Katy Gabel
18 September 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
Currently, many health workers in Africa leave their countries for better pay abroad, leaving a vacuum of skilled workers at home. Herlihy suggests that doctors and skilled health workers could work as outsourced labour in health call centers in their own countries, providing services for patients around the world.
Increased bandwidth can also help health researchers working in Africa, he said. “Say I am a doctor coming from Boston to Zambia and I want to do field work, including testing. It's not just the testing that matters when improving health in that country. It is all about what you do with that information.
“What happens when, as a doctor, I leave Zambia and all these people I tested are left behind with no classification of the information I gathered? There is now technology where I can write reports on my phone and send it back automatically to a database in Boston, New York or wherever, where it collates automatically.”
Education
Students and teachers also stand to benefit from increased broadband access at a lower cost. Seacom will provide free Internet access to the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and subsidized access for South African universities.
“Our intent is to [provide educational access] throughout East Africa,” Herlihy said. “In Ethiopia we intend to do something similar. We provided free capacity to the government of Djibouti for a national Internet program. We are now thinking about how to bundle that for free primary and secondary education... but it has to be structured appropriately so that it is truly exploited.”
Herlihy said it was important to remember that 25 percent of Africa’s population is below the age of 25 and the real impact of this has yet to be seen. ”This age is technology savvy – they are going to find a way to get access.”
Ultimately, according to Herlihy, the impact of increased broadband access in East Africa will be tremendous: “Let's close our eyes and imagine it is 2015 and the cable came in 2009. What did it mean for the market? I think that it's a very exciting story and it is one that people have been dreaming about for a long time.”
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This is a truely exciting time for the continent! Is 2010 going to be Africa's real Internet 'take-off' year? Can't wait for the rollout of EASSy and TEAMS as well. Very proud to be African!
Very interesting article, Thank you. notebook memory
We're very excited about Africa's cellular revolution as well!
Nathan Eagle's txteagle program is one initiative that we, here at ALTA, are very excited to see growing!
http://www.altalang.com/beyond-words/2009/02/18/beyond-txt-crowdsourcing-wi th-txteagle/
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Active Discussions: New Technology Sweeps Africa