Tenders not included

Pip: Shrimp is the black man’s lobster! (Mike pretended to be sick from eating shrimp and Pip is angry because he threw it out)
Mike: (looking perplexed) Why isn’t lobster the black man’s lobster?

This is dailogue from a series called The Job which had a short run in the early noughties, with Denis Leary as Mike and Bill Nunn as Pip. This exchange resonated with me because it conveys the sense that havenots must be/ and are satisified with settling for less.

I’m currently at a ICT conference in Pretoria organized by SAFIPA. A recurrent theme of the conference or the first day at least,  is the penetration of mobile phones in Africa,  South Africa in particular and how the ubuiquity of these devices can be used as internet connection device. An ICT in education break-away session discussed the progress being made in mobile learning. Now I understand the impetus to do this, and wholehearty endorse the mlearnign movement and usage of tools that extend the internet using mobile phones right NOW. What I  do object too, however,  is a tendency to think of mobile phone penetration and solutions using this penetration as an end in itself i.e that the mobile phone is Africa’s PC or put another way  - African relationship with the internet will be mobile phone based. Now to me this was clearly “shrimp is the blackman’s lobster” thinking with the consensus being Pips perspective. I will definitely concur with Mike in this debate and declare my opposition with a question-

“Why can’t PC’s/Laptops be Africa’s PC’s/Laptops?

There are as many answers to that questions, about as many as there are people willing to give them to me. I’m going to take aim on three obstacles to making laptops or netbooks as pervasive as mobile phones. My calculations are of the “back of the napkin” variety, so shouldn’t be considered gospel but are intended as food for thought.

• The device costs are too high: This is where we need to borrow from the mobile phone business model where the device cost has come down because of amount of users and the hybrid revenue model.  The prepaid revenue model where the service and the device costs are decoupled and the postpaid contract where the device and service are coupled with the initial device costs spread over the life of the contract. To illustrate the device price decrease I’ll present some data from America. In 1984 mobile phone cost $4000, and according to “Life Styles and Past Times” by Jenny Tesar  40000 americans used mobile phones. Fast forward to 2002 and the mobile phone cost dropped to $300 (and this was a premium phone) and there were over 180 million americans using mobile phones. Over a 18 year period this is a order of magnitude drop in the price, for a four order of magnitude increase in usage (even more if you consider worldwide usage). Since them of course the usage has increased more and prices have dropped even further, where you can pick up a decent device for about $30. A typical netbook costs around $400 dollars today.
• Demand: The conjecture here is that africans (or the masses or grassroots as called by the baby kissers) don’t need laptops or PC’s. This was probably the thinking of most people when Mr. Craig-Knott sought funding for his little cellphone venture,  and also arrogant and niave. African hunger for technology is grossly underestimated and the imperative for connected citizenry in africa is widely accepted with Rwandan President Paul Kagame being a notable advocate.
• Infrastructure: This is mostly around the available infrastructure to providing broadband service. Although Telco liberalization in Africa has been exceeding slow,  one of the biggest impediments has been the supply side scarcity i.e the fact that the undersea pipes where low bandwidth and monopolized. With the advent of WACS and Seacom ( I just heard of these in a Steve Song presentation yesterday), the supply side constraints will ease by 2011. The mobile phone network is probably the most expansive network and could also be leveraged to cater for last mile access.

A general theme of this conference has been the way in which ICT and Technology as a whole can play a central role in transforming an economy from a resource base toward a more information base, with Finland being a prime example. Some of the specific developmental challenges in South Africa are the uneven distribution of network  infrastructure, education and ultimately economic participation. Its my opinion that the only way that the resource to information economy shift makes sense if it increases the participation (economic and social) of people who don’t currently participate, and this what profileration of netbooks/laptops/pc’s can do.

The research and technology from the OLPC which has contributed to the commercial netbook developments and the Open Hardware movement are also convergent themes that would allow african entrepeneurs to participate in making “lobster the blackman’s lobster”.