Technology - The Mother of All Development?

Imagine being stuck in traffic on a rainy Monday night in Accra. You are priviledged enough to own a laptop, which you whip out to start writing a report. Given that the inside of the taxi is dark, you request that the inside light be switched on so that you can see what you are typing. You know that by the time you get home, you’d be dead-tired, only fit enough to eat dinner, do a few things and settle down to sleep in front of television news. During the write-up, you remember that you have to send an email, but you are inhibited by the fact that you are on the go. So you decide to whip out your GPRS-enabled phone. You log into your email and compose a message. You only breathe a sigh of relief after you see “message sent.” The job is already half-done for tomorrow.

Imagine a world where this is all possible. Now imagine no more—for this is happening in twenty-first century Ghana! Now, if there had been “hotspots”, venues or areas where wireless connection were seamless, there would not have been any need for the phone to send email; a mere connection to whatever public wireless connection available would have sufficed. That is where the West has succeeded where Ghana needs to do better. For a minute, while the taxi has not reached its destination, allow me turn to let you in on a small secret.

Next Saturday is a day celebrated as a mouthful only the UN could come up with – World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD). It is no accident that this hybrid day is celebrated on one day; the explanation is rather prosaic. Since 1969, the UN’s agency in charge of telecommunications has been celebrating World Telecommunication Day. After the November 2005 World Summit on Information Society(WSIS) in Tunisia, the UN called upon the General Assembly to celebrate an information society day as well. This was so that the panoply of issues that emerged from the Tunis summit would be recognised as remaining important in the development of ICT. In March 2006, the UN’s General Assembly would stipulate that World Information Society Day be celebrated every year on 17 May. In November 2006, an ITU Conference in Turkey would decide to celebrate both events on that day by organizing what the ITU website describes as “appropriate national programmes.” These would be with a view to “stimulating reflection and exchanges of ideas”; “debating various aspects of the theme with all partners in society”; “formulating a report reflecting national discussions on the issues underlying the theme.” All this would be fed back to the ITU and the rest of its membership.

Although this year’s theme is about disability, it seems appropriate to make reference to the One Laptop Per Child(OLPC) initiative, which was launched in Tunis in 2005. According to the home page of the project’s wiki at laptop.org, “OLPC espouses five core principles: (1) child ownership; (2) low ages; (3) saturation; (4) connection; and (5) free and open source.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC - cite_note-0

Who’s Laptop? Who’s Profit?
Truth be told, it would be in January 2005, when Nicholas Negroponte would first publicly announce the company’s intentions to build what would become known as a $100 laptop. In 2008, when we reduce this innovation of its complexities, we reveal bare – yet again – a turf war between no less than Intel—a for-profit entity that is one of the leading companies in computer processors—and the OLPC, which is a non-profit entity, using open source software to provide affordable machines to people in the developing world. Does Microsoft’s OOXML and Googe’s abortive attempt fight it come to mind, anyone?

Uruguay and Nigeria are two of the countries that have attracted attention around OLPC for different reasons. Uruguay deployed 100,000 for use as recently as December 2007, whereas Nigeria ordered 1,000,000 of them, but after the elections in 2007, the deal failed to materialize. Last year, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Baah-Wiredu talked about it in the budget. As to how far it will go is a moot point.

The bottom line about laptops is that it is a great learning tool. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the speed with which children born in the 21st century take to computers is phenomenal. The skills that computers facilitate in children are unprecedented and must be harnessed. So imagine what they can do for adults who are afraid of technology. Whether we like it or not, technology is here to stay, and it seems to me that a careful consideration by all into buying into this idea is fundamental if we are all to move society forward.

There are of course, issues. In most developing countries, there are donors that support substantial parts of the country’s budget. This might cause problems in how money is disbursed, for the expectation of donors might hold supreme. Nonetheless, a vision about a society where even the so-called illiterate, like the disabled, can play constructive roles in society from technology like affordable laptops seems a society I would like to see for posterity. After all, is that not where the future lies? If adults are more reluctant, might we not consider educating and sensitizing our progeny about its benefits?

Mobile Madness
As the tax on talk-time beckons with incredible celerity, policy-makers can give us statistics on why they feel the tax is necessary. A considerable amount of noise has equally been made about the number of handsets that Ghanaians possess in the country. Often-times, it is perceived –rightly or wrongly — as a sign of the wealth of the country’s citizens.

However, in these parts, statistics matter less—someone might tell you “we don’t chop statistics!”—and seeing things “fili-fili”, or for yourself is what counts. To assume that many ECOWAS nationals come from the sub-region to study at the distinguished Kofi Annan IT Centre of Excellence is wholly insufficient if you are not factoring the extent to which the centre is helping broaden the minds of Ghanaians and West Africans in a greater appreciation of ICT and what it can do for society in particular, and development in general.

A long-harboured pet-peeve has been blogging and the commitment by it—or lack thereof—by Ghanaians on blogging. The genesis for the frustration stems from the categorical fact that Nigeria—an ECOWAS neighbour we love to hate—outnumbers Ghanaian bloggers probably by three to one. Many of the bloggers in Ghana appear to be written by non-Ghanaians. There simply is no excuse for this. What distinguishes Ghanaians from Nigerians so much so that they can be such prolific bloggers?

A case in point is a Nigerian journalist acquaintance who was blogging when he was working for a paper here in Ghana. He engaged me in a short instant messenger discussion today, telling me that he will come to Accra soon, but he is currently in Lagos, working on a paper that will send him to Accra as a correspondent. Before we ended our discussion, he pointed me to a new blog he had started writing. Though his internet connection was as sporadic as mine, I was pleasantly surprised to see him join the blogosphere-venerated CITY Photo Blogs, which sees bloggers post a picture of their city every day. The sporadic connection is important, because it appeared he was in an internet café.

Let us think a minute about the number of cafes that exist in Ghana, and pause for a moment as to where Ghana might have gone wrong. We are quick to assume that the Nigerians in Ghana are doing 419 when they enter internet cafes, forgetting that though it is an unwholesome practice, it has built dexterity for computers and technology that Ghanaians possess but are not translating into the much-talked about blogosphere.

Having celebrated Mother’s Day, might we remember that in the same way that none of us would be here without our proverbial mother, so it is that the information society as we know it today would be a whole lot less sophisticated than it is were it not for technology and telecommunications. (Belated) Happy Mother’s Day! Happy World Telecommunication and Information Society day (in advance)!

http://twelvedaysintunis.blogspot.com / ekbensah AT gmail.com / +233-20.755.08.45