Software-as-a-Service: A Lifeline for Sub-Saharan Africa

Software-as-a-Service - A Lifeline For Sub-Saharan Africa

The persistent problems in Sub-Saharan Africa are so complicated that they have proven resistant to many formidable attempts at finding sustainable solutions in the last 50 years. Whatever the solutions may be, it is likely that the most successful would feature fundamental elements such as self-determination, attraction of foreign investment, technological productivity, food security, increased capacity to contribute to global knowledge, political stability, and rule of law. Evidence from other regions of the world have proven that all of these elements can be facilitated by the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) tools and services. It is therefore exciting to see the rapid implementation and adoption of ICT in Sub-Saharan Africa in the past few years. Benefits from the rapid adoption of cell phone technology, for instance, provide clear evidence that there is good reason for hope that this hypothesis holds true in the African region as it has in others.
I believe that another technology that presents unprecendented opportunity for Sub-Saharan Africa is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Definitions:
SaaS “is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hostedcentrally (typically in the (Internet) cloud) and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.” - Wikipedia
SaaS: “ it’s software that’s developed and hosted by the SaaS vendor and which the end user customer accesses over the Internet. Unlike traditional packaged applications that users install on their computers or servers, the SaaS vendor owns the software and runs it on computers in its data center. The customer does not own the software but effectively rents it, usually for a monthly fee. SaaS is sometimes also known as hosted software or by its more marketing-friendly cousin, “on-demand.”” - CIO
Simply put, SaaS enables on-demand access to software hosted by a remote provider and delivered through the Internet. In contrast to software that is locally installed on a user's computer, the SaaS user connects to a host usually through a Website.

Common SaaS Products:
Common SaaS products include applications for e-mail management, document and data management, office process automation and management, health care management, classroom management, and library collection management. The most popular consumer products include IBM Lotus Live, Google Apps,  and, most recently, Microsoft Office 365.
Since SaaS is delivered through the Internet, user experience benefits greatly from robust bandwidth.  As a result, access to SaaS has become more viable and popular with the advent of affordable broadband.

Advantages:
1. Low initial investment.
2. Pay per use.
3. Scalability.
4. On-demand access.
4. Minimal client-side hardware requirements.
5. Low maintenance burden.
All of these factors make SaaS ideal for implementation in Africa because they lower the threshhold for entry to a level that Africa can afford.

The Case:
The need for shared on-demand resources became apparent to us at Techbiz (our cybercafe in Freetown) even before we could actually envision SaaS products. It actually started with hardware. We recognized that we could save money by consolidating several hard drives into one server box with connections to c-port units at client stations. This solution was initially driven by the need to save money on electricity and space. So in 2002 we installed a ClearCube solution that allowed us to deploy 10 to 15 computers from a single box. The solution also simplified our security needs since we only needed to secure one box that could be located in a small space several yards away from the terminals.
It also quickly became clear to us that our clients needed different applications at different times. Some came in to write papers using word processors; some needed to browse the Web; some needed to access software learning applications; some needed access to typing training software; others needed to print. Instead of loading each station with all of these applications, it made sense to host the applications on servers that could provide access on-demand. That is when we started playing with VMWare Workstation, VirtualBox, and Microsoft Virtual Machine. With these solutions we needed only a few copies of each application, only a couple of "servers" to host the applications, and only low-cost thin clients at user stations. This was back in 2006.
While virtual desktops and applications dramatically minimized our costs, the setup and maintenance are still more sophisticated than ideal in Sierra Leone. With the emergence of SaaS solutions such as Google Apps we see a light at the end of the tunnel where we don't have to host and maintain our own servers and applications. Now we only need broadband! As you can imagine, Techbiz is excited about the opportunity to invest in SaaS solutions such as Google Apps not only for our cybercafe but also for installation in small businesses and institutions. We can hardly wait for affordable broadband to land in Sierra Leone in 2012!

A Lifeline for Africa:
In addition to the need for consumer applications such as Google Apps, Software-as-a-Service offers Africa the opportunity to gain reliable access to critical applications that could make a huge difference in healthcare, education, financial management, and governance. For example, a SaaS application such as Practice Fusion would enable hospitals and medical care centers to manage patient records and drug inventories without having to manage complex computing infrastructure. Practice Fusion is already one of the fastest-growing health record management systems in the US because it is a SaaS solution that can be deployed and adopted easily by providers that do not wish to invest in complex on-site infrastructure. With the software infrastructure managed remotely, medical care centers in Africa would only need to invest in high speed Internet access, user training, and low-cost Web-access terminals such as tablets, Chromebooks, thin clients, or virtual desktops.
African Universities could also benefit from SaaS through the adoption of virtual libraries, virtual learning management systems, student records management systems, financial management systems, course management systems, and lab information management systems.
SaaS solutions could furthermore provide records management systems for government institutions such as the police, drivers licensing and passport services, tax revenue management services, census services, and pension management services. The opportunities are virtually endless. Instead of waiting for Africa to develop the technical capability to develop and host such sophisticated infrastructure, Software-as-a-Service solutions could make sophisticated applications accessible to Africa through broadband connections. Then Africa can concentrate on learning to apply these tools to the challenges at hand. Eventually, African countries will develop the human resources to handle local hosting of these resources, and even local development of sophisticated applications. In the meantime, SaaS could provide a much-need bridge.

Software-as-a-Service is ideal for Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, it could be a real lifeline. We just need to make sure that we take full advantage of this unprecedented opportunity.

How African universities can take advantage of broadband Internet access

By the end of 2012 most countries in Africa will be connected to at least one fiber-optic backbone that provides high speed access to the Internet. Until recently these countries have had low-speed, high-latency, and expensive access via satellite. As a result, few people could afford access to the Internet and those that did only connected at very low speeds. Such low connection speeds prevented practical access to multimedia content on YouTube,  iTunes, and other online sources. The opportunity to connect to the Internet at true broadband speeds is going to provide an unprecedented opportunity for students and instructors to access academic content and learning resources such as digital libraries, online databases, instructional videos and podcasts, and learning management systems.

University libraries in particular must take advantage of this opportunity to address one of the most urgent impediments to education in African countries - access to current prescribed texts, research material, and instructional resources. Access to broadband suddenly enables African students and academics to take advantage of vast repositories of preprint research literature , free and open access libraries, as well as subscription-based literature repositories.

In addition to content, universities can also take advantage of search technologies such as Google’s Search Appliances to federate search across multiple repositories.

Finally, with access to broadband, African universities can start creating repositories of local research and knowledge from academics and students as well as repositories of local environmental, geographical, agricultural, economic, political, scientific, social, literary, historical, and entertainment information. African academics need to start contributing to the world’s knowledgebase.

African universities stand to benefit a lot from the numerous innovations that have taken place and continue to emerge in the digital library world in the West such as RDF, Microdata, adoption of RDA by the library community, OpenURL, Open-Access, Preprints, Federated Searching, Natural Language Processing, Semantic Search, etc. These and many other technologies have revolutionalised education in the West and can help accelerate the improvement of education in African institutions.

The list of resources below includes a few that I have either worked with or investigated recently:

- RDA - Resource Description and Access
- RDF - Resource Description Framework
- Microdata
- Microformat
- OpenURL
- OAI-PMH - Open Archives Initiative Protocal for Metadata Harvesting
- Open Access
- Preprints
- Open Publishing
- Open Access Publishing
- The Open University
- Commonwealth Open University
- arXiv
- Science.GOV
- BioMed Central
- Public Library of Science
- iTunesU
- Google Code University
- Google Scholar
- Google Books
- PubMed
- Citeseerx
- The National Academies Press
- Highwire Press - Stanford University
- The European Library
- http://www.doaj.org/
- YouTube
- Google Search Appliance

Obviously, the list of available resources is very long and growing. The challenge that African universities have therefore, is to minimize the learning curve of their students so that they are not overwhelmed and can develop the skills to utilize these resources effectively. This is a challenge that we will discuss in other posts.

A Web directory for Sierra Leone

When I found out the other day that Google has given up support of its Web directory I thought a bit about the role that Web directories such as Google’s have played in the development of the Web. It makes sense that Google would give up the directory since their search engine has made it irrelevant. In the early days of the Web though, the directories were critical in providing Web presence (although limited) for many organizations and businesses. I believe that directories introduced people and organizations to the advantages of being discoverable through the Web. The taste of being on the Web eventually led many organizations and businesses to increase their presence on the Web by developing Web sites and advertising on the Web.

I think that a similar strategy would be useful in Africa. The very idea of being discoverable through the Web is very new and foreign to most organizations and businesses in Africa. I think however, that if people were given a taste of being on the Web through a directory, many are likey to eventually realize the benefits of Web presence and move on to developing Web sites and Web advertisements.

Techbiz has been thinking about developing such a directory for Sierra Leone. Our vision is to start with Freetown and include in the directory as many local businesses, schools, government institutions, medical caregivers, NGOs, and sports teams. Since most organizations do not have Web sites or even e-mail, the directory would mainly contain name of entity, address, short description and geo-coordinates. Businesses would include products; government institutions would include services and schedules; healthcare providers would include services and schedules; schools would include governance, program details, class schedules, sports schedules, alumni club information, and competition results; NGOs would include services and products; sports teams would include schedules, rosters, biographies of players, and competition results, and so on. If we keep the directory well updated it could eventually become a great resource for search engines but more importantly it could help accelerate adoption of the Web as a resource for information gathering.

Although there are already some directories in African countries, most concentrate on the few businesses that are paying to advertise on the Web. Our idea is to include most local businesses even if they know little about the Web with the hope that they would get a taste of Web presence and eventually desire to advertise on the Web.

What do you think?

Why Agile project management makes sense in developing countries

While failure in project management in developing countries can be attributed to various reasons, one that is becoming clearer to me is the very style of project management. The traditional style of project management is often too inflexible and averse to change during the project lifecycle. In an environment where change is a constant, such a methodology is likely to be problematic. This traditional style of project management is similar to the Waterfall style of project management in software development where a project manager creates a plan that follows a clear timeline of sequential tasks and deliverables with anticipated milestones, dependencies, and due dates as reflected through a project critical path. The critical path is strongly followed and protected as the lifeline of the project. This style of management assumes that relatively few changes would be necessary during the project. Changes are taken very seriously, especially those that affect the critical path. In contrast, the more recent Agile methodology expects changes throughout the project lifecycle and focuses instead on delivering smaller working pieces of the project objectives through a flexible, reiterative process of prioritizing, focusing resources, solving problems, testing components, and accommodating feedback from stakeholders. Agile project management expects changes to be necessary during projects, even changes to project specifications and priorities.

The Computer Lab Idea

I promised a few weeks ago to publish details about the idea of getting computer labs in secondary schools and colleges in Sierra Leone with funding from alumni based mostly in the US and Europe. My belief is that we can build upon the pride and competitiveness that is cultivated during secondary school days among students fueled through sports and other competitions. This pride and allegiance results in alumni clubs in many cities in the US and Europe which meet periodically to raise funds for school projects as well as party to stay in touch. My plan is to propose to each one of these alumni groups the idea of sponsoring a computer lab for their school at the approximate cost of $1,300 - $1,500 per seat for 3 years including fees for technical support and teaching.

Education and Development Assistance

The more I think about development assistance I am increasingly convinced that the transfer of knowledge should be the most important objective of every program, even those that are not directly geared toward the formal education sector. While we must be grateful for all assistance that comes from other countries, our goal should be to learn to do things for ourselves up to the point at which we will eventually be able to offer assistance to others in need, as well as minimize the burden on other countries to take care of us. If this became our goal, then we would hunger more for what we could learn through development assistance programs other than how much money we could gain through these programs.
Because this is not the goal of most development assistance programs, an awful lot of opportunity is passed up to gather and document information and intelligence through development assistance programs.

Education - The Plan

My excitement about these developments and opportunities has motivated me to conduct in-depth research over the past few months with the goal of coming up with a viable plan to take full advantage of this window of opportunity. My hope is for sober and helpful review and critique of the plan from this group with the goal of making sure that the final version is sound and well-thought-out. Please don't hold back.

My plan is to get reliable computer labs into secondary schools and colleges, teach students to use the computers to access academic content through an online learning management system designed to fit the local syllabus of the Ministry of Education. My initial plan for funding the labs is to approach school alumni organizations based in the US and Europe with a proposal to fund lab units of 10 computers each at about $1,500 per computer seat including reliable solar power supply, system maintenance, and computer instruction for 3 years.