Category Archives: Editorial

Pitching A Brighter Future for Liberia

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Blair Glencorse is in Liberia working on the Accountability Lab, which aims to find answers to problems of accountability. He also started pitch salons, a cross between speed networking and TED Talks.

 

 

While walking around Monrovia recently, I asked a Liberian friend if he could imagine his country as a place where resources were managed sustainably, women were treated equally, corruption was fought consistently and social enterprise was seen by young people to provide real opportunity. “Where on earth would we start?” he replied. We started several days later when I invited him to Liberia’s second Pitch Salon- held again in partnership with the brilliant and generous iLab Liberia and with the support of the RSA- where the Pitch Salon recipe of great ideas, brilliant people and unique format once more led to some fantastic discussions.

 

As always, the pitchers gave an “elevator pitch” for an organization, cause or idea that is engaging, accessible to an informed listener and has the potential to change the world for the better. The pitches this time around were as diverse as they have ever been at a Pitch Salon. Pandora Hodge, a serial entrepreneur in the making, talked about her idea for a student-run art house cinema in Monrovia; Nora Bowier, an environmentalist and community-rights advocate pitched about her pioneering work on natural resource management around the country; Tom Gwagee, the image of a modern African businessman, discussed his idea for a Liberian bike factory using Dutch thinking and techniques; Maryealee Pennoh, a women’s rights activist, gave an impassioned speech about her idea for a summer camp for disadvantaged girls; and Robtel Pailey, an academic with a real understanding of practical problems, discussed “Gbagba” her book used to teach children about the dangers of corruption.

 

The audience of forty or so from across the private sector, government, civil society, media and donors-  and including many of the pitchers from the inaugural Liberian Pitch Salon- listened in, feasted on food from one of Monrovia’s favorite restaurants and provided advice and connections to the pitchers. Business cards were exchanged, funding possibilities were discussed and there was a real sense that the concepts were beginning to move towards realities. There are very few outlets for young Liberians to express their ideas in a collegial atmosphere to people who can really make them happen, and the Pitch Salons are beginning to fill this gap. In keeping with the concept, a film-maker at the event even suggested that the Salons themselves be recorded professionally and shown on Liberian television in the future so that the ideas can reach an even wider audience.

 

A few days later, I bumped into the same Liberian friend I had invited to the event, and asked him what he thought of the Pitch Salon experience. “I saw up-close the passion and creativity of Liberian youth” he said; “the question is not where we start, but why we haven’t started doing this earlier”.

 

Blair Glencorse is an RSA Fellow and was awarded a Challenge and a Catalyst Grant for the Pitch Salons. You can follow him on Twitter @blairglencorse

 

Liberia’s Technological Oasis: One Intern’s Experience at iLab Liberia

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Shira Khaminsky interned at iLab to teach an intro to branding and advertising course for small business owners. She studies at the University of Massachusetts and works as a Senior Editor of the school newspaper.

 

Before I arrived in Liberia, I got a few warnings. “Don’t ever use a memory stick twice,” a friend told me who’s been to the country a couple of times, explaining about viruses that fester in many Liberian computers. “If you need to get anything done on the internet,” he said, “bring a book to read while you wait for the pages to load.”

 

Expecting a technological desert, I was genuinely concerned about the withdrawal symptoms. How many hours would I survive without checking my email? Would I still be an effective, functioning member of society without access to Google 24/7? I doubted it.

 

Enter iLab, Liberia’s technological oasis, where I was fortunate enough to get an internship. Just five minutes in the building and my worries melted away. iLab’s computers operate on Ubuntu, meaning viruses are not a concern. And the satellite on the roof gives pretty much the same internet speed as back home. The iLab staff gave me a warm welcome. In addition to the technical stuff, like how to use Ubuntu, the staff volunteered to show me around some parts of Monrovia outside of iLab’s big yellow building. I could not have asked for better friends and tour guides for my time in Liberia.

 

 

Branding for Liberian businesses

I was to give a one-week course in branding and marketing for small businesses, with an emphasis on design. The goal was to get a group of people who want to grow their businesses, and give them some skills to help present themselves better, like designing business cards, ads, and brochures.

 

My own experience comes from my work as the editor-in-chief of a student newspaper. Working for a newspaper, you get to see both sides of the game: we regularly place and design ads from local businesses on our website and in print, advising them on how to best reach the market we can provide. But we also advertise our own services: soliciting local businesses to buy ads.
Julius Saye Kehnel, from Liberia’s Ministry of Commerce, got together a group of small business owners to attend my class. We did some pre-testing which included basic questions (“What is a computer?”) and creating Word documents using different font sizes and colors. 16 people came to the pre-test and the class had 15 spots. Although some people had issues with saving their documents on the desktops, and some of their test answers showed deep confusion about computers, I felt that it would be a shame to keep anyone out. We took 15 people, including a few who didn’t exactly pass the pre-test. I’m still not sure if this was the right decision.

 

Starting the course, reality sets in
I planned the five-day course: two days of conceptual work, two days of practical work on Scribus, an open source design program, and a test on the final day. Looking back, this was an ambitious plan. The first day of class it became clear to me that we wouldn’t be able to cover as much as I had hoped: many people struggled with logging into the computer because the password included both lower case and capital letters. I adjusted my plan to include more practical time using the program, and less time talking about marketing.

 

At the end of each 2-hour session, the students gave me feedback by filling out worksheets. On the first day, the most common comment on the worksheets was “Too fast.” Considering the fact that we didn’t even finish what I had in mind for the day, I was concerned. I decided to dedicate three days to Scribus instead of two.’
Unlearning what you’ve learned
Have you ever thought about the double-click? I mean, have you ever really thought about it? Both the physical action of it and the concept behind it? Can you remember the first time you did it? I can’t. At iLab, I watched Liberians in their 30s and 40s double-click for the first time in their lives. Computer illiteracy suddenly became a tangible thing.
There were a lot of lovely moments, too. On the second day I challenged the class: create the Liberian flag on Scribus and write “LIB” in big capital letters above it. After twenty minutes, one of the students created a flag that looked like it was flapping in the wind. Another student added some verses from the Liberian national anthem under her flag.

 

We spent only part of one day talking about marketing – specifically logos. We played a game in which people had to describe, without looking, various logos that they see on a daily basis. We discussed what makes a logo not only memorable, but also practical. Still, I could feel everyone inching towards their laptops – they wanted more practice time on Scribus. In the end, most students were able to create finished business cards, which they saved as PDFs and mailed to themselves (an impressive feat).

 

If I could do it again, I would devote one or two weeks to learning Scribus and an equal amount of time talking about and seeing examples of branding and marketing. One week just wasn’t enough. If I can swing it, I hope to go back to Liberia and to iLab, and spend more time with my students talking about the specific needs of their businesses. In the meantime, I’ve encouraged them to come back to iLab, use Scribus, and email me with any questions or just to show off their work.

Programming for Liberia: Excerpts from an iLab Intern

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Allan Martell interned at iLab for several months and taught intro and intermediate programming and video production courses. He is a native of El-Savador and is passionate about digital media for rural communities.

 

A Salvadorian in Liberia

I’ve been running trainings on computer programming for iLab Liberia over the past two and a half months. In this brief period, not only did I instruct five courses on programming, but I also learned about the promising future of programming for this country, as well as some of the challenges that Liberians will have to face in order to become programmers. I had my own challenges as an expat; and being a native Spanish speaker, having to teach in English wasn’t easy at times.

 

My home country is El Salvador, and I learned most of my English while studying my masters at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States. Two years ago, I didn’t even know where Liberia was on the map. I became interested in this country in the fall of 2010 when I took a class with professor Michael Best from Georgia Tech’s Computer Science department. Dr. Best led a project about post-conflict reconciliation in Liberia. By getting involved in his research I learned that Liberia and El Salvador share some key similarities, like extreme poverty and a recent civil war.

 

Teaching Programming
I came here with one mission: to teach classes on computer programming with Python. iLab Liberia decided to use Python because its syntax is fairly easy to learn.

 

My first task was to find out about the context in which I would be teaching. I was astonished to learn Liberian universities have no Computer Science programs. My co-workers had also warned me that due to civil war, the educational system had been virtually paralyzed for too long. Therefore, many people here have trouble understanding abstract concepts, which is a key skill for any programmer.

 

My first strategy was to draw lessons from my experience as a facilitator in El Salvador. Before leaving my country to study my masters, I had already gained two years of experience running trainings on video production for rural communities in El Salvador and Honduras. The background of rural communities in Central America resembles a lot what I’d heard about students in Liberia.

The main challenge in the trainings back home was to make sessions interactive. For that purpose, my co-facilitators and I conducted several activities that required the participants involvement, to the point of having them become the protagonists of each session. The overall goal for us as trainers was to move behind the scenes and let the participants do all the tasks. For any trainer, this methodology requires a lot of patience and time. I imagined this would be the two main skills I would need in Liberia, and I was proven right.

 

Based on my video production days, I planned sessions that would combine theory and practice at all times. I divided the contents of the class into very small pieces of theory, and I assigned at least one exercise for every piece so that students wouldn’t move forward without seeing their practical application of the current topic. This approach had its advantages and drawbacks. On the positive side, in-class exercises frequently allowed the students to see what the theory was about. On the downside, these exercises required more time than I originally expected.

 

Lessons

I left Liberia convinced that patience is key for any trainer. After all, students will ask the same questions many times, and will require a bit-by-bit explanation of complex topics. Many times I found that my programming students were totally capable of accomplishing the required exercises, but their fear of failing would stop them.

 

I also realized that the traditional classroom format doesn’t work as well in this country. Precisely because many students have problems with self-confidence, the format of classes, and tests doesn’t help to measure the skills acquired in class. The level of stress becomes too high often overwhelms the students. Then, the question that naturally arises is what are the alternatives to measure their learning if a traditional test does not capture their progress?

 

Instead of having a formal test every week, I think that reorienting classes around projects would better serve the goals of programming courses in Liberia. Students would be given a project description in the first session of each course. The document would outline a series of tasks that students can accomplish by using the contents of the training. While the tasks might make no sense during the first session, each new class should shed light about possible solutions to the stated problem. In this format, students would have to see each class as an exploratory experience where they have to actively question
themselves how to use the newly acquired knowledge to solve a puzzle, rather than just sit and listen.

Emerging Voices: Glencorse on Higher Education in Liberia

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Blair Glencorse is in Liberia working on the Accountability Lab, which aims to find answers to problems of accountability. This article has been cross-posted from the Council on Foreign Relations blog.


Under the leadership of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia and its international partners have focused on several governance priorities to bolster economic development and prevent a repeat of the brutal conflict of the past. Their reforms have included rooting out rampant corruption within the public sector, opening up government, streamlining business rules to attract investment, and consolidating management of natural resources. Indeed, Liberia was the first African state to comply with EITI rules governing extractive industries and the first West African country to pass a Freedom of Information Act to support more transparent government.

Among these issues, Liberia’s higher education sector may not seem a priority. But chronic accountability problems in colleges and universities are putting the sustainability of Liberia’s transition under threat. The country’s human capacity is very low; it ranks 182nd out of 187 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index and literacy is less than 60 percent. It is difficult to manage a state and society without effective institutions of higher education that can generate basic administrative and management knowledge over time.

 

Accountable universities are also important because Liberia has significant natural resources—a key driver of conflict in the past—that must be managed effectively and equitably. Beyond huge agricultural potential and large deposits of iron ore, rubber, gold, diamonds, and timber, significant amounts of oil were recently found off Liberia’s coast.

Governance of the extractive sector is already weak, as documented in detail by a recent Global Witness report. There were nearly 3,000 engineering students across the country this year, but just 30 were able to pass the necessary exams to graduate. This is hardly a sign that the necessary capacity is being developed to manage the country’s resources. A failure of higher educational institutions raises the likelihood that Liberia’s wealth will turn into a curse instead of a blessing.

 

It is also essential that current students—the next generation of leaders—understand the importance of accountable structures and behaviors, which they can then build upon and replicate at the national level. Earlier this summer, one university closed for three weeks after violent campus protests by students and a brawl with the administration when fees were increased without warning. Meanwhile, the country’s largest public institution of higher education, the University of Liberia, was racked by fierce riots between supporters of opposing political parties after student elections. Colleges and universities should be forums to learn about effective decision-making and responsible participation. Too often, though, they are not.

 

 

The endemic integrity challenges of the higher education system manifest themselves both at the top—in Liberia’s government—and at the bottom—in colleges and universities and among individuals within them. The Ministry of Education has not yet developed a strategy for the future of universities and colleges, while the body tasked with oversight—the National Commission on Higher Education—largely cannot effectively accredit institutions, set clear regulations, or enforce standards. Universities and colleges themselves rarely have strategic plans and are unable to follow regular reporting regimes.

Patronage and bribery by administrators, professors, and students are widely reported. Abuse of resources, teacher absenteeism, and sex for grades appear common, although data is minimal and there has been almost no systematic research into these problems. This structure endures because the corrupt dynamics have become entrenched and a “culture of silence” prevents reporting of problems and hence any constructive reform. When combined with a lack of resources, limited technology, and poor teaching quality, this produces woeful outcomes from Liberian higher education. Employers complain that some students graduate without even being able to write their names. The system, rather than generating knowledge and building integrity, actually teaches corruption and undermines capacity.

 

 

The Accountability Lab, an organization I founded recently to find new answers to problems of accountability in the developing world, is working with universities and civil society stakeholders to develop innovative solutions to these challenges. Over the past four months in Liberia, we have conducted preliminary research and discussions with a wide range of individuals—from government officials to students. This work has established that a new approach is needed to strengthen rules, understand problems, set benchmarks, and ensure credible punishments for illegitimate behaviors.

 

 

An approach of this type will have to be carefully integrated within wider reform efforts, and will take decades, not years. In the short term, clear rules and benchmarks could improve monitoring and generate more ethical behavior. This effort might include helping university administrations enforce codes of conduct for students and professors, and putting in place honors councils to encourage honesty and achievement among students.

 

 

To overcome the “culture of silence,” universities also need trusted and anonymous tools for reporting problems, supported by reformers within university administrations who are willing to address them. This would allow leaders to enforce rules based on evidence, firing professors who engage in corruption, for example.

 

 

Fortunately, higher education is garnering greater attention. Public university professors are receiving higher salaries, and a new education law provides for student loans. Liberia’s government is working with the World Bank and USAID to develop a strategy for higher education and provide trained professors.

 

Moreover, some administrators, professors, and students understand the need for reform and want to change the status quo. Liberia’s international partners and friends should work to support and encourage these reformers in order to build a higher education system that can prepare Liberians to successfully rebuild and develop their country.

Demographics and Usage – Feb 2012

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iLab recently evaluated their usage records from May 2011 to February 2012 to see who is using iLab and what parts of iLab they are using. Here is what we found:

Who uses iLab

By far the majority of iLab users consider themselves students. Since a user can select more than one way of describing themselves it’s possible that many of our users are students while they are also employed. Also, the Liberian education system is notoriously slow and students often have large gaps in their class schedule, so it’s possible that not everyone who considers themselves a student is actively taking class, but in the process of completing an education program. Entrepreneurs and IT professionals round out the top 3 places. Interestingly the least number of users are government and NGO staff. This may appear surprising since these two sectors are the largest sources of formal employment. However, unemployment and informal employment in Liberia are known to be quite high. To encourage those who are formally employed to come to iLab we hold a lot of our events after hours.

What events are people attending

When it comes to iLab events the mapping parties and TED talks are the clear leader. This is most likely because these are our longest running and most frequently offered events. Google technology events and our introduction to Free Open Source Software (FOSS) events are also quite popular. It should be noted that this graph represents the number of individuals that have attended 1 or more of the given events. If we were to count the number of repeat users TED talks and Mapping parties would be much higher. The graph on the left shows the number of users who have attended 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 or more events. This shows that mapping parties draw more repeats users. When looking at the numbers we do see that TED talks draw more first time users.  As we continue to offer events we hope to better capture the number of new and repeat users for all of our events.

Gender

Finally we end with a look at gender. Out of 335 users 278 (83%) were male and 57 (17%) were female. Quite a large discrepancy. We certainly do our best to encourage participation of both genders, but it seems, as is often the case around the world, participation by the fairer sex is lacking in the technology sector. iLab is currently talking with an organization about creating a curriculum specifically to target young ladies. We’re excited about this opportunity and hope it comes to fruition.

Raw Data

For those of you who want raw data to play with, like all good computer scientist would, please see this Excel File.

 

Thanks,

 

John.

Thank-you Letter from Columbia University

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Access to technology is a huge challenge for local Liberians. iLab Liberia in an effort to minimize this gap has used its hub as a single public point for techies and innovators to access the internet in Liberia.

 

Among the many beneficiaries of this initiative are Liberians, expatriates and other INGOs, foreign universities and institutes that use iLab’s facility to enhance their mission, programs and surveys.

 

Below is a thank-you letter from Columbia University as a testimony for the assistance ilab rendered while they were carryout a survey in Liberia.

 

 

SMS and Liberia: A Love Story

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These days technology just works. There’s no magic and there’s very little rocket science. You put in some 1s and 0s and get out 1s and 0s. It all works just as it should. The days are gone when bugs, actual insects, would chew their way through the computers wire and cause mayhem.

 

 

Now some of you right now are saying, “Yeah, but I still can’t figure out how to make my Facebook profile private.” That’s a user interface issue; the underlying technology is working perfectly. The layer that exposes that technology to you may be poorly designed, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss.

 

Technology, it hums along gloriously…. until certain assumptions no longer hold true. Such assumptions usually include constant electricity and constant Internet – two things that just don’t happen very often in Liberia. Thus what seems like a perfect combination – SMS technology and Liberia – has a few obstacles to overcome before riding off into the sun set happily ever after.

 

For us at Ushahidi Liberia, we wanted SMS and Liberia hit it off. SMS is a great way for people on the ground to send in reports of what’s really happening. All you need is a phone and a cell phone signal. Most places in the world have cell phone coverage, and more and more people have cell phones. The Ushahidi platform even has built-in support for SMS because it has worked so well in other deployments. Lets start off by getting to know a bit more about the compatibility of this couple – SMS and Liberia.

 

SMS, or Simple Messaging Service, is a GSM standard that uses extra bandwidth in the signaling path that controls call flow. The signaling path is used to tell a cell phone that a new call is coming in, that the call has been hung up, the number of the incoming call and so forth. Since the signaling path isn’t used when there is no phone call, phone companies realized they could add a messaging service on top of this unused signaling path – and thus SMS was born. Because the signaling path is only intended for short messages like, “incoming call +231-6-555-343”, SMS messages can only be 160 characters long.

 

Liberia is a small country in West Africa still recovering from a civil war that devastated the nation’s infrastructure. Despite the lack of power lines, power stations and any kind of hard-wired telecommunications infrastructure, Liberia now has a relatively robust cell phone network. While less than 1% of Liberians have access to the Internet, at least 20% own cell phones and even more have access to shared phones. SMS seems like a natural choice for Liberians to send messages to our Ushahidi Liberia sites, given that even the cheapest cell phones available in-country support SMS.

 

At this point things look good for our two lovebirds. A simple global standard for sending short messages and a country where about all their telecommunications infrastructure can handle is short messages. In fact, such a partnership has worked so well in other countries that the wonderful people at kiwanja.net created FrontlineSMS. FrontlineSMS is a program that turns your average laptop and a cell phone into an SMS gateway for routing incoming SMSs to the internet. By connecting a cell phone to a computer via a data cable, FrontlineSMS can intercept incoming SMS and automatically send them to a website of your choosing – an ideal matchmaker for SMS and Liberia.

 

However, it is here we encountered our first obstacle. Computers need power. You can get around this requirement for a few hours by using a laptop. Most laptops can reliably go 4 to 6 hours without power. Ushahidi Liberia’s first office used a diesel generator for electricity, like most Liberian workplaces that do not have access to a power grid. Diesel isn’t cheap in Liberia, so the generator only ran from 9am to 7pm. That leaves 14 hours without power – in other words, 14 hours without the ability to send and receive SMS via a desktop SMS gateway. Because many of the reports sent to our Liberia instances about conflict and instability, we could not afford to be operational for only 10 hours a day.

 

The second obstacle was an unreliable Internet connection. In Liberia, all Internet connections are via satellite – far slower and more expensive than fiber optic connections. Ushahidi Liberia’s first ISP leased a satellite Internet connection comparable to a slow DSL connection in the US – until the ISP splits that connection among all of its customers who then split their slice of the connection amongst all the users in the office/home. During peak working hours we could make an educated guess that approximately 500 people were using that one Internet connection, causing it to drop out when bandwidth was exceeded, and cause any user to grind their teeth in frustration when it was working but painfully slow.

 

When the Internet dropped out in our office and FrontlineSMS received an SMS to forward to Ushahidi servers, the sending would fail and FrontlineSMS would drop the message without resending. FrontlineSMS does not notify the sender or the receiver that a message failed to send, so it could be days before the person manning FrontlineSMS might realize that half the sent messages were missing. FrontlineSMS, like many platforms, is built under the assumption that the Internet works – as it does most of the time in most places.

 

Considering these glitches, our couple might not be as compatible as we thought – that is until SMSSync came along. SMSSync is an Android app written by the Ushahidi team that replaces the computer as the intermediary and runs the SMS gateway program on the phone itself. Since Android phones can connect to the Internet via WiFi and GPRS, they can receive an incoming SMS and then send it out over the Internet all by themselves. This solved our first problem of power. Phones can easily run 14 hours, or a couple of days, without recharge; that’s what they’re made to do. But we still have the issue of unreliable Internet.

 

To address the Internet, our team worked closely with SMSSync’s creator, Henry Addo, to incorporate a resend function that tries sending a message over and over until it is received by the target URL. Now with this feature added, messages can be received by SMSSync even when the Internet is out and they stay in a holding pattern until the connection returns. At this point it seems like everything is going to work out for SMS and Liberia, but not so fast.

 

There’s still one more assumption that I hinted at earlier – that humans will interact with technology correctly. Even the most well-intentioned, experienced user will occasionally get it wrong. The civil war held up the arrival of the latest technologies, and as a result many Liberians don’t have extensive experience with technology. This is nothing against Liberians, just the reality of their situation.

 

We noticed that every so often we’d receive a blank message from our users in the field; someone probably hit send prematurely. At first we didn’t pay much attention to this, but then we noticed that SMSSync would stop sending messages after receiving blanks. After a lot of hair-pulling, we realized the problem was with the Ushahidi platform itself. It was programmed to reject blank SMSs as erroneous. SMSSync would try to forward the blank SMS to Ushahidi, Ushahidi would reject it, SMSSync would wait 5 minutes and try again, meanwhile all the other messages were waiting in line. We reprogrammed the Ushahidi platoform to accept all messages, blank or otherwise. Messages that appeared to be errors would be marked as such for the users of the Ushahidi platform to decide what to do with them.

 

We also had a similar problem with promotional SMSs from the cell phone companies. They’d send out things like, “Talk free this Saturday.” Often these messages wouldn’t be from numbers like, “06-555-123”, but from “winBig” or “LonestarCell.” Again, we didn’t think much of this, but SMSSync stopped working shortly after receiving these messages. It turns out that the Ushahidi platform is also set to reject SMSs from numbers that aren’t numbers, sending an app like SMSSync into a never-ending loop. We also fixed this in the Ushahidi platform.

 

At this point we’ve accounted for assumptions about electricity, Internet and human users. The final assumption we had to overcome is that the technology will always, from now to eternity, until you tell it otherwise, do what you want. It seems that in an effort to save battery power, Android phones are programmed to turn off their WiFi radios after a certain period of inactivity. Thus SMSSync would work brilliantly for awhile, but then stop forwarding messages for no apparent reason. We’d look at the phone, see the unsent SMS, and since we were using the phone the WiFi would come back on and mysteriously work. Much to our embarrassment, this also took a long time to figure out.

 

At this point I’d like to make it clear that 99% of the time it’s the simple things that get in the way. It wasn’t some small manufacturing default in our phones, it wasn’t a rogue bit of code deep in SMSSync, it was just a simple feature of the phones that, when they aren’t working as SMS gateways, works to the user’s advantage.

 

We fixed the WiFi automatic sleep by installing KeepScreen on the phones. KeepScreen is a free Andoid App that just keeps the screen on all the time. By keeping the screen on, and making the Android think the user is still using the phone, the WiFi also never goes off.

 

Now our phones work perfectly, day and night, through power and blackouts, high bandwidth bliss and connection timeouts, to send SMSs from our users on the ground to our servers high in the Internet’s metaphorical cloud. Finally, after so much struggle and hardship, Liberia, a beautiful country, and SMS, a messaging protocol of elegant simplicity, are together at last.

Developer Training in Liberia

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At the heart of all the technological advances in Africa is the hope that African people will use these technologies to their gain. Fiber-optic cables surround Africa’s coasts; mobile operators are investing in wireless technologies like WiMax in preparation for a flood of data that could break existing networks. Mobile devices and computer manufacturers are selling low-cost superphones, tablets, and netbooks, hoping that these devices will integrate well with the African lifestyle whilst platform developers scout the continent in search of developers to build apps for Africans on their systems and networks.

 

At this point it is quite obvious that the focus of these market players is the people—because it is the people who will spend their money on these technologies. A huge “side-opportunity” is created as a result of this new focus—the demand for developers of these Africa-relevant applications. At the moment, a few African countries have woken up to this new reality and are striving to meet this huge demand.

Liberia is not one of those countries awake to this new reality. For public and private sectors alike, the primary focus is on rebuilding systems and infrastructure destroyed by the two civil wars, as well as dealing with international debt accumulated over the years. Instead of technology being the means by which these reconstruction efforts are undertaken, it has become a project of the future. With our education system still weaker than its pre-war status, technical training has still not matured for even the best institutions.

 

At the moment, there are no Computer Science (CS) programs in any of our universities. The closest and only program we have is an e-Learning program for BSc. Information Technology from Amity University in Uttar Pradesh, India, offered through the Pan African e-Network with the University of Liberia[1]. This program primarily focuses on infrastructure setup and management, with little programming. This stands opposed to the programming-rich B.Tech program in Computer Science and Engineering offered in India by the same university[2].

 

Other institutions that offer courses in programming include the Starz Institute of Technology[3] and Silicon Pro. These courses are mainly introductory courses to languages like Visual Basic and PHP/MySQL. Furthermore, training in web development is more concentrated around tools like Dreamweaver than on the underlying programming/markup/scripting languages. These institutions are relatively new and the programming courses are not as popular with students as courses like networking and hardware. Courses in popular languages like Java, C++, and Python which are relevant to mobile application development are non-existent in these training institutions. Furthermore the high cost of these trainings makes them inaccessible to most would-be programmers.

 

Liberia’s small developer community is comprised mainly of people who studied outside Liberia, self-taught, and those who learned on the job. As a result, programmers are in short supply which causes programming jobs to go to foreign firms. There are a handful of tech firms in Liberia that are involved in software development that often have to train their recruited staff to program on the job. This is on a very small scale and benefits very few people.

 

Due to the limited number of programming languages taught in Liberia, developers are often not prepared to build applications on platforms that are language-biased like iOS. Since this is the case mainly for mobile devices, Liberian developers are cut off from harnessing the potentials of mobile applications. To date, it is still difficult to find mobile applications for Android, Apple or Symbian that have been built by Liberians.

This situation leaves us woefully unprepared to tap into the vast opportunities the mobile and Internet revolutions bring to the continent. Without mobile and web developers, Liberia will be left voiceless on these emerging platforms. Mobile and web applications relevant to Liberia need to be built by Liberians but, without effective training in modern languages, this will be impossible to accomplish. It is hard to imagine Liberia playing a pivotal role in the tech industry without a growing developer community. As important as computer networking and hardware are to Liberia’s technological advancement, these skills are inadequate to spur maximum Liberian participation in the global tech arena. They also do not promote innovation as programming skills do.

 

Until our tertiary institutions start offering relevant CS programs, Liberia will remain a consumer of information technology and may never grow to be a provider. Until Liberian students get early exposure to programming, they will be unable to compete with their regional and global counterparts in the technology race. And until we get a shift in our thinking about science and technology education, we will never get free from foreign technological domination.

 

Kpetermeni Siakor

IT Director

*iLab_ Liberia
 

Sources:
[1] Pan African e-Network - http://www.panafricanenetwork.com

Tech Centers in Liberia

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In 2007, SocketWorks Global [1] of Nigeria began setting up a technological hub at the University of Liberia to bridge Liberia’s digital divide in the project called the Liberia Digital Bridge with the sponsorship of the International Finance Corporation. After inauguration, the project did not get off the ground, dashing the hopes of thousands of students and staff who anxiously awaited the outcome of the project. This project died without making any significant impact.

 

In an effort to bridge the digital divide in Liberia, various organizations and individuals have stepped up to the challenge by setting up technology centers in Liberia to meet this end. These typically take the form of community libraries, resource centers, and training centers. Since these efforts do not have the strong investment backing that the Digital Bridge project once had, these tech centers are run on a much smaller scale.

 

The most popular approach has been to setup training centers that charge a fee for the courses it offers. One example is the Young Men Christian Association (YMCA)[2]training center in Monrovia. This training institution offers introductory courses in the Microsoft Office suite as well as graphics design. Using mainly proprietary software (i.e. Microsoft products), which inure costly fees for licensing. As a result, despite being registered as a non-profit organization, the YMCA charges fees for courses to sustain the training institution. The downside of this approach is that only those who can afford the fees are eligible to attend. The training center is also not an open space for tech professionals to meet and host events; the YMCA charges for the use of its facilities to host events.

 

A second approach has been to setup resource centers with a hybrid of a library and a computer lab for public use. Two centers with this arrangement are the Information Resource Center (IRC)[3] at the US Embassy and the Liberia Intellectual Society of Scholars & Academia (LISSAA)[4] setup by a Liberian citizen living in the US. While the IRC does not charge users for the facilities, computer use is usually limited to an average of thirty minutes a day per person. These centers provide Internet access, a small library and a few computers running Microsoft products. The high cost of running tech centers in a country like Liberia has taken a toll on LISSAA in particular making them charge for Internet use, while the IRC runs safely with US government sponsorship. Since these centers do not have a specific technological focus, users are allowed to do anything like following sports news to using social networking sites without restriction. Occasionally, basic computer training is offered to select users of these centers. In regards to accessibility, the IRC is located on the grounds of the US embassy where visitors are usually screened by security guards before entry. The location is frightening enough for would-be users. This leaves the IRC out of reach for many Liberians who may not be able to muster the courage to go to the US embassy. LISSAA, on the other hand, is located on Benson Street which makes it more accessible for Liberians.

 

Based on our observation of these technology centers, we decided to follow the style of*iHub_ Nairobi. With this arrangement, we setup an innovation hub called *iLab_ Liberia to focus on the tech community, as well as anyone interested in learning more about technology. Usage of our space for training and events hosting is free of charge, and our computers run free and opensource software like Linux and FireFox. At the moment, we are the only people using this approach in Liberia. At *iLab_ Liberia, our focus is to promote information sharing and the use of opensource tools. Instead of offering training in regular proprietary software, users are introduced to web and software development as well as to opensource alternatives to proprietary software. This is significant considering that most users who cannot afford to buy genuine copies of proprietary software often make pirated or cracked copies of them which often leaves them vulnerable to viruses. Equipped with a dozen computers on a dedicated VSAT Internet connection, the tech hub is suited for hosting tech events as well as for providing contextually relevant training to users. This is usually done by understanding what potential users want to learn about and then directing trainings to these needs. This is a paradigm shift from the traditional definition of a tech center which is nothing more than a computer school or Internet cafe.

 

Since inception, we have hosted PenPlusBytes‘ Africa Elections Project workshop to train journalists in technology reporting. We have also hosted Monrovia Google Technology Users Group (GTUG) meet-up sessions and web development trainings. The West African Network for Peacebuilding, Liberia Early-Warning Working Group, and our elections partners have all been hosted for various workshops and trainings at the *iLab_. Right now, we are training thirteen students from five high schools in Monrovia, Paynesville, and Brewerville in web development to take each other head-on in the *iLab_ Web Challenge.

 

We are positive that we can make a far greater impact in the lives of Liberians with this approach to technology centers.

 

Kpetermeni Siakor

IT Director
*iLab_ Liberia

 

Sources:

[1] SocketWorks Global Digital Bridge -http://www.swglobal.com/e-solutions/digital_bridge.php

International Finance Corporation Sponsorship -http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/spiwebsite1.nsf/0/36CA941DCF217B3C852576BA000E29BD

http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/che.nsf/AttachmentsByTitle/Factsheet_Socketworks_OvercomingtheDigitalDivide/$FILE/Fact+Sheet-SocketWorks-Overcoming+Digital+Divide.pdf

[2] Young Men Christian Association –http://www.ymca.org.lr/

[3] Liberia Intellectual Society of Scholars and Academia –http://www.lissaa.com/

[4] Information Resource Center -http://monrovia.usembassy.gov/irc.html

[5] *iLab_ Liberia –http://www.ilabliberia.com/