South Africa: Telecoms ‘Gold Rush’ Leaves Nothing for Masses - ICASA

This press release was widely distributed online and appeared on Allafrica.com amongst others, from where I reproduce it, with full credits intact. This of course ties in with my previous posts regarding the fragile socio-political dynamics of the South African internet/web 2.0/technology sector and the many challenges faced by all who hope to make a meaningful contribution in this space.

Telecoms ‘Gold Rush’ Leaves Nothing for Masses - ICASA
Business Day (Johannesburg)
NEWS
24 July 2008
Posted to the web 24 July 2008

By Lesley Stones
Johannesburg

THE telecommunications sector is becoming a new gold rush where large white-owned companies pocket the wealth and leave nothing for the masses, says the chairman of the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa).

The lowest rungs of society would be alienated if the regulator did not actively demand a greater role for black people in the industry, said chairman Paris Mashile. That is why Icasa would insist new licences for scarce spectrum went to companies that were 51% black-owned.

Speaking during a conference staged by Internet Solutions this week, Mashile defended Icasa’s decision to make empowerment a more important criterion than skills or cash to build a telecoms network,

Demanding 51% black ownership “isn’t outside the law” and the aim was to empower black people to start their own businesses rather than just take a stake in a successful white operator. White firms that sold equity to black people without relinquishing control were merely performing “empowerment gimmicks”, he said.

The high black profile is a condition for six new licences to use a high-speed wireless technology called WiMax, and each licence will allocate 20MHz of spectrum. That decision has also angered the industry, with many voice and data carriers saying 30MHz is needed to build a cost-effective network.

Telkom’s chief technical officer Thami Msimango said giving licences to one-man shows would not benefit the country. “People who can afford to roll out infrastructure should be given that spectrum,” he said.

Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig said true empowerment would be achieved by giving everyone access to affordable telephony and internet services, not by favouring operators owned by the previously disadvantaged. Vodacom could extend its network for two-thirds of the current cost if it had more spectrum, and it would pass the savings on to consumers by cutting the cost of calls, he said.

Mashile said there were ways of using 20MHz of spectrum efficiently, and operators just wanted as much as they could get simply to deprive other companies of that resource.

The unwelcome licensing criteria were set out after Icasa distilled a wide range of comments from the industry. It has repeatedly said the conditions are final, but has called for another round of comments.

Mashile said he would be happy to see companies build their own network infrastructure, as long as they were aware of the risks. ” We will open up for whoever wants to burn his money in this market - it’s up to them to take on the big guys and live with the consequences.”

Copyright © 2008 Business Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com)

Tags: access, africa, BEE, black economic empowerment, competition, culture, empowerment, ICT, infrastructure, internet, politics, resources, south africa, telecommunications

Why Social Media Will Fail in South Africa

I stumbled on a very interesting post which is an elaboration on Tuesday’s theme, entitled The Internet’s Hierarchy Of Needs. The author also superimposes Maslow’s Hierarchy of Basic Needs on the internet.

As we can see, at the very base of the pyramid is

• 1. Existence needs: The most basic need for the internet to play any meaningful role, namely computers connected to the Internet and access to documents and any media necessary for whatever task needs to be accomplished. Right there South Africa fails already, since technology infrastructure, access to computers and the internet is non-existent or few and far between. In 2006, out of a population of nearly 50 million people, only 5 million had internet access. There has been some attempts to outfit black schools with Open Source Tuxlabs from the Shuttleworth Foundation, but unfortunately one never hear of these efforts anymore and if there is any success stories then they surely keep it very quiet.
• 2. Connectivity needs: the ability to connect to and between documents and sites and it’s subsequent implications; this largely flows forth from the first need and is therefore impossible for the majority of the South African population to attain, without access to a fast and modern computer with the appropriate software and connectivity installed and without the necessary education and sophistication to effectively use and utilize these resources, this is somewhat of a moot point
• 3. Organization needs: the ability to sort and search based on title, metatags and document contents - when a large majority of the current web surfers do not understand fully the mechanics of SEO and web development, how long is it gonna take someone who needs to first get access to a computer in the first place, then learn to use it properly, to know to Google around for the appropriate information that he/she needs, which is essentially what this level represents…?
• 4. Semantic needs: the ability to derive meaning from language, content and context - here again we can see that with the foundation of the previous requirements unfulfilled, this level will not be reached; in a country where even many government decision-makers do not have a good grasp of the English language, which is the internationally accepted language of the internet, business and technological studies and learning, the lack of understanding of any web based technology or jargon or techno speak underlying the tools needed to access information will be to the detriment of all involved
• 5. Actualization: the web becomes a frictionless tool for personal growth and fulfillment - this is the apex of the pyramid and unfortunately in the case of South Africa, a level that will only really be reached by a small minority of privileged individuals. The foundations are lacking, this level can never be reached; when the average black child lives in poverty with his parents, cannot afford a computer themselves, do not have the money to send the child to a school where he will get a decent education and maybe exposure to these modalities, a vicious circle continues to perpetuate itself; a circle of poverty, hopelessness, desperation and inevitably all the social ills that we see manifested each day by taking note of news headlines…!

On Tuesday I wrote about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and used it to speculatively analyze the Web 2.0 scene in South Africa and also to make a pronouncement as to the viability of a Social Media effort online in South Africa. Given the highly unequal distribution of resources and technology infrastructure, the majority of the country’s population do not have access to computing technology and internet access.

Any kind of Social Media Strategy is therefore little more than inside baseball amongst an incestuous clique of privileged practitioners who retain and guard the old money and benefits of the old apartheid regime. Whatever Social Media campaign is launched online will necessarily only be seen by a handful of regular old faces who continually regurgitate each other’s utterings and bounce around any newsworthy items or movements within the local South African Web 2.0 zoo.

For the majority of the population who struggle to figure out where the next meal or roof over their head or warm blanket is gonna come from, these issues may as well have taken place on the moon. Social Media Press Releases and Social Media Newsrooms and shiny new websites with all the bells and whistles added on for people to comment and share and save and bookmark and all the widgets etc etc. Many a social media consultant and expert have “emerged” and are peddling their virtual wares, many websites are erected (!) in the hope of being THE must-go-to destination for anyone fortunate enough to learn of it’s existence.

Unfortunately it is a project doomed to failure:

• There is not a critical mass of internet users to visit these sites,
• those that do have internet access do so mostly from public terminals at school, university or from their work machines. (where in some cases internet access are severely restricted and most social networking activity has to take place “undercover” e.g Facebook being blocked and only corporate e-mail from behind a firewall is allowed
• Their priorities are not to whip out their credit cards to support online businesses.
• Mostly kids at school and students at university use their internet access time to check e-mail and catch up with their friends on Facebook and MySpace.
• Only a small handful of geekily inclined web surfers really spend a significant enough amount of time online to Save, Bookmark and Share stuff or leave comments on each other’s blogs.
• And those Saves and Shares and Bookmarks do not necessarily turn into sales, the only really lucrative businesses online in South Africa seem to be the Mobile Service Providers who sell prepaid airtime and the myriad of ringtone and mobile games vendors.
• Most of the online campaigns that are successful target only a small niche, privileged market anyways, which reinforces my earlier points: it remains a case of incestuous inside baseball with no intention of ever including the majority of the population in any sort of “social networking” endeavour
• For entrepreneurs who may want to do business online, it is virtually an impossibility since PayPal does not operate in South Africa and credit card purchases are limited to the handful of high net worth individuals who can afford to qualify for these facilities in the first place
• most of the online merchants are the old media companies and established big businesses who leverage their existing resources to establish a web presence.
• For the average Joe entrepreneur who do not have a rich uncle or a corrupt relative high up in government with access to BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) deals it is a pipe dream which will remain only that, a dream.

It is a terrible indictment on local Web 2.0 efforts, but these issues need to be aired out in the open if we are gonna make any headway in this country. The way things are going now it seems every man and community for themselves and we see a perpetuation of the old divisions among racial and class lines, a situation which can only lead to a Zimbabwean tragedy in the long term when the poor majority start taking matters into their own hands as we recently saw with the xenophobic attacks in the country!

Last, but not least, already reports are coming in about the failure of many corporate social media community attempts. This article on ReadWriteWeb cites reports by the Wall Street Journal and other research done about failed attempts and “abandoned towns” on the internet social networking scene. It comes back to the earlier assertion; communities are built around shared or common interests and characteristics. Why would anyone go and register and upload their profile photos and share anecdotes on a social networking site dedicated to kitty litter products and devices…? The more workable and sensible strategy seems to be to utilize already existing popular social networks where people are already congregating and try and get their attention and engage with them there instead of trying to build a dedicated site and try herding everyone over there. It just will not do, unless you’re someone very famous or interesting or has a very compelling value proposition like being an expert in your niche and sharing scarce specialist information or advice. For the rest of us, it would be well advised to stick to the Facebook pages, YouTube channels, Flickr accounts and ning social networks where we can tap into an already existing network without having to reinvent the wheel again all over at great cost.

Tags: access to scarce resources, business, communications, hierarchy of needs, ICT, marketing, maslow, politics, social media strategy, social networking, socio-political, south africa, strategy

Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, WordPress, Africa

I have found a very good tool in the form of a WordPress plugin called WordBook, what it does is to integrate with your self-hosted wordpress.org blog on your own domain and then also your Facebook profile and mini-feed. This updates all your WordPress blog posts to your Facebook profile mini-feed and those of your friends.

The plugin from the wordpress.org plugin directory is over here.

The original author’s site and the latest developments around this plugin is over here.

There is a nice write-up of what it does over here.

Of course the biggest news in the tech space is the unsolicited ‘hostile’ bid from Microsoft to take over Yahoo to the tune of $44,6 billion dollars. The Media has already blown this into one of the most visible stories in headlines and titles of news updates from all over.

I do not claim to know all there is to know about these things, so I will point you to a collection of very insightful and in-depth posts by people more knowledgeable about it.

I found a good post on the current state of mobile, internet and other infrastructure issues in Africa and the implications for entrepeneurs in the Web 2.0 space.

It comes via a newsletter from Russell Southwood over at www.balancingact-africa.com

African countries’ ICT policy– going from the blah, blah, blah cycle to getting something done

In a week in which the heart of South Africa’s ICT industry - Sandton - suffered continuous load-shedding (rolling power cuts for those of you who speak English), no-one doubts that developing a modern ICT-enabled economy in Africa is a challenge. It is easy in these circumstances to respond cynically by asking: Government? What is it good for? But a small number of African Governments have managed to make a difference through facilitating major projects but the majority are in the slow-track when it comes to getting the big things done. Russell Southwood looks at why some countries talk, whilst others do.

Changing an economy through introducing ICT is akin to trying to set up a whole row of spinning plates. Without infrastructure, you can’t get media, services and applications. Without media, services and applications, you can’t get critical mass. Without critical mass, there’s no-one to e-mail or exchange videos with, so why bother? And that’s before you get on to all the “nice things” that might happen if African governments delivered their services better.

The private sector can do many things but even in Africa it does not do very high risk investment and it does not go where tomorrow’s market is today. For example, despite all the heady promises made at the Connect Africa event in Kigali last year, the new vertically integrated mobile companies are unlikely to lay extensive high-capacity microwave or fibre infrastructure quickly. They will follow the market in metro areas and connect up major cities. They have shareholders’ money to look after and it would be unusual if they did otherwise.

But for Africa’s fast track economies where growth is running ahead of the global average, it is important that they get in place the new global ICT infrastructure to support their changing economies today. Access to fibre really is the fuel of the new global economy: the cutting of the Flag cable to North Africa and Asia illustrates this all too vividly in a negative way.

For five years and more, African Presidents and Ministers have been making speeches about how important ICT is and how they wish to use it to attract new jobs. If words were money, Africa would be rich beyond its wildest imaginings. Some of this “blah,blah,blah” has led to new initiatives but in most countries these have simply fizzled out. But recently in East Africa, Kenya and Uganda took decisions that they would build national infrastructures. Kenya decided that it would initiate its own international fibre connection.

Spurred by the World Cup in 2010, South Africa has more international fibre plans for the West Coast of the continent and has set up Infraco to intervene in the broadband connectivity supply market. To meet its growing connectivity needs, Angola is going to buy a Russian satellite. Nigeria has launched Nigcomsat and set up Galaxy Backbone to address the Government’s own connectivity needs.

None of these initiatives are above criticism and indeed some are questionable but it is interesting to see that some countries are taking steps to do something rather than simply talking about what needs to be done. However, these countries are the exception rather than the rule. They are the fast-track countries that either have oil-revenues and/or have burgeoning economies that are not solely reliant on mineral extraction. However, mineral wealth is quite widely spread across the countries of the continent and there are significant numbers who have it that are not “stepping up to the plate”. The remainder of the countries concerned have a range of relatively easy excuses: lack of money, lack of education, corruption and much else besides. But if Nigeria or Uganda can foster these kinds of changes, why is it that Gabon or Ghana do not?

Making change in the ICT space requires a particular chemical mix that involves both Government and others, along with a magic ingredient that consultants call vision, but might better be called imagination. Those that have taken initiatives have had the courage to imagine that their countries might go from being global victims to becoming attractive places to live and work. Rwanda’s President Kagame rarely sets a room alight with a speech but he has understood that if his small country Rwanda is to find a place in the global economy, it’s going to be necessary to work very hard at providing the conditions in which that might happen. He and his country may or may not be successful and they may or may not have the capacity to succeed but you cannot fault them for trying.

Getting a Government that does something requires getting a number of committed people in place. Firstly, there has to be a President who does not just make the speeches but also provides political backing and resources to get things done. Africa still has highly centralised decision-making processes and without Presidential backing, no-one takes you seriously.

Next there has to be Minister who can take that backing and motivate the sometimes indolent and leaderless civil servants in the appropriate Ministry and get into dialogue with the private sector and others about what needs to be done and how to achieve it. The Minister is nothing without a highly articulate and energetic civil servant who can: “carry the message”, respond quickly to all the interested parties and knows how to manage initiatives successfully.

All set and ready to go? No. Government by itself working “top-down” is one hand clapping in an empty room. There needs to be a vocal, critical but supportive private sector that knows how to make demands and shape projects. Alongside them has to be an equally vocal civil society that speaks up for the non-market requirements like education and health. Everyone at every level needs to understand the difference between having a successful meeting and actually getting something to happen. No more self-congratulatory speeches to other Ministers but time to concentrate on a small number of achievable initiatives and work to deliver them.

In a subjective assessment carried by Balancing Act of the sixteen West African countries on the basis of the above criteria, only two countries (Nigeria and Senegal) met these conditions outlined, although the latter does not really have an active private ICT sector because of the dominance of the incumbent Sonatel. Ghana has the scale of economy to succeed but somehow never really manages to convert all the right words into political will and thereafter into action. The majority of the others have strong individual servants and sometimes Ministers but they lack Presidential and/or private sector and civil society support.

Nearly all of these “slow-track” economies lack the imaginative response to change that says if the country gets ICT support in place, we can start building a very different place to live. They may - like Mali – have a small-scale illustrative project (a Government-sponsored call centre) but this project (or even groups of small projects) are not life-changing enough for the countries concerned. And please do not bleat to me about how these types of countries lack money as there are both private and public sources of financing for those who have the ideas and energy to attract it. Open economies with ideas about their future are at a premium in the global economy.

For private sector ICT companies, whether carriers or vendors, the obstacles in the slow track economies make selling services there a complicated business. For the individual small ISP owner, it means that he or she become not just the commercial head of their company but also unpaid policy advocate in the continuous trench war over a favourable ICT policy.

The big companies like Cisco, Google and Microsoft have understood that they are not simply selling “kit” or software but have to create the “weather” that will allow more open markets to flourish. This week Microsoft and the Centre Africain d’Etudes Supérieures en Gestion (CESAG) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU), which aims to deliver high-quality ICT policy training to government employees in West and Central Africa. CESAG is an institution specialising in the delivery of government-related training and leadership capacity building across
French-speaking Africa.

Microsoft’s Regional Technology Officer Nicol Woodward is tasked with influencing Government across 10 policy areas that include: interoperability; identity, privacy; innovation; IPR; accessibility; spectrum allocation; standards, DRM and formats, and GAP. What’s GAP? It’s Microsoft’s way of looking at Government as decision-maker, influencer and customer. G stands for governance. A for Architecture in the sense of how everyone will get networked and P for procurement.

Like other large vendors, it has both to both set up the debate and try to reap the rewards that come from the dialogue. It would not be a business if it did not want to make sales but it can’t simply say “we’re right and all the other guys are wrong”. Creating a successful economy involves complex but vital debates around issues as diverse as IPR and piracy and how you foster innovation. The answers chosen by policy-makers to these many debates are all linked: get one wrong and it becomes harder to get the others right.

As Woodward told us:”We have got to the point in Nigeria where we are having in-depth discussions about IPR and DRM. It’s the same with Angola. These are blossoming economies and they want to get it right. We want to explain things from our viewpoint but whatever they install, they are well informed in making that decision.”

Obviously explaining these issues cannot be left to the Microsofts of this world alone but given the perilously low levels of understanding in many countries, the discussion has to start somewhere. The issue is then how public these debates are for if they are conducted entirely behind closed doors then they will not be subjected to the full force of all viewpoints.

The difficulty is that for some Open Source advocates that choosing it is so blindingly obvious that they forget it is debate with two sides. The more thoughtful Open Source advocates, like Microsoft, believe this is a debate that they can win on the merits of the arguments. But whichever road you choose, you have to have a growing economy to have the expertise and resources to make it a debate worth having.

So if Africa is to have more open, successful economies that can begin to ride the waves of global expansion and contraction, then it will require multinational (and regional) ICT operators to take more interest in the continent. And for its politicians to understand that words do not feed mouths.

But the best is yet to come…

A South African blogger has taken the time and effort to reproduce, for the edification of everyone who cares to read, the PATHETIC, SHAMEFUL speech made to Parliament by the South African Minister of Minerals and Energy Affairs after a disastrous two weeks where industry and the entire country came to a standstill because of power failures and the subsequent CIRCUS of incompetent, corrupt and arrogant imbeciles running the country into the ground with their IDIOCY!!!

Anyways, we remain positive, it is sooo un PC to be cynical and an afropessimist these days, but to all those who care to investigate and have to live under such obvious IDIOTS, at least be truthful and call an IDIOT an IDIOT, whether they be black or white or Indian or Coloured or Green for that matter, just tell these idiots to put people in place who know how things work, and who know how to keep those things to keep on working so we all can start getting this country out of the SHIT that it is in!

MTN takes on Vodacom ISP in South Africa

www.balancingact-africa.com is a very valuable resource for anyone in the mobile and ICT (Information and Communications Technology) fields in Africa, and this article deals with the mobile service providers in the South African market specifically. Especially for young tech startup companies who is dependent on reliable infrastructure to base their services on, since it mostly runs online.

And then of course the product offerings and pricing structure from these players will determine the nature and extent of the tech industry ecosystem that will grow up in South Africa in this space.

MTN takes on Vodacom ISP in South Africa

MTN must reposition itself as an Internet service provider (ISP) in order to remain competitive, says Brian Seligmann, MTN’s data and messaging executive.

Speaking at the ITWeb Technology Roadmaps 2007 conference, in Bryanston yesterday, Seligmann said: “MTN has 4.5 million active data subscribers, and yet we still think of ourselves as a mobile provider and not an ISP. We need to start playing the game.”

Mobile services are evolving within the context of Internet services and these will be more important than the company’s traditional mobile voice offerings, he explained.

He said with the high levels of mobile penetration, MTN has the potential to dominate in the IP arena. “Mobile Internet will become more valuable than mobile voice services, and if we don’t get involved, we will fail.”

The availability of free Internet services, such as instant messaging and VOIP applications, are driving the company to look more directly at Internet services, he noted. “IP [Internet Protocol] services have the possibility to wipe out most mobile revenue.”

MTN is not the first cellular operator to elevate the importance of ISP services within its strategy. Earlier this year, its competitor Vodacom established an ISP business.