Africa looks at India for appropriate, affordable telecom and IT tech
By Frederick Noronha

KUALA LUMPUR, April 4 (IANS) Africa is looking with hope to low-cost and affordable technologies from India that could allow the neglected continent to be able to access the power of ICTs (information and communication technologies).

"I'm passing through Delhi while on my way back (to Africa). It's a business trip," says Phoday Sisay, of the Gambian telecom giant Gamtel, which is pointed to as one of the few telecom success-stories in Africa, because of its ambitious expansion plans in the small West African country of 1.3 million.

Like Sisay, other African delegates to a UNDP-organised workshop on using the fast-changing world of ICT (information and communication technologies) for development, voiced their interest in affordable technologies being put out from India. This despite the fact that many of these are yet to get their fair share of media-attention globally.

Speaking to IANS, Germany-educated Tanzanian businessman Ali Abdul Mufuruki discussed the potential of wireless-in-local-loop technologies, and whether implementing the same in the African continent posed peculiar problems.

IIT-Madras, the Chennai-based prestigious technology institution, has been behind innovation of Cordect WiLL, a form of wireless-in-local loop that promises to drastically lower the cost of telecom infrastructure.

This also promises to solve the 'last-mile' problem (the difficulty in reaching the subscriber's home), and make telephones accessible to a larger number than just a narrow segments of Third World populations.

India has also built up a name for itself due to a number of project related to non-English language computing solutions (in Pune and Chennai), machine language-translation (Hyderabad), computer-less e-mail solutions, and rural IT projects through networking at places like Pondicherry and Madhya Pradesh which have bagged international awards.

Across the country, there are a wide ranger of smaller, less-costly ICT-for-development experiments, as documented by University of Chicago doctoral candidate Aditya Dev Sood through his www.cks-b.org website.

Prof. Gabriel Olalere Ajayi, of Nigeria, also recalls a visit to Chennai a couple of years ago, to tune into an international conference on make telecom solutions affordable to the commonman in the Southern parts of the globe.

Such efforts at reducing the cost of technology are seen as particularly relevant to vast populations globally, even as multi-nationals race ahead with technical innovation that makes the telephone into a powerful but much-more costlier piece of equipment.

Mozambique-based IT professional Jose Antonio Murta says he is keen to explore the possibilities of linking-up with IT professionals in India, to work on business software ideas that his firm specialises in.

"The Simputer is something I've been following. I see potential for it in Africa. At one point, I was trying to talk to a few people and see how we in Africa could possibly use this tool," says Senegal-based Pierre Dandjinou, ICT Policy Adviser for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme.

The Simputer is a low-cost computing device, getting its final touches at the IISc (Indian Institute of Sciences) in Bangalore, which is promised to cost at around US$200, and could take computing to the commonman.

It has evoked a lot of interest from around the Third World and beyond, though production schedules have got a little delayed due to difficulties in finding much-needed support. Currently, a few prototypes have been brought out from Bangalore, but mass-production is still to get underway.

Comments Salman Ansari, advisor to the Pakistan's Ministry of Science and Technology, half-seriously: "India was the biggest driver (in Pakistan's IT growth). We looked across the border and would get very jealous (with India's growth and appropriate technology ventures)."

Pakistan itself is drawing attention now for its ambitious attempts to roll out the Internet across cities and the countryside, including ventures like setting up a Virtual University and educational-TV channels. Officials from Islamabad say General Musharraf's regime is serious about this task.

In Malaysia too, IT specialists of Indian origin continue playing a significant role in that country's plans to move boldly into a "knowledge era", stressed on by Prime Minister Dr Mahatir Mohamed's Vision 2020 plans.

Laurence Sebastian of MIMOS Berhad at the Malaysia Technology Park points to the many new technologies being worked on by this official venture, including the DAGS scheme to fund innovation by IT personnel. Sebastian, like a section of the Malaysian population, traces his roots to Tamil Nadu.

T. Yogalingam, also of Tamil origin, is the operations director of Quantum, the Penang (Malaysia) based production unit that was once known worldwide for its production of computer hard-discs. (It has since moved out of that field and is into giant capacity storage devices based on tape-drives.)

Malaysians say that the "overlapping" of major civilizations' populations in their country -- including the Indian and Chinese -- would help them to do business with a wider set of Asians across the globe.

"We must get into the game (of using ICTs for development)," stresses Narayanan Kanan, a Malaysian of Indian origin, and currently senior vice-president of the ambitious Multimedia Super Corridor that Kuala Lumpur is building up on the outskirts of the city.

Kanan told visiting African IT specialists and government representatives: "Even if it for the purpose of combatting HIV/AIDS, the modern information and communication technologies can be used to transfer relevant information. If we don't use it, the existing gaps will get bigger all the time,"

One of the global IT leaders whose approval the Multimedia Super Corridor uses enthusiastically in its promotional video presentation is Bangalore-based M.R.Narayan Murthy of Infosys.

An official of the Malaysian Prime Minister's Department economic planning unit said his country was keen on working with India. Recently, at the government level, a Malaysian-Indian Joint Committee had been set up to study the possibility of collaboration, including in the IT field.

"One plan was to study collaborative ventures with planned products like the Simputer. We could help with the hardware side, while India is known internationally for its software strengths," said Dr Baharom Jani, a principal assistant director in the industry and commerce section.

"Our first meeting was held in KL last year end. We expected the second meeting to be hosted in India in March 2002, but it has not yet happened," he added. (Indo-Asian News Service)

ENDS