Algorithms In Africa

The story of a man who computerizes an African rural area (fighting the urge to say village) and realizes it might not have been the best idea in the world.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4657

Surely, these questions are for the Africans themselves to answer.

It seems like in that story, the main problem is that they didn't provide proper technical training beforehand so that the Africans could keep their own systems running... and that's the fault of the guy who installed the computerized systems.

No. ItsTheEconomyStupid?! Sorry for the name-calling. ;-) The people need to be at a point where they realize the need for computers themselves, not to have someone from the outside imposing their simplistic solutions on a problem that is decades old.

Right on. Improvement must come from within, and all that. Sometimes I even think Africa would be more developed today if it weren't for decades of foreign "aid". -- DanielKnapp

That's not quite it, either; consider this quote from the article:

: I realized I had blundered badly, to the point of putting the Brigades in serious jeopardy. I began to ask myself such basic questions as: What would happen to the computer after I left? Was the staff fully capable of operating the system independently? Would backups be maintained and performed rigorously? Were skills sufficient to troubleshoot problems and reinstall the system if necessary? If the equipment failed or was stolen, could the center afford to replace it? And what would the center do when the staff I had trained for so long were lured away by more lucrative jobs in the big city?
: These questions all led to the same answer: the Brigades would be left in even worse shape than I found them. Rather than gaining empowerment, independence and enablement, they would more than likely be left powerless, dependent and possibly ruined. And all because of my own cultural myopia, despite my good intentions.

That's precisely what the economy is about, so long as you understand economic relations to include power relations, and not just brute GDP.

Did the project actually fail? It seems to me that the author was simply speculating on the possible future failure of the project based on an assumption that the locals were incapable of learning how to maintain it, rather than on any real documented failure. To me it smacks of paternalism.

You don't understand. Whether the project succeeded or failed is not relevant to its being paternalism. All foreign-aid projects that I've ever heard of are deeply paternalistic. They're all bureaucratic, working with little or no consultation of the local populace. The concept of "consultation" by itself reveals endemic paternalism, as if asking the locals what they want were some kind of favour we did them or something we did for our own purposes (eg, to make the project "succeed"), instead of us helping them do what they want done.

In the above case, the initial decision to bring in computers was deeply paternalistic. The writer came to realize this and became afraid the project would fail due to his own initial paternalism. Presumably, he "fixed" the problem with still more paternalism.

... by taking the machines away. Maybe he should have left them along with some books in order for the people to use as a tool?

''The article says he didn't take the machines away; he put them in a support role, replacing them in the central role with paper. And while he expressed concern at being able to train the people adequately, there were other concerns that, IMO, were quite a bit more legitimate. (The computer breaking with no immediate hope of replacement, for instance.)

The original solution the author proposed did seem both paternalistic and naive to me (on reflection - I might have done the same thing myself). I think he refigured things for good reasons, that were not paternalistic. If a sustained infrastructure doesn't exist within the country to make the solution durable, you're just introducing more dependence, which isn't really a solution. (A good analogy would be the GM grains Monsanto and others are pushing all over the world which don't produce viable seed, making the farmers dependent first on the return from the high yield on the grain, then on the seed companies that provide it.) In this case, when replacement parts for computers are at a reasonable price point, and there is a knowledge market where users can get support for the computer when something goes wrong, a computer-based solution will be sustainable.''