Internet may aid Africa Colleges (13)
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Nemo,
The best thing about that article was the criticism it generated.
Bureaucrats may still be inclined to fund white elephants, but
judging from the postings there are enough people who are highly
clued.
Well said.
[...]
Yet some aid projects seem to be designed with the assumption that
Africa suffers from a shortage of neurons, rather than hardware.
I used to say that "We Africans are only poor, not stupid!" but your
way of putting it is so much nicer, great stuff. :-)-O.
[...]
A good measure of the project would be the ratio "new bandwidth
going out"/"new bandwidth coming in". By this measure, the benefit
from the $1.2 million investment is dangerously close to zero.
I like this measure.
Why don't they just put that money into a fund, and universities
can apply for money to lease lines, buy servers, routers, interface
cards, LAN hubs, workstations, modem pools, and to pay for training
of system administrators. The money would only be granted to those
who can prove that they will make good use of it.
It's very easy, because that way not enough money will go back to
the developed countries so they can dump their trash on us, yet
again (remember the ZX-80 or was it TRS-80 offer?), that's why.
It is quite obvious that the author of the paper has never been in
East Africa, in particular not at one of the Universities to be set
up.
Besides the fact that the infrastructure is just not there yet,
though initiatives are underway to build it (and I have had the
immense pleasure of being allowed to play a very insignificant role
in one of those, recently), such a top-down project is going to make
things worse.
It will create dependency and complacency and of course will never
be sustainable.
I can tell you already now that after a couple of millions are down
the drain, or rather safely in the developed countries, the project
will go the way of the dodo on the day when the first bill comes due
after funding runs out.
Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse
Resident Medical Officer
Swakopmund State Hospital
Private Bag 5004
Swakopmund, Namibia
Tel. +264 81 124 6733 (cell) 64 461005(h) 461004(f)
e-mail: el@LISSE.NA
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