Technology Will Fail Africa by Nengak Daniel
Last week I followed the progress of the BBC Africa Science Festival with much interest and I probably asked many more “what ifs” than anyone else. The ingenuity deployed into technological innovations in Africa is hard to miss, even by non-techies like myself. Recently, I began to look inquisitively at the creative deployment of technology in Africa especially by African innovators and I concluded that in Africa, everything is possible, really. These African inventors have left nothing to chance as they work from electric generators powered by urine and faecal matter to election reporting systems and to lion-protection systems. Today, there is probably an ‘app’ to do everything; maybe there is even an app for checking which apps exist. But my personal favourite is the ‘iCow’ — not that I own any cows, but this invention promises to be every cow farmers best friend.
We are headed into an ‘iWorld’ where there could be an ‘app’ that replaces everything we had considered to be an exclusive human domain (bear in mind that I use the word ‘app’ rather loosely). But just before we are replaced by apps, we are honoured to be alive today surrounded by such fascinating array of devices and services on offer which make being human and especially being African a lot more easier. Probing skeptically at the apps being invented in, or deployed to Africa, a couple of trends quickly emerged to me: in the first instance, the most successful apps are designed to remedy deep-seated structural shortcomings in Africa. Secondly apps that are to succeed are likely to be invented in Eastern Africa, especially in Kenya.
Of course I am aware that products and services are often deployed to meet needs in society and the most successful ones are the ones meeting the biggest problems. But in Africa, it seems that the technological inventions or apps are proceeding in the opposite direction; they are deployed to circumvent broken structures — such as replacing nonexistent fixed telephony with mobile phone coverage. Here is the first emerging thesis: the more successful the invented app becomes; the greater the likelihood that the faulty structures would be abandoned, forgotten and archived. Consequently, the app-inspired death of these structures creates a vacuum that is deeper than what existed prior to the deployment of technology. For example, in the 1980s Africa, if you had a (fixed) phone in Lagos, you are sure to connect with another phone say in Port Harcourt; today, with mobile phones making contact is less likely.
You must already know of M-Pesa, the mobile money transfer system that completely changed the face of business first in Eastern Africa before spreading out and inspiring competitors. M-Pesa was designed for money transfers, but brilliant Kenyan girls are also using it as a private detective — transfer 5 Kenyan shillings to that phone number stalking you and get an sms telling you exactly to whom you have been so generous. Obviously M-Pesa was inspired by the many challenges in real banking such as long queues, the discourteous services, the dilemma of doing business with an unbanked person, the long processing time on transactions and the absence of bank branches in rural areas. Like magic, M-Pesa wiped out these issues by allowing registered users to transfer money, pay bills, and buy phone airtime all on their mobile phones. According to Christopher Mims, as much as 31% of the Kenyan GDP is actually spent via mobile phones. Mims suggests that technology driven portals such as M-Pesa give African countries the possibility to “leapfrog” over some developmental stages. But that is exactly the trouble with the technology, it leapfrogs!
But with mobile money systems, are we looking at the extinction of banks — as we know them? Not anytime soon. So what has changed inside the banking hall? Queues have remained long, services discourteous and costumer care hard to access on the phone while often the advertised email addresses of banks are dead-ends. In many African banks, queue management systems (such as Q-Matic) do not exist and customers are obliged to stand in the queue for a long time; disagreements in queues are therefore not uncommon. Worse, banks in Nigeria are deploying ‘customer castes’: customers making transactions above certain thresholds are allowed accelerated and somewhat courteous services.
A core challenge in banking operations in Africa has been the question of identity. Banks are unable to verify that customers are really the persons they said they are and could be found where they said they would be. Without such details, banks are reluctant to give loans. Only those who dare give loans would make background checks and demand outrageous collaterals and interests when the margins seem profitable enough. While mobile portals for money transfers are able to avoid this challenge in the short term — there is no risk for the banks in money transfer, it is customer transferring money to those they have pre-identified. But soon, those venturing into mobile loans would return in a circle to the same problem banks are faced with: what if the customer dumps or change mobile phones and identity documents and skips on the loans? The lack of comprehensive national identification systems in Africa will continue to scare away good business for years to come.
Ushahidi (Swahili, meaning ‘to witness’) is another “famous African app”, according to Toby Shapshak. Ushahidi receives reports in the form of sms from observers across a country and aggregates them into a real-time map which is studied by experts and electoral officials in ‘situation rooms’; it was first deployed in the 2008 elections in Kenya. Since 2008, the ‘U-word’ has come up in virtually all elections held in Africa and look-alike models have been used. Soon, the ‘situation room’might become part of the electoral law in Africa.
The problem that Ushahidi sought to solve was this: sometimes things which undermine the credibility of elections happen in remote areas but are not taken into account before the final results are announced. Also, some election results from rural areas have the tendency to mutate before they are collated at the headquarters. The smart techies figured out that if there were witnesses sending local reports into a central database, then a national picture would emerge and alternative vote tallying could be made. The idea is brilliant, but here is its worrying underlying assumption: you cannot trust the electoral official to report violence and rigging to the headquarters nor could you trust that what they deliver to HQ is really the results of the ballots. The only thing you can trust is the phone-equipped witness and the aggregators in the situation room. Here again is a weak structure — the electoral commission whose failure the Ushahidi-system tries to circumvent.
This assumption is not only made by election observers but it is official since election commissions themselves are quick to cite the reports of the witness portals as a confirmation of their credibility. Candidates in the elections also cite the reports as confirmation of their victory or as proof of malpractices. The implication of this trend is that the credibility of such elections rested squarely on the technological controls, and not on the electoral officials or the electoral systems. With the right technological checks in place therefore, even a certified gang of thieves would have no choice but to conduct democratic elections.
Unfortunately, the electronic vote tallying system which deployed in the 2013 presidential polls in Kenya failed. It was a state-of-the-art failure as “biometric identification kits to scan people’s thumbs broke down; a server meant to take in results from 33,400 voting centers sent via SMS became overloaded; and some election operators forgot the passwords and PIN numbers for the software. Polling centers went back to hand counting ballots and results were delayed almost a week”. According to the BBC, the 2013 election would be remembered as one in which “paper trumped digital”.
It still is not clear why the tech systems failed; but it nearly dragged down Kenya with it. Much of the critique from the elections rested on the technological systems not doing what they were deployed to do. So when Kenyans waited for days for their votes to be counted by hand and for the electoral officials to make faithful reports of voting in their stations, the unresolved question of credibility of the electoral officials returned to the table. Kenya was thrown back to its pre-Ushahidi troubles. This tech failure is illuminative especially in Kenya, Africa’s Silicon Savannah and a nation of technological leapfrogging.
Back in 2010, the Presidential Election in Togo also suffered a similar tech failure when the VSAT systems which were to be used to transmit results from all polling units to the central collation points either genuinely collapsed or were shut down. When the electoral officers finally drove into Lomé with the ballot papers to be cross-counted and collated, some voters felt that the results had been doctored en-route and then there was violence. But between Togo and Kenya, we had been warned: technology is no replacement for trust.
So what is to be done, should telephone cables be installed in Africa in spite of the penetration of mobile telephony? Yes. Should M-Pesa be banned and all its 17 million users return to the banking halls? No. Should the old banks be allowed to rot or deliver stone-age banking in this millennium? No. Should Ushahidi be disbanded and all votes tallied by hand? Probably not, especially in more populous countries like Nigeria where there could be as many as 70 million voters. But we have to make clear that elections are to be conducted by human electoral officers and among human candidates and voters. Not among apps! As much as possible, technology should be deployed in the conduct of elections; but only to the extent that they assist, not circumvent human agency.
The real problem that innovators today should help solve in Africa is not very different from what was the case 20 years ago: assist Africa establish comprehensive, foolproof and verifiable identity systems, assist states to improve the efficacy and credibility of their agents including elections officials, judges, health workers and business officials and please let every human dwelling have its post address and be found on street maps. You see, it is not so much about leapfrogging as it is about moving, one feet in front and another in front of the first one, and so on.
As any frog would hopefully confirm, leaps are not easy feats. Leapfrogging from a shaky substructure could be unstable, uncertain and a dangerous adventure. When leapfrogging fail, the ‘leaper’ is returned back to the start point with so much energy expended and no problems solved or avoided — probably with a broken spine. For Africa, unless we could achieve greater human-machine interface to bridge the old ‘analog world’ and the new iWorld then the continued deployment of technology will ultimately fail us. The boomerang would come soon and it would take us back in time to the days before there were any apps.
I acknowledge and appreciate Felicity Okoth and Serah Mukami for very helpful review of the initial draft of this article; the errors remain mine, though. I also pay tribute to the late Paul Mutfwang, my teacher at the Ahmadu Bello University. His early insistence on critical reflection helped shape my writing skills.
