Published October 11, 2000
Telephone lines replace bongo-drums to communicate across Africa. The people of this impressive continent are eagerly welcoming the Internet with an abundance of determination and cooperation midst a lack of nearly everything else.
Africa’s population density, 27 people per square mile, is nearly that of the United States. But its size is 325% larger without the benefit of a communications infrastructure.
Ayisi Makatiani, co-founder and CEO of Africa Online, is rapidly installing Internet connections across the continent. Designing and building this is an enormous project. The economics, demographics and vast distances of the sub-Saharan Africa would seem formidable, and they are.
The average income of the 805 million population in these distantly separated communities is only about $220 per year. In all of Nigeria, a mere 2,000 people have Internet accounts, about the same number as in Park County, Montana.
An estimated five million presently use the Internet. Seventy percent of these users are concentrated in Egypt and South Africa where two out of 150 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) control 90% of the market.
"We did consider going to South Africa in 1995 and 1996, but realized it would be a waste of time. The competition there is murderous. We would have been swallowed by South Africa’s ISP giants, and they would not have even burped," says Makatiani.
Africa is not isolated from the exponential growth of the Internet that’s occurring everywhere else. Makatiani believes the use of the Internet in his country is destined to change African patters of work and inter-community relations for the better.
Africa Online has had to overcome many obstacles in the last five years. Tough governmental regulations have resulted in telephone scarcity making broad bandwidth data capability discouragingly expensive. Civil unrest and instability in Zimbabwe, the Ivory Coast and other countries have halted progress in those regions until relations normalize.
Britain’s fourth largest bank, Barclays, in alliance with Africa Online and African Lakes have agreed to an unprecedented insurgence of financial services for the benefit of the Internet in Africa. The unique plan starts with twelve of the fifty-three African countries. Rural homemakers, for instance, will be able to buy groceries and other services over the Internet without use of credit cards.
For the cost of a pencil and an envelope, some 100,000 clients now send and receive Internet email and browse the Web through 600 low-cost Internet centers. They call it E-touch. In addition to expanding existing service to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Swaziland, Africa Online is negotiating to enter Zambia, Ethiopia and Senegal.
Another hurdle is the low literacy and scarcity of computers. People like Githogori wa Nyangara-Murage, a former software researcher at the Xerox Research Center presents free computing seminars. He is convinced that the open-source software model of Linux, a popular form of Unix that runs a majority of Internet servers, is the only viable choice for Africa to ever catapult beyond its underdeveloped status.
Even without modern computers, older salvaged models are very functional using the Linux operating system. In fact, freely distributed Linux software is supported over the Internet by a global pool of technical talent. Besides it’s price tag, Linux is also non-proprietary, virus free and stable (doesn’t crash).
“Under the proprietary software model,” says Githogori, “Africa is just investing in unattainable dreams because we cannot afford to pay all this money that the continent is paying proprietary software.”
The Windows operating system costs about $100US in Kenya, or half a year’s salary. Add to that the Windows Office Suite applications for as much as $800US for each computer setup. Robert Bunyi, Equity Stockbrokers research analyst, attributes the high cost of proprietary software for the rampant software piracy in Africa.
The Linux OS is free and free to copy and distribute without license. The applications also cost nothing except for copying and installing. The technology in-crowd are aligning with the richer South Africa and Nigerian contingencies to endorse and promote Linux installation and training.
Sam Nganga, a technology columnist for East African Standard, says that Microsoft is nowhere near total penetration. “Once businesses get to trust the Linux platform, it will catch on like bush fire.”
Graphical user interface adaptations like Caldera Linux match the look and feel of other popular commercial systems. “A large segment of Linux users are in the Internet Service businesses, says Peter Gitau, systems administrator at Kenyan ISP Interconnect Ltd. “To walk into a shop and buy a Windows NT or Sun Microsystems Solaris is just not readily available.”
Kenya Airways and Kenya Power & Lighting are among many businesses curious about using Linux and are evaluating its merits.
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Kenya) includes Linux as part of its software engineering syllabus. JKUAT has been invited Githogori to contribute to the pool of devout Linux users who desire teaching as many who will listen.