Panel on “Appfrica: How Web Appli­ca­tions Are Help­ing Emerg­ing Mar­kets Grow” with:

• Jonathan Gosier — Appfrica
• Erik Hers­man — Ushahidi / Afrigad­get / WhiteAfrican.com
• David Kobia — Ushahidi
• Rose Shu­man — Open Mind — Ques­tion Box
• TMS Ruge — Project Diaspora

Every­thing we thought we knew about Africa is wrong. Tech­nol­ogy is lead­ing growth, devel­op­men­tal aid is hurt­ing it. The con­ti­nent is incred­i­bly rich while the peo­ple remain poor. How is tech­nol­ogy (specif­i­cally the web and mobile devices) chang­ing the nar­ra­tive of sus­tain­able eco­nomic growth in the African diaspora?

Aid orga­ni­za­tions have not yet fig­ured out how to use tools that have been there for years. For exam­ple, they’re just get­ting on the mobile band­wagon now.

In terms of trade ver­sus aid, there are more trade-based ini­tia­tives. There are more oppor­tu­ni­ties to invest, rather than to just write a check. It’s not an atti­tude of anit-development aid, but rather to say: “give Africa a chance to find its own solu­tions.” If things are never being built up from the ground, nations will con­tinue to remain depen­dent on devel­op­ment aid.

It is a must to have devel­op­ers who live in Africa. You might as well not do it, if you’re bring­ing in devel­op­ers from out­side Africa. You need peo­ple with expe­ri­ence on the ground, peo­ple who are famil­iar with the issues. A west­ern turn-key solu­tion will not work.

Some of the excit­ing ini­tia­tives include:

• The Kamusi Project — online translations
• Ushahidi — mobile news reporting
• Project Dias­pora - Mobile banking

Open source is play­ing a huge role in Africa, where any­one in the con­ti­nent can con­tribute. Ushahidi is an example.

Africa is a very oral place, so ideas spread through word of mouth. Some of this is hap­pen­ing dig­i­tally now through text mes­sag­ing, but most of it hap­pens in a vil­lage context.

A wish of the pan­elist is to con­duct more col­lab­o­ra­tive con­ver­sa­tions with the West, rather than what too often occurs: the West talk­ing down to Africans regard­ing technology.

Google and Grameen Bank are some of the larger com­pa­nies with enough fore­sight to think about and invest in Africa right now.

Mobile has 30% pen­e­tra­tion in Africa, which works out to about 300M peo­ple. Only 5% have access to the web, which is about 50M peo­ple. SMS is the one big com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy in Africa. The fastest grow­ing areas are Nige­ria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt. How­ever, what’s more impor­tant than carv­ing things out region­ally is to think about rural vs. urban or rich vs. poor. Also, develop for what exists now: broad­band is not there yet; peo­ple keep their cell phones for seven or eight years; etc.

“This tech­nol­ogy will make you bet­ter is not a good argu­ment, because ‘bet­ter’ is a ques­tion­able par­a­digm to strive for. Bet­ter for whom?“

A chal­lenge is made: the pan­elist needs a lap­top to take back to Uganda, by Tues­day evening.

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