What Kinds of Organisations do We Want to Build in Africa with Information Communication Technology?
Posted in Business
Introduction:
It has increasingly become clear that ICT plays an important role in how society
develops. This is apparent from the plethora of initiatives we have seen in the past
few years ranging from computer applications in business, education, transport, government,
and medicine—to mention only a few areas of application. This relentless
application of information and communications technology (ICT) has developed
a momentum during the past 50 years during which personal computing has developed
and grown in the workplace, and at home to an extent that could not have
been envisaged when the first business computers went on sale in 1952. Despite the
obvious importance of this technology in shaping the way we live, work, and play,
we hardly ever hear the question asked, “What kind of society do we want to build
with our ICT?” We seem content to have the providers of ICT shape the institutions
that will ultimately determine the quality of our lives.
The first step in deciding how we might like to see ICT implemented in the future
is to have a view of how the technology will develop in the medium term. To look
into the future and suggest what we can and perhaps should be achieving with the
help of ICT is no mean task. There is an old quip sometimes made by stand-up
comic entertainers (which has also been attributed to the quantum physicist Niels
Bohr); “Prediction is always difficult; especially prediction about the future.” And
when it comes to the application of ICT, the ability to predict is especially daunting.
Furthermore, there is also an interesting admonition against prediction in Dante
Alighieri’s Inferno where he suggests that the 8th level of hell—the second worst
out of nine levels—is reserved for futurists and fortune tellers (Jacoff, 1993). It is
also very sobering to remember the famous remark of Lincoln Steffens upon his
return from the Soviet Union in 1919, “I have seen the future, and it works.” It is
just as well that Steffens wasn’t attempting even a rudimentary course in prediction
or forecasting.
Therefore, from fear of the fires of hell or just simple embarrassment about being
wrong, this author will not attempt to foretell the future of ICT, but will instead
identify potential trends based on the technological options presently available to
us. The options are of course many and it can be very difficult to see which are
real and which are just figments of the imagination of technicians, the digitrati, and
others. It is always interesting to remember how wrong important people have been
when they spoke about how computers might develop in the future. For example,
Thomas Watson Sr., the founding father of IBM said, “There is a world market for
five computers!” Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Computer Corporation said
rather to his regret one supposes, “Who would ever want a computer in their home?”
Also, let us remind ourselves of Bill Gates’ contribution to these faux pas “Who
could ever need more than 640K of memory?” Furthermore, in this chapter we are
not just interested in the technology but rather in how it will be used in our society,
which actually makes forecasting even more problematical.
However, we need to start with a view on how the technology will develop in the
short and medium terms. From a pure technological point of view, there is every
prospect that computers and telecommunications technologies—the bedrock of
the IT revolution—will continue to improve in leaps and bounds. Computers will
no doubt relentlessly continue to become more and more powerful. Moore’s Law
is alive and well and living in Silicon Valley and other parts of the world. At the
current time, no foreseen limit is envisaged to this law. Our capacity to process
and store data seems virtually limitless. It is now being said that we are producing
some one to two exabytes1 of data per year. This will no doubt continue to grow. In
the next five to ten years, even greater advances in computing and memory power
may be derived from the suggested amalgamation of biotechnology and electronics.
Telecommunications will continue to become faster and faster. This will be
done while the price of the equipment and facilities will continue to fall. This does
not necessarily mean that computers will become cheaper as such, but rather that
the price will probably stay at about the same level with much more power being
provided for the same amount of money.
A more fundamental problem with IT adoption relates not to whether communications
technologies will improve, but to human problems around IT adoption in
Africa. The real question is whether the potential users of ICT in urban and rural
communities of Africa would be willing to incorporate ICTs into their daily lives.
The answer probably is that regardless whether they live in urban or rural communities,
most Africans would adopt ICTs if they consider them to provide a cost effective
and sustainable way of solving a range of problems that beset their daily lives.
Those problems are formidable: all-consuming poverty fuelled by unemployment,
drought, diminishing land resources, poorly developed health care and educational
resources, rudimentary transport infrastructures, local political and global economic
exploitation, and so on.
As economies of scale make established technologies evermore affordable and
because conscious efforts are presently being made to develop a new generation of
light, affordable, and ergonomically efficient ICT, increasing numbers of African
consumers will be willing to invest in ICT—provided that they even faintly believe
these instruments will enable them to break the grip of poverty and isolation on
their lives.
On the telecommunications front we will see bandwidth increase and prices fall
dramatically, provided that governments deregulate telecommunications to ensure
that the monopolistic stranglehold of telecommunications providers is broken through
competition in the market place. In deregulated economies, international phone calls
are charged in pennies an hour.2 This will completely open up communications in a
way hard to currently envisage. Technology changes such as this will impact Telco’s
and their employees as traditional pricing models break down video-on-demand
will become a reality as will domestic and mobile video conferencing, probably
even from wristwatch type devices as envisaged in the Dick Tracey stories, will
eventually become ubiquitous.
It appears that nearly everyone on the planet (at least in the more developed countries)
actually wants mobile teleconferencing in some form or another. The mobile
phone has become a very much superior version of the security blanket by which
those who are lonely and who need to feel connected to others anywhere in the world
can do so instantly. The mobile telephone has changed the focus of communication
to the individual rather than a particular location.
It also seems that many people want to be able to talk using the most modern and
fashionable handset and in this respect, a piece of telecommunication equipment has
become a personal fashion accessory. As a result of this attitude towards these hand
sets, it is estimated that there are more than 100 million discarded mobile phones
in the United Kingdom alone, awaiting ecologically clean disposal. Furthermore,
it is interesting to note that the race for new features accompanying these handsets
and the corresponding generation of additional revenue streams can have interesting
consequence. The advent of mobile phones capable of taking and sending pictures
or video clips has led to a variety of enterprises banning their use. Banks, schools,
gyms, and exclusive nightclubs3 for example have all barred the taking of pictures
or video footage on their premises.
Not only do we put computers and telecommunications abilities into many in all kinds
of domestic devices, we also install tracking chips into our pets and our children’s
clothes. Sooner or later, someone may even propose that we put a microprocessor
and a telecommunication device into a diagnostic toothbrush, enabling it to report
problems to the dentist and to schedule an appointment, and in between even doubling
as a telephone!
Remotely operated electronics is increasingly being used by the authorities for crime
control. Great Britain already uses thousands of closed circuit television cameras
(CCTVs) in urban communities, linked to computer networks and other telecommunication
devices to detect criminal activities, to enhance private and public
security, and to serve as evidence by helping to identify perpetrators. On the other
side of the Atlantic, there is disagreement between the president of the USA and
Congress about the legitimacy of co-opting Internet service providers to enable the
Federal Government to monitor the communications of American citizens as part
of ongoing an anti-terrorist campaign.
The recent upsurge of phishing e-mail messages and the successful swindling of
banks and governments are examples of evasive criminal behaviours, as are evermore
innovative ways trading in pornography over the Internet. There is little doubt that
in the next ten years smart computers and telecommunications devices will exist,
many of which have not yet been invented at this stage as a ubiquitous part of a
global fully wired society. The jury is still out on where citizens will eventually
draw the line between being willing to be under constant surveillance for safety’s
sake, and insisting on the right of individual privacy.
Where communication networks with proper bandwidth permit fast electronic communication,
we are beginning to integrate intelligent decision making protocols in
networked appliances that form part of smart kitchens and other intelligent devices
throughout our homes (Herper, 2001, Levinson, 2003). Ovens, kettles, and climate
control devices can already be operated remotely, curtains drawn and TVs or audio
devices activated via cell phones, or baths filled to just the right level and temperature
as we approach our homes at the end of the day. During the day, our fridges will
have placed orders for us with our grocers, supermarkets, or fast food vendors, to
be delivered just in time as we arrive at our homes, kept clean by roving bots.
Fault detection will be incorporated into many of our domestic appliances, which
will alert us about worn out equipment. We will use the technology in an attempt
to remove as many domestic chores as we can as we become more efficient in our
home life. Hopefully, not many of us will buy these fully wired homes as they will
take away much of the familiar routine that actually constitutes human life. But
they will be on the market for those who want them and who have a lot of spare
cash to buy them, as they will not come cheap—at least initially. Of course, it will
also be necessary to be trained in how to use one of these at home. Perhaps one day
some entrepreneurial university will offer a master’s degree: Mastering your fully
wired home. In a similar vein, smart communication devices are disappearing off
our desktops into our clothes and bodies, soon to be followed by companion robots
(Cowley & Kanda, 2005; Klopper, 2005).
Generally, software use will become more user-friendly and intuitive. This will allow
computers to undertake many more tasks for us. On the advanced software side, we
will make progress with artificial intelligence (Kehal & Khurshid, 2001). Computers
will not only dominate chess tournaments, but will take on and eventually become
champions in the game of Go. We will produce more intelligent programs, which
will increasingly help us in many different situations from medicine to banking, and
travel selection to cooking. The computer will indeed help us make smarter decisions.
It is however worth noting that sometimes smart decisions are at the expense of
wise decisions, which generally need a broad and long term perspective and which
often have to cope with paradoxes—one aspect of human thought that will remain
a challenge to computers and companion robots for a while yet. It is thought that
in the next 5 to 10 years we will make some progress towards a robotic or silicon
brain. However, in all probability the quintessential essence and extreme complexity
of human intelligent decision-making will elude us for the foreseeable future. Until
we understand natural intelligence it is not likely that we will be able to fully master
artificial intelligence. Given the reality that human cognition is a continent of which
we have only begun to explore the beach on which we landed, Arthur C Clarke’s
estimate that by 2001 there would be mature artificial intelligence (AI) that could
interact with human intelligence, represented by HAL in Clarke’s visionary film
2001: A Space Odyssey was clearly quite overoptimistic. Sophisticated and mature
AI will almost certainly be only realized by the middle of the 21st century, if not
in hundreds of years’ time. Gene Roddenberry’s fictional portrayal of the android
Data in the Star Trek series, set about three hundred years in the future, is probably
a more reasonable estimate of when mature AI could be available.
On the business front, ICT has been well established and should grow in leaps
and bounds, making organisations more efficient. There will of course always be
computer project failures with the concomitant lost of money. But on the whole
information technology investment will continue at an increasing rate and it will
turn out to be successful. DotComs and e-business will probably play a lesser role
(Remenyi, 2001) while applications such as knowledge management (Depres &
Chauvel, 2001) will become increasingly important.
Computers will interface with the public more and more. As a consumer, it will become
harder and harder to find a human assistant to talk to. We will buy increasingly
either on the Web or through a telephone or via some sort of electronic interface.
It will become hard to find a bank staffed by people rather than ATM type devices.
Companies will continue to increase their fees to those of us who want to deal with
human assistants. Furthermore, we will buy just about every type of ticket from a
machine, or download prepaid tickets remotely onto our cell phones or credit card
size cash cards. Train tickets, bus tickets, airline tickets, theatre tickets, and meal
tickets will be dispensed by machines 24 hours per day and seven days a week. This
could be seen as the siliconization of relationships between entrepreneurs and clients.
Many companies see this as an improvement in efficiency. But for some people,
siliconization is simply a synonym for depersonalisation and for many depersonalisation
means a reduction in service. As the application of information technology
and telecommunications continues to show good returns for their organizations the
so-called productivity paradox (Brynjolfsson, 1993; Willcocks & Lester 1998) will
be seen for the misunderstanding that it was. Computers will insinuate themselves
into every aspect of the organisation whereby these machines will automatically
reorder inventory, plan production, redesign products and reschedule vehicles, and
so forth. Customer relationship management (CRM) will come into its own and will
ultimately play a significant role in driving the day-to-day affairs of the business
(Leavitt & Whistler, 1958).
In fact, with regard to corporate entities, the pervasive nature of ICT is pushing business
organisations towards embedding technology deeper and deeper within their
business models. For competitive reasons, there is increasing pressure to be more
cost effective and ICT is seen as a central way of achieving this. The application
of this technology can be with little or no concern for the individuals whose jobs
are either lost or dumbed down. Seeing this through the technologic determinism
lens, we could say that at present it seems that businesses do not have much choice
as to whether or not they embrace this technology. If a particular business refused
to “modernise” and its competitors so do then it could be forced out of the market
place. It can be seen that the logic of the market has now begun to drive the logic
of technological determinism.
To add to this situation, it is important to note that to prosper, businesses will increasingly
need to have the capacity to interact seamlessly with other enterprises
and dynamically create and dissolve relationships (Kalakota, 1998). This is most
effectively facilitated by ICT. There are many examples of enterprises extending
beyond their boundaries and acting as a virtual enterprise using ICT as the primary
facilitator. Thus, the pressure to use ICT is nothing less than enormous and this has
been reflected in the sales figures of this industry sector over the past decade.
When this trend is examined in detail, the concerns of business with generating
a demand for their product or service, selling, and delivering their product to the
customer, getting paid, managing the relationship with the customer, conforming to
regulatory requirements, and managing the relationship with the shareholders, all
lend themselves greatly to facilitation by ICT. If we look at each of these generic
areas in a business, we can see an almost endless list of possibilities for ICT appli-
cations. Even if the enterprise has reservations about the use of this technology and
does not want to continually chase after and adopt the latest ICT, the technological
determinist argue that they may have no choice due to inevitable disruption of the
traditional business paradigm by ICT. It is relatively clear that in order to survive,
enterprises have to and will have continue adopting new technology hat gives them
a temporary advantage over their competitors.
Given the reality of this determinist approach, the choice facing the corporate sector
is how ICT can be introduced and how these systems will be put in place, and
how sound policies for their use and governance will be developed. This concern
is reflected in the current focus within large enterprises on project and program
governance, enterprise architecture, and program office concepts This emphasis
allows the enterprise to manage the application of the technology within the context
of the corporate strategy, processes, rewards systems, organisation, technology, and
measures. In addition, while a lot of research indicates that the technology should be
put in to support of business change, a number of organisations appear to be forcing
change through the organisation using the technology. Of course, this sometimes
leads to poor systems or even to outright failure of ICT projects.
A hard line technological determinist would say that given these circumstances, there
is no choice but to chase after the technology and that individual employees need to
enthusiastically embrace the new systems by becoming an early adopter of technology,
and make full use of it. But this a rather simplistic and incomplete view of the
issues involved. Given the above, it is clearly hard to argue against the fact that ICT
is rapidly becoming ubiquitous to the point at which it will be a central facilitator
to virtually every aspect of our lives. But there are still real choices as to how we
implement ICT. For example, as business continues to siliconise,4 so relationships
change. The human-machine interface changes attitudes as well as work practices.
As mentioned before, the highly impersonal ATMs, ticket vending machines, and
Web sites become the client interface. Telephone systems with multiple menu options
may well be efficient from the company’s point of view, but we have never heard
one single phrase from a client in praise of them. It is hard to find any discussion on
this type of issue. In general, this debate is simply avoided. Many corporate systems
are either not ergonomic or simply downright user-unfriendly. Repetitive strain syndrome
has now become an accepted complaint for office workers. Fortunately, the
use of computers to monitor too closely individual work practices is unacceptable.
But despite these issues, there seems to be an unquestioned implicit assumption that
ICT leading to efficiency is simply good. But this is clearly not always the case. It
is not at all clear that the users of ICT always obtain more satisfaction from their
work or deliver a better level of service to the organisation.
Furthermore, large swathes of people are almost automatically left out of this ICT
driven type of world (Morino, 2001). In general, those who are in any way traditionally
disadvantaged have reduced access to ICT. One important group that is
paid very little attention is people with disabilities. Virtually no accommodation is
currently made for such individuals. Examples of this abound. Few Web sites have
facilities for the visually impaired. Few ATMs are placed at a convenient level for
those in wheelchairs. Few organisations make braille or voice recognition systems
available for blind individuals.
Yet, for people with disabilities, ICT can radically change their lives through emerging
neuro-informatics, the melding of electronic, and neurological signalling (Klopper,
2005). In the case of the blind or visually impaired, it is now possible to facilitate
their reading of computer screen using various high-tech assistive technologies.
Speech input, screen readers have changed the way people communicate. Furthermore
predictive text, typing aids, and alternative input devices are available.
If accessibility is not taken into account during the design of technology, it becomes
very difficult and expensive to retro-fit it. Clearly, it is desirable that all individuals
can obtain the maximum benefit from the developments in ICT and this was
recognised by The European Commission when it stated that “It is accepted that in
today’s Information Society ‘learning to use technology’ and ‘learning to learn’ with
technology is necessary” (EU, 2000a). In the European context, national government
in member countries is expected to encourage this by ensuring that teachers
can provide the necessary skills training and by encouraging teachers to teach using
technology. Furthermore, the EU has recognised the importance of the issue of inclusion.
The EU commission has examined the opportunities, which an ITC empowered
society could bring “the information society promises new digital opportunities
for the socially disadvantaged” (EU, 2001). For the socially marginalized, technology
could educate and inform, bring people closer together and provide them with
new services—of course basic computer literacy and access to technology would
be necessary. These issues were highlighted at the Lisbon Summit in March 2000
where the challenges of the Information Society and the actions needed to address
them were defined in the eEurope Action Plan (EU, 2000b).
So the application of ICT opens up a lot of important issues and we will be forced
to face a number of choices. We will need to think hard about our basic values and
what sort of society we really want or need to create. We could create a highly siliconised
society where the only issue is how to be more efficient in the market place.
We could ignore personal preferences as to how people want to work and we can
just pay for redundancies and repetitive strain syndrome cases. We can disregard
our customer’s dislike of telephone menus etc. This is the sort of world where we
chase after technology for technology’s sake not caring for the human impact of
what we are doing.
On the other hand, we could be much more sensitive to individual preferences and
also we could create a society where we use technology to enable people to overcome
difficulties, to provide high-tech assistive technologies to people with disabilities,
to provide support and education and to minimise exclusion. Furthermore ICT can
be used to inform those who are struggling for freedom. In this world, we actually
face the question of whether we get a better feeling from buying from a machine or
drawing cash from an ATM or obtaining information from the Web than we do from
having real live people help us. We also face up to the fact that although machines
are generally more reliable than mere people, when they breakdown they can have
a greater and more catastrophic effect than an inadequate people based service.
Remember the last time your credit card was swallowed by an ATM in a far away
town leaving you on a Saturday night without cash and without your credit card. Of
course, most of us know about having back up arrangements or business continuity
plans to use the modern parlance. But even that doesn’t always work! Perhaps we
will need to cultivate a culture that understands there is more to life than efficiency.
Therefore, we need to seriously ask the question and face the implications of its
answer: Do we actually want to deal with machines rather than people? We can
withhold our business from those who want as much siliconisation as possible just
to maximise their profit.
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to definitively state what kind of society we
want to create for ourselves globally. However, it is clear from the information
provided above that we feel that ICT should be used in a sensitive way that bears
in mind the preferences and aspirations of the individual. It is also clear that ICT
could play a very significant role in improving the circumstances of disadvantaged
people including those with disabilities. We argue that not enough attention has
been given to this and that it is now necessary to move quickly on this front. It is
hoped that this article will generate a more debate and discussion as to how this
may be achieved.
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