The African connection

Futurefile online - www.theherald.co.uk - click Features, then Icon

Write to the writer - futurefile@techspot.com

Norman Chipakupaku - norman@chipaku.fsnet.co.uk

Africa News Online - www.africanews.org

African Connection Rally - www.africanconnection.org

African Information Society Initiative - www.bellanet.org/partners/aisi

Computers for Africa - www.computersforafrica.com

International Internetworks - www.widernet.org/intlinet

Microsoft South Africa - www.microsoft.com/southafrica

So, the internet porn industry has been doing its bit for the Third World. Deals struck with cash-strapped Chad mean some seekers after ''adult'' content have their internet connections quietly re-routed via North Africa at $7 a minute, to the distress of unwitting punters and the mutual benefit of US porn-brokers, an Irish facilities company, and Chad's telco. Another victory for the global economy. Not that it's hard to understand why Chad is happy to make a few bob, especially from telecommunications. It's said there are more telephones in Manhattan or downtown Tokyo than in the entire African continent - population 700 million.

The UN's secretary-general, Kofi Annan, made the point pithily earlier this month: ''How can we say that the half of the human race which has yet to make or receive a telephone call, let alone use a computer, is taking part in globalisation? We cannot, without insulting their poverty. Thus the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalisation becomes a positive force for all the world's people, instead of leaving billions of them behind in squalor.''

Annan was setting out part of the agenda for the UN's millennium summit in September, guided by the principle of a moral recommitment to the purposes and principles laid down in the Charter, and he has his work cut out.

During an African regional hearing held last year in preparation for the summit, the Bank of Abyssinia's chairman, Tekalegne Gedamu, suggested that Africa had ''concentrated on vision-building while not enough energy has been focused on the nuts and bolts''.

A case in point was last year's African Connection Rally, a 14,500km road trip through 11 countries intended to highlight the continent's telecommunication needs and spur outside investment. The plan was that during the rally its political figurehead - South Africa's posts, telecommunications and broadcasting Minister, Jay Naidoo - would open four ''telecentres'' to symbolise progress.

It turned out that three of them weren't ready. So the focus of this pan-African extravaganza fell on a building in the Zambian town of Chipata containing five computers, a fax machine, phones, and a photocopier. To a business or organisation in Europe or America, small beer indeed. For Africa, an exemplar to be celebrated.

The man who planned the Chipata telecentre and raised finance for it in Canada was Norman Chipakupaku, executive secretary of the Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce in Zambia. He now lives in Hawick, working as a business consultant, and has a three-fold solution for Africa's hi-tech shortfall.

''The real issue is to make sure that the government-owned telcos are privatised,'' he says. ''Only outside competition will ensure competitive connection rates. The second need is satellite links, because land-lines just don't work in a country like Zambia, which is about 30 times the size of Britain. The third issue is power itself. A lot of countries in Africa are thinking hydro and coal, which is very expensive. They should be using solar power instead.''

In addition, bureaucracy needs to be cut and import duties on IT equipment reduced or waived. And, crucially, governments need to establish IT policies. ''It's impossible for African countries to promote agricultural produce and tourism without proper communications.''

That's the vision, but Chipakupaku hasn't forgotten those nuts and bolts. By the end of this year, he hopes to ship 50 reconditioned computers to five secondary schools and two colleges back home. They will be part of a growing traffic in machines deemed useless over here but vital over there.

Many come from Computers for Africa, a charity which originated in 1995 as the entry for a Royal Bank of Scotland IT innovation award by pupils at Plockton High School. The idea was to give a second life to redundant 386 and 486 machines. The enterprise has expanded, with schools in Edinburgh and Balerno coming on board and Kelso High School developing a similar scheme. Around 500 systems have already gone, and this year volunteers and pupils will take two trips to Kenya and Tanzania to see machines installed and train their users.

CFA volunteer Ross Cockburn, IT manager with Mid-Calder firm Guardall, says: ''Schools are ideally placed to collect equipment from local businesses, carry out the fund-raising needed to cover shipping costs, and find suitably motivated people to go out and set up the machines. I would hope that in 10 years' time there will be hundreds of these school-based charities, which give the pupils genuine involvement throughout the whole process.''

The impact in Africa is considerable. ''We took 10 computers to the new University of Bakoba in western Tanzania,'' says Cockburn. ''They're in use 24 hours a day and the university has become a training centre for the whole community. Three of our machines are being used for database work at a teaching hospital in Mwanza to help combat Aids. A single computer at a project for street kids in Nairobi is cutting months off the time it takes to find parents and relatives.''

However, there is a difficulty with licensing software for the computers. Cockburn has approached several companies, including IBM, but with little success. ''It's difficult to find anyone to talk to, and the first question is always whether you are working for schools in this country. If it doesn't mean publicity for them here, they're not interested.''

Big Blue's slogan - ''solutions for a small planet'' - consequently annoys Cockburn intensely. But the biggest problem lies in securing an operating system. Most of the machines involved are only capable of running Windows 3.1, which Microsoft has stopped distributing and licensing in order to concentrate demand on its '95, '98, NT, and 2000 platforms.

Ross Cockburn has negotiated tirelessly, but the company won't bend. ''Microsoft UK has done its best,'' he says. ''Their exceptions team gave us 50 free copies of Windows '98 so that we could use them to backwards license 3.1. But Microsoft South Africa just don't want people dumping old technology in their marketplace. It's hard when you're hit with that kind of dogma.''

Norman Chipakupaku agrees. ''It's very unfortunate that Microsoft has withdrawn 3.1 because it is the best platform for Africa. People won't use the latest releases because they just can't afford them. Microsoft could still recoup money there by distributing 3.1 instead of forgetting about it. It should be thinking about technology which is appropriate for the region it is selling to.''

This point seems to be lost on tech corporations locked into a parochial high-end marketing mindset. Ironically, they are not being asked to practise benevolence. It's merely being suggested that they do what transnationals are supposed to be good at - using every opportunity to create markets and satisfy them.

The Coca-Cola company understands what it's for, and will invest $1bn in Africa over the next three years. It claims that 700,000 Africans make their living, in whole or in part, by selling Coca-Cola.

Donald Sort, president of its Africa and Middle East group, told a group of African finance Ministers, officials, and diplomats in Washington last Friday: ''We do business in a way that is deeply woven into each and every local economy. From Cairo to Cape Town, every bottle of Coca-Cola enjoyed by an African consumer is an African-made product.''

That strategy enables Coke to add froth. ''The impact of the Coca-Cola system's multiplier effect on a nation's economy is often quite powerful, creating jobs, generating tax revenues, promoting the growth of ancillary industries, expanding the retail sector, and improving business and social infrastructure,'' said Sort.

Unfortunately, the tech sector seems not to have the imagination or the bottle to follow Coca-Cola's example.