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the one putting this information on the web, and in theory, the gov’t could change the policy, making this document out of date.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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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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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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By far and away, MTN is the dominant operator. Zain/Celtel was the first to market, but as my Ugandan friends say “then they started cheating us, overcharging – we will not forget.” So when MTN arrived with giant masts, reliable infrastructure, and fair rates, the Ugandans switched en masse.

UTL is the government owned operator (they may be partially privatized, I would have to check), so they also carry the stigma of distrust of high prices, as well as perception of inadequate infrastructure. In my experience – their GPRS is great, EDGE is not so good, but their overall coverage is not as widespread as MTN or Zain.

Warid is a new arrival – as of about 2 years ago, and already they have a reputation for being an all-over network – that is what their billboards say (if you have time, browse my flickr photos from fall 2008). They don’t have huge market share yet but people say they will make gains. In the meantime, they are also entering the broadband market, offering low cost Internet services via a city-wide WiMax network at less than $100/month with minimal installation costs. Revolutionary in an area where VSAT is the norm.

Orange. Another provide means more competition. Will it force an existing provider out of business by driving prices lower? Will more money go into infrastructure rollout in rural areas?

Another extremely important aspect of telecommunications rollout in Uganda is the Uganda Communication Commission’s rural communications development fund, the RCDF. Using part of the income from the taxes on the voice communications, take bids from the mobile phone operators to fund projects to develop unreached rural areas that don’t have mobile coverage yet – and might not be a viable market normally. I think it is structured well here, with a good balance of investment in innovation and practical deployment. Orange has the potential to be another player here, if they are willing to participate in Uganda’s development, and not just trying to tap the mobile phone market. The two can be mutually beneficial. We shall see.

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My Stopgap Ergonomics Setup

Well, you can’t really call it Ugandan style if it involves a stack of 4 eeePC boxes, admittedly, and I’m not actually going to use this as my permanent setup. But I thought it would be entertaining to share this with you.  Most days I’m too lazy to set up the entire stack – I only do it when I’m doing a LOT of typing, and/or my tendonitis has already flared up.

It’s basically my stack of eeePC boxes, with an open binderbox being used as a keyboard tray, and the laptop on top. The top three eeePC boxes are raising the laptop to eye level and counterbalancing the keyboard so that it is stable while I am typing.  There’s a fourth underneath (not visible) that lifts the keyboard a little off the chair so that the keyboard is a little below elbow level and such that I can sort of fit my knees under it. I’m using my goldtouch keyboard and a small portable usb mouse, connected to a 4 port usb 2.0 hub.

I’ve wandered all around looking for actual keyboard trays, and everyone looks at me a little blankly. Hah. But I finally found a store that actually sells computer desks for $70-$100 with built-in keyboard slider trays and adjustable “secretary chairs” for about $100. Expensive, especially by Ugandan standards, so I’ll have to think about it pretty seriously, but ergonomics and RSI is serious, yeah?

My other theory is to hire a carpenter to build a wooden keyboard tray into the desk pictured on the right of the picture.  Or to see if I can find a small waist-high table to fit under the desk.  I think I’ve been too spoiled by keyboard trays that can be tilted in every-which direction and fully adjustable.  Strange to have to find a way to cope out here…

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I was sort of hoping when I looked that they were a site that donated textbooks – so that I could get some textbooks for the Object-Oriented Programming class I’m teaching at Mbarara University of Science and Technology this year. I wanted to use Head First Java (which you can get from BWB for $32), or maybe Deitel and Deitel’s Java How to Program (available in various editions from BWB) at least as a reference, but unfortunately they don’t have either in their libraries (the library actually has a lot of copies of C++ How to Program and C How to Program), and I’m sure the students can’t afford to buy the books.  Alas even if they could I didn’t even know what class I was teaching until a few weeks ago, so it’s not like the books would be shipped on time. There are a bunch of other textbooks in the library – but unfortunately there’s about 20 books for my class of 208 students to share. I’m hoping they’ll cope with the online resources (e.g. the Java Tutorial) and my lecture notes, but that puts a lot of pressure on my lecture notes and very unreliable Internet connection.  I just gave my first lecture today, which was followed by lots of frantic copying of my slides to some very highly infected usb-keys.  Thank goodness I have an apple laptop. Whew. Sigh.

Anyone want to donate an electronic copy of a decent OOP-Java textbook?

Actually, lots of people here are asking me for advice on web development and some systems administration too.  I think we’d be happy to take donations of any textbooks, electronic or otherwise.

You can ship books to me here at the Institute of Computer Science:

Institute of Computer Science c/o Melissa Ho
Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST),
P.O. Box 1410
Tel: +25648520394 / +25648521373
Mbarara, Uganda

If you decide to ship anything else to me, umm, like computers (!!) let me know and I can give you an address in Kampala, which might be more secure/faster. =)

p.s. For my personal use, I’m perfectly happy to just buy and download pdfs of books from O’reilly or elsewhere and read them on my Sony Reader.  It’s a little slow sometimes, but I get instant gratification (relatively, compared to the post) and remarkably readable. And I can carry them home with me. But if you send me a physical book I’ll leave them here for the library.

Powered by Qumana

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I, however, was nowhere near South Hall – and instead enjoying pork and chips in at the Grand Holiday Inn in Mbarara, Uganda, the trading town in Western Uganda where I am based for the next year for my dissertation fieldwork. It’s an urban center – not quite the locus for most of the private health clinics where I’ll be working, but the location of Mbarara University of Science and Technology, where I’ll be teaching, and sort of the center of gravity for the private clinics – they all come here to restock their medical supplies.

On the inauguration – expecations here run from high to indifferent. The newspapers all feature Obama’s picture on the front page, both yesterday and today. The radio programs have “Obama” speaking as a guest, while people call in to discuss Bush’s legacy as the president who gave the most aid to Africa. People have high hopes – but simultaneously know not to have high expectations of the president of a country with an economy currently in shambles. Yet just Monday night I was just approached by a hotel manager wanting me to help him get to the USA so he could “raise so much capital for his business.” His plan? To work hard in the hotel industry and save money.

Most people I spoke to didn’t seem to be planning to watch the inauguration – yet when one of my coworkers was checking in to her hotel at about 3pm (4am Pacific, T-4 hours), the reception was playing CNN, which had already started the countdown to the inauguration. (It transpired later that whatever the reception played – the entire hotel had to watch, since they controlled the cable access for the entire building!!)

Later, I discovered that my place didn’t have a tv, so when the time came, I went back to my coworker’s hotel room and joined her to watch the festivities. The power was out, so there was a super-loud generator running just outside her room competing with the volume of the (heh) 13 in tv. The walls of the room were an odd shade of lime green. She called many of her friends and family to see if they were watching too – “how can you be watching cartoons when history is happening?” I found it strange that we could be off work and watching – while many of my friends had to be at work or class and couldn’t get away to see it. Yet at the same time, part of the (ahem) cnn experience was also seeing people all around the US watching the inauguration on giant screens everywhere else. It’s crazy to be a part of such a shared experience.

So. Where were you when Obama became president?

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There is a crisis in Eastern Congo around Goma.  The rebel army, CNDP, lead by Nkunda advanced from the north all the way to the outskirts of Goma, the provencial capital.  More than 50,000 people fled to Goma.  Behind the CNDP lines, credible reports document that the rebels have broken up IDP (internally displaced peoples camps) and burned them to the ground, further displacing 50,000 + more people.  Aid agencies haven’t been able to reach many of the displaced, until now, and hunger and starvation are very real, as there is no food. It is wet, muddy, and raining.  Many are sick. Below are a few articles that do a good job analyzing the conflict.

How we fuel Africa’s Bloodiest War
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-we-fuel-africas-bloodiest-war-978461.html

The Rape of a Nation (~10 min documentary that explains some history)
http://mediastorm.org/0022.htm

Update on UN’s role
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/31/congo-unitednations-miliband

This conflict is more than what is frequently cited as “tribal” or “ethnic,” rather it is economic.  Eastern Congo is rich in natural resources: copper, diamonds, gold, and coltan.  Coltan is used in laptop computers and cell phones — multinational companies benefit. Attached is a form letter to send to your senators calling for conflict-free coltan regulations.  Send a letter to our senators and representatives.  The form letter is “Coltan Letter.pdf”

Here are the links to the CA Senators
Senator Boxer: 

https://boxer.senate.gov/contact/email/policy.cfm

Senator Feinstein:
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe

Secondly, it is women and children who suffer the most during this conflict.  Troops from both sides are raping and pillaging.  The people of Congo need security and to be able to return to their homes, their villages, their fields in order to produce food!  One million people are displaced in North Kivu, and they cannot be taken care of.  They’re dispersed, and putting huge strain on the existing towns and cities as they try to feed them.  WFP’s rations are one quarter of what is needed to survive.  MONUC (UN peacekeeping mission) doesn’t’ have the resources to provide protection.  Support is needed from the international community in order to help these organizations do what their mandate is: feed and protect. Attached is a petition drafted by HEAL Africa you can sign.  To sign, email your Name, Affiliation, Country to [editor's note: instructions for participating in the petition are available on the HEALAfrica "Four Ways to Help" website]

Finally, to encourage the international community to do something about this humanitarian disaster, attached is a form letter (thanks to Andrew Hoeksema) to send to your senators calling for them to do something and influence the UN Security Council, rather than sit back and ignore.

“As the UN Security Council will be briefed on the situation in eastern D.R. Congo.  Please work with fellow Senators to encourage the U.S. delegation to the UN to push for further intervention on behalf of the innocents who are affected by this fighting.  Great humanitarian aid is needed for the 100s of 1000s who have been displaced in recent months.  Tell the UN Security Council to increase humanitarian aid in this emergency situation to the displaced peoples in the major city of Goma.  Also, have the UN Security Council increase the mandate of the peacekeeping troops to further intervention to stop and push back the advances of Nkunda’s rebel forces.  The UN Security Council also must work to push negotiations between presidents of D.R. Congo and Rwanda who are both involved in this crisis.”

Thank you for taking time to learn more about this catastrophe.
Thank you for praying fervently for peace and for taking  a step to end the atrocities and injustice.

Marian

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Just as diamonds are mined to finance these conflicts – coltan (used in the Sony PS2 and mobile phone chips) is another scarce resource that can be traded for weapons or other supplies.

Senate Bill 3058 endeavors to do what we’ve already done with diamonds – to enforce restrictions to make sure that we don’t end up with conflict coltan in our mobile phones. Kerry Gough from my church has drafted a letter that you can use to urge your senator to sponsor this bill.  You can download word documents for Senator Feinstein or Senator Boxer (California) here, or you can just copy the text from below and use it for your own senator.
Letter to Senator Boxer
Letter to Senator Feinstein

Honorable Diane Feinstein
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Re: Rape & Exploitation in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Dear Senator Feinstein:

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the worst places in the world to be a girl or woman. Everyday women as old as 87 and babies as young as 10 months are raped by militiamen, soldiers, policemen and civilians. There are hundreds of thousands of victims—2000 RAPES were reported in June, 2008, in just one Province (North Kivu) of the DRC. There is a pervasive atmosphere of impunity that encourages rape at will.

Although the recently passed House Resolution 1227 condemns the ongoing epidemic of sexual violence in the Congo, such resolutions carry no sanctions and are ignored by the governmental powers in the DRC. Legislation with some teeth in it is necessary, such as the Conflict Coltan and Cassiterite Act of 2008 (SB 3058). Similar to the legislation banning importation of blood diamonds, SB 3058 will require that coltan be certified as conflict free before being imported. Coltan is a necessary ingredient for the manufacture of cell phones, computer games, monitors and numerous other high tech instruments. Restrictions on its import would compel not only Congolese government to take action to eliminate coltan related conflict, but also would put pressure upon the U.S. manufacturers of technological instruments to ensure that their products are conflict-free.

The Congolese live in dire life threatening and life ending conditions because DRC is entangled in 10 years of war which has contributed to the death of over 5.4 million people to date. This conflict is not just an internal African implosion but rather it is a battle for coltan, diamonds, cassiterite and gold, destined for sale in London, New York and Paris – the metals that make our technological society vibrate and ring and bling. In addition to high death rates, the war has lead to the use of child soldiers, child slavery in mines, the mass displacement of peoples, and the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war and the transmission of HIV infection by rape. Shockingly, notwithstanding the epidemic of HIV in the DRC, of the $45 billion dollars authorized by Congress to fight HIV (PEPFAR) only $15 million is allocated for the DRC.

I urge you to join as a co-sponsor of SB 3058, legislation that is essential to put meaningful sanctions behind well-meaning resolutions.

Let me know if you have any questions and I’d be happy to point you to some people that can tell you more about the bill!

Melissa

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I do information technology for healthcare in Africa. Actually, I’ve also recently dabbled in solar powered lighting for a hospital in rural Nigeria, done some IT for education in Mexico, and helped out with wireless deployments in India, so I’ve been known to think about other problems as well, but my primary focus (i.e. my dissertation) is on information technology for healthcare in Africa. My motivation runs something like this: (A) I’m pretty good (compared to some, not so much compared to a lot of my colleagues in TIER) at computers and actually get pretty obsessed with them at times. (B) God has placed a special and specific compassion in my heart for the needs of Africa. Since I’m absolutely sure that (A) is not a coincidence, and because God has managed to do a lot of things in my life to make this possible, I’m using (A) to address (B).

On an academic end, my dissertation committee is Dean AnnaLee Saxenian (co-chair), Prof. John Chuang (co-chair), Prof. Eric Brewer and Prof. Jenna Burrell. My coursework and reading delves primarily into research methods, development theory, and healthcare and telecommunications policy. My work experience is in user interface and web application design, so my research also involves human-computer interaction, participatory design, and action research. By combining a theoretical approach with an experiential interaction, my work most closely approaches applied anthropology. My dissertation will be primarily ethnographic – although I am allocating six months (jan-jun 2009) to do a deployment, the remaining six months have been set aside in such a way that I will deliberately step back from my role as a technologist, both to ensure sustainability of the deployment in my absence, but also so I will have the time to observe social dynamics as they emerge around the deployment over time.

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