Mobile Asia

Vom Zwang zur Innovation: Interview mit dem Entwickler und Social Entrepreneur Jonathan Gosier

Jonathan Gosier ist Software-Entwickler und setzt sich als Social Entrepreneur in Uganda für den Einsatz von Computern, die Ausbildung von Programmierern und die Verbreitung des Internets ein. Sein Blog Appfrica gehört zu den wichtigsten Quellen über afrikanische Bildung, Unternehmertum und IT. Mit Afridex entwickelt er ein Verzeichnis afrikanischer Start-ups, etablierter Unternehmen und ausländischer Gruppen im Kontinent. Als CTO von Question Box ermöglicht er auch Analphabeten den Zugang zum Internet.

(Jonathan Gosier )

You´re born in the United States. What made you move to Africa – and what made you stay?
I moved to Kampala, Uganda in August 2008 with my girlfriend who is the Regional Manager for an NGO. My family is American but my ancestry is obviously tied most recently and most directly to Africa. I leapt at the opportunity to see a new part of the world and learn more about my own roots. We’re here until her contract ends, but it increasingly seems like we’ll be here longer because we rather like Kampala.

What – in your personal opinion – are the main misconceptions that Westerners have about Africa?
That what works in one part of Africa, will work in another. People tend to generalize when in areas where race is homogenic. This is the same for people who go to China and assume all Chinese are the same. Some parts are more liberal, some parts have been influenced by Russian culture, some parts are extremely rich, many parts are extremely poor, some parts are more rural. I’m over simplifying but, likewise, just because Africa is predominantly black, doesn’t mean each area doesn’t differ. To answer your question more directly, people often misinterpret the ’surface’ as being all there is to the story.

Beyond that, within Africa there’s a lot of explicit distinctions. For instance, Kenyans are not simply Kenyans. They are Luo, Kikuyu, Maasai etc.

How do Africans use their mobiles different from Westerners? What functions are important to them which are rather unimportant to „us“ – and vice versa?
Well, it’s just a different context right? A mobile phone is a mobile phone no matter where it is. What you see is African countries, and others around the world ‘innovating out of constraint’ (to borrow a phrase Ethan Zuckerman likes to use). Africa is huge, you could fit both China and the U.S. in it’s landmass and still have room to spare. But it’s no where near as developed. There’s all these sparse populations scattered across the continent, with no landlines and no easy way to travel. So people have begun using mobiles for EVERYTHING. Any piece of information that can be distributed using a mobile carrier will because in Africa that’s the only common denominator.

This makes things like messaging (SMS and MMS) naturally useful to Africans. It’s the cheapest, fastest, most ubiquitous way of disseminating information here – period. The infrastructure isn’t there for anything else…yet. In the U.S. SMS is a luxury or an annoyance depending on who you’re talking to. That’s because there are hundreds of other options for getting out information.

You´re also active to get western business invest into African entrepreneurs. What are your main arguments to do so?
It’s gotten to the point where I’ve stopped trying to convince anyone of anything. It’s basic economics. This is one of the last regions on the planet to industrialize, to manufacture, to develop. Given the way the credit system is collapsing around the world, Africa is somewhat insulated because it doesn’t have much debt or credit that just doesn’t get written off by the World Bank anyways. Although it’s slow growth, the East African block has steadily posted consecutive GDP growth for the past five to ten years. Basic math tells you there’s a lot of room to make money. Add on the fact that increased information (through the internet) is making education better and tribalism weaker, and you begin to see how silly it is to bet against Africa for it’s history. It’s changing. It won’t happen over night but it’s changing.

Afridex.net is my attempt to help local and foreign groups that want to invest or work in Africa. They want to know who’s here doing what. Afridex simply makes it easy for them. As easy as something like Crunchbase or LinkedIn is in the West.

In plain words: How do mobiles improve life in Africa?1)
Without mobiles there is no affordable long range communication in Africa for the average person. That alone is reason enough

2) If I had to list others I would say, that information here needs to be portable and easy to digest. SMS naturally limits that.

3) Africa traditionally communicates orally. The written language is a fairly recent addition to society here. So naturally, phones are a great way for people to socialize.

4) Mobile operators are increasingly the biggest business prospects in the region. Groups like Safaricom and MTN offer great local jobs and build infrastructure.

5) For foreign groups, the mobile phone records are an easy way to peer into the social graph of the average African. Call and pay patterns are interesting because they help show how they prioritize data. I have a friend who’s a sociologist who studied the phone records of a carrier here and she found it interesting that people of different classes didn’t really have much interaction at all, except with family. That’s telling because it shows how one’s personal network shapes their daily lives.

(Karte von Uganda)

© 2009 Trendmobi.