Cameroon - Stuck on the Fringes of the Knowledge Economy

By Dibussi Tande (culled from Scribbles from the Den: Essays on Politics and Collective Memory in Cameroon, 2009)

"The ability of a society to produce, select, adapt, commercialize, and use knowledge is critical for sustained economic growth and improved living standards. Knowledge has become the most important factor in economic development." The World Bank.

The email from the IT department of a US-based company was a simple one:

"Due to civil disturbances in Bangalore, India, there is limited IT Services staff available in our Bangalore help desk location to provide telephone support. Our help desk locations in Ottawa and Dublin are providing extended services to alleviate this situation, but you may experience extended delays when contacting IT Services via phone.”

This brief email, which would have raised eyebrows two decades ago, is now just another mundane piece of workplace communications in the US. And, it succinctly sums up Thomas Friedman’s now famous assertion that the world is “flat”  - i.e., that national boundaries are no longer relevant in  today’s global economy, and that people and companies can now compete for jobs and market share on an equal footing, from anywhere in the world.

According to Friedman (in The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century), the dramatic developments in Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in the past decade, particularly the Internet and computer technologies, have created a new global economy where

"…intellectual work, intellectual capital, [can] be delivered from anywhere. It [can] be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced and put back together again -- and this [gives] a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature."

The result, says a recent World Bank report, is a new economic reality where

“comparative advantages among nations come less and less from abundant natural resources or cheap labor and increasingly from technical innovations and the competitive use of knowledge—or from a combination of the two, as is illustrated by the success story of Bangalore, the capital of the Indian software industry.” (P. 8).

As I read the email on disturbances in Bangalore, I could not help but marvel at how India, a country which for all intents and purposes is still a “third world country” quickly understood the opportunity --and vacuum -- created by the digital revolution of the 1990s, and how it quickly adapted to the exigencies of new economy that ensued.

A decade ago, India was no different from most developing countries in Asia or even Africa. As an Indian financial expert quoted in Friedman’s book points out:

''India had no resources and no infrastructure. It produced people with quality and by quantity. But many of them rotted on the docks of India like vegetables. Only a relative few could get on ships and get out.

However, India was able to capitalize on the Internet boom of the late nineties and place itself at the frontline of the 21st century "knowledge economy". It did this by creating an enabling environment characterized by a renewed emphasis on science education, particularly in engineering and computer sciences at the tertiary level; huge investments in ICTs, particularly in a robust and reliable Internet system and a world class software industry; the establishment of business-friendly laws aimed at attracting foreign investment and multinationals; the adoption of less restrictive citizenship laws, to harness the potential of India’s mammoth Diaspora community, etc.

The results are there for all to see. Today, India’s graduates are no longer rotting “on the docks of India like vegetables” but have become frontline soldiers in a global digital economy. As the Indian financial expert puts it, “…we built this ocean crosser, called fiber-optic cable. For decades you had to leave India to be a professional. Now you can plug into the world from India. You don't have to go to Yale and go to work for Goldman Sachs.''

Cameroon's Unfulfilled Potential
Inevitably my thoughts turned to Cameroon, that country so strategically situated in the “armpit” of Africa, with the additional advantage of having one of the highest literacy rates in sub-Saharan Africa and being officially bilingual in French and English.

This is also a country with a huge unexploited ICT potential particularly the high-performance fiber optic SAT3/WASC Submarine cable which has a terminal in Douala, and the COTCO fiber-optic link which runs across the entire length of the country along the Cameroon-Chad oil pipeline. No serious effort has been made to build the infrastructure within the country necessary to take advantage of these fiber optic links. So a country that has the potential to be at the forefront of the ICT revolution not only in the central African region but also in the rest of Africa is trailing the pack. 

Today Cameroon is where India was some two decades ago – and it has the potential to become what India (or even Mauritius) is today. However, unlike India, Cameroon is crippled by the “civil service mentality”, and it lacks a crop of creative economic and political visionaries similar to those who transformed Bangalore from a sleepy backwater Indian town into an IT outsourcing and software Mecca.

Nowhere has that absence of vision been most manifested than in the country’s higher education system which was established primarily to train administrators for the post colonial government. Time has not changed the focus of Cameroon’s higher education system even as the world has moved on.

Apart from a few exceptions such as the Yaounde Polytechnic or the three Institutes of Technology in Bandjoun, Douala and Ngaoundere which graduate a meagre 100 or so students annually, Cameroon’s university system still churns out thousands of “pen pushers” each year rather than technology-savvy and innovative graduates with higher-order skills who are able to tackle the challenges globalization and knowledge societies. In Cameroon's universities, there is no particular emphasis on science and technology in general, or on research and development in particular, which are the cornerstone of the new economy.

An editorial in the economic monthly, The Entrepreneur (Vol. 1 No. 3 Jan. 2006 p. 2) brilliantly sums up the consequence of this misaligned educational system:

The deficit of knowledge and learning is killing Cameroon and Africa softly. Despite a proliferation of schools and colleges, the lack of true learning and creativity has held the African captive to underdevelopment. In Cameroon we have graduates who are just producing what they were taught in school, instead of producing new things…This has left Cameroon with millions of qualified illiterates and graduates who are failures as far as life and service is concerned. A Master's degree holder moves with little or no creativity. Thousands of poorly educated Cameroonians only wait for opportunities to work where others have worked. Few are involved in the creation of new things. The outdated education they received then gives birth to confusion.

Some might consider this analysis a little too bleak and apocalyptic. But the truth remains that Cameroon’s educational system is a relic of colonization which creates a dependent consumer society with little or no capacity for creativity, innovation and productivity. In this regard, Jeremy Weate's observation about Nigeria is truer for Cameroon:

The longer I live here, the more I realise that technological interventions or money pumped in by donors will do little to transform, unless there is a primary focus on business processes (whether in the commercial or the public sector)… Nigerians enjoy the benefits of cars, laptops, mobile phones and other modern technology, but live in a society which does not understand the discipline and rigour it takes to produce such technology. This creates an alienated culture where technology and modern industrial processes are seen as a mystery. No one seems to be able to solve the aviation crisis. No one seems to be able to create value-added manufacturing processes; no one seems to stem the tide of an import-economy, turning into an export-economy. So few technological interventions (in any sector) meet with any kind of success.

Being part of the knowledge economy is not just about benefiting from IT outsourcing opportunities. For developing countries, it is the most effective way of competing in the global economy, increasing economic productivity and improving general living standards. Countries that fail to become part of the knowledge society will therefore be stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty, dependency and underdevelopment; “Lagging countries will miss out on opportunities to improve their economies through, for example, more efficient agricultural production and distribution systems— which would increase yields and lower the proportion of food wasted due to poor distribution—or by making exports more competitive through better metrology, standards, and quality testing”, says the World Bank report (pp. 10-11).

Tags: Globalization Knowledge Economy ICTs Thomas Friedman World Bank India Outsourcing Cameroon

Comments

[Walbert]

Thanks for this piece! For the first time, I clearly understand what the hoopla about "knowledge economy" is all about and why it is relevant to Cameroon/Africa. Hopefully, one day our country will be controled by visionaries able to think out of the box and move us to the next level. Until then, na siddon look...

[Sango Angoh]

Interesting. However, to imagine that Cameroon's numerous problems would be solved solely by relyng on technology is to miss a point: Our ATTITUDE is the most important. Long before emergence of the internet in the U,S., for instance, it relied on paperwork and most transactions, whether small or big, were carried out meticulously without problems because of the attitude of the men and women called upon to do their jobs. On the otherhand, of what use is the internet and other modern technology to a country like Cameroon when the men and women are unprepared to work for the good of the country? Don't we have traffic lights in cities like Douala and Yaounde? How many times do we really see people obey the rules when it comes to traffic light? Aren't traffic lights some of the trappings of modern technology? Our attitude is what will determine whether we succeed or not.

[Facter]

Hey: we keep falling behind. See______

Friday July 24, 2009
Africa-Europe fiber optic cable laid

MOMBASA, Kenya: East Africa took a big step toward joining the wired world Thursday with the launch of the first undersea fiber optic cable linking Europe to one of the world's poorest regions.

Telecoms companies SEACOM and Cisco Systems said in a statement that Thursday's start of broadband services will make fast Internet cheaper and more accessible in places like Kenya.

SEACOM's Brian Herhily says the launch marks the "dawn of a new era for communications between the continent and the rest of the world."

The 17,000-kilometer (10,625-mile) cable allows information to be sent at speeds of 1.28 terabytes per second, fast enough to stream high-definition video.

It connects Djibouti, Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania to India and Europe.

Southern and Western Africa already have broadband services.

As the West has grown used to taking streaming video and Internet phone calls for granted, Africa has remained far behind.

The Indian Ocean's east African seabed is the only one in the world without a submarine fiber-optic cable, forcing the region to rely heavily on limited and expensive satellite links.

The International Telecommunication Union sees businesses such as the Internet cafes as leading the growth in Internet use and services in Africa.

The union, a U.N. agency that tracks telecommunications trends, says there is potential for more growth because Africa has registered almost double the global average growth in Internet use between 2003 and 2008 - 30.6 percent for Africa compared to 17 percent for the world.

"Levels of home computer ownership and Internet access are extremely low in most of Africa and will remain so for years to come. Higher levels of ICT access will only be achieved through public facilities such as community access centers, Internet cafes and schools," said the ITU in its 2009 annual trends and statistics report for Africa.

In anticipation of the growth ITU forecasts, Mambo Mindila says in the coming months he will increase the number of terminals in his Internet cafe in downtown Mombasa, Future Online Technologies, to 50 from 35 and fit each one with a webcam and headphones.

But he remains a bit skeptical about the hype in the Kenyan media.

"If the high speed Internet comes, we hope to get what they are talking about," said Mindila. At least four projects to land a submarine cable in Mombasa have been in the pipeline for two years but have missed deadlines.

"We hope to get the speeds up and we hope the prices will come down as they are telling us," Mindila said.

Journalists were able to stream video and audio clips from the Mombasa launch venue Thursday.

An Associated Press reporter was able to test the connection's speed to confirm the broadband connection in Mombasa. Organizers also streamed via video an address by neighboring Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete in that country's commercial capita, Dar es Salaam.

Kikwete said his government plans to extend the existing fiber optic cable network in the country to reach about 10,680 kilometers (6,600 miles) within a year so that a Tanzanian will, for example, be able to apply online for a passport, get an acknowledgment and receive the passport in the post in a matter of days.

Broadband "will reduce the need for someone traveling. It will reduce the people-to-people contact. And above all, the highest benefit of all, it will reduce corruption. It is really a great moment for Tanzania," said Kikwete.

SEACOM's connection to India and Europe will be through cables operated by Tata Communications, one of the world's largest cable operators.

A rival cable project, the East African Marine Systems, has failed to meet its own self-imposed March deadline but is expected to be ready in the coming months.

A third project, the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable Systems, has extended its deadline to next year, but it is the most ambitious, aiming to connect 22 eastern, central and southern African countries to the rest of the world. - AP

[Oku]

Dibussi, it seems as if the government heard your cry. The government of Cameroon and China signed a 38 billion FCFA deal for the construction of a "national backbone" using the COTCO system that you mention. china will pay for 85% of the cost and the project is supposed to be completed by end of 2010.

See report below in French
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.lemessager.net/details_articles.php?code=204&code_art=27769

Investissement
39 milliards Fcfa pour construire la fibre optique
Selon l’accord de prêt signé et le planning d’exécution des travaux, le Cameroun devrait avoir sa fibre optique en fin 2010.

Environ 26 milliards Fcfa. C’est le montant de l’accord de financement/prêt que Eximbank-Chine a accordé à la République camerounaise pour la réalisation du projet Backbone de transmission d’informations par fibre optique. Cet accord a été signé hier, lundi 6 juillet 2009, à Yaoundé par Louis Paul Motaze, ministre camerounais de l’Economie, de la planification et de l’aménagement du territoire (Minepat), et l’ambassadeur de la République populaire de Chine au Cameroun, S.E.M. Huang Changqing. La cérémonie se déroulait en présence, entres autres, du nouveau ministre des Postes et télécommunications, Jean Pierre Biyiti bi Essam, du directeur général adjoint de l’entreprise Huawei technologies company Ltd, Shi Weiliang, et du directeur général adjoint de Cameroon télécommunications (Camtel), Richard Maga.
Le montant total du projet, toutes taxes comprises, est de 38,234 milliards Fcfa. Dans les détails, le projet va coûter en terme de fournitures, quelque 11,290 milliards Fcfa tandis que l’on a prévu pour les prestations 26,944 milliards Fcfa. Le financement sera fait par le Cameroun et la Chine. La partie chinoise s’engage en effet à accorder un prêt de 52 millions de dollars Us au Cameroun. Ce qui fait environ 26 milliards Fcfa. Cette somme correspond aux 85% du montant hors taxes-hors douane (HT-HD) du projet. Camtel devra pour sa part supporter les droits de douane et taxes ainsi que les 15% du montant HT-HD. Soit une enveloppe d’un peu plus de 12 milliards Fcfa.

18 mois de travaux
Les travaux en eux-mêmes se feront sous le contrôle de Huawei technologies company Ltd. Dès septembre 2009, il est question de fabriquer des équipements en Chine. Ils seront expédiés au Cameroun un mois plus tard, afin d’être dédouanés dès décembre 2009. Les travaux de génie civil auront déjà démarré en octobre. Et la pose même des câbles à fibre optique et l’installation des équipements de transmission sont prévues à partir de février 2010. Temps total des travaux : 18 mois. De manière globale, le projet Backbone national va consister à construire un réseau de câble optique sur une longueur de 3 200 kilomètres à travers l’ensemble du pays. Avec pour principal objectif de doter le pays d’infrastructures pour le développement des technologies de l’information et de la communication (Tic), et de manière spécifique dans les zones rurales et semi urbaines.
Dans son discours de circonstance, le Minepat, a émis le souhait de la partie camerounaise de voir ce projet prendre rapidement corps. “ Consacrant définitivement la mise en place des fonds nécessaires à la réalisation du projet, nous espérons voir les travaux démarrer dans les meilleurs délais ”, a souhaité Louis Paul Motaze. Il a par ailleurs rassuré l’entreprise Huawei de l’assistance de l’administration camerounaise pour une bonne exécution des travaux. La partie chinoise, par le biais de l’ambassadeur Changqing Huang, a réitéré l’envie de son pays à soutenir le Cameroun à combler le “ grand déficit au niveau du développement des [Tic] ”. Surtout que cela cause un obstacle réel pour l’envol de l’économie camerounaise.

Par Alain NOAH AWANA
Le 07-07-2009

[Will Ballard]

Hello Dibussi,

I googled the phrase 'outsourcing to cameroon' and 'bpo cameroon' and came across your article... Very, very interesting read - and you nailed the issue right on.

The points you make about Cameroon's human capital are huge - the country does not fully realize what it has - in terms of literacy rate and the power of being bilingual. You're equally right though that the educational system has to tweaked to make graduates 'think outside the box'. There is so much potential for economic growth, for international business in terms of BPO Services, Outsourcing, Research and Development - all unfulfilled.

I am interested in this topic because with my partners, we're opening a company (headquartered in Bamenda) but operational in Douala to provide BPO services and a host of other services to international and local clients. And the most difficult thing we're facing right now is finding the right talent to join our team. But we're positive that one year from now, we'll be a known entity on the Cameroon BPO scene.

Thanks!

Will Ballard
ZoomOps.com

[limbekid]

Any progress with the so called "national back bone" using the COTCO network? It is supposedly scheduled for completion by end of 2010. The fallout should be interesting.