[kictanet] Inside Nairobi, the Next Palo Alto?

[alice]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/business/worldbusiness/20ping.html?ex=1217217600&en=18779b83fccc23b0&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Inside Nairobi, the Next Palo Alto?
Jacob Wire/European Pressphoto Agency

Google has mapped Nairobi and wants to add similar detail for other 
African cities.

Other places must be content with technologies made by others. Yet 
people in these areas are dreaming of more.

Consider Wilfred Mworia, a 22-year-old engineering student and freelance 
code writer in Nairobi, Kenya. In the four weeks leading up to Apple’s 
much-anticipated release of a new iPhone on July 11, Mr. Mworia created 
an application for the phone that shows where events in Nairobi are 
happening and allows people to add details about them.

Mr. Mworia’s desire to develop an application for the iPhone is not 
unusual: many designers around the world are writing programs for the 
device. But his location posed some daunting obstacles: the iPhone 
doesn’t work in Nairobi, and Mr. Mworia doesn’t even own one. He wrote 
his program on an iPhone simulator.

“Even if I don’t have an iPhone,” Mr. Mworia says defiantly, “I can 
still have a world market for my work.”

Nairobi’s challenges are many. Internet use is relatively expensive and 
slow. Power failures are common. The city also lacks a world-class 
technical university. Mr. Mworia’s professors don’t offer lessons in the 
latest computer languages; he must learn them on his own.

Political instability can be a problem, too. Earlier this year, Kenya 
suffered widespread violence after its disputed national election. For 
weeks, work in Nairobi came to a halt.

“If you have a bright idea in Nairobi, you can’t just turn it around,” 
says Laura Frederick, an American working on an online payment system in 
the city.

Still, Nairobi is home to a digital brew that invites optimism about its 
chances for creating unusual innovations. The city has relatively few 
wired phone lines or networked personal computers, so mobile phones are 
the essential digital tool. Four times as many people have them as have 
bank accounts. Text messages are far more popular than e-mail. 
Safaricom, the dominant mobile provider, offers a service called M-pesa 
that lets customers send money with text messages. Nokia sells brand-new 
phones here for as little as $33.

While engineers in the United States lavish attention on expensive 
phones that boast laptoplike features, in Kenya there are 10 million 
low-end phones. Millions more are used elsewhere in Africa. Enhancements 
to such basic phones can be experimented with cheaply in Nairobi, and 
because designers are weaned on narrow bandwidth, they are comfortable 
writing compact programs suited to puny devices.

“Applications are heavy in America,” says Michael Wakahe, a Nairobi code 
writer. “Here we have to make them light,” because simpler hardware 
requires smaller programs. These can have advantages in wireless systems.

The distinctive digital experience in Nairobi inspires confidence in its 
youthful community of programmers, bloggers and Web enthusiasts. Over 
the past year, about 600 people in Nairobi — most under 25 — have 
coalesced into a group called Skunk Works, sharing ideas and encouraging 
new businesses. In June, it held an all-day workshop that included 
sessions on using the Android phone operating system from Google, 
developing applications for digital maps and creating content for mobile 
phones.

“Possibilities are opening up for us,” says Josiah Mugambi, one of the 
group’s organizers.

The prospect of marrying low-end mobile phones with the Internet is 
earning Nairobi notice from outsiders, who wonder whether the city might 
emerge as a test-bed for tomorrow’s technologies. One intriguing 
possibility is broadcasting local television programs on mobile phones.

In Nairobi’s highest-profile validation, Google opened a development 
office here last September. “Africa is a huge long-term market for us,” 
Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said by e-mail. “We have to 
start by helping people get online, and the creativity of the people 
will take care of the rest.”

Google hired seven recent university graduates, who digitally mapped the 
streets and structures of Nairobi for Google Maps. The company is now 
doing the same for other African cities. A leading Nairobi television 
broadcaster, NTV, has made a deal to present whole episodes of its 
programs on YouTube, a Google property.

Google plans to hire more people in Nairobi and is recruiting staff in 
half a dozen other African cities. In Nairobi, Google chose a veteran of 
the city’s Internet-access industry to lead its office. The company 
assigned two Americans here; like the presidential candidate Barack 
Obama, each is the child of a Kenyan and an American.

The company’s presence has raised ambitions. “When I interview people 
for jobs in this office,” explains Chris Kiagiri, a Google technology 
officer in Nairobi, “I ask them, ‘What would you like to see Google do 
in this market that it has not attempted anywhere else in the world?’”

“A lot of people assume Google is trying to replicate in Africa what it 
has done elsewhere,” adds Mr. Kiagiri, who transferred last year from 
Google’s head office in California. “Sure, we want to bring existing 
products into this market. But we also want to organize information 
locally in a way we haven’t done elsewhere.”

To be truly creative in a technological backwater is to defeat 
geography. Even as powerful a technological force as Google might not 
succeed. But dreaming of greatness, Kenyans are pushing Google to expand 
into completely new areas.

One local programmer, Timothy Mbugua, wants Google to enhance its 
communication backbone so he can use it to build a money-transfer 
business that would charge lower rates than existing services. While it 
sounds daunting, Mr. Mbugua explains, “I’m only saying to Google, ‘This 
is what I need from you in order to execute my idea.’”

G. Pascal Zachary teaches journalism at Stanford and writes about 
technology and economic development. E-mail: gzach at nytimes.com.