By Kathleen Melymuka
ComputerWorld Reporter
July 2, 2001

Rebecca Enonchong, daughter of a village chief in Cameroon and educated in the U.S., co-founded the Washington-based Africa Technology Forum (www.africatechforum.com) to promote technology in Africa and to foster the networking and growth of African technology professionals. 

Enonchong, 33, who is also president of Application Technologies Inc., a Bethesda, Md.-based global application service provider, recently spoke with Computerworld reporter Kathleen Melymuka about the many challenges and opportunities of doing business in Africa. 

Why should U.S. companies want to do business in Africa? Look at what's happening in the U.S. economy: The market is shrinking. Africa has new, untapped markets. A lot of formerly government-owned enterprises are being privatized. Economies in Africa are growing at a rate much more rapid than in the West. They have a greater [technology] gap and greater need [for high technology] than in the West. There are great opportunities for any company offering goods and services. 

Is there a digital divide within Africa? There is. Countries in southern Africa like South Africa, Botswana [and] Zimbabwe are more advanced. Then you have the northern African countries that are also more advanced. In the middle—what would be considered black Africa—you've got this huge gap, and that's the area of greatest opportunity, because it's neglected in general by American companies. 

What kind of infrastructure challenges are there? What about electricity? It's not everywhere. Even larger cities with millions of people may have entire neighborhoods without electricity. When you have it, it's really expensive, and, frequently, electricity will just go off for a couple days. So you always have to think about what kind of power generator you have and do you really want to use it for computers or do you need it for [other things]. 

Those are the kinds of challenges Africans face daily. It becomes part of your psyche, so it's a challenge but not an obstacle that can't be overcome. When we think about doing projects in Africa, we have to think about that and how we're going to deal with it and then just deal with it. 

Talk about some of the challenges of deploying technology in Africa. Lack of land lines is very tough to deal with. Getting a phone line in some countries takes over a year, so dial-up [service] isn't necessarily an option. Most [companies] use VSAT technology, and in some countries, that's illegal, and in others, they could make it illegal any day, so even if you have VSAT, you don't want anyone to know. 

Some companies will put [a satellite dish] on the back side of the building so the government officials won't see it. And that's very scary. Some companies have built their business around this technology and they don't know if it's going to last till next year. How do you get investors in a company that the government could shut down tomorrow? 

What are some of the political challenges? On paper, some countries seem to be encouraging the growth of technology. For instance, Nigeria has a whole ministry for science and technology that's brand new. But our [chief operating officer] is from Nigeria, and he laughs and says it looks good on paper but the reality is that it's still filtering through and it will take some time. But it's a move in the right direction. 

Then there are other countries I won't name. In one, the main land-line phone company was being privatized, and a South African company wanted to purchase the formerly government-owned [telecommunications firm], but the holdup was that one of the government ministers wanted $100 million for himself. That stopped the deal for a long time. Finally, it went through, but those are the types of things that happen. 

About six years ago, when the Internet was becoming big, the minister of communications of one country said that over his dead body would his country have the Internet. He's still alive and he's still a minister in that country and the Internet exists. It comes from the population and you can't stop a revolution