Africa in the digital Age has been chosen for MDG Contest, what does that mean?

This year 2006, i have made resolutions. It’s not strange, it something that i always do. Fun enough at the end of the year i sit down to see that 99% of the resolutions are achieved. With that background this year i have decided to come up with difficult resolutions.

More like planning to go to Mars uuuh…Imagine it takes five years to go there. So if i go now, i will return in 2016…Yeah but anyway thats not my resolution for this year , its just an example of the the kind of resolutions i have for this year. Ohh but i think its worth pursuing.

Its just your money and determination then you are done. I remember last reading a story of SpaceX a space company by an African x-internet entreprenuier (Paypal founder) who will be allowing flights to space at US$20 mil…More on my resolutions 2mrwo

Africa in the digital age involves letting open myths and the truth about African history and culture. Especially history related to things that even ourselves never imagined them to have come from Africa. Here i am talking about inventions and discoveries attributed to Blacks but all along had been hidden from us.

Recently i have come to note that the Internet isnow tending to be centred around social networks.

It is now those websites with the greatest potential of connecting people of similar needs that are leading in hits and use.

I was amazed by the power of hi5.com. Imagine how i got connected to people i last saw in pre-school. It's really a wonderful experience.

Merry Xmas to you all and have a Prosperous 2006.
My vision in the coming year is "AFRICA IN THE DIGITAL AGE"

Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and is credited with the creation of a middle class in American society. He was one of the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the mass production of affordable automobiles. This achievement not only revolutionized industrial production, it had such tremendous influence over modern culture that many social theorists identify this phase of economic and social history as "Fordism."

The origins of the VW Beetle car date back to 1930s Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler's desire that almost anybody should be able to afford a car fit with a proposal by car designer Ferdinand Porsche, although Hitler himself played some role in the car's shape and, possibly, nickname. Dissatisfied with the initial design of the car's front end (and perhaps caught up in the 30's mania for all things streamlined) Hitler penned a more rounded shape on a napkin and handed it to Porsche with the instructions, "it should look like a beetle, you only have to look to nature to find out what true streamlining is." The intention was that ordinary working Germans would buy the car by means of a savings scheme.

In Zimbabwe today and the expanse of Africa and thus the major part of the third world defined, we are so called because of where we are today. In such countries, typically we have a massive foreign debt, frequently exceeding the NDP (National Domestic Product). The economy is frequently controlled by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), which orients production away from sustainable local growth towards large-scale cash crop production for export to foreign countries.

Under such management education and health are slashed to a fraction of expenditure before IMF control, and social welfare is non-existent. The majority of people struggle to earn enough to eat, and still frequently cannot meet the high cost of basic sustenance (food, shelter and clothing).

The reality we currently live in Africa today is that of poverty, HIV/AIDS, illiteracy, civil wars, failure to contain natural disasters and unemployment. The picture that the western world who obviously dominate the world press or information dissemination is that of a wanting Africa. Many motivatational speakers talk about the fact that: we become what we always listen to. Reading through one online collection of African news articles on Allafrica.com you realize emphasis is on the negative side of things in Africa.

If there is any headline positive, it is about some NGO pledging to donate money to a western nation endorsed country. The other news in pictures and compassion stories all depict a doomed Africa.

This article is not an all out hate statement but what I want to make clear dear reader is that Africa is looking for inspired individuals who can collectively bargain for its rightful position in the world.
Like the heroism of particular individuals in history, sometimes looking at history their way will create a need within Africa and its people to aspire to be better. Quoting Henry Ford famed for the Ford Motor Company he says,” History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today."

Like the need for a car for the majority during Ford’s time and the same in Nazi Germany today Africa we are at a position, which gives us, access to make history. Our plethora of damaging accolades is an opportunity to make the present history.

To move from our present scenario men and women with visions of a brighter Africa are what we need. It is somewhat scary to say positive things about the future when you are in a perceived dark present. Many theorists and pessimists will call for your neck. Experiences of Joseph, the dreamer and David the king shows us the bad side of saying you are going to make it.

The car industry was once a platform for America and Europe’s growth and today the IT world is a springboard for Africa’s development. It is only as such when it is done by Africans with an African perspective focusing on global satisfaction.
Africans in Diaspora like Professor Philip Emeagwali have done Africa proud technology wise. Africans locally are doing great things especially in the software field. Such young companies like Venekera Works Technologies, Adept Systems and a plethora of software programmers are doing well.

Today to take Africa to the other side I believe we have to embrace technology, look out for the new opportunities it offers in such areas as software development, website development, biotechnology and even computer hardware. In Nigeria we have Zinox Technologies producing computers the same way as Dell or any other international computer manufacturing companies.

The Asian tigers have moved ahead of us by embracing information communications technologies and it has only happened in so short a time. In America itself the only industries that has created billionaires in two decades is the information technology industry. Names like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Paul Allen, George Bezos, and Larry Page adorn such magnificent corporates like Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and Amazon these and other big elephants of the American corporate world come the information technology sector.

In the following articles we shall be looking at a sectorial perspective on what the information communications are going to do for Africa. For it is not what we can do but what we are going to do.

By Richwell Phinias

Every time you read or type a domain name eyebrows should not rise. If ICTs are part and parcel of people’s lives then website domain names becomes part of the system just like telephone numbers or street addresses. Once websites are taken, as part of life then investing in constructing them will be initiated as just basic needs for the sustenance of people and organizations.

Many a times African companies and organizations tend to turn a blind eye on building websites for their companies. Experiences have shown them they cannot get any direct profits through their websites. To some extend they are right about this because when the Internet hype was in its hey days they just felt having their brochures online would sale for them.

What they did not see is that the way they built websites only helped the visibility of their companies but the nature of the sites did not allow sales to be directly linked to their web presence. The main issue accelerating first African companies to build websites was as a global marketing tool. One thing these companies did not realize was the way in which global orders would be handled.

From the first brochure sites build in Africa they were just like print and radio/TV media adverts where sales and orders are done through available physical set ups. To this end we find African businessman now giving second thoughts about joining e-commerce initiatives.

Most of them have developed a negative attitude towards including websites for their companies. The message they are missing and which is getting popular with the young, inspired and well-informed entrepreneurs is that the INTERNET is not a marketing media.

The Internet is not a tool were you can market your products. In fact the Internet cannot be compared to print, radio and television medias. The Internet the whole concept of the World Wide Web is a society joining together all people of the world together.

All the services that are offered by radio are also offered more conveniently over the Internet. The internet even surpasses the radio because it allows broadcasting that is confined to the small coverage to be listened live over the world from anywhere to everywhere including on the top of Mt Everest.

You can read daily newspapers online but you cannot read the Internet from daily newspapers. Newspapers can be for reading, television for watching and listening the same way radio is listened but with the internet you got this and many more services all in once.

So African business man are now realizing the opportunities that lie in investing in e-commerce initiatives like Ecosandals.com they can sell their products online over the world. Imagine how that would have costed in telephone, fax and transport bills. Everything is found online that supports any business operation.

If there is something you think cannot be done online then that will be an opportunity for the emerging inspired programmers of third world countries like India. Africa we are now realizing that we need impossibities to prove our creativeness and innovative nature.

Imagine before the western world came to colonise we just lived well but without things that are called basics in the western world. Only because we were less informed then we have to wait for other people to come and discover us. Scientists in Germany knew what developments were happening in Britain and through that knowledge they could on similar adventures and once well informed always come out with brilliant discoveries.

We have some scientists who even chose to leave Germany for America or the United where their talents were appreciated and they could mix and mingle with people of the same mindset. Now for Africa and its people we have been put at a similar platform for doing business on the world.

With the internet you also see and know projects of importants being done by our counterparts anywhere over the world. With the Internet we are able to recognize and realize opportunities that matter to the world. We are able to check if someone else is working on our dreams or to asses if they were really raw and fresh.

Over the years our picture have been depicted to us by the world. Now with the Internet we can send out our own picture and the way we view our selves to the world. At times because some of us we live for information and actually see a lot of possibilities that can change people’s lives we are bound to want to place blame those in authority for not doing anything. Look long back western well wishers would bring in their concepts here after they have made a debut abroad.

Then when we start knowing what is going on around the world. Now with the Internet we are even able to know which ideas have been worked on or not, which ones are in pilot phase or not. So at the end of the day we are able to work on ideas from concepts at the same time they being implemented oversees.

So for now why should we website developers, media houses and marketing companies not come up with plans that will provide transparency and openness in the areas in which e-commerce, websites and online marketing can benefit local companies.

This of course is a concept that is already working oversees, we have companies like yahoo and google that depend on online adverts for their revenue. The question here is not only online adverts on junk portals but also we need to initiate creation of value on our portals. We need to come up with convincing ways of showing advertisers how online adverts would really work.

Remember advertisers s do not pay just for placing a banner on your portal, they are things like pay-per-click and feedbacks which actually shows how many people are actually visiting websites and also making orders after that.

We need our governments to look into legislation in as much as online payments are concerned on a local pespective. With a mind to go and surely go we will rise above standards set by the digital divide and come to realize that the Internet is a force to reckon with.