In memoriam...

This month of April 2012 is the 18th anniversary of the horrible genocide that took place in Rwanda.  The world and the UN in particular ended up deliberately turning their back against the genocide that was occurring in Rwanda where 800,000 to 1,000,000 were slaughtered in 100 days. It was the fastest paced genocide ever.

This annual commemoration of the 1994 genocide is important in fostering unity and reconciliation among Rwandans. Across the country memorial events are taking place starting with a major commemoration that the national football stadium, but also many smaller events are organized across the country from district to neighborhood level during one week. Messages which are disseminated during those commemorations help to restore hope for a better future which was the theme for this year events: "Learning from history to shape a bright future."

Many expatriates are leaving the country during that period and some advised me to do the same, because during that week activities are reduced and in particular "fun" activities like sports or entertainment in respect for the memorial.

I decided not to follow their advice and to stay in Kigali. I did not attend the major event in the stadium mainly because it being in Kinyarwanda, the local language which I don't understand. Instead I attended the event organized in my neighborhood (they call a neighborhood a village here). I always try to attend the meetings in my village and there is always someone helping translating what is said. This was the case again as someone sitting next to me translated all that was said in French for me during the three hours meeting.

It was a very simple meeting organized the African traditional way where everyone (about 50 of us) sat around a fire to discuss and listen. The ceremony started with the village chief explaining the objectives of the meeting and the theme of this year anniversary. Then a man explained the definition of a genocide and took us through a short historical review of the events that lead to the Rwandan genocide.
A woman survivor who lived in our village in 1994 shared her terrifying history with us relating it to places nearby that all of us could relate to. She was very animated and made us live through the fear she lived through for weeks, especially that she was eight months pregnant at that time. She told us how she was able to save her baby girl (now 18years old) from the massacre. She was helped by people that didn't even know her.
Then a group of 5 young people with two guitars chanted songs of sorrow and hope. Their soft voices covering the sound of the fire in the African night were very emotional.
Finally another woman spoke about the impact of the events on children, in particular the orphans who saw their entire family slaughtered in front of them. For months they would not speak, unable to express their feelings, thinking they were dead and living in another world. Many of them have been helped by NGOs. Often allowing them to draw their feelings has been helping them opening up.

It was a very emotional meeting for me. I was the only "white" person attending and many came to me at the end thanking me for attending and sharing these moments with them. In attendance were the mother of the president and the minister of health both living in my village and attending as simple citizens.

After the holocaust, the world said "never again" and yet it seems incomprehensible how this could happen again. And even now, the world is not helping much Rwanda bringing 65 genocidaires hiding mainly in Europe and identified by the government to justice. While Europe deployed many efforts to bring the people responsible of the Srebrenica killing of 8,000 Bosniaks during the Bosnian War to the International Court of Justice, they seem less interested in pursing the Rwandan genocidaires. It seems that once again we are turning our backs and that African lives do not have have the same value...

The need to send appropriate messages to African entrepreneurs

I was recently attending a Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) in Nairobi where I presented "The Link between Building Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and the Labor Market".
This was a good conference organized by the African Development Bank and UNESCO to discuss policies to promote STI in Africa and come up with practical recommendations to be presented to attending ministers.

One speaker was a Professor of Entrepreneurship from a US School of Business. She was a very excited (and maybe exciting for some) speaker, jumping all over the stage during her presentation, a presentation style often appreciated in the US but maybe not so much in Africa.
She presented some "facts" that I have seen before that many CEOs of successful companies are university drop-offs, the two more famous ones being Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. And thus she was offering the proposal that there are other venues to become a successful entrepreneur than the traditional higher education path.

I think that this is sending the wrong message and even more so to an African audience and I wish that my fellow citizens coming to Africa be more sensitive and adapt their message to their audience. This is the minimum respect you need to show when invited in another culture.

First about the fact itself,  it has been shown that university graduates get better jobs and as a result earn substantially more than people who did not completed higher education. That is the real statistic, and successful drop-offs do not represent the majority. Earning more is only a side benefit (but an important one in Africa) from university studies. Probably more important in good universities is the intellectual development and the broader vision acquired not only in the particular subject of the studies, but about the world in general through interaction with professors and colleague students from all over the world. It opens the mind's horizon and expand the limits of what you think is possible. In summary it prepares you becoming an entrepreneur.

Second, the famous drop-offs are not really drop-offs in the sense of people giving up on their studies. They dropped off because they were brilliant minds who felt slowed down by studies and had a passion and vision. Only a minority of drop-offs fall in that category. The others end up failing in their professional life.

Third, many of those drop-offs where sons and daughters of families where money was not a problem (Gates father was a wealthy attorney and his mother was a bank director) so that their family was able to support them. Obviously this is not the case for the majority of African students. In fact many times, their families has to go into debt to support their studies. Those studies are often the only hope for the family. Family in Africa has a different meaning than in the developed world.The social structure of African families is much broader, covering not only the direct family, but all the members of the large family including uncles and aunts, cousins, grand parents, etc. A typical family can exceed one hundred members who all depend and rely on each other. Often, the university graduate of the family who earns a better salary is providing support to the extended family. He or she will intervene in case of problem, e.g. if a member of the family is sick and needs hospitalization.

I'm sure that the professor's objective was to encourage people to pursue all paths to success and that she successfully teaches those paths. My only recommendation is to be more sensitive to the audience and I must recognize that her short speaking time made it difficult to be more appropriate but that is not a reason not to try.

Seeya later alligator...

Rwanda to offer access to worldclass education to its neighbours

In September 2011 in Pittsburgh, Paul Kagame President of Rwanda and Jared Cohon President of Carnegie Mellon University announced a unique partnership between CMU and the government of Rwanda to deliver graduate education programs in Rwanda. It is unique because it is the first time that a top ranked research institution will deliver graduate programs in Africa with in-country presence and resident faculty. The plans are for 15 faculty from CMU to be resident in Kigali to deliver Master of Science in IT and in Electrical and Computer Engineering degrees.

Last week, in a very interesting and  visionary move, the government of Rwanda announced that it will provide scholarships for the CMU's programs in Rwanda covering 50% of the tuition cost for students qualifying for the programs. But what is extraordinary is that those scholarships will be available for students from all countries in the East African Community (EAC): Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. One can only acclaim this visionary move rarely seen in Africa.

The EAC represents a market of 130 million people connected in many ways: an open market, a common business language English (except still for Burundi), broadband Internet networks crossing all 5 countries. Good governance is being recognized in most countries. This EAC region is poised to become one of the major development poles in Africa.

While in Pittburgh, President Kagame made it clear that CMU would be part of a "regional" ICT center of excellence. The goal of his government, clearly explained in their public Vision 2020 plan, is to become an ICT hub for the region. This announcement can only help attract the brilliant minds of the region to come to Rwanda to get a world class education in the region helping slowing Africa's brain drain. Now students can access quality graduate education in Rwanda without the need to move to the US and will benefit from a curriculum adapted to the region's needs by resident CMU faculty.

I'm a strong believer in innovation developed by Africans for Africa in Africa. This is a great step in that direction.

Seeya later alligator...

Civilized HOA in Rwanda

Home owner associations (HOA) in the US are formal legal entities created to maintain common areas, developments; they have the authority to enforce deed restrictions. Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&R's) are issued to each homeowner, and HOAs are established to ensure that they are adhered to in order to maintain the quality and value of the properties involved (about.com guide).

I have only one HOA experience in the US. That HOA had regular meetings where the home owners of the development discussed matters related to the neighborhood. For example, they may discuss security questions or landscaping criteria, traffic control in the neighborhood. These meetings were often the occasion for some people to vent their frustration in a not so polite manner ending sometimes in verbal fights. Usually a few people in the neighborhood would really take actions to improve life in the development. Most would never do anything and often those were the ones screaming at the meetings.

Here in Rwanda, we don't have official HOAs. Instead every last Saturday of the month, everyone in the neighborhood is invited to participate in community services in the neighborhood. This is called Umuganda and happens in the entire country. The services can be different things: cleaning a section of the common areas of the neighborhood, planting trees, etc. At the end of the service, there is a meeting where the head of the neighborhood is sharing information and where everyone can present topics for discussions. What strikes me is how these discussions are "civilised" and how everyone listen and respect each other and how practical decisions result from these meetings.

Clearly this blog posting is based on a non statistically valid experience based on one HOA in the US and one in Rwanda, but I just wanted to share it with you...

See ya later alligator...

Another interesting use of ICT in Rwanda

When I applied for the green card in the US about 15 years ago, the only way to know about the status of my application was to call a 1-800 number provided by the immigration services. As far as I remember I was never able to speak to someone - I mean a real person not a computer - by calling this number. I only knew that my green card was granted when I received a postmail saying so. I'm now an American citizen and did not try this service since then.

As I now live in Rwanda I had to go through a similar process to obtain a working visa in the country. Clearly the number of working visa applications in Rwanda cannot be compared with the number of green card applications  in the US, however I'd like to share with you how it happened.

When I provided all the required documents at the immigration services of Rwanda, they provided me with an ID number that I could use to track the progress of my application online. But even better, when my visa was ready I received an SMS on my mobile phone saying so as you can see on the next screen shots.

The same way, my bank is sending me an SMS everytime a transaction is happening on my account. When I go to the bank to cash a check, my mobile phone rings announcing that an SMS message is waiting for me even before I leave the bank. The SMS tells me the amount of the withdrawal that just happened and the balance of my account. My wife who is sharing the account with me receives the same message at the same time. Some may not like this last function!

Many businesses here have integrated SMS functions in their customer services. As a customer you can choose to get that service or not.

See ya later alligator...

"Want to become an internet billionaire? Move to Africa"

A recent published post was titled "Want to become an Internet billionaire? Move to Africa". This article was also referenced in another article published by Forbes: "Africa Could Make You An Internet Billionaire".

The authors are speaking about the ICT opportunity in Africa which I described in a paper published last year: "The New Nomads and Cloud Computing in Africa". One of the author was invited by UK Prime Minister David Cameron who took a high-level delegation of corporate CEOs to Nigeria and South Africa to highlight "one of the greatest economic opportunities on the planet".

So can Africa make you a billionaire?

First Africa's environment is not even close to where California was when Silicon Valley started in the early eighties at the beginning of the IT opportunity that made many billionaires in the US. So it may take much longer for the opportunity to develop and millionaires are more likely than billionaires in the near future. But I understand the need to attract readers with flashy titles.

Second and more importantly the question is who is "you"? Clearly in the mind of David Cameron, it should be British people and most VCs investing in the market are investing in startups managed by people from the developed world. Most of the startups operating in Africa indicated in the article are actually managed by British people. Other nations like India are also lining up to size the opportunity.

I personally have nothing against that, I think that the opportunity is for grab by anyone. But my wish is that African young entrepreneurs will grab it first and that we will see ICT solutions developed by Africans for Africans. Africans have a major advantage over people from the developed world: their knowledge of their region and their innovative spirit that has nothing to envy to that of their colleagues in developed nations.

Recently I attended a major IT innovation conference in Johannesburg. Ninety five percent of the people attending where white South Africans or expatriates! One sponsoring vendor organized a contest for the best innovative application. The winner was a solution developed to use twitter to share comments about wine that you are drinking! I'm not sure that this is the type of "innovation" that Africa needs right now!

More than ever before, now is the time and the opportunity for Africans to control their future in this IT industry before someone else does it. There are many "someone else" vying for the same market but Africans should not fear that competition because this time they have the home field advantage!

Interesting use of ICT in Rwanda

As you may know, I now live in Rwanda since September 1st, 2011. I'd like to share with you some simple applications of information and communication technology I experienced or saw since I'm here.


In this first posting on that subject, I'd like to describe the experience of acquiring and using a mobile phone in Rwanda and probably in most of Africa.


But before speaking about Rwanda, let's go through the experience of buying a mobile phone back home in the US. By the way in the US they call it cellular phone not mobile. Cellular is a name based on technology. "A cellular network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver known as a cell site" - wikipedia, while mobile rather describes a major advantage of the phone for the user. From a marketing point of view therefore mobile is a better name.


So if you want to buy a mobile phone in the US, you need to provide a picture ID. They will then record all your information in their system (and you hope it is safe). Next they will ask you for a credit card and perform a credit check on you. If you pass all these tests, they will then ask you to sign a contract committing for 2 years with a penalty if you cancel before that date. So now that they hold you prisoner, they inform you about the cost which you have to pay every month. They will offer you many options depending on how many minutes you think you will need. At the end of the month, you'll pay the price even if you did not use all your minutes, but if you exceeded the limit of minutes allocated, you'll pay an expensive price per exceeded minute. By the way this is only to use your phone in the US. If you want to use it abroad, you need another more expensive contract. And I forgot, if you want to send SMS you also need an addition to your contract with obviously an additional cost. Then you need to buy your phone, and they need to activate it. By the time all this is done you probably spent one hour in that shop.


In Rwanda, if you want to buy a mobile, you go to the shop. You select the phone you want. In my case I bought a simple Nokia phone. They offer you the choice between different phone numbers, you select one and they install the corresponding SIM card in the phone. They then activate the card and you are up and running. Total time: 5 minutes, total cost $23. The card is preloaded with enough units for a couple of days. I did not need to provide any ID or credit check. As soon as I was out of the shop, I was able to call my daughter back in the US with that mobile. And I was also able to send and receive SMS!!!


You only pay for what you use by loading units in your phone. You can buy units from young sellers at any street corner. You buy a card, let say for RWF5,000 (USD8.30), you scratch the code on the card, enter it in your mobile, and the units are added automatically to your phone. With RWF 5,000 I usually last two-three weeks. That money on my phone is actually mobile money. I can use it to pay for other services. For example, I bought an internet USB modem. I can charge my units to that modem from my mobile when I need to use it.


You may wonder why such a difference. While I did not really investigate this, I'll share what I think. In the US, mobile phone companies came out of traditional Telco companies renting land lines, i.e. fixed phone lines to your house to connect a fixed phone. So obviously, they needed to know your address and name to ensure that you ownd the house where they were going to dig a hole to connect the phone cable. They need upfront payment to pay for this labor and for the material. When they offered mobile phones, they did not see the need to fundamentaly change their billing system. In Africa, they were no landline phones or very little. Mobile company came to the market and wanted fast penetration. They offered an easy process to acquire a mobile phone.


That's it for now, next I'll talk about SMS based services.


Seeya later alligator