 |
| Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google |
After
a week of business meetings in the cities of sub-saharan africa, we can surely
say three things are new for the continent:
a) the despotic
leadership in Africa from the 1970s and 1980 is in decline, replaced by younger
and more democratic leaders
b) a huge youth demographic boom is underway, with a majority of the population
of 25, or even under 20
c) mobile phones are everywhere, and the Internet in Africa will be primarily a
mobile one
Many of the older
problems are still severe, including a lack of electric power, the general
trend of rural to urban migration, and pervasive corruption. Every
country we visited had an internal security problem, or a significant border
problem, and the elites are sheltered from this pervasive concern behind
guarded walls, hotels and restaurants with gates and security checks, and
ubiquitous guards. I try to imagine what the US would be if we had the
types of security problems in Africa.. how would WE deal with such threats?
Connectivity is
much more important for security than many analysts think. Societies who
are not connected lack opposing viewpoints and are much more subject to easy
radicalization. The virtue of having more connectivity is that people
will have more choices, and more choices lead a better understanding of the
value to go to school, the need to treat women equally, the choice to not
demonize others, etc.
Nairobi has
emerged as a serious tech hub and may become the African leader. A
combination of relatively stable politics, the British legal system, and a
benign climate seem to attract a significant share of foreign investment.
Incubators are hosting potential solutions to many problems, including
connecting M-Pesa (their mobile money solution on simple phones using SMS) with
payment systems for local stores. If they manage to get through the
upcoming March elections without significant conflict, they will grow quickly.
Rwanda
is a jewel with a terrible past. High economic growth and the development
of a significant middle class is threatened by the withdrawal of aid due to UN
complaints over the Congo. Rwanda feels like Singapore, an island inside
of Africa whose small size allows great focus and a dynamic, stable
government. A visit to the Genocide Museum in Kigali, and a
trip to the Volcanic National Park where eight groups of eight can trek to see
the gorillas made famous by Diana Fossey, are well worth it. Gorilla treks
are also available through Uganda and the Congo, over the same mountains.
After fifty years
of war, South Sudan is the worlds newest country. In a country where
every issue is an urgent one, mobile networks can unify a poor country with
isolated villages, significant flooding in the rainy season, and the constant
threat of attacks from rebels from the north. A courageous group, the
Satellite Sentinel project. uses satellite data and other sources to document
ethnic cleansing in remote areas of Sudan (the northern Sudan) and serve as a
record of the terrible ongoing violence against innocents.
Chad is a poor
petro-state, with a long history of conflict and one pipeline and one fiber
link. Africa has submarine fiber cables on the west and eastern
side. Landlocked countries are at the mercy of their neighbors, and all
have learned that competition with multiple fiber connections from differing
borders dramatically reduces costs. Chad like some others, has determined
that future spectrum should not be auctioned as that only increases the
eventual mobile costs and are simply allocating it to a set of competitive
carriers. Less than 1% of Chad has electricity.
Nigeria,
known as a land of oil corruption and the ubiquitous 419 email scams, is the
biggest surprise to a first time visitor. Nigerians are entrepreneurial,
stylish, educated, and have the belief that their country can emerge as the
next Brazil. With 170 million citizens, and a record breaking eleven
years of civilian elected government, the compound growth and the shared memory
of real internal conflict almost guarantees their short term success.
Future growth of Nigeria should help with its international image problem, as
the real story of its success gets out.
The emergent
model of the African internet is a set of competitive fiber suppliers to the
capital, a set of fiber rings owned by local telco’s, and 3G and 4G
networks. Some of the countries are late with licensing plans for 3G and
4G, a costly delay for countries that have very little residential
broadband. Solar charging can help with the power needs of handsets, but
the electricity needs to be more reliable or costly backup systems will be
built at each tower. Many of these countries have telecommunications as a
major contributor to their GPD (Cote d’Ivory is about 12%) and even Somalia,
which we did not visit this time, has a profitable competitive
telecommunications industry.. the most profitable legal industry in that country.
Some countries are reluctant to turn on the data portion of their
telecommunications industry, another costly delay to their future digital
commerce, education and entertainment industries.
Many
Africans will be last, unfortunately, to be connected to the rest of us.
For them, the best short term outcome will be feature phones (inexpensive voice
and SMS phones) and a private network of microSD cards that can be traded
behind oppressive authorities to get information in and out of trapped, occupied
and remote locations. Information is power, and more information means
more choices. Documenting abuses, getting pressure from outside to fix
real problems, and solving illiteracy are just a few functions of even the most
limited of feature phones.
The demographic
dividend in Africa of young people is their greatest hope, in my opinion.
Today high rates of unemployment show an economy underperforming to its true
potential. This new generation expects more, and will use mobile
computing to get it. Optimism is appropriate for Africa, as the people we
met will do much more with less than we can imagine, and the devices and
systems built in the first world will be used in the most creative ways in the
emerging new world of Africa.
By Eric Schmidt
