A couple LStechies have asked me about internet access and computing in Namibia.  Since I have about 6 weeks left in my year long stay here I suppose I better not put it off any longer. Sorry but this post ended up being longer than a normal blog post should be - what can I say I've been saving up for 10 months.

Namibia has a fairly robust technology infrastructure -especially by Sub-saharan Africa standards. This all starts with the cell phone and a government parastatal called Telecom.

Cell phones and cell phone coverage are ubiquitous here.  Everyone owns one from the poorest rural villager, to the security guard making N$3.50 per hour (equivalent of $0.35 US per hour) to everyone.  A start-up pack for your phone that you can purchase in about any store in Namibia costs N$20 ($2 US) and it includes a SIM card and a new phone number.  Basic functional Nokia 1200 phones are usually had for $N250 new and cheaper used. Here is my sturdy little Nokia 1200 with the Tango (AKA SIM) card next to it.

Most people pre-purchase phone credit in N$10 increments but rarely place a call.  The lingua franca is SMS.  This is because airtime costs money and SMS text messages are usually free. So most people SMS. Even if you have no money to "top up" your phone you can still communicate with anyone anywhere in the country.  Pretty clever approach to communication via a US$25 device.

As a result email isn't as popular and not as common and most low to moderate income people don't have access to a computer except at their government jobs. At the University of Namibia where I am housed most students don't have laptops or computers of their own, don't know much about blogging, etc. although some do have Myspace accounts.

Ok I digress.  Telecom, after the cell network is established, spins off another parastatal (MTC) to handle cellular services. Also a private South African based cellular provider Cell One has recently opened a beachhead here but isn't making a lot of headway with MTC owning all the equipment. But with MTC in place for cellular service Telecom now begins to focus on broadband services.  They move antiquated ISDN services to ADSL and now almost anywhere you can get a landline (which is almost anywhere in the country) you can get ADSL for $55 US per month.  Not a great price but it is very fast, un-capped and they don't have cable providers to compete with because television service is satellite.

We have a Telecom DSL line at home. Which I justify because we depend on it for communication with family and friends in the States via Skype, IM and Gmail. We haven't paid a penny for international calls since we arrived. We also post a fair amount of pictures to our family blog.

For hardware I bought Joy (my wife) a $400 used Latitude before we left which we will leave with a deserving Namibian or organization and for the kids and myself we brought our Mac Mini in our carry-on luggage. I got a cheap LCD after we arrived for the mini.  We'll take the Mini home with us since Macs are almost non-existent here and hard to deal with for the average Claudia or Paulus.Of course I also brout my Linksys wireless router with me set up a little wireless home network for our machines.

At my office at UNAM Law Faculty I am provided with a 3 year old PC running XP pro, a 17" CRT and access to the University network and connection to the internet. Although the machine speed and screen size are not what I was used to working on I haven't had a problem adjusting after the first week.  And the nice thing about this machine is that it isn't a target for thieves like newer machines or laptops are here. So everything is hunky dory right?  

Well not exactly. Internet access at UNAM is a bit of a problem.  UNAM's pipe to the internet is tiny and when students show up and get on the 100 or so PCs in the library lab things grind to snails pace (I'll get back to why such a small pipe later).  So much so that gmail is almost inoperable and google apps - upon which I depend, just doesn't cut it.  Also working with a web-based CMS like Joomla was a bit problematic as well.  Yikes, how am I going to do my work on this non-functional connection.  Maybe I could work from home - but that is really not an option for relationship building purposes alone.

In rides 3G to the rescue. Telecom and the two other cellular providers offer cellular based 3G service for a little under $30 US a month.  You can use either a USB device or PCMCIA card to get broadband access anywhere in the country that you can get cell service.  I have the USB fob that I take back and forth with me to the office that gives me about 250 Kb/s up and 100 Kb/s down (and probably faster to sites on this side of the Atlantic).  The 3G fob also uses the same cellular SIM card as a cell phone. You can see both the 3G dongle and the SIM card pictured here.

I have been very happy with my 3G. So much so that I have been using Windows Connection Sharing and UNAM's ethernet network to share the 3G love with my student assistant that is helping build out our project site as well as another colleague. Shhhh.

So although the infrastructure is in place for ubiqitous internet access throughout the country the biggest potential consumers like government and the university have not taken real advantage of it yet.  Everyone in these orgs has internet access at their desktop but only a tiny pipe and so slow it becomes meaningless. So here is my theory (I've only been here 10 months but of course I have a theory) as to why the government and universities aren't buying faster access.  IMHO, it is because internet connections don't vote - people do.

In a country with 35% unemployment (kind of puts our current 12% in perspective), jobs become a very important way for gov't/public university to transfer wealth and consolidate power.  Add to that the fact that labour is very cheap here.  Security guards make US$0.35 per hour and a fullt-ime lecturer at the University makes about US$25K a year.  You can employ a lot of voters with the money you would need to buy faster internet connection.  I heard a story of a riot that was started by lecturers at one sub-Saharan University when they learned of admin's plans to allocate new funds to a faster internet connection rather than to new hires.

So Namibia has really laid the groundwork to take advantage of the new global economy.  Unfortunately I think it will be a while before the post apartheid education system is able to catch up with it.