Digital Africa

I am in Uganda at the moment, typing this from my hotel room. My reason for being here? I am attending and presenting at the Digital Africa Summit.

Uganda
Flying into Uganda I was treated to a fantastic African sunset over Lake Victoria. In my opinion there is little in this world to rival the beauty of Africa at dusk.

This is my first time in the country and I had a fascinating journey from Entebbe Airport to the resort on Lake Victoria just outside Kampala. It was dark by the time we go onto the road but it seemed as if the country had just come alive. Every road had been turned into an African market to meet the needs of the Ugandans. The night was awash with people, lights and colours. Business was loud and brisk; from barbers to tailors; from butchers to internet cafes. I can’t wait to compare this experience with Uganda during the day.

The conference
I was enticed to present at this conference as the organisers have focused on “excellence driving positive change”. The theme is upbeat and I am hoping for an energising experience.

Another aspect that interested me is the format – each speaker has 20 minutes to convey their message and there is plenty of time set aside for meetings and networking. I think that the concept will work well as it can be tiresome to listen to hour long presentations all day.

My message
I will be conveying a simple message: Innovating in Africa. My 20 minutes will be spent on conveying the importance of innovation in Africa and why innovation can solve some of the really big problems facing the continent.

I will discuss how inventions in instrumentation, interconnectivity and intelligent decision making can be used to build innovative solutions for Africa. Essentially this means building sense-and-respond systems on a scale never possible before.


Africa is uniquely positioned to leapfrog many of the technologies implemented by developed economies, and to use the emerging technologies and architectures to improve the lives of people living here.

techsmart: Intelligent Society

I enjoyed this article by Thomas Mckinnon on an Intelligent Society published in techsmart.

Interconnections and instruments
Much of his writing (edit: he is referring to Thomas Friedman) concerns the idea of an information society. Wikipedia defines an information society as “a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity.” The world in which we currently exist exhibits large pockets of this knowledge economy- with the world’s wealthiest states dominating it.

For the development of a knowledge economy we not only need to live in an interconnected world, but also an instrumented world. A world in which every object is a platform for collecting data, from cellphones, to microchipped household appliances and anything else into which we can embed a transistor and from which we can mine data.

To many an instrumented and interconnected world equals an information society.

Intelligence
Last year a number of companies such as Microsoft, Cisco Systems and IBM recognised the fact that it is not enough to live in a world that is just instrumented and interconnected.

IBM’s chief executive, Samuel J. Palmisano, put all the pieces together in a speech delivered on 6 November 2008 that highlighted the need for a more “intelligent” society, what IBM has coined a “Smarter Planet”. Without intelligence, interconnection and instrumentation could actually lead to poor decision making or even indecision- the current global recession being a potential example.

Thus Friedman’s metaphor of a Flat World exhibits some of the same shortcomings the myth of a flat earth displayed when it was debunked around the 3rd century BC (although still a powerful means of conceiving interconnectedness in isolation ). In a world of “1 billion transistors”, “a trillion networked things” and data that is intelligently mined and analysed the world is conspicuously three-dimensional. Thus competitiveness is the sum of interconnectedness, instrumentation and intelligent decision making based on sound data.

South Africa
Clifford Foster, Chief Technology Officer at IBM SA, expressed in an interview with TechSmart the belief that “Africa has an opportunity to leap frog the development process Europe and the developed world had to follow.” The reason for this is that countries with developed infrastructures will have to retrench or re-develop existing infrastructure- at huge costs- while we are currently still developing our infrastructure. He went on to say, “If we act quickly insuring our country and continent is instrumented, that our water supplies have cheap $1 dollar sensors in place, that we develop smart grids etc.- then we are implementing for the future and will become more competitive.”

A demonstrable solution
A demonstrable smart solution in SA is Guateng’s Open Road Tolling System under the auspices of SANRAL. The ORTS seeks to alleviate congestion and to an extent the emission of CO2 (bidding is still underway for the project). By charging drivers rates based on the time of day and area in which they are travelling according to information garnered from RFID tags embedded in vehicles or video captured from gantries and connected to a monitoring system, SANRAL can intelligently manage and monitor traffic.

Thought leadership
While a number of companies seek to offer such solutions IBM believes that it can offer a total solution based on its expertise in hardware, software and sophisticated analytical tools. For the time being however Big Blue sees itself as a thought leader on the issue of an intelligent society by opening up a conversation on smart grids, transportation, health and more issues. While the benefits of an intelligent society speak for themselves for the potential citizens of such a society- resource and maintenance efficiency and cost benefits not the least of which- the benefits for the company that can provide the instruments, connections and ultimately the intelligence (in what may yet be the most unashamed move towards vertical integration in history) are no less obvious.

You can read the original article here.

Metaverses

A social tool?
Currently we think of metaverses like SecondLife as a communication mechanism that allows people to interact and collaborate for pleasure and decision-making. The environment is definitely richer and more engaging than a telephone call or email. Some people would even argue that it has advantages (beyond financial) over communicating in person. This may seem foreign but there is a generation of people that naturally gravitate to this medium.

Other uses
We have used metaverses for a range of communication and collaboration activities with great success. However, it doesn't need to end there. Metaverses are a great tool for learning, simulation, rehearsal and roleplay activities. It provides a tool for developing skills that are difficult or costly to execute in real life. This would probably have to be complemented with real life training and experience in certain situations.

Visualising whats there
This is where is gets really exciting. Imaging visualising the real-world in a metaverse and then using that information to aid decision-making. This could include business processes and manufacturing.

But take this one step further and we can visualise the real-world ... the "internet of things". With more and more of the world's devices becoming smart and connected, there is no reason why we could not represent this information in a metaverse. The ability to manage and manipulate information in three dimensions is exceptionally powerful and natively intuitive.

I can see a not-too-distant-future where we represent energy grids, natural water systems and traffic (amongst others) in metaverses. Consumers, operators and decision-makers will use these tools and information to make better decisions and make them quicker.

Makes good business sense, doesn't it?