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Here be dragons

Appropriate IT and the African scene...

Bill Buckle
By Bill Buckle, strategic director and functional consultant/analyst at Dac Systems.
Johannesburg, 20 Jun 2013

Africa, as with any other developing area, has IT projects that are initiated from different funding sources and which are driven by different motives. In making the following statements, I am generalising; however, the distinctions being made relating to appropriate IT (AIT) are clear.

The first funding source is international aid organisations. Their prime motives are altruistic, and for the most part, genuinely aimed at improving the lives of the people of a particular country. They dream up a project based on advice from their consultants, most often without engaging the real end-users as to what is needed and what will work.

The second funding source is that of the government of the country. While development is also in their minds, the need for government efficiency, control and governance information (all to do with votes) forms a major component. Both this and the previous group lean towards off-the-shelf solutions, believing this will be quicker (correct) and less expensive (generally correct), but not always providing what is actually needed.

The third source is entrepreneurial business, and the primary motive of this group is simple - make lots of money!

Good for the goose

From an AIT perspective, these three groups represent different environments. In the first instance, international aid organisations are by nature external to the African country and are mostly Western in worldview. They focus on their perceptions of how IT can propel a developing country towards the goal of being 'developed' or 'competitive'. They tend to think in terms of what works internationally (for which read 'in the West' or now 'in China').

These organisations provide a good flow of project funding for IT companies which are to deliver what the aid organisation asked for. The reputation of the IT company rarely suffers if the system is inappropriate and fails - and the aid organisation simply moves its attention elsewhere.

The second (government) group tends to take the bureaucratic approach - get one company to develop the requirements and another IT company to implement the system. The projects can be huge and run over many years and deliver great systems that work well in urban environments, and which meet the government officials' requirements.

Insincere IT

Often, little more than lip service is paid to the actual needs of the end-user, and even less time is spent on change management. The success rate in terms of user uptake tends to be very low, unless they have little choice but to use the system.

The projects are a great source of income for the (normally big) IT companies, but the danger in taking on these projects is that when the system does not get used, the IT company somehow gets blamed for delivering a "useless system".

As recently seen here in South Africa, this can cause huge damage to the reputation (and finances) of a company.

Small apps need large markets in the chase for big profit.

The third (entrepreneurial) approach, namely that of developing own IP, can be costly and have high risk related to the uncertainty that the product will sell. The tendency is to invest as little as possible in some small app and test it in the market with the hopes of growing the offering through added functionality. If this offering is aimed at the mass, end-user market, then penetration in Africa is likely to be limited to the urbanised population, unless certain factors are not taken into account - hence AIT.

Small apps need large markets in the chase for big profit, and so there is the tendency to build for the global market, which is perceived to be homogenous. The challenge is that everyone else seems to be chasing this same market (and 'everyone else' seems to have more venture capital than you have).

Statistically, Africa is a huge, mostly untapped market, but these Western IT solutions are only accessible (appropriate) to a small segment of this market. This is borne out by some recent (June 2012 and January 3013) statistics for software penetration in the RSA - Internet =17.4% (rest of Africa = 15.6%); Facebook only 12.8%. Usage of IT systems or sophisticated software applications would be much lower. Appropriateness, in all its forms, is a definite factor in this low usage - either the IT is too technological to be available in rural areas, in the wrong language, culturally misaligned, or one of several other factors.

AIT is just as much a factor to be considered outside of the small app arena - if the aid organisation project succeeds because it is actually used, it may well be rolled out further, and if the government initiative actually gets used (due to the IT company's understanding of AIT) then more work will come their way because they made the government look good.

I believe for an IT company to really succeed and have sustainable business in Africa, it will need to take AIT seriously. As I will explore in the next Industry Insight, a little progress is being made in getting IT used in Africa.

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