1 Political, Economic, Cultural or Social, Legal & Technological Environmental Analysis

[Mangin]

Facilitating or impeding issues around political, economic, cultural or social, legal and technological environmental analysis

[Jeff Buderer]

Very focused thinking Jacob. However, my thought is that seeing the global trends and also seeing that "EUland" has a relatively weak position in the production of computers (as seems to be pointed out in the DWF papers and materials), it might be better just to ditch that kind of strategy (of trying to get EU states in the low cost computer manufacturing business). I Hope that does not raise too many hackles, but I think the most value we can provide to the EU in this process is giving them a comprehensive plan for creating jobs in the tech sector, while also incubating innovative and successful and sustainable tech sectors in Africa.

Given the low margins and very competitive environment for hardware production such as low power computers is this really the best strategy for either Africa or Europe?

I think the real opportunity and other thread(r) of the work of DWF is to
1) Identify Innovative Technologies and Best Practices;
2) Integrate them into Holistic ICT4D approaches;
3) Design a Roadmap for long term development of IT in Africa;
4) Foster and Cultivate Innovation by training people at incubation/innovation/integration/research centers focusing on rapidly replicating and integrating the successes of Early Adopters.

So again lets keep our eyes on the ball - from my perspective, its not purely about creating new hardware solutions that already exist in a highly fragmented and competitive sector, as much as its about stimulating IT sector for mutual benefit of Africa and Europe. In this way, Europe as it helps Africa build the beginnings of its tech sector can really focus on putting its skilled labor force and high level think tanks and research groups to effective use in aiding Africans, as they develop more sophisticated IT solutions in their regions. I might emphasize there that it is important that this is closely linked to the promotion of more ecologically and socially responsible development models.

Possibly through a process of developing a higher and more developed supply chain ecosystem in Africa for ICT, we can begin to create jobs in actually building the hardware in Africa to supply the need more directly and also create jobs in manufacturing that are appropriate to Africa's level of industrialization/modernization. Thus, Europe might be better suited to provide investment financial and development expertise as well as aid in the sharing of its formidable research and IP resources to build such manufacturing facilities in Africa (where labor is at a discount and where those kind of high levels skills are not so common), rather than directly investing in such technologies and infrastructure at home.

If we want to see a "global ecosystem" emerging, then it is not just about competitiveness, but rather it is about how we complement each other in the global economy in terms of what we do best. This is what I see as significant to what is being put forward by the DWF, offering a way or potential "roadmap" in which Africa and Europe can work together in a complementary way.

The key is to promote interactions at the global level (most specifically and relevant here is building partnerships between groups in Africa and the EU states) that stimulate the kind of economic profitable collaborations that will ensure a economically, socially and ecologically sustainable global society. Such a ambitious and broad goal, mandates that the distance between the haves and have nots is decreased and which minimal standards for living are met - as put forward in the MDGs. The question we have to prove here is such interactions possible and financially viable/sustainable in the ICT arena?

[Jacob B. Odame]

I am excited to here from you. I have also looked at the attached documentation which is fantastic. I think you rightly hit the nail on the head that developing countries need to create an enabling environment to make it possible for investments in ICT sectors. I have seen initiative in the low cost- low power domain which seems to be a brilliant option to speed up the bridging of the digital gap however there still seems to be a lag in the investment processes.

In Ghana for instance, I know that the importation of slightly used computers are duty free. But what has happened? The result has been e-waste and dumping which has had adverse impact on the environment. I recently interacted with an ICT teacher in one of the high schools in Ghana who openly contributed in the refusal of refurbished computers donations to the school. He argued about the fact that there were already a pile of computers not working in the school and the cost of maintenance annually is also on the extreme side. Green solution deployment should be encouraged and the best climate for investment should also be put in place.

I hope to read more from you Tim as the themes of this discussions roll........

[Jacob B. Odame]

Many thanks Jeff for that insightful contribution to the digital world forum and even more importantly the Low Cost Information Access device work package (WP2) where OVFGH has a major role. This is invaluable and I am beginning to draw the WP2 leader's attention of your overview. The discussion is on and we are glad to see it follow in this thread because we are preparing weekly summary of the contributions until the end of May. The discussion is on..........

Can you make any input on political issues from the point of view of developing nations to help create an effective implementation of the roadmap of the research outcome?

[Jeff Buderer]

Jacob, thanks for that message of support.

>Can you make any input on political issues from the point of view of developing nations to help create an >effective implementation of the roadmap of the research outcome?

Well let me take a stab at that and then you can help me to hone in on that.

In relation to starting to consider that lets look at OLPC. OLPC with their larger scale vision for scaling out their laptops among large groups of youth seems to be running the risk of facing criticism for misplacing priorities (giving kids computers when most dont have enough to eat?). On a larger level, it is very important that we get right the idea of balancing ICT spending with pressing social needs like fighting AIDS, infrastructure, etc and that I think is a core political consideration.

The OLPC large scale approach is not really ready. We are still figuring out to connect the last mile or to directly cover the financial investment associated with larger scale deployment of OLPCs?
*Way to measure readiness for equipping children with laptops such as schools have a basic level of readiness in relation to staff and infrastructure and student base;
Enough local small prototypes testing this out to show it works;
*A real commitment on western countries to financially effective development strategies that would enable a comprehensive, large scale development approach;
*Ensure at the national level, that the political and economic infrastructures were in place to ensure that those monies were well spent.

Methodology
When we use terms like Assets Based Community Development or Human Scale Development, we are basically implying that there needs to be a re-evaluation of not only development practices but overall human governance at a global scale. In this lens, the scale of ICT development also needs to be considered and would lead us to conclude that we really need to start out with more of a bottom up approach:
1. Small centers like ODiVs with initial seed money
2. Scale them up as ICT & sustainable tech social enterprise incubation centers
3. Then replicate to other regions - once we have really developed the community impact at that level?

National Strategies
National strategies need to be well designed for the particular challenges of each country. So there needs to be a pragmatism that guides the process so that the modernization process can begin to be self-financing even as more development monies are coming to help increase the capitalization of the program to finance its expansion/replication:
* Show how projects are already providing a return on that investment as the programs are being standardized, while also harmonizing to the challenge of each region/community/neighborhood where they are being deployed. This will serve to increase the amount of international investment coming into the country while leveraging existing local assets to value closer to the real potential of the citizens of that region so that the local stake/ownership in the projects are not over-diluted with foreign capital:
* Concentrate ICT4D aid on more viable (focus on the intermediate Peri-urban/Relay Villages in which a significant portion of the population has a basic education) regions rather than marginal areas where education is very low and infrastructure is almost non-existent.
* Leverage the financial success in those regions to replicate to other outlying, isolated and challenging regions so not only is it a social enterprise at the local level but the regional, national or international organizations facilitating this process.

National Level Staging
We need to have a national template for massive investments in ICT sector:
* Stage 1 (1-2 years) investment in prototype telecenters with variations with consideration to different geographical, demographical and ethic considerations as well as experimentation with technologies
* Stage 2 (2-5 years) scale out of centers that demonstrate minimal criteria of success to operate as incubators and also tie it with development of green economy at the local level;
* Stage 3 (3-7 years) plans for regional replication in each of the regions where the still successful centers are located finalized and then implemented. Also in this stage clearly link how ICT is creating value and further investing in the best areas of ICT value creation to create regional technology hubs that include sustainable as well as general development benchmarks.
* Stage 4 (10-15 years) harmonization of existing practices and integrated ICT4D approach into broad sectors of society to ensure standard quality of service and not uneven development.

Local/Regional/National Coordination and Implementation
ICT Incubation zones would be designed so that people are fairly clear on how to proceed in terms of what works while still allowing for local innovation and autonomy. In my view that is a very important political consider:
* Reliable formula for saying making a telecenter or wireless network financially sustainable (like what Wireless Africa is tying to figure out now) - that is clear on all levels in the decision-making process;
* High level of coordination in relation to each person in the "ICT modernization ecosystem" local, regional, national and international.
* Definition of "Ecosystem" of vendors and suppliers or set of criteria to evaluation various vendors so that the set up of telecenters is using appropriate computing technologies;
Within the above framework five people choices and empower people to make choices and not force any particular technology or approach on people.

So to tie all the above together and to see it as some sort of roadmap it seems to me that we are really from the indicators I see still at Stage 1, doing research and hypothesis testing about what works for low cost computing. I think we need to really consider why after the many years of discussion the rate of scale out and replication is low and how the rate of change can be increased. We will need to dramatically increase the pace of growth to meet the MDGs.

What is the greatest stand out success? I would say that would be Grameen. So thus I would encourage an effort here to really look deeply into what has made Grameen into what I see as the most successful development franchise in the world and to consider how we could at least in some respect model ourselves after that success in terms of developing the roadmap.

In considering how to move forward we should ask:
* What is the total cost of ICT4D in each country and what is this in terms of total development budget/investments?
* How much of the ICT4D projects are sustainable or moving towards sustainability?
* What is the average cost break down on telecenters and other ICT4D in terms of costs such as electrical, ISPs/Vsat, Rent, Hardware, Staff, etc. For example what is the difference in investing in low cost ICT hardware as compared with Bandwidth management tools or say investing in long distance wireless networks as an alternative to extremely expensive Vsat;
* What are the capacity bottlenecks and how can efforts like this move people in the field to address these bottlenecks.