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Entrepreneurship in Uganda

Jan 14th, 2010
by melissa.
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I’ve always thought that Africa was full of entrepreneurs – thousands of people eking out a living in container stores and markets selling goods a minimal profit, so they can support their families, send their kids to school, and, in general, survive.

Now, there’s clearly a difference between the startups of Silicon Valley that get venture capital and make millions, and the small business owners that run grocery stores or laundromats, and street hawkers that sell chewing gum from baskets on top of their heads. Profit margins are one.  But everyone has to start somewhere, and not everyone has the same connections; certainly environment and geography plays a large role in the probable capacity of an individual to aspire.

So what does it take to start a formal business in Uganda? To be a small business owner?  I’ve been encouraging some of my students along these lines, and thinking about the “Coded In Country” concept.  One thing that plays a large role in the ability to build local capacity is the country’s business environment; how hard is it to start and run a company in Uganda?

After a bit of word-of-mouth consulting, and talking to some small business owners here, I turned to google, and found the Doing Business Project, which provides indicators on 10 topics in 183 economies.  While the data itself is also very useful, from a very practical standpoint the fact that they’ve documented all of the (18) steps for starting a business in Uganda, and put them on the web is totally amazing to me.  This is not formal e-governance, since the government isn’t the one putting this information on the web, and in theory, the gov’t could change the policy, making this document out of date. However, this does make things easier for people… as long as they have Internet access and pick the right search terms (e.g. “starting a company in Uganda“).

Now, what does this information mean for my students?  Mostly it means that they need to hire a lawyer to incorporate as a partnership.  We’ve consulted with a friend of a friend of theirs, and it will cost about 365,000 UGX (180 USD) in licensing and lawyer’s fees to go through the entire process. Their hope is to start a company that uses information technology to support healthcare in Uganda, through the development of software and the support of IT systems. They are helping me by providing ongoing computer and mobile phone maintenance to the healthcare providers I’m working with, even after I go back to the States, and working on supporting the software we’re developing.

Now they just have to come up with a name for the company…

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Posted in: Africa, Claim Mobile, Entrepreneurship, ICTD, Ideas, Random, Uganda.
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Young Researchers in ITID

Jan 1st, 2010
by melissa.
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I’ve just had two papers published in the Journal of Information Technology & International Development’s special issue on Human Computer Interaction for Development (HCI4D) (Vol 5, Issue 4, Winter 2009).

The first is a lit review and historical overview of the area:
Ho, M., Smyth, T., Kam, M., & Dearden, A. (2009). Human-Computer Interaction for Development: The Past, Present, and Future. Information Technologies & International Development, 5(4). http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/420/188

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in research into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of developing regions, particularly into how such ICTs might be appropriately designed to meet the unique user and infrastructural requirements that we encounter in these cross-cultural environments. This emerging field, known to some as HCI4D, is the product of a diverse set of origins. As such, it can often be difficult to navigate prior work, and/or to piece together a broad picture of what the field looks like as a whole. In this paper, we aim to contextualize HCI4D—to give it some historical background, to review its existing literature spanning a number of research traditions, to discuss some of its key issues arising from the work done so far, and to suggest some major research objectives for the future.

The second is a paper drawing on the field experiences of all of the authors, a group of (mostly) graduate students:
Anokwa, Y., Smyth, T., Ramachandran, D., Sherwani, J., Schwartzman, Y., Luk, R., Ho, M., Moraveji, N., & DeRenzi, B. (2009). Stories from the Field: Reflections on HCI4D Experiences. Information Technologies & International Development, 5(4). http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/427/195

Human-computer interaction for development (HCI4D) requires considerable time in the field interacting with users. While this is true for most HCI work, fieldwork in developing regions presents unique challenges due to differences in culture, language, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. As a group of nine HCI4D researchers, we have adopted a systematic approach to reflect on the challenges we have encountered in the field. Arising from this exercise are three contributions: The first is our research method itself, which uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative instruments to elicit and synthesize individual experiences. The second, intended for beginning researchers, is a set of lessons learned and suggested strategies for navigating the unique challenges of HCI4D research. The third, intended for the HCI4D community at large, is a critical reflection on the field itself, inspired by our findings. Topics covered include the incentives and agendas of the research world, the importance of managing expectations, the nature of “participation” in HCI4D, and the conflict between research and development more generally.

I really like researchers and the projects written about in the articles, so I encourage you to peruse the entire issue.

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Posted in: Uncategorized.

Bringing ICTs and Solar to Rural Uganda

Dec 16th, 2009
by melissa.
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Dembbe Clinic WECARE Solar and Netbook Deployment

Dembbe Clinic WECARE Solar and Netbook Deployment

Kathe Medical Care Netbook Deployment

Kathe Medical Care Netbook Deployment

Barefoot Power PowaPak and Palm Treo Deployment

Barefoot Power PowaPak and Palm Treo Deployment

While my study hasn’t quite officially started yet (most of my equipment is en route via Cairo right now) I’ve started deploying some computers and mobile phones in a few health facilities, just to give them some time to familiarize themselves with the equipment, and to give myself and idea of what I’m going to run into with the other clinics when they get the equipment too.

Here’s how my research works: There’s a lot of complicated stuff about claims and claim processing. However, what I actually do is a lot of qualitative research on how people do their work, perceive information technology, and manage information. Then I introduce new technologies, and then ask them what they think of them, and see what they do with them. Sometimes I’ve done weird things with these technologies (like umm.. written them or installed specific software), and I definitely have a specific approach – I interfere with my subjects a lot in terms of computer training, and in the case of my partnering agency, being an IT consultant in this office for 15 months.

My baseline studies and are showing that my target user base 1) has a high interest in using information technology for patient information management but 2) very little training (for the most part). So if I were to introduce a new system, let’s say a laptop/netbook, 1) they would be very interested in learning how to use it, even paying for it but 2) they would have little to no background knowledge on where to start.

This has deep implications for user interface design. For many people, they choose a “kiosk” approach, making computers that have only one application (also known as the “appliance”). However, this has implications on sustainability. For private health facility owners who need additional skills, or for programs that cannot be expected to finance the equipment externally – paying for purpose-built machinery when the computers are capable of general purpose applications is impractical.

In this case – Claim Mobile is probably not a sufficiently valuable application to motivate purchase of laptops or phones. However – the phones, bundled with a camera, medical calculators, bible readers, internet browsing capabilities, etc, and the netbooks, with Microsoft Office, and Hesperian ebooks, and other medical resources, Barack Obama’s speeches, and the ability to access the Internet are of great value to the health facilities, and to the program management of the Uganda OBA project, even without the claims processing component.  However – we hope to find out in this study how this value will actually play out against real purchasing decisions: laptops vs phones, Internet subscriptions vs pay per kb Internet use.  In addition, we will observe over time how the health facilities and the Uganda OBA project will make use of their ownership of these devices, and how the new uses play into relationships, communications, and the management of the OBA program in general.

Some caveats about the deployments so far.  Out of the first three deployments, two facilities did not have power.  In one location, we donated a solar suitcase to Dembbe Clinic through WE CARE, an organization I’m involved with that seeks to provide improved electricity and communications for maternal health care.  The two 20W panels provide sufficient power to charge the netbook, phone and lights for the facility.

In the second location, we are experimenting with the Barefoot Power Powapak, which provides solar led lighting sufficient for rooms (not quite surgery), and a cigarette adapter to charge phones. However I went back on Monday to check on the solar deployment, and discovered that the battery was completely discharged – probably because the solar panel was failing to charge the battery.  I’ll introduce some solar logs to have them track usage more closely in January. The phone is being charged every few days from the clinician’s other place of work, which has access to electricity.

The third location, Kathe Medical Care, has very reliable access to electricity, because they are on the power line connecting to Rwanda. However, what interests me about this particular clinic is their innovative uses of ICTs prior to the study.

IMG_1312

Kathe Medical Care analyzes output indicators by local sub-districts

During my baseline surveys, I was introduced to Kathe Medical Care’s many colorful computer generated graphs and charts, all produced from the government-mandated monthly summary data.

There were charts showing trends of increasing numbers of antenatal visits over the past year, since the beginning of the OBA program, charts, comparing non-OBA deliveries to OBA deliveries, and charts showing from which  sub-counties patients were coming.

I learned that the clinician did all of these from an Internet cafe, taking his monthly reports to Mbarara each month, entering them into Excel, to produce the charts.

Based on these charts, I assessed this clinic, and had high hopes that I would be able to learn from him how other clinics could use their data to benefit from computers.

I also assumed that he had a usb flash drive.

But to my surprise – one of his statements upon entrance into this study was that he had been giving people these charts for a while and hoped that at some point  someone would think to give him a flash drive. You see it turned out that each time he produced one of these charts, he was entering in another year’s worth of data, all over again – he had nothing on which to save the Excel spreadsheet that he was using to create this chart. I think none of us ever imagined he could achieve so much without a flash drive in the first place!

This sort of begs a question: clearly he has enough income to purchase a flash drive, if he’s willing to purchase a netbook, and even a printer… What stopped him? (This is another blog entry entirely, maybe a paper or two).  There’s a lot to be said at this moment about 1) trust in electronics purchased in Uganda and 2) the perturbation that I am as a ethnographic researcher in this environment.  But I won’t say it now.

In the meantime… given what he was doing without a flash drive, and with the nearest Internet cafe an hour away at $1.50/hour,  let’s just imagine what he’ll do with his own netbook and Internet access.  Or perhaps not imagine… we can wait and see.

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Posted in: Africa, Claim Mobile, Field Work, Field Work, Health, ICTD, Mobile Phones, Uganda, WECARE.
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WE CARE Solar on PRI

Sep 14th, 2009
by melissa.
1 comment

One of WE CARE’s solar suitcases (www.wecaresolar.com) was recently
deployed by Catapult Design in the Minazi Health Post in Rwanda (
http://bit.ly/59j9G ), and PRI included  some of the photos in an
article about the project.

On PRI’s The World


Solar medical system
http://www.pri.org/business/social-entrepreneurs/solar-energy-clinics1583.html

A self-contained, solar-powered system for operating rooms ensure clinics in the developing world aren’t impaired by blackouts.

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Posted in: Africa, Health, News, WECARE.
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Zap: Much more than Money Transfer

Aug 17th, 2009
by melissa.
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Zap BrochureSo MTN Money is not the only mobile-phone based money transfer service (mobile banking services not-withstanding), Zain Uganda also offers Zap, with marginally lower prices, and what seems to be slightly less restrictive than MTN Money – no 1M UGX limit on the balance to be held by the mobile service provider being the one thing that stands out, although the transaction limit still remains at 1M.

My main exposure to Zap is through advertising, prominently featuring a cross-section of the different populations in Uganda, from shopkeepers, to middle income urban young adults, to villagers dressed in traditional clothing.  This particular brochure I’m looking at features a young man dressed in a polo shirt in a modern apartment using a smartphone to “Zap” money to an older  women in a village dressed in traditional clothing, holding a basic nokia candybar  phone.

Rumor has it, and the tv and billboard advertising go to support the rumor (“What can i do with Zap? … Pay for goods and services and so much more”), that Game and Shoprite – two large consumer stores in Kampala, both accept Zap in lieu of cash. Which, if the rumor is true, means that Zap has found an alternative to credit cards in a market where credit doesn’t work due to  lack of addresses, lack of ability to track individuals, and lack of bank accounts to support the debit card intermediary step that has worked in the States.  (One day I will go and verify this, but this isn’t my area of research, and I don’t live in Kampala, so bear with me. An astute reader living in Kampala is welcome to verify for me…)

Another interesting thing about Zap is that they’ve also deployed it in Tanzania and Kenya - and news reports say that they are working with Western Union to allow international money transfers. Which reminds me – locally in each country they partner with Standard Chartered, a prominent bank, which by my assessment tends to charge fairly high fees, but offers very good services, including online banking.  People complain that if they don’t pay attention they quickly end up with a negative balance- but if you are employed, and direct deposit your salary, then it is often the bank of choice here.  In Kenya, it seems they are partnering with both Standard Chartered and Citigroup (remember, this is a blog, so I have exactly one source for this information).

Some nitty gritty details:

Registration is in any of the authorized agents – Zain shops country-wide, who also can cash-in and cash-out Zap Money. To register, you need:

  1. A Zain SIM card
  2. Original and copy of an ID document, either a passport, voter registration card, recommendation from a village chairperson, employee id or a pension card
  3. Fill out an application form (so customer service may not always be perfect in africa, i haven’t tried this yet)

Zap also has a feature in which you can specify a “nick-name” in order to protect the privacy of your phone number – so you can give your nickname to the person with whom you are exchanging money instead of your phone number, and then you can change your nick-name afterwards. Every transaction must be confirmed by a password, and the sender and recipient each receives an SMS confirmation of the transaction.  All the services are accessible from the phone menu directly, and if you forget your password you can call customer care to reset the password. Lost phones/SIM cards can be replaced without impact to the account.

Now for costs:

Zap M-Commerce Account Restrictions

  • Max transfer amount: 1,000,000 UGX (~500USD)
  • Max tx Buy Zap per day: 50
  • Max tx Sell Zap per day: 50

Zap Service

  • Zap to Zap Account Transfer (to Number or Nickname): 250 UGX
  • Zap to TopUp Airtime:  No Cost
  • Zap Tools: Balance Check, Change Password, Change Nickname, etc: No Cost

Recommended Cash In& Cash Out Fees (Actual rates to be determined by supply and demand)

  • Amount: Buy/Sell
  • 1-5000: 250/250
  • 5001-30,000: 200/1,000
  • 30,001-60,000: 300/1,200
  • 60,001-125,000: 400/1,600
  • 125,001-250,000: 500/2,500
  • 250,001-500,000: 1,000/3,000
  • 500,001-1,000,000: 2,000/5,000

The interesting thing about this pricing model is that there is a fixed transfer fee of 250UGX per individual transfer, but the cash in and cash out fees are  the primary transaction costs that are comparable to MTN money are only incurred when they choose to take money in and out – so Zap clients are actually encouraged to use this as a bank account, and to take out and put in money as a lump sum in increments of as high  as they are able, especially given that there is no maximum balance of 1Million UGX, as there is with MTN Money.

What I think would be great is if Standard Chartered and Zain (and MTN) could start tracking individuals who are using this, and to give them a credit history based on their ability to maintain a balance successfully.  Those who have a good credit rating might be eligible for loans through Standard Chartered or other banks.

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Posted in: Random.

Pyramid Schemes in Uganda: Together as One Community Project

Aug 13th, 2009
by melissa.
6 comments

People have long been prey to pyramid schemes all over the world, and it seems that Uganda is not an exception. (Apparently South Africa has already made pyramid schemes illegal, according to Wikipedia.) I was in my office today and I overheard my co-workers discussing a finance club, some disparaging, others curious, so I asked about it – and was told, “Melissa, they will steal your money!”

tacop-fronttacop-frontThe Together as One Community Project (TACOP) claims a mission “To enable the community to raise investment Capital through net work saving” and encourages members to recruit more members to deposit money into specified bank account.  Each new member deposits 10,000 UGX (~5USD) into the TACOP bank account (Post Bank 1630003000139), and 5,000 UGX into each of seven (7) other member bank accounts, all listed on a numbered page (the paper I’m looking at is numbered 169).  Thus, joining entails a cost of 45,000 UGX (~25USD), but with the “promise” of earning 5,000UGX per person recruited to the project by their recruits.

There’s a very nice chart on the back, explaining that “your one form will turn into 3 forms, 9,27,81,243,729,and 2187, as you earn UGX 5,000/= from each form,” and showing that at level H they will have an income of 10,935,000/=. They of course forget to mention the detail that each level requires the recruitment of 3 times as many people , and that at level H, if you get there,  the so-called the community project has earned 32.8M UGX (16,400USD) from your “descendants” alone.  There’s no information on who runs this project, or how they plan to use this money.

They even suggest you can rejoin the program – presumably by paying another 45,000 UGX.

Apparently the “company” has just reached Mbarara, and are claiming that they just arrived in Kampala a month ago (so people don’t believe that the population is saturated, presumably), but my intern notes that it’s been in Kampala for over a year.

So let’s say that the #169 indicates that this is the 169th member of the company to be recruited. That puts this potential member at level 6 or level F in the overall company. To get to their level H (level 12 overall), over 797,161 people will have to have been recruited. At level 16, they will have exceeded the population of Uganda.

What really gets me though is that the fact that maybe 168 people have been recruited already means that some 120 people have probably put in money without actually receiving any deposits, and another 50 have only gotten a little back – whereas the 4 people that started the scheme already have 1,680,000 and 840,000 UGX in their banks.

At least they haven’t figured out yet how to use MTN Money and Zap for these schemes… which I’m guessing might make them largely untraceable given how easy it is to get new sim cards out here.

This isn’t the only pyramid scheme out here, a new one has also started up, with a higher buy in (I think around 95,000 UGX), possibly targeting higher income people.  We suspect also that it’s making its circuits right now because the students are returning to start classes, and may have cash on hand for their living expenses and tuition money, so both schemes might be targeting students.

Now here’s the thing that I’m thinking about.  What can we do about it?  What is the role of development in dealing with pyramid schemes in Uganda? Besides informing the banks and the Ministry of Finance so that they can do something about it?

1. I think we should think about ways in which mobile technologies and other ICTs might be misappropriated to propagate these schemes – not as a reason for not using these technologies, but so we can design better and more secure mechanisms. Do pyramid schemes have an implication for m-Pesa and other mobile finance programs? Or are they irrelevant?

2. I think we should think about how people access information, how they ask questions when they encounter new things like these “finance clubs”. For my coworkers, a lot of information is spread by word of mouth – they know things by rumor, by discussion and stories shared within the office during breaks and at lunch. Very different from our “new culture” of looking everything up on wikipedia, or the culture we might be trying to create by telling people they can query google for information.

3. Rights to information: how can we give people access to the information they need to decide for themselves whether a program is a good or a bad program.  Of course this slip of paper doesn’t have “Google Keyword: pyramid scheme” written on it anywhere. So how do they link information resources to the questions they might have?  Question Box tries to be a general purpose unspecified answer of whatever questions might come up – but hasn’t come into general usage yet. By American experience I’m not sure that this type of solution would become mainstream – Google Answers and Yahoo Answers seem to only serve particular audiences. Google search is more mainstream, but sometimes requires a some technical skill to get the required answers – and has severe limitations in the types of knowledge one can acquire.  Would Google search be adequate for the answers needed by our audiences in developing regions?  I can’t tell you how frustrated my colleagues at Mbarara University are by finding academic papers via Google search (they generally aren’t familiar yet with Google Scholar) only to be stymied by restricted access journals.

So, what is the role of ICTs in addressing the day to day issues of Ugandan poverty? Information about pyramid schemes in this case has already clearly benefited the scam artists involved – how can we use ICTs to also prevent pyramid schemes from propagating further?

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Posted in: ICTD, Uganda.

Tethered Computing

Jul 26th, 2009
by melissa.
7 comments

At long last I have my personal MTN sim working for both voice and data on my android phone, *and* I can connect the my computer to the Internet using mtn’s gprs connection using JuneFabric’s PdaNet software.

Sigh, well PdaNet only works for windows, not my MacBook Pro, but since my MBP is currently out of commission with an inexplicably inoperable motherboard (the graphics card seems to have fried itself, so it’s being serviced – side note: by some miracle there’s a shop that does warranty repairs on apple computers in Kampala, but it takes a while bc they have to order parts from Cupertino), not working on a MBP is a moot point at the moment. And I can always switch back to my Palm phones if I want to tether the Mac via bluetooth.

Anyways the point being that I spent hours trying to get this sim card enabled for the 90k/month data plan last March, and they kept saying a new plan was in the works – and apparently now it is available. Whee!

I also noticed that while I’ve been having trouble connecting to the internet on pay as you go internet using this sim card for a while, recently it started connecting using the modem APN instead of the standard APN, so I am using MTNDATA as my apn setting instead of yellopix.mtn.co.ug.

Zain is also pretty easy to get configured for internet – you can either go into a shop in Kampala or just top up with 90k shillings and do it yourself. Set the apn to web.ug.zain.com and connect. From there you will need to go to a browser and try to open a website, which will redirect you to a zain site, where you will be able to choose from three plans: Zain Access (the pay per kb plan), Zain 1GB (the 90k plan), and Zain Unlimited, which doesn’t charge additional fees for usage over 1GB in a given month. If you choose Zain Access you will be stuck with it – and have to talk to customer service for several hours in order to get switched back to Zain 1GB. Once you click one of the links, it will show you the prices for the plan, then you can confirm, and you’ll be in.

With Zain I haven’t in general had technology issues with any of my phones, although the sim no longer works with my old falcom modems. They will sell you a usb modem (locked) made by huawei for 360,000 ugx (180 USD) which works reliably at fairly decent speeds. In the past I have been able to roam in dr congo on my 1GB plan, but recently was told that we can only roam on Zain Access, because they haven’t worked out payment policy.

So this is what works. It’s not the most stable connection in the world, tethering the android. Nor the speediest. But it hits a price point and I can check email and download files.

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Posted in: Random.
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MTN Money: Long Lines and Bank Competition

Jul 23rd, 2009
by melissa.
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A long hiatus, but now I’m back! I’ve been a bit swamped with teaching and travel – but still there’s so much going on here that I want to share.

One thing I’ve noticed recently is that the MTN Service Center has become swamped lately – there are frequently crowds of people there waiting in line.  And the explanation is MTN Money, a program that was launched early this year (or was it late last year?). Similar to SimbaCash, MTN Money allows people to send up to 1 million Uganda Shillings at a time (approximately 500USD) to people with identification and mobile phones (either on the MTN Network or on other networks) for a small fee via an MTN Money agent. It’s less expensive than Western Union, and more accessible than banks.

The fee schedule is graded based on the amount of money being transferred, and generally paid by the reciever, unless they aren’t registered as an MTN money user, in which case, it is paid by the depositor in advance and is moderately cheaper.

  • Sending UGX to a Registered User: 800 UGX
  • Sending UGX to a Non-Registered User
    • 5000-30,000: 1600
    • 30,001-60,000: 2000
    • 60,001-125,000: 3700
    • 125,001-250,000: 7200
    • 250,001-500,000: 10,000
    • 500,000-1,000,000: 19,000
  • Withdrawal of UGX by a Registered User
    • 5000-30,000: 700
    • 30,001-60,000: 1000
    • 60,001-125,000: 1600
    • 125,001-250,000: 3000
    • 250,001-500,000: 5000
    • 500,000-1,000,000: 9000
  • Withdrawal of UGX by a Non-Registered User: 0 UGX

There’s a daily limit of 1 Million UGX, an a maximum balance of the same, which probably helps put a cap on how much cash the agents are expected to carry on a daily basis. The minimum transaction is 5,000, and there is no minimum balance.

Who is the market for Mobile Money users?  Well – car conversations here tell me that the competition being killed first is Western Union – it’s much less expensive to transfer money than Western Union, and that they will have to bring their prices down to compete. So families sending money back to the village may use MTN Money now instead.  Another friend needed to send money to his wife last weekend – after the banks had closed.  MTN was still open, and so despite the fact that she was not yet registered as an MTN Money user he was able to send her cash – also he was not happy to learn that it would cost him more money to send cash to non registered users than to send money to registered users! Perhaps it would comfort him to realize that the overall transaction cost was lower…

Are they competing with banks?  Unclear to me.  It’s not the banks’ core service to offer money transfer services – often they don’t charge for within-bank transfers.  Indeed – ATM withdrawals cost me 500UGX and although my bank account might only usually have about 1M UGX in it and doesn’t charge fees, I think most banks make their money off of fees and other services.  This is filling a gap for a market that wasn’t quite being served, perhaps due to the identification restrictions common for the larger banks.  It’s difficult to open a bank account here without a letter from an employer and a show of regular income.

I’m curious to know also how MTN Money will fare in more peri-urban areas, and how it can be accessed by more rural users.

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Posted in: Mobile Phones, Uganda.
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The Internet (or lack thereof) is driving me crazy!

Apr 23rd, 2009
by melissa.
6 comments

Remember when we used to call the Internet the “World Wide Wait”? Sigh. The truth is that it isn’t really that Uganda as a whole doesn’t have access to the Internet but really that, depending on who your service provider is, and how much you are willing to pay, and where your geographic location is, you get wildly different quality of service.  If you are willing to pay several thousand dollars/month for a dedicated VSAT line you can get a pretty zippy connection.  If you can pay $2k/month, you can get a 128/256 (read: about the equivalent of a DSL connection about 5 years ago in the US).  Although in practice, even if you get a link advertised at 128/256, the ISP’s connection to the Internet might not be so great.  For example – at the moment, I have a 128kbps link to Kampala, but I’ve only got at 10kbps link to London or NYC (For better or for worse, I am using Speedtest to test the effective bandwidth). And about 1 in 5 packets to google are getting dropped so that 10kbps link is pretty useless…

At the moment, I’ve totally given up on using my 64/64 WiMax+VSAT link via Infocom (which costs $300/month) and I’m using my Warid Telecom GPRS/EDGE modem (cost $60 + $40/month), which incidentally also claims speeds up to 128kbps (16KB/s), but in reality usually sits at about 2-5 KB/s on a good day (I am getting about 1.0KB/s now).  The MTN EDGE/HSDPA service ($150 + $45 modem) is a bit of a joke and I have never seen it go above 1-2 KB/s (It’s supposed to be 384kbps, or 48KB/s).  My suspicion is that MTN, as the pre-dominant service provider in Uganda is over-subscribed, and they use older equipment here in Mbarara. Rumor has it that they get better performance in Kampala.  But it is totally beyond me why they claim 3G services and sell HSPDA modems but offer a service quality that is really completely unusable. In practice – I was able to get data services (with the same sim card) using my android g1 phone, but not with the modem they provided. Okay, I’m straying from my original topic – I’ll do another series later reviewing available mobile data services in Uganda, since that’s part of what I have to research here for Claim Mobile. (My findings are mysterious and intriguing, let me tell you… or just plain frustrating, take your pick.)

So why is a mobile phone researcher sitting here worrying about ISPs and various telecommunications providers, other than the fact that I can’t send emails and every time I manage to load my credit card website it times out and kicks me back to the log on page? Well, it’s actually part of my participant observation activities.  Yes… I get to be my NGO’s consultant on all things IT.  But it is also useful to know and understand these things – not just in theory but on the ground – what are NGOs actually facing in day-to-day experience trying to deal with ISPs, from selection of an internet service provider, to daily maintenance of an Internet connection, to their own understandings of why things are and are not working..

The technical people to whom we outsource things are in general okay.  There is a dependence on Windows products.  And I could wish that they would install proxy caches, especially since we are using VSAT services.  I like that Infocom uses WiMax.  But their connection to the Internet seems less than reliable, which is unreasonable given that they are multiplexing WiMax users. And really, when the Warid mobile internet for $40/month performs better than the $300/month Infocom link, you know that something is seriously wrong.

As I mentioned at the beginning – this isn’t an all-across Uganda problem.  I can go to my Mbarara University office, and my internet connection is fine – we use Uganda Telecom as an ISP there, and the connection is a lot faster.  Unfortunately for me, the sysadmin is a bit paranoid since he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, and the firewall doesn’t let me POP3 my mail.

And I will also note that the story differs a lot when you change regions – East Africa Internet prices are very different from West Africa – in Ghana you can get fairly decent DSL broadband for $90/month, with out paying an arm and a leg for VSAT equipment, purely because West Africa has the SAT3 submarine fiber with a landing point in Ghana and a few other countries.

We’re waiting for that submarine fiber to Nairobi to be finished this summer?  Hopefully with a non-monopoly business plan? But even once East Africa has submarine fiber, that doesn’t solve pricing problems for the land-locked countries in central Africa.  While, there are many capital projects working on getting broadband Internet around the coast of Africa, no capital projects that I am aware of to date are investigating lowering the cost of Internet beyond the coast. More than a few invest in broadband via VSAT (e.g. o3b), but while VSAT may be expedient, it will remain expensive to maintain, and is not a new solution.

How many development projects have died after their three year term when the supporting NGO was no longer able to pay the $2000/month subscription fee for the VSAT service?  Even when coupled with on-the-ground last mile solutions like WiMax or WiFi for sharing the VSAT link amongst a number of users, we find that the per-user cost of VSAT is too high.  $2000/month here pays for maybe a 263/790kbps connection, which will support about 20-30 users.  That’s almost $100/user/month!  Let’s say we restricted applications to low-bandwidth apps and could support more users. With an optimistic 200 users, assuming no costs for maintaining a network that supports 200 users, $10/month is a lot of money to ask from a rural villager, discounting the cost of whatever device you are giving them. There’s still no real scenario in which this pricing model becomes affordable and sustainable. Shared VSAT plans are less expensive – but as I allude to in the beginning of my email – shared plans support fewer users.  This 64/64 Infocom plan is virtually non-functional at the moment.

There’s something on the horizon… Warid has started offering WiMax service in Kampala, for which they are charging about $150 for equipment and $100/month for “broadband” service.  In theory they will offer the same in Mbarara at the end of the month. (End of the month in Uganda usually means sometime in the next 3-6 months, as I’ve learned..)  I assume that this is similar to Infocom and MTN’s service – WiMax to VSAT, unless Warid has some sort of wireless relay going up through Kenya and Ethiopia to the Middle East that we don’t know about.

Also on the horizon is Eric Brewer’s plan to build long-distance wireless broadband (not necessarily WiFi or WiMax) links down the Rift Valley, effectively bringing broadband inland from a number of possible submarine fiber drop points to a selection of possible inland locations using existing(?) wireless towers.  Issues to surmount?  Spectrum licensing in each country, trans-boundary traffic issues, negotiating agreements between the various ISP associations in each country, pricing models, who will administer the network, etc.  Oh, and of course, setting up the network…. But TIER has experience with that…

In the meantime.  I’ll post this and be thankful that at least two of my three available Internet connectivity options are functional. ;)

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Posted in: Africa, Ghana, ICTD, Uganda.
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WECARE goes to Africa Part III

Mar 23rd, 2009
by melissa.
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Laura’s back in Africa for her third trip to Kofan Gayan Memorial Hospital, a rural municipal hospital (district hospital) in northern Nigeria, where she’s provisioning solar power to support lighting (led headlamps and DC led floodlamps) and communications (icom walkie talkies) for a maternity ward.  While she’s there, she’s emailing periodic updates about her progress, which I’ll crosspost here.

From:  Laura Stachel

Cross-posted from wecaresolar.com
Hello friends and family,
I’ve been in Nigeria for 5 days and it’s been a whirlwind of activity and accomplishments. Please take a look at the WE CARE website: www.wecaresolar.com if you want some detailed updates. The solar project is phenomenal – the solar panels are being installed, wiring is being done, and lights will be up in the maternity ward, operating room, and labor and delivery by the end of Monday. We’ve also installed outlets to enable suctioning in the operating room, and ongoing battery charging for the walkie-talkies and LED headlamps. Nurses in ALL of the wards are using the LED headlamps, and I’m learning that they are no longer having to postpone critical nursing care due to lighting problems. So intravenous lines are being placed on time, babies are getting the antibiotics they need, and stress levels are going down. The new antenna for the walkie talkies has been installed, and the repeater will be put in place on Monday. Then I will test the system to
verify that the walkie talkies will extend for 12 miles. That means that all the hospital employees on call will be able to use them, not just the ones who live on the hospital grounds. I also met with a group of visiting American doctors and convinced them to donate surgical supplies to the labor and delivery ward.  Finally, I have been observing and working with hospital staff, who have asked me to initiate a meeting next week to review difficult cases with poor outcomes, and to promote improved standards of care. They see me as  an allie and have responded to my gentle criticisms of their care in the most productive way possible.

And for the most special surprise – I procured a solar powered blood bank refrigerator and solar panels for the laboratory today

I’m going to be visiting the ministry of health on Monday, because the hospital wants to have a celebration in honor of WE CARE on Wednesday.

I haven’t been sending out my field notes about hospital care as I have in the past. I have been witness to many sensitive things, and worry about publicizing this for the world to see. If you would like any of my notes for your personal perusal, just let me know. They are at least as detailed and moving as the ones I blogged a year ago.

Finally, some of you have asked me how to make donations.  If you have not had a chance to make a donation to the WE CARE project and would like to, the website will accommodate donations through PAYPAL for a tiny fee, or you can send a check to: WE CARE, 3009 Hillegass Ave, Berkeley, CA. 94705.

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Posted in: Africa, Field Work, Health, WECARE.
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