Malawi's electricity shortage and lack of data centres did not deter two university students from building a Web search alternative to Google.
In one of the poorest nations on earth, information and technology communications students Kondwani Chimatiro and Daniel Chiwinga are fast developing a reputation for becoming the country's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's famous co-founders.
Mzuzu University's two 23-year-old students, who complete their studies in five days from today, last year finished building “Cfinder”, an Internet search engine that is aimed at digitising all Malawian information.
The duo says most information on the small landlocked African country is still to be found in hard copies, such as academic materials and books, rather than on the Internet. Therefore, they want to collect all that information from their country and across the globe, scan it and then index it on their Web site, which is hosted in SA.
Chimatiro and Chiwinga's claims that Malawi's online presence is desperately insufficient come as Internet World Stats last week revealed that less than 5% of that country's nearly 16 million people have access to the Web.
Chimatiro, speaking about his search tool, which is more rudimentary-looking than Google Malawi, said: “It's very different from Google, because most of the information that is there is about Malawi.”
The pair hopes to make money out of the project too, as they plan to sell advertising space to local businesses.
Start-ups, such as Cfinder in Malawi, and the rise of mobile phone application businesses in a nation like Kenya, are finding African solutions to the continent's tech problems. However, the rising number of these entrepreneurs also unfortunately run the risk of being tied down to the continent, with no scope to expand globally, says Steven Ambrose, chief executive of Digital Worx.
“What might be entirely relevant for a place like Malawi, or Kenya, or SA, may not scale globally,” he notes.
“They don't have the resources, nor do they have the access to the technologies that Google can throw at the problem. The best they can hope for is that their stuff is so comprehensive that it is cheaper for Google to buy them, than to do it themselves.”
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