Open source: Africa`s liberating IT force

Open source is smashing the paradigm of how information and communications technology (ICT) benefits are delivered to Africans. In the past 40 years, ICT has made minimal impact on the lives of 90% of the people living in Africa because they didn`t fit the Western models of how benefits should be delivered to them. It failed to adapt to support the way of life it found here, seeking rather to hope that Africa would `catch up` to the rest of the world.

If we are going to transform Africa using technology, we need to move away from the need for a long logistical process that rolls out before a solution is delivered. This model has proved to be unsustainable on the continent.

I believe that, conceptually, a different model is needed for our country and the rest of Africa if we are to transform politically and economically, and within the ICT industry itself.

We need to build application services for a user who is different from the one current hardware and software offerings cater to. We need to de-couple delivery of solutions from infrastructure ownership and location dependence.

A different model is needed for our country and the rest of Africa if we are to transform politically and economically, and within the ICT industry itself.

Aubrey Malabie, CEO, Khanyisa Real Systems.

Open source will release us from the stranglehold of having to be rooted in one place to use IT. Mobile phones are the first technological tool that we have embraced as having practical value to support the way our businesses and lives are run.

Now that same mobility - having technology to hand any place, any time, without having to be physically tied to a place with hardware, software, a power point and phone jack - can be delivered through the liberating force of open source.

I`m talking here about mass deployment services - applications that can be delivered across the Internet to whichever device the user needs, wherever it is housed - in their offices, vehicles, homes, Internet caf'e, Spaza shop, resource centre or delivery point where there are public access terminals.

Africa`s entrepreneurs have for too long been hobbled by the need to invest in rooted hardware and software, and then be tutored in using applications that have little relevance to the way they do business.

Being able to access, via the Internet, a choice of African-developed services to address a choice of needs as and when needed, will leapfrog African technology users into a new and dynamic realm of interacting with the world.

It is not only entrepreneurs that open source`s mass deployment services will liberate. Services, such as health, education, libraries, welfare, financial transactions and information research, can be made available to people who log on to public access terminals to interact with all spheres of government and non-government organisations.

Public servants - whether they be health workers, teachers, agricultural extension officers or road builders - can use enterprise-class applications to do their jobs better because their departmental `paperwork` can be done in a multi-purpose resource centre shared by the community.

These enterprise-class applications serve the mass of the people or operations that don`t meet the usual criteria of having to own a PC. Their work doesn`t need them to sit at a terminal for a couple of hours each day - but they need access to the technology to update reports or order supplies.

This is an affordable and speedy way for government to deliver services to most South Africans. Delivery will not be stymied because of the cost of taking the IT infrastructure to each rural outpost or township school.

Open source enables us to emerge from old proprietary IT models and environments in the way applications are developed and deployed into a participative model.

Traditional players will feel uncomfortable with this. They are used to customers assessing their value through recognised norms - global brand names and service levels.

Vendors will need to become self-reliant within the continent and shed their global security blankets. They will need to be more `street-wise`, relying on innovative agility to quickly deliver to the market what it needs.

The model open source enables is dynamically different from the software solution delivered to an end-point. The open source model is based on universal availability.

Shared ownership and shared resources will deliver ICT benefits to Africa - and open source will make it happen.

Khanyisa Real Systems sponsors ITWeb`s open source portal. While the debate around whether to go the open source route or not rages on, some companies are quietly just getting down to business, and taking the many benefits attached to its usage out into the marketplace. Need to know more? Click here.