1.
Discoverability and
Digital Colonialism
Firoze Manji
Acknowledgement: research assistance by ThoughtWorks ™

2.
Elements of
disccoverability
 Technical
 Producer / author determined
 Political bias / digital colonialism
 Infrastructural

3.
Historical context
 Mobilisations in 1950s
 Rise of independence movements
 Social contract
 Achievements
 Reversals
 Privatization of the commons
 Concentration and centralisation of capital

4.
Set the context for
 Microtechnological revolution
 Bio-technological revolution
 Nano-technological revolution
 Effective re-appropriation of destiny of African
people (landgrabs, economic control, resource
extration, ‘repatriation’ of profits, tax evasion etc

5.
Don’t Africans produce
knowledge?

6.
Lack of content from
Africa?
 Economic Commission for Africa survey conducted
in 1999 : Africa generates only around 0.4 percent
(1:250) of global content.
 Excluding South Africa, the rest of Africa generates
a mere 0.02 percent (1:5000)!
 http://213.55.79.31/adf/adf99/codipap3.htm

7.
Articles in Wikipedia
 The whole continent of Africa contains only
about 2.6% of the world’s geo-tagged
Wikipedia articles despite having 14% of the
world’s population and 20% of the world’s
land.
 http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/#the-geographically-uneven-coverage-of-wikipedia

8.
Geographically reference
article in Wikipedia

9.
Geotagged article in
English on Wikipedia

10.
Educator vs Native
 Academic and scientific discourse tends to be from a
paternalistic / uninformed / and completely
‘educator v. native’.
(http://aidnography.blogspot.in/2012/11/olpc-in-
ethiopia-thin-line-between.html)
 For no other continent is there so much written
about it by outsiders

11.
Spatial Solipsism
 “This uneven distribution of knowledge carries with it
the danger of spatial solipsism for the people who live
inside one of Wikipedia’s focal regions. It also strongly
underrepresents regions such as the Middle East and
North Africa as well as Sub-Saharan Africa. In the global
context of today’s digital knowledge economies, these
digital absences are likely to have very material effects
and consequences.”
 http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2014/02/there-are-more-wikipedia-articles-
about-one-part-world-rest-it-combined/8486/
 (Solipsism = belief in self as only reality – polite term for
eurocentrism)

12.
Access and bias
 Internet allows those with time and money and easy
access to the internet to control large proportion of
discourse

13.
Cultural homogenization
 Since it is cheaper to send a data package from the
North to the South than vice versa, and since access
is greater in the North (Africa 13%, or 3% excluding
the big ones), there is structural built in dominance
of information coming from the North.

14.
Google and silences on
Africa

15.
Languages
 Africa has more than 800 languages spoken
amongst its various ethnic groups. However, the
Internet is an ‘English’ based medium which affects
the usability and content creation thereon. A vast
majority of programs, applications and services
continue to be provided in English thereby denying
access to large swathes of the population and
exacerbating the digital divide.
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-colonial/2031

16.
What language?
Not ours!

17.
Languages

18.
Google search by language

19.
Academic Knowledge and
Publishers

20.
Location of academic
knowledge

21.
User generated content on
Google

22.
News travels

23.
Infrastructure

24.
Internet backbones
Back bones
onsdag 5 juni 13

25.
Internet penetration

26.
Penetration

27.
Top Level Domains
Africa has more countries than
any other continent, but only
10 of the ccTLDs have
functional registries within the
African countries they belong
to.

28.
Most cloud services and data
storage sites are outside Africa

29.
Data Centres in Africa

30.
Colocation of Data Centres
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
U
SA
U
KSouth
Africa
G
erm
anySw
itzerland
India
China
Egypt
KenyaAustraliaN
etherlands
France
Coloca on Data Centers

31.
Physical location of data
centers around the world

32.
Google’s data centers, 2008

33.
Microsoft Azure Data
Centers

34.
Population size: no of
developers

35.
Lack of employment
opportunity in ICT sector

36.
Software import / lack of
production of software
 Nigeria imports 90% of all software used in the
country. The local production of software is reduced
to add-ons or extensions creation for mainstream
packaged software.

37.
Patent applications filed in
Africa
 Only around 10% of applications for the registration
of intellectual property (IP) rights in Africa are
made by African citizens or residents.
 “Both anecdotal accounts by African IP agents and
WIPO statistics on IP activity in Africa show that
more than 90% of applications for registration of IP
rights in Africa are by foreign IP applicants”
http://zine.openrightsgroup.org/features/2013/digital-colonialism

38.
Arm-twisting
 Microsoft has apparently attempted to arm-twist African
governments on policy issues repeatedly – for instance by
threatening to withdraw funding to Kenyan government
programs in view of its support of free software (OOXML), by
hiring government officials and their relatives as in Namibia
and Nigeria.
 Lobbying with governments to ensure use of Microsoft
products including by tying governments into long term
licensing agreements.
 Also see South Africa’s clamp down on open source in
education.
 http://www.pcworld.com/article/144898/article.html/ https://netzpolitik.org/2009/misconceptions-and-failed-attempts-microsofts-strategy-for-africa/
https://netzpolitik.org/2009/misconceptions-and-failed-attempts-microsofts-strategy-for-africa/ http://www.webaddict.co.za/2013/10/09/south-africa-
education-department-bans-open-source-software/ http://techrights.org/2009/05/12/south-african-schools-windows/ and
http://techrights.org/2009/05/10/lobbyists-bribes-vs-free-sw/

39.
Thank you
Firoze Manji
fmanji@mac.com
firoze.manji@codesria.org

40.
Thinking about the future
Each generation must discover its mission,
fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.
Frantz Fanon

41.
Thinking about the future
If you don't change direction, you will end
up exactly where you are heading.
Lao Tzu

42.
Thinking about the future
If you don’t know where you are going, any
direction will do.
Anon

43.
Thinking about the future
The future belongs to those who give the next
generation reason to hope.
Teillard de Chardin

44.
The challenge of thinking
about the future
 Thinking outside the box
Recognizing that we are in a box, we are imprisoned
by our past.
 Cognitive hindsight bias
Our capacity to imagine the future is limited by our
knowledge of the present / past.

45.
The task
 Imagine you are meeting 20 years from now.
Discuss what you achieved and how you got there.
 Imagine you are able to see your own funeral. What
would you like people to say about what you
achieved or made happen.