Ask HN: suppose I parachute into mainland Africa, could I help the people with my Hacker skills?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227587

by Tichy • 18 years ago

31 61 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

In reaction to the "are you helping the world" thread, I really wonder what good could we do with hacker skills, on location? Like there are physicians who spend some months a year traveling poor countries and curing people.

Could we as programmers do something similar?

aitoehigie• 18 years ago

To tell, you the truth, i don't think that your skills will really matter here, and this is from the horses mouth. I live in west africa, which is one of the most stable parts and i am itching to leave to a place where my skill swill be appreciated.

thaumaturgy• 18 years ago

This is something that appears to be poorly understood in the tech/computer industry. Superb software design skills aren't as important in areas with serious social and infrastructure problems.

Also, to some extent, I think that those that have recently spoken out against foreign aid in Africa are correct: only Africa can improve Africa's well-being. (I say this even as a former member of a local community organization that raised funds to send an experienced hydrologist to Uganda for a year to work on water quality there.)

rory096• 18 years ago

I certainly agree that computer programming doesn't matter much, but what about hacking in the more general sense? I'm sure there are tons of problems in Africa where a simple solution could make a big difference (the recent thing with wheel-shaped water containers comes to mind).

stcredzero3• 18 years ago

One could help with OpenMRS, which would help to improve the medical information infrastructure of countries in Africa.

http://feed.openmrs.org/tag/global%20health

coglethorpe• 18 years ago

You might not be able to provide medical help, but you could teach for free and help others to gain jobs. You could set up a website to help aid those in need (like Kiva, a donation site, or a blog that tells the world about conditions).

Mystalic2• 18 years ago

I love the hypothetical and how you've asked it.

But to be serious, your programming skills are going to be of almost no use to them. Hell, go look at the Zimbabwe government's website to see how much they care - http://www.gta.gov.zw/ (prepare to cringe).

What skills you DO have are compassion, finances, and the ability to get awareness up HERE. Tons of charities need better and more functional websites that come up more often in SEO. They need more prominent donation tabs, they need websites that better explain their mission and better recruit. You can create a site to promote a cause, you can team up with someone and start your own charity (I intend to).

There's tons you can do. Just because you're not on location doesn't mean you're not making an impact.

Tichy7• 18 years ago

What is a good way to find an appropriate organization to help, with an office where I live?

Mystalic2• 18 years ago

Charity Guide (http://www.charity-charities.org) is a place to start, though it mostly lists local branches of larger charities.

radu_floricica• 18 years ago

You slashdotted it. Or something.

I'm in Romania, which right now is a proud member of the European Union and thoroughly civilized. Well, it's in EU, anyways. I'm talking about an ex comunist country with an literacy percent of 99 and university free education all the way. And still, every time I went into a public institution for the last 15 years I wished they'd let me write software for them for free. The problem is, they don't (i asked).

There are more software companies here then mushrooms after a rain (my own startup included) and still the main clients are foreign. Both the private sector and the government are very very oblivious to any advantages software could bring. It pains me, but what developing countries need are not hackers, but evangelists, and damn good ones at that. More like missionaries, actually.

Agathos• 18 years ago

Software that could be useful to Zimbabwe's government... that's an interesting challenge.

How about a Google Maps mashup that allows government goons to share notes on where opposition leaders are hiding?

menloparkbum2• 18 years ago

Rather than parachuting in, you could simply book a flight to one of the international airports located on the continent.

Teaching would be the obvious useful occupation. However, everywhere needs good teachers, not just Africa.

menloparkbum2• 18 years ago

More seriously, I spent some time in Africa after my first startup imploded. I volunteered in the pharmacy of a medical aid organization. Mostly I just got their ancient windows 3.1 machine set up with an ancient version of Access, (or something? I don't remember). I should have done a bit more teaching of how the system worked, but I wasn't even sure how it all worked. I'm pretty sure everything went to crap shortly after I left.

What I found more rewarding, and probably more useful than doing tech work, was helping kids have fun. The other bleeding hearts I was with were Ultimate Frisbee fans and we introduced the game to the local kids. We even had another aid worker bring a huge shipment of 144 frisbees into the country. This may seem frivolous, but one thing I noticed was that kids had tons of free time and were really eager to learn how to do fun stuff. Art, music, sports, etc. Computer programming would have been great, too... but there were hardly any computers.

Tichy7• 18 years ago

Interesting story, thanks.

eatenbyagrue• 18 years ago

You could probably help transferring an unclaimed fund of $25,000 from which I am in dire need of immediate assistance.

gills2• 18 years ago

I don't see what value this adds

bprater• 18 years ago

Pure entertainment value. As long as we are running 25:1 on entertainment to valuable info, I'm good with it.

wumi• 18 years ago

well, if its any consolation, its telling that this person created an account just to leave that comment.

evilneanderthal• 18 years ago

I'd have to say I think you'll end up using your nunchuku skills and bow hunting skills more than your hacker skills.

swombat• 18 years ago

No.

pistoriusp2• 18 years ago

I think the way that you would be able to help the most is been able to educate them. A bit of a "teach a man to fish" mantra.

I live in South Africa and we have a serious shortage of programmers in this country, especially when it comes to the open source web based languages.

gaius2• 18 years ago

I live in England, we have lots of great South African programmers here :-)

pistoriusp2• 18 years ago

Funny you should mention that I'm immigrating next year to England. :)

acgourley2• 18 years ago

If someone would like to pitch in, and has has at least basic python abilities, consider helping out with Aaron Swartz's project: www.watchdog.net

There are a lot of bite-size python tasks they need help with. It usually pulling in data from a very unhelpful format and converting it to a helpful format. It's not terribly stimulating but it might be rewarding to enable the data to see the light of day.

Check out things you can do at: http://watchdog.jottit.com/volunteer

acgourley2• 18 years ago

Have you contacted http://www.geekcorps.org/ ?

bobochan• 18 years ago

Wouldn't it make a bit more sense to signup with an organization that is already working on this:

http://www.geekcorps.org/

As someone that has wired networks, written code and taught some basic computer skills in Africa, I would suggest narrowing down your search a little. Africa is a vast continent and there is a big difference between what you might find in Tunis vs. Kinsangani.

There are probably many projects that could benefit from having geek help but do not think you can just "parachute" into many places without a great deal of preparation. Without concrete plans for things like where you are going to live, how you are going to get medical care, etc. you may end up being more of a liability than an asset.

Good luck and do not give up trying to find a way to help. I lived and worked in Africa for four years after college and it was a great experience.

subwindow• 18 years ago

I had been considering doing something similar in Ghana. I thought about it for a few weeks and kept coming back to teaching. Teaching programming in particular probably wouldn't be very useful, but teaching basic computer skills definitely would be.

If you worked with a small town (provided they had access to reliable power), you could probably have a measurable impact on the local economy. That is really the only way I could sustain myself in such a situation- by being able to see the good I'm doing to a whole community.

dazzawazza2• 18 years ago

To be fair no. Working for a charity isn't really going to help either (I refere you to the last 50 years where outside of disaster relief charity has done little to remove people from poverty).

If you really want to help, buy the things they make and lobby YOUR government to lower trade barriers.

Tichy7• 18 years ago

I am not even convinced "buy the things they make" is the right way to go. Maybe they should just make other things? Buying things "they" make would be the same thing as subsidization, which I consider mostly evil. It would lead to even more investment into making things nobody really wants, rather than investment into making useful things.

Trade barriers are probably a good point, though.

dazzawazza2• 18 years ago

If you lower the trade barriers you will get a chance to buy the things they make and they will get a chance to make what we want.

The reality of africa is that Europe dumps a lot of it's produce into African markets at below market prices reducing the value of the local goods. There is no point in giving to charity until this stops. African countries don't want charity, they want markets and foreign capital so they can grow jobs for THEIR people.

rw2• 18 years ago

"lower trade barriers"? When market isolation is one of the key ways the U.S. has become so highly productive?

byrneseyeview• 18 years ago

Source?

I have heard of only informal studies on the percentage of economic growth over the last 200 years that was caused by charitable or governmental redistribution versus skills, technology, and reinvestment. And the number is usually less than 1%. But apparently someone has studied this more rigorously, and gotten a more confident estimate. Let's hear it!

jfischer• 18 years ago

You might help out with a project like OpenMRS (http://openmrs.org/wiki/OpenMRS). This is an open source medical records application used in several African countries, primarily for HIV/AIDS care.

aditya• 18 years ago

This guy did it, but don't parachute in cuz you might break something and cause more harm...

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/9/3/151048/0948

biohacker42• 18 years ago

Skill X, can not fix or much help a broken state.

Even a doctor could only help those in close physical proximity and in no need of advanced medical tech or much expensive drugs.

The fix for broken states is to fix the state, then the economy takes off and your stills are needed.

Most broken states are run by undemocratic governments, to "fix" them you need a change of regime. Undemocratic states often spy on their citizens to stay in power. So l337 crypto skill could help a democratic underground communicate and organize.

mechanical_fish• 18 years ago

A short answer: Politics. That's where your hacker skills have leverage: Education, research, documentation, analysis, logistics, fundraising, diplomacy.

Of course, we can't discuss many details here, because politics is anathema on news.yc unless IP law is involved. :)

[And that, BTW, is why we see all these posts lamenting that hackers "never do enough to solve the world's big problems" -- most of the world's big problems are intensely political, and politics is to news.yc as sex was to Victorian England. Of course, just because we don't talk about political issues here doesn't mean we don't work on them, off camera.]

Actually, though, IP law is relevant: If you can successfully lobby to reduce the patent lifetime for AIDS drugs you will save an order of magnitude more lives in Africa than you could ever do with your own two hands.

Another source of leverage is, obviously, invention. Hackers are good at inventing things, much of which you can do in your own shop (where you are most productive).

None of this should stop you from traveling to Africa, but the most useful thing you can do there is learn: Once you have a first-hand look at the life and problems of an African person you may have a better idea of how to apply your leverage.

Tichy7• 18 years ago

I don't think hackers are anti-politics by default. I for one am very interested in how to "hack" politics. I just don't think the "official politics" we see is the real politics. Like I don't think people's opinions are being swayed by debates. I don't know a good approach for changing people's opinions, unfortunately - but if somebody would present one, I would be very interested.

ComputerGuru• 18 years ago

Your programming skills: No.

Your talents and engineering senses? Most definitely.

The idea is the same, the venue is different, that's all.

babul• 18 years ago

Don't know about the parachuting in bit and most people won't have/use computers, but mobiles are making big impact/inroads in third/developing worlds. Ideally do something using them.

So, perhaps a text based mobile service (most places do not have mobile-internet yet) to do something useful may be of value e.g. to find the current market price of rice (to buy/sell without being cheated) or warn about events like potential flood/hurricane risk or when the next bus is coming or text-based bartering system or even just teaching the kids how to use the OLPCs effectively.

ismail• 18 years ago

hey, being from Africa: Yes, you could,though i dont in 'aid' and charity in Africa we need to resolve our problems, only then will we learn how to compete in the global economy. So for example, encourage entreprenuership etc.

Take a look at the bigger picture being how do can you use your technology skills to programme/code something to make a difference? To assist with the issues being faced in Africa (And globally).

i.e The current inflation being felt world wide, the energy crisis(fuel / power), the food crisis with the high prices of food, in places like the US it does not affect people and even for some people like myself it will not affect me since i can afford the higher prices. However when it comes to people who can just barely pay for their daily food, it leads to starvation.

So yes, while we build 199999 Facebook(x) clone or silly little online app, millions of people out there are starving and can barely make ends meet.

Think about that.

There is a group created to put into action practical technology solutions to target some of these issues, feel free to join.

http://groups.google.com/group/technologyforchange

aneesh• 18 years ago

You can work with others. Develop point-of-sale software to improve efficiency at crowded stores. Cell phone software can make markets more efficient and prevent price-setting that farmers suffer from. Then there's medical records software.

All of these 1) require some domain expertise, even if small 2) are conceptually simple, but the delivery is hard

stcredzero3• 18 years ago

OpenMRS is a project to enable modern medical records technology, which is now used in Africa.

http://feed.openmrs.org/tag/global%20health

sutro• 18 years ago

Check out these guys:

http://www.inveneo.org/

I recently met the founder at an event in SF. He gave me a demo of their very impressive solar-powered computer product. This is a high-tech nonprofit run in an entrepreneurial way by people who are trying to change the world for the better.

bjelkeman-again• 18 years ago

With the right plan I think you can be more effective if you stay at home and deploy your Hacker skills.

Mechanical-fish wrote in another thread: "Wake me up when you have an actionable plan to solve a problem. That would be interesting."

We identified a big internet service/applications gap in the development-aid water and sanitation sector. Essentially these people are stuck in the LP/cassette tape age, when the rest of the world moved on to iPods and p2p networks.

Some basics:

Market size: 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation, 1.1 billion lack safe water to drink. Some US$10 billion is spent every year to try to resolve that problem. The goal is to halve those numbers by 2015 (UN MDG goals), but that isn't going to happen.

Problem: There are lots of problems with development aid, but we are focusing on a couple of specific areas: information exchange, funding and monitoring and reporting.

Information exchange – Information about low cost, appropriate technologies and sustainable water and sanitation solutions for low-income households and communities is very hard to find and collect for the non-specialists. Information is available, but spread over a large number of sources, and essentially disorganised.

Funding – The water and sanitation community struggles to attract additional flows of money and connect funds directly to where the demand is. It is estimated that around 15-30% of budgets are directed away from intended beneficiaries due to corruption and high overhead costs, partially due to a lack of transparency. It is specifically difficult to find grants and loans for local initiatives, even though these initiatives have proved to be very efficient.

Monitoring and reporting – Monitoring and reporting are often used as a means to ‘justify’ a correct use of funds, not as a tool to intervene pro-actively in projects while they are evolving. The sector is stuck in the “thick Word report” process, rather than using easy to use IT tools. Additionally the sector struggles to visualise and share results in an appealing way to those outside the sector.

You can take what I considere basic internet tools and drastically improve the "state of the art" that the people working in this field today use. Which is what we are doing, like picking low hanging fruit. We are putting together a non-profit foundation to work on this and deliver some tools.

We are putting together three integrated products:

- Akvopedia – the first truly open knowledge platform dedicated to water and sanitation - Akvo Matchmaking – an unique marketplace for water and sanitation projects screening and funding - Akvo Really Simple Reporting (RSR) – an easy and transparent way to track projects in the field and to share and visualise results

Essentially a Wikipedia for water and sanitation knowledge, eBay, Blogger and YouTube for water and sanitation projects, rolled into one.

The tools we develop ourselves will be available under GPL and the platform is available at an "at cost" basis to the users, who are NGOs, government departments and companies. Which will be way below in cost what they can provide for themselves.

We are in the process of deploying the platform and building out the first product, Akvo RSR. The web site is essentially a wireframe which we used as part of our fundraising, which will be swapped out with the real thing during the summer.

We have more than a dozen development-aid partners and we are working with hundreds of field partners lining up to use the system, and expect to put the first 25-50 projects on the system over the next couple of months. The goal is to scale this up to thousands of projects over the next year and then further.

I could go to Africa and work as a hydrologist (I have the education) but I think that I am going to be much more effective rolling out some modern internet systems to make all these people working in this field more effective. Our funders agree with me, otherwise I don't think they wouldn't have given us money.

24pfilms• 18 years ago

I think this is the right approach. I think by being inventive and creating ideas like www.freerice.com you can make a hell of a difference. John Breen the guy who created this has sent much $$$$ to the World Food Programme. It's a WIN/WIN situations users love it because they are learning, and the hungry get fed.

www.codewithcause.com

akd• 18 years ago

If you parachute into mainland Africa, the most likely outcome for you is death.

I had a friend who worked in Kenya for a few months and the class conflict was so tense there that he had six armed bodyguards on the advice of his employer.

muriithi• 18 years ago

Where in Kenya? I live there and unless your friend was doing drugs, his story sounds highly implausible.

ihack4fun• 18 years ago

i think the root of all problems/evil in africa comes from lack of (bad.. very bad!) leaders. there's mugabe on one extreme and many other mini-mugabes who are "sly" enough to go unnoticed (they are not sly or clever or whatever but just downright stupid!), and worst of all, potentially "good" leaders will simply never get to lead because of the long queue of bad leaders waiting to get to the top and make themselves rich - and who , believe me , are ready to do anything to make sure that the "good" ones never lead - including murder. kenyan example - yet its not the worst 1. MPs in kenya , one of the poorest countries in the world, take home AT LEAST 8000$ per month (it must be 10000$ by now) , much more than most rich countries. they vote for these salaries and block the parliament activities (hold hostage) if they dont get the amount they wanted - after all they are the law makers !. 2. Before elections, several women who wanted to become MPs we're beaten , raped etc.. in order to scare them. 3. Now , after elections, with the hard times and especially after a near civil war situation ( also because of "kenyan leaders greed for power" - that's another long story !) , MP revenue taxation was proposed ( i had forgotten to mention they are not taxed ) - they we're obviously up in arms against it and vowed it would never happen - even if they earn 1000 times more than the average kenyan, who pays taxes. i believe african countries have their share of talent ( intellectuals, artists, good leaders .. all what you want) only that they never (and might never) get to exercise it. many africans know this so they simply have no faith in govt and live like they dont have them - which is more or less true, this means living in some very chaotic societies where the strong survive and the rest are left to try and survive. let me cut it for now but if you can hack the bad leaders and replace them with good ones - maybe that might just be the hack of the century :)

DabAsteroid• 18 years ago

i think the root of all problems/evil in africa comes from lack of (bad.. very bad!) leaders.

You don't think IQ is a factor?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_Global_Inequality#Nation...

Ask HN: suppose I parachute into mainland Africa, could I help the people with my Hacker skills?

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