Tami Hultman
16 February 2009
(Page 3 of 3)
Your company talks about social benefits.
The major one, I think, is education. Education is so important for economic development in Africa. I was recently at the MIT media lab [in Massachusetts in the U.S.] where there is a push to change fundamentally the way that we educate children through visual education. The concept of creating a completely three-dimensional textbook is completely within technical reach. I think visual learning helps so much when you’re in Africa, because of the diversity of languages.
The other thing that has excited me is you always think about these cables as a way to bring content to Africa, so that Africans will have the same access to information as the rest of the world. But the world needs more access to African content, and the idea of adding a billion people worth of content to the worldwide web is incredibly exciting.
At a groundbreaking ceremony in Mozambique, Graca Machel came. One of our shareholders gave a speech, and he spoke about natives and immigrants. He said everyone over the age of 30 is an immigrant to this technology age. The natives are younger people. They can pick up technology and use it like an additional gene that they have.
When you consider that 50 percent of Africa’s population is under the age of 25, it really makes you smile. These are the people who will exploit this technology and be limitless with what they can do.
Lack of reliable power is a tremendous constraint on development of all kinds. Have you had discussions about how energy issues might affect your supply and demand?
Is Seacom itself in jeopardy because of the energy crisis? It’s an incredibly low energy requirement to run fiber optics. I think we’re powered by 12.5 volts from each end of the cable. We’re quite fortunate that energy itself is not a problem for Seacom.
Having said that, our end users are primarily computer based and the ability to access the worldwide web or data applications via the computer are constrained by energy. Absolutely.
We have been involved in the energy discussions. The planning for energy growth in Africa has been insufficient and it will be a limiting factor for economic growth. It’s probably a big statement to make, but I’ve had experience in the power industry and have seen that power projects usually lag demand, as opposed to preceding and predicting demand.
In Africa, I’m seeing demand grow now at exponential rates. But people not having the foresight to create a supply that will meet that demand is, I think, an indictment of how the international finance system has worked, because [large, multinational institutions] have a hard time seeing the necessity in Africa to meet backlog demand. But also there is an issue with the countries themselves; there hasn’t been the foresight and planning.
South Africa has been the perfect example of that. They’re getting a little respite right now because the mining industry has cut back on production, but commodity demand will be a long-term boom. It’s just going to be a bit cyclical. We’re very involved, because I do wear multiple hats and have had exposure to the energy industry. I think the high cost of energy and inadequate supply will continue to be a hurdle within Africa.
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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