In September, Sony released an ad for Playstation 3 which included the line, “You can't believe everything you read on the Internet – otherwise, I'd be a Nigerian millionaire by now.” The ad was met with consternation from many Nigerians, and the Federal Government requested that Sony make a formal apology (Sony did apologize and later withdrew the ad).

Around the same time came the release of District 9 – a sci-fi blockbuster which was critically well-received but irksome to many Nigerians. The Nigerian government took offense at the film's depiction of Nigerians as criminals and cannibals, banning the film within Nigeria and asking the Censor's Board to confiscate it from theaters. Online, the movie provoked varied reactions, with some taking the view that the film presents a racist view of Nigerians, while others defended it as a fictional representation with little bearing on reality.

Adamu Waziri at EVCL points out that often Nigerian depictions of Nigerians are equally unflattering:

Nollywood, our indigenous movie industry, has portrayed us in a much harsher light to both national and international audiences. There was a time where you couldn’t get Nollywood movie that didn’t include one of the following or a combination of them; fraud, juju/witchcraft, armed robbery, incest, adultery, cannibalism and of course our favourite, corruption. Nollywood has been pumping out thousands of movies with these themes for years with no real opposition from the general public or any Ministry.

… Banning films sets the wrong precedent; in fact it can be dangerous. Let us the public debate the issue. We are mature enough to do so. In fact our Minister has succeeded in giving the movie more publicity which I’m sure she didn’t intend to do.

Nicole Stamp comments on race in District 9:

The thing that really upsets me is that most people who see this movie won’t question, or even notice, this incredibly racist portrayal…. Why can’t the Nigerians just be people with logical motives like money and weapons? Why do they have to go out of their way to be ooga-booga savages? ….it is impossible to disregard the charged portrayal of Nigerians which when viewed in a larger context, is beyond damaging or defamatory but is dangerous.

Read more on the debate at Nigerianstalk.org or google “district 9 race”.

More recently, Time magazine published a slide show by the South African photographer Pieter Hugo which featured scenes from Nigeria's “Nollywood” movie industry. Though not so controversial as District 9 or the Playstation commercial, the photographs nonetheless prompted debate in the blogosphere, with discussions over whether such depictions of Nigeria fall under the category of artistic freedom or cultural bias.

Solomon Sydelle at Nigerian Curiosity writes:

I definitely understand the need to push the envelope, after all that desire has led to some of the most creative masterpieces and accomplishments of all time. However, with these pictures, I struggle to develop an appreciation of them and/or what they represent and believe that they unnecessarily relied on biases that will only confirm certain stereotypes for Hugo's mainly Western audience.

These events are especially ill-timed as they correspond to a new initiative launched earlier this year to “Re-brand Nigeria.” The initiative is sponsored by Dr. Dora Akunyili, Nigerian Minister of Information and Communication, and has been met with both praise and criticism (see here for the discussion at Global Voices).

Bunmi Oloruntoba at  A Bombastic Element discusses the re-branding campaign in the context of a recent BBC discussion on the subject:

The minister has a good case when she argues that Nigeria is overlooking a lot of positives, has not been telling her stories and is making the mistake of letting the world define her image based on its notoriety alone. And she has some good examples of the positives. But the BBC sought out a few PR and branding experts who counter by saying, if the country wants to rebrand itself, it needs to give any PR team a lot more to build on. Those interviewed said, consistent power supply and an end to a diesel generator economy will make rebranding Nigeria “effortless.” And to prove their point, 13:40 mins into the program… well, you don't need to be a Nigerian to figure out what happened.

A bright spot in the discussion of Nigeria's image was a widely circulated video of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaking on “The danger of a single story.” Adichie comments on the pitfalls of a monolithic image of Africa as a site of catastrophe; she cautions that limiting ourselves to a “single story” flattens experience and creates stereotypes. For many bloggers, Adichie's remarks resonated with their frustration at the depictions of Nigeria prevalent outside the country.

Shade NonConformist  writes of the connection between Adichie's speech and Nigeria's image:

I believe this is what Chimamada Adichie meant about The Danger of a Single Story lecture she gave at TED. It becomes a problem when the only portrayal of Africa that we see is one involving dead animals, poverty, disaster, death, corruption, celebrity adoptions…you know the whole nine yards. Now I'm not saying Africa does not have these issues. We can all agree that we do. I'm arguing that these issues are not specific to African countries.

… I/We will never stop criticizing depictions of Africa that are unbalanced and prejudiced. Presenting a balance depiction of Africa is crucial. As Africans we also need to act as vessels who are willing to be instrumental in the change we want to see (and will see) in our beloved continent.

Internet connections allow students in the most rural areas to augment learning through research. Academics can keep up with colleagues across the world. Social media may make it easier for people to organize themselves and facilitate the way immigrants send remittances.

The role ICTs plays in human development is being debated and discussed at a Sept. 23- 24 Harvard University forum, ICTs, Human Development, Growth and Poverty Reduction.

What about the backlash against computers and the fear of technological devices? If the promise of ICTs will lead to poverty reduction, how will technophobia affect this mission? Technophobia certainly remains a global issue. With the influence of ICTs role in development, however, does the fear of technology and misunderstanding of its uses disproportionally affect the developing world? If so, what are people doing about it?

Here are a few examples of fighting and understanding technophobia in Africa. (If you’ve got more, we’d love to hear them. We’ll also be trying to write this issue in other parts of the world, so please pass those ideas along, too.)

Technophobia in Africa, like elsewhere, takes many forms. Resistance to technology by teachers has been cited (.pdf) as a problem of computer expansion in Kenyan classrooms. Both hospital staff and patients in Uganda list “cultural adaptability” as a constraint in implementing ICTs in health centers. Girls around the world view cybercafés – in many places, the only gateway to the internet – as strictly boys’ territory.

James Kariuki, an E-learning specialist from Cape Town, South Africa relates a story of a well educated friend having difficulty with adapting to new technologies. This is from his blog Elearning in Africa:

I engaged with a friend today and he was lamenting about the speed at which the technology is moving. I could see the agony in his face when he told me that he was scheduled to do a presentation in a hall, and the only thing in that lecture hall as a visual aid is a computer and a projector. The old-fashioned overhead projectors have been replaced by these new technologies. The pain of having to redo his presentation, and scanning his images so that they can be used on the computer was profound. I asked him whether he has considered attending any of training sessions:

Most of us have a phobia for technology and most of the jargon used in the training leaves us more confused than we were before training. I know of a number of professors in my department who have the same feelings about the technology and they cannot attend training.

I asked him, is this reasons that some lecturers never use the technology in the lecture theatres? He said:

Yes, and more to that there is a cultural bearing. They should have involved an anthropologist to study the culture of the prospective users of the technology so that they can advice them about what need to change first [in terms of culture] for the technology to be successfully used.

Here I see a problem where the technology is being provided but the constituency that should benefit from it is not. I am not sure of the best approach to dealing with technophobia, especially in situations where the individuals [with the phobia] have all the resources and support and training but they cannot still use the resources available. If you have a clue, feel free to let me know.

In a comment, Neil J says we should all be expanding our definition of technophobia — because each of us have a bit of it.

I suppose, as you said training is the best way to deal with this. I am currently doing a university assignment into technophobia. I think we all have elements of technophobia:
- the anger we display when a computer crashes
- fearing that computers will replace our jobs
- fear that we are being watched!

The digital divide is not just rural versus urban or rich countries versus poor. Gender remains an important factor, says Ore Somolu, writing in The Networking Success Project from Nigeria.

Women face a number of limitations to be able to freely use technology, Ore continues, including lower disposable incomes, limited time for technology use, average lower literacy levels. One solution includes starting technology lessons for girls at an early age.

Young women need to become more involved in science and technology from an early age. This could be formally (primary or secondary school, computer school, after-school program) or informally (learning from family or friends, summer camps with computer classes). The Gender Team at KnowledgeHouseAfrica organises the FOSS Women Bootcamp Workshop, which equips young women with the skills necessary to train other women to use FOSS* (Free and Open Source Software). Fantsuam Foundation offers scholarships to qualified and interested women for ICT training.

Mothers are a big influence on their daughters and if they display feelings of technophobia, some girls may unconsciously adopt similar feelings. It is important that encouragement comes from the home, through introduction from a young age to incrementally more complex forms of technology.

Lauren Clifford-Holmes, a student at Rhodes University in South Africa, at one time felt that ICTs were not living up to their promise because few projects created tangible results. She lists a few examples of best practices when using ICTs to augment development. From her blog, The Soap Box:

What struck me about this story were two key nuances: firstly that dumping technology in a community is useless unless the skills are taught for the consumption of and production using this technology. Secondly, this case study emphasised the importance of focusing on schools and introducing students to technology which can aid their learning experience, and teach them the skills they need to thrive in the knowledge economy/ information society.

She reports on an example that promotes the right kind of appropriate technology, the Intel Teach Program.

Mthebula High School was donated computers by Telkom a few years ago, but none of the teachers were incorporating the technology into their instruction. School language teacher, Mercy Ntlemo, attributed this to most of the teachers lacking “the specific knowledge and training to integrate technology in any substantive way”. This meant the computers were gathering dust, barely used beyond basic information retrieval and simple word processing.

This example speaks to the larger debate within ICTs and development: development needs to happen on a multitude of different levels. It makes no sense to think you are aiding development by donating free technology like computers to those who lack the skills to utilise this technology effectively.

In this particular case, Ntlemo underwent the Intel Teach Program, a professional development program designed to help teachers integrate technology effectively in the classroom with the objective of helping students build 21st century skills. Ntlemo felt she really benefited from the training and following her success, many other teachers did the program, to help “conquer their technophobia”.
This training program exposed the teachers to new approaches for creating assessment tools and aligning lessons with educational learning goals and standards. Additionally, they discover new ways to incorporate the use of the Internet, Web page design, and student projects as vehicles for powerful learning.

As a result of the Intel Teach Program, Ntlemo says that technology is now an integral part of the curriculum at DZJ Mthebula High School, and project based learning is the norm. The training program revolutionised the way the teachers used the computers – a wonderful resource which until then were being completely underused. Ntlemo says the program “has revolutionised the way we teach.”

So what does a story such as this one teach us? It teaches us that we need to have a wholistic approach to development, and that development occurs within a particular context – such as lack of digital literacy. We need to understand the contexts of the communities needing developments in ICTs so that development does not become a worthless endeavour but rather a meaningful process of change.

GLO-1 is Africa's newest submarine cable.
Map via Many Possibilities.

In late July, damage to the SAT-3 cable — which until last weekend was Nigeria's only link to the global communications system — crippled bank services and Internet access throughout the country. Approximately 70 percent of the country's bandwidth was affected.

According to the Chief Operating Officer of Globacom Limited, which financed the GLO-1 project, the new system will be able to meet all of Nigeria's broadband needs for the next 15 to 20 years. Bloggers are looking forward to faster speeds and cheaper and more reliable access.

From Cameroon, Bill Zimmerman writes:

The cable is expected to drive down broadband costs and provide faster and more robust connectivity for voice, data and video services. The technology sector in West Africa stands to benefit from Glo-1 as companies will be able to communicate more easily with clients and partners overseas. It equally holds promise to open Internet access to individuals and small businesses who’ve been unable to afford connections of their own.

For Yomi Adegboye of Mobility Nigeria, the improvements GLO-1 promises can't come soon enough:

Before now, the entire country depended on only the SAT-3 cable under the monopoly of NITEL for cost-efficient high-speed access. Industry watchers have been in expectation of Glo-1 for months now, as its launch will undoubtedly impact on the cost and delivery of high-speed internet access in Nigeria.

Now that Glo-1 is here, when exactly do we begin to enjoy the services?

GLO-1 is unique in that is the world's first privately owned submarine cable. Theresa Carpenter Sondjo of Appfrica explains:

Most undersea cables, including the SAT-3 that currently connects West Africa to the rest of the world, are built by consortiums of private and public (national) companies. Glo-1 is unusual because it was financed entirely by Nigeria’s GlobalCom…. Nigeria currently depends on the NITEL monopoly for access to its own SAT-3 landing station and buys extra bandwidth from neighboring Benin.

Munashe Gumbonzvanda of TechMasai adds:

The interesting thing about the cable is that unlike other ventures like Seacom [Editor's Note: Seacom, a cable connecting the eastern African coastline to Europe and Asia, went live in July 2009], this venture was entirely financed by Glo alone. The consequences of the Glo-1 are major, but will probably take a while to take effect. This as with Seacom is a great moment for African technological innovation and development.

GSBI students

From the GSBI, the Global Social Benefit Incubator and The Next Billion Blog comes a series of video interviews of social entrepreneurs from all over the globe who are meeting in what editor Francisco Noguera calls a 2-week in residence boot camp that closes the Global Social Benefit Incubator.

But what is the GSBI? This is how they explain:

The Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI™) is the signature program of Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology and Society (CSTS).  It works with social entrepreneurs to empower them and their organizations and to overcome barriers to scale and impact.  Since 2003, 87 award-winning social enterprises have attended this program and become part of a growing network of path finding alumni for creating a more just and sustainable world.

The first person interviewed was Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu who runs Smallholder Farm Rural Radio in Nigeria, providing poor farmers in rural and isolated communities with a rural radio full of information on sustainable agriculture and development in local languages. What is great is that they use radio and Internet to provide the information and is a profitable enterprise.

Yugandhar Mandavkar from India's Grass Roots Action for Social Participation organization was also interviewed, and spoke about the vertical draft energy efficient wood stoves which save women in India from having to collect large amounts of firewood for cooking fires:

Manoj Sinha is also from India, but he has a different take on affordable energy for rural communities. Husk Power Systems provides pay-per-use energy to communities by providing energy from rice husks. According to GSBI, “HPS systems eliminate over 190 tons of CO2 emissions annually per village by replacing kerosene, diesel, and methane output with renewable sources”. The video, here:

Seacom connects the eastern African coastline to Europe and Asia

Johannesburg, Nairobi and Kampala received their connections on Thursday, and Addis Ababa and Kigali are expected to follow. The cable's arrival was originally scheduled for early July, but pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia delayed operations.

The undersea link is expected to lower the cost of bandwidth by up to 90 percent and to increase access to video conferencing, high definition television and high speed Internet along the eastern African coastline.

“Mmmh…Can't wait for the downloads to start,” writes IT Blog Kenya.

In Uganda, Josh from In an African Minute is already noticing the difference:

The widely known technique for watching YouTube videos in Africa is to immediately pause the video when it starts, wait 20 minutes (or much more) until the video fully loads, and then watch. Today I’m at the ceremony launching SEACOM…. In the corner of a conference room, Peter Moreton, a procurement manager for SEACOM, beckoned me over to a display computer with YouTube queued up. We launched Kung Fu baby and for the first time in Africa, I saw a YouTube video load completely and play in 6 seconds.

Munashe at TechMasai is equally thrilled:

Seacom the undersea cable we wrote about a while back is complete and has been commissioned, today. The initiative is revolutionary for the fact that the countries which will make use of it for now, which include Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, South Africa and Uganda.

…It is a beautiful moment for Africa, I can vouch for Kenya who until now depended on satellites for their internet needs.

Jeremy, a Nigerian blogger writing at NaijaBlog, compares Seacom to West Africa's various cable links. West Africa comes up short:

East Africa goes broadband…while West Africa is still in the starting blocks (actually, still in the changing room wondering what to wear) with useless always-cut SAT3, a phantom Glo1 (are Alcatel's contractors stuck under a sand dune?) and the two new entrants, WACS and Main1 still way off beyond the horizon (next year if we're lucky). East Africa has embraced broadband and sprinted off with it while West Africa dithers and looks around.

Twitter is also abuzz with Seacom news. Some users are excited, while others are more skeptical:

“Still absolutely amazed that you can practically download the whole of the Interwebz through one small yellow cable #seacom“
— ncallegari

“Seacom did launch _for real_ today. Lets see how long it takes for the ISPs to increase speeds and lower costs…”
— dnyaga

“is it just me or is the net in Nairobi slower today since #seacom launched? Maybe the bandwidth is enjoying the ocean view before coming up?”
— mentalacrobatic

Much of the Seacom skepticism surrounds the issue of pricing: though some analysts claim bandwidth costs will drop by 90 percent, others believe the actual cost cuts may be much smaller. Kachwanya writes:

In the ideal world the cost should go down by more than 90%, currently it cost ISPs US$6500 (around KShs.487500) per MB of bandwidth. According to Seacom they will be charging US$400 (around Kshs.30,000) per MB of bandwidth, but hold your breath, don’t expect miracles on this front. Recently UUnet CEO Tom Omariba claimed that cables will only bring down costs by 20-30 percent.

True Kenyan is concerned about transparency:

Seacom has blatantly refused to disclose to us, the consumers of the internet, which ISP’s have bought the bandwidth from them. Hence we are still on the dark and we do not know where we can buy the cheap and reliable internet from…. So the only alternative i am left with is to continue with my ISP staring at the machine as it loads pages at its own pace wishing that one day our dream will come true.

Commenting on a post by Tanzanian blogger Issa Michuzi [SW], Mdau is also worried about costs, though he has high hopes for the future:

Asanteni sana kwa huo mkonga. Sasa kutandaza fibre-optic cables kwenye miji mbalimbali tunaanza lini? Manake kuwa na inter-country connection wakati within the country hatuna connection nzuri bado gharama zitakuwa juu na kwa maoni yangu tutakuwa tuna-under utilise capacity ya hiyo under sea cable. For the moment, well done! For the future, we have to work had!

For Jellyfish, who dismisses pricing concerns by noting that such an increase in speed and quality of service would normally be accompanied by a price hike, the arrival of Seacom is a beautiful event:

In a highly publicized and coordinated event SEACOM turned on the switch which instantenously beamed Terabytes of bandwidth at the speed of light through highly polished and engineered strands of glass.

And for South African Aki Anastasiou, “This is one small MB for my laptop, one giant TB for Africa.”

Discussing anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda Simon Collery argues that criminalization of same sex relationships will make it harder to protect male gay from HIV transmission:

When it comes to preventing HIV transmission, criminalization of same sex relationships will make it more difficult to protect men who have sex with men (MSM). MSM are very vulnerable to being infected with HIV and are more likely to transmit it than those engaging solely in heterosexual relationships.

But this means that it must be made possible for MSM to be open about their sexual practices. If they are not open about their sexual practices it will not be possible to target this group with appropriate HIV reduction programmes. They will do everything they can to remain invisible, they will not be able to seek medical attention safely, they will not be protected by the law; they will become even more vulnerable than they are now and they will represent a greater obstacle to reduction of HIV transmission.

The Director General of Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) was quoted last year saying, “Gays are one of the drivers of HIV in Uganda, but because of meagre resources we cannot direct our programmes at them at this time.” Ugandan homosexuals responded:

* 26 years since the epidemic of HIV started there has not been a single government led prevention programme amongst gay Ugandans.
* That from the very beginning of the world wide epidemic it was known that gay men are a vulnerable group.

The statement by the Director General is particularly sad, following statements of other Ugandan leaders that gay people should be marooned on an island to die2, and from an advisor to the UAC that “Our previous experience showed us that bringing homosexuals into campaigns against HIV only gives them a chance to propagate their illegal and unnatural acts.”3

We are Ugandans. We are gay Ugandans.

We have a right to life.

We have a right to health.

We have a right to be free of HIV.

We have a right to knowledge about HIV prevention and treatment. We have a right to protect our selves, our lovers, our families and our communities.

26 years since the HIV epidemic started, Gay Ugandans believe myths and lies about HIV because of biased and unscientific public education campaigns carried out by the government. Despite the lies we have been told, all people have the right to unbiased prevention, care, treatment, and support.

Being gay in Africa is still like being in the belly of the beast. Culture, religion and homophobia aside, bloggers feel that prevention campaigns on HIV among MSM should be active and negative gay stereotypes should be avoided to make gay men more confident in protecting themselves, and governmments should at least make an effort to try and salvage their people from obscurity.

Sebaspace summarises his feelings on the issue:

Sadly, it is unlikely that any African government is paying attention or interested in paying attention. It's criminal really …. utterly diabolical.

Gay Uganda feels that the community in general has to pay too:

To be fair, the community has to pay it with us. So, who's to blame. Seems as if we can start tossing around the blame too.

Tamaku, who writes Diary of a gay Kenya man, writes:

HIV continues to wreak havoc in Sub-Saharan Africa more than in any other region of the world and it appears African males who have sex with men are particularly affected.

One of his readers comments on his post:

ts unfortunate that HIV prevention programmes in most Sub-Saharan African countries are still geared only towards the heterosexual majority. Until recently, quite a few gay men in many countries even believed that the virus was transmitted only via heteroexual sex. MSMs will have rampant unprotected sex with their male partners and because they sleep with only one woman (perhaps their wife), they believe that all is well.

This is a very opportunistic virus that exploits every single chance its given and the rectum with its profusion of capillaries,
together with its liability to rupture is perhaps the single most probable possible point of infection

In highlighting the plight of homosexuals in Africa,The LGBT Asylum posts an article written by Edward Qooro titled, “Activists petition UN over violation of gays' rights in Tanzania”:

Human rights campaigners have filed a report with the United Nations, complaining against Tanzania's violation of the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender (LGBT) persons .

The report submitted this month to the Human Rights Committee of the UN, seeks to highlight the social and legal obstacles that hinder the freedom of the groups with this type of social relations.

The report was filed by three non-governmental organisations: the Centre for Human Rights Promotion in East Africa, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, and the Global Rights.

Tamaku had a 3 month poll on his blog asking readers if homosexuality should be decrimanalised in Kenya. 41% said “No” and 28% felt that homosexuality has no place in Kenya. One post on his blog showed that 96% of respondents were against homosexuality:

However, the danger of public hostility is real. A 2005 poll in Kenya showed that 96% of respondents felt that homosexuality was an affront to their beliefs.

Most gay youth who are proud of their identity are now speaking out and looking for gay role models to emulate. Afrogay, a gay Nigerian now living in the United States, writes:

Now Gen X is living a life of based on what the media has given them. Is this what being gay is all about? The answer is no, there are positive good black gay role models out there , some are out some are not. These older men should be able to mentor the younger ones and not seek just sex from them. Encourage them to be positive to build their talent and use it for a purpose.

This is something I seek as a young gay African American. I seek a mentor a role model, I seek one ready to teach and care for a younger gay man.

IS THERE ANY OUT THERE

HIV on the Down Low: Myth & Reality?:

I think we are getting on dangerous grounds as people are refusing to acknowledge that there are people of different sexual orientations and by this! they might be forcing people on the down low (some).

What people fail to realise is that gay people are social beings too, like all the people in the world, they want to love and be loved and engage in bodily pleasure and satisfaction, so if you force them into oblivion and make them hide their sexuality it puts people in the sexual equation at risk.