Message-ID: <m0uJxNq-0004fPC@lisse.na> Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 08:22:01 +0100 From: Dr Eberhard W Lisse <mailto:el@LISSE.NA> Subject: Re: Re[3]: Computers to Africa To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
> What is being said by some people is: don't send old technology. Fine. But is
> that to say that old technology is useless? Would you object to being sent
> clothes sewn by hand of cloth weaved by hand if you were naked? Perhaps it is
> too coarse for you tastes? (I'll refrain from further rhetoric and trust that
> the reader gets the gist from just one such example.)
The point is, we Africans are being treated like minor children. Someone overseas who has no idea decides he must do something (and I leave out the motive here which is another story), so inappropirate stuff is being sent and then we must be grateful to the sender because we got a truck full of trash we can put into the landfill.
Not just computers. So called state of the art approach radars, which turn out to be east german air force equpment rejected by the Federal Air Force because it is useless, hospital beds and sterilisators that don't work and have to go to the scarp dealer, expired drugs, about to expire drugs for which we don't have any indication, the list is endless.
It doesn't stop there. The development bureaucracy is particularily notorious for "pulling UNESCOs". Projects are not initated because a country has identified needs and strategies for solutions, but because some bureaucrat at head office decides now it's country ABC's turn to get a project.
Now one could look into reasons for poverty, and talk about colonialism, neo-colonialism, the use of the (french) language as instrument of neo-colonialism, western values and so on.
One could look in particular into the role of Apartheid for the development or lack therof in my country.
But I doubt this is the right forum here.
> Let's get things into perspective. Ten-year-old computers are perfectly fine
> for word processing, computer programming, exchanging email or controlling CNC
> machinery. Are these uses outmoded?
10 year would would be before 386, then? You simply can not exchange email with a 8088 or 80286. Well, actually you can, but then are restricted to FIDO or DOS based uuPC. Now I used uuPC before switching to linux, and in Mozambique they were running hundreds of systems off one uuPC box, but not because that was technologically acceptable, but because they simply did not have a unix capable box at some stage.
>
> I understand the frustration expressed by some of having equipment and no
> manuals. But with the ability to transmit information world-wide in minutes, I
> fail to see how that should long remain an obstacle. Ask for the documentation
> over a Usenet and you might get it.
How are we to email with equipment that is not working? :-)-O
I really do not care one litle bit if you dump 75374 TRS-80s into Mali. I really don't. It's just that it will not develop anything.
I do object against the mentality: "Don't bite the hand that feeds you".
We can put this to the test if you wish. We are looking at 386's for former homeland schools, nothing fancy, but they must run Windows 3.1 and have an ethernet card. We can source a server ourselves (in fact there is a US embassy project mentioning this possibility)...
Any offers?
el
-- Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse \ / Swakopmund State Hospital mailto:<el@lisse.NA> * | Resident Medical Officer Private Bag 5004 \ / +264 64 461503 (pager) 461005 (h) 461004 (f) Swakopmund, Namibia ;____/ Zone/Domain Contact for the NA-DOM Vice-Chairman, Board of Trustees, Namibian Internet Development Foundation, an Association not for Gain. NAMIDEF is the Namibian Internet Service Provider.