Why does a dog wag its tail?

Because it's smarter than its tail

If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.

SSA telecom/ICT buzz seems to be centered all around stretching teledensity rates; placing a mobile phone in the hot little hands of Sub-Saharan Africans.

The arrival of new telecom technologies, along with encouraging gestures from different SSA Governments such as; deregulation, privatization, etc., of telecom sectors, along with increased provider competition, all yielding telecom service costs reduction, thus paving the way for the next level of ICT uptake in SSA corporate operations/functions. The next level will be characterized by increased automation of organizational data and work processes -- regardless of industry taxonomy: logistics, financial, manufacturing, etc. Labor/skill requirements will become more sophisticated and Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Customer relationship Management (CRM) systems gain ground. (See a Bridges.org sampler on a rudimentary CRM system in South African health sector here.)

Sub-Saharan Africans are definitely waxing viral on the Web -- Blogs, movie rental, e-commerce, e-collaboration, etc.
Bloggers generally fall in 2 broad categories: Constructive bloggers express the goodness of their hearts, showcase personal skills and knowledge, fill in communication gaps in our media starved clime (Read SSA). A lot of them I constantly give credit here.

The second group of bloggers are Jerry Springer wannabe blogs -- banking on generating traffic to their site by stirring up an overpoweringly pungent malarkey of personal and social debasement. And site traffic, of course, translates to ad money, or even a Google, Yahoo or Ebay buyout, KACHING, KACHING!

More on an ICT4D note, SSA mavericks are rapidly retrofitting successful Western Web trends and business models with a view to achieving similar profits on SSA-focused terrain; My Africa site is the Nigerian equivalent of Myspace, Movieglory practically cloned Netflix, and Ayo Africa Bazaar closely mimics Ebay. But wait up, Ebay is thinking way ahead, Kijiji is their new strategy to capture the rest half of the planet -- according to the white African, Kijiji aids Ebay in "getting involved in developing countries,...[and] source ideas from those in the community."

 
The title of this blog is not totally mine (how much of anything in my life is really mine?) I'm basically reacting to this interesting World Bank report, which sums up my brimming enthusiasm on one hand, but also curbs my rapidly inflating optimism on some accounts.
 
Good news is:
"Sub-Saharan Africa—long tagged a high-cost, high-risk place to do business—is becoming a more hospitable destination for investors... Africa attracted about $12 billion of foreign direct investment in 2004, about 3 percent of the global total, with investment flows rising in 40 of the 53 countries in the region. Portfolio investments are at about $3 billion and rising... "
 
Nice going! But then this part here is really no news:
"Much of the inward investment is directed to South Africa or to the extractive industry sectors, but not all..."
 
South Africa alone already accounts for a bigger fraction of the entire sub-Saharan economic output. South Africa’s economy pretty much turns on the extractive industries – so the second half of the statement is merely a repetition. It would have been really something if they said how much investment funds were directly invested in ICT sectors or how much of these investment transactions are ICT- enabled or catalyzed.
 

Akame is a 30-year-old widow with 4 children. She has a college degree and earns a monthly income of $150 as a high school teacher.

She has a mobile phone, which she primarily uses for text messaging and receiving calls only - making voice calls are reserved for emergencies. Why? It is expensive! She bought the phone 3 years ago for about $100 -- big chunk out of her savings and monthly paycheck. Then she had to wait a couple more months to raise another $100 to cover sign up costs/tariff/line charge with one of the national mobile providers. Like the vast majority of SSA mobile phone subscribers, she subscribes on a pre-paid basis; at 25 cents/minute rate on originating local calls, a $5 recharge card would give her 20 minutes, so originating calls up to 200 minutes in a month will wipe out 30% of her monthly income.

I’m mulling these exorbitant costs of mobile phone ownership in SSA, and I know telecom providers can do more! For one, providers need to get more creative with their product offering in these SSA emerging markets – it will make a whopper of a difference introducing any of the popular packages like in the US now, such as: "free in-network calling" (Cingular, Verizon, etc), or "unlimited push-to-talk" (Nextel). Don’t worry about voicemail— SSA tele-citizens hardly use them – people just look up their missed calls and call back or text back.

The typical African water cooler banter often goes; "the economy is the problem, if we fix the regional economics, everything else will fall in place... No, we need to fix everything else and then the economies will snap into shape ..." sound familiar? The sheer volume of these randomly divergent views, shapes the archetypal entropy of the SSA world. Seemingly endless circular arguments or circulus in probando in Latin.

Classical economics defines the factors of production as Land, Labor, Capital. Leveraging any unique features in either one these factors is sure to spur production and economic growth. Post colonial economic progression  in SSA also exhibits some fairly strong correlation per the exploitative sequence of these factors in the classic notation. First, Land -- representing natural resources; oil, minerals, etc., several of these occur in unique patterns and quantities all over SSA, and the countries have simply continued to run their economic engines on a single cylinder of their natural resource, eagerly catalyzed by clearly insatiable western demand, and dubious brokerage. And now, in the current knowledge economy, Labor has been redefined as capital -- Human capital. Human capital can be cultivated, nurtured and augmented via skills acquisition and training. Suffice to say; SSA is only just awakening to the consciousness of achieving economic progress via skilled labor or enhanced human capital. Lastly, ease of access to financial capital/monetary facility to the SSA average joe, exist only in intricately worded academic tomes -- for now.

Then I came across Forest Baker's commentaries on Forbes online. When Forest speaks, you have to listen! I approached Forest and asked him to take a look at our work on the CIPESA site, and much to my surprise, he agreed. His response was, once again, vintage Forest, and had me mulling over the different permutations of unique sub-Saharan skills and ICT as well as all the other industries out there.

Here's full text of Forest's response:

"I see that you are [...] focused on
communication technology.  Of course, this is vitally important as people in your
region become more directly involved in economic globalization.  I, myself,
managed here in Silicon Valley since 1988 but now have my own business. 
   
 The best hope for any developing nation seeking to improve the lives of its
workers is to enter industries that convert high quality, low cost labor into
dollars (euros, yen) by "creating wealth" (raw materials processed across
productive resources) and "exporting" the finished goods.  Businesses that afford
a premium for hand-made quality will be best.  If your country then becomes
recognized as the best source in the World for such goods then industry players
from all over will show up and your workers will be urged by these foreign buyers
to launch their own small companies.  It is important that hand-made counts
because one cannot expect your workers to have the capital, when they start out on
their own, to invest in machines.