparing software developers' lifestyle to the
refugees, nomads and slum dwellers? In which case $20k in San Fransisco is
also balling out of control, when compared to the homeless guys living on your
porch.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Even the homeless in SF cost the city $40,000 a year.

