africa.wired: seacom submarine cable launches

The recent* arrival of “fat pipes” in Kenya courtesy of the new SEACOM sub-marine fiber optic cables has me flashing back to an article from 1998 that fundamentally altered my world view. It was titled “Africa Rising” written by John Perry Barlow. The subtitle of the article was “Everything you know about Africa is Wrong”. The article appeared in Wired 6.01 during the pre-Conde Nast, Lou Rosetto, super-optimistic, neon-hurt-you-eyes-design era of the magazine. During that time the magazine prided itself on presenting “idees fortes” (powerful ideas) to challenge conventional thinking on an issue. This was Barlow’s idee forte:

Most Africans stayed out of the loop of the 20th century and were not homogenized into the generica that is now much of the Northern Hemisphere, or what they call the North. And thus their continent – so intensely different from the rest of the world, so vastly different within itself – represents a huge and still unconnected battery of stored potential. All it would take for Africa to leapfrog into the wonderland of an information economy would be to attach the electrodes – get it wired, in other words – and then watch its huge voltage zap the gap. Or so went my theory.

The idee forte created a “eureka” moment in me when a whole new set of possibilities opened up in thinking about how Africa can develop itself. The internet, techno-libertarian frontier that it was in those days, could help individuals route around the sclerosis, incompetence and plain lack of resources of African instituitions and find ways to better themselves. Harness the power of the individual, and step out of the way.

It sounds like pan-glossian optimism to think that a continent that has so little (unreliable) electricity, a place so full of people who are hungry, sick and/or fleeing conflict should divert resources away from alleviating such chronic needs to build something for people to “surf” on. What attracted me so powerfully to his idea was that John Perry Barlow saw the enormous untapped potential in Africans themselves, while most (including Africans themselves) just see a continent full of basket cases in need of charity. I don’t think anyone would have predicted the explosive growth of mobile phone technology around Africa when it was first introduced. The launch of the Seacom fiber optic cables is a next phase in Barlow’s wiring of Africa; who knows yet what the impact of that will be?

The problems on the continent are so complex and intractible that institutions, government or otherwise, can’t possibly even conceive of solutions to them all. Development will best come from the bottom up. From individuals, families and communities thinking through how to solve their own problems, how to grow themselves, how to connect themselves to the world at large without physically leaving their communities. Connectivity harnessed to the wild innovation and creativity that one sees in the informal (jua kali) sector in particular and in African culture in general is one way Africa is going to lift herself up.

See also: Paul Kagame Information Technology Means No More Excuses

*Arggh! This post was supposed to be done the week the cable was switched on but has languished in the draft folder since. Better late …