RE: Reports on few conferences in Africa

Hi Stephane,

Thanks for sharing these insights. Your finding that many projects share
PC+internet approach (and not going for a mobile data service platform)
also is similar with TNO's capacity building through ICT project.
Important for rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa is always the
issue with 'ownership' of a service: PC's plus a VSAT internet
connection present a tangible solution that can be adopted by local
people. A mobile phone service is still something 'far away' and mostly
'built by people that haven't shown their faces here'.

Cultural aspects like those are very important for adoption by Africans;
we've seen projects fail simply because of this aspect. Hopes this adds
to your understanding!

Best regards,

Gjalt Loots
TNO ICT
 

-----Original Message-----
From: public-mwi-ec-request@w3.org [mailto:public-mwi-ec-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of stephane boyera
Sent: maandag 18 juni 2007 13:39
To: public-mwi-ec@w3.org
Subject: Reports on few conferences in Africa



Let me try to make this list a bit more active !

I'm just back from 4 weeks around africa going to different conferences
and events, and also meeting associations and visiting people. So It is
time to make a quick summary. (beware, long mail ahead !). 4 parts: one
about ist-africa conference, one about the W3C Southern Africa Office
Opening, one on the 3GSM east&central africa conference, one about some
data i gathered in Uganda about gsm cost and connectivity.

1-Ist-Africa Maputo, Mozambique
(http://www.ist-africa.org/Conference2007/ )

Audience
This conference is funded by the EU commission (this one was the 2nd
edition) to gather representatives from all over Africa and Europe,
focusing on ICT for development.
There were around 350 people.

Program
4 parrallel tracks during the 3 days, with a mix of technical
presentations, business presentations (about sustainability), research
topics and use cases.
Lots of different topics focused on how ICT can leverage countries
development, mostly: e-learning, e-government, e-health, e-infrastucture
(internet deployment) (also few other session of eu opportunity for
funding, environmental risk management,...)

My comments
The biggest value of this event for me was about the networking. I met
lots of very interesting people, representatives from governments,
universities, or NGOs from all over africa (mostly southern).
About the technical aspects of the program, i was more than surprised. 
All the people i met in Bangalore workshop were believing hard in the
mobile platform, and its potential. They were all convinced that it
would be almost impossible to deploy PC and wired internet. So i
sincerely believed that this was a shared analysis. But this is not the
case. As of today, most of the presenter, particualrly those
representing governments, are still thinking that ICT=PC+wired internet
And there are lots of project specifically focusing on developping
tele-center with few PC around the countries. All those projects always 
   emphasis on the limited impact of such solutions to reach rural
communities, and particularly nomad populations, and also the problem of
maintenance of PC, availability of wired internet,...
Just few presentations are considering the mobile platform for the
future. Just 2 presentations were about using mobile phones but for
e-learning only.

About my talk (http://www.w3.org/2007/04/sb_ist/all.htm ), there were
about 40-50 participants in the room, but i didn't attract the right
crowd imho, because i was in a session called e-infrastructure, burried
between people talking about satellite networking and the eu-africa
research network. so clearly, nothing related to the topic i was
addressing. However, the chair of the session was very interested, and,
in order to seed the mobile web idea, i will explore how to organize a
track next year on the topic of using mobile phones for ICT.


2-W3C Southern Africa Office Opening, Pretoria, South Africa
(http://www.w3.org/News/2007#item94 )
My talk: http://www.w3.org/2007/04/sb_saopening/all.htm

This event was organized by W3C as the launch event for its new office
opened in South Africa, and covering the whole Southern region of
Africa.

Attendance: ~70-80 people, majority from Meraka Institute, but also
people from country around (Mozambique, Botswana,...) Industry and
academic.

The format was quite successful: 3 sessions: one on the opening itself,
then 2 more technical.
For me it was the most successful office opening meeting, for the
format, but also because at the end of the day the office has a roadmap
defined by the discussion during the day (a workshop, with a defined
audience and defined set of topics).
This successful output is imho due to the presence of a meeting
facilitator. I never heard before of such existing job, but the guy
drove all the discussion session and he was really good.

For me, i discovered lots of the activites taking place at the Meraka
Institute(http://www.meraka.org.za/ ), and i was impressed by the whole
organization, thier strengths, and their outgoing work. I dind't know
before that there was a research center of this quality. That's
encouraging to have contacts with people that will play an important
role of relay between W3C and local activities. This relay will be
bi-directionnal, promoting the usage of W3C standards and also to
provide requirements, uses case, applications to W3C. Relying on such
strong players locally is, imho, a key success for any work we will do
in the area of the digital divide.


3-3GSM east & central Africa, Nairobi, Kenya
(http://www.gsm-3gworldseries.com/newt/l/gsm/events/ecafrica/ ) My talk:
http://www.w3.org/2007/04/sb_3gsm/all.htm
Attendance:
quite a small audience
*about 250 people-almost 90% salesman afaik, around 100 people in the
conf room (plenary) and about 50 people in my session (2 tracks the
second day)

*about 20-30 booths: 80% on network technologies(tower, antennas, sim
card producers, how to place the relay,...), nobody from the content
providers side (except music as such or as ringtone and games). mobile
web browsing is almost 0%.

Overall comments
Some of the talks, particularly the plenary were very interesting to get
the picture.
An interesting talk from the Africa chairman of GSMA V. Olunga. few
excerpt from his talk:
-integration of internet access in strategic plans -africa mobile
subscribers: fixed line vs mobile ration 1:10 -a tool of business and
administration -60% of africa covered - 70% by the end of the year 10
countries has more than 90% coverage -problem is still rural africa

Another one from Mrs Mbongue (research analyst) -200 millions subcribed
reached 1Q07 (1 year from 100 to 200): nigeria, SA, Algeria top 3 big
markets -growth drivers is mobile browsing

 From Marc Rennard (orange, responsible for Africa Asia & middle east):
- the trend is to go to free simcard (free subscription) and charge on
service use
- 95% of revenue from africa is voice and SMS

Except these plenary talks, in terms of contacts, it is disappointing. 
No real interest now, despite what said in plenary talks, on developing
internet access from mobile phones among participants. Just one very
interesting (ie relevant to the mobile web topic) presentation made by
Dr Fisseha Mekuria, head of telecom engineering dept, GSTIT (telecom
schools) in Ethiopia, about specific usability context in Africa, and
usability of mobile applications in rural areas .

What was really disappointing for me was the current trend of
considering mobile browsing only for high-end phones and 3G network. 
People may be interested to read mu thought on this topic in an article
i wrote last week : 
http://www.w3.org/blog/MWITeam/2007/06/06/enabling_web_browsing_on_emerg
ing_market 


Eventually i made one very interesting contact with someone working
exactly on the same area of the work i presented :  Dr Fisseha
Mekuria,head of telecom engineering dept, GSTIT (telecom schools),
Ethiopia fisseha.mekuria@gstit.edu.et . He is a potential host of one of
our workshop in africa. He is focusing on usability of mobile
applications in rural areas.
My overall feeling is that it is not really worth the cost and the time
to participate to such localized event. I will focus on the big 3GSM
Africa event taking place once a year in Cape Town. I will give a talk
there next november.


4-Uganda
I was there mostly for vacation but i found lots of very intersting data
i wanted to report. I was amazed to see that almost 100% of the zone i
visited (the whole west uganda) was served by gsm, including national
park !
What was also a discover is the most widespread phone is the motorola
c113, the one who won the GSMA emerging market handset program, sold at
25$ (i thought about buying one for myself !) in phones shops (without
any operator deal).
I was also interested to see the price of internet cafe in rural area: 
around 100shilling/minutes (0.05eur) while phone credit is around
200shilling /mn (0.1eur) so this is not a so huge difference. In town,
internet cafe are around 20shilling/minute (0.01) and here the phone
cost is then 10 times higher.


I will try in the future to make this list more active by posting
information about future events, or new relevant to this topic.

I will also in the next few weeks rework the wiki and try to make
different sections as i've a bunch of ressources to share on different
subject (some events, emerging market handsets, ...).

I encourage also other participants to also post information, comments
they have !

Feel also free to tell me if you think that such report are useful or
useless.

cheers
Stephane
-- 
Stephane Boyera		stephane@w3.org
W3C				+33 (0) 4 92 38 78 34
BP 93				fax: +33 (0) 4 92 38 78 22
F-06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,		
France


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Received on Tuesday, 19 June 2007 09:25:17 UTC