I’m from America. Over the last year or so I’ve been discussing technological innovation in Africa with Abel Viageiro of Mozambique. (Read his blog at www.abelviageiro.com.)
Key to these discussions is an understanding of what is different, and what is the same between situations in Africa and in the Western world. Understanding that is critical for understanding which technologies might work, and which won’t.
This short exchange with Abel introduces some of the fundamental differences between African society and ours that affect the impact of various technologies.
After reading an article in National Geographic, I asked this of Abel:
“I have such difficulties with understanding Africa. There’s a picture in the latest National Geographic of “subsistance fishermen” on the shores of Lake Tankanyika. The article talks of the poverty, but yet, the people look well fed, and have decent clothing. Not like pictures of people living through a famine. Are they desperate people? Or happy? Are their basic needs met? Do they really need all the stuff of modern life? It’s hard to get a grasp from here, I’m guessing it’s different in different places, and different for different individuals.”
Abel, who often explains the relationship between African reality and technical possibilities made these comments:
Quite interesting…
Subsistance Fishermen
The “subsistance fishermen” do have income …. they are productive people … when you do have income in Africa ….you have more probability of finding a partner and supporting a larger family, which can provide support in old age – in rural or impoverished settings
Income doesn’t come just from “regular job as you know it from the western world” — some have “assets, land, cattle, remittances – which set them apart from their peers —
For “subsistance fishermen” – some have boats, others work for those who own the fishing boat – at the end of the day they have a “some income” – on a day-to-day basis, irregular or erratic – but it is some kind of income that makes a difference in their lives.
Desperate People? Happy?
Desperate, No. it is hard life, but it is human nature – to feel “like worth doing something” to contribute to society — fishing for them – is a way to bring protein, food, fish to their community – they probably feel proud and respected – for they feel their community depends on their hard work, effort and sacrifice at sea …
Happy? It depends – happiness is relative — and momentaneous. The gap between one’s reference point and one’s perceived reality determines happiness
Basic Needs
Are their basic needs met? => Well, that is where the challenge is …
They can go to sea, work hard, make some money — (actually little money a day) — but their basic needs can not be met effectively because “the Government and Western donors and system have set the rules of the game.”
To the greatest extent, all services are based on Western models. This includes water services, sanitation services, energy services, health services, and transportation services.
Where This Fails
The “subsistance fishermen,” for example, don’t have monthly salaries. They earn on a day-to-day basis – and yet billing for water services is based on the Western “monthly, quarterly, early bill pay” system.
Worse, even if they set aside the money to pay the bill – Government controlled or delegated management by companies belonging to elite or westerners – multi-national companies – fail to even deliver high quality water services to the poor, both rural and urban.
Why? Because they try to run a large water supply and distribution network – in the same manner like back 150 years ago.
Accessories are still produced the old way – not leveraging on 3D printing, for example …..
There is no online monitoring, intelligent monitoring & control, quality testing, hydraulic models, information systems…
Western Mentality
Saying that these advanced technologies are needed is often criticized with the statement it is necessary to “walk before you run.”
I disagree, and see an opportunity for massive technological leapfrogging.
To pretend you can just lay pipes in the ground, connect a pump and fittings, and connect clients at service connections points – and there you have the water grids extended to serve the “subsistance fishermen” community simply doesn’t work.
This is what is being done and the result is ….no effective supply and demand management — and payments not appropriate for the “subsistance fishermen” community.
They would be better served by “shorter billing cycles and smaller payments towards bill – and water running all day – “a remote controled, connect valves- with sensor based metering or “sensor data fusion or smart metering” – would do the job for – consumer monitoring usage and payments – saving water, etc
Stuff
What stuff you mean?
TV – Yes they probably need – after all that a way you can get informed, and source of life long learning these days —
Radio – yes, they probably need – that is way to get informed in local languages – radio is cheaper
An electric kettle THAT can help heat their water faster. Yes, they need that one too — they can use wood or charcoal – smoky
A third of all premature deaths were the result of using smoky fuels such as wood and coal for heating homes or cooking and using dirty diesel generators for electricity, all well-known hazards.
The WHO ranks the problem as one of the worst health risks facing the poor. In low-income countries, such as those in Africa and Asia, indoor smoke from cooking has become the sixth biggest killer. Between now and 2020, the adoption of new, low-emission advanced biomass stove technologies, or a mix of clean fuel and biomass stoves, could avert 600,000 child pneumonia deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, said the WHO
“Just hard to get a grasp from here, I’m guessing it’s different in different places, and different for different individuals.”
It’s simple. To say “walk before one runs” is to say Africa should aspire to be where America was, say 100 years ago.
Time has changed, globalization is a reality – there is no point in claiming that “Africa is better off living the way the American or European rich people lived back 100 years ago…
No running water, no toilet that uses water for flushing (off-side sanitation or clean toilets)
America as it was 100 years ago, when technology was meager, financial ruin was one downturn away, war was ongoing in Europe, and the choices that Americans have come to expect—in their cars, clothes, food, and homes—were preceded by a monotonous consumer economy. In 1915, Americans walked everywhere (or took a streetcar, if they lived in cities), lived in three-generation homes that they rarely owned, ate almost as much lard as chicken, and spent Friday nights dancing to player pianos. In short: Everything was worse, except for the commute.
I would ask the same question for America 100 years ago: Were they desperate people? Or happy? were their basic needs met? Did they really need all the stuff of modern life?
Africa Today
What happens is that the riches of natural resources of Africa, capitalism, multi-national, NGOs, have pushed a lot of Africans into the sitution of “elderly Americans 100 years ago” – at adult age or very young age
For the elderly in America 100 years ago: For those who did make it to old age (something of a feat back then), Social Security didn’t exist, and in bad times, poverty among the old was so bad that contemporaries wrote of growing old as if it were a dystopia—the “haunting fear in the winter of life.” In 1938 a writer with the American Association for Old-Age Security said “our modern system of industrial production has rendered our lives insecure to the point of despair.” The industrializing economy was no country for old men or women. As families moved off farms into cities and suburbs, it became harder for some old people to find work in factories, which ran on limber sinews and sweat.
A Better Approach
==> To change that scenario for Africa “massive technological leapfrogging and technological empowerment has to happen”
Digitization of key sectors: Water, Sanitation, health, energy, agriculture, transportation & logistics, m-commerce ….
But few understand what I am thriving for, except you ..that helped me visualize http://www.abelviageiro.com/intelligent-water-for-developing-countries/
Hope I have shed some light on my perpective – though biased to my own stubborness – on “high tech, hybrid AI SYNDROME” AND DREAMING MENTALITY…
But I SEE no viable future without “massive technological leapfrogging” to solve the basic biggest problems!
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