Rwanda: Mobile and Digital Strategies on Display

Ten bags!  That is what we carried back from Rwanda, a small mountainous country in east equatorial Africa last night.  Why? The short answer is we have friends in Boise, Idaho with family and friends in Rwanda.  We took 7 bags to Rwanda, but unexpectedly returned with 10. Our refugee friends that have been resettled in the USA miss many familiar things from the region of their birth.  Now that they have jobs and money in the USA, they put in orders with their family and friends for the things they miss most.  We were surprised when we delivered a suitcase full of clothes to family members in a refugee camp high in the mountains of Northern Rwanda, and they gave us three in return.  We experienced that more than once. So much for traveling light!

While in Kigali, Rwanda I had the honor of speaking to a number of government ministries and most of the large banks about digital strategies.  Not so much digital transformation though.  How do you talk about digital transformation when digital is so new to Rwanda?  That is the question Professor Michel Bezy challenged me with, when I was the guest lecturer at the Master of Computer Science program at Carnegie Mellon University Rwanda.  Professor Bezy continued, here in Rwanda we are implementing digital for the first time.  We have no legacy IT systems to hinder our progress.  Wow!  I think many IT departments in western industrialized countries right now would envy that situation.  Most of the biggest problems in the west now are digitally transforming legacy systems.  It’s like running a race while dragging an anchor.  It is their biggest obstacles to future success among many we work with.

Put yourself in a Rwandan's shoes.  How would you design and develop an IT environment differently if you started from a blank sheet, a white canvas like they are doing? It is a fun thought exercise.

For a small landlocked country like Rwanda, digital changes everything.  The disadvantages of moving physical products in a landlocked country disappear with digital products and services.   The recent completion of 5,000 kilometers of fiber optics cable now makes mobile and Internet services available across much of Rwanda.  Now to get electricity!  Electricity is not yet available to 74 percent of the households, but that number is also improving fast.  I am fascinated by the fact that more households have mobile phones (approximately 70%) than electricity (less than 30%).  In fact, households with Internet nearly equal households with electricity.  I watched as school children lined up at a school office to retrieve their parent’s mobile phones after school.  They were all being charged in the school office because they had no electricity at home.

While traveling back and forth across beautiful Rwanda visiting schools, refugee camps and kids that we sponsor through Africa New Life, http://www.africanewlife.org/, I was keenly watching and pondering the challenges of living in a developing country where over 80% of the population are rural farmers.  I observed the work.  I spoke to farmers.  It is a MASSIVE amount of work to feed a family.  Basic tasks like getting water for your family to cook and clean often require herculean efforts in a country of a thousand hills that has made vertical farming an art form.  

Northern Rwanda Farms

It occurred to me while watching how much work living can be, that digital transformation and productivity improvements can significantly impact individuals as well as industry.  The Financial Times’ David White gives this example, “Registering a land transfer in an outlying village in Rwanda requires a number of journeys — to the nearest subdistrict office to get forms to fill in, which then have to be notarised, to a bank to pay the notary’s fees, then back to the government office, probably returning later to check the status of the process.  Now registration can be done online. For people with no internet-capable device of their own, this could be done at a government centre, or a cyber café, or the place perhaps where they already buy phone airtime and do their mobile banking.” Rwanda’s Vision of an ICT-Enabled Economy,http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fc318106-deda-11e4-b9ec-00144feab7de.html#axzz4K8LMqocP.

Rwanda 2016

Just feeding a family takes all day.  Getting water can take a half a day.  Walking to town can take half a day.  Walking to and from school can take half a day.  It is life draining work to survive in the mountains far from town and markets.  This point was burned into my consciousness over and over on this trip.

While speaking at a gathering of banks and financial services companies at the beautiful Serena Hotel in Kigali, a senior official of the Rwandan Tax Authority demonstrated to me how SMEs (small to medium size enterprises) can now register and pay their quarterly taxes all on basic mobile phones.  It was very impressive.  We don’t even have that capability in the USA!  It can save hardworking entrepreneursthe need for endless travel.

Another innovation that I read about, but did not yet see at work, is the simple idea of the Hippo Roller, https://www.hipporoller.org/.  Using a simple design and elementary physics to roll water instead of carrying it (often on your head) saves so much energy and pain - https://youtu.be/YUsKjleOopk.  Everyday I saw men, women and children excerting great effort carrying heavy loads of water miles to their homes.  Making this easier and faster could free up calories and time for more economically productive activities.  I hope these are widely and quickly adopted universally.

I left Rwanda pondering how hard it is to live as a rural farmer.  I was impressed by the skills, ingenuity and innovation I witnessed just to feed, educate and house a family on the sides of these breath-taking mountains.  Mountains, mountains everywhere!

Rwanda is looking at all solutions.  They are pushing for farmers to seek economy of scales in agriculture.  They are organizing small subsistence farmers into cooperatives so they can share the work and costs of farm equipment to improve their overall productivity and incomes.

With a population of 12 million,  Rwanda is the mostly densely packed country in Africa, but in the past 5 years they have lifted over 1 million of their people out of poverty.  They are one of the fastest developing nations in the world, and all of this is happening just 22 years after their peoples, economy and nation was devastated by genocide where 1 million of their people were murdered in a 90-day period.  Ideas, both good and bad can have a big impact on a small country and economy like Rwanda.

More on Rwanda’s Development

World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/rwanda/overview

Forbes: The Surprising Story Behind The Worlds Fastest Developing Countries, by Robin Meyerhoff, Senior Director, Corporate Affairs, SAP, http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2016/06/27/the-surprising-story-behind-the-worlds-fastest-developing-country/#238628b372d6     

************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Rwanda: Mobile and Digital Strategies on Display

Ten bags!  That is what we carried back from Rwanda, a small mountainous country in east equatorial Africa last night.  Why? The short answer is we have friends in Boise, Idaho with family and friends in Rwanda.  We took 7 bags to Rwanda, but unexpectedly returned with 10. Our refugee friends that have been resettled in the USA miss many familiar things from the region of their birth.  Now that they have jobs and money in the USA, they put in orders with their family and friends for the things they miss most.  We were surprised when we delivered a suitcase full of clothes to family members in a refugee camp high in the mountains of Northern Rwanda, and they gave us three in return.  We experienced that more than once. So much for traveling light!

While in Kigali, Rwanda I had the honor of speaking to a number of government ministries and most of the large banks about digital strategies.  Not so much digital transformation though.  How do you talk about digital transformation when digital is so new to Rwanda?  That is the question Professor Michel Bezy challenged me with, when I was the guest lecturer at the Master of Computer Science program at Carnegie Mellon University Rwanda.  Professor Bezy continued, here in Rwanda we are implementing digital for the first time.  We have no legacy IT systems to hinder our progress.  Wow!  I think many IT departments in western industrialized countries right now would envy that situation.  Most of the biggest problems in the west now are digitally transforming legacy systems.  It’s like running a race while dragging an anchor.  It is their biggest obstacles to future success among many we work with.

Put yourself in a Rwandan's shoes.  How would you design and develop an IT environment differently if you started from a blank sheet, a white canvas like they are doing? It is a fun thought exercise.

For a small landlocked country like Rwanda, digital changes everything.  The disadvantages of moving physical products in a landlocked country disappear with digital products and services.   The recent completion of 5,000 kilometers of fiber optics cable now makes mobile and Internet services available across much of Rwanda.  Now to get electricity!  Electricity is not yet available to 74 percent of the households, but that number is also improving fast.  I am fascinated by the fact that more households have mobile phones (approximately 70%) than electricity (less than 30%).  In fact, households with Internet nearly equal households with electricity.  I watched as school children lined up at a school office to retrieve their parent’s mobile phones after school.  They were all being charged in the school office because they had no electricity at home.

While traveling back and forth across beautiful Rwanda visiting schools, refugee camps and kids that we sponsor through Africa New Life, http://www.africanewlife.org/, I was keenly watching and pondering the challenges of living in a developing country where over 80% of the population are rural farmers.  I observed the work.  I spoke to farmers.  It is a MASSIVE amount of work to feed a family.  Basic tasks like getting water for your family to cook and clean often require herculean efforts in a country of a thousand hills that has made vertical farming an art form.  

Northern Rwanda Farms

It occurred to me while watching how much work living can be, that digital transformation and productivity improvements can significantly impact individuals as well as industry.  The Financial Times’ David White gives this example, “Registering a land transfer in an outlying village in Rwanda requires a number of journeys — to the nearest subdistrict office to get forms to fill in, which then have to be notarised, to a bank to pay the notary’s fees, then back to the government office, probably returning later to check the status of the process.  Now registration can be done online. For people with no internet-capable device of their own, this could be done at a government centre, or a cyber café, or the place perhaps where they already buy phone airtime and do their mobile banking.” Rwanda’s Vision of an ICT-Enabled Economy,http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fc318106-deda-11e4-b9ec-00144feab7de.html#axzz4K8LMqocP.

Rwanda 2016

Just feeding a family takes all day.  Getting water can take a half a day.  Walking to town can take half a day.  Walking to and from school can take half a day.  It is life draining work to survive in the mountains far from town and markets.  This point was burned into my conscienceness over and over on this trip.

While speaking at a gathering of banks and financial services companies at the beautiful Serena Hotel in Kigali, a senior official of the Rwandan Tax Authority demonstrated to me how SMEs (small to medium size enterprises) can now register and pay their quarterly taxes all on basic mobile phones.  It was very impressive.  We don’t even have that capability in the USA!  It can save hardworking entrepreneursthe need for endless travel.

Another innovation that I read about, but did not yet see at work, is the simple idea of the Hippo Roller, https://www.hipporoller.org/.  Using a simple design and elementary physics to roll water instead of carrying it (often on your head) saves so much energy and pain - https://youtu.be/YUsKjleOopk.  Everyday I saw men, women and children excerting great effort carrying heavy loads of water miles to their homes.  Making this easier and faster could free up calories and time for more economically productive activities.  I hope these are widely and quickly adopted universally.

I left Rwanda pondering how hard it is to live as a rural farmer.  I was impressed by the skills, ingenuity and innovation I witnessed just to feed, educate and house a family on the sides of these breath-taking mountains.  Mountains, mountains everywhere!

Rwanda is looking at all solutions.  They are pushing for farmers to seek economy of scales in agriculture.  They are organizing small subsistence farmers into cooperatives so they can share the work and costs of farm equipment to improve their overall productivity and incomes.

With a population of 12 million,  Rwanda is the mostly densely packed country in Africa, but in the past 5 years they have lifted over 1 million of their people out of poverty.  They are one of the fastest developing nations in the world, and all of this is happening just 22 years after their peoples, economy and nation was devastated by genocide where 1 million of their people were murdered in a 90-day period.  Ideas, both good and bad can have a big impact on a small country and economy like Rwanda.

More on Rwanda’s Development

World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/rwanda/overview

Forbes: The Surprising Story Behind The Worlds Fastest Developing Countries, by Robin Meyerhoff, Senior Director, Corporate Affairs, SAP, http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2016/06/27/the-surprising-story-behind-the-worlds-fastest-developing-country/#238628b372d6     

************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant Writer, Speaker and World Traveler

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Could Mobile Devices and the Internet have Prevented the Rwandan Genocide?

This week marks the tragic 20-year anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide.  On April 7, 1994, the Hutu majority, which was in power at the time, began an organized effort to wipe out the minority Tutsis living in Rwanda and other neighboring countries.  During an approximate 100-day period nearly 800,000 Tutsis and sympathizers were massacred, most by machete.

The genocide was only stopped when an exiled Tutsi rebel group marched into Rwanda and overthrew the Hutu government.  No outside international forces intervened to stop this massacre.  The UN peacekeeping soldiers, lacking authorization to intervene and protect, stood by as the massacres happened within sight of their forces.  This was and is to this day a great international shame.

In Boise, Idaho we have a fast growing Congolese and Rwandan population of refugees that were forever impacted by this event.  Many have spent the last 15 years living under plastic tarps on mud floors in refugee camps.  The tragedy of these events is personal to me.  It hits home nearly every day as our home is often filled with newly arrived Rwandan refugee families and friends.  Many of my close friends suffer nightmares to this day from the mental and physical scars of these events.

I often wonder if mobile devices with broadband Internet could have prevented or limited the Rwandan Genocide.  In 1994 letters were sent through the postal service from fearful Tutsi families and churches begging for protection.  Here is an excerpt from just one letter sent by a pastor to his church leadership, “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families.”  Tragically, the pastor’s words went silent and his predictions came true.  His entire family and congregation was massacred.  These letters were sent through the postal service.  The world was not aware, informed or alerted in a manner that rose above the noise.  These letters are now archived for us to read, remember and learn from.

There was no instantaneous access to social media sites, online forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or places where citizen journalists with iPhones and broadband Internet could upload photos, videos and articles.  There was no YouTube or widely used public news websites to spark immediate worldwide outrage.

In 1994 the news of the massacres leaked out slowly and the rumors were too horrific to be believed.  Facts were hard to come by. The scope and scale of the tragedy was difficult to measure.  News crews found it dangerous to venture out into remote areas.  It took weeks for the world to begin to learn the full scale of the violence and genocide and by then the tragedy had nearly run its course.

I ask again, could mobile devices with cameras, broadband Internet connectivity and access to social media sites have stopped or limited this tragedy? In 1994, the world had limited news, limited understanding of events, limited perspective of the scale and scope of this tragedy, and limited interest.  These challenges limited international outrage and prevented UN intervention and humanitarian responses.

In the absence of news crews and photojournalists, the Hutu government, militia and instigators of violence felt immune from personal accountability, scrutiny and retribution.  They gave into a mad, uncontrollable and unexplainable bloodlust.  The violence continued unabated for 100 days.

In 1994, the ruling Hutu party controlled most of the radio stations and newspapers in Rwanda. Propaganda ruled the airwaves calling for violence against the Tutsis.  Many of the Rwandan news agencies and broadcasters themselves were later found by International courts to have been guilty of instigating and organizing the violence.

I hope and pray that the ubiquity of mobile devices would make keeping genocide a secret far more difficult today.  Every person with a mobile phone has the potential to be a citizen journalist.  Every act of violence has the potential of being documented and the location and perpetrators identified.

There are models today that demonstrate how mobile devices can be used to help prevent future genocides.  In Kenya, a small group of volunteer programmers have developed a website and mapping solution called Ushahidi, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushahidi, where people with mobile phones can report violence and document the location of incidences on a map.  This information is instantly projected to a map on a website for the world to visualize, study and understand.

Today, freedom of speech and the ability to widely communicate news, knowledge and ideas has the opportunity to transform societies and peoples as never before.  Evil does not like the exposure and light of public scrutiny and debate.

In some circles, it is popular to cast disparaging remarks at technology, mobile devices, the Internet and social media, but I for one appreciate the value of information transparency afforded by these technological advancements.  I will celebrate the opportunity and freedom to know, and pray for the strength and courage to react with immediacy.

*************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.