Agony of an African programmer

I would gladly start working with programmers in Africa. I&#x27;m based in Europe (Poland), and for a long time I&#x27;ve been thinking about how we&#x27;re working with people around the globe while completely ignoring the huge continent that is right within ±2h of our timezone.<p>The problem begins with the word &quot;Africa&quot;. Obviously, this is a meaningless word, describing an entire continent full of radically different countries. And yet we use it. I know how I get annoyed when my country gets generalized as &quot;Eastern Europe&quot; (first, we&#x27;re Central Europe, and second, countries in this part of Europe are quite different from each other). I can&#x27;t even imagine what it feels to be thrown into an &quot;Africa&quot; bucket.<p>Then there is the issue of whom to work with (and where), how to start, how to build trust. It&#x27;s just immensely difficult. I know next to nothing about African countries, much less about major cities, good schools, places where I could find programmers and business partners.<p>I am hoping for more ties between European and African developers and entrepreneurs, so that we can start working together. Which would hopefully make the life of an African programmer easier, at least on a practical (economic) level.

The patchy and expensive internet access that many people around the world experience really emphasises the importance of offline or native apps. There&#x27;s a relentless (and in my view unnecesary) push by many technology companies to run everything online as if it&#x27;s some natural progression we should all be moving towards. Some of us, even with broadband access, don&#x27;t want to run apps in the cloud, (where everything we do is gleefully tracked and recorded). It&#x27;s clearly to the benefit of many companies to push for an &quot;online first&quot; approach, but I feel it&#x27;s unsuitable for many apps. I&#x27;m not convinced it&#x27;s a better experience for users either.

This article really nailed it. I spent two months last year in the D.R Congo and in those 2 months I had approximately only 4 hours of coding.<p>Electricity was reliable only between 11PM to 5AM and we spent New year&#x27;s eve in the dark.<p>My data provider had a special 3G plan where you get 1Gb data between 12AM and 6AM for $1. This worked well for the first 2 weeks only then connection became non-existent. The only thing the provider had to say was &quot;sorry but we don&#x27;t have coverage in your area.&quot;<p>Yet I met some brilliant folks who would make amazing programmers if only they had access to all the resources we get with reliable internet and electricity. I spoke with many of them about starting a computer club where we meet weekly, share ideas and learn from each other. Some were kin but many were skeptical because they&#x27;re used to unkept promises.<p>Edit: Forgot to mention that the state has installed fiber optic in some parts the capital city but nobody wants to use it because they know the government will abuse it and extort millions from users. And the country&#x27;s ccTLD .cd is still one of the most expensive in the world.

Africa is a big place. From what I hear, Nairobi is one of the most interesting places to be an entrepreneur these days. Yes, there are huge challenges all over africa including, but not limited to, corruption, unreliable power, political instability, and terrible infrastructure.<p>But this very constraint is what drives projects like M-PESA, and Ushahidi, and BRCK.<p>Also, Software Developers in the US and Europe don&#x27;t necessarily make 100,000 Dollars. In some spots you&#x27;d be luck y to make half that.

This description sounds a lot like eastern europe :) When I used to live there, electricity was only available when it wasn&#x27;t raining. The internet was really crappy and it used to cost a pretty big percentage of my salary. Investors were practically non existent, and the brain drain took its toll on any innovation attempt (alongside the corruption). I have now left eastern europe for a better western country, and I have to face their &#x27;1st world&#x27; complaints. A brit does not, can not understand what that is like. I think the same goes for americans. Feel free to downvote your ignorance :)

&gt; A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least $100,000 dollars per year.<p>&quot;at least $100,000 dollars per year&quot;<p>...&quot;at least $100,000 dollars per year&quot;<p>Where can I find one of these mythical minimum-100k-salary programming jobs, without having 10+ years of experience and working for a massive tech company?<p>Source: UK twenty-something.

While 100k (especially as a minimum treshold) is an overestimate even for richest European countries, &quot;Europe&quot; is not equal to &quot;just Western Europe&quot; or &quot;just a bunch of richest countries in Western Europe&quot;, as some seem to think.<p>Apart from the UK, Switzerland or Germany, there are countries like Greece and Portugal, and there&#x27;s Central and Eastern Europe, too.<p>Median programmer salary in Poland is 5500 zl, which is about 3900 zl after deductions and 1 USD = ~3 zl, so it&#x27;s 22 thousands per anum (gross pay) or 15.6 grand net pay.<p>Grass is always greener, huh?

Working without stable power is such a hassle. Good luck coding something complex with a diesel generator going brrrrr a couple of meters away and all the UPSs in the building going wild. Or all the restaurants just shut down because the roads washed away and power is out for days on end. So no dinner. Or you find a place still serving but you end up with food poisoning because they can&#x27;t cook properly in those conditions. True story.

Get out of Africa. Africa will steal your life.<p>If you choose to stay in Africa and have your potential limited by silly things like bad Internet and no electricity, then make that choice consciously, and for good reasons, like wanting to be near family. If you stay because you feel some deeper connection to Africa because you were born there, get over it. Get out of your comfort zone, live your own life. Consider carefully the costs of maintaining that irrational connection. Personally, I think it&#x27;s a cop out, an excuse to be mediocre. It&#x27;s a global world, stop thinking locally.<p>What would Elon Musk have achieved had he stayed in Africa? Substantially less. Get yourself into an environment that is supportive of your dreams and goals, not one that works against you.

I am based in the US but travel to South Africa a few times a year. The tech community there is strong. Though I haven&#x27;t had my feet on the ground in Kenya I also hear that there are some amazing things happening there. Startups like Soko.com come to mind.<p>Growing these areas will help. With that being said Africa is a large continent and a large portion of it lacks the basic infrastructure that we are used to. For example I met a guy through a friend who&#x27;s entire business is setting up and maintaining generators for lodges and other businesses in northern Botswana. He was telling me that there are many areas up there where there is no access to a power grid so your only option is to have a generator (or solar farm) for power.<p>With that being said some of these challenges have also spawned some interesting solutions. There is a reason why Whatsapp sold for the amount that it did. It is really exciting to see technology begin to make it&#x27;s way to this continent. The rest will come with time.

I think the article is plein of cliché about the africa: electricity, internet price ?!! seriously these things have been improved in most of african countries especially in the north of Africa (Ghana has the fastest internet speed in africa ), and now its much more an advantage than of disadvantage for tech companies.especially for salaries and low fees.<p>The question that I looked for an answer for in the article is : where is the silicon valleys of Africa?, I know that there have been many attempts to create tech hubs , like the &quot;cyber parks&quot; in Algeria and Tunisia, where you can rent offices with a symbolic price and create your startup where the process is covered by professionals of different fields (juridique,financial, banks ...) , but these cyber parks remains pretty much empty , or just occupied by big international companies selling their stuffs or promoting dead technologies to young students (like Microsoft)

The trouble with software is that, of all industries, it has the lowest barrier to entry and the lowest capital costs. Crucially, the marginal cost of deploying software across the globe is next to nothing. This is why the Microsoft stack is so dominant worldwide. It was so easy to export when it had a monopoly in the US, that Microsoft had nothing to lose and everything to gain by spreading its products across the globe.<p>African countries are not the only nations lacking in indigenous technical solutions. A place like Canada has over the years lost all of its comparative advantage in the technology sector to massive US companies.<p>One of the many consequences of &quot;free trade&quot;.

This article is an interesting read that I can relate to, moreover, the author is from Ghana where I currently reside so I understand the challenges he&#x27;s referring to. I however think that the issues raised are the same generalist ones being made about business&#x2F;entrepreneurship in Africa that don&#x27;t go deep enough to address the root causes of the challenges, the solutions successful people are implementing and some possible solutions that are yet to be explored.<p>Before I go any further I would like to state first that I&#x27;m speaking from the point of view of a Ghanaian entrepreneur and not an African entrepreneur because I am more familiar with the situation here at home and I would only be speculating about what transpires in other African nations.<p>Cost of equipment:<p>------------------<p>It&#x27;s true that the duty slapped on the importation of IT equipment makes you wonder what the rational is because I was under the impression that one taxed heavily the importation of luxury goods or items that are manufactured locally to protect indigenous industries. However the market is flooded with used computers&#x2F;laptops from abroad that are cheap and can get the job done (albeit a bit slower that one would prefer). A core 2 duo desktop with a 15&quot; lcd monitor and a UPS will set you back Ghc700 ($260).<p>But if the cost is still prohibitive then you have to come up with an alternative solution. For example, when I got my first freelance project, I couldn&#x27;t immediately afford a pc so I leased one from an internet cafe and agreed to share the work and revenue with the owner.<p>Availability of learning material:<p>----------------------------------<p>I think IT is one of the few industries where so much leaning resources are available online for free and more so now with the advent of MOOC. If you don&#x27;t have an internet connection at home or a usb modem then go the an internet cafe.<p>PayPal blacklisting:<p>--------------------<p>Now this is a very annoying and unfortunate situation! West Africa is made up of the following countries: Benin. Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;West_Africa</a>). Of all the listed countries PayPal isn&#x27;t in 4, namely: Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Liberia (<a href="https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paypal.com&#x2F;webapps&#x2F;mpp&#x2F;country-worldwide</a>). One of the reasons PayPal doesn&#x27;t want to do business with us is because of credit card fraud which I think is a rather lazy excuse. If Skrill can make it work then really...<p>However iTunes, Skrill, iStockPhoto, Hetzner.de, Linode, AWS, Rackspace, Register.com, Gandi among others all accept visa cards from Ghana so you can get by without PayPal (although you can&#x27;t register your copy of Sublime Text so you have to I&#x27;ve with the annoying reminders or switch to Komodo IDE).<p>Banks here don&#x27;t issue Visa Credit cards willy nilly but you can more easily apply for an international Visa Debit card and if your bank doesn&#x27;t offer one then change to another institution!<p>I&#x27;m going to end this comment here because it&#x27;s getting too long and I&#x27;m running on a UPS (lol) but my main point is that yes, there are challenges but they are surmountable. You either solve them head on or work around them but there is always a solution. And besides entrepreneurship is all about the fun of solving challenges anyway so come over to Ghana and have some REAL Fun!

The author forgot to mention something; Finding good staff.<p>Finding staff is difficult because of the scarcity of developers and anyone talented almost always has a job paying far more than a startup can afford.<p>Training juniors is the only alternative, but in doing so your company ends up being a training shop for other companies to headhunt from.

&gt;&quot;A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least $100,000 dollars per year.&quot;<p>Either he doesn&#x27;t consider Eastern European softwware developers as colleagues or he thinks all of Europe is London, which it certainly isn&#x27;t. The upper limit he gave is more than most Eastern European developers make.

&quot;A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least $100,000 dollars per year.&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t think this is factually true.<p>That said, the article really makes you think how much easy we have it in the developed world, yet we always find the time to complain about everything.

&gt; The problem is that, though the syllabus looks good and would be a good starting point for being a software and web developer, these students do not spend time working on their personal projects and instead code for a grade “A” in exams.<p>What, these students only work on getting good results in school, where they&#x27;re studying? What a bunch of slackers.

proper link: <a href="http://www.geektime.com/2014/04/06/agony-of-an-african-programmer/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geektime.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;06&#x2F;agony-of-an-african-progr...</a>

Sometimes I think it would be a better idea to let any educated African (or any African for that matter) immigrate to any country he wants. In the first world, programmers (and most other professionals) are more productive and earn more. They can then send home some of the money they earn, which results in a net-positive effect of emmigration.<p>Currently the barrier to this solution are the immigration controls inspired by irrational fear (rationalized by unquestioned assumptions and generalizations).<p>Fixing African institutions to a point where they can compete with the rest of the world will take decades or even a century or two. The process could be accelerated by returning expatriates.