Today finds me off in Bopola, a town well off the beaten track North of Monrovia, Liberia – where I’ve taken a lot of pictures and had a good time getting out of the city. I hitched a ride with an American NGO taking breeding rabbits upcountry, so the back of the pickup truck had 80 furry big-ears in it. It smelled some, since they had picked them up in Guinea 2 days before.
I saw this fascinating creation called a BUV on their station before I left too. 3 wheels, and it looks like it can haul anything.
The ride was just what I was looking for; providing me a chance to get out and see how the country really breathes and moves. The outskirts of Monrovia are hectic, as you would expect, but as soon as you get out it slows waaaay down.
One of my main missions while out is to talk to some rural community radio managers. When we got in, I made contact with the owner/manager of Radio Gbarpola and we had a good 2-hour discussion on their technology, programming, practices and business growth possibilities.
International Alert has pumped a decent amount of money into a number of strategically located community radio facilities. Radio Gbarpola is one of them, and boasts a bank of solar powered batteries, a 300 watt transmitter, a split studio, a 2-deck CD and tape player, and a motorcycle (for the news reporter to visit locations on). That’s some spread!
As I had expected, this radio station is one of the only ways anyone in much of the county can find out what is going on within the county. They currently cover 2/3 of it, and with a repaired or new antenna, they can reach all of it. The only mobile phone antennas are owned by Lonestar, and it doesn’t have nearly the reach of the radio station.
While there, they insisted on a quick interview as well – I hope the Liberians in Gbarpola county can understand my American English… 🙂
Being myself, after exhausting my question supply, I started demo’ing what you could do with just a SIM card, mobile phone, and a computer. The first thing out was a quick test of FrontlineSMS there, which worked like a charm. I explained how a setup like that could add a new revenue stream as well, if they started selling text ads.
Then, I went on to talk about what we did in Kenya with Ushahidi, and ask about what they thought of similar technology in Liberia. Interestingly enough, it turns out that all “important” information seems to filter into the radio quickly. It’s either direct to, or direct to police-to-radio.
That that has started me thinking about is using the 50+ community radio stations in Liberia as nodes in a larger network. I’m thinking it might be possible to set up a number of them with a FrontlineSMS system that uses Mesh4x to sync certain information between them and up to Headquarters in Monrovia. Just an idea at this point, but well worth doing more discovery on.
[Note: How did I manage to post way out in the middle of nowhere? Aforementioned NGO has a nice slow connection, and I have all night to upload these resized images…]
Today I stopped by the University of Liberia, which is situated right between (and across the street from) the massive UN Mission to Liberia (UNMIL) building and the equally large Liberian capital building. I had the chance to sit down with Professors Bropleh, the Associate Dean of Engineering, and Professor Damalo Robert, the Director of Computer Information Systems.
It turns out there is no computer science program offered at all. I asked if they knew of any student that was a programmer, if there were any groups that did some type of hacking on their own. Nothing. Below is the sorry story of this saga.
On April 27, 2007 the president opened the new “Center for information and communication technology” at the University of Liberia. It has 150 computers, a VSAT connection and a video conferencing machine. Sounds good!
That operation was shut down 6 months ago.
The power and the building are paid for by the university, but the nice internet connection cost about $5000 per month and no one was paying the bill. There is some muddy story involving Socketworks Global’s digital bridge project and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), where Socketworks put in a $100k+ expecting to be reimbursed by the IFC, only to have it not happen.
“In post-conflict Liberia, where students cannot absorb a fee increase for education, SocketWorks is self-funding the initial investment and seeking support from the World Bank to subsidize the student subscription fees. This is the first time SocketWorks is changing its business model to accommodate donor subsidies.”
What we’re left with is a padlocked door to a 150 working computers, with a dormant VSAT connection sitting unused in the middle of the demographic that could do the most with it. The very same demographic that will be called upon to lead the next generation of government and business in Liberia.
Since the war ended in 2003, there has been well over a billion dollars of AID money pumped into this country. It appears as if the young children are more important than the older youth, as almost all education money is funneled to primary schools. On average, out of an engineering student population of 500 students, only 30 graduate. There is a whole generation missing out on real higher education opportunities.
The University of Liberia is an eyesore – a mess of buildings falling apart and crumbling before your eyes. That might be okay though, as the Chinese have built a brand new university complex 30 miles out of town, which is supposed to go into use next year. Maybe they have other plans for this land now, but in the interim, it just seems an embarrassment to the system – both government and aid organizations.
It seems such a shame to have the futures of this current generation of “could be” programmers and developers held hostage by a system not of their making. Where the very purpose is to be educated in areas that will help the country exponentially in the years ahead. It makes you wonder…
We see the big tech foundations dumping their money into all kinds of projects. With a running cost of under $100k per year, why doesn’t some white knight from a big tech company put their money here? Surely this is a place and a project worth that much. That number equates to an accounting error for most of them anyway.
I find myself torn between excitement of the potential that these 150 computers represent and the disappointment of the current muck up.
That was a reply from a rural Liberian farmer to Malcolm Joseph, the managing director of the Center for Media Studies in Liberia. He shared that with me as I discussed the way communication has happened between the media and the public here over the past few years. It’s an interesting challenge, trying to marry up communication channels and technology mediums to be as effective as you can be across a varied and spread out demographic.
Radio is important. It’s still the main way that rural groups get their news. Newspaper circulation drops drastically outside of the cities. While many countries have at least a couple of radio stations of national reach, you still find a number of smaller radio stations that work within districts, down to the the real rural community radio stations that operate with a 5-10 kilometer radius.
The question we have to ask ourselves is, how do we connect better through this medium? It’s not good enough to just say that, “mobile phone coverage is good enough”. Even though the mobile coverage might be good, the credibility and community-inclusiveness of even a small radio station means that it cannot be ignored when trying to reach ordinary Africans. Add in illiteracy rates, which are typically higher in rural areas, and it becomes even more important.
Not ever web or mobile service needs to consider this, but we all need to think better on how to integrate radio into the mobile and web world in Africa. This isn’t just a post for aid and development groups either, it’s for people who want to create digital services that reach beyond African urban settings.
More thoughts and resources:
Yesterday had good meetings, but today was amazing.
I had a chance to sit down with the CEO of Cellcom today, Avishai Marziano. Cellcom is the second largest mobile phone operator in Liberia by subscription, right behind Lonestar. They have very good coverage of the country (all the main roads and towns), and they do a great job of marketing their services. We got into a nice heated debate over the value of Ushahidi, and if there is any business model to use it for carriers like him (turns out there isn’t, except that the long-term health of the country is in his best interest).
We then got into some great discussions about mobile phone payments and banking. Specifically, the pros and cons of an MPESA approach (carrier monopoly, bank agnostic) compared to a Wizzit (carrier agnostic, bank monopoly). How everyone is jumping at using these services to gain more subscribers, and not to really add another value added revenue stream into their company.
The final part was when he showed me their newest prototype of an iPhone-like touchscreen mobile phone that runs with dual SIM cards, has radio and all the other goodies you would expect. Right now, it needs a little more polish, though the form feel is good and if they drop the price point down it will find buyers. Selling a dual SIM phone is a tricky business though. It’s definitely what African users want, but it’s also a tricky thing to market, when you’re basically giving a free slot away to a competitor. (no pictures, sorry)
Lunch was at a local dive, over a bowl of rice and spicy fish gravy/soup. It had no airflow, and was really much like eating in a sauna. However, it was worth it because I think I might have found one of the only true hardcore hacker types that is in Monrovia today. John Etherton has been here for a year, working on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from Georgia Tech. He’s done some really cool stuff with GPS-enabled PDAs in rural Liberia, and is the only guy I’ve met who could give me true rundown of all things mobile and internet in the area.
It turns out that there is decent mobile coverage of the populated areas of the country. The best any operator can do is Edge/GPRS, so no 3G anywhere, but that’s better than nothing. It also means that almost everywhere that you get network access, you can also send data. Cellcom and Lonestar have the best rural coverage, and Comium is the easiest ISP to start using, but for dedicated access most go through Cellcom or one of the smaller ISPs.
Alie is the newest Ushahidi dev, originally an ASP and .NET guy, he’s now starting to get involved with the program. You can read the full story of how I got to meet him and how this transpired on the Ushahidi blog.
Today was my first full day on the ground in Liberia, which I spent talking to a number of people about the mobile, internet and radio infrastructure – and, more importantly, the realities of their usage on the ground in the country. I try to not only talk to high-level executives and business officials, but also the implementers (people who really do the work), and laymen who just use the technology, but have no major tech background themselves.
Two of the guys I talked to run the IT department for a medium-sized NGO. One of these two, Joshua, is an engineering student at a local polytechnic, and we had a good discussion on why I’ve been having such a hard time finding young hackers and programmers in Monrovia. They came back with an interesting response on how the barriers in their country make it quite difficult to even get started.
Liberia came out of a civil war only a few short years ago. The infrastructure was torn apart (there is no electricity grid, rich people run generators), the university and education system are still trying to catch up, and no computer science degree is available. The mobile phone companies, due to not needing as much foundational infrastructure, have built out quickly and cover much of the main roads and major towns (I’ll have to do a whole post on this subject later). All internet connections come through VSAT connections, and they’re not reliable or cheap.
Barrier: You can’t get online to get to all the free knowledge. Unlike many other parts of Africa, there are very few internet cafes here. Joshua explained that young people find it very hard to get out to them to get free knowledge online.
Barrier: The few jobs that there are in the ICT sector are generally with NGOs, a few businesses and government organizations. Only those with good connections get in, so a lot of smart young people miss. Why is this important? Only those in these jobs are able to get the training and certification to do higher paying jobs because they have to be flown out to the training centers – none are in-country.
I’m on my first day here and will meet more people, so I still have more discovery to do on this topic. Though I do find it interesting that today, of the 5 tech people I met, not one was a Liberian grown and trained in Liberia. I think it’s fair to say that Liberia presents challenges that are steep to overcome, even by African standards.
I’m on the road to Liberia for a couple weeks, so getting up a quick post on some items that I think are interesting around the technology space in Africa.
Hannes van Rensburg goes off on groups that give financing to European tech companies for work in Africa, rather than the local African companies who are better equipped and more knowledgeable to handle the situation. I agree.
“I really have difficulty in understanding how this mildly succesful UK company can make a difference in Africa. Not only is it unlikely that they will be able to re-use the UK functionality in Uganda (Java phones, ATM switches, etc.), but they are also late. Many Ugandan-based companies have already (or are in the process of) lanching their mobile banking services.”
Solar-powered phones are coming. How will they change the power equation in Africa?
Matt Berg writes a good post on leveraging internet with radio:
“Eventually low cost smart phones that are able to access the Internet in an acceptable way (think < $100 Chinese iPhone), will represent a paradigm shift in the way Africans connect to the Internet. Until then, a community radio is probably the best way to make the information on the Internet accessible to rural communities."
Zain launches mobile payment service Zap in East Africa. This is their challenge to Africa’s mobile payments golden-child MPESA (by Safaricom). In the past, Zain hasn’t had a stellar record in marketing and simplification of their services. I hope this is different, as the market needs competitors.
Rural internet, not online but still connected
“Internet access might not be instantaneous, but a USB stick driven off in a cloud of motorcycle dust, or bumping along in an ox cart, can often shift more data than a telephone dial-up connection. And with delayed dial up the customer avoids the frustration of slow downloads: returning later to waiting data.”
Coby Leuschke builds a prototype 12 volt mini computer:
“I was most interested in the 12V DC requirement for use with solar systems. I finally got around to building one from a bare bones kit…”
I see maps like this, listing the worlds 50 most innovative companies, and I’m driven to get just one marker in Africa.
Three years ago I wrote about this new site called Muti, created by South African Neville Newey. It’s a site that allows everyone to participate by putting in links to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa. Other uses can then vote it up and, generally, the cream rises to the top. We originally thought it should be for “all Africans”, but the community quickly proved that they though it was for South Africans – and that is how it has remained.
Over the intervening years I’ve become good friends with Neville and have watched him crunch the early morning hours to fine-tune and evolve his site into a real community. There have been a number of times that Neville has wanted to throw in the towel, with real (paying) work taking up so much time, and with all of the life that comes at you when you have a family. He didn’t though, and what we’re seeing is that Muti is growing and his patience is starting to pay off.
I asked Neville to shoot me his numbers for the past two years. Here are the last two years subscriber growth:
Here are the last two years news submission chart:
We’re seeing Muti grow in other ways too. News 24 is one of the largest media houses in South Africa. In their new mobile application, Muti is listed along with Digg and Reddit as a place to submit a story to. It has become South Africa’s version of those services, and you can see that change coming as more submissions are not just about technology (though that is still the foundation).
Neville started Muti, but he didn’t grow it, the community did. It’s the hundreds of bloggers, social media gurus and African news hounds. Among them are other South African developers like Charl Van Niekerk, who has been instrumental in extending and debugging the site. People know each other and start to gain a reputation – good and bad – which makes the community sticky too.
One interesting place that the community came into play is the Muti logo. There was a contest to see who could create the best logo, and then everyone in the community voted on it. It went from something that Neville hacked together, to a really well designed logo by Fred of World Wide Creative.
Neville tells me that this is going to happen again, with the skin for the new site. He’s done an initial design (below), but plans to allow users to submit their own style sheets and then have a gallery of all the style sheets and let the users decide which one to go with.
What we’ve seen so far is a bootstrapped startup, that sells one or two ads per month to cover server costs. It’s a hobby. But, it’s a hobby that is continuing to grow and gain a larger following in South Africa. I hope Neville serves as an example and an inspiration to all those other startups and bootstrappers across Africa – to stick with it. Longevity has its own value.
Vinny Lingham has had two big hits in the last couple weeks. Just a week ago, in the midst of this down economy where web apps are dying every day, he managed to pull out a second round of funding for Synthasite worth $20 million. That’s a lot of money in a good economy, in a down one it’s huge.
Today, he was announced as one of the World Economic Forum – Young Global Leaders for this year. The others joining him from the Bay Area include the likes of Zuckerberg (Facebook). There have been others from Africa (full list), and it’s quite a group to be associated with.
Vinny is proving to be a great example of the type of tech entrepreneur that Africa creates. My hope is that he continues to be a resounding success in the global market, thereby bringing more investors and businesses hunting for real investment opportunities, not just looking to give handouts.
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