Support Your Local (Tech) Team

After celebrating 49 years of independence, it makes you look at how far you've come as a country and how far you've lagged behind your neighbors or the world in general. Everyone who comes from abroad obviously say we're light-years behind in almost every aspect but the saddening reports are those about the countries that surround us. From infrastructure to technology,it seems we focused on the wrong things in the 40 or so years. Even something as simple as graphics on our national broadcaster are from the 50's,blocky and boring. Lack of initiative if you ask me.

As far as technology goes, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is creating the technology we so crave, Zambia must be at 2 rising at the rate of 1 point every decade. We have the minds (and I say this all the time)  to push us up my ranking but don't have companies with either the means or guts to back development of our own technology,whether consumer electronics or software.

A mobile phone manufacturing plant was opened some time back,which is a good start but we need to start supporting this industry. I believe China can open up a doors for us creating our better mobile phones, make computers, laptops, TVs. Building components is not cheap, but the government can take the lead by offering tax incentives to those who set up plants that make/assemble consumer electronics which will in turn make their products cheaper than imports. We wonder why things are cheap in South Africa when the biggest reason is that most of them are assembled there.

It will then fall upon us to buy what we make, cast aside our Samsung phones, home theatre systems and buy 'Zed Tech'. Most wouldn't if the opportunity came, we have been ruined by choice. The demand is there for cheap handsets,its a matter of providing the supply.

The same goes for software, whether business solutions or mobile applications. The next big thing is sitting on someone's computer and is only known to a few because we'd rather buy a payroll system that developed outside Zambia because it looks fancier or download that mobile app from a rounded developer.

Lets make our own (tech) destiny, support our own!!!!

The Degree that Doesn't Prepare You For IT

From the very first time I sat worked a personal computer I knew my future was in computing. I pushed aside my ambitions of being an astrophysicist, NASA seemed a bridge too far and computers felt more at home. It's no surprise that when grade 12 results were out,the program I wanted to do was Computer Science. Computing from the ground up,that's what the program offered and the idea fascinated me.

It was only half way through my four degree program did we visit Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), mining giant that had a state of the art information technology infrastructure setup. While touring their IT rooms and talking to those employed there did it dawn on all of us that what we doing as part of the degree programme had little application in the real world. Things like computer architecture and design had no place at KCM neither did numerical analysis. The guys reassured us that we will find jobs after completing school but we expect a different world.

The university degree now just turned into a stepping stone,expected to open doors but not to keep them open. The modules in the latter stages of the degree had more relevance but were also outdated. The curriculum was formulated at a time when computers were for those who could afford them and not for everyone therefore all we studied was history and little of the future.
We learnt a lot about programming, object oriented programming but the programming jobs were and a still scarce in Zambia. Companies opted to purchase software than develop it in house and the purchased software was from a foreign developer. Their reasons for not going local were either we lacked the capabilities to design and develop or they just weren't able to take the risk.

Zambia has produced great programmers, the market or industry is too small to take them and they end up doing networking where they don't really come up with anything new because the technology is proprietary.  Those with ideas on building local hardware lack backers.

We end up in offices supporting Microsoft servers, Cisco routers or business systems when the stuff we learn can be updated to cover the evolving landscape, mobile computing, cloud computing, eCommerce etc.

I appreciate the degree as a foundation for the work I do now and understanding the underlying technology,I only hope that future generations will get revised degree programmes to reflect the current industry otherwise getting professional qualifications like Microsoft Certified Professional will be the better option.

Zambia has brilliant minds, universities steer us in the wrong direction only for job seeking to bring us back to REALITY!

Embracing The Digital Age.....

The internet, in a commercial sense, has been in existence since 1995 and despite the slow up take caught on in the developed world. Big companies made sure they had a presence on the world wide web, websites were for the elite as internet access was only for those that could afford it. In the developing world, personal computers were expensive, few had them and the net wasn't even a known factor. My first experience with one was in '96, a Compaq Presario belonging to my cousins with an Encarta encyclopedia disc that opened up the world to me. Safe to say most Zambian companies were only pushing for electronic mail at the time and having their own website was not a priority. At the time, website design  and hosting was expensive, very few people with knowledge on hypertext markup language (HTML) existed and they would charge top dollar to have one done so these companies could get away with not having a presence online.

Fast forward to 2013, we have the internet in our pockets and can literally make or break business deals on the go but Zambian companies still have a phobia about having a presence on the internet. I looked up the companies listed on the Lusaka Stock Exchange (LUSE) a while back and noticed that less than half had websites even the LUSE site was not very interactive or informative. At least now, the website has been improved and all the companies have one as well albeit under their multinational parent companies. These are serious people who want to be known and want to sell,the ones that surprise me are the ones termed medium scale businesses. Their focus is to get a Post office box and maybe an email address registered under free mail providers like Hotmail or Yahoo. Others would get one under a local ISP. They think of websites as a nice to have rather than a necessity.

Little do companies know what a powerful tool a website can be. A customer does not have to visit a premises or make a phone call to know what you are about,its as simple as performing a web search and going to the site. The visit would be reserved for the actual business dealings.

There are plenty of good web hosts and design has been made easier with content management system based websites so an organization's excuse for not having an online outlet is nothing but lack of forward thinking. At the minimum a company can open up a page on the world's largest social network, Facebook.

Gone are the days when social networks were frowned upon, now everyone who is anyone has a either a LinkedIn page,  Twitter account and a Facebook page or all three making access to information or news very easy for any and everyone.

Its time to embrace the digital age. Get a website made, a mobile app developed and a Facebook to make your company reach more people.

The Specs War: Are Phone Makers Giving Consumers The Best or is Quality Compromised In The 'Arms' Race...

Every year, phone  manufacturers (smartphones to be precise) release at least one new device which is an iterative update from the previous year's phone if a predecessor existed. Changes are made to at least 2 critical characteristics of the phone,either the processor is made faster, the display made sharper or larger. These improvements vary in size,from minor to quantum leaps. For example a single core processor married to 1 GB RAM being upgraded to dual core/4 GB RAM.

These guys making these phones are in the business to make money,new and improved products means the possibility of more revenue. The main question is whether these yearly updates a really worth your precious kwachas. Is the newer device that different in terms of performance and quality that you need to change it every year or are we consumers simply hoodwinked by the supposed superior spec sheet that we quickly rush to buy one?  Bear in mind, Zambia is new to the concept of contract phone so most of consumers get unlocked brand new phones for a pretty penny and the resale market is not so friendly, meaning you incur a lost when switching from your Galaxy S III to an S 4.

Undoubtedly, a good number of the people I have spoken to that have changed phones on a yearly basis in the last 3 years all claim it was worth it. Others say,"why get the iPhone 5 when i can wait for the 6?". The disciplined ones do wait,while others buckle under envy pressure.

Now taking a different direction, what happens when specs bottom out or reach their highest possible level? Will we now enter personal computer territory? Screens can't go beyond 5",that's a phablet. What comes after 1080p display?4K? Can a 4-5 inch screen accommodate that number of pixels? Unless all these OEMs have ways to keep pushing up specs,I expect a road block of sorts on the next 2 years. At that point,improvements will have to well thought and innovative.

Not being a journalist,means my train of thought gets derailed most of the time and I lose track of what I'm trying to put across....thoughts of the wonder consumer trying not to buy every new phone that is announced.