25/11 05 Internet in Africa

We thought that the internet would liberate and democratise the world and give specific advantages to the third world, because they could skip steps of technology. It turned out not to be true. It is not because, as always before, any new market every new commodity everything will be capitalised. It is because the mayority of the world can't afford using the internet. They have no real access. It is a surprise because anywhere you go there are internet cafés - like Coca Cola they have spread world wide (web). So it means that everyone has access to the internet - we think. In a way they have. To really use the internet you will have to be online for a longer time, and it is only we in the west and the north that can afford it. There are only a small group in the third world that can afford to be online to such an extend. We are talking about surfing on the internet or chatting. Imagine you are on an old fashion internet connection. I am talking about the situation where you are waiting up to 5 minutes just to get into your yahoo account. So you need to use very long time, and it will be expensive. You end up only checking your e-mail. We don't consider that using the internet anymore in our part of the world. So this is exactly waht most people manage to do checking their e-mail only. Even if you have enough miney to sit in the internet café for several hours, then you still end up only checking e-mail and writinmg a few quick ones. It is the structure that hits you when the clock i ticking. So not even I will really use the internet undersuch condition that are offered to the mayority of the world, though I theoretical have the possibility. I am not part of the mayority, but I have friends that are more normal than me. Some of them live in Kampala. I will try to describe for you how they can use the internet. First you need to realise some basic conditions. There are the women who only have 7 years of school if they are lucky. Not because there was no money for her, but because the family choose to give the boys propers educations and she was sacrificed. So today she writes bad and very slow. Then we have men with basic jobs or no jobs at all. If they are lucky they will get 150.000 Ugandan shillings (approx. 80 US$). Half of it will go to paying house rent. The house is two rooms for a whole family plus some extra relatives. The kitchen is outside on the ground. The bathroom is a shared pit latrin. Most of the remaining money goes to feeding the family. The man will work to save money. Transport is quite expensive. One hour in an internet café will cost you 2000 shillings so it is not very often you can afford to do that. So using the internet on a regular basic is not optional. If you do, it means to sacrifice daily needs.