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ICTlog.net (14 unread)

March 30, 2010
8:45
Why are we where we are…….?
» ‎ ICTlog.net

One wonders why we are where we are with all the “resources” at our disposal. As an engineer am trained to see things differently and use my expertise to the advancement of my people and country. RESOURCES in this context means “technology”.

Corruption is a human thing and it does not know colour nor race and so long as we are human, we will always be greedy. Who says there is no corruption in USA, BRITAIN, ITALY and so called G8, but the difference is that these countries have put measures that has made corruption not profitable and that’s the business of GOVERNMENT.

Why is our ICT policy as a nation moving on a snail pace? Why is it taking a decade to complete a simple database centre? Why are we building a national database centre without resourcing the BIRTH & DEATH REGISTRY. Does this makes any logical sense?

Why are we fueling cars for our police to be patrolling the city when we can employ technology to scan areas for offensive and potential and deadly criminal acts. Is the Ghana POLICE deliberately using this old form of policing a nation to leak monies that should have been channeled to providing others needs like descent accommodation for police officers?

A nation that is not ready to interconnect its operations, be it Police, Medical facilities, Internal Revenue, Customs, VAT, etc, will always lose vital resources to some greedy politicians and public servants. The technology exist and all we need to do is to buy it and use it. Is that a difficult thing to do?

E-governance is a platform that will see the automation of virtually everything that falls under the arms of government: e-voting, e-meetings(Audio & Video), filling taxes, the courts, etc. Providing computers takes about 10% of complete automation. Providing computers for these institutions do not mean automation.

Ministers can have meetings with their staffs online and do not need to be present physically. We are a “third world country” and as such we should to be spending like a third world country that is in need and not spend foolishly. We spend like we have enough.

We want to create jobs and we allowed individual to own transport companies yet pay whatever they like to drivers. How can a driver live on GHS 40 a month. Why not pass a law to put the minimum number of cars to own to be able to operate a taxi business. There is a lot of jobs to create in the transport industry. The drivers can then sign a contract with these taxi companies and be paid salaries and Social Security like any worker.

Most Ghanaians don’t pay taxes and yet complain everyday that, they don’t have Water, electricity etc. Are we a serious country? Most property owners in Ghana do not pay property taxes and when they rent these properties, they pocket the money without paying taxes on them. These people turn around and blame the government for not providing services.

I expect the government to automate its systems to be able to track down people who default tax payments. THE ONLY WAY FORWARD IS USING TELECOMMUNICATION PLATFORMS WHICH ARE ALREADY IN PLACE. LETS DO THE RIGHT THING NO MATTER HOW MANY WILL BE AFFECTED.
March 22, 2010
10:46
Making broadband a national priority
» ‎ ICTlog.net

My frustrations with the National Communications Authority (NCA), Vodafone and the Ministry.

I have been reading a lot of articles and blog posts on broadband the past week and it is one of those blog post by my twitter friend @Kwabena that pushed me to write this post and I am going to be very blunt in this one.

I am tempted to believe that Ghana is not serious about widespread broadband adoption and seriously, I am increasingly getting irritated at the idea of lagging behind many countries for not acting when time was appropriate. As I said earlier, I have read many articles about broadband this week and I continue to read. With all the broadband available in the United States, they have released a broadband plan. Can you imagine? They already have about 80% penetration of what I will term true broadband, yet they still want more. The catch phrase for the US Broadband Plan is “100million squared” - get 100Mb/s broadband into 100 million homes by 2020 - and they think it is NOT an overly ambitious goal. We do not even have 0.256Mb/s into more than 20,000 homes yet but we are complacent. If the United States are not being complacent about broadband adoption, why do we still sit here and do nothing. Finland has taken it a step further. Finland has just passed a law making access to broadband a legal right for Finnish citizens. By July 2010, every person in Finland, which has a population of around 5.3 million, will have the guaranteed right to a one-megabit per second broadband connection.

This may be a lot of noise to the ears of many because we do not really understand the importance of broadband. Of course not! If we did, the citizenry would be pushing government hard for it, just like a whole parliamentary caucus could desert their duties and ask for justice for a party member who decided to make an irresponsible comment on air and was ’swiftly’ dealt with. Did they not get the ‘justice’ they wanted? They did. Why can they and the others not do that for a just cause for once. Since I am biased towards the Internet, let us say, why can they not go on one of their ‘virtual strikes’ to demand from government to provide affordable broadband to at least 60% of Ghanaian homes by 2015 and I am being very generous here.

Let me run a little statistic by readers. A BBC map titled “Visualising the Net” shows that in 1998, Ghana was in the same group (0-5%) as Morroco in terms of Internet penetration but we have remained where we are and Morocco has moved on to have increased penetration rate. In fact it has the highest rate (31% +) in Africa, looking at the graph. What is stopping us from achieving higher penetration rates.

Now, let me break it down since I want everyone reading this article to understand what broadband is, its benefits and explain the issues in detail.

What is broadband?

Broadband Internet access, often shortened to just broadband, is called “high-speed” access to the Internet, because it usually has a high rate of data transmission. This is typically contrasted with dial-up access which is only limited to 0.056Mb/s and with the advent of constant improvement in technology on a daily basis, dial-up has virtually become an obsolete Internet technology but still relevant.

Broadband benefits

After reading an article “What would happen if the Internet collapsed?“, I understood clearly just what the country was missing for not having widespread broadband. In the most unlikely event that the Internet collapsed, it will have the most disastrous consequences on especially countries that depend on the Internet for e-commerce, research, health care, education and many more. Countries like Ghana will remain largely unaffected (directly) because Ghana does not really have a presence on the Internet. But Ghana would also suffer as the trade and aid we depend upon from other connected countries decreases. This is just how much we are loosing for not getting connected to the Internet (broadband).

Let me explain the benefits a bit more, this time directly for everyone to understand. Broadband aides in attracting and retaining businesses. It has increased opportunities for distance learning and helping people access government information online from far and near without having to physically travel to the government agencies. It has aided tourism and increased to access to, and quality of health care delivery.

It is helping people to connect in amazing ways. Twitter and facebook have become very interesting social networking tools helping people make new social connections, meeting old school mates and even business connections. A BBC story explains how Indians are finding love online. It is somewhat laughable but come to think of it, the Internet will help more and more people find love provided people can reveal their real identities and be able to protect their privacy online. I bet a lot more people have already found love on the Internet in Ghana, but wont say because people tag the Internet as some ‘evil’. Well, it is a necessary (and an important) evil. The earlier we adapt to it, the better. With broadband, we can make video calls for nothing and chat without the net going off and on. There are challenges but they are not insurmountable.

As a country, increased broadband penetration will increase the level of economic activity. A 2009 World Bank Information and Communications for Development report has analyzed the impact of broadband on growth in 120 countries from 1980 to 2006, showing that each 10 percentage points of broadband penetration results in 1.21% increase in per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in developed countries, and 1.38% increase in developing countries thus Broadband has more impact in developing than developed countries. This means the effect is felt even more in developing countries. The report goes on to further states that a 10 percentage point in mobile phones penetration has less effect on GDP of developing countries (0.8%). This underscore how important broadband is to developing countries.

There are many more benefits of broadband but can we realistically say that we are enjoying these benefits? No. Because, as a country, we do not seem to have a plan of action to push forward the broadband agenda, but rather we allow companies like Vodafone to dictate to us how we should adopt broadband.

Vodafone

We have left vodafone off the hook and thrown up our hands in despair as if there was nothing we could do to salvage the deteriorating situation. Vodafone have continued to deliver very poor services to consumers of their broadband service and we cannot seek any redress. We simply do not know where or whom to complain to. Not even vodafone’s own call centres comes to our rescue. They actually work, but, nobody picks up. And when you manage to get through to one of the landlines, someone picks up and gives you the ’stupid’ response - “call 101″ and when you tell them nobody picks up, they simply tell you off in their usually very bad customer service manner. Are we saying we cannot do something about this?

When I heard that vodafone was putting up busyinternet-like cafes in Ghana, I was truly troubled because it has the potential of pushing many of the Internet cafes out of business and I think this is an issue the regulators must seriously take a look at. So far, there are four of these in Accra alone, I have seen one in Koforidua and Ho. There is also one in Tamale. I believe they have been replicated in other regional capitals as well. This is simply anti-competitive. Instead of concentrating efforts at giving valued but affordable services to subscribers, the choose to put up new cafes that i predict will disrupt the market yet wont do well. With the kind of services they offer clients, I am so sure they wont do well with this cafe initiative too. Who advised them? He should have told them first to improve their services and “all other things would follow”. Coupled with poor services, are their very high broadband prices. That must be checked.

Regulation

I am very dissapointed with the NCA for watching and letting things go the way the have. Partly, they are to blame for how far we have come. I am sure there are laws that regulate what kind of services telecommunications providers must provide in order not to be anti-competitive. Can the NCA realistically say they have done what is necessary? I dare say no because if they did, we would not be where we are now. As for the Ministry of Communications, the least said, the better. It is time the Ministry and the NCA starts playing coordinating roles aimed at developing a broadband agenda for Ghana. There are current efforts spearheaded by the private sector with support from many industry stakeholders.

The GhanaConnect initiative

GhanaConnect is a platform for stakeholders in the ICT industry with the aim of ensuring broadband growth by means of public seminars, workshop and implementation of mechanisms to ensure accessible and affordability of broadband connection for all. GhanaConnect seeks to help with policy and strategy development and implementation. The current effort is to help develop a Broadband Strategy based on the Telecom and ICT Policies, geared towards making broadband accessible and affordable.

Their meetings have identified three (3) key areas that require action if broadband is to be made accessible and affordable. These are; cost of broadband connection, access to personal computers and the cost of customer premise equipments (CPE).

I call on all well meaning Ghanaians to support initiatives as this and help move the country forward broadband-wise.

I rest my case.
February 11, 2010
16:45
Facebook driving ICT adoption in Africa?
» ‎ ICTlog.net

I read ICTworks, a very informative blog all the time. Earlier this week I saw a blog post titled “facebook is driving ICT adoption in Africa” which inspired this blog post. My intentions are to interrogate that statement and ask whether it is not the increasing use of smart phones that has increase facebook adoption or the other way round or it is a rather more complex web.

I have been following with keen interest how people in Ghana are adopting facebook, twitter and other social networking tools and ICT in general. Last year checkfacebook published a month by month statistics on how people are adopting facebook and it showed an increasing rate. In November, Ghana had 277,600 facebook users, 68.7% of which are males and the rest female. Of this number, about 48% are between the ages of 18-24 and 34% for ages 25-34. In October, it had below 200,000 facebookers from Ghana.

These statistics gave me an idea the rate of increase of ICT adoption. But upon interrogating the issue further, I realised that I may be wrong. People are making decisions to buy smartphones because they would like to get on the facebook train, update their statuses and tweet or use one social networking platform or the other. Or shall I say people are making decisions to get onto facebook because they have some smart phone or the other?

So, facebook may actually be driving the use of smartphones and not necessarily ICT. ICT’s are far broader than that and even though i conceed that it will have a long term effect on ICT adoption, government and organisations need to do more to drive ICT adoption.

By the end of last year, the total Internet penetration of Ghana is still about 4.0% and broadband penetration is less than 0.1%. There are less than 100,000 PCs in Ghana and the ICT skills level is nothing to write home about. Government ICT systems are infantile and companies/organisations are still struggling to deploy IT systems. Educational institutions are still teaching old out-of-date curriculla and more.

And oh, I forgot that Internet is very expensive and highly unrealiable in Ghana and most parts of Africa. If the rate at which these indicators were increasing was was commensurate with facebook adoption, I would conclude that Africa is adopting ICT. Unfortunately, this is not the case. This is not to belittle however, the immense contributions the mobile industry or should I say facebook is making towards ICT adoptions.

In order not to delve into the more complicated area of ICT adoption which involves amongst other things, use of ICT equipments, intensity of use of connectivity solutions and intensity of computer use and skills levels, I would simply add that we are at the risk of reducing the digital divide debate to a mobile adoption instead of ICT adoption. Can we realistically say that mobile adoption equals ICT adoption? I say no but it will be great to read your thoughts and criticisms.
February 10, 2010
13:05
Glo readies to launch in March
» ‎ ICTlog.net

Competition in the telecommunications industry is set to further increase as Glo prepares to launch in March this year. The media and marketing campaigns have already started with several mini billboards carrying photos of Ghanaian celebrities endorsing the Glo brand with the “like never before” slogan.

Glo will be exceeding my expectations if they can introduce value added services and revolutionalize prices downwards. As things stand now, the various internet packages available are simple too expensive, unreliable or irregular. The mobile industry will also be given a major boost if Glo can introduce more innovative products and reduced prices that can see users trooping to their network.

I am also hoping that Glo will put more of their resources into corporate social responsibility, for eg. building technology centres for schools and communities instead of spending on beauty pageants. All they need to do is to get the media at the launch of these initiatives and the media will do the publicity.

There are interesting times are ahead and I am so looking forward to them.
October 19, 2009
18:05
My twitter account is suspended!
» ‎ ICTlog.net

This weekend was a bad one for me because I had my twitter account suspended and for what reason, I will tell you. As far as I am concerned I did not think I had breached or violated any of the twitter rules, so this really came to me as a surprise. But I did, well, not knowing. I have however submitted a request to the twitter team and still awaiting a response from them and I hope they do.

To think that I have to wait for up to a whole month is really something and why would I not be edgy when the twitter team is telling me they have only a staff number of seven (7) and may take a long time to respond to me.

I really wanted to do a little tweeting on Saturday night, so I did the first tweet and decided to retweet a google work from home employment opportunity for people leaving in Canada and the US which I found interesting. Thinking and researching more on this several hours after the account suspension, I found out this was just a scam I fell for. Now, I look like a real fool for getting my twitter account suspended. At first, I thought it was some kind of a joke but reality struck me when after sleeping over it, nothing happened. Too bad but it seems I can do nothing until the small twitter team can restore my account back to me. I hope they do because it will be such a shame.

Some simple advice to you folks out there, watch out whom you retweet!

UPDATE: About 26 days without twitter, my account has been released to me. Well, they said it was a mistake! I wonder which mistake…
16:38
Why must our own ccTLD (.gh) cost as much as $42.66?
» ‎ ICTlog.net

As part of my research with the Diplo Foundation, I am required to present a case study of the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) and Ghana’s (.gh domain space) comes handy. I found that registering for a .gh domain is cumbersome and the price is ridiculously high. Seriously, I wont know the reason why it is so in the case of Ghana and moreover, it does not make any marketing sense.

First of all, whilst a generic top-level domain (gTLD) - for example, .com, .net, .edu - costs just around $9 per year, a .gh is almost 5 times expensive ($42.66). Even though many Ghanaians are generally willing to have a .gh domain names, they would rather go for the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) because the ccTLDs are simply too expensive. Only last year, it cost $35 and one would have thought that if there are proposed changes in price, it would be downward but this is obviously not the case. Why wouldn’t I chose to register a .net domain instead. Moreover, the .gh is not being marketed as it should. Many organisations would like to register these domains but they cannot even tell where to register them or in case they do have to go through a cumbersome process of registering them.

I saw a comment which sought to relate a ccTLD to a “made in Ghana good” on the public participation site of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and I absolutely agree with that. This certainly gives Ghanaians some form of identity on the web and I think it is absolutely necessary that the authorities in charge have a re-look at marketing the ccTLDs and reducing the prices.

Where to get a .gh domain name

The Ghana Network Information Center (ghNIC) was set up in 1997 and incorporated in 2003 as a not-for-profit company under the laws of Ghana to carry on the work of providing Network services for the development of network infrastructure and managing the .gh domain space but has been relatively ineffective in doing so. The current structure is for ghNIC to manage the .gh domain space administratively and Network Computer Services (NCS) which is the company Dr. Nii Narku Quaynor an Internet poineer and a Jon Postel Award winner, to manage the .gh domain space technically.

GhNIC adopted the hierarchical structure of namimg such as a .com.gh even though there are instances of the flat structure of naming domains such as .gh.
October 02, 2009
21:16
Impact of IXPs in Africa
» ‎ ICTlog.net
Below are the conclusions of a report I was heavily involved in its production. I believe that some of the dynamics have changed since we first worked on it, for example, traffic on the Ghana Internet Exchange is now being monitored. However, the conclusions are still very valid. I hope you enjoy reading.

Africa’s Internet Exchange Points score well on lowering latency and local download speed but did not contribute to lowering of end-user costs, says new study.

Those promoting Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) in Africa (and Balancing Act was one of them) made several broad arguments. They would enable cost savings as a larger proportion of traffic is exchanged using local rather than international bandwidth; They would improve access speeds for users and cut down delays in downloading through reducing latency. They would create revenue opportunities because they allow easier hosting of local domains and improved access speeds make certain types of applications possible. Thirteen years after the first IXP was launched in Johannesburg a research report has been published assessing their impact.

The purpose of this research entitled “Impact of IXPs – A review of the experiences of Ghana, Kenya and South Africa” commissioned by OSI was to look at the evidence for these three different kinds of impact outlined above. Crucially, whether the cost-savings IXPs may or may not have made helped local ISPs to pass on price changes to the end-user.

The proportion of local traffic going via a local IXP in Africa varies from 10-60%, depending on the scale of the market involved and the level of development in that market. Therefore three African countries were selected that fell at different points of development along this spectrum.

The researchers looked at a combination of the following as measures of impact: the price to end-users and the views of operators on price reductions; changes in access speeds; whether local content, hosting and applications had grown; and other external which may have had an effect. The core of the report is three case studies covering Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.

The conclusions drawn from the three country case studies were as follows:
- Even where the proportion of local traffic going via the IXP was high, as in the case of South Africa with 60% in 2008, operators claimed that savings made in bandwidth costs were insignificant. However, in this case, the cost savings did benefit Tier 2 ISPs who only had to pay to connect to one point (the IXP) rather than to several other providers. Where the Internet sector has been divided, as in Ghana, it has not been possible to gain the full cost advantages of a unified, single IXP.
- The original cost saving arguments for IXPs were predicated on there being a substantial difference between local, national and international wholesale charges. Since IXPs have been introduced, reductions in SAT3 bandwidth prices mean that in some cases national bandwidth costs may be the same or more than international bandwidth costs on a distance basis: for example, in Nigeria, it is cheaper to send traffic from Lagos to Sessimbra in Portugal than it is to send the equivalent amount of traffic from Lagos to Abuja. With the arrival of even cheaper fibre capacity in 2009 and 2010, this closing of prices will be a challenge for IXPs wanting to attract local traffic. But just as international prices have come down, so local and national prices will have to come into line with them. For IXPs to remain cost-effective, ISPs will need to press for lower national bandwidth charges.
- Since the retail cost of Internet subscription charges (and cyber-café access costs) in Ghana and Kenya has fallen since the introduction of IXPs, it could be argued that whatever cost reductions IXPs made for ISPs, they were passed on to subscribers or users. But since these reductions were also made by ISPs that were not IXP members as well, it is unlikely that they were as a result of savings from IXPs. In South Africa, dial-up charges have changed little over the past ten years and DSL charges have fallen since their introduction in 2003, well after the introduction of JINX. Again this makes it unlikely that any cost savings were connected with the existence of an IXP. Ghanaian and South African providers argue that cost savings were passed on to end users in the form of improved quality of service. But it is clear that cost savings from the IXP process were not passed on to end users except as part of the wider process of competition between operators.
- Whilst IXPs may have resulted in cost savings for the end user, the most significant factors have been: the ending of the international traffic monopoly (in Kenya), increased levels of competition and dramatic reductions in international bandwidth costs. For example in South Africa, international bandwidth as a percentage of total costs fell from 60% in 2003 to 45% in 2008. However, there is a direct link between IXP participants, their ISP associations and the bringing about of the factors listed above. For example in Ghana, GISPA has been instrumental in getting a special, low-cost deal on SAT3 bandwidth and in Kenya, TESPOK was at the forefront of the liberalisation process.
- Access speeds appear to have improved but it is difficult to separate the impact of improved national and international links from the speed advantage delivered by the IXP. Furthermore, as international bandwidth has come down in price, end users have had access to faster download speeds.
- Whilst the volume of traffic going through IXPs in Kenya and South Africa has increased dramatically, even these increased volumes have to a large extent been overshadowed by increases in international bandwidth. Indeed local traffic has fallen as a proportion of overall traffic in South Africa. There is no traffic measurement at the Ghana IXPs so it is not possible to say what has happened either in terms of the proportion of local traffic or the overall growth of traffic at the IXPs.
- Likewise the growth in local content and its use by end users has been eclipsed by a much wider interest in international content. As international fibre has become cheaper, it has been easier for operators to supply Internet users more cheaply. As a result, the number of people using the Internet has gone up. Although local content has grown in all three countries, the majority of use (particularly web mail access) remains international. For example, Facebook and You Tube are amongst the top ten sites accessed in African countries analysed by Alexa.com. However, this growth in Internet use has also benefited a small number of local sites. IXPs have supported the introduction of new local services and applications: for example in Kenya, the implementation of online tax reporting by the Kenya Revenue Authority and the availability of freeware hosted by the University of Nairobi.
The Impact of IXPs – A review of the experiences of Ghana, Kenya and South Africa was written by Charles Amega-Selorm, Muriuki Mureithi, Dobek Pater and Russell Southwood.

Source: Balancing Act news update
15:24
spam, spam, spam!
» ‎ ICTlog.net

I thought I was the only angry one until I saw the following comments from a friend on facebook.

MTN short code 2010 is driving me nuts - one txt to MTN to try n win a lovely KIA and all I get back is a minimum of twenty texts per day, at dawn and at nite - bummer! should’ve listened to my MAMA “mikee……no good thing free n no free thing good.

To be honest, I really wanted to win that KIA as well so I also sent the text and then I was involved in this whole game I was not ready to play. I played it four times and realised my credit was almost gone so I decided that I would never play again, only to realise I was in for the biggest trouble of my mobile life. My phone was subject to what i term mobile spam. Let me try and retrieve some of the text messages and share with you. Check the following out;

MTN: Extend your holiday - win our huge cash jackpot and give yourself a non-stop break from! Reply HOLIDAY.

Since I decided not to play again, I would receive hundreds of messages relating to the 2010 World Cup as punishment for trying in the first place. Can someone tell them I am no longer interested? In their desperation to get me to spend more credits on this, they send me the next text message;

MTN: GASPER, We miss you! Return to the game and win 100,000 GHC. One winner chosen this weekend. Change your life. Reply MISS

Can you imagine, MTN misses me. Is it because they want more of my credits huh! And oh, just as I finished typing the last sentence, I received another one. Well, if I did not want to win that KIA, I wont be in such a predicament.

There are similar stories for ZAIN and tiGO too. But seriously, it is about time we take them on for all this spamming. Sometimes I receive very serious text messages I do not pay attention to because the spams are just too much. Sometimes, I simply do not see the real texts because my inbox is filled to the brim I have to spend precious time deleting these spam messages. I am tired about them, I don’t know about you?
September 28, 2009
1:11
Facebook ‘Waakye’ Party rocks Accra, what to expect next…
» ‎ ICTlog.net

Technology is surely changing the way we do things - good and bad, the reason some school of thought is of the view that technology is neutral. I will not talk about technology neutrality today but rather share my views on the facebook phenomenon and how it is gradually catching up in Ghana, and why I think it is for all the right reasons.

Elsewhere, social media such as facebook, twitter, youtube and blogs are used in several ways. For example I got several twitter messages from someone on the role France played in the post election violence in Gabon. In his own small way, he was making his voice heard on developments in his country. You can also do same. Twitter, youtube and facebook played a major role in bringing the attention of the International community to developments in Iran during the elections that brought President Ahmadinejad back into office. In the particular case of Iran, even though twitter and facebook were blocked, it did not deter people from working around that to get their messages across and they did thanks to technology. So this social media phenomena has literally empowered the voiceless to speak out.

Apart from citizen journalism which is one of the many uses of social media, there are several other uses people put them to. It is a great tool for marketing and PR as well, and speaking of PR, the three Ministers of Information were recently on facebook discussing government business via facebook. They said the were trying to reach out to another constituency of Ghanaians and even though I have personal issues with that, I think they got their messages across.

Perhaps one of the most unorthodox uses I have seen people use it for is the Facebook ‘waakye‘ party I attended today. It was totally mind blowing to see several hundreds of Ghanaian youth throng Labone, a surburb of Accra to meet virtual friends, have fun and above all eat ‘Waakye’, a nutritious and delicious Ghanaian delicacy made from rice and beans. It was simply amazing the kind of people I saw there. So facebook became the enabler if I may of organising this new generation of Ghanaians, full of energy and zeal. Now, I kept wondering to myself what next to expect of social media such as these in Ghana. I just think there are countless possibilities and I just hope we can take advantage of them to empower the people more.

I understand there will be a Facebook Awards Night soon and I don’t have any ideas on what that is but I guess I can’t complain so long as people get to use the Internet more and adapt to changing trends. This is already encouraging because for the past three months I have been checking the statistics on unique Facebook accounts at Checkfacebook.com and found out that the number of facebook accounts have increased from 100,000 to 249,060 as of Friday 25th September, 2009. This means people are using the Internet more, and seriously I don’t care whether they are using mobile phones or the PC. I just dream of a day when everyone has access to some form of Internet connection. I feel I have limitless possibilities with the Internet, I hope you do too?
September 22, 2009
14:39
Today is OneWebDay!
» ‎ ICTlog.net

Be it coincidence or fate, yesterday was a very interesting day in Ghana because it was the Centenary of Ghana’s Founding President Dr Kwame Nkrumah and the Internet Community in Ghana had a rare privilege of welcoming Sir Tim Berners-Lee. I am privileged to be a part of both events.

Dr Kwame Nkrumah

At the Berners-Lee event, which took place at the Advanced Information Technology Institute also called the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence, one quote by the man at the centre of the whole discussion caught my attention. This was in response to a question posed by Dorothy Gordon, Director General of the AITI-KACE on why he made WWW a free and open product.

The only way to keep ONE WEB is when you keep it FREE and OPEN.

That was his response and he went to say that if he had priced it, we would be having MMM, KKK, PPP and stuff like that which makes a lot of economic sense. Eventually, many more entrants would have entered the space and saturated the market. The One Web reality we have now would not have happened. This is how noble the man can actually be.

As it turns out, today is OneWebDay and it is worth noting that this man’s invention is arguably the greatest internet tool and has contributed immensely to bridging the digital divide. Below is a video I saw on the Ghana Connect website inviting more video responses on how the web is helping overcome the digital division.

Well, I was able to take a picture with him even though too many people wanted to say something to the man :-). Remember how government officials and MP’s were trying hard to get a photo glimpse of Obama when he was in Ghana? Peace out!
September 15, 2009
21:52
Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee meets Internet Community in Ghana
» ‎ ICTlog.net

Isn’t it fascinating that I can also set up my own website and blog for free…:-) Now, do all you bloggers and Internet users in general know how this great technological invention called the WWW (in other words World Wide Web) started? Do you know it’s history? I bet some of you have no ideas. Well, if you are in Ghana then you are fortunate because the man at the center of the development of the WWW will be right here and you will have a rare opportunity to see one of the greatest living geniuses of our time. His name is Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, founder of WWW.

The wikipedia describes him as follows;

He is a British engineer and computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web, making the first proposal for it in March 1989. On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet. In 2007, he was ranked Joint First, alongside Albert Hofmann, in The Telegraph’s list of 100 greatest living geniuses. Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web’s continued development. He is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, and is a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

The Kofi Annan ICT Center will be filled to capacity at 2:00pm on Monday 21st September, 2009 with many experts from the Internet Community in Ghana. I will be there to see him and possibly take a picture shot with him:-). Let me know if you would be there, so that I can look out for you too.
September 14, 2009
4:42
What is this localisation?
» ‎ ICTlog.net

Maker Faire Africa (MFA) took place in Accra, Ghana about a month ago and i must say it was a huge success despite the isolated cases of little thefts here and there. I was amazed at some of the exhibits on display at the faire; I can’t forget the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology student who built his room furniture out of plastic water bottles. Awesome! There were many others; the Accra Polytechnic students who built from scratch an FM transmitter which was broadcasting the event live from the Kofi Annan ICT Center; shoes made out of discarded plastic bags and several others. It was an amazing sight to behold. Just check out the video compilation from the event.

My most memorable time at the event was however not one of the these, unfortunately..:). On the second day of the three day event, a session caught my attention and it was none other than a localisation workshop. Frankly, I did not know much about localisation before this, so, I was curious. What is this localisation some software developers I know make all the noise about anyway? I was going to find out.

Then my interest was heightened by the sight of one of the finest software developers in Ghana, Henry Addo of Kasahorow and Ushahidi entering the side room of the Kofi Annan ICT Center. Well, i had no other option than to enter as well. I did find out what was localisation was all about and was not disappointed at all and rightly so because all my misconceptions/ignorance about the subject were laid to rest.

My checks show that there are several definitions of localisation but, Wikipedia defines it sometimes called internationalisation in computing as a means of adapting computer software to different languages and regional differences.

I am an ardent fan of using local languages while chatting with friends online. I can write Asante Twi well enough for people to understand and same goes for my native Ewe language but my problem has always been some of the characters in our local languages. I have wondered for so long when we will also have our own keyboard but some brilliant minds were already at work getting a software keyboards out and so they did. I have heard of Kasahorow but never really paid attention to it until their side room session at MFA and have become an ardent fan. I will look out for them on twitter:).

Kasahorow (also meaning many languages) is living to its name by covering several languages already. If you speak some local language, you should look out for it on Kasahorow to download because it may have been covered or in the pipeline. Akan, Ewe, Hausa and Ga have already been developed and there is more to come. This certainly makes our efforts to generate more local content a reality.

Kuddos to Henry and colleagues at Kasahorow and by extention the African Network for Localisation (ANLoc) and all you fellas out there, help me say congratulations for these efforts.
September 10, 2009
14:52
Can immigration personnel check the contents of my laptop?
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I was recently in a well organised cybercrime training workshop by the Government of Ghana at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel which saw participation from several stakeholders in the ICT industry in Ghana. While i enjoyed very much the discussions that went on during the workshop, and I am sure I will later share most of them on this blog, I was tempted to probe further one particular statement a lawyer made which I want to discuss here and hopefully you can help me out.

This lawyer, and from his presentation a learned one, said that immigration personnel in Ghana are not adequately trained to search laptops and their electronic contents. Now, that raised my red flags and warranted the following question from me; Can the immigration personnel on duty actually check the contents on my laptop at the border or point of entry?

I ask this question because it raises serious concerns about people’s freedoms. I cannot pretend to know the law but I sure know that Freedom of Speech, rights of privacy and others are upheld by our constitution. So what law would allow the immigration officer to search the electronic contents of my laptop? Don’t I have any rights to my privacy especially when there is no reasonably suspicion hanging over my head? I think I do and will definitely like to test this is court. The Constitution of the Republic of Ghana states in Article 18 (2) that “No person shall be subjected to interference with the privacy of his home, property, correspondence or communication except in accordance with law and as may be necessary in a free and democratic society for public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the protection of the rights or freedoms of others”.

On the other hand, what if some miscreant (peadophile) decides to come into this country with nude pictures and videos of children on his laptop? How can we stop such persons - without infringing on the privacy of others with genuine confidential files on their laptops - who can upload these contents on the Internet from here in Ghana since he will be difficult to trace.

If indeed there are laws that allow these officials to search the electronic content on my laptop, how can we make sure my private correspondence, financial records, medical records and business records are not seen by anyone during this so called search? I want answers to these questions.
August 31, 2009
17:15
IPv6: Opportunities for Developing Countries to “play”
» ‎ ICTlog.net

Imagine a new world in which cars have wireless devices installed and can communicate from any part of this world with other wireless enabled devices; fridges can be controlled from the office; and robots at home can be prompted to do an emergency laundry while their owners are still at work. This world, fortunately or unfortunately seems to be closer to us than we think. One tool that will be the great enabler of this kind of world is what is called Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Like it or not, it has come to stay and for good reasons too. Is it of any benefit to us? I say yes but just as the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), may create further dimensions of the digital divide.

Internet Protocol (IP) may be simply defines as the rule or method by which data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet. Each computer (known as a host) on the Internet has at least one IP address that uniquely identifies it from all other computers on the Internet. The first widely used version of IP is the IPv4. Despite its advantages, IPv4 came with its problems; addresses were not distributed equitably between the various regions and contributed to creating the digital divide. However, the new Internet protocol (IPv6) presents an opportunity for developing countries to participate further in the global information economy through equitable addressing policies. This will no doubt help provide leapfrogging opportunities for these countries and hence bridge the digital divide.

According to research commissioned by the Internet Governance Project, IPv6 promises to “unlock a range of opportunities for network operators, in terms of service provision continuity, growth, and innovation on one hand, and network management efficiencies and savings on the other. For hardware manufacturers IPv6 is key enabler of smart grids, intelligent buildings, sensor networks, and other hardware- (and application-) dependent innovations”. Demand for new hardware will grow with the deployment of IPv6. The promise of a virtually unlimited address space is expected to spur innovation in monitoring, tracking and remote management software and applications for developers. Generally, IPv6 offers simpler and more resource efficient infrastructure management and routing.

But without the development of equitable address allocation policies, developing countries may not participate as much as reap the full benefits described above. That is why it was very important for the AfriNIC and LACNIC communities, which account for majority of developing countries to initiate through a multi-stakeholder approach, the development of global policy for allocating the remaining IPv4 address space. This is a strong indication that the developing countries are ‘ready to play game’.

IPv6 adoption and transition are important challenges worldwide but more importantly in Africa and other developing regions, there is the perception of lack of demand from the users - lack of end-users applications, perception of huge costs related to transitioning, lack of awareness on real IPv6 development cases, lack of transparent compatibility with IPv4, people are still struggling to properly deploy IPv4 Networks – extensive usage of NAT especially in the Africa region. However, statistics show that the Africa region is slowly adopting with 33% of allocations announced on the global routing table (46% in APNIC, 33.6% in ARIN, 32% in LACNIC, 49% RIPE. In Africa, South Africa has the highest adoption level with about 26% followed by Kenya with 6%. Ghana has just 1% adoption.

What AfriNIC is trying to do in the Africa region is to create awareness, organise training workshops one of which took place in Ghana recently and provide laboratories for live IPv6 practicals. It has also created an environment within the technical community to exchange IPv6 initiatives throughout the continent through afripv6-discuss@afrinic.net. AfriNIC is also supporting research and building v6 ready platform infrastructure. These initiatives and more will sure help the developing regions bridge the digital divide.

The AfriNIC CEO said during the Internet Governance Forum in Hydradad, India, that ”Just as many developing economies have leapfrogged the extensive wired telephone network with wireless, new networks and developing economies can bypass IPv4-only networks. Instead, they can incorporate IPv6 from the start, avoiding much of the transition cost. It is essential, however, that equipment vendors provide IPv6 upgrades and functionality at minimal extra cost, and that those whose products do not yet provide IPv6 support should develop upgrades without delay.”

The developing world can indeed take advantage of this new protocol as a leverage to bridging the digital divide, but, despite all the gains made by the developing regions to participate in the ‘next big thing’ of the Internet, there is one study to show that there is some correlation between GDP and adoption of IPv6. This means inherently that lower income countries will adopt less of IPv6. The study further indicated that “in particular, the 65% of the world population in countries without extensive Internet infrastructure experience even greater inequality in IPv6 addressing resource distribution than in IPv4 address distribution. A mitigating factor is the sheer number of IPv6 addresses, which will decrease the likelihood of hoarding by richer or more powerful nations”. Governments of developing world need to build infrastructure, and adopt best practices in terms of regulations and understand the IPv6 debate. With these in place, I am of the view that we will not be talking about IPv6 further creating another dimension of the digital divide, we shall be talking about how to compete with the developed world.

The new Internet protocol provides new opportunities for the developing world to participate in the global information society through equitable allocation policies. AfriNIC has for instance been working on encouraging adoption in the Africa region but countries in the regions need to participate in this transition, else, further dimensions of the digital divide will be created.

More references

IPv6 BGP Geopolitical Analysis [online]. Available from [www.caida.org] [Accessed 8 July, 2009]

Mueller, Milton (2005). Competition in IPv6 Addressing: A Review of the Debate [online]. Available from [www.internetgovernance.org] [Accessed 8 July, 2009]

Akplogan, Adiel (March 2009). What is AfriNIC, IPv4 exhaustion & IPv6 transition [online]. Available from [www.icta.mu] [Accessed 8 July, 2009]

IPv6 Growth Increases 300 Percent in Two Years (2008), [online]. Available from [www.nro.net] [Accessed 8 July, 2009]